“I see. And you? You’re happy as an Emberling?”
Her thick brows drew together. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about your first baby steps. First, you need to focus on saturating your Heart. That’s easier at the Academy, which is built over a massive trap of Iron mana, the best you can get here in Bastion. Further, there they give you all manner of help in the form of treasures which help you Ignite at much lower levels of saturation. But here?”
Her smile was dark, her gaze turned predatory, her amusement at his expense. “Out here in the ruins, you’ll be working with Coal mana, the worst of the worst. You’ll have no help, no elixirs, no pills. You’ll have to do it all by yourself, and odds are you’ll do such a poor job of it your Heart will be pathetically weak even if you do manage to ignite.”
“Wait, weak?” Scorio felt his pulse begin to race. “Why? I’m willing to do the work. Is it the Coal mana that will limit me?”
“Indirectly, yes.” She lowered her chin so that her black hair pressed close about each cheek. “The Coal mana is crude, hard to work. You might even grow stronger by limiting yourself to it, but your control will be abysmal. In the Academy, they artificially help their students pack their Hearts with astounding amounts of pure, high-density mana. They can saturate themselves to the point of stupidity, and ignite at absurdly high levels, setting the baseline of the Hearts miles ahead of where they might otherwise get. You? You’ll be sipping Coal for years, exhausting the local supplies too quickly to build up a deep reservoir.”
Scorio stared at her blankly.
“What?” She inclined her head to one side, a lopsided smile curving her lips. “You asked me to teach you for a week. Not to lie to you and make you feel better.”
Scorio tongued the inside of his cheek then leaped to his feet to pace, unable to remain still. “So the more you can saturate your Heart before igniting, the more powerful you’ll be in the long term?”
“That’s right.”
“And the Academy makes that easy for its students?”
She nodded.
“But out here, I’ll burn through the Coal mana too quickly to build up a high saturation point, so that… I mean, will I even be able to ignite?”
“There are three parts to the equation. Mana is just one element. The purer, the denser, and the quicker it regenerates, the better. But you can compensate for terrible mana with quality training or the natural quality of your Igneous Heart.”
“Natural quality of my Heart?” He stopped pacing and turned to face her. “How so?”
“Not all Hearts are created equal, though in the long run, these differences don’t matter much. All Hearts vary in depth and reactivity. The deeper your Heart, the more mana it can hold, the longer you can sustain your techniques and powers, but the harder it is at first to ignite. On the other hand, the more reactive your Heart, the more it responds to training, and the less mana and training it requires to burn.”
He dropped to a crouch before her. “So if I had a highly reactive Heart…?”
Naomi shrugged one shoulder, indifferent. “Sure, you’d manage to ignite, even on Coal. But you’d have a very shallow heart due to a lack of saturation.”
“But what if I had a very reactive heart and a very deep one?”
She moved her head from side to side. “Deep hearts are good. They give you stamina. But they make it exponentially harder to ignite. I suppose this could be offset by an especially reactive Heart, but even so… on Coal? You’d be in trouble.”
Scorio rubbed at his jawline, trying to keep his frustration at bay. “What about the blue vials? That’s better mana, right?”
Naomi’s tone grew chilly. “It is. But they’re mine. Not. Yours.”
Scorio stared at her, but she held his glare with indifferent ease, and finally, he stood once more to resume pacing. “What if I train in areas of better mana? Like where there’s that reddish-brown kind, or find hidden pockets of Iron mana?”
“Hidden pockets of Iron mana?” She grinned. “Why don’t you snatch up piles of forgotten elixirs while you’re at it?”
“Fine, but the reddish-brown mana—”
“Copper.”
“Copper mana, whatever. What if I train where there’s Copper mana? Would that make enough of a difference?”
“First, those locations are hard to find and carefully protected. But sure. Say you find a way to train where there’s Copper. You’d still have to take into account its regeneration rate, as you’d need a lot to saturate your Heart, and would quickly use up a single location’s reserves. But yes. It would help.”
“Great. Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“Still won’t be enough to give you more than an average to weak Heart,” said Naomi, eyes glittering. “The baseline for every Great Soul is enhanced Iron from the Academy. You’ll be locking yourself in at weak Copper. You’ll be at a disadvantage for the rest of your life.”
Scorio stood still, glaring at Naomi, but tore away his gaze when he realized that none of this was her fault.
“This world’s not fair,” she said. “The sooner you accept that the Houses hold all the cards and never, ever plan to relinquish them, the better it’ll go for you. Think of it this way: why does the Academy have a monopoly on Great Souls?”
Scorio scrunched his face up in confusion. “A monopoly on Great Souls? What do you mean?”
“Never mind. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Look. I didn’t take you on for this week because I intended you to get nowhere.” She rose smoothly to her feet and dusted off her palms on her hips. “Practice drawing Coal mana into your Heart. You’ve already made decent progress for an ignorant Char. Once you can drain this whole room of its mana, you’ll be ready for the next step.”
“Next step?” He fought hard to hide his disappointment. “What’s that going to be?”
She eyed him over one shoulder as she stepped back out onto the windowsill. “Training. Learning to apply pressure to your Heart. And in that department, at least, you’re in luck.”
“Oh yeah? And why’s that?”
Her smile was just shy of sadistic. “Because I’m exceptionally good at making people realize the reality of their shortcomings.”
And with that, she stepped off the ledge and dropped out of sight.
Chapter 17
Scorio spent the rest of the night wrestling with the ambient Coal that suffused his chamber. His newfound connection to his Heart allowed him to interact with the sooty clouds with greater focus, though in large part he still found himself swooshing it around as if he were a boatman trying to pole a barge along a river of honey.
But his focus was ruined, and after perhaps an hour of laboring in the dull light of his lamp, he rose to his feet to pace again.
What was the point? Why kill himself to develop at best a weak Igneous Heart? He’d made Blood Baron before, but that had to have been under different circumstances. Was it even possible to get that far if he formed himself out here in the ruins?
Moving to the window, he stared out over the rough, dark shapes of the closest buildings. The rain had ceased to fall, and all was silent and still. Could he get back into the Academy, somehow? Avail himself of the high-quality mana and the treasures they heaped upon their students? What if he swore some kind of pledge, to never go against House interests, or…?
He paused. What if he joined a House? They were the benefactors of the Academy, were they not? Or had some manner of relationship? What if he approached one—say, House Chimera, the youngest and perhaps most flexible—and revealed himself to be a rogue Great Soul? Offered to swear himself to the House in exchange for training and high-quality resources?