The Hermit, The Tower, The World (Vol.2 Complete)

30th-46th of Inandyl

The next two weeks skipped along at a steady pace and with it formed the illusion of a routine in which Calas had come to look forward to each day's events. It was an odd sort of optimism that he woke with and carried with him into the next day. The only weight on his mind that lingered in the moments in between, was the quiet anxiety of how long the mark of Orendell remained cold and quiet.

He wasn't so stupid or hopeful that the god would simply forget about Rea or the fact that Calas was now the one in the way of whatever machinations the Beast of the Eldwood wanted her for. It was an hour glass turned on its head, but one he never knew when the sands would run out. They would, though. He just hoped he could make some progress with Rea before they decided to run out.

That front had made some progress at least after she committed to coming to three to four sessions a week and practiced in between study breaks on off days. Calas put the wolf on the back burner for now and replaced it with true martial foundations. So the very next day he taught her breathing techniques.

"I'm pretty sure I know how to breathe." She contradicted flatly when he had told her.

"Maybe, but I promise you there is a wrong way to breathe," he responded dryly. "Besides, I would think you of all people would know that breathing is essential to mana manipulation."

She blinked at him with a curious expression and tilted her head, her sandy blond hair waving loose with the movement. It seemed that she hadn't known after all.

"At least it is for me." Calas shrugged nonchalantly.

Despite her initial protest, Rea caught on quickly and it was a good thing, too, as Daz made it a personal goal to interrupt Calas as often as possible. It was always the same line coupled with a shit-eating grin.

"Cal, come spar with me."

"Seriously, Daz. Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?"

"Yeah, well, you'll always be in the middle of something while Rea is around, so, come on! One bout won't kill ya." Daz cajoled and Calas sighed an apology to Rea before he left her for the sparring box with Daz.

Outside of those persistent pauses and other junkies who actually wanted help with something, Rea started making decent headway and Calas started her on stance and posture. That experience had not panned out as easy as it had been when he helped Korinna with the same.

For one thing, Rea had no prior exposure to watching her siblings try to beat the crap out of one another like Korinna had. There was simply no frame of reference for Rea to latch onto when he only described what a grounded stance looked and felt like. Even when he showed her and pointed out flaws, it was sometimes a struggle to get Rea in the right position.

"Bend your knees and sink." Calas instructed and Rea attempted to ground her stance. It was horribly awkward, but Calas kept most of the emotion to himself.

"Straighten your back." She did.

"Shift your hips back." She scowled at him.

"Excuse me?" Rea retorted, not moving from the stance. Calas sighed.

"Your hips are arching your back the wrong way. Tuck in your tail."

She set her jaw, but there was a blush on her cheeks as she adjusted her posture.

"Good. Now push your feet into the ground."

"What does that even mean?" Rea whined. Calas sighed deeper.

"This is a grounded stance. You want to grow roots in this stance. So imagine that you are trying to push those roots from the bottom of your feet into the ground."

Her posture shifted slightly and he nodded at the improvement. It wasn't bad for her first time. To test it, he tried to push her shoulder to knock her out of the stance, but she tensed and remained standing, her feet still planted.

Her deep blue eyes set on him with shock, but it melted quickly into a spark of pride.

"Good. Remember how this feels." Calas hoped she did because he never wanted to tell her to tuck her tail again.

It was frustrating and only partly overwhelming to be so aware of how her petite frame moved. He knew, though, that his admiration, or something stronger, wasn't at all appropriate in this space, especially now that he had accepted this role of "instructor". He had learned, painfully, that the key to a good mentor was how well the novice could trust them.

It wasn't difficult to keep himself in check despite the tempest inside of him. All he had to do was recall every "training" Calas ever had with his uncles, which was about the worst examples he had, and decided not to be that. Every time he corrected her stance or led her through an exercise, he felt that trust build between them. Maybe the distractions weren't such a bad thing after all.

On the days she wasn't training with him, he would bring her lunch in the east tower and those meals often turned into the entire afternoon together. It was a much different atmosphere when it was just the two of them and Calas had started to prefer it. The peaceful afternoons where she was scratching out notes at her desk and he lounged on the couch finishing "Empires of Eld".

The end of the book was a bit of a let down for Calas as it didn't actually mention how the Solia faded out of the annals of history. It was also clear from the first ten chapters that the author didn't actually believe that the Solia could weave mana into spells. Luckily, Calas had no doubts that weaving was a very real method of magic, but it gave him real doubts as to the accuracy and authenticity of the tome in general.

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As he closed the book, Calas looked up at Rea with her back to him in her chair and scribbling studiously, as always. His mind swirled with all the possible reasons that the Solia could have vanished while he stared at a modern day weaver of spells. Logically, Calas came to two conclusions: the Solia most likely disappeared with the Sundering of the World Tree as many ancient cultures had, but that they hadn't vanished completely or the clever beauty in front of him would never have existed.

That train of thought led him down a very different path about how a girl from the sticks of Tranmere, with no extended family to speak of, ended up with this gift. His thoughts were interrupted by Chou who landed lightly on his outstretched arm which was propped up on his knee.

"You really aren't as scary as you used to be." The butterfly fluttered her blue wings as her soft voice whistled.

Calas gave a snort, but narrowed his eyes at the familiar. It struck him from something he recalled in a dream from weeks ago and the vertigo from the deja vu that lingered made him hesitate.

"Should I be more scary, Chou?" Calas asked in a wry tone.

Her antennae went straight and rigid as she gasped. "No! Of course not! But the analysis I had compiled about you was inconclusive until very recently."

