With the sand zooming in and out of focus, Nar raised his hands, and gasped at her gentle, but firm touch as she held onto his pinkies.

"I dumped all of this info on you because once we start, you won't be thinking properly anymore, and I needed you lucid to get the basics," she said, looking up from his hands to stare into his eyes.

He too looked into hers in turn, his breath quick and shallow.

"This is your last chance, Nar. Walk away now, or tell me that you want me to do this to you."

Nar was practically hyperventilating at that stage. He didn't even know why.

It was as though some primal, inherit and subconscious part of him was rebelling at the idea of the pain to come, and alarms were going off in his mind, all sanity left within him screaming from the back of his mind and begging for him to turn back now. To walk away! To not foolishly bring this pain and injury upon himself!

There was nothing he could do to save his dad anymore! And how could he justify this torturous climb to the ranks of the Named Few just to protect his party?

For Crystal's sake! He would be forced to fight the evil gods and their legions of Formless that lurked beyond the Deep Deep! Where was the need to go that far?

And yet, the answer was surprisingly simple.

People with more power than me have controlled me my whole life, he thought, bitterness and resentment rising within him to steady his breathing and heartbeat. They did whatever they wanted to me. To my family. To my people… They starved me and tortured me in that machine without even allowing me a single day of rest for years and years without end.

He grit his teeth as memories flood him. Memories of death and dying. Memories of darkness and how his life had almost come to an end so many times before at the whims of another…

If the chief didn't save me that day when I went out looking for food, someone else would have done to me whatever they wanted, he thought, his jaw clenched so hard it hurt. Those cannibals almost did the same. Those pieces of trash in that hospital almost did the same to us too, right after we escaped that damned Climb! And there will always be someone stronger than me. Someone that could want to do whatever they want with us. With me. And I didn't suffer through all that Climb… I didn't leave my dad behind in that darkness to become someone's toy!

He raised his eyes to meet hers, and he saw his resolve mirrored in hers. Saw her making the decision that she herself had been struggling to accept, as this would not be easy on her either.

"Will you take me to the top?" he asked her, his tone a whisper. "To the very top?"

"I will. I swear it on the Crystal, that I will do everything in my power to make it so," she whispered back. "As long as you give yourself completely to me, and that you survive what is to come, I will bring you to the very top, Nar. I swear."

He gulped drily and gave her a nod.

"Then do it."

Without hesitation or warning, her grip changed, and she pressed hard and pushed his pinkies towards the back of his hand.

Nar opened his mouth to scream as skin teared and flesh parted to reveal the white of his splintering bones and knuckles, his tendons snapping and ligaments rupturing, and his knees buckled under him at the wave of nausea and agony that ruptured through him.

Tys held him up with one arm, and a hand clamped down on his raw screaming with a vice like grip, muffling the sound of his suffering.

"Don't scream!" she breathed against his face. "Your training has started. Fight your pain! Break free and keep your mind focused!"

Nar swallowed his bile and grit his teeth together, breathing hard through his nose as the pain threatened to pull him under.

"Now, there's this," Tys said, pulling her hand from his face.

He twisted his eyes to the side, and found a metal cylinder with a long, wicked needle gleaming in her hand.

"This is filled with pure, liquid, fire aether. It comes from a strong enough beast that your aura will have trouble dealing with, and it will force your HP to focus on healing other, much more crucial things and ignore your fingers for the most part," she explained. "But I want you to tell me to inject this into you."

Nar roared through his teeth and nodded.

"You need to tell me, Nar. You need to beat the pain! To beat the fear!" she said, her eyes coming within an inch of his own. "You need to always be in control! You need to leave all your weaknesses behind!"

"Do it!" he shouted. "Do it!"

Day after day of agonizing double shifts at the hands of that cursed machine, of beatings, of starving, of watching his people dropping around him, spent, abused, empty and dead! Even all the torture induced by the Pressure during the Climb… Why should he fear pain now? Why should he run from it, when pain had only brought with it the promise of greater power? His double shifts had given him his massive aura and enhanced cycling capabilities, and as for the Climb, all his efforts had yielded the salvation of his party and the unlocking of his Champion Aspirant class. So, again, why should he fear pain now? Why should he run from it?

No… I won't run! He roared in his mind.

"Then hold still," Tys said, her eyes a bottomless void as they locked onto his.

And by the sudden, eerie stillness with which his body obeyed her command, he knew that this time, she had used her [Presence] on him. But before he could wonder why, a sharp coldness entered his neck… And then fire, unlike any he had ever experienced before.

Yet, he kept his lips sealed even as a mute scream begged to tear through his throat.

