My turn to flash a grin, though it fades quickly. “We’re going to lean into what is natural for you, so it should come easily. But to be frank, with the Order now aware of your existence, we need to get you up to speed fast.”
“Comfort isn’t exactly a combat power,” Teren points out dryly.
“Any emotion can be a combat power,” I counter. “And by the same token, any sage power can alsonotbe a combat power. It’s a matter of our imagination. The first magic I worked against the priests today was using my Wrath to overcome an aura of Compassion, which broke their unity. How do you think Comfort could have dealt with the same thing?”
Teren thinks about that. “Comfort isn’t as opposed to Compassion,” he says slowly. “But maybe... could I make the priests too comfortable to act?”
I smile, maybe with too many teeth. “Very good. Now, there are fundamentally two ways we can go about that. First, we can use ourownemotion to induce it in others. If you were facing me in battle, that’s probably what you’d have to do. But against Compassion,becauseyour domains are more adjacent to each other, you have a different option: magnification. Do you know what that means?”
“I can connect to their feelings of Comfort and draw them to the fore?”
“Exactly. And you won’t have to work against Compassion to make that happen. All the priests will be nice and happy and absolutely too comfortable to act against you.”
Teren says thoughtfully, “Not bad as a defense, but not exactly an offense, though.”
“Sure, unless you can make a whole army hold still while your own people go and slaughter them.”
He blinks.
“You seem to be under the impression that Comfort is a weak sage power,” I say. “That’s only true if you believe it. Your imagination is the limit.”
“Yours too,” Teren murmurs, and I suck in a breath.
Yes.
I need to be able to imagine what else I can do with Wrath besides killing if I’m to win in truth.
“Lucky for both of us,” I say, “Zan and the guardians and the sages before us have kept a wealth of knowledge. I started skimming through and I think I already have a kata that will work for you, and I’ll help you modify it to what works best for you, to give your feelings form.”
Teren looks at me curiously. “Is this the way sage training usually went? Learning specific cases, and then applying them more broadly?”
I shake my head. “Oh, no, it was endless theory for ages before the priests would let you actuallytryanything. They thought once we had all the frameworks first that we would then be able to implement whatever we wanted from first principles. But in actuality, all sages improved with age, and I don’t think that’s simply a matter of more time to create more katas. With the amount of emotion we hold, in my opinion moving is imperative for us, and doing is how we learn best.
“So for you, we’re going to start with some specific things that we can make work easily in actual practice, and let you start building connections from there.”
Teren nods like this makes sense, which is encouraging, considering I hadn’t actually given this thought and was operating on my gut feelings.
But Zan did point out that I can trust those.
“So starting with practice and working back to theory,” Teren says. “That does seem like it will get me started faster.”
I nod and smile slightly. “You can’t be wise about the world without moving in it,” I say, as much for my benefit as his.
And then we get to work.
Whenwe’redone,I’mfeeling more confident and assured about our chances.
Teren’s sage power packs some serious oomph.
Nomi, too, despite her own extremely meager sense of magic, has picked up the knack for feeling when it’s acting on her. Her perceptiveness is equally powerful.
Before they take their leave, though, I ask her to show me what she did with the ice cream.
As we make our way to the ice house, she talks me through how she transferred it into a large bowl.
I look at the bowl of ice cream I barely got to try.
I have time now.
