Chapter 4 — Knowing Isn't Doing
By the following morning, I had developed a plan.
It was an excellent plan.
Possibly revolutionary.
Father hated it immediately.
"No."
I stood in the eastern training hall holding three wooden balls and a length of chalk.
"You haven't even heard it."
"I saw your face."
"What does my face have to do with anything?"
"You make that expression before damaging property."
Behind him, Bella nodded.
"He does."
I pointed at her. "You don't get a vote."
"I'm observing."
"You're eating."
She looked down at the pastry in her hand.
"I can do both."
Mother had declined to attend today's training, claiming she had actual work to do. Bella, apparently, did not share that burden.
Father looked at the chalk markings I'd drawn across the floor.
Three circles.
One near the western wall.
One beneath a support beam.
One beside a thick padded column.
"Explain."
Finally.
I dropped the wooden balls into their respective circles.
"Yesterday we established that I can Anchor myself to a moving object."
"We established that you can Anchor yourself to one particular moving object under one particular set of conditions."
"Exactly."
Father's expression remained unchanged.
I decided to ignore the distinction.
"If I establish one Anchor here, fall toward it, then switch to another before I arrive, I should retain the momentum from the first fall."
"Should."
"Then I switch again."
"Should."
"And again."
"Astri."
"Eventually, I could move through the air without needing a surface."
Bella stopped eating.
Father looked at the ceiling.
I smiled.
"You see it."
"I see several ways for you to break your neck."
"That's because you're focusing on the negatives."
"Gravity tends to make those important."
I crouched beside the first ball.
The theory was simple.
At least, it had been simple while lying awake thinking about it.
Gravity accelerated me toward an Anchor. Changing Anchors changed the direction of that acceleration, but it didn't erase the velocity I had already gained.
Therefore, with enough control, I should be able to create a path through open space by constantly redirecting my fall.
Not flight.
Falling with ambition.
I liked it.
Father walked past me and picked up one of the wooden balls.
"How quickly can you change Anchors?"
"I don't know."
"How much Mana does each change consume?"
"I don't know."
"How precisely can you choose a new Anchor while moving?"
"...I don't know."
"What happens if you fail to establish the next one?"
I looked toward the padded wall.
"Presumably I learn something."
Bella covered a laugh with a cough.
Father handed me the ball.
"You've answered none of the questions required to use this safely."
"That's why we're testing."
He stared at me for several seconds.
Then walked toward a storage cabinet.
That was not the response I expected.
"What are you doing?"
"Preparing."
"For?"
He opened the cabinet.
Inside were leather straps, padded guards, helmets, and several rolls of thick rope.
My confidence weakened.
"Father."
He pulled out a harness.
"No."
"You wanted to test."
"Not dressed like cargo."
"You fell into a hedge yesterday."
"Once."
"You also fell into a wall."
"That was during Awakening."
"And broke a lamp."
I turned toward Bella.
Her mouth was full.
Traitor.
Twenty minutes later, I was wearing enough padding to survive being launched from a carriage.
A rope connected the harness around my torso to a ceiling track. It was loose enough that I could move freely but short enough to catch me before I reached the floor or walls at dangerous speed.
I hated how reasonable it was.
Father stepped outside the marked area.
"Begin."
I touched the first ball.
Anchor.
The familiar connection formed.
I handed the ball to Father.
He carried it several meters away and set it on a low pedestal.
My body immediately registered its location.
Not visually.
Something deeper.
A direction.
If I activated the Anchor, that was where I would fall.
I took a breath.
"Ready."
Bella raised her pastry.
"Try not to die."
"Your support means everything."
I activated.
The floor vanished from importance.
I dropped toward the ball.
My boots left the ground.
The first instant still felt wrong. My stomach expected downward movement while every other sense insisted I was traveling horizontally.
I ignored it.
Second ball.
I reached mentally for the Anchor I'd established there earlier.
Nothing.
The western wall approached.
Fast.
"Second," I muttered.
Still nothing.
I hit the rope limit.
The harness jerked me to a stop so abruptly that all the air left my lungs.
I swung several feet above the floor.
Bella burst out laughing.
I slowly rotated on the rope.
"This equipment is humiliating."
Father made a note on the board beside him.
"You failed."
"I noticed."