"Stop that!" Tys ordered him, no [Presence] this time. "And you're free to move now."

He tried to close his hands into fists on reflex against the burning pain, and his agony only tripled when he moved his ruined pinkies. And this time, Tys allowed him to drop to the sand.

"I'd keep those wounds clear of sand. It will only make them harder to heal," she said, staring down at him.

Nar could barely hear her words, tears streaking down the sides of his face as the fire spread through his veins, blackening his insides. His heart wailed within his chest, and his mind buckled under the screeching dual agony of the invading aether and of his ravaged fingers. Darkness threatened to take him, his mind screaming for the only release within reach, and darkness spread from the corner of his eyes, the sands swimming before him.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"I told you before that I knew someone that passed out on their first day. Their teacher was far kinder than mine… She didn't allow me to escape like that," Tys said, looking down on him with cold eyes. "And I won't allow you to either. Stay awake and look at your hands."

The darkness disappeared in the blink of an eye, and his mind returned to full wakefulness under the authority of her [Presence]. The ruined mess that was his fingers glared at him, and the image was clear and sharp now, the blood flowing freely down his wrists, bits of bone still peaking from the gory mess.

"Good. Now, let's get to healing," Tys said, taking a knee at his side. "This part is not hard, Nar. All you have to do is cycle to your hands, focusing your intent on healing your injuries. When I tell you to stop cycling, you stop. When I tell you to start again, you start. The hard part is in pushing through the pain. Oh, and also because of the aether inside you… It will also make cycling hard, and while you'll hate me for it now, one day you'll thank me for it. Now begin!"

Through the tears that occasionally blurred the sight of his bloody hands, Nar swallowed a whimper and did as she told him. Or tried to.

The burning aether ravaging him from the inside fought his aura across his entire body, and in its panicked state, his aura ignored him in favor of fighting the invading aether.

"I'm waiting," she said. "And if I don't see anything happening in the next 60 seconds, I'm breaking another finger."

"Wait! Wait!" Nar begged her.

"Don't talk to me. Focus!"

Nar swallowed hard and pressed his eyes shut, plunging down into his core. It was a mess in there, bright red flames roaring around his core, and streams of shining gray aura leaping out from the ball of light to fight them, attempting to put out the raging fire.

"Ignore the aether. Heal!" Tys voice came from afar.

With a gasp of pain, Nar reached to his aura, and yanked it down its pathways. It begged at him to be let go, and to be allowed to protect and defend him from the fiery invader, but Nar kept a tight grip over it, cycling up to his shoulders, then down his arms… All the way down until it reached his hands, and a fresh wave of agony and nausea reached him as concentrated aura touched his mangled fingers.

"Well done. Now focus on healing yourself. Picture your fingers moving back into the right position. Picture your bones joining, your torn tendons and ligaments kneading back together. Your flesh mending, and your skin closing over the wound…" she urged him. "Don't worry about the how. The aura will know. There's enough aurium in you for this work, and it knows how it's supposed to be. All you have to do is provide the guiding intent."

Nar did as she told him, doing his best to put together the mental image that she described… Of his fingers, hale and fixed, moving without pain or issues, and of his mind easing from the agony it now endured.

He didn't know how long it took him, but eventually, he felt something. A tug. An itch spreading across the agony…

"Good, now, let go of your aura. Let it rush back to your core!" Tys ordered.

He almost screamed at her! He had finally gotten the healing processes started and now he had to let go?

"Let go, Nar," she said, her tone suddenly gentle. "This is the only way. Otherwise, you're going through all this pain for nothing."

A shaky breath escaped his lips and he nodded at her, fresh tears coming down his face.

He let go of his aura, and as expected, it rushed away from his wounds and back into his core, where the battle between aura and aether still raged.

"Good, let's go again," she said. "And we won't stop until those fingers are fully healed. And don't worry, if your aura consumes the aether inside you, I'll just inject you again. Start!"

And he grit his teeth, his mind awake but barely coherent, and reached for his aura once more.

*********

Nar gasped, staring at the bright ceiling above his head.

Tears ran freely down his face, and his breaths were shallow and filled with relief. He had done it…

He dug his fingers into the sand and closed them into loose fists, marveling at the lack of pain. Not even an echo of the agony he had endured for hours without end remained. He was whole again.

"You did well," Tys said, kneeling beside him as he lay sprawled on the orange-brown sand. "I wasn't sure if you're going to be able to make it to your bed tonight, but it looks like you'll get a little sleep after all."

