Shawn could hear the crack of rifles in the distance, Regia offering pointers to Claire and the others, and scolding them for not taking the time to line up their shots. But the silence from Garrett was deafening. His half-open beak and widened eyes sold the level of shock.

  “Shawn...maybe we don't need to--"

  “No. I need to talk about this one. I'm infinitely far away from anyone who would stop me if I talked about this one." He let out a calm breath, realizing this had been sitting in the background for a while. Garrett took that as his cue to relax his posture, his limbs less tensed. "I told you my father wasn't a great person. He’d been very effective at compartmentalizing his life, up until when I turned thirteen.. Mom saw the hints, from time to time that something was off. But…she never could fully grasp how awful he was.”

  Shawn never let go of his focus on the flame in his hand, as he fed it with his Etteria core, feeling the tendrils of warmth through his arm, down to his claws. But, he could gently throttle it to his legs, or his wings, even.

  Garrett tilted his head, beak agape. “You never knew, until…when?”

  “When he wanted me to know what he did. How his ‘job’ was just a cover–a facade. I knew he worked for the military. Mom told me his job was 'contract security.' Which, when I found out much later, really just meant that he worked as a mercenary, a soldier for hire. He was getting nowhere with Maggie, uh, my sister, and she had no interest in the military, guns, survival stuff. She’d become somewhat of a rebel, despite a series of increasing restrictions on her life. He failed to realize that the more he tried to push her in one direction, the more she dug her heels in."

  The flame rose higher, and he narrowed that beam of pure heat to run hotter, with minute adjustments of his claws acting like a flame break. “Over time, I noticed he was more prone to anger. He could occasionally have a hair-trigger temper, and he’d knock stuff off tables, or throw a coffee mug at a wall, one time. My mom told me, it was stress from work. I didn’t buy that for a minute, I thought she was trying to sugar coat his behavior. he’d been acting shitty toward Maggie, and I knew there was a reason for it. I didn’t know how awful that reason was.”

  Garrett nodded while he continued to experiment with throttling the flame, while talking in an even voice. “So, I knew my father had a stint in the military. He was discharged before he met my Mom. He charmed her, brought her into his life, they had us…life was okay. For a while." Garett sat there, the slightest dip of his head indicating he was following along. "It all added up, though. He missed sports practices. He was out late at night…doing who knows what. Smoking in the house. Soon, he was screaming at my mom a few times that he was the ‘provider’ and that it was ‘his’ rules he set. I think as we got older, he was afraid we might start having opinions different from his.”

  “Well, that sounds like military training alright," Garrett commented. "The order of command is pretty clear, so that everyone fulfils their role. But, with families...that's not the same thing. That's control."

  “That's one way to put it. I grew to resent him, the way he treated Maggie, as she got older. He was being unjust. He’d punish her for tiny things, like not clearing her plate, after dinner. Or, talking to a girl that she…liked. Like, I didn’t understand, at the time. Why was he so controlling?”

  Shawn glanced at the flame, and pushed with that ethereal nudge to ignite a flame in both hands, no more intense than the warmth of a summer breeze. “It got worse from there. The yelling started. The more we pushed back, the more severe it got. When I was twelve…I walked into an argument between him and Mom, her asking where his money was coming from. He wouldn’t answer. He got agitated, accusing her of being disloyal. She threw back an accusation that he was hiding something.

  “Then, he hit her.”

  The flames in his palms intensified–but only to the level he allowed. His pulse spiked, and his throat clenched uneasily. “That was the end of my perception that my father was a decent human being. He apologized instantly, but it was too late, and I knew, with the way he tried to blame her for it, something dark crawled out of him. He’d already set in stone that he was hiding something awful, and that we were in the dark, by design."

  “Mom was terrified. She didn't say a single word; she just wore this look of terror on her face, and got a pack of ice for her bruises. Not a shout, not a whimper...just a screaming silence. I went to my room, shaking, wondering what she did to deserve that. And the answer is, she didn’t. Mom’s a loveable sort, but she was too afraid to speak out. It was…kind of an old-school silent stoicism. It almost got her killed.”

  “That man would have been dead, right then and there, if I ever saw something like that.” Garrett's gaze was low to the ground, his voice tense. “I presume you don’t tell people this one much, huh?”

  “Only to mind healers in our world, borrowing a term from Varrick. Maggie saw some of it, too,” he replied softly. He still could feel that awful, choked-up sensation in his throat, Hands that wouldn’t stop trembling as he scrunched in his bed, trying to hide his sobs as his father walked by his bedroom door, like it was routine to hit his mom. He clenched his beak, and toned down the flames in his hands to nothing more than candlelight, while Garrett looked on observantly. “That was just the start. The full breadth of what he did, what came out later…no human could do that to other people. Only a demon could do what he did."

