Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Other than his relationships, Evin was starting to use his metal leg more roughly. Since he could walk on it non-stop for a couple hours without problems and even move it a bit thanks to the runes that connected it to his brain, he reckoned he could try running on it now. Once again, the effort made him sprawl on the ground and clutch at the last bits of his remaining flesh.

But compared to last time, when he only lasted a minute, this time he lasted five minutes. Obviously, he wasn't battle ready, but he felt like he could survive a fight on the ground if it lasted a minute or two. 

This gave him the confidence to attempt some spear stances. Bokh, his teacher also supported this idea, saying that only focusing on handling the spear only wasn't the ideal thing for a spearman, or whatever-other-weapon-man for that matter. Evin agreed as well, as he knew how important legwork was.

So, he began learning his stances from the ground up. Most of them were techniques to apply one's weight as low as possible and hold it there without faltering. Evin quickly learned that the most important thing for fighting with spears was to stand one's ground. Since the spear was a rather long weapon, naturally, there came a time when the extra length became detrimental.

This became especially apparent when Evin did mock fights against Bokh, who always managed to either disarm Evin, or make him topple over. And that last part was important too. It wasn't that Bokh toppled Evin over, it was that he made Evin topple over. There was a difference. 

The man never pushed or hit Evin with a weapon. He always focused on the spear that Evin held. Bokh would either grab and yank it after Evin finished swinging, or lightly block Evin's attacks by putting his own weapon in front of the spear's path (which somehow always ended up in Evin losing his balance), or he would simply parry Evin's attack, even if Evin was swinging it at full speed. The man had inhuman hand-eye coordination.

And after each time Bokh finished making Evin topple over or lose his balance, he would tell him that it was entirely possible to avoid this outcome if Evin had a stronger, or sturdier stance. 

Evin always wanted to complain that he couldn't apply too much weight on his legs because of his prosthetic, but he didn't want to make excuses. He liked the class and he didn't want to disappoint Bokh.

Evin liked the man, despite how he sometimes tries to pit Evin against noble students. Evin didn't know why, but he always felt that the way Bokh did it was more sincere than the way the Chairman did it.

Perhaps he was just being biased. 

One more class that he enjoyed was, surprisingly, the Heart-casting class. 

It was a small class. Aside from the three students that were picked alongside Evin, there were only five more from the second years. Shockingly, Evin found Konanne among them. He learned that the previously timid girl had become much more confident compared to half a year ago, so much so that she was switching from Pleading Chants to Demanding ones. 

Weirdly, after talking to the other four, Evin learned that one of them was an orphan, the other was paralyzed below her waist, while the two were previously slaves. 

Sufia explained that most likely, those experiences taught these children to control their emotions better. She then told them that the class wasn't going to involve much thinking. Instead, they were going to focus much more on their emotions, or rather, how to best suppress them.

Evin learned that the reason why mages went crazy when they entered a World of Magic, was because they felt a certain emotion to its peak. Some of those emotions were quite simple. For example, in the World of Fire, mages felt severe rage. So much so that they try to burn everything and everyone around them after they exit Irratas. 

There were also some complex ones. In Ivelisi, mages would feel extreme detachment and loss of self-awareness, effectively turning them into lifeless husks. 

In the World of Earth, a mage would feel as if they were perfect. So perfect that they wouldn't even want to move an inch after they escape the World. After all, why bother living if they were already perfect.

The World of Emotions, though, was the most complex of them all. It was able to evoke literally any emotion a person could evoke, and depending on how important whatever emotion was to someone, it would put a negative twist on it and amplify it by a thousand times. 

So, mages who wanted to access the Worlds needed to learn how to suppress these specific emotions, or learn how to deny these emotions somehow. 

When Evin first heard it, he immediately went through the Worlds he could access and their specific emotions. He could enter Seyethe, Exivear, Lochra, Qanatohm, Therae and Ori-Etu.

Seyethe's invoked a sense of longing for freedom. The mage would feel as if the entire world was some kind of giant prison, despite how illogical that sounded. 

The World of Darkness turned a mage dysfunctional levels of paranoid.

Lochra was a rather special case. While inside it, a mage's brain would be ceaselessly fed with information. Not only that, their thinking capabilities would be boosted as well, allowing them to process the information to a certain degree. And after some point, the mage would simply kill themselves. Evin really didn't know how one was supposed to survive that.

The World of Weight was more straightforward. It simply made you feel the purest despair. Sufia even called it the easiest way for a mage to become suicidal.

Therae and Ori-etu were similar. While Space made you feel small and insignificant, and Time made you feel so very finite, they both made you feel unbearable fear alongside it. 

Listening to these descriptions, Evin felt confused at how he was supposed to survive any of them.

After the first lesson, which was mostly a lecture, Sufia began teaching the students exactly that. Everyone picked one of the Worlds that they were compatible with and Sufia would tell them how to best handle that World. 

Evin picked the World of Thoughts under Endra's persuasion, and learned that to survive the World of Thoughts, one had to either learn how to block information from their minds completely, or to use drugs and hallucinogens to numb their brains…

Evin's eyes widened at the method and asked Endra about how he blocked Evin off. The latter replied that he used a Lochra spell. Excited, Evin asked Sufia whether someone could use Lochra spell to block out the information, but the old woman shook her head, saying that that was like trying to stop a tornado by blowing at it.

So, Evin's days of spending his mornings meditating and trying to think nothing began. It didn't feel like he was achieving things, but he found it nice to have an hour to himself a day. He would've preferred it even more if he could do whatever else he wanted to, but this was still nice. Lately, he was always surrounded by someone, so even this moment of nothingness felt precious to him. It wasn't like he hated being with others, it was just that he liked being alone and he was now realizing it.

All in all, Evin was enjoying his school days peacefully.