Chapter 135: THE SLOW WAY

Aiden hadn’t slept much.

Nyx had.

By morning she was back to normal, stretched across his shadow while the fen woke around them. Frogs worked somewhere beyond the reeds. Gnats hung over the water in loose clouds, and something small splashed whenever Cinder moved too close to the bank.

Nyx behaved as if she hadn’t spoken to him for the first time in her life a few hours earlier.

Aiden decided not to punish her for that by staring.

Another question for the pile I can’t answer yet.

There was other work waiting.

The wet ground sucked at his boots when he walked beyond the camp. Mist had soaked the shoulders of his coat before he found the dead tree, a half-rotted thing leaning over one of the shallower channels.

It would do.

The hound, along with Cinder’s biting but correct remarks, had shown him the problem.

Aiden had Shadow Step, Acid Weave, and Solar Plexus. On paper that sounded impressive.

In an actual fight, he’d blinked badly, put acid through a reed, and ended up in the mud while his beasts finished the job.

Three weapons I don’t know how to use together. That’s why I won’t argue with Cinder’s "you don’t know how to fight."

I’ll argue after I learn how to.

He scratched a mark into the trunk and stepped back.

Start with two. Shadow Step into range. Acid Weave before I stop moving.

The first jump put him too far from the trunk. The corrosive thread fell short of the mark.

The second brought him close enough, but Acid Weave came only after he’d already stopped moving. By the time the thread touched the bark, the attack still felt like two separate decisions.

The third thread missed the mark he’d scratched into the bark and ate a line through wet moss instead.

Nyx watched from beneath a root.

"You’re enjoying watching me fail."

Her pale eyes narrowed with what Aiden chose to interpret as innocence.

"Sorry. I don’t trust you."

He tried again.

By midday, his boots were black with mud and the inside of his coat smelled like damp wool. Mosquitoes had discovered that Inferno Resistance did nothing whatsoever about mosquitoes.

Cinder found that hilarious.

Aiden found a use for Solar Plexus.

The mosquitoes reconsidered him from food source to very bad idea and scattered.

"Get lost."

Cinder snorted.

Aiden looked from Cinder to Nyx beneath the root, then to Miasma on the dead trunk.

Three beasts. Three traits from them. And I’m the one trying to make all of it work together.

The Academy called this kind of thing Synergy.

He had read enough discarded manuals to know the theory. The Department of Synergy taught formations, complementary abilities, positioning and how one beast covered another’s weakness.

It was the Academy’s prestigious department because good tamers weren’t supposed to win by owning the largest monster in the room.

They won by making several beasts behave like one weapon. He’d already done something close to it with Miasma and Nyx in Sewer Row.

Every diagram had one assumption.

The tamer stood outside the formation.

I’m trying to be the formation itself all on my own. I almost miss how simple lighting lamps had become.

He went back to the tree.

Shadow Step.

Acid Weave started before his boots settled this time. The thread still missed the mark and cut into the bark beside it.

Ugly. But that felt like one attack instead of two.

Miasma climbed onto the trunk and inspected the damage. She stopped at the line where he’d missed.

"I know."

She kept looking.

"I know."

Aiden pointed toward Nyx.

"She hasn’t done anything all morning. Judge her."

Nyx disappeared beneath the tree.

Miasma continued judging him.

Aiden tried again.

He kept at it until his shoulders started complaining. Then he gave his arms a rest and made the others work.

Miasma drove her spines into the rotten trunk from different angles. Nyx moved through the shadows beneath the roots and along the bank. Cinder burned the marks Aiden pointed out, clearly pleased to demonstrate what competent aim looked like.

After several rounds, Aiden noticed the difference.

Miasma hadn’t slowed.

Nyx looked like she could keep going until she got bored.

Cinder could keep going too, but the fire along her shoulders took longer to rise back after every burst.

That’s new.

Aiden brought up Perception.

Silver motes filled the mist. Blue gathered around the water. Brown sat heavier through the wet ground and peat.

Something different clustered beneath the roots and along the darkest cuts. The motes gathered wherever the light struggled to reach.

Void Fragments.

He came up with the name naturally: give the motes the name of the affinity they were tied to.

Farther east, green particles gathered above stagnant water, rotting plants, and patches of fungus.

Vesperian Spores.

Miasma was already looking that way.

Around Cinder, there were plenty of blue, brown, and silver motes.

Aiden turned slowly, searching the dry ground, the old firepit, even the stones she’d blackened since their arrival.

A few Ember Motes drifted near the hottest patches.

That was all.

Aiden looked at Cinder’s fire again.

There it is.

Cinder’s ears turned toward him.

"You’re recovering slower because there’s barely any fire here."

Cinder looked around at the marsh and growled.

"Yeah. Terrible place for you." Aiden let Perception fade.

Sitting in the fen wasn’t hurting her. Training hard here was another matter. Nyx and Miasma had the opposite problem. The marsh was full of what their bodies wanted.

So I don’t train all three of them the same way. Obvious after I see it.

Aiden faced the dead tree again. His own problem hadn’t gone anywhere. He scratched a fresh mark into the bark and stepped back.

Shadow Step.

Acid Weave.

The first attempt went wide.

The next landed after he’d already stopped.

Then, once, the thread left his fingers before his boots had fully settled and cut straight through the mark.

Aiden stared at it.

Once. I’ll take once.

Nyx appeared beside the tree and stole a strip of dried meat from his pocket.

"Why do you steal the reward if I did the work?"

She vanished with it.

Aiden sighed and set another mark.

That was the first day Aiden trained himself like one of his beasts.