"So there are three stages of mastery for Pneuma that I know of," Kurt explained while eyeing the notebook on his hands. "The first one is Amplification, which increases the amount of Od contained in your body through breath control. That is the one you're currently at, Mila."

  "I see," the girl mussed. She, like Kurt himself, was only paying half her attention to the lecture, the other half centered on the squirrel construct on her lap. "And the next two?"

  "The stage after Amplification is Redistribution," he continued. "Once you've attained full mastery of Amplification, enough to evenly fill your entire body at once instead of letting the life force flood out you abdomen, you can move onto controlling how this energy moves within your body. Centering your Od around your eyes to boost your sense of sight, or to your eardrums to boost your hearing, as well as the use of od-flares all fall onto this category."

  "How long did it take you?" Came the question, this time from besides him. "Going from the first stage to the second, I mean."

  "A good deal longer than it should have, really," Kurt answered as he turned to Conrad. "Three or four months, I think. I should not have taken me more than one or two weeks. The problem was that I was figuring stuff on my own, and that slowed me down quite a bit. I reached what I now know is full mastery over Amplification some three weeks after the wyvern incident, give or take a couple days. But I didn't know what the next step was, or even that I had just finished the first one, and so, my growth stalled until I realized I could move that energy after increasing it."

  "Must have been hard," Mila said from her seat. "Discovering Pneuma, realizing how much potential there was on it, and then having to slog through every idea you had to figure out how to use it right, a la Thomas Edison. You... never talked much about it with me."

  From his seat, Kurt closed his notebook after making sure to fold a specific page as a book mark, and then he turned on his seat to face Mila. "It was tough, that much is true. But, you know what? It was also very fun at the same time. I wasn't suffering while figuring out what the next stage was for Pneuma, I was enjoying the challenge, and the idea of what reward clearing it would bring. A bit like you right now, actually."

  "Not the exact same, though." Mila raised her gaze from Christopher Robin, and set her eyes on his. "I mean, you had to carve a path of your own, because there was no one to teach you. I'm just gonna have to follow that path you carved. It's kinda like I'm plying on easy mode."

  "So?" Kurt asked with a shrug. "That's how knowledge works. Someone figures something out, and then they teach it to others. It's that way that I learned to, say, wield a sword, thanks to manuals and what I could get from the internet-plus a ton of training and actual combat to polish it. Or how I learned sorcery thanks to Edward. So long as you give your best, it really doesn't matter if you are being taught or figuring it out yourself, at least when it comes to merit and such."

  "Yeah, I know, " Mila said, avertingher eyes for a moment. "It's just that I don't want to feel that, because you're so busy teaching me and such, your own training will get stalled. I mean, back at the train you did quite a bit of practice with your sorcery. Figuring out Wind evocations, that Dynamancy spell... are you gonna be able to do all that while teaching me?"

  "I don't know," Kurt immediately answered. "And it is not important. I practiced my sorcery in the train because I wanted to. Now, I want to train Pneuma with you, so that's what I'm gonna do. Who knows, might even let me develop my own mastery over it while I'm at it. So don't worry about it because, as long as you give it your all, it's not gonna be a waste of time. Plus, the next thing I wanna work in, sorcery-wise, isn't something I can do until we get back home either way."

  "Oh yeah?" Conrad asked. "And why is that? What is it you wanna work in?"

  "That's not important, Conrad," Kurt said. His eyes flickered between his two companions, and some guilt took hold of him. "I just... really can't work on it with you two around, that's all."

  "What? Why?" Mila asked, worry clear on her voice. "Is it something dangerous? Because if it is, you really shouldn't try and tackle it on your lonesome. Why don't you tell us what it is? Atleast so that we can stop wondering about it."

  "You wondering about what it is is much better than you knowing it, trust me."

  "Has it got anything to do with that sorceress' notebook?" Conrad asked, causing Kurt to turn towards him fast enough to make him a bit dizzy. "What? You've been eyeing that thing for the last hour or so. I thought it was kinda obvious. So, what are you reading?"

  Kurt's hold on the notebook tightened. "Conrad, I'm serious, it's better that you don't know, okay? For starters, I'm not one hundred percent sure I'm gonna do... what I said I wanted to work in next, and knowing about it would cause you guys nothing but distress. Believe me, it's better that this one specific thing remains a secret."

