An urgent knocking sounded on the door of the control room in the Pantheon, where the Gods spent most of their time.

  “Come in!” Water called in a sing-song voice.

  The door opened with barely enough room for a body to slip through and Time side-stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. Time looked around the room, noting three of the Primaries in front of ethereal, floating screens displaying scenes from the world. Water, on the other hand, lounged on a plush chaise lounge, waving her hand back and forth as she always did when interacting with her private interface windows. Fire also stood alone, interacting with a set of moving, three-dimensional displays before angrily waving all the displayed boxes to the side so she could see Time walk through the door.

  “Time, how many times do I have to tell you - you don’t need to knock! You’re a demigod! You live here!” Fire roared irritably.

  “Excuse the interruption, Primaries,” Time ignored Fire, as he always did. He understood his place in the hierarchy of the Pantheon, and held a rigid stance about rules and courtesy. “The magic flows we have been monitoring have spiked in their power gain. Our estimate that we had up to a year until a Chaos eruption is no longer accurate. It is likely we will see the eruption within a single season. The magic flows are strongest in the area of the Temple where the heroes were summoned and the boundaries of the dungeons are weakening. The ambient Chaos magic of our dungeons in that area may have been disrupted by the summoning, causing this spike.”

  “Well, that’s not good.” Earth stated the obvious.

  “This is why we should have ensured all our summoned heroes were of the appropriate level,” Air glared at Water.

  “Yeah, well maybe we shouldn’t have put all kinds of rules and limitations on magic. You know I’ve been talking to other gods that don’t have any restrictions on theirs. Maybe they had the right idea!” Water retorted, sitting up straight on her lounge to return Air’s glare.

  “You didn’t want the Chaos magic running wild either, Water.” Earth attempted to interject himself to diffuse the situation, “we made the best choices we could to achieve our goal of a peaceful planet.”

  “Stay out of it, Earth!” Both Air and Water turned on him. He held up his hands, indicating his disinterest in speaking again.

  “Be calm,” Aether spoke with authority. As the embodiment of manipulation of the mind and emotions, even the other gods gave a small pause to listen. “The area around the Temple is a low level area. The Heroes and members of the Temple will be sufficient for the task. We must spend our time focused on what happens if the timeline continues to accelerate beyond our predictions. We have already used our currency - the preparations and Heroes must be enough.”

  As is rarely seen in the Universe, Time moved backwards, quietly sneaking out and closing the door behind him. This is why he knocked.

  —--------

  Anika stood next to Leka in a huge room filled with strange equipment and pools and containers of water in many sizes. Lily had gone to the Aether Training Room with another acolyte, saying she wanted to practice too. The room was well lit, with natural skylights down the center of the giant room, and bright white orbs of light on the walls and ceiling leaving no dark corners. On the right side of the long room, a large pool of water, about half the size of an olympic swimming pool, was built into the ground. The floor and sides of the pool looked like they were made of stone instead of the concrete she was used to. Large rings in assorted sizes hung from the ceiling. Platforms at various heights around the pool made the area look like a diving training center. The far wall of the room had larger contraptions and equipment that Anika wasn’t able to determine the function of from where she stood.

  On the left side of the room, a row of stalls without doors lined the wall. Inside each stall was a large, glass container of water on the left wall, about the size of one of those 30 gallon storage totes her mom always stored Christmas decorations in. On the right side, a small table and chair were pushed against each wall. The stalls all contained similar contraptions inside, including a target on the far wall, metal rings of all sizes hanging from the ceiling, a stack of thin wood cards that looked like they had shapes carved into them and assorted vials and shaped containers. Several of the stalls were occupied by people Anika did not recognize, and they did not acknowledge the newcomers. Anika watched as they manipulated small amounts of water in the air in front of them, guiding strands through rings or into vials.

  “Welcome to the Water training facility!” Leka exclaimed, clapping Anika on the back.

  “Uh… thanks?” Anika replied, unsure how she was supposed to react. She decided to just push forward with their goal, as she was tired after the afternoon in the dungeon and ready to get to dinner and some rest. “Where do we start?”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Leka began walking towards one of the shorter platforms near them that overlooked the giant pool and gestured to Anika to follow. “We will start with gross manipulation, as fine control of elements is a more advanced skill. Your ability to handle larger amounts of water will grow as you level, though your capacity is also influenced by your aptitude. We do not have a way to accurately measure a person’s aptitude - it is something we know exists, but is not something the Primaries wished us to have knowledge of. We can, however, get a rough gauge of a person’s aptitude by how much water they are able to manipulate for their level. The ability descriptions are accurate to a person of average aptitude, but those with significantly higher or significantly lower aptitudes will diverge from that number. At your level, the average is about a cubic foot of water. Of course, there is far more water than that in the pool!”