Nar offered her a weak nod. He hadn't even thought it possible for the agony to ever end, much less be able to harbor any thoughts about his bed. Tys had injected him twice more throughout the course of his cycling and letting go, as he slowly healed throughout the night with just the residual will imparted to his aura, and escaping past that pain had been everything to him. But now that he had, more than thinking about his comfy bed, it was the realization that he had actually managed to heal himself that dominated his mind.

A solid part of him had doubted whether it would be possible to even heal himself in the first place. He knew that Jasphaer and other healers could do it, but the thought of him healing himself had still been almost too incredible to believe. Not anymore though.

As he wiggled his perfectly restored fingers, he now knew that it was possible. That he could do it… And the promise of the new skills he was working towards whispered to him amidst the fragments of his exhausted mind.

With me, you will be unstoppable, they whispered. And Nar didn't doubt it. Not anymore.

But Crystal… How far did he still need to go for not only unlocking those skills, but also upgrading them to reach the levels of regen and pain immunity that Tys had promised him?

"Step by step, Nar," his teacher said, as though she had read his mind. "Don't think about the future, or get distracted about what's to come. Tonight, you won. You healed yourself. Sure, your HP still touched your injuries, speeding their recovery, but you did the majority of it. You, Nar. So, well done."

"Thank you," he said, his voice clear, his throat perfectly fine given how he had not been allowed to scream. Every time he did, Tys grabbed one of his destroyed fingers and squeezed it until he shut up, and that had happened a lot of times throughout the long, long night.

"When we unlock these two new skills, we'll move on to other ones and continue building your arsenal of enhancing passives, but I think you now have an idea of the power that passives can give you."

He nodded. "Stamina next?"

She smiled.

"Well done! Yes, stamina regen will be the third passive we'll aim for, and the fourth will be for aura regen. You have a lot of aura but your path will guzzle it down like crazy, and you can't just run dry in the middle of a fight," she said. "But it will be the Master of Aura that will teach you that one. Her control and knowledge of aura is far superior to mine, and she'll be teaching the skill to her casters anyways, even if in more gentle ways."

She offered him a hand and he took it, allowing her to pull him to his unsteady feet.

"As for active skills, the Master of Blades is going to continue handling those for now. I'm a basic swordswoman at best, and it's best to leave the building of your foundations and intermediate knowledge of the blade to someone who actually knows what they're doing."

She reached over and patted his clothes, shaking the sand off of him. When it stuck to her fingers, staining her hand red, she frowned.

"Now you know what sort of training to expect," she muttered, whipping her hand on her own pants. "We'll meet here every night until you head into the Brightnight, and every night I'm going to hurt you and you are going to heal yourself. And the injuries will become worse and harder to heal as we go…"

He nodded at her and she sighed.

She scanned the walls around them for a moment, before speaking. "If you progress fast enough, we'll move on to mid-combat healing. But if not, I will find it a success if we can just get your aura to passively heal you outside of combat and when you're awake. But I expect you to surprise me, Nar."

"I will," he promised.

"Good. Now remember, no healing, no matter what," she said, her tone steel. "Tonight, I'm letting you walk out of here in one piece. But tomorrow you'll have homework."

She looked deeply into his eyes. "If you want to reach the top, this is the only way I know of. And I'm your best shot at it."

"I know."

"Then go get cleaned up and get some rest. You're meeting the Master of Blades in less than three hours. Whatever happens during the night, you will fulfill all of your other obligations to the faculty with the same dedication you have so far, no matter how tired you are, or how hurt. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Tys," he said, resisting the urge to bow to her, as he would've to the Master of Blades.

"Alright… Good job, then. If you want to continue this, then I'll see you here tomorrow night at half ten. And as for your clothes, you can just store them away. They will continue to fix and clean themselves, and I'll make sure to charge them when they need it."

She pursed her lips as she looked him over. "Always black. No one will be able to tell…"

"Yeah. It is nice," he agreed. Even looking down at himself, he couldn't see the blood he felt sticking the material against his skin. "Then… I'll see you tomorrow."

"If that's your choice," she said. "But remember, happiness is a foolish thing to chase when it can just be snatched from your fingers."

"I will. Goodnight, Tys," he said, with a stiff nod.

"You too."

What's left of it, anyways… he thought. And with that, he stumbled across the sands, focused on making it to his room and passing out. He didn't even care to wash the crimson stickiness that coated him.

And yet, even as he struggled to stay awake, he knew already that come tomorrow night, he would be in that arena once more. For what was pain and agony when he was promised the might to be unstoppable?

No matter the price of power, he was going to earn it, and one day, he would be the master of his own fate at last, and a proper guardian to his party's future.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.