Blake bid temporary farewell to River just outside the pavilion and stepped inside, then dropped off his loot at the storage longhouse. They awarded him his three hundred contribution point chits.

  The first thing he did was take a shower, even though it was only noon.

  Once he had cleaned himself off, he made a beeline for the technique library and purchased the Cloud Body Lightning Fists slate.

  He only had about a week before he’d have to leave the pavilion and find Mingel again, but he wanted to learn something new before then—and hopefully get through another stage of Tempering.

  With Ethbin having gone quiet, Blake didn’t have any external guidance, but he was pretty sure he could figure out an upgraded Augmentation technique on his own.

  The harder part would be the last two stages of Tempering. He’d never gotten Ethbin to tell him what the last two were.

  Then there was the slight issue of convincing people that he’d found a way to complete Skin Hardening. When they asked, he said he’d found a temporary vortex of high-concentration mana out in the mists and used it to rush the next stage.

  As soon as he returned to his room, he set the technique slate down on his bed. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to use it until Foundation—something about his ‘mana’ channels being too weak or his willpower not being strong enough.

  But that hadn’t stopped him before, and it wasn’t going to stop him today.

  He looked over the slate. It used a combination of Aes and Vir meridians, cooling and heating the mana, while making sure to cycle it through the Root a few times to bend it to the user’s aspect.

  The goal of the technique was to lighten your body like a storm cloud, until you wanted to strike, at which point you would hit with immense power. If Blake could get it to work as intended, that’d be wonderful, but that was going to require modification.

  First, he ran his Honour through the meridians as the technique intended, trying to get a feel for the pattern. There were about thirty points it stopped at, and at one point bounced back and forth between the Root and the Heart, building charge. He would have to memorize the order until it became second nature.

  When he finished the pattern, though, nothing happened. It was difficult to identify the point of failure with so many different Honour movements to complete.

  Next, he tried running the technique in reverse, and that yielded better results. Static bubbled in his limbs and tingled in his fingers, trying to lift him up, but the full technique never condensed.

  This time, he recognized the problem. The technique failed when, after building up a charge of black lightning between his root and heart, he passed it to his muscle instantly. Muscle was the strongest Aes meridian, and it couldn’t accept a Vir-based aspect instantly.

  Before, he had just been Augmenting his muscles with raw Honour. Not aspect-bent Honour. Only now had he made it truly antithetical to mana.

  But after passing the Honour to his Endocrine Meridian first, allowing the regulating nature of the meridian to temper the cold Vir nature of his Honour, his Muscle Meridian accepted it readily. Black lightning surged out into his flesh. Instead of searing his muscles, it engaged with the enhanced flesh, supporting it and fuelling it.

  And consuming the Honour.

  He lifted his arm, and it snapped through the air faster than he thought was ever possible. His senses barely perceived the movement. But where a movement like that would’ve torn out his shoulder before, it just felt…good. Like scratching an itch that had been plaguing him for a long time.

  Black sparks trailed in the air behind his arm, and when he looked down at the enhanced limb, a sheath of black lightning writhed over his body like snakes.

  That was going to be hard to hide.

  He chewed the inside of his lip, then looked down at his other arm. His head rotated faster than ever before, the muscles twitchy, and a heavy sense of dizziness overwhelmed him. He fell to his knees, but before he knew it, the black lightning was surging over his entire body. Each tendril had the head of a snake, and his body had become cold to the touch. When he set his hands down on the floor, ice crystals spread away from the contact point.

  But he wasn’t going to just kneel down and let a slight burst of dizziness get the best of him. He pushed himself back to his feet, and the spring of movement launched him up. His legs activated faster and stronger than ever before, Augmentation compounding his perfect muscle enhancement, his back smashed into the ceiling and cracked a rafter.

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  And that was without even much effort.

  Thank the Fates he’d just hardened his skin, because if he hadn’t, the rough wood would’ve torn his back open. But as it stood now, there was no damage to his body.

  After that, he landed on his feet. The technique enhanced his speed and strength, that much he knew. But was it making him lighter?

  The second part of the technique, the Lightning Fists, was a slight extension of the loop, which he was supposed to trigger in battle to make himself heavier, denser, and stronger at a specific moment, but what good was that if he had reversed it? He’d already activated the ‘Lightning Fists’ of the technique by having fiend-tainted Honour. Until he read the technique.

  “Oh,” he muttered to himself, but with his voice box enhanced by the Augmentation technique, it sounded as loud as a regular voice. “It’s the reverse of the original.”

