“An idea?” asked Scorio softly.
“That… I might leap from the top.” She carried on hurriedly, “To see if I could survive the fall in my nightmare form, of course. Test my limits. And—well. I found this room.”
She toyed with the broken sliver of wax in her hands. “And… it was raining. And I sat on the balcony’s edge and felt the building shift under me. And thought it might collapse, and that was… okay. I didn’t mind. Felt excited. Like… the building was answering a question I hadn’t dared to pose. Not out loud. Not directly to myself.”
Scorio sat, bread forgotten, staring at her back.
“Obviously the tower didn’t fall,” said Naomi, tone growing hurried once more. “But it felt like the wager was still on. I started coming back here every night. And thoughts of—well—jumping off towers ended. I decided instead that I’d take better care of myself and let this tower decide if I was to fall or not. Leave the question in the hands of the ruins. And slowly… well.”
She cracked the wax fragment in half, dropped it atop the dresser, then turned to stare at him, her gaze defiant. “Slowly I started bringing things here. Making the space my own.”
Scorio nodded soberly, expression grave. Held her defiant gaze until it softened, and she looked away again.
“I think I understand,” he said softly. “Or maybe I don’t. But thank you. For bringing me here. I don’t take it lightly.”
“Well, you were near death, and leaving you in your room seemed needlessly cruel, so.” She curled her hair briskly behind her ear. “Are you going to eat that bread or not?”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” And to demonstrate willingness he took a large bite out of the slice.
She crossed her arms. “I suppose you’ll be wanting something to drink.”
“Parched,” he managed to say around a mouthful of dry bread.
“Hmm.” She pushed off the dresser, crossed the room to where a large pitcher sat beneath a curious funnel that descended from a crack in the ceiling. She noticed his curious gaze, then took up the pitcher. “I fashioned a rain catcher on the roof. To save myself having to go into town all the time.”
“I should have thought of that,” said Scorio, raising a hand to his brow. “Brilliant! All the trips I could have avoided…”
Her lips quirked into a self-satisfied smirk as she poured water into a wooden cup and crossed the room to hand it to him. “I’ve had a little more time than you to figure things out.”
“You’re being modest.” He sipped the water—it tasted hard and rich with minerals after the smooth neutrality of the water fountains. “I’m so focused on training that it would probably never have occurred to me.”
“Hmm.” She replaced the pitcher and leaned against the dresser once more. “About that.”
“Fine, yes, I know.” Scorio frowned down at his half-eaten slice of bread. “Obviously I pushed myself too hard.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
He looked up. “Then?”
“The best training isn’t about abuse.” She paused, then moved her head from side to side as if reaching a compromise. “All right, it’s not just about abuse. It’s about finding your edge. Remember what I told you?”
“Sure. That the best trainers find their students’ edge and keep them there. Don’t push them so hard that they lose all hope or ambition.”
“Right.”
“But I haven’t lost all hope or ambition.” He raised his chin. “If anything, I’m more excited now than I ever was before.”
She nodded slowly, as if he’d inadvertently said just what she’d expected. “That’s the problem.”
“How so?” He took a deep breath. “What’s wrong with wanting to advance as quickly as possible?”
“Look at it this way. What’s the downside of working with Coal mana?”
Scorio hesitated. “It’s crude. Low quality. You said that a Great Soul can gain strength at the expense of control.”
“Precisely.” She raised her chin, still hugging herself tightly. “If you push yourself like you did yesterday, you’ll gain strength. There’s no question. You’ll find that your Heart can absorb more mana, and perhaps it’s even the fastest way to reach Emberling. But it will come at a cost.”
“Loss of control?”
“You’ll be sloppy. You’ll burn through mana faster than you realize, will flare out, and die off. Worse, your Heart will take damage, and your mind will suffer. Training in that manner will cause you to become raw, mentally exhausted. You’ll make bad decisions. You’ll make mistakes. Your temper will get the better of you, making you easier to manipulate, to goad into falling for traps. Power is not the sole element of the equation, Scorio. There also needs to be control.”
He wanted to protest. He felt a flicker of anger well up within him, unreasonable as he knew it to be. Carefully, he set the plate and cup aside so he could interlace his fingers on his lap and keep his hands under control. “My training is all that I can control right now. The only way to gain an edge. I’ll pay the cost if it means reaching Emberling quicker.”
She shook her head, expression frustratingly pitying. “You will be a raging shadow of what you could have been, Scorio. A brutish thug compared to the warrior you should become. I’ve seen others do it. None of them got very far before they were put down.”
Scorio took a deep, calming breath. “So you’re saying I should train slower? Let the others get even more ahead of me? Content myself with crawling when I could run?”
“No.” And now a touch of fire entered her tone, and he remembered in a flash that within her was the Nightmare Lady, that being of impossible strength and finesse. “You train smarter. Are you not listening to me?”
He pressed his fists to his temples as he bowed his head. “I am. I’m sorry. It’s just that…”
“Just that you want to gain strength as quickly as you can. I understand. You aren’t the only Great Soul to feel that way. If anything, that’s the default for all Great Souls.”
He dropped his hands. “Except for a few obvious exceptions.”
Her hazel eyes narrowed. “We need a reason to train, to fight, Scorio. The wiser you are, the sooner you realize that power is not its own reward.”
“Not sure I agree.”
She glared at him. “Well, that proves you’re a callow idiot.”
For a moment the air between them fairly roiled with tension, then Scorio raised both palms and laughed uneasily. “I won’t dispute that. I’m sorry. I’m just… I feel very strongly about this.”
“Fair.” She leaned back against the dresser. “I’m not asking you to train less. I’m telling you to train smarter. The Gauntlet and constant death will act like shocks to your Igneous Heart. But you need to step back and absorb those shocks, process them, integrate them into your being. You need to spend time working with mana, pushing your Heart, and most importantly, you need to rest.”
“Hmm, most of that sounded good but the resting part.”
“Rest is integral to training. It’s when you sleep that your body realigns itself with the changes that have taken place.” She brushed her hair roughly back. “Think of training as the active part of your training, and sleep as the passive part. Sleep is when your Heart grows more powerful, when your body restores itself and prepares for more training. If you don’t rest, you’ll just slowly collapse. Just like you did yesterday. And you’ll lose time recovering that you could have spent training intelligently.”
Scorio frowned and looked away. “Fine. Like I said, I may have overdone it a bit there.”
Naomi laughed and threw up her hands. “May have? Hells above and below, that’s probably the best I can hope to get out of you, isn’t it?”
He closed one eye and squinted at her through the other, giving her a lopsided smile. “At least I’m charming?”
Despite herself, Naomi smiled. “And who sold you that lie?”