As Miana practiced moving a cloud of steam, Niphru focused to maintain a rge sheet of fire across the ground. Several attempts now had shown it to be very mentally taxing to keep the rge amount of fire all burning at the same time. Since Miana wasn’t actively produg steam, he felt it was safe enough to move most of his focus to his own practice, resulting in being able to hold the fme for nearly twenty seds, despite its rge area. Additionally, he gathered up the hot air it produced into an invisible ball that shimmered as the heat distorted the light.

  With a quick thought, he formed a small half-sphere of force before pulling an even smaller ball of water behind it. L both into the fmes, the water quickly began to boil, letting off a plume of steam. Boiling water did end up being much harder to trol, however; the fist-sized ball rapidly escaped his grasp and fell deep into the fmes, vanishing in a quick puff of steam. The few esg pellets of boiling liquid only made it a tiny distance before smming into the small barrier he had put up before falling bato the fire.

  Seeing Miana grab a head-sized k of water, he let his fire die down and held his blob of air in pbsp; With less to keep track of, he focused on building up another shield to protect them in case the water detonated again. It appeared, however, that she had a somewhat plex idea, as several yers of water formed a sort of open-ended bottle around the initial blob.

  Shifting his visioween the unusual creation and Miana, he noticed she seemed a bit strained. Her eyes were squinted, ah grit, arms held to her sides with ched fists. Worried about what might happe go of his globe of burning air and focused on strengthening his barrier. A momehe innermost portion of water exploded—much as his first attempt had—but the e was caught by the outer yer of water and funneled away from them. A loud crack rang out, and a shower of boiling water sprayed out, along with a lengthy gout of steam extending across the chamber, nearly reag the targets before it dissipated.

  With a grunt, she let the remaining water spsh to the floor before sitting down. “Well, that wasn’t quite as difficult to tain as I worried, even if it was a lot of effort; perhaps I avoid that mutense foext time. Maybe you try it, too; I imagine force would tain it better than more water. What I did was focus the heat more to the baear us, so most of the bst would be focused out and away,” she remarked with a shaky smile before taking a deep breath.

  Nodding, Niphru grabbed another fist-sized ball of water and began f a shell around most of it, leaving a small opening on the far end. As he reparing to heat it, the door opened, and the man from before quickly stepped in. After a quick, worried g Miana sitting on the ground, he seemed to focus on the newly-f shield of water, along with the rexed postures they held. His attention then flicked to the h liquid beyond them.

  At this point, Niphru set off the water, resulting in a much smaller spray of boiling liquid, a small popping noise, as well as a rge bst of steam, though with much less power behind it than the one Miana had produced. While the force from the explosion was siderable for its size, it was easily tained within the shell of force magibsp; Seeing the ck of anything harmful , as well as how easily it was taihe man walked back outside, closing the door behind himself.

  Niphru smiled at Miana before stating, “That does seem to work really well. Maybe you should try it with different shapes, and smaller amounts at first; that should reduce the effort o tain it. That seems like it would make food starting point for an attack.”

  Thinking about things he wao try out, he suddenly remembered that he had been ied in the idea of using fuel with his fire magibsp; Sihey were already using one of the practice chambers, he asked Miana, “Would it be okay if I left for a short while to pick up some supplies to test with from the store? If not, I do it ter.”

  She waved at him and replied, “I don’t mind; I’m resting for a few moments, and then I io focus more on moving steam, not making rge amounts of it, so I’ll be fine.”

  Nodding, he quickly headed out towards the entraopping halfway there before returning. Going upstairs wouldn’t work if he couldn’t opeh up the stairs, after all. A quick request ter, aried again, this time with Miana’s sigil tucked away in a pou his harness.

  Actually opening the way took a mio figure out, though the rest of the trip was uful. Once he reached the shop, he greeted Franklin before quickly flipping through the catalog until he reached the raw materials se. After a bit of looking, he decided to anythiid instead chose some simple wood shavings, sawdust, and charcoal, paying a very small sum to acquire several pouches of materials before heading back downstairs.

