Chapter 72: Death Control

"So? What’re you doing here?"

Ethan watched as she stood in front of him and replied. "Training."

"Training?"

"Yeah. Just started a couple days ago. Turns out I need a body that doesn’t fold after five laps of running."

She laughed. "I wasn’t expecting that. Well, what are you up to? Squats, pushups? Or another five laps?"

Ethan shook his head. "I’m working on something."

Ava’s eyes widened in curiosity. "Oh? Interesting. What is it?"

Ethan raised his hand, and a jolt of Death Energy ran up his hands and danced along his fingertips. "Turns out my Death Energy isn’t only useful for corpses. I’m trying to learn how to use it..."

Ava looked at him for a moment, watching how the sparks of energy danced along his fingertips... "Hey, it looks me lot like my lightning..."

"It’s sloppy, but otherwise the same."

"I’m still trying to understand how it works..."

She hummed and crouched in front of him, her elbows on her knees, studying his knuckles as if the residual Death Energy might still be visible. "Show me what you were doing."

Ethan released Death Energy and it raced up his arm, dissipated, and the shock made him hiss.

"Wow," she said. "You suck at this..."

"Oh wow, I appreciate the words of encouragement..."

"But still, it’s more or less the same, if not completely alike." Ava tapped her temple with her finger. "Lightning sits in me the way your Death Energy sits in you." She raised her own hand and Ethan saw how smoothly the lightning flowed up her hand. "Think of it like a faucet. If you open it a little bit, a small amount of water comes out. If you open it wide, well, you know what happens."

Ethan looked at her. "So what am I doing wrong?"

"In your case, you’re opening and closing the faucet way too fast. When you do that, the faucet has a hard time figuring out how much water needs to pass through."

She hummed. "Rookie mistake though. You must be trying to conserve energy, I know that." She stood, offered a hand, and pulled him up when he took it. Her grip was warm, soft, and unnecessarily firm. "Come on. On your feet. I’ll show you how to properly channel it."

He adjusted.

Ava circled once, then stepped into his space and nudged his right shoulder with two fingers. "Less. You’re bracing for a backlash you already expect. Expectation is the same thing as invitation." Her voice dropped into instruction mode, low and serious. "Easy. You don’t push the whole flicker into your fist. You open the faucet slowly, and once your’re satisfied with the amount of energy that’s out, you close it."

He did it again...

**BZZT**

The energy dissipated again with a shock.

Ethan glanced at his system.

"It drained the pool."

"Of course it did. You kept opening the faucet and forgetting to close it." She smiled at him, her yellow eyes bright under the gym lights. "Also, has anyone told you your eyes do that focus thing when you’re annoyed? The green goes sharper. It’s distracting."

Ethan tilted his head away from her. "Is this a lesson, or you’re trying to hit on me?"

"I can do both." Ava grinned and stepped behind him before he could say anything else, close enough that he caught the smell of lavender from her hair.

She reached around and set her hands lightly over his wrists. "Move it up the forearm. You’re trying to dump it into the knuckles at once. Let it run the path. On my count, don’t punch. Just let it flow."

Her palms were steady, but the proximity was making it hard to focus...

"One."

Ethan pulled Death Energy the way she mentioned. Slowly opened his "faucet". The cold pressure rose, ran up his arms and tried to jump straight to his hands and fire

Ava’s fingers tightened around his wrists. "Flow. Not throw."

He forced the flow to climb his forearms instead of vaulting off of it and the dark energy settled along the skin in a thin green film.

"There," Ava murmured near his shoulder, pleased. "Hold on it for a few seconds. Don’t let it leak."

Ethan forced his breathing to settle. Ava spoke again.

"You’re staring..."

"Where else would I look if not my hands? I need to see if it’ll leak so I can adjust."

"You’re staring at your hands like they owe you money. You can’t find leak by looking. You have to feel it." She released his wrists and came around front again, her expression openly entertained. "Now hit the post. Coat it, then release on contact, cut the flow the instant the impact lands. If you keep feeding after the hit, you’re paying for an echo." a pause, "and trust me you do not want to know what that is..."

Ethan faced the training post. Breathed in, opened the faucet and struck.

The impact felt better than he thought. Deeper thud, less scatter and then the energy stuttered out mid follow through in a sharp jolt that ran up to his elbow. He hissed.

Ava winced in sympathy that still looked like fun. "You cut late. Again."

They worked on it...

She corrected his shoulder, his breath, the angle of his hips with the same way coach Merrick did during gym class, except Ava talked while she did it and kept slipping personal observations between technical ones like they weighed the same.

When he coated too heavy, she clicked her tongue. When he coated too thin, she stepped in and, without asking, took his hand and pressed his fingers into a tighter fist.

"There. You’re not trying to give a command. You’re holding a blade made of your own essence." Her thumb brushed against his knuckles. "Also, cold hands. Fits the Necromancer brand. Cute."

"Stop."

"Make me by doing it right."

On the fourth serious attempt he almost had the release timing. On the fifth the energy held through the swing and vanished clean at the end of the hit, and the post jumped with a crack that turned the head of one of the students that was there.

Ethan felt it. All of it. He flexed his fingers, and felt the energy dissipated cleanly this time...

Ava’s smile went wide.

"There it is." She clapped once, delighted. "Stable strike. It’s not pretty, but it’s as clean as it can get."

Ethan rolled his wrist, checking residual sting. Death Control still felt like borrowing a limb that wasn’t designed for him — but it had obeyed this time. In a dungeon with no undead screen, that one strike might be the only thing keeping him from becoming a pool of blood and broken bones.

Ava rocked back on her heels and placed her hands on her hips. "Alright. I’ve decided. I’ll teach you how to use that properly."

He looked at her. "What?"

"You heard me. I want to take you under my wing. I get to be entertained, you get full control over your powers. It’s a win win..."

Ethan took a moment to consider. On one hand, he wasn’t too comfortable around her...

On the other hand, she did have better control of her abilities. And since death control and her lightning had the same mechanisms, having her stick around might actually prove to be helpful...

"So... what do you say?" She asked, then tilted her head with a mischiveous grin. "Unless your scared of a senior tutoring you..."

Ethan stayed silent for a long moment. Then he sighed.

"Fine..."