"Why?"
I waited until the room stopped spinning.
"I couldn't establish the second Anchor."
"You already touched it."
"Apparently that wasn't enough."
He lowered me.
The moment my boots touched the ground, I pulled the harness away from my ribs.
"Again."
Father didn't move.
"Why?"
I sighed.
Because this was apparently my life.
"The first Anchor was still active."
"And?"
"I tried switching directly."
"And?"
I thought back.
I'd felt the second ball when I touched it earlier, but there hadn't been any connection after I activated the first.
Maybe establishing an Anchor wasn't permanent.
Maybe—
"I can't store them."
Father nodded.
"Test it."
We did.
I touched Ball One.
Moved away.
Activated it.
Worked.
Released.
Touched Ball Two.
Moved away.
Activated it.
Worked.
Then I touched Ball One, touched Ball Two, and tried activating Ball One without touching it again.
Nothing.
Only the most recently established reference remained available.
I stared at the balls.
"That's annoying."
"It's a limitation."
"Same thing."
"No."
I looked toward him.
Father tapped the chalkboard.
"Limitations are information."
That sounded exactly like something he would say.
Bella swallowed the last of her pastry.
"So your brilliant flying technique lasted twelve minutes."
"It isn't dead."
"You can't switch Anchors."
"Currently."
Father glanced at me.
I pretended not to notice.
Bella did.
"You're going to say 'currently' every time something doesn't work now, aren't you?"
"Currently."
She groaned.
Worth it.
We changed the test.
If I couldn't prepare multiple Anchors in advance, then I needed to establish the next one while moving.
That was significantly harder.
Father stood ten meters away holding the wooden ball.
My goal was to Anchor to the western wall, begin falling toward it, then touch the ball as Father passed it into my path and redirect toward him.
Simple.
I failed eleven times.
The first three failures were timing.
On the fourth, I touched the ball but failed to establish it as an Anchor before passing.
On the fifth, I established it and forgot to release the wall.
For one extremely unpleasant moment, my Core seemed to disagree with itself.
Pain stabbed through my chest.
Both connections collapsed.
The safety line caught me.
Father stopped the test immediately.
"What did you feel?"
I pressed a hand against my sternum.
"Like someone pulled my Core in half."
Bella's amusement disappeared.
Father stepped closer.
"Anything now?"
"No."
"Circulate Mana."
I did.
The Core responded normally.
He placed two fingers against my chest and sent a thread of his own Mana through.
I hated the sensation. It was like someone opening a drawer inside my body without asking.
After several seconds he withdrew.
"No damage."
"Good."
"We stop."
I frowned.
"I'm fine."
"No."
"I know what happened."
"Which means?"
"I tried holding two Anchors."
"Exactly."
"So now I know not to."
"After experiencing direct Core strain."
"It wasn't that bad."
Father's expression hardened.
That was the end of the argument.
Usually.
I looked at the chalkboard.
Eleven failed attempts.
One useful result.
Two Anchors at once caused immediate strain.
Not ideal.
But—
"What if I release the first before establishing the second?"
Father's eyes narrowed.
"We're done."
"I'm not asking to test it now."
"You are thinking about testing it now."
"That's different."
"It isn't."
Bella walked over.
"You can do it tomorrow."
I looked at her.
"You were laughing at me ten minutes ago."
"I contain multitudes."
I hated when she read.
Father began removing the training equipment.
That should have been the end of the morning.
Instead, a thought bothered me.
Something about the failures.
I sat on the floor.
"Father."
He kept coiling the rope.
"Hm?"
"How did you learn your first technique?"
That made him stop.
Bella looked over too.
Father considered the question.
"Poorly."
I blinked.
"That's not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Something profound."
"I was twelve."
"You Awakened at twelve?"
"Sixteen."
I frowned.
"Then how were you learning a technique at twelve?"
"I wasn't."
He placed the rope back inside the cabinet.
"I spent four years believing I already understood what I would do once I Awakened."
That sounded familiar.
"What Expression did you get?"
"Compression."
I'd seen it before.
Father could increase gravitational pressure within localized areas. At lower output, it could pin someone to the ground. At higher levels—
I had once watched him compress a boulder until it cracked.
"I thought Compression would make me exceptional," he continued. "My grandfather had the same Expression. So did his mother."