  Conrad looked at him with a suspicious, eyes squinted expression for a moment, only to deflate a moment later with a scoff and turn his attention back on the road. "Whatever, you do you, man. Not like I can force it out of you."

  On his seat, Kurt relaxed, as did his hold on the notebook.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "Thanks, man. I just..."

  Which was exactly what Conrad had been vying for, because as soon as Kurt began speaking, Conrad moved. His arm, suddenly covered in Blue Aura all the way to his trapezius, blurred in motion, first moving to Kurt's lap, taking hold of the notebook, and then back, tossing it into Mila's lap, where it landed right atop Christopher Robin.

  "Read it, Mila!" Conrad exclaimed, a wide smile on his face. "The page he marked!"

  To his side, Kurt had just finished processing what had just happened, leaving his brain free to just feel rage."Hey, you ass-!"

  "On it!" the girl said back, ignoring the indignant stare Kurt shot at her, and she opened the notebook, right one the page Kurt had folded. "Okay, it's something about atoms and... oh, boy."

  "What?" Conrad asked, laughing hard enough that, hadn't the road been empty, Kurt would have worried about him crashing them against another car. "What wondrous new experiment was this guy working in that our little brains couldn't know about?"

  From her seat, Mila was not laughing. At all. Instead, she gave Conrad an uncomfortable look that seemed to land on the back of his seat, as if she were imagining what was beneath it. "Uhm... I really don't think I should say, Conrad."

  "Uh?! You too, Mila?" the blond exclaimed, his laughter replaced by anoyance. "What the hell is it, you two?! Just tell me already!"

  On her seat, Mila squirmed, and she looked at Kurt. "Uhm, Conrad, I really think Kurt was right. It's best that, for the moment..."

  "Girl, I will drive us straight into the next tree if you don't tell me. I mean it."

  From his seat, Kurt looked at Conrad, one eyebrow raised. "Wouldn't you be the only one to get hurt though? I can use Pneuma and, to a lesser extent, so can Mila, The only one in this car without any means to make themselves tougher is, well, you."

  "I-" Conrad started, only to stop himself. For a few moments, he just muttered to himself, until he finally threw his head back with a sigh. "Yeah, good point. I mean, I wasn't gonna do it either way but...Urgh, this is so frustrating, man! Seriously now; why won't you tell me what is it?"

  "Because, well..." This time it was Kurt who couldn't complete his sentence. In order to continue, he first had to look away from Conrad. "Because it's something that, in light of what happened last night, could really bring some very bad memories to the both of you."

  Conrad's brow furrowed, and the older swordsman stared at Kurt in confusion. Then, something seemed to strike him, and his face settled in a grimace. "Lightning evocations, uh?"

  "Yeah..." an ashamed Kurt confirmed. As if to punctuate, Mila leaned forward, and offered the notebook to Conrad, who took hold of it and started to read it, his eyed periodically going from the text to the road.

  "Interesting stuff, that psycho wrote," Conrad said, giving the notebook back to Kurt. "Few sorcerers actually use them though. Apparently, they are hard to aim and use safely, so they just add its aspects to their Fire evocations."

  "It's aspects?" Kurt questioned.

  "Yeah, it's aspects," Conrad confirmed, nodding. "You see, the thing with evovations is that you aren't just controling the element itself. No, each element, be it water, air, earth or whatever is just the physical vessel for you aether, and the key to access the force that truly gives evocation its power: The World's Engine, the force that upholds the laws of physics themselves. If things fall down instead of up, heat goes from hotter areas to colder ones, or objects with more mass are harder to move around than lighter ones, it's all because of this omnipresent force. It's not even perceivable through physical means, just magic ones. Trying to observe it through, say, photons or gravitational waves or whatever would be like a painting trying to observe the canvas it's painted on. Only stuff that exists partially separated from Malkuth, from the physical world, can interact with it directly."

  "And each element his used to acces an aspect of it?" Kurt asked, "Galton told me about it. Each element is just the sorcerer artificially dividing the, uh, dynamism of the physical world into portions that are easier to understand and manipulate."

