Ardor was give and take. Something passed on and received in equal measure. And he could feel this man's passion. He could hear it almost as clearly as a song echoing in the dead of night. He felt in his heart that he had something this man needed.

  So Caen Impassioned the man's fire.

  Streaks of purple, pink, and red blossomed and writhed within the swelling orange fireball above the Fire practician's palm.

  “Tahal,” Caen swore, looking on in awe.

  For a single second, it lit up the entire patch of forest they were in, casting long shadows in every direction. Then the spell construct collapsed with a bang.

  From so many yards away, Caen could feel a wave of hot air rush over him. He shook away his daze as he was pulled back into the present.

  Screams. The Fire practician's in particular were ear-piercing. He writhed on the ground, clutching his swollen hand, but the