  Anika walked behind Leka to the platform, arriving before Leka had finished her speech, nodding along to show she was listening. “If I will only control around a cubic foot, why aren’t we in one of those cubbies over there?” Anika gestured to the practice stalls as she asked the question.

  “As I said, gross manipulation is easier. If we give you the exact amount of water you may be able to control, it can become more difficult to grasp. Think of a child drawing a picture. The lines are not straight, the color is not contained within the image - their control is not enough for small spaces. But they are able to fill all the available space by scribbling over and around the shape’s lines. If they were told to not go over the lines, they would not be able to fill the entire space as they do not have the control. Using magic for the first time is like that. By having a large pool to pull from, you can grasp the maximum capacity. Once you know your capacity, you can work to scoop it up with more precision, until you are able to control the precise amount needed. Once you are able to do that, you can work to refine that control to smaller amounts and shape the magic into whatever form is required.”

  “That makes sense,” Anika completely understood how training fine motor control worked. She didn’t have much experience with kids, but everyone knew the truth of Leka’s example in learning to write and color. Like any skill, practice with magic would increase her precision, agility, and control.

  “Now, most people find it easier to use physical movement to help them channel the magic for the first time. However, true fine control of the magic relies entirely on the element itself, not envisioning external forces containing the element. But, as I’ve said before, many never advance in their control and remain reliant on physical movements for simple tasks. I will demonstrate using my hands so that you can more easily connect with your magic, but once you have the feel for it, I encourage you to drop the physical movement as quickly as possible.”

  Leka held her hands in front of her, cupped together like someone would drink from a stream. “First, imagine a core of power in your chest. It feels cool, like water in a pond. Imagine that power flowing slowly from your core into your arms and out your fingers. Next, imagine a giant, invisible bowl in front of you. Think about what the water would look like in that bowl. Imagine your arms are longer, stretching with power, and your hands, larger, power expanding out towards the pool. Imagine your hands holding the bowl. Push the power from your hands into it. Then, dip your hands forward into the water. Submerge the bowl, and feel the water fill it to the brim. Pull the bowl up out of the water.”

  As Leka explained, her hands mirrored her voice, dipping forward into the air in front of her. Anika watched, eyes darting back and forth between Leka’s hands and the pool in front of her. As Leka moved her hands to dip into the air in front of her, the water rippled. As her hands flattened and began to move straight up, a nearly 2 and a half foot diameter circular section of water began to move up as well. As it moved further out of the water, Anika could see that it looked like the bottom half of a sphere, maintaining the bowl-like shape on the bottom and flat top. The water left behind in the pool crashed into the empty space, splashing up as it met in the center, as if trying to reclaim the water that had risen out of the pool. The water stopped about five feet above the pool, so Anika could see it clearly at eye height from their short platform.

  “Now, once you’ve lifted the water, you can shape it. Imagine the bowl of magic changing shape, sides narrowing.” As she explained, her hands flattened from a shallow bowl shape into a long, skinny trench. The water mirrored the action, straightening and forming a skinny V-shaped trough of water.

  “As you gain control, you should try to decouple the magic from your hands, working purely with the invisible energies of elemental power.” Leka moved her hands back into cups, but separated them, as if holding the left and right sides of a large beach ball. The water obligingly spread into a sphere. Then, Leka dropped her hands to her sides and the water continued to morph, turning into a mountain of water that began to spray water on all sides like the eruption of a geyser. The mountain of water became smaller, consuming itself from the bottom and moving up to be sucked into the fountain, then rained back down into the pool. When the last of the water entered the apex and gushed up before falling back into the pool, Leka turned to face Anika.

  “Now you try. Start with envisioning the magic in your core, and then move it into your cupped hands. Try to make your larger magical bowl and scoop the water up with it.”

  Anika nodded, turning to face the water. The idea of imagining the magic manipulating an object was easy for her. As a child, she remembered staring at objects and willing them to move as if she were a Jedi using the Force to clean her room… because anything was better than actually cleaning her room. She’d read many books about people with magical powers and seen movies and television shows of people learning magic. All of that increased her confidence in attempting this for the first time, so she cupped her hands in front of her and imagined the magic flowing in the water.

  She imagined a bowl of magic the width of the pool itself, determined to raise as much water as possible. She reached down with her hands, as Leka had, imagining the bowl moving into the water and saw a ripple. She fought down the urge to cheer at this first sign of success, staying focused on the task in front of her. She did not want another messy first attempt like when she tried to use Splash for the first time. She focused her will on the magical bowl in the water, imagining it full to the brim with as much water as it could hold, and pulled her hands quickly upward, willing the water held in her magic to surge upward with the movement.

  Which of the primary gods are you favorite?