  Conrad nodded, and handed the notebook back to Kurt. "Pretty much, yeah. Though it would be more correct to say that each element embodies a series of aspects, instead of just one. Earth represent solidity and mass, and it is accesed using silicates as a physical vessel. Water are liquids and dispersion, which makes it a better element for defense and cleansing that for anything else, and it's accesed using liquid H2O as a vessel. Wind is gases and motion, and it his accesed usin gaseous nitrogen, which comforms over 78% of the atmosphere. And, finally, there's Fire, which represents raw energy and volatility, and is accesed using heat as the physical vessel."

  Conrad winced, and brought one hand to scratch the back of his head.

  "At least, this is the system that the vast, vast majority of sorcerers use. There are variations. For example, some sorcerers separate both of Earth's aspects, manifesting the aspect of solidity through iron instead. And there are others that separate Fire's two aspects, energy and volatility, in two different elements." He gestured vagely at Kurt. "Like you and that back-frying-sorceress did. She knowingly, and you unwittingly."

  "So my Fire is incomplete?" Kurt asked, remembering how different his own Fire and Galton's had looked. "I just thought that Fire should be something like... independent energy, instead of just a process of combustion. I mean, if Fire needs the presence of air and oxigen and such to work, doesn't it stop being an independent elemnent? I just need air, or gaseous nitrogen or whatever, to use Air evocations, why should it be different for Fire?"

  "Because Fire evocations don't work through combustion," Conrad explained. "They are not flames that feed on oxigen and need fuel. Fire evocations are more like a plasma-like substance that constantly 'loosens up' the matter around it through its high energy aspect, and then absorbes the energy that is released because of it, using it to grow even hotter and more volatile. Your Fire only has the high-energy aspect, not the volatile one, which makes its output lower than that of 'proper' Fire evocations, with the boon that it is easier to control."

  "I see," Kurt said, impressed by the breadth of knowledge that Conrad was displying. He really had been raised in a household of sorcerers. "So, if I were to manifest a Lightning evocation, it would be pure volatility, right? Pure, violent power manifested through electrical currents and electrons and such."

  "Pretty much, yeah," Conrad said, nodding. "But it would behave like actual electricity would, which means needing to build up a charge, guiding it through differences in potential... No throwing beams of energy around for those that use it. I'm pretty sure that sorceress could only use it so well because she was working from within her own ward, which allowed her to guide the lightning's power much easier. To use it in a combat situation where you don't have that advantage is way trickier."

  Kurt's eyes went first to the notebook, and the diagrams of atoms and electric fields drawn on it, and the to Conrad. "Well, there is another reason to postpone it," he said with a sigh. "Like you said, no point on trying to master a tricky, possibly dangerous new technique in the middle of a quest, especially if it could..."

  "Trigger us?" asked Mila from her seat. "That is the reason you don't wanna try it, right? The whole 'It's hard to use effectively' would not detter you, that much I know. You just don't wanna go around throwing lightning bolts after what happened to Coonrad and I last night."

  Conrad chuckled from his seat. "Yeah, it's pretty obvious that's the one and only reason, man. I just gave you an excuse you thought wouldn't hurt our feelings or something." He turned to Mila. "He's quite the bad liar, this guy."

  "Yep!" Mila agreed, giving a chuckle of her own. "He really is."

  "Yes, I am," Kurt grumbled, looking through his window with a sour expression. "I'm sorry, guys. I just... don't know. I guess I didn't want to trigger yet another bullshit memory about last night in you. I mean, look at what happened to me back at the motel because of it, or what state you were in during our first stop, Mila. I felt that if you guys went through yet another episode because I wanted to practice some cool new sorcery, then I would have failed you yet again."

  There was a moment of silence, barely filled by the sounds coming from Christopher Robin. Then, Kurt heard the screeching of the car's tires, and felt the vehicle slowing down and swerving to the right. Kut turned to Conrad.

  "We have some jump starters in the trunk," Conrad said. "They came with the car. Some promotion or whatever. We just need something metallic to connect both ends to get a curent going." He turned to Kurt, and their eyes locked. "You think that's gonna be enough to get a hold on it?"