Yerin waited for him to stumble to his feet and press his hand to his skull, checking for bruising, before she nodded sagely. “Yeah, that's how it happens.”
The dirt was blasted away in a starburst pattern where Lindon had been standing. It wasn't deep—the soil here was packed tight, and had been charred over and over for years—but it stood out. The aura seethed in his Copper sight, the black and red powers boiling, but they slowly calmed.
“It didn't get very far,” Lindon noted, steadying himself against the cliff wall. That explosion had singed his hands, even though it came from his own madra—it must have ignited the air. His Bloodforged Iron body was already drawing power to the injury, sapping his core further. That one technique had taken more out of him than five minutes with the Burning Cloak.
“River doesn't get too far without banks,” Yerin said. “Out of control, it's just a flood. Spills everywhere. You want it to go where you want it to go, you have to guide it.”
She tapped the stone again. “There’s a pointer here. Push it outside your body, but keep it under control.” She held her hands a few inches apart as though cupping an invisible ball, and swirls of sharp silver energy began collecting in the air between them. They whirled and slashed in bright flashes, as though she’d contained a dozen blades of light.
“Pack it together,” she continued. The silver light bunched up into a ball the size of his thumb, but she kept pouring more madra into it. “Then, when you can’t keep it dammed up anymore…” A wild, spiraling blaze of silver light whirled between her hands. “…let it go.”
The ball flew out of her hands, a silver fist-sized spiral of sword madra. It spun erratically in the air, going no more than a yard or two before it slammed into the ground.
The technique exploded.
A thousand sword slashes detonated in all different directions, slicing the air, carving hundreds of crisscrossing grooves in the earth. Some of them looked deeper than the length of his hand.
The storm of sword energy faded, leaving Lindon stunned. “Have you used that technique before?”
She shrugged. “Pulled that out of thin air. Not really a winner for me; it only goes a step or two, see, and I could do it faster with my sword. Sword madra likes to move, not to be bunched up like that. Should be stable enough for fire madra, though.”
It hadn’t looked anything like the diagram: she’d fired a twisting ball, not a stream of energy that struck in a line. But different aspects of madra should be expected to work differently, and this technique had been developed for Blackflame.
Lindon was expectant as he held his hands about six inches apart. Even if he ended up with an explosive fireball instead of a dragon’s breath, that was a more devastating weapon than he had now.
Cycling his madra according to the Striker technique’s pattern, he gathered power in his palms. Then, focusing on the space between his hands, he let the power flow out.
The air between his hands blew apart.
This time it wasn’t enough to knock him away, but he did stumble back a few steps, his hands scorched. The front of his outer robe had started to unravel, and his belt was singed.
“You’ve got to keep hold of it,” Yerin said.
“That’s what I’m trying to—” he said, before his second attempt exploded.
After three more failed attempts, Lindon eyed the far side of the Striker Trial grounds. They were mostly identical to the Enforcer grounds, with one notable exception: there was no crystal ball on the pedestal next to the tablet, and no pedestal on the other side. Obviously he wasn't supposed to carry anything across.
Judging by the nature of the Trial, he had to assume he was intended to launch a technique all the way over there. But if he wanted to extend his Striker range from a few inches to over a hundred yards, then he had to hope his talent as a Striker exceeded his talent as an Enforcer.
“I can practice tonight,” Lindon said, putting his hand on the pedestal. “Let’s get started.”
Yerin rubbed a thumb along one of the fresh scars on her jaw. “Looks like you're trying to fly before you grow wings, if you ask my opinion.”
Lindon was already gathering madra into his hand. One hand, this time. “We have to see how far we have yet to fly, don't we?”
“Truth.” She drew her sword eagerly—he'd known he wouldn't have to do much to convince her. “Light this fire,” she said.
It took him a few more seconds to push the madra through his palms, and this time his madra was recognizable as fire. It spilled all over the pedestal, doing no damage whatsoever to the smoky crystal or the stone, and only knocked Lindon's arm back instead of his entire body.
The technique didn't stretch any further, but progress was progress.
As soon as his madra entered the crystal, circles came to life all over the Trial grounds. The ground rumbled, and a field of hazy gray light sprang up in the center of the field.
There was some good news: at least he didn’t have to hold the technique this time, as he had for the Enforcer Trial.
The scripts continued working, making more changes, but Yerin reached down and hefted a rock twice the size of her fist. With a casual flip of the wrist, she hurled it half the length of the grounds, into the gray wall.
The rock sizzled and disappeared.
“As you’d expect, they won't let you just walk through.” She flicked her sword, and a rippling wave of silver-tinged light sliced through the air. It passed through the gray field intact; Lindon could sense its energy streak past the aura barrier.
So madra passed through, but not solid objects. Fascinating.
Shadows gathered past the gray wall, visible as though through dirty glass, but Lindon jogged up to the transparent wall itself. “Is this a technique, do you think, or some kind of script?”
Yerin had followed him, though she watched the shadowy figures gathering on the other side rather than the wall. “Could be either one, I'd say. Gathers up destruction aura into one place, leaves madra alone.”
Lindon opened his Copper sight, and sure enough, the entire wall was a hazy mass of black, twisting lines that carried the meaning of destruction, dissolution. They meant 'the end.'
He focused back on the physical world, looking for the edges of the wall, sending out his spiritual sense to probe for the script that had projected it. “Blackflame has a destruction aspect. I wonder if I could—”
Yerin shoved him aside as something heavy passed through the air where his head had just been.
He caught a glimpse of the weapon as he fell to the dirt: a heavy stone spear.
More spears flew out of the gray wall, flicking out in rapid succession, each aimed at Yerin. She moved quicker than Lindon could follow without the Burning Cloak active, ducking one spear, knocking a second off course with her Goldsign, and sidestepping the third.
The spears flew back to the end of the grounds, clattering to the ground just before the entrance arch.