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  Epos (Maltia)

  16 November 2355

  Ethan’s 26th day on Tersain

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  As evening fell, I went to my cabin. Usually, after coming back from the mess, I linger a while with Jim or Archeos, chatting about this and that. But today, I have other plans.

  Once the door is closed, I face the confined space of the room as though it were an enemy. Then I reach the bunk and sit down.

  Let’s give it a try.

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I focus all my attention on the warmth of my body. Perhaps by reflex, perhaps by suggestion, but after a few seconds I feel hotter.

  Because of the tension, my palms start to grow damp.

  Heat: the transfer of thermal energy from one body to another. Thermal energy… energy…

  As I ponder these things, I force myself to think about raising my temperature. I know it cannot be controlled by will, so I have to resort to the trick of suggesting to myself that it can.

  That part isn’t too difficult.

  Lucky I’m an introvert, thinks the part of my mind busy deceiving the rest of my consciousness.

  I’m somewhat used to dealing mostly with myself and my own psyche, so self-suggestion comes fairly easily, even if only in an incomplete form. It’s like leaving just a small piece of me anchored to reality while the rest sinks into an illusion. Something hard to explain in words.

  I begin to breathe less deeply, trying to avoid losing heat through my breath. My mind drifts back to when, in a moment of despair, I somehow built up a great heat—so much that I even released it from my hands in the form of flames.

  My cheeks start to burn. I feel hot, and soon I’ll begin to sweat. Yet, no matter how hard I try, I can do nothing more than merely raise my temperature.

  Assuming that isn’t just suggestion too, which is far from impossible.

  I could use a thermometer.

  I keep concentrating, trying to meditate on all those concepts that seem to stimulate my abilities. So, after heat, I think of fire.

  Flames—highly heated gas, which therefore emits light.

  I imagine gathering fire in my hands, releasing it through my pores. However, nothing happens.

  What else was there? What came to my mind when I controlled the fire of the velivus? The lightning that struck me before my arrival on Tersain, and the electric discharge from the ilectron gun.

  I recall the electricity that ran through my body on those occasions. Of the lightning I remember very little, unlike the ilectron gun. I remember my muscles contracting uncontrollably. What did I feel then?

  Electricity…

  The sound of someone knocking distracts me. I open my eyes and look towards the door.

  “It’s Dawn.”

  “It’s open,” I say.

  The door swings wide, and the rebel peeks into the cabin. We hadn’t agreed to meet. In fact, we haven’t seen each other since yesterday.

  “What is it?” I ask her.

  I realise I’m being a little defensive. Perhaps it’s a trace of embarrassment from my speech outside the captain’s room… even though my outburst was mostly aimed at Antony and Samuel.

  “I wanted to see how you were,” she replies. “We didn’t have training today.”

  “No,” I confirm.

  “May I?” the rebel asks, half-closing the door.

  “Go ahead.”

  She comes closer. She’s surely noticed I’m not behaving like usual, yet she still seems to be trying to act normal.

  “You’re rather flushed,” she observes. “Looks almost like you’ve been training on your own.”

  “I haven’t done any physical exercise,” I deny.

  “You haven’t got a fever, have you?”

  Dawn quickly reaches out her right hand to touch my forehead. I let her… and from the point where she touches me, I feel a spark run through. The rebel jerks her hand back at once.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Ow!” she exclaims. “You gave me a shock!”

  Yeah… that was it exactly. Something that happens fairly often in everyday life. But the timing of it now…

  “Mmh…” I mutter, rubbing my forehead where I felt the tingle. “Did it work?”

  “What?”

  “I was trying out some experiments with mayea,” I explain. “I know you don’t think that’s what it is, but I have to call it something.”

  “I’ll cope,” says Dawn. “And?”

  Distracted by the thought that my tests might not have been in vain, I start to loosen my tongue again.

  “I didn’t do anything spectacular,” I state. “I’ll have to try again to move a flame. It seems that what this ability acts upon are things I can ‘visualise’ as energy. The heat of fire—maybe even the ilectron…”

  “Ah, so that’s why I got shocked?”

  “Earlier I was trying to mentally summon the ilectron.”

  “Mmh… I did suspect that the lightning you shot from your fingers might have been mayea.”

  Dawn sits down beside me.

  “So, you’re saying you can use this… mayea if you think about energy?” she asks.

  “Not about energy itself, but about the energetic nature of things—like how heat is energy, on a fundamental level,” I clarify, though I realise it’s not easy to put such mental processes into words. “Or at least, in the moments when I’ve manifested my abilities, those concepts were often in my mind. Only it was a deep, almost unconscious perception, of which just a few fragments surfaced into my awareness. I tried recalling those sensations and thoughts. I think I got some kind of result, but it’s still minimal.”

  “You know,” says Dawn, “With spontaneous mayea you shouldn’t overthink things.”

  “Spontaneous?”

  “Almost anyone can learn to use mayea through study,” the girl explains. “However, there’s a smaller part of the population with a special talent for it. They grasp it naturally, without study, and achieve better results than others. They’re usually called absolute mages.”

  “Are you one of those people?”

  “Me? Not at all!” Dawn laughs. “According to my mother, I’m part of the portion of the population that can get good results through study and training, but I’m not an absolute mage.”

