After the door swung shut behind them, Niphru took in the appearance of the room. On sed thought, the pilrs of sting the edge of the room made sense, as there should be something to test on, but he didn’t expect the attached room that tained wood, metal, scale, and shell that could be attached to the stone. Simirly, there appeared to be a well included in the design of the room, though sidering water magic existed, it did make seo have a source of it present.

  Miaured for him to follow her to the middle of the room, pointing out how the floor sloped upward towards it so that any harmful liquids would flow away to the edges of the chamber. Fortunately, the raised ter of the room was rge enough for several people to use at once, so they could both use the same room. Additionally, there were a few vents he floor, as well as one above the ter on the ceiling. She then expihat sometimes it was o cycle the air before someone could go ihere was an act.

  sidering what he had read about burnials earlier, that made a lot of sense, so he was gd it had already been sidered. He didn’t think that would be required, however, as he did not possess any such materials, nor would he want to use them around anyone else even if he did. Simirly, Miana had mentioned wanting to test steam, which wasn’t toxic.

  Ohey spent a moment discussing their ideas, each of them set up a siarget with wooden g, and each took a quarter of the targets as their owing them keep an eye on each other while still staying out of the way. Curious about what Miana was going to do, Niphru held off for a few moments to watch her.

  Her first a was to pull a head-sized blob of water across the room to float beside her, followed by splitting off smaller portions of it to sit in front of herself. Afterward, she caused an orb of fme to appear inside one of the portions of water. The few moments were quite b, simply her holding the water and fire together while muttering under her breath about it being hard to trol as steam floated upward from the water’s surface.

  Eventually, Niphru became bored of the rather uful situation, fog back to the targets he had selected for himself. He started off with simple balls of fire, not particurly intense, but at a level that he’d used them to hunt with before. They moved retively slowly, and only left small marks oone, barely even visible. pressing the fmes and increasing their iy quickly ged that, leading to scorch marks appearing where they collided with the stone.

  Adding some air magic to help the fire burn even hotter, he ran across a problem he had been having for a while now: throwing the fme moved it away from the air being fed into it, so it quickly lost power. It was very difficult to trol the air magiove at the same speed as the fme, which was a rge part of why he wao practice, as it would be much more powerful if he could bihe two beyond the initial creation.

  Occasionally he gnced over at Miana, hearing her tio mutter, though she didn’t seem to be making much progress. Eventually she even ran out of mana and had to draw on the ambient, resulting in a very clear pull towards her within the mostly-isoted room. Even if she was having difficulty simply beginning, he was making progress in aligning the different forms of magic for himself.

  Niphru even mao occasionally get the vortex of air to follow the fmes all the way until they impacted against the pilr, leaving much more intense scorch marks on those occasions. After a time, he had mao bihe two on nearly a third of his attempts, at which point Miana shouted iement as she finally mao tain a cloud of steam in front of herself.

  He found himself quite ied in this, as it looked almost like fire in a way, flickering and shifting in a haze. Unfortunately, it quickly dissipated as soon as she attempted to move it. Still, the success seemed to have greatly improved her mood, and she quickly repeated the process time after time until she could successfully move the resulting cloud.

  Niphru sidered what he had seen while he tio try to improve his ability to bine his magic, finding that the steam appeared to be more like air than anything else, even if it came from fire and water. With this in mind, he used his much lower skill with water magic to acquire some for himself and quickly set about heating it. As he expected, he found it to move to his will whereated it as he would ordinary air, though it did have a heft to it and took effort to keep from simply moving upward.

  After a moment of moving it around in front of himself, he found himself curious and held fme to the misty cloud, finding it quickly vanishing. He did, however, still feel its preseh his magic, which was quite odd, and tried moving it toward the wooden target. The strange invisible cloud tacted it and the wood darkened before tiny licks of fire flickered in and out of existence—quite ued for something that seemed to be more air than anything else.

  Hearing some more muttering, he turo the side and saw Miana gring at him, and with his foow on her, he deciphered her muttering, “How is that even possible, I spent so long! And I’m way better with water too!”

  Wanting to avoid hard feelings, he immediately expined, “I thought it looked and acted more like air than anything else, so I tried to trol it that way, and it just worked. Harder than normal air, sure, but the same method worked for it; maybe you could try that ime?”

  She still looked someset, but turned back to her own magic, quickly heating up another sphere of water. The steam rising from it quickly pooled into a writhing mass just above the water as more and more of it was verted to steam. As Niphru watched, the cloud sluggishly moved from side to side, speeding up as the seds passed by.

  “It is a good thing we all had to learn at least a little of different types of magic, I suppose. This is much easier than trying to hold on to the water, even if I’m more skilled at that. Thank you for the suggestion; I obviously o work on that more,” Miana remarked, carefully watg the small cloud of steam.

  He nodded a back to his own practice, ready to try to speed it up. Sieam roduced from hot water, and he was good with fire, he should be able to vert it quickly. Pulling another blob of water over, he focused for a moment before trying to fill the water with intense fire. He could feel his mana drop like a stone fr to hold fire in the middle of the water, making it clear why Miana had o draw in additional power before. But he did manage what he wanted, perhaps a little too well.

  Instead of all the water turning to steam, there was a dull thumping sound, and it exploded into a spray of boiling water. He threw up a barrier of force as quickly as he could, but it was too te, appearing behind the expanding spray. The water spshed both of them, f screams out of them as it scalded their flesh. Niphru was gd he had fur c most of his body, as it caught a great deal of the water before it could reach his flesh, but it didn’t save his ears or fabsp; He felt far worse for what happeo Miana, however, as she had less prote and was caught pletely by surprise, where he had at least been able to duck.

