Chapter 36: 36 - Percentages
The next day came round, and Adrien found that a fair amount of what had been sitting badly in his head had started making sense now that somebody had given him a little context to hang it on.
He spent the morning on a clear stretch of ground out in the forest, on his own, working.
[Ice Wall | 2 Stars | Novice 14%]
[Winter’s Reach | 4 Stars | Novice 25%]
Both of them had come up a long way for the time he had been using them, and he had no intention of slowing down. Getting the numbers up early was worth more than almost anything else he could be doing, because he had already seen where it led.
Frost Lance had gone all the way, and now he could bend the thing into whatever he needed. A lance. A wedge. A blade held in his own hand. Thirty of them hanging in a tree over somebody’s head. That had not come from being clever about it. That had come from throwing the spell a thousand times at a dragon.
’So the goal is the same with these two. And with Zap eventually.’
’Although if I’m honest, spreading myself across two affinities right now would be stupid. Frost will go first. Everything else after.’
Amelia turned up not long after that. She came out of the trees on the far side and walked straight over, and she had clearly known where to find him, which meant she had come looking.
"Do you need something?"
Her expression changed the second the words left his mouth, and Adrien had no idea why. He also had no idea that she had spent most of the previous evening turning over a conversation she had not been allowed to hear, and that walking twenty minutes into a forest to be greeted with do you need something had not improved any of it.
"Yes," she said, and there was an edge on it. "My grandfather wants to hold a feast for what you did. So you have to come. It’s tomorrow."
"Right. Fine, I’ll be there."
"Good."
That came out flat enough to leave a mark. Adrien watched her stand there a second longer, and had a fairly clear sense that something was wrong and no idea at all what it was.
’That isn’t how she’s talked to me once since I met her. And I don’t know her well enough to ask.’
He decided to leave it alone and see whether she brought it up herself, and went back to work.
[Winter’s Reach]
The cold came out of him and into the ground, and he held it, and this time he made himself pay attention to the parts of it he usually let run on their own. Where the mana went first. How the edges wanted to fray. What it cost to push the boundary out another five paces instead of letting it sit where it landed.
He held it a long time, and when he let it go the number moved.
[Winter’s Reach | 4 Stars | Novice 26%]
’One percent. Fantastic.’
Amelia had not left. She had put herself on a fallen trunk at the edge of the clearing with her arms folded and had gone very quiet.
[Ice Wall]
Adrien put one up eight paces out, and after that made himself try the difficult version. Rather than one slab, he tried to run it wider, low and long across the whole width of the open ground, and the middle came out thin and the far end never formed at all.
He dropped it and did it again, and again after that, and the fourth attempt held across two thirds of the distance before it came apart.
[Ice Wall | 2 Stars | Novice 15%]
’Better. Not a wall yet, more of an unhelpful fence.’
He turned around and threw four [Frost Lances] over the top of it at the far treeline, one after another, and all four went into the dirt about ten paces short.
Amelia’s arms came unfolded. She had known he was strong. She had watched him take a camp apart and she had watched him hold a domain for longer than anyone should be able to, and she had assumed, the way most people would, that it came out of some enormous natural talent and not much else.
What she was looking at now was a man doing the same thing wrong four times in a row and writing down what went wrong each time.
And she saw his arm.
"Are you hurt?"
Adrien glanced down at his forearm, where the sleeve had a dark line through it. "This? It’s nothing. Small cut, I’ve had worse this month."
"Let me see."
She came over and took hold of his arm below the elbow, and Adrien said "ow" before he had decided to.
"There." Amelia turned it over. "You’re not fine. I can fix it, so let me fix it."
"Alright. Please, then."
She put two fingers over the cut and the white-gold light came up out of her hand and went into it, and Adrien watched the whole thing.
Nothing opened. No window, no pressure, no structure coming apart in front of him. He had known that already from the night at the camp and he had wanted to check it properly with his full attention on it, and the answer was the same answer.
’Shame. That’s genuinely a shame.’
Amelia’s eyes came up and found him staring at her hands.
"What?"
"Sorry." He blinked. "I was concentrating."
"Well, it’s done." She let go of his arm and stepped back. "Good as new. If you need me for anything else, say so." A pause. "You looked very interested in that."
"I was. I wondered whether I could learn it." Adrien flexed his fingers. "Apparently not."
"You’re a mage. I’m a Healer." Amelia said it as though explaining the weather to somebody from a warmer country. "That’s a Path, not an affinity. You can’t learn it by wanting to, and you certainly can’t learn it by watching me do it." She tipped her head. "And how were you planning to learn it anyway? Affinities come with talent. Most people get one, some get two, and anybody with three is unusual enough that people talk about them."
Adrien had a sentence ready and did not use it.
’And there’s the problem.’
’Absolute Magus doesn’t have a limit written on it anywhere. Nobody in this kingdom has a Unique Path, nobody’s heard of one, and I still don’t know what happens to a person once that gets out.’
"You’re right," he said. "Bad idea."
He picked the staff up off the grass.
"I’m going into the forest. I want to try some of this on something that moves."
"Fine. I’m coming."
Adrien stopped walking. He had been planning to go alone, although now that he thought about it, he had never actually said so out loud.
"Are you sure?"
Amelia was already walking. "Have you got something to say?"
"Nothing at all." He went after her. "Let’s go."
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