  I wonder, then, what those mages are like. For now, Dawn is the only person I’ve actually seen use mayea.

  “Anyway, what I was saying before is that spontaneous mayea is more a matter of simple perceptions,” the rebel continues. “It’s something instinctive, like moving an arm—only it develops mostly within the mental space.”

  “Right, conceptually that’s clear… but I find it a bit vague to put into practice,” I admit.

  “It’s not difficult. Think of concepts in an immediate way, without too much mental processing,” Dawn suggests. “If we assume that yours is spontaneous mayea, and the energetic nature of fire is your vision of its symbol…”

  Feeling my head overflow, I raise a hand to stop her.

  “All right,” I say. “I’ll try again, but don’t bombard me with concepts right now. I can’t keep all these theories straight in my head.”

  I know that before the last mission I wanted to discuss mayea with the rebel, and now the topic has come up on its own. But compared to before the events at Fairworth, the situation has changed a bit; I’m no longer at a standstill, and I already have plenty on my plate to think about. If I drown in too much information, I risk not being able to study it properly—

  especially the more abstract stuff, which requires particularly long and deep reflection.

  “As you wish,” Dawn agrees. “Just remember—try thinking with your stomach.”

  “With my stomach, huh?”

  The door is still slightly ajar. At one point, a female voice comes from beyond it:

  “Ethan?”

  The door opens a little wider. Behind it stands Nipria.

  “Oh!” exclaims the artificer, seeing us. “Erm… sorry, Ethan. I wanted to say hi, but… um… maybe later.”

  And she vanishes almost immediately. She didn’t even give me time to say hello!

  Stunned by how fast it all happened, I stare at the gap still left open. Then I turn my gaze to Dawn. She’s watching me, her head tilted slightly to one side.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  The girl reaches out a hand and runs it through my thick hair.

  “Hey!” I protest. “What are you doing?”

  “You’ve got a few hairs sticking up,” she says. “I imagine it’s because of your little games with the ilectron.”

  “Oh, really?” I reply. “Didn’t notice.”

  “Anyway,” says Dawn, standing up, “let me know if you make any progress. This business has got me curious.”

  “All right,” I nod.

  “And… thanks,” adds the rebel. “For what you said when Antony and Samuel were with us, I mean.”

  I sigh.

  “There’s no need to thank me,” I say. “To use your expression—it was by following my stomach that I said all that.”

  Well, more or less. The words came out in the heat of the moment… but the ideas behind them had already been clear in my mind for some time.

  “Fine by me,” says the rebel.

  She says goodbye, then leaves the room. After the door closes, I keep staring at the handle with a vacant look.

  Think with your stomach, huh? Basically, it means relying on “physical” sensations. Might be worth a try… especially since, so far, it seems that in using mayea I’ve been following a strange mix of bodily perceptions and mental intuitions. The emotional factor seems to help, too. I wonder if it’s all connected…

  I look at my right hand.

  Fire is energy.

  – – – – – – – – – –

  Amathia (Maltia)

  Same day

  – – – – – – – – – –

  In his cell, Cyrus Sanders has made sure never to lose track of time. Twenty-four days have passed since his arrest. Yet still, no one has tried to extract any information from him.

  That is until one evening, when, without warning, a burly man appears before him.

  “I’m here to interrogate you,” the man says.

  Cyrus knows him. It’s Ewan Pandromio, a general admiral notorious for acts of war considered brutal even by republican standards. Usually, the Republic is harsh with rebels—except when there’s a chance to capture someone worth questioning. Pandromio in particular, however, tends not to care much about the integrity of prisoners, or the safety of civilians.

  They’ve assigned me a despicable man.

  “Let’s begin,” says the general admiral, stepping closer to Cyrus.

  The prisoner glances towards the cell door. Two armed soldiers stand guard in the doorway.

  “You’re not foolish enough to think you can escape,” Pandromio remarks. “Now then… tell me about the artefacts of the Star Prophets.”

  “Artefacts? What are you talking about?” says Cyrus.

  “Don’t lie,” replies the Republican. “It’s pointless with me—I’ll know.”

  Then he raises a fist and strikes the prisoner in the pit of the stomach. Cyrus manages to shield himself partly with his arms, but the man is so strong that the blow still lands with full force, knocking the air from his lungs.

  As his victim falls to his knees, Pandromio comments:

  “I sense a certain suicidal impulse.”

  What?

  The rebel stares at the man. It can’t be a coincidence—Cyrus had just been thinking about using his ultimate system to protect himself from brutal interrogations.

  “How would you do it?” asks Pandromio. “A weapon? A mayea? Oh! A mayea!”

  He grabs the prisoner by the collar and hauls him up.

  “So we’ll have to have you examined more thoroughly, to see if you’re carrying one,” he says.

  Damn it!

  Cyrus lifts a hand, about to slam it against his chest, over his heart. But just before he can, his arm is seized by Pandromio.

  “A mayea for suicide, placed near the heart, eh?” the Republican says. “I see… clever, yes—but rather dangerous. We’ll have it removed.”

  Then Cyrus feels a blow strike him at the neck. As he loses consciousness…

  After all the effort I spent convincing Sally to implant that mayea… he thinks. And now, I can’t even use it.

  A moment later, darkness engulfs him.

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