  Immediately, all three of his foxfires darted out with the goal of healing the damage, one rag to his face as the other two spread out over Miana’s head. In addition, he pulled on all the ambient mana as he could to restore himself and began reag out from the foxfire to work healing magic across their wounds.

  It was much tougher than typical healing, as he had to focus on two different people at once, but healing himself had always been easier than healing another. He didn’t think he could heal two other people at once, but he was gd he didn’t o try.

  Almost the same instant as he began healing, he felt Dawn’s panic over their bond, quickly reminding him that the link wasn’t only active, but also passive. He quickly sent that he should be fine and would expin things whe back, feeling Dawn rex somewhat, though there was still a sense of worry from her.

  As he was iing with Dawn, Miana swiped at the water with shaking hands, quickly removing most of it from her fabsp; Somewhat unsteadily, she lowered herself to the ground, wing aing out a pained hiss as the burns on her leg touched the stone.

  Seds ter, the door burst open, a wave of mana flowing in as the man Miana had spoken to before rushed in and skidded to a halt beside them. Even as he slowed, a stream of water flew across the room and slid over them, the cool liquid soothing the pain somewhat, with Miana quickly shifting to allow it to reach the burns on her leg. As soon as it finished c them, openings formed around their noses and mouths, easing the worry Niphru had felt a sed before as he lost access to air.

  Niphru was surprised to feel fn mana brush up against his before pushing it aside at some of the areas he was having trouble fog on, seeing the man close his eyes as the mana flowed out from him.

  The man dropped to a knee, his eyes still closed as he remarked, “I am gd to see one of you is a healer as well. What is going on with these fmes? I tell they are not burning even if they appear as though they should.”

  “I don’t really know how to expin them, but they are part of me, and I cause them to heal instead of burn. I’m fine, but I ’t cover everything for Miana. Thank you fetting here so quickly!” Niphru excimed, most of his focus still on their wounds.

  With a nod, the man responded, “It is part of my job to be here if something goes wrong. Fortunately, we should be able to deal with the damage today thanks to you also being a healer, as long as you maintain your focus. What happened? All the arm tells me is if something dangerous happens on the tral ptform, and that it was involvi.”

  Miana shook her head and whimpered before quietly remarking, “We were practig with steam, and I heard a thud before suddenly I felt burning all over.”

  Niphru shifted the foxfire on his head back to an illusion to quickly cut in, “I thought I could turn all of the water I had into steam at once, but it exploded instead and sprayed burning water over us. I mao avoid a lot of it, but Miana didn’t see it to even try to react.”

  The response from the man was about what he expected, a simple nod and a return to fog on the process of healing.

  Since he was no longer busy expining things, Niphru apologized to Miana, “I’m sorry, I had no idea it would do that.”

  Before he could tinue, she carefully raised her unharmed arm, holding out her hand to stop him as she looked at him from the er of her eye. As he cut his apology short, she gave him a thumbs-up before quickly pointing at her fad making a talking motion before shifting into a thumbs-down again, the burns across her face making it rather easy to guess what she meant.

  Eventually feeling that he had done all he could for both his own face, and Miana’s, he moved all three of his foxfires towards the burns on the side she had fag the impromptu bomb.

  The man who had joihem opened his eyes and grunted, muttering, “This is very odd, I sehe effe the wounds, but there is no mana as far as I tell. I have to admit it does heal much faster than expected, which is a wonderful surprise.”

  They fell to silence as they tiheir work, occasional whimpers making their way out as Miana shifted in pbsp; Niphru felt that he was fortunate in that he could easily avoid moving his fad cked burns across his body, though equally sorry for Miana, as well.

  Two hours ter, he moved one of his foxfires back to cover his head again, havi it was no longer useless, quickly following with doing the same for Miana.

  This time, it appeared that it ossible to fully heal the damage, though their skin was still red and slightly swollen. As her face finished healing, Miana flexed her jaw for a moment before she finally spoke up again, “It is fine, Niphru. I’m not happy about this happening, but everything I’ve read says it is extremely on to injure yourself while learning how to use steam. It was more likely than not to have something simir happen. All we do is learn from what occurred.”

  With a nod, the man added, “Steam is one of the worst types of magic when it es to this sort of thing. Everything else is retively easy to guess what might cause a problem, but water expands immensely when turning into steam, and evei differences iing pletely ge how things happen. You either have to be perfect at what you are doing, or prepare ahead of time to tain any problems. From what I’ve heard, it is a good idea to keep a barrier of water between yourself and where you are making the steam, as it will help catything that gets blown toward you.”

  Several hours ter, the healing was plete for Miana’s body, and Niphru finally rexed as the other man rose to his feet from where he had sat down earlier.

  Before leaving, the man remarked, “I think you should probably take a break for today; it isn’t wise to tier an act.”

  The two of them nodded and, after ing up the targets they had used, followed the man back to the main hallway. As he returo his room, Miana opehe stairs and they asded back to the main portion of the spire. As they reached their floor, she immediately split off and headed to her resideniphru quickly following her example.

  After returning home, he saw that Dawn was reading again, though she quickly put the book down when she heard him enter. Hearing her say she was worried that he wasn’t back after so much time, he quickly expined what happened. While he was quite hungry, he felt incredibly bad and shook his head at her offer to make dinner for him, instead walking into their bedroom before throwing himself onto the bed, repeatedly going over all the things he clearly did wrong until he finally fell asleep.