“Now, you try.”
The wolf tilted its head in confusion, and so Vir repeated the action before pointing at Shan.
This time, the wolf seemed to understand. Vir grew excited as he watched prana flow through the tattoo. “That’s it! Just like that!”
It soon became apparent that the Ashfire Wolf required no encouragement. Shan traced it effortlessly, despite having done nothing like this before. His instinct and natural aptitude were simply unparalleled.
Vir backed away a few paces, allowing Shan the space he’d need if an ability manifested. The prana cycled… and cycled… and kept cycling.
“What’s the matter, lad?” Cirayus asked, seeing Vir’s puzzled expression.
“Well, Shan’s moving prana through the tattoo—nearly perfectly, from what I can tell. Just that nothing’s happening.”
Cirayus’ eyes widened. Then he laughed. “Figure an Ash Wolf masters the hard part immediately. Except, I suppose the intent might be the tough part for him.”
“Intent… As in visualizing the attack?” Vir asked.
Cirayus nodded. “For most demons, it is trivial to envision a fireball hurtling toward one’s foes. For Shan, there, I doubt such visualization comes easily despite his intelligence.”
It was true—Shan hadn’t been exposed to such magic with any regularity. Even if he had, could Shan envision such an abstract ideal in his head?
“Shan? Think of a fireball. Big fire. Whoosh,” Vir said, making a blowing gesture with his hands. “And then, boom.” Vir mimed an explosion and looked at Shan expectantly.
The wolf simply stared back, his face impassive and expressionless.
“Now, I’m no expert,” Cirayus said, “but I don’t think he’s impressed.”
Vir threw the giant a glare. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know, lad. Trouble is, you don’t have a tattoo suited for demonstrating what you mean, and Balancer of Scales is far too abstract for the poor wolf to have a chance of understanding.”
Vir thought of Aida, but she only had Giant’s Hide and Giant’s Grace. She wasn’t a combatant—those would do them little good.
“I suppose we’ll just have to keep practicing, then. Won’t we, Shan?” Vir said, turning back to the beast.
The hours passed, and Vir tried everything he could think of. Even Cirayus began pitching suggestions upon seeing the difficulty Vir was having.
Yet try as they might, they were entirely unsuccessful in getting the beast to manifest even the barest glimmer of magic.
“Is it bad that I wish Saunak were here?” Vir asked, at his wits end. “A part of me wonders if I ought to have allowed him to experiment on Shan.”
“I hear you, lad. Just know that Saunak is as likely to kill your poor friend as he is to strengthen him,” Cirayus said, placing a reassuring hand on Vir’s shoulder. “It’ll come in time. Expecting results on the first day was unreasonable. Even for Shan.”
“I know,” Vir sighed. “Just that it’d have really come in handy, y’know?”
“You’ll get by without it,” Cirayus said consolingly. “If you ask me, what’ll help you more than a new tattoo is food in your belly, and a solid night’s rest. What do you say we head home and I rustle something up for the three of us?”
Vir smiled. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”
Shan separated from the group on the way back, as he often did. This time, it was the call of a lone Ash Biter that’d strayed too far from the Boundary. While his master might have killed such prey out of a desire to protect others, for Shan, this meal was every bit as tasty as the one he’d relish in the giant’s home later.
The wolf licked his lips and pounced, moving so fast he blurred.
The Ash Biter stood no chance—Shan had ended thousands of its ilk, after all. His attack was the embodiment of perfection.
Except, on this day, perfection just grew a little deadlier.
For instead of merely sinking his fangs into the Biter’s neck, his mouth bristled, growing hot.
Hotter and hotter, until his fangs glowed red with heat.
They passed effortlessly through the Biter’s neck, searing and cauterizing the wound even as they entered.
The wound was so clean, so fast, that the Biter died before even knowing what hit it.
Shan unclenched his jaw, and from the wound, steam arose. Shan licked his lips. He would enjoy this snack very, very much.
Were anyone around, they’d have seen not just an Ash Wolf, but an Ash Wolf with a mouth that was so hot, it glowed red. Were anyone around, they’d have thought such a wolf was a devil from the worst planes of the Ash. A creature so foul, it would spell the end of the realm.
For, in that moment, Shan cut such a frightful figure that he might very well have spawned such tall tales. Tales that might’ve been passed down and told millennia later to naughty children before they sleep.
Luckily, there was no one to witness it. No one, that was, except a handful of Bairan Warriors who stood shaking in their boots long after the wolf had gone.
91
REALMS APART (MAIYA)
Maiya sat with her legs crossed in a lotus position, as Cirayus had recommended. Centering herself, she focused on the concept of stability.
With each passing day, the feeling came both quicker and more easily, and Maiya was sure she was on the verge of a breakthrough. On the verge of ‘opening’ her Foundation Chakra.
The voices that had nearly killed her were now a distant whisper, and if she was right, would recede entirely when she mastered her Foundation Chakra.
It was all so wondrous—to think an entirely new form of power had existed all along, hidden to the realm. It brought about a myriad of questions in Maiya’s mind. Why had no human in recorded history ever opened a Chakra? Why was there no documentation of this? Was it a physiological problem? If so, why was Maiya able to unlock it?
Her intuition told her it might’ve had something to do with her time in that illusion realm with Vir, but if so, that only brought up more questions than it answered. It was all enough to make Maiya’s head spin, but now that she’d had some time to digest it all, she’d concluded that this mystery was not one she could allow to go unsolved.
She also had a sneaking feeling that the answer would be bigger than anyone had thought… And that made her both excited and more than a little nervous. What would she find? What effect would it have upon the world? Would it be a great boon? Or would she only find horrors best left undisturbed?
Neel’s arrival forced Maiya out of her meditation—though since she’d let her mind wander, it’d ceased to be meditation some time ago. The crisp Sonam winter air tickled her nose, and a brisk chill swept past her as the bandy pushed open the closed door and bounded into the room, circling Maiya several times, tail wagging.
“Well, somebody’s in a good mood,” Maiya laughed, hugging her old friend. “And I wonder why!”
The sight of the old bandy never failed to lift her spirits, no matter how low they may just have been.
Neel barked in reply, eyeing the orb that sat in front of Maiya. He looked at Maiya and barked again, tongue lolling.
“Yes, yes. It’s almost time,” Maiya said, easing herself out of the lotus position for a more comfortable cross-legged one. Cirayus said it’d get easier over time, and it did, but Maiya doubted it’d ever be what she could call comfortable.
The image of Vir’s serious face brought a smile to Maiya’s face, as it always did.
“Hey, you,” she said warmly.
“Hey, Mai,” Vir murmured, looking embarrassed to call her by that name despite all the time they’d spent together. It was more than a little endearing, so Maiya had never called him out on it. She didn’t want him to stop.