"And?"
"I couldn't control it."
That surprised me more than the early Awakening misunderstanding.
"You?"
Father looked offended.
"Yes, me."
Bella sat beside me.
"What happened?"
"The first time I tried applying it in combat, I compressed everything except the person I was aiming at."
I tried imagining sixteen-year-old Father missing completely.
It was difficult.
"What did you hit?"
"The floor."
"That's not so bad."
"It collapsed."
Bella started laughing.
I joined her.
Father waited.
"How far?"
I asked.
"One level."
That made it worse.
I leaned back on my hands.
"You dropped yourself through the floor?"
"Along with my instructor."
Bella was nearly crying.
Father crossed his arms.
"I don't see what's funny."
That statement ended any chance of recovery.
Eventually, when we could breathe again, Father continued.
"The point is that understanding what an ability does is not the same as being capable of using it."
I looked at the chalkboard.
"Knowledge and execution."
"Partly."
He picked up the wooden ball.
"Tell me how to throw this."
I frowned.
"You throw it."
"Explain."
"Move your arm forward and release."
"When?"
"When it's pointing where you want."
"What angle?"
"I don't know."
"How much force?"
"Depends."
"How does your wrist move?"
I stared at him.
Father tossed the ball.
It struck me directly in the chest.
I caught it on the rebound.
"Rude."
"You know how to throw."
"Yes."
"But you cannot describe every calculation involved."
I understood.
"You don't calculate it anymore."
"No."
"Instinct."
"Eventually."
He took the ball back.
"Knowledge begins consciously. Practice compresses that knowledge until your body can perform without waiting for your mind."
I thought about yesterday.
Every time I activated Anchor, I still had to consciously decide what should count as down.
That took perhaps a second.
Sometimes less.
During testing, that was fine.
In a fight?
A second was enormous.
"So that's Attainment."
Father's attention sharpened.
The word wasn't new. I'd encountered it in books, usually beside discussions of senior Awakened and elemental research.
But until now it had been one of those concepts adults mentioned as though everyone understood it.
"Part of it," he said.
"What's the rest?"
"Later."
I frowned.
"Why later?"
"Because if I explain ten stages of a mountain while you're still learning how to stand on the first slope, you'll spend more time looking upward than watching your feet."
That was annoyingly reasonable.
"So what matters now?"
"Understanding your own Mana."
He pointed at the ball.
"Making Anchor reliable."
Then at me.
"Making your body reliable."
"I've trained my body my entire life."
"Not for this."
Right.
There was a difference between being physically conditioned and having your personal sense of down change six times in thirty seconds.
My stomach already hated three.
Father returned the ball to me.
"You have a useful Expression."
That caught me slightly off guard.
He wasn't generous with statements like that.
"Useful?"
"Potentially very."
I smiled.
"Careful. That almost sounded like praise."
"It isn't."
There it was.
"But at the moment, you are more likely to defeat yourself than an opponent."
I looked at the harness.
Then the padded wall.
Then at Bella, who had resumed eating.
"That feels exaggerated."
Father pointed toward the wall.
"Five Anchor changes."
I stood.
"What?"
"No movement technique. No tricks. Floor to wall to ceiling to wall to floor."
Easy.
I'd done those individually all yesterday.
I touched the floor.
Anchor.
Nothing changed.
The floor was already down.
I touched the left wall.
Shifted.
My body fell sideways.
I landed properly.
Good.
Ceiling.
I touched the wall first, then jumped high enough to slap one of the low overhead beams.
Shift.
My stomach flipped as I fell upward.
I landed against the padded ceiling on both feet.
Bella watched.
Father counted.
"Two."
Other wall.
I released, kicked from the ceiling, reached—
Missed.
Normal gravity returned.
I dropped.
The harness caught me halfway down.
"That wasn't a change."
"I know."
"Again."
I reset.
First wall.
Ceiling.
Second wall.
By the third shift, nausea rolled through me.
The fourth made the room blur.
I forced the fifth.
My Core responded.
My body didn't.
I landed on the floor, took one step, and immediately fell onto my hands.
Everything spun.
Bella stopped chewing again.
Father didn't.
He simply waited.
I stayed there until the floor agreed to remain underneath me.