  "What did he do?"

  Shawn swallowed uncomfortably. The flames flickered and died out. "I don't think I'm ready to talk about that one, yet. What I've told you is more than what most people know." I remember broken glass and sobbing. A choking gasp. The sledgehammer, on the ground--

  Even now, he couldn't put take his mental eye off of what he'd seen, and he rubbed his hands together gently. “Yeah, I have baggage I’ve been working past for a long time, Garrett. It has not been easy. That’s why I need to get this gestalt figured out. Because I worry I might have the same feather-trigger rage my father did. I saw what he did. Those memories didn’t die out when he did.”

  “So…you seek to set yourself apart from your father?” Garrett concluded, green eyes focused on him.

  He rose from the grassy ground and brushed himself off. “Yep. Putting as much distance between that man, and who I am, became a lifetime goal.”

  Garrett's beak creased slightly upward. “A noble goal. So, that’s why you kept that level of focus when I saw you firing on the range? On our retreat, from the orbital platform? I think anyone else would have frozen up. You didn’t.”

  “Because I’ve seen the horrible things that man did, and what other men like him do. Inaction is a choice. A bad one.” Shawn shook his head, trying to forget that man’s face as readily as burning every photograph he’d ever had of him. He noted the firing on the range had stopped. Regia was talking with Claire, who had hit the targets at the extreme end of the range, and looked confident as she cycled out the remaining rounds from her rifle.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Well, looks like shooting time is over,” Garrett mused, stretching his wings lightly. “Thanks for sharing that with me. It kind of helps me figure out how to make effective use of recruits. Though, I don’t usually telegraph that out.”

  “Put me in a mechanical lab, with the right supplies? I'll find a way to even the odds against Revarik,” Shawn replied with a grunt. “There’s more, but…yeah. I’ve had this aspect of myself under control, for a while. It’s what happened to Maggie that almost broke me. Finding her in this world of floating rocks? That’s going to be tough.”

  “If she made it here? If she's anything like you, then there's a chance she's alive here, somewhere," Garrett responded, sounding confident.

  "I don't know about you, Garrett? Call it an engineer's worst-case scenario, but I get this feeling she's in the core world." He looked down at his feet, as if he could peer through rock, stone, and an entire orbital layer. "I don't have any way to prove that. But it would be the kind of thing I need to be prepared for. To fight through three goddamn layers of this world to get to her."

  "Hey, there's an idea. You and I should walk out to the tectonic edge and take a look. Best view in the universe,” he added with a level of confidence, the way he stood casually. “That mine that I heard Varrick mention? It’s right near there. We also tell our young to stay away from the edge, due to the risk of ugly, unsightly deaths, and their bodies never being recovered. Just throwing that out there.”

  “A view to die for?” Shawn asked with a bit of humor. “Is there anything on this planet that doesn’t kill you?”

  “Hey, We’ve done pretty well on this post-cataclysmic pile of rocks. Now, I don’t want to torch the targets out here, we’ve got a small arena set up for gestalts, made out of durable materials.” He pointed with his thumb to a small set of durable stone enclosures–almost like a miniature obstacle course, then called out to Regia and the others. “Alright recruits, it’s the fun part of our training! Or maybe not so fun, depending on what the Radiants blessed you with when you were born! Gestalt training time! Let’s see what you guys got!”

  Hitting targets with fire darts was fun.

  Shawn didn’t want to admit it, but this part was secretly fun, as he recalled everything he knew. He’d started small and reached out to his core to direct only a small amount of that energy to his hand. But, there appeared to be a minimum amount of mana–as he called it–to create a globule of flame in his hand. Below that, it would create flickers of flame in his hand, maybe enough to ignite kindling or light a candle. But it wasn't an offensive flame projectile. It felt like a minimum energy threshold had to be crossed, to be effective.

  But once he pushed a current beyond a certain limit, those small, dart-like flames emerged in his palm, and he could gently grasp them with his fingers–more amazingly, without burning his flesh. He seemed to be immune to the flames' impact–though when he brought it too close to the feathers on his face to examine, he felt a feather or two get singed.

  Claire hadn’t stopped laughing about that, and that he was going to become an impromptu firebird, and that his attempt to emulate a phoenix was going to end badly. He responded to her heckling with a one-claw salute.

  “Hey, easy where you point those claws! You could put someone’s eye out!” she laughed. He chose to ignore it and channel another fire dart, gaze focused on the furthest out target. He didn’t ‘throw’ the fire darts, so much as give them an initial velocity. He could make minute adjustments in-flight, to correct for bad aim. However, it took a bit of focus to do so, and he also noticed a light burning sensation in his chest, which he rubbed gently.

