Chapter 145 — Small Fires

Chapter 145: Chapter 145 — Small Fires

The days that followed settled into a rhythm Arlen recognized from every other stretch of disciplined practice in his life — unglamorous, repetitive, built from small failures stacked patiently against each other until something finally gave.

He went to Neris each morning before the day’s remaining orientation duties claimed him, and each session looked, to an outside observer, almost identical to the last — sitting, reaching, drawing, the faint current gathering and dissolving before he could properly hold it. By the fourth day, the dissolving had slowed. By the sixth, he managed to keep a thread of it gathered against that small, uncertain point low in his stomach for nearly a full breath before it slipped away.

"Progress," Neris said, unbothered by the modesty of it. "Most people would call that nothing. I call it considerably faster than average, given where you started a week ago."

He spent his afternoons with the cohort, orientation’s remaining briefings winding down into something closer to practical review than new instruction, and found himself, more than once, genuinely grateful for the company Elira and Dallin had become rather than simply endured.

"Mana practice," Arlen said, when Elira glanced over mid-thought during a break in the training yard, her ice-lance technique still crackling faintly along the practice post she’d just finished demonstrating, frost spreading in a neat, controlled pattern across the wood. "Trying to work out why something that should be simple keeps refusing to hold."

"Give it time. I spent the better part of two years on my ice-lance before it stopped feeling like fighting the current instead of shaping it." She said it without any particular boast, though the confidence underneath was plain enough. "Confirmed Novice already, though. That’s not nothing, this fast."

"Corwin’s a good teacher."

"Corwin’s a demanding teacher. Different thing entirely." Elira’s mouth twitched with something almost like genuine humor. "You’ll take the compliment better once you’ve had a proper instructor for longer than a few weeks."

Dallin joined them a moment later, knuckles freshly dusted with stone grit from whatever demonstration he’d been running through on his own, and settled onto the bench beside Arlen with his usual easy, unhurried presence.

"Heard you’re spending your mornings with Neris," Dallin said. "Good instructor, from what I understand — my cousin trained under her a few years back, said she doesn’t waste a student’s time with anything they’re not actually ready for."

"She hasn’t yet, at least."

"Give it a proper month before you judge. Mana’s slower than Aura, near enough across the board — my own instructor used to say Aura teaches your body a new habit, and Mana teaches your whole self a new relationship with something that was never yours to begin with. Takes longer for a relationship to settle than a habit."

Arlen turned that over with genuine appreciation, filing the phrase away alongside everything else Neris had taught him this past week.

They spent an idle hour that afternoon wandering the guild district’s outer market rather than returning immediately to their separate obligations, and Arlen found himself, trailing a half-step behind Elira and Dallin’s easy conversation, drawn toward a narrow shopfront he hadn’t properly noticed before — shelves lined with labeled jars, a faint, herbal bitterness hanging in the air, a woman behind the counter measuring something dark and viscous into a small vial with careful, practiced precision.

"Apothecary," Dallin said, noticing his attention. "Good one, too. Half the potions any sensible adventurer carries into the Depths come through a shop exactly like that one."

"I hadn’t thought much about where potions actually come from," Arlen admitted. "Guild sold them ready-made, back in Greyhaven. Never much considered the person actually brewing them."

"Whole profession behind it. Alchemists doing the raw compound work, apothecaries refining it into something a body can actually use safely." Dallin shrugged, unbothered by the gap in Arlen’s knowledge. "Capital’s got room for all of it. Enough adventurers pushing into the Depths every day that half this district exists just to keep them properly supplied — smiths, healers, alchemists, enchanters, cartographers mapping whatever the last expedition found. You’ll want a proper potion supplier eventually, before your first real dive. Sooner rather than later, probably."

Arlen filed the observation away with the same careful attention he gave most things now, understanding, with quiet appreciation, exactly how much of the capital’s layered economy he still hadn’t properly explored — an entire world of craft and trade orbiting the same gravity that had drawn him here, considerably larger than the guild hall alone.

He returned to Neris the following morning with that thought still settled comfortably in his chest, and found her waiting with the same unhurried patience she’d shown every session before it.

"Same as yesterday," she said, gesturing him down. "Sensing, drawing, holding. We’ll keep at it until it finally sticks."

He sat, and reached, and this time — perhaps the eighth or ninth attempt in as many days, he’d genuinely lost proper count — the thread he drew didn’t simply dissolve the moment he tried to shape it. It gathered instead, settling against that small, cool point low in his stomach with a resistance that felt, for the first time, like something actually holding rather than simply passing through.

"There," Neris said, her voice sharpening with real attention. "Don’t lose it. Keep the shape steady, exactly as it is. Now, slowly, guide it outward — palm up, and let it settle rather than release."

Arlen obeyed, moving with the same careful, deliberate slowness he’d learned from every other discipline this remarkable life had asked of him, and felt the gathered thread travel outward through some channel he was only now, for the first time, properly aware of existing at all — and a small, steady point of pale light bloomed above his open palm, faint but genuinely sustained, hovering there without flickering or fading.

"There it is," Neris said, satisfaction plain in her voice. "Mana Light, properly formed. Hold it as long as you can manage — every second you keep it steady now is a second your Core spends learning what steady actually feels like."

Arlen held it, the small light trembling once before settling, and found himself watching it with the same quiet, absorbed wonder he’d given every genuine discovery since a boar’s fire beside a riverbank, two years and an entire life removed from anything he’d understood back then — proof, small and unglamorous and entirely his own, that the other half of himself had finally, properly begun.