Then I sat back.
"...Point made."
Father nodded.
No smugness.
That somehow made it worse.
Mana wasn't my only limitation.
My body had grown up with one gravitational direction.
My balance.
Inner ear.
Reflexes.
Eyes.
Everything expected down to stay where it belonged.
Anchor broke that assumption every time I used it.
I had spent the morning imagining myself moving through the air like some legendary Gravity master.
At the moment, five direction changes made me want to vomit.
That was humbling.
Also irritating.
Mostly irritating.
I looked up at Father.
"Can that be trained?"
"Yes."
"How?"
Father finally smiled.
I immediately regretted asking.
The next two hours were terrible.
Father called it orientation conditioning.
I called it revenge.
The exercise itself was simple.
Four padded platforms had been arranged around the training room—floor, wall, ceiling, opposite wall.
I changed Anchors.
Slowly.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Every time nausea started, Father stopped me long enough to recover, then made me continue.
There was no clever solution.
No hidden mechanism.
No question I could ask that would suddenly fix the problem.
My body simply needed repetition.
That bothered me more than I expected.
With the Hanging Road, I had found the wrong assumption.
During Awakening, I had found the wrong approach.
With Anchor, I'd discovered new possibilities through testing.
This?
There was nothing to solve.
I just had to do it until I got better.
By the end of the first hour, I understood something unpleasant.
Effort was far less satisfying when it didn't immediately make you look clever.
By the end of the second, I could complete six direction changes before needing to stop.
Yesterday, five had put me on the floor.
One more.
That was all.
No new ability.
No dramatic breakthrough.
No secret.
Just one more.
I found myself smiling anyway.
Father noticed.
"Why?"
"I improved."
"Marginally."
"Still improved."
He nodded.
That tiny acknowledgment felt surprisingly good.
Bella had left sometime during the second hour, apparently deciding watching me repeatedly fall in different directions had reached its entertainment limit.
Father checked the wall clock.
"Enough."
I released my final Anchor and sat on the padded floor.
My shirt clung to my back.
"Tomorrow?"
"No."
I looked up.
"What?"
"You leave tomorrow."
The words took a second to register.
"Tomorrow?"
"You knew the date."
"I know the date. I just thought—"
I stopped.
Temperance.
Between the Hanging Road, Awakening, and two days of testing, the academy had somehow become something happening later.
It wasn't.
My luggage was already packed.
The departure carriage would leave the estate at sunrise.
Father began collecting the training equipment.
"Your entrance assessment is in five days."
"Five?"
"The journey takes three."
I stood.
My legs felt strangely unreliable despite being on normal ground.
"What are they testing?"
"Everything they can."
"Useful."
"They'll measure your Core development, Mana control, theory, physical capability, Expression, and application."
I smiled.
"Application should be easy."
Father looked toward the harness.
I stopped smiling.
"Right."
He handed me the wooden ball.
"Temperance will be full of people who have spent their lives preparing just as you have."
I turned the ball in my hands.
"Nobles."
"Some."
"Prodigies."
"Some."
"People who've already been Awakened longer."
"Many."
That felt unfair.
"How much longer?"
"Some students Awaken at sixteen."
"Two years?"
"Yes."
"And we're being assessed together?"
"Yes."
I stared at him.
"You could have mentioned that."
"You never asked."
I hated that answer.
Father started toward the door.
"Wait."
He glanced back.
"How am I supposed to compete with someone who has two years of Mana training?"
His expression was completely serious.
"You aren't."
That wasn't what I wanted to hear.
"What?"
"Not yet."
He opened the door.
"Your first mistake would be assuming everyone standing beside you is already your rival."
I followed him into the corridor.
"Then what are they?"
"People ahead of you."
That was somehow worse.
Father kept walking.
"Learn why."
I slowed.
There it was again.
Not beat them.
Not prove I belonged.
Learn why.
I looked down at the wooden ball.
Two years.
Somebody my age could already have two years of practice turning conscious knowledge into instinct.
My six successful direction changes suddenly seemed much smaller.
Good.
I tightened my grip on the ball and followed Father.
For the first time since Awakening, I had something more intimidating than a wall to fall toward.
Temperance Academy.
And tomorrow, I was leaving home.
End of Chapter 4