  Opening the path back belowground took a moment again before he could tinue back to the practis, though he didn’t have arouble with it. He thought it would probably take a few more tries to memorize the proper pattern to pass his mana through. On that note, he figured he should try to get his own sigil from Morris.

  Arriving back at the chamber they were using, Niphru spotted Miana surrounded by three small clouds of steam, sending them through looping paths around herself. Upoitention, she moved them to the side aurned her sigil.

  She then said, “I won’t be doing anything major for a while, so feel free to focus on your own practice.”

  After thanking her, he turo another portion of the room and removed a small amount of wood shavings from his poud lifted them into the air with force magibsp; He remembered reading about powders and sawdust potentially exploding, and didn’t want to start with something like that, after all.

  A quick flicker of fme ter and the slivers began burning on their own without having to focus mana ohough they let off quite a bit of smoke that drifted toward the vent on the ceiling. Frowning, he tried pushing some air through the wood, finding that not only did it intensify the fmes, but it also reduced the amount of smoke the fire produced.

  bining this with more fire magic resulted in a bzing white inferno that rapidly ed the wood before falling back to normal reddish-e fmes powered solely by his mana. For the attempt, he pulled out thrice as much wood and tossed it into a powerful vortex of air magic.

  After a moment of it spinning around, he lit a small fme in the ter of the swirl, watg it quickly spread through the entire vortex, growing brighter and brighter as it went. He then attempted to press the fmes, finding that the outermost slivers of wood sent streamers of fire into the smaller orb of fme that was reag eye-searing levels htness.

  Rexing his trol, the fmes raced outward again, bsting out an intense wave of heat before stabilizing again. Seeing the rapidly shrinking woments, he tossed even more into the vortex, watg them instantly catch fire as they joihe swirl in the air.

  A few moments ter, he felt he had a good idea of what he could do with this method, and moved to using the ks of charcoal. For these, he simply held them up with force magic before fog on burning them with as mutensity as he could. From the resulting fmes, he pulled off smaller bits of fire, finding it was far easier to maintain the inal fire and split it than it was to simply produce more fire from nothing. The coal also burned for far lohan the shredded wood did, though it didn’t burn quite as hot.

  Another quick experiment showed that he could pass a vortex of wood slivers through the fme before ung them away, resulting in a bzing e of white-hot fme that tinued for quite a distanbsp; As he watched, the es reached the targets and ed around them, leaving them covered in soot.

  , he wao try the sawdust, which he had read might explode if a cloud caught fire. In order to avoid arming the man watg over the area, he moved off the ptform toward the wall most distant from Miana before tossing sawdust into another vortex of wind, watg it spread out siderably. To be safe, he then formed a shield that covered a rge area, going over to the other side to e fully covered the full area a bst would pass through if it went toward the ter of the room.

  Satisfied with the size of the barrier, he headed back to the side opposite the vortex he was maintaining. After a moment of thought, he stepped back several times before he formed another shield. It was better to be overly cautious, after the act before, after all.

  Niphru guided a small bolt of fme around his barriers and into the vortex full of sawdust, a sudden bst of burning air rushing around the shields as a dull whump sounded out. Fmes spread across a siderable area, though the barriers did their job ahe bst from moving toward the ter of the room. While they spread a fair distahe fire did die out almost as quickly as it appeared, vanishing as Miana turo face the noise.

  Seeing the questioning gaze she sent toward him, Niphru expined, “I floated a bunch of sawdust in a swirling bit of air, then tossed a small fme inside. Very little magic created quite a rge explosion. It certainly does o be done behind a shield, though.”

  Miana nodded and remarked, “I think I might have to copy you and try some experiments with fire ter.”

  Their practice tinued for several more hours without i before they agreed that it was time to stop for the day. Niphru stopped on the way back to their floor to check the request board, finding that all but one he had sidered going to were still listed.

  Sihere was still quite a bit of the day left, he decided to ge his destination and instead visit one of the shops out iy that had requested help with removing vermin. Before he headed downstairs, however, he double-checked that he actually had his money pouch, just in case he wao buy anything while he was out.

  Shard