The silence after his pronouncement was heavier than the forest's deepest gloom. It was the silence of a verdict handed down, a fate accepted. Elara could only stare at the Serpent God, at the chilling, absolute certainty in his molten eyes. He had mapped out her entire future with the cold precision of a master architect, and its only destination was a grave he would dig with his own hands. Her heart hammered, a frantic, trapped bird against the cage of her ribs, but a strange numbness was spreading through her, the shock of a wound not yet felt.
"You're insane," she breathed, the words barely a whisper, fogging in the chill air.
"I am thorough," Valerius corrected, his voice flat, devoid of any emotion but intent. He straightened to his full, imposing height, his serpentine tail shifting with a soft, scaly sound against the loam, carving a smooth, deep groove. "Insanity is repeating an action and expecting a different result. I tried to break my bonds with brute force for centuries. It failed. I am now trying a new approach. You are that approach. Do try to keep up. Your comprehension speed will directly impact my timeline."
He gestured vaguely, with a flick of his wrist, at the chaotic mess of thorns and upheaved roots she had created in her panic. The brambles were already browning, decaying at an unnatural rate without her will to sustain them. "This… display. It is an embarrassment. A scream of power. I will teach you to make it a whisper. A razor's edge. Control is everything. Without it, you are a danger only to yourself and the insects at your feet. You are a liability to my design."
The condescension was a spark to her tinder-dry fear, cutting through the numbness. "I managed well enough to free you," she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest, a pathetic defense against the chill and his penetrating gaze.
"You managed to swing a hammer at a wall and get lucky," he countered, a flicker of genuine annoyance crossing his perfect, severe features. "The first lesson is one even the dullest mortal child learns: do not bite the inside of your own cheek. Power without control is a weapon that invariably cuts its wielder. You will learn to hold it. To shape it. To command it. Or you will bleed from the effort. Repeatedly."
He didn't give her time to retort, to muster another defense. "The energy you wield is mine. It is of shadow and scale, of deep earth and cold blood. It is not some verdant, life-giving force for growing weeds." He sneered at the withering wall of thorns, his disdain palpable. "You forced it to mimic life, and it obeyed clumsily, like a wrong key turning a stubborn lock. It is anathema to its nature. Feel its true essence. Understand what you have stolen."
He extended his hand, palm up. The shadows of the clearing, already deep and menacing, seemed to drain toward his hand, coalescing above his palm. They swirled, not as an absence of light, but as a tangible, liquid substance, taking form. It solidified into a perfect, shimmering scale the size of a warrior's shield, its edges so sharp they seemed to cut the very air around them. It hummed with a low, deadly frequency, a note that vibrated in Elara's teeth. It was beautiful and utterly terrifying, a piece of a divine nightmare given form.
"This is a thought," he said softly, his voice a hypnotic murmur. "A single, focused thought given form. No wasted energy. No flailing. No… weeds. Your turn."
He closed his hand into a fist, and the scale vanished into wisps of dissipating shadow. He looked at her expectantly, his golden eyes gleaming in the dark.
Elara's mouth went dry. She looked at her own hands, pale and trembling in the dim light. They looked so human, so fragile. She reached for that ocean of power within her, the connection that thrummed like a plucked wire between her soul and his. It was there, vast and waiting, a bottomless well of cold, dark potential. But how did she draw just a single cup? How did she shape a thought from this formless storm?
She thought of a shield. A simple, round shield of light, like the ones the village guards carried.
The power surged in response to her fear, her desperation. It wasn't a thought; it was a plea. A blinding, chaotic burst of raw energy erupted from her palms, lashing out wildly like an uncoiled whip. It didn't form a shield. It was a violent discharge of pure force that shot past Valerius, obliterating a decaying log into a cloud of splinters and scorching a deep, black furrow across the forest floor before sputtering out with a sound like a dying sigh.
The recoil was immediate and violent. A searing pain lanced up her arms, as if she'd tried to catch a falling star. A hot, sudden trickle of blood dripped from her nose, and the coppery taste of it filled her mouth. She had, indeed, bitten her cheek. She cried out, a short, sharp sound of pain, staggering back and clutching her arms to her chest. They throbbed with a deep, aching burn.