  “Hey, Regia. What warning signs should I not ignore?” he called out. She walked over to his station, after using her water blasts to knock down several targets.

  “Burning sensation in your core? Classic Etteria use fatigue. Lucky for you, you don’t need Etteria to survive, but if you overuse it, you can cause some damage to yourself. Don’t do that,” she warned him. “It comes in a degree of severity. Mild discomfort, where it will feel like a dull ache. The next step is a low burning sensation in your chest, or extremities when using your gestalts. If you get to the point where you are feeling severe physical pain, you need to stop immediately. Because if you push further than that, you can get Etteria burnout, and damage your nerves. Push far enough, and you cause organ failure, and die.”

  His eyes widened at that notion, and nodded sharply. “Got it, my body is giving me warning signs.”

  “Haha, no, I think that’s just me this time,” she added with a sharpened smile. He stammered for a few seconds while she laughed. “You’ll find that over time if you frequently use your gestalts, the amount of power you can exert without hurting yourself does seem to increase. The Radiants seem to have no limits.”

  “Kind of you guys to show off firepower and hydropower, but what good is mine?” Trask grumbled.

  Regia tilted her head, then flicked out her wrist to shoot a thin jet of water at him. Trask melted into black motes in an instant, dodging the spray aimed at him because his body simply disappeared. The shadowy motes flowed through the shadows cast by the trees on the arena. Shawn blinked, barely able to keep up, and Trask’s whole body materialized a split second later. His fur was a little frazzled, but he was dry. And irritated.

  “You know what it’s good for? Not getting hit! Or, repositioning yourself to put yourself behind an enemy formation!” she pointed out. “Your gestalt is as powerful as your imagination allows for! Get creative! The shadow-based gestalts lend themselves to information gathering and tactical repositioning. Use them to the maximum effect. An enemy can’t kill what they can’t hit. So if someone like Shawn here throws an exploding fireball at you…that split second where you disappear into little shadowy particles is your window of safety. I suggest you get the timing right, so I don’t end up with flambe recruits,” she added.

  “Do you always shoot at your recruits?” Trask grumbled.

  “Not with anything that would cause permanent harm. Now, back at it!” Regia instructed with an air of authority.

  Claire had to sit out a bit on this one, and Shawn felt a little bad about that, since she had no gestalt, and had made clear her wariness of taking one in. In the meantime, he practiced, while Garrett demonstrated his burst speed, sparring with Trask and challenging him to dodge his lightning-fast strikes with his claws and talons.

  Trask was good. But, even he took a claw to the solar plexus and wheezed while Garrett toppled him and locked him in a chokehold before he begrudgingly tapped out. “Cheap shot,” he said after he’d regained his breath.

  “You heard the lady. You need to get creative. Maybe you use an alchemical flash bang to create light–and shadows–where none exists, perhaps?” he proposed. “Get creative, recruit. I expect you to demonstrate a new use of your ability within the week! Every trick you can pull off is another way to evade a hungry monster, or put one into the dirt! Or on the dinner plate,” he grinned.

  “On that note, Garrett, what’s good eating around here?” Claire asked, sounding curious. “Shawn here hunts. But I don’t think he’s hunted the same things you do.”

  “Roast razorbeak is gamey, but very filling. It’s best with a sprinkle of seasoning, very juicy. We also have some domesticated boars that make good eating, and Manix out by the butcher shop has a little curing house to make some food that’ll preserve through winter if kept bone dry.”

  “All this talk of food is making me hungry,” Regia called out, then motioned to the recruits. “Alright, I think that’s enough for today. You trained hard, but you trained within your limits! Etteria burnout is no good and leaves you in a longer recovery when you could be pacing your training! We’ll head to the main hall, grab a bite, then call it a day!”

  Shawn glanced down at himself, dirtied from laying in the ground, and from the various other activities. He really could go for a shower, but there wasn’t one in Vea’lant. Or, a communal bath house.

  Reinventing all the modern comforts would be a pain in the tail–until he thought of something from the equipment over in Varrick’s smithy shop. “Claire, what would it take to make plastic?”

  “Chemicals I don’t have?” she shrugged. “Petroleum? Why, what’s your angle?”

  “Well, how about something a little easier? Maybe something to make a flex hose?”

  “To do…what?”

  “Make a shower. Because if I have to take a bird bath, I might die of shame.”

  The magitech revolution won't happen overnight. He needs to build some of the classics, though at least some of them exist somewhere in Remaria.

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