“I take it back,” says Skarlet, letting out a loud laugh. “You don’t seem so tough now.”
They walk side by side, their bodies tall and muscled and sweaty, and there’s a comfortable ease between them that he and I never shared. Studying him, I realize he’s less burdened than he used to be, and he’s almost emanating the same peaceful aura as Pandora—until he catches me watching.
“Hey, everything okay?” he asks, cutting over to us quickly, his gaze panning from me to Pandora. “Is there news?”
Skarlet comes up behind him, also looking alert.
We’re so primed for tragedy that apparently anything out of the ordinary is cause for alarm—like my presence in a physical training area.
“I was hoping to train with you today,” I say, looking from Mathias to Skarlet. “That is, if Major Thorne is finished with you.”
Skarlet smiles sweetly. “How nice of you to ask for permission this time.”
“I guess it’s only fair after what we went through last night,” I can’t help saying. Her eyes widen in warning since we’re within earshot of other Majors, and I add, “You know . . . how you stayed by my side until I fell asleep so the monsters couldn’t get me?”
Her frown eases a little, but her expression is still tense. “Can we speak alone for a moment, please?”
She seems to tag on the last word unwillingly, and Pandora takes Mathias’s arm and pulls him away. “I just spoke with your parents,” I hear her tell him as they walk, “and they asked me to tell you a new troop of Zodai from Virgo will be arriving tomorrow morning with Numen and Qima. They’ll need lodging. . . .”
As her voice fades, Skarlet says, “I had to call a healer I trust last night to covertly close Corinthe’s wound, and then I had to change her scrubs so no one would know anything happened. This whole thing is too risky—I’m telling my commanding officer what we did before it gets out.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Then you need to go to Eurek. And after you’ve explained to him how you forced me to help you, you can tell him what we learned from Corinthe. It might be important.”
I wait a few seconds to pretend I’m thinking it over, and then I say, “Fine. But tomorrow.”
“No,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Now.”
I blow out a hard breath, and without meeting her gaze, I say, “We’re launching my brother to Empyrean tonight. So I would rather not do this now.”
After a moment she says, “Tomorrow then.”
When she leaves, I find Mathias waiting for me by the weapons display. “Pandora told me about Stan,” he says, his musical voice soft. “She said you wanted to take your mind off the Ascension by doing some physical training.”
I nod.
“Then let’s get you fitted with a Barer,” he says with newfound energy, and we step into what seems to be a stockroom of weapons. Mathias rummages through the Barers until we find one with rings that fit my fingers comfortably. Since it’s suited to a person’s dominant hand, I have to transfer my Zodai Ring to my left hand to make room.
“The Barer’s strength is completely dependent on your connection to it,” says Mathias as we climb inside an elevated ring to test it out. “It’s similar to the Zodai Ring—the more attuned you are to its energy, the easier it will be to call on it when you need it. This is where your Centering skills come in handy—you’ll need to be completely focused on the energy you’re wielding for it to work the way you want.”
“How do I do that?”
“You dig down into the energy you feel buzzing in your hand until you’ve bonded with the weapon. Unlike the Ripple, the Barer isn’t about having good aim—it’s about concentration. Generally speaking, those who are best at Centering themselves do best with this weapon—so you have an advantage.”
As he talks, I flash back to us on Oceon 6 when he taught me how to use the Ring. I remember the way my emotions jostled my mind then, adding their own voice to the conversation. But I can’t remember how those feelings felt.
“Metals in the rings convert energy from the atmosphere into electricity. When you’re ready, make a fist and think of the shape you want the energy to take—it can become a sword, or a bow that fires off electric blasts, or brass knuckles that deliver electric jolts every time they connect with your opponent.”
I close my eyes and reach inward, toward the humming in my right hand. It’s similar to the Psynergy from my Ring, only the electric current in the Barer is more of a physical sensation than a mental one. I can feel my skin tingling and the hairs on my arm stiffening from the static. I concentrate on honing the energy into the long blade of a sword, and then I squeeze my hand into a fist.
I hear a crackling sound, and I open my eyes to see a blue flame.
“I’d be impressed if I weren’t so used to you impressing me,” says Mathias, his midnight gaze bright with admiration. “The second part is projecting a shield around yourself—that’s how you can repel a Murmur attack.”
“How does that work?”
“You have to dig deep and pull the Barer’s energy through every part of your body. Only thing is you need to Center yourself first so you’re protected by a barrier of Psynergy. Otherwise, if the blue energy touches your skin, it will electrocute you. So the first thing you do is access your Center and feel the Psynergy bonding with the Barer’s energy, and then you spread the shield through your whole body. It takes supreme concentration, and you have to feel every single inch of yourself, or you’ll risk leaving holes—”
“I can practice that on my own time,” I say before I shut down from information overload. “I’m more interested in learning your fighting technique. There isn’t much of a point to wielding this weapon if I don’t know how to use it.”
First he teaches me how to turn the Barer into a bow. It takes me longer to envision the right shape to manifest it, but once I do it’s easy enough to shoot electric blasts. The sword is hardest for me to wield, and Mathias and I spar for hours until the muscles of my arms and legs grow leaden. I’m not very good, but that’s not important.
I don’t plan on fighting fair with it anyway.
When I’m worn out—which doesn’t take long—we sit on a bench far from everyone else and fill up on water. As we drink, we watch the dozens of fights going on throughout the space, our thoughts adrift.
“Rho,” he says after a long silence, “I’m sorry about your brother.”
My throat goes dry even though I’ve had two glasses of water, and I stand up to pour myself a third. When I sit back down, Mathias says, “I’m sorry I didn’t save him.”
I take a long drink and don’t look at him. “I should go see Hysan,” I say after swallowing. “I told him I’d check in by now.”
“I’ll walk you—”
“No, I’m fine. I could use the alone time.”
He nods, and I know he understands. But before I get up, he says, “I missed you.”