Lyall was alone on the deck of the dark wind. The ship was fleeing the shores of Thalassa, plunging into a rough open sea. The sky was a blanket of heavy clouds, reflecting the dull rage that boiled within him. He held his teral stone, his anchor, and found it ridiculously heavy and useless. The failure on the Thalassa docks had been a more devastating blow than any physical strike. He had been dominated, ridiculed, not by superior force, but by the very negation of force.
The anchor relied on the manipulation of mass and inertia. Lyall had always used his teral to strike or immobilize an object or a body. But the walzer, that aelith master, had used aerone not to fly, but to free himself from mass. The aelith was a particle of pure movement; there was nothing to anchor. Lyall replayed the light jumps, the bounds that used the anchor's inertia as a springboard. He had tried to impose heaviness around the aelith, but the effect had dissipated on a body that weighed almost nothing. It was like trying to grasp water with a closed hand.
Kalas approached, his silhouette weather-beaten by the wind. He smoked a wooden pipe and watched the black sails. "We say in our lands that if you fight the water by making it heavy, you will sink. But if you fight the air by changing the sails, you will go where you wish."
Lyall looked at him. "I have no sails, Kalas. I only have the earth."
"You have the air, lad. Look at your anchor. When you strike it, it imposes its will on the ground. But what is between you and the ship's hull? The air. Movement is nothing without the space to manifest. And space has a mass, even if minimal."
This simple advice struck Lyall with the force of a revelation. He had always considered air as a void between objects, not as an object itself. Aerone manipulated what teral ignored. The walzer does not manipulate his mass, he manipulates his own energetic flux to minimize his interaction with the gravitational field. The key was to strike the cause of his movement: the space allowing him to be light.
Elara joined them, carrying two bowls of steaming stew. Her presence was a different kind of anchor, a more mental one. She had listened to the conversation.
"Kalas is right," Elara said. She set down the bowls and took out her solis stone. "We'll try an exercise. The oracle sees the flux. The walzer doesn't just move fast; he chooses the paths of least resistance. Close your eyes and feel the wind around you. Not the sea wind, Lyall. The energetic flux. Imagine the lines that compose it."
Lyall closed his eyes, concentrating. He felt the teral within him, the heavy stability. He extended it, not towards the deck, but towards the air. It was like trying to sculpt with smoke. He perceived thousands of subtle movements: the brush of an insect, the fall of a raindrop, the passing of a seagull. He could no longer impose heaviness on the aelith's body, but on the body's trajectory, on the air currents it used.
"You are still striking the effect, Lyall. The kick, the jump. You must strike the cause," Elara explained, the solis dancing in her palm. "The walzer uses aerone to give himself a light springboard. Your anchor must give him an unexpected fall. Create a pocket of suddenly heavy air right in front of his destination, without him being able to see it. This is the off-center anchor: manipulating the gravity of the space around him."
The first attempt was a disaster. Lyall tried to concentrate the teral on a point in the air ten feet away. The energy boomeranged, striking him in the chest and making him double over. Lyall coughed, the taste of blood in his throat. Manipulating such minimal mass, but over a distance, required a finesse and power of application he had never developed.
"Again," Elara said, pitilessly. "If the walzer touched you now, you would be dead. You have the eye to strike inertia; now, develop the eye to strike the absence of inertia."
For hours, Lyall concentrated. He imagined himself not as a man, but as a source of a gravitational field. He tried to imprint subtle variations. Pockets of air where his own weight would have seemed to double, and right next door, pockets where he would have seemed to float. It was an exhausting mental balance. Finally, after one more attempt that left him gasping, Lyall succeeded. For three seconds, he maintained a zone of air three feet above his head that was perceptibly more dense. Lyall threw a pebble into it. It fell faster.
He had found the way to counter aerone. The walzer could make himself light, but he could not nullify a patch of space suddenly burdened by Lyall.
As they ate their meal, a lumenarc beacon from the Maritime Kingdoms flashed. It was an urgent message from the Lady of the Tide.
"Vane has reacted to the sabotage," Elara translated, her brows furrowed. "He has counter-attacked politically. He is flooding the neutral Houses, including Aerum, with false information, accusing us of terrorism and of wanting to destabilize the nexium market to seize it for ourselves. He promises to restore order and the flow of purified nexium."
Lyall understood Vane's strategy. It was no longer about brute force, but about perception. Lyall had destroyed Vane's tool, but Vane was destroying the cause of the alliance. House Aerum, whose power rested on controlling air flows (transport and logistics), was essential to the coalition, but also the most pragmatic. They would not care about tyranny if trade was secured.
"We must secure Aerum," Lyall said.
"Yes. And quickly. Their allegiance is our political shield," Elara agreed. "The Lady of the Tide wants us to travel to Aerum Island, undercover. We must bring them proof of Vane's nexium corruption and show them the sample of corrupted nexium we took from Ithaca."
The dark wind sharply altered its course. Lyall knew what this meant. By heading to Aerum Island, they were heading into another trap. The walzer was undoubtedly already there, waiting to see if the anchor and the eye would dare to manifest again. This time, Lyall could not afford to just run. He had to use his new mastery of the off-center anchor to defeat the fastest enemy he had ever encountered. The danger was not brute strength, but the finesse of adaptation. Lyall knew he would not get another chance.