Chapter 187 — The Other Half, Continued

Chapter 187: Chapter 187 — The Other Half, Continued

The Instruction Wing hadn’t changed in his absence — same modest room, same high window letting in the same thin, patient light — but Neris looked up from her desk with genuine surprise the moment he knocked at the open door.

"You’re back," she said. "I’d assumed you’d fallen in with a longer contract somewhere and forgotten you had a standing appointment with me."

"Region Three. Longer than I meant to be gone."

"That’ll do it." She set aside whatever she’d been writing and gestured him toward the floor space they usually used, the same cushion, the same bare stretch of wall he’d stared at through a dozen frustrating early sessions. "Sit. Let’s see what a month away has done to you. I’m expecting the answer to be nothing good."

"Probably fair."

He settled onto the floor across from her, and found the old, familiar stillness coming to him more easily than it used to — not effortless, exactly, but no longer the fumbling, uncertain reaching he remembered from his first weeks.

"Same as always," Neris said. "Draw a thread. Hold it. Don’t force it."

He drew, and held, and felt the current gather at that small, cool point low in his stomach with a steadiness that surprised him even as it happened — no wobble, no dissolving edge, just a clean, obedient thread sitting exactly where he wanted it.

Neris didn’t say anything for a long moment. When he finally opened his eyes, she was watching him with a small, satisfied kind of attention, the sort she wore whenever a student did something better than expected without needing to make a production of it.

"That’s considerably steadier than where we left off," she said.

"I practiced. When I had the chance."

"Practiced Mana Light and Mana Sense, in the middle of a flooded dungeon region." She said it with dry amusement rather than suspicion. "That’s not really an environment suited to either spell."

"No," Arlen admitted. "Mostly I just held the thread when I had a quiet moment. Didn’t always have anywhere to actually cast."

"Well, it shows. Holding the thread’s half the discipline anyway — the casting’s just what you do once you’ve already won the harder argument with yourself." She gestured for him to try again. "Do it once more. Hold it as long as you can this time."

He held it, and found the shape of the thread staying obedient far longer than it ever had before — not the trembling few seconds of his early attempts, but something closer to a minute, then two, the current settling into place with a patience that felt almost restful rather than effortful.

"That’s not just practice," Neris said, once he’d finally let it go, the thread dissolving cleanly rather than snapping back the way it used to. "Something’s settled a bit deeper than it was before."

"Maybe. It felt easier, coming back to it, I’ll say that much."

"Mm. Happens sometimes, oddly enough — time away from a thing lets it settle in a way constant drilling doesn’t always manage. Give the mind room to catch up with the hand, or however the old teaching phrase goes. I never much liked that phrase, honestly, but it fits here." She didn’t press further, already rising and crossing toward her desk, the moment passing with the same unhurried ease she brought to most things. "Cast Mana Light for me. Let’s see where you’re actually standing before I decide what we’re doing today."

He did, and the small point of pale light bloomed above his palm steady and bright, holding without the faint flicker that had characterized nearly every early attempt.

"Cleaner than before," Neris said, studying it with mild, genuine approval rather than any deeper scrutiny. "Good. That’s worth building on properly." She made a brief note to herself in the margin of whatever she’d been working on before he arrived, the same practical efficiency she brought to everything, and didn’t dwell on the observation any further than that.

"Is that unusual?" Arlen asked, mostly out of curiosity rather than any real concern.

"Not especially. Foundational spells firm up however a student’s own strengths happen to lean, over time. Some people’s Mana Light ends up warmer, some cooler, some brighter, some dimmer but steadier. Yours has apparently decided to go bright and steady both, which I won’t complain about." She shrugged, the whole matter settling comfortably into the category of things worth a passing remark and nothing more. "We’ll pick up properly next session. I want to walk you through the next stage — holding a sustained cast over real duration, rather than just the length of a single breath. It’s a different kind of discipline than what we’ve been doing, closer to endurance than precision."

"When’s next session?"

"Two days from now, same time as always. Gives you a chance to actually rest, and gives me a chance to plan the lesson properly instead of improvising because you’ve decided, again, to be a little ahead of where I expected you." She said it dryly, the closest thing to a joke she usually allowed herself, and it landed with the same understated warmth most of her humor carried. "Go on. You’ve earned an easy afternoon, and I’ve got another student due shortly who very much has not earned one yet, given how last week went."

Arlen rose, gathering himself the way he always did at the end of a session, and found the room’s quiet, unhurried atmosphere settling into him with the same grounded satisfaction it usually left behind — not the anxious uncertainty of early lessons, just the plain, comfortable sense of steady progress properly logged and set aside for another day.

"Thank you," he said, at the doorway.

"Don’t thank me for a session that mostly consisted of you already being better than I expected," Neris said, without looking up from whatever she was now preparing for her next student. "Save the thanks for a day I actually have to work for it."

He left the Instruction Wing without the weight he might once have carried out of a conversation like that — no sense of being studied, no lingering unease about what exactly a month underwater had quietly done to him. Just the ordinary, satisfied tiredness of a lesson gone well, and the small, private certainty that whatever had shifted in him this trip, it was his to understand in his own time, at his own pace, the same unhurried way he’d approached every other piece of this strange, remarkable life.

He made his way back through the guild district as the afternoon settled toward evening, the day’s two errands — gear left with Kellan, progress confirmed with Neris — both handled now, and found himself with an entire empty stretch of time in front of him for the first occasion in longer than he could easily remember.

He thought, walking, of the small bakery stall from the day before, and decided the second half of his afternoon could reasonably be spent doing nothing more urgent than seeing what else the vendor might be calling out today.