  So, to make himself lighter and more nimble, he reversed the Honour loop, and this time made sure to account for the Vir nature of his mana by using an intermediary meridian.

  His body lightened, pressure lifting from his shoulders. The black lightning gathered on the underside of his limbs, and it seemed especially powerful when coming from below. He floated up slightly, his feet barely pressing against the ground. When he walked, everything was airy, and he couldn’t get a good push off. That was the ‘Cloud Body’ half.

  He cut off the cycle of Honour off, and both halves of the technique faded. Black sparks whisked away into the air.

  For a moment, he knelt by the side of his bed and stared at the technique slate. If he could just do everything regular lightning could, then what was the point of even having void lightning?

  There had to be something he hadn’t figured out yet. Something about the lightning’s nature that changed it. For now, it made him cold, but there had to be secrets he just hadn’t uncovered yet.

  But if this was it…what did that mean about the fiend-y nature of his body? It was always going to be a horrible curse, no matter what? Something that just made life slightly more difficult?

  With a slightly gloomy, sinking pit in his stomach, he cleaned up, tucked himself into bed, and eventually fell to sleep.

  ~ ~ ~

  The next morning, he dragged himself around the pavilion. For the first time in a few months, he hadn’t felt excited to wake up. Like his purpose had just been stripped out of him. Froskur and Iver didn’t seem to notice, but they were preoccupied with the cured pork that the breakfast hall was serving (and their excitement over it).

  I mean, how could you not be excited for bacon? Blake thought.

  Instead of eating, however, he just pushed Honour into his stomach and intestine meridians. It staved off the hunger for a little while.

  He’d been planning on heading out into the woods just to practice his Augmentation technique early, but that plan faded with his mood. He was a fiend, and what could he do to change any of that? Instead, he slept in. He’d probably go out later.

  Maybe Ethbin had been right. Raw motivation would eventually fail him, and he’d just become an empty husk.

  But after breakfast, he moved on habit. He dragged himself out toward the gate anyway and stepped outside, walking off along the trail to his usual practice spot.

  He only made it about a minute away from the pavilion before someone placed a hand on his shoulder. Spinning, he came face-to-face with Elder Ulfreld. The man had a stern expression, and Blake’s heart raced. “Elder, have I done something wrong?”

  “As far as I’m aware, no,” Ulfreld said. “But something seems wrong nonetheless. You returned from your most successful hunting mission yet, you purchased a new technique, and yet you still seem glum.”

  Blake hung his head. It was supposed to be exciting, wasn’t it? He wasn’t supposed to lose this spark.

  “Sir, do you think fiends are evil?” Blake asked.

  Ulfreld raised his eyebrows. “Evil? What is evil, Junior Brother?”

  “You don’t think it exists?” Blake tilted his head. “I mean, I know there’s not much evidence for the Dark Surge, but I can feel that something like it exists. I can’t say—”

  “No, that’s not what I asked,” Ulfreld replied. “You know it exists, sure. I can feel it too, twisting the hearts of men like Silverbeard. But what is it?”

  “I…don’t know.”

  “The void,” Ulfreld said. “The darkness isn’t something that exists. It’s an absence of good. Fiends are a total absence of feeling. They take the hunger of monsters and let it consume all their natural impulses, until there is nothing within them except a desire to fill the void. They only ever grow the void.”

  “Is that my fate?”

  Ulfreld shrugged. “I cannot say.”

  “Is it wise for you to be training me, then? What if there’s a chance I fail and become a terrible fiend?”

  “There is a chance,” Ulfreld said. “But you haven’t succumbed yet. There is also a choice, yes? You have the mind of a man. The capacity for both good and evil.”

  That echoed something Ethbin had told him, too. Blake muttered, “Yes.”

  “You’ll fail over and over again. There is a chance the demon within you consumes you. But there’s a chance you succeed, too. That you shake the foundations of the world and become the strongest force for good in centuries. You have the capacity to lead, to inspire, to show the rest of the galaxy what the race of men is capable of.” Ulfreld stepped forward and placed a finger in the center of Blake’s chest. “It’s about you. What you choose. You’re still mostly a man, and you didn’t ask the universe to Blend you. So don’t lament what you cannot change. At the moment, the fiendish part of you has given you tools. It’s up to you how you use them.”

  Blake nodded, considering for a moment. He opened his mouth, about to argue or make a snarky comment, something to take away the tension, but he couldn’t bring himself to. “Th—thank you, Elder.” He bowed. “Now, I need to go practice a technique.”

  “That you do.”