Chapter 17: DISTANCE

The satisfaction remained, but repetition changed the mood quickly. Arch moved the cup farther away, and Sio felt the burden increase before he even released the next stone. The second opening took longer to stabilize, pressure gathering behind his eyes until his jaw clenched. He missed twice, then closed the openings himself on the third attempt and bent forward with both hands on his knees.

Arch approached immediately but did not crowd him. "Pain?"

"Pressure." Sio kept his head lowered while breathing through it. "Not sharp. It feels like... I don’t know. Like part of my head is trying to be in two places and neither one appreciates it."

Arch handed him water. "That description is good enough. Drink."

Sio took the bottle and discovered halfway through that he was thirstier than he thought. His fingers trembled slightly around it, a small movement that made frustration tighten his face. He closed both hands until the shaking settled.

"I hate that this looks easy."

Arch stood beside him, watching the coast rather than Sio’s hands. "It isn’t."

"I know. That’s why it’s annoying."

There was enough raw frustration in his voice that Arch let him rest instead of answering.

Once Sio’s breathing returned to normal, Arch changed only one part of the exercise at a time. He moved the cup closer but placed it higher. Sio discovered that changing the exit angle felt much cheaper than adding distance. Then Arch gave him a larger stone and made him widen both openings. The strain increased much faster than Sio expected.

That sent him toward the notebook tucked behind his waistband.

He crouched beside the bowl of stones and wrote with his forearms resting against his knees, his handwriting becoming increasingly cramped as his thoughts moved faster than his hand. "Distance matters. Size matters more than I thought. The bigger opening doesn’t just feel like more pressure. It feels like I have to keep more of the space... open, I guess. That sounds stupid."

"It sounds unfinished." Arch crouched nearby without touching the notebook. "Those are different things."

Sio looked up.

"Stupid means the observation is useless. Unfinished means you don’t have the language yet."

That made Sio pause before scratching out what he had written. He left it instead. "Okay. Unfinished."

Arch noticed how much that tiny permission mattered and pretended he had not.

After the break, he replaced the stones with one of the pieces of driftwood. "This time you don’t move the whole object. Hold one end normally. The first opening goes around the far end, and the exit goes beside the nearest cup. You push from here. Only the tip crosses."

Sio understood the idea immediately and hated the execution almost as quickly.

The first opening formed cleanly around the stick, but he placed the exit at the wrong angle. When he pushed, several inches of driftwood vanished in front of him and emerged pointing downward beside the marker, scraping harmlessly across the wood instead of touching the cup.

He instinctively twisted his wrist to correct it.

Arch caught the stick before he could force the angle. "Close it."

Sio collapsed the openings and flexed his wrist, irritation flashing across his face. "I could see it was wrong. I thought I could adjust."

"That’s exactly what I don’t want. Once part of your arm starts going through one of those, discovering halfway through that the geometry is bad becomes much less educational."

Sio rubbed the sore joint. "Right. That image helped."

"Good. Try again."

The second attempt missed as well, though the third came close enough that the end of the driftwood passed only inches from the cup. By the fourth, frustration had begun changing Sio’s body before the ability even appeared. His shoulders rose. His grip became too tight. He kept staring at the cup as though enough concentration could physically drag the exit into place.

The stick emerged several inches wide.

Sio closed the passages hard enough that the darkness vanished instantly, then walked two steps away and dragged both hands through his hair. "I know what I want it to do." The words came through his teeth before he turned back toward Arch. "That’s the part driving me insane. I can see it perfectly until I actually try. Then everything’s just a little wrong. A little too high, too far, wrong angle. It’s like my own ability is translating badly."

Arch rested his piece of driftwood against the ground rather than immediately correcting him. "You’ve had the idea for an hour. You’ve had the ability for three days."

Sio’s breathing was still too quick from frustration. "I waited nineteen years for those three days."

Arch’s face changed before he could stop it.

Sio noticed.

The words carried a different meaning for Arch now that he knew who had spent those nineteen years inside him.

"I know," Arch said quietly.

Something in his voice made Sio’s anger lose momentum. He studied the older man for another moment, almost asked what had happened, then looked back toward the cup instead.

He loosened his grip deliberately. This time he visualized the exit before forming anything. He held the angle in his mind, stopped trying to correct it once the opening appeared and pushed.

The end of the driftwood emerged beside the cup and knocked it into the grass.

Sio’s whole body sagged with relief. His shoulders dropped, and he stayed bent slightly forward with both hands still around the stick while a breathless laugh escaped him. "I hate how good that felt."

