The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 361

Chapter 361: The Second Ruin

My eyes remained firmly on the twin aetheric sabers glowing in the djinn woman’s hands. Admiration, excitement, and envy swirled in me as I examined her near-perfect creations until I forcefully pried my gaze away. “What about the trial you’re supposed to give me?”

“It has already begun,” she answered confidently. “I will judge your worthiness as we battle.” She spun on her heel and the room vanished, melting away both my armor and everything around us into a blank white nothing-space. “Don’t dawdle now.”

The djinn flashed toward me, her form becoming a streak of amethyst as her twin sabers swung outward in a broad arc at my throat.

I swiveled on my heel, parrying her blows with a strike to her hands before I forced aether into the shape of a hazy blade. Using the brief window as she brought her swords back up, I lanced at her side with my dagger.

The djinn spun mid-swing, twisting her whole body fiercely to gain the momentum to intercept my strike with her left blade.

Sparks flared upon impact, but the only weapon remaining after the exchange was hers.

The djinn hardly waited for me as she began her assault, her twin blades becoming a barrage of intersecting crescents hell-bent on shredding me apart.

I summoned blade after blade of my own, each time pushing harder to force the shape together, to hold it when deflecting her attacks, but none lasted more than a single strike.

“You’re holding back,” the djinn said tersely, mid-swing of her saber. Just as the amethyst blade whistled past me, it warped into the shape of a long staff. Pivoting on her lead foot, she grabbed her new weapon with both hands and swept at my legs with the butt of the staff.

I fell to one knee from the force, and by the time I looked back up, her staff had become a warhammer.

Jagged bolts of violet lightning arced across my body as God Step took me several dozen feet away just as the giant bludgeon created a shockwave of force upon impact with the white ground.

The short-haired djinn’s expression turned to that of surprise for the first time, her eyes wide and brows furrowed as she took in what had just occurred.

“Again,” she growled, launching herself toward me in a blur.

I stepped forward, concentrating on the aetheric paths converging around her even as I conjured a blade of my own. Using my aether blade to merely redirect her strike was already enough to make it shatter, but it bought me enough time.

Tendrils of violet lightning arced across me once more as I flashed behind the djinn. However, in the time that it took me to form another dagger, the djinn’s own aether blade had already intercepted my attack.

“Had you chosen to attack with your fist, I most likely wouldn’t have been able to block it,” she admitted, her sharp eyes seeming to look through me rather than at me. “Your mind seems to have connected this godrune with the deviant mana element of lightning. It explains much about your tendencies when using aether.”

I furrowed my brows in confusion. “My tendencies?”

The djinn waved my question away, stabbing her aetheric sword into the ground and casually leaning against it. “Before that, I would like to ask first what it is you want from me, Arthur Leywin,” she asked, her tone harsh.

I froze before answering, realizing she had used my real name.

The djinn’s cropped hair bobbed as she cocked her head to the side. “Have you grown uncomfortable with that name already?”

“No,” I answered, caught off guard. I wasn’t sure how I felt. It had been months since anyone except Regis had called me by my real name, and I realized that I had become far too used to hearing myself referred to as Grey. “It’s fine. But I don’t understand your question.”

Her bright eyes roved over me like searchlights. “What do you want, Arthur?”

Is this a part of the test? I wondered, but out loud, I said, “I’m not sure that’s the right question. What I need is to learn how to control Fate.”

“If Fate were something that could simply be taught, passed on from person to person, then our universe might as well fit within a snowglobe.” She rested her chin on the back of her hand as she continued to devour me with her eyes. “No. What you want is power. The power to protect all of your loved ones and defeat your enemies.”

I crossed my arms. “But isn’t that the same thing? Even with all four elements at my disposal, I couldn’t defeat even a single Scythe. I want—need—something stronger. From what I’ve been told, that’s Fate.”

She stood tall once more, prying her aether blade out of the ground. “Then you’ll have to open your mind to new ideas. You are blinding yourself by attempting to see aether through the lens of mana, equating one to the other. Only after you understand aether as itself can you begin to understand Fate. Now form your blade. Show me that you understand.”

My dagger formed as I stood up, its edge jagged and lacking substance.

She eyed it with distaste. “Strike me.”

I didn’t hesitate, lunging forward and feinting to the right. When her blade moved to intercept, I conjured a second dagger and thrust up into her ribs from the left.