"Analysis, huh," Calas mused as a sly smile spread across his face. "That reminds me. I get the feeling, dearest Chou, that you haven't been completely honest with us about your analysis ability." He said it loud enough so Rea could hear.

A worried trill escaped the small creature as she nervously took flight from Calas' arm. She fled from him to Rea at the desk, but she had already turned in her chair to pin Chou with a dangerous glint in her eyes. Calas joined them at the desk a moment later.

"Yes, Chou, please tell us what other things you might be able to analyze." Rea put a hint of knowing mischief in her voice. It was very akin to his own wry tone and he couldn't help but flash a smile in Rea's direction.

"Things…things? Uh!" Chou's trill had turned panicked, her flight patterns erratic.

"Yeah," Calas continued in answer to Chou's existential crisis, "such as, a certain red thread." He prodded, but added to Rea as an aside, "Or is it vermilion? Crimson? Scarlet?" He shook his head furtively, "I still don't really know the difference."

"I'll see about finding a paint set in town this weekend to explain it better." Rea glanced up at him with an endearing smile and a light pat on the snake that wandered the length of his arm. Calas knew she meant to tease him with the comment, but it only deepened the affection he felt for her. That small touch sent an electric current through him that made his heart pulse to that ever-present rhythm on the other end of the thread.

"What do you say, Chou." Calas broke eye contact with Rea to find the familiar attempting to hide in the desert colored locks of her hair. Casually, he pushed the curtain aside with a finger, away from Rea's face. "Would you like to try analyzing this thread of bonding that you somehow knew by name, but nothing else?"

Chou shifted anxiously from side to side on Rea's shoulder as she chirped and stuttered. Calas noticed something dark against Rea's light complexion between the familiar's fits of movement and he stared at it curiously.

It looked like a tattoo at first glance, but there was something off about it, other than it didn't move. The image looked to be a single blackbird in flight and it was so eerily similar to the Lady Crow's two-bird mark that he nearly missed Chou's response while he fixated on it.

"Oh! Yes, analysis! Yes! Of the red thread! Yes, I can do this, but it will take more data to create a complete analysis." Chou's breezy voice became more and more confident as she went.
"What kind of data do you need?" Rea asked with a tinge of exasperation in her voice.

Calas straightened and let her hair fall as Chou darted out of her hiding spot on Rea's shoulder. His eyes lingered on the spot on her neck that was now covered by the shade of her wavy hair. Had it always been there? Not that it was any of his business, but it was a curious coincidence. They couldn't be the same person, could they?

"Aetheric analysis requires mana to channel through the bond. Right now, all it does is send nonsensical signals back and forth." Chou sounded like Moonshadow in one of her moods and it brought his attention back to the small creature.

"That pulsing? Is that what you mean by signals?" he asked.

"Hmm, maybe," Chou mused, and Calas let a piece of his focus drift more strongly to the thread on his finger and the beacon on the other end.

"This kind of signal?" Calas questioned blankly.

"Oh! Yes, that is… from you, then." Chou's wings beat double time as she back flipped in the air, but she sounded bemused.

Rea stared at her hand and Calas knew that she was considering the thread she could actually see. Her brow furrowed slightly and she met Calas' gaze. That shrewd, calculating glint was back in her too blue eyes, but he tried not to smile at it.

"That warm beating is from you?" Rea asked Calas and he shrugged.

"I guess, but I feel that sensation on the other end." He half-sat on the desk, careful not to disturb her piles of notes that were scattered on it.

"Hmm, how did you do it?" She sounded disappointed, but Calas knew it was her first response to pretty much anything he had shown her that she didn't immediately understand.

"It's like opening a door. Think about the link; the thread. Imagine a piece of you walking through that doorway." As Calas spoke, he thought it was very similar indeed to how he used the mana that churned inside the wolf.

"A piece of me?" She closed her eyes without Calas having said a word.

"Like an echo. Not a real piece. An imaginary version of you. Ephemeral." His voice trailed off with his thoughts as he tried to imagine Rea in Lady Crow's mask. Rea, poised as she was, reminded Calas of when he had tilted Lady Crow's chin to kiss her, and could almost imagine Rea there instead, the sunlight through the windows resembling the golden light of Pandia.

A jolt of awareness came through the link on his finger. The shock made him realize what he had been thinking and he pushed the thoughts of Lady Crow away. He hadn't kissed Lady Crow and, now, he maybe thought that was fortunate if Rea and she happened to be the same person. But really, what were the odds of that being true?

Besides, he thought, Lady Crow said she was the clever one and would find me… Calas convinced himself just to ask, but his voice just stuck there in his throat. It came out instead as a groan which he stifled with a laugh, and found that Rea had opened her eyes, smiling triumphantly.

"Well, that didn't take you very long." Calas choked out as he cleared his throat. "What do you think, Chou? Any analysis on this data yet?" He barbed, but to his surprise the butterfly's core pulsed brightly as she spoke in her excited trills.

"Yes, yes! Analysis is seventeen percent complete!"

"Come on! Just tell us what it does!" Both Calas and Rea groaned, but the disappointment didn't last long as they found themselves pushing and pulling mana through the thread. It was only something that Calas felt instead of how she could see it, but that rhythm seemed more real now that it could reach out to him, too.

Calas focused on the new knot of sensation that ebbed and flowed like a wave at the tether on his finger. It felt familiar and why shouldn't it, he had been growing more and more used to having her around; not just because of their link, but also being in her company felt natural now.

Her smile lit up her face like pure sunshine and he did his best to enjoy a moment in the sun with her. It was moments like that when he felt himself falling. Calas hoped that however far he fell, he didn't drag her down with him.