Arch retrieved the cup. "Good. Again."

Sio straightened and stared at him. "You really are determined to make every successful moment temporary."

"You said you wanted combat training. An opponent isn’t going to admire the first one and go home."

The next twenty minutes made the lesson considerably uglier.

Arch began moving the cup between markers. At first he let it stop before Sio created the exit. Then he kept it moving slowly enough that Sio needed to judge where it would be rather than where it was. The mental strain rose quickly. Sio’s shirt began sticking along his back, his forearms ached from maintaining the same controlled grip and the pressure behind his eyes returned each time he tried to hold both openings while tracking movement.

His accuracy collapsed.

One attempt landed so far behind the cup that Sio simply let the stick fall from his hand and sat down in the grass without asking. For several seconds he kept both hands pressed over his eyes, elbows resting on his knees while he breathed. When he finally lowered them, exhaustion had stripped most of the humour from his face.

"I’m starting to understand why people train abilities for years instead of getting one on Tuesday and becoming competent by Friday."

Arch handed him the water and sat on the nearby marker rather than towering over him. "You’re learning faster now than you were an hour ago."

"I’m sitting on the ground because moving a stick made my brain feel hot."

"That doesn’t make the first statement less true."

Sio drank and leaned back on one hand. "I know. I’m just annoyed that progress still feels terrible."

"That part rarely improves as much as people hope."

For once Sio had no immediate reply. He lay back in the grass instead, forearm covering his eyes while wind moved across the ridge. The frustration remained, but underneath it Sio could finally feel progress, small and exhausting and occasionally humiliating, but real enough that he no longer hated the morning.

When he finally sat up again, his breathing had settled and his expression was more focused than excited. "Show me what I’m doing wrong before the opening happens."

Arch stood and motioned him over.

They repeated the movement without using the first Claim at all. Sio held the driftwood and mimed an attack toward one marker. Arch stopped him before the imagined strike finished and tapped the end of his stick lightly against Sio’s leading shoulder.

"You lean before you create the passage. Your eyes find the target, then this goes forward, then your weight follows. Your body still thinks it has to travel the distance even when the stick doesn’t."

Sio reset his stance and tried again, consciously keeping his weight centered.

Arch tapped his shoulder once more, gentler this time. "Better. Don’t help the ability. Let it do the part you’re asking it to do."

That phrasing stayed with Sio.

He repeated the movement several times until staying balanced stopped feeling like deliberately holding himself back. Then Arch allowed him to create the passages again.

The next attempt was cleaner. The opening around the driftwood remained small, the exit appeared beside the moving cup, and Sio pushed without lunging after it. The tip emerged from another angle and knocked the cup cleanly from Arch’s hand.

Sio remained where he stood.

He looked down at his own feet first, then at the fallen cup. "That’s it. I keep treating distance like something I have to cross. I don’t."

Arch nodded. "Not every time."

Sio looked at his own hand, and the idea that had been following him all morning finally became clear enough to say aloud. "A fist is smaller than my body. I throw the punch here, the opening catches the fist, and the exit appears beside whoever I’m trying to hit. I never move across the space."

Arch considered him carefully. "You work toward that."

Sio’s head came up. "Work toward?"

"Your wrist nearly lost an argument with a stick half an hour ago."

"That was half an hour ago."

"And civilization has advanced beautifully since then."

Sio was too tired to argue properly. He flexed his fingers and conceded with a reluctant nod. "Fine. Stick first. Punch later."

Arch was surprised enough by the easy surrender that Sio caught it.

"I can learn restraint."

"You can occasionally experience it."

"Don’t ruin the moment."

The training continued, but Arch slowed the pace. Sio did not disappear across the field or suddenly master an ability he had possessed for only days. He learned to keep an opening small. He learned to stop chasing the target with his shoulders. He learned how quickly maintaining two spatial points could exhaust him even while his muscles barely moved.

Most importantly, he learned what failure felt like before failure became dangerous.

By the time they stopped, he was sitting against one of the markers with his knees drawn up, sweat cooling along his neck and an ache sitting firmly behind his eyes. The frustration had worn down into tired satisfaction.

"I thought learning a spatial ability would involve more disappearing."

Arch began collecting the cups. "You can disappear after you learn how not to injure yourself moving kitchenware."

Sio rubbed both hands over his face. "This is probably healthier for my ego."

When Arch’s communicator finally vibrated, both men expected Caspian. Arch reached for it without urgency, only for his expression to change the moment the Central Nexus seal appeared across the screen.