Valerius didn't move. He didn't even blink. He looked utterly, profoundly bored. "As I said. You bleed." He examined his own perfect, unmarred nails. "You are thinking like a mortal. You are begging the power to do what you want. You are not commanding it. It is not a separate thing to be beseeched. It is you. An extension of your will. Your intention must be absolute. Your vision must be clearer than your desire."
He took a step closer, the air around him growing colder. "Again."
Tears of pain, frustration, and sheer exhaustion welled in her eyes. She wiped the blood from her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a stark crimson smear on her pale skin. She was cold, she was tired, she was humiliated. She wanted to scream at him, to refuse, to curl up on the cold ground and give up.
But the look in his eyes wasn't just malice. It was a challenge. A test. And a part of her, the defiant, cunning part that had spoken the marriage vow against impossible odds, rose to meet it. She would not let him see her break. She would not give him the satisfaction.
She took a shaky, ragged breath, ignoring the throbbing pain in her arms. She closed her eyes this time, blocking out his infuriating presence, the dark, watchful woods, everything. She focused inward, on the hum of the bond, on the vast, dark ocean that was his power. She didn't beg. She didn't ask.
She remembered the feeling of the binding circle that had held him. Not its destruction, but its nature. The absolute, unyielding certainty of its form. Its immutable purpose. Contain. Hold. Define a space.
She held that image in her mind, not as a wish, but as a fact. A truth. She would create a containment field. A sphere of pure will. She visualized it perfectly, its curvature, its shimmering, impenetrable surface.
She opened her eyes, her gaze fixed on a point in the air between them. She didn't thrust her hands out. She simply willed it. She commanded it into being.
A sphere of shimmering, dark energy, shot through with faint, opalescent scales like his, winked into existence. It was small, no larger than an apple, and it hovered, perfectly stable, humming with that same low, deadly frequency as his scale had. It held. It did not waver. It did not lash out.
Elara stared at it, a gasp of shock and pure, unadulterated triumph catching in her throat. She had done it. It was small, its form slightly imperfect at the edges, but it was there. It was controlled. It was hers.
She looked at Valerius. His expression was unreadable, a mask of cold observation.
Then, with a flick of his wrist almost too fast to see, he sent a tiny, needle-sharp shard of shadow shooting from his fingertip toward her sphere. It struck the surface and vanished with a faint, almost polite pop, absorbed without a single ripple disturbing its perfect form.
"Adequate," he said, the single word sounding like it had been dragged over gravel. There was no praise in it. No approval. Only a flat, cold acknowledgement. "For a first attempt. It would not stop a determined child, but it did not make you bleed. Remember the feeling. That is the barest foundation upon which we will build your coffin."
He turned away from her, as if the lesson was concluded, the spectacle over. "We move. The nexus calls. And you require… significantly more practice before you are fit for purpose."
Elara let the sphere dissipate, not with a burst, but with a thought, a gentle release of will. The exertion had left her dizzy, her head pounding, but the searing pain in her arms was gone. A strange, exhilarated energy thrummed in its place, a heady cocktail of exhaustion and power. She had commanded a god's power. And it had obeyed.
She fell into step behind him as he began to move east, following the relentless pull. The forest was still dark, her future still a terrifying question mark, and her husband still unequivocally, meticulously planned her murder. But as she walked, she flexed her hands, feeling the echo of that perfect, stable sphere, the memory of its creation etched into her mind.
He had taught her to control the power so he could later kill her with no messy repercussions, to craft her into a perfect victim. But as the blood dried on her skin and the phantom hum of power lingered in her veins, Elara felt the first, dangerous seedling of a new thought take root.
What if she learned faster than he anticipated? What if she became stronger than he expected? What if the materials he was so carefully shaping turned out to be beyond his ability to break?
The pupil, after all, did not always have to die at the master's hand.
Sometimes, they surpassed them.