It was just dawning when Master Rylan summoned them to the training ground. The morning mist, cold and damp, stuck to the clothes.
"Today, we are working on precision under pressure," he announced, pointing to a series of moving targets hanging from cables. "You will be in pairs. An attacker, a defender. The attacker must hit the target. The defender must stop him. Without touching the attacker."
Chance, or Rylan's keen sense of pedagogy, pointed to Hakime and Loïd as a pair. A tense silence set in.
Loïd wore a cruel smile. "Perfect. I can't wait to see how your little light can withstand the heat."
Hakime didn't bite the bait. He knew that anger was his enemy. "Are you the attacker or the defender?"
"I'm starting to attack. I want to see how you manage to block me."
Rylan gave the signal. The targets began to oscillate erratically. Loïd, without losing a second, threw small, incandescent fireballs. They were not intended for Hakime, but to bypass him, to overwhelm him with their numbers and their speed.
Hakime concentrated. He couldn't settle for a static shield. He revealed small disks of light, miniature "Aegis," which he projected onto the path of the fireballs. The impacts created bursts of light and heat, but he managed to intercept the majority. It was exhausting. Each disc required a crazy concentration and drained its ether.
"You are slow, orphan!" said Loïd, speeding up the pace. "You react, you do not anticipate!"
The remark was vexing, but right. Hakime closed his eyes for a second, ignoring the danger. It broadens its perception, sensing not only the fire projectiles, but also the movements of the cables, the air currents. When he opened them again, his discs of light no longer appeared where the fireballs were, but where they were going to be. It became more efficient, more economical.
"Change!" ordered Rylan.
This time, Hakime was on the attack. He took his training spear and froze, observing. Loïd had adopted a defensive posture, little flame shields circling around him.
Hakime didn't attack right away. He studied the trajectory of the targets, the pattern of Loïd's shields. Then he started moving. He did not target targets directly. He used his spear to hit the cables, changing their oscillation in unpredictable ways. A target, suddenly released, went into a spin. Loïd, surprised, had to concentrate on her. In that second of inattention, Hakime projected a thin ray of light that hit another target right in the center.
"Stop!" Rylan approached. "Loïd. You let yourself be distracted. You forgot that the main goal was not the targets, but preventing your partner from touching them. Hakime. Intelligent. You used the environment. But you used ether for a simple ray. Was it necessary?"
"No, Master," Hakime admitted. "A stone could have done the trick."
"Exactly. Ether is precious. Never forget."
Loïd was furious. He had failed to dominate Hakime, and he had even received praise for his cunning. "Next time, we'll have a real duel," he scolded as he passed by him.
"Whenever you want," Hakime answered calmly.
Later, in the control room, Hakime thought back to the exercise. Lyra's teaching on finesse had been useful to him, but he still had much to learn. He tried to create not a disc, but a light-curved blade, a kind of fake. The shape was complex, unstable. It broke several times, releasing small bursts of energy that pushed it back.
"You're trying to copy physical weapons."
Lyra's voice startled him. She had entered quietly.
"Perhaps," he admitted, letting the form dissipate. "It's a form that seems logical to me."
"Light doesn't have to imitate steel. She has her own laws. "She came up and created a long, thin shard of glass, pointed like a needle." I don't think of a sword. I think of a perforation. At a breaking point."
She threw the needle into the target with a sharp noise.
"Your power is more raw, more fundamental. Don't constrain it in conventional forms. Find the forms that are natural to him."
Under his gaze, Hakime tried something else. Instead of forcing a blade, he let the light flow out of his hand like a fluid, and then solidified it into a simple, solid stick of light. It was basic, but incredibly stable and inexpensive in ether.
"There," said Lyra. "A foundation. Now, refine."
The day ended with an impromptu meeting in their room. Arthur was excited; he had managed to use his Quickstep to escape a coordinated assault by two other students. Conor had experimented by only strengthening his fists, focusing his defense on more powerful strikes.
"We're making progress," Arthur said, smiling. "Really."
"The expedition is two weeks away," recalled Conor, his grave face. "You have to be ready."
"We will be," said Hakime, looking at his hands. He felt the light in him, more docile, more obedient. He had learned a crucial lesson today: true mastery was not in reproducing existing weapons, but in understanding the unique nature of his power. The way of the Monarch of Light was his own to be invented. And he had just taken another step in that direction.