Her sword came around to deflect both blows, and my aether blades collapsed. I caught her counterattack with my hand, then God Stepped behind her, but she was already rolling forward, her blade sweeping behind her to catch me if I followed after. It was a clean move, and impossibly fast.

She held up a hand before I could attack again. “Focus. You are trying to win, and perhaps you even could, but you should be trying to learn. Why does your weapon collapse whenever you use it?”

“Because I’m not strong enough to maintain such a complicated form,” I answered honestly.

She frowned at me as though I were a foolish child. “Wrong. You are stronger than you should be. Stronger than me—at least, this remnant of me, contained with the memory crystal. And yet…”

A perfectly formed sword appeared in her right hand. Then a second in her left. Then a third, hovering just over her shoulder. And a fourth floating near her hip.

She glowered at me, and all four blades pointed at my face. “It is not power you lack. It is perspective. As a human, you have always been expected to build on what you already know. Crawl, walk, run, yes? To wield aether, you must forget that there are rules to things. Constraining yourself to a system that already exists around you only holds you back. Do not seek to walk or run. Ignore gravity and simply fly.”

I couldn’t help but shoot her an amused smirk. “I already learned how to fly—”

One of the flying blades hacked at my neck. I deflected with an aether blade of my own, but it shattered. The second flying sword swept across the side of my knee, while the two she held thrust at my chest and hip. Remembering Kordri’s lessons, I fell into a defensive position and used short, rapid movements of both my hands and feet to intercept or avoid each attack, conjuring several aetheric daggers one after the next, each one evaporating under the strain of her attacks.

Her bombardment was relentless, with attacks coming from several directions at once. Although I was fast enough to dodge or block most, I still felt the repeated cuts and piercing thrusts where her blows did land.

Eventually, she simply stopped, dismissed her weapons, and sat once again. I cautiously mirrored her, waiting silently for the lesson to continue. I wanted to think I had learned something, but so far her guidance had been too esoteric, too vague, to really help me understand how she conjured such powerful aether blades. While she made a fantastic sparring partner, my ability to maintain the form of a pure aether weapon hadn’t much improved.

“That is because you’re waiting for me to tell you what to do, like we were learning mana manipulation back at that academy of yours,” she said shortly. “But I cannot.”

I frowned at her. “You claim to want to teach me, but also that I should simply pull this knowledge from the air, manifesting it as if by magic.”

“Exactly,” she said, giving me a single, sharp nod. “But I can sense your frustration, and I recognize that you are not a djinn, even if you share a drop of our essence. And so I will attempt to explain this in a different way.”

She paused, her searching eyes peering deep into my own. “I mentioned your tendencies earlier. You fail to form a true aether weapon because you treat the aether just as you would mana. You feel a constant, ever-burning need to be in control, Arthur Leywin. Of your body, your magic, your life. With mana, this desire coupled with the depth of your confidence allowed you to progress at a remarkable speed. But with aether, you succeed only at building a barrier between yourself and your desire.”

Resisting the urge to argue about my apparent need for control, I said only, “Can you elaborate further? If I’m not supposed to control the aether, then what?”

“Do you understand how your heart works, or your lungs?” she asked immediately, pressing a hand to her chest.

“Yes,” I said slowly, unsure where she was going with this.

“Do you control your lungs?” she asked. “Do you force each breath, absorbing just the right amount of oxygen in your body? Without your focus, do you stop breathing?”

“No, of course not. But I can control my breath—”

She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Yes, you can. But if you focus on every single breath you take over a day, a week, a year, would it somehow make you better at breathing?”

I frowned at this and began tapping my fingers against my ankle. “No, although practicing the control over one’s breathing does help to—”

She reached out and slapped the side of my head. “Don’t be smart. Be focused.”

“Fine,” I said, rubbing my temple. “So if I can’t control it, what do I do?”

She smiled as she stood, motioning for me to do the same. “Aether is not mana in the same way water is not a stallion. One may be controlled, the other must be guided. Trusted. A bond formed. But aether is not a stallion, either. It should not be broken. Further, your aether is not my aether. While, through the very careful application of spellforms and decades of practice, I learned to slowly guide aether to assist me, absorbing and directing it, because of your core and your ability to easily absorb and refine aether within your own body, your relationship to aether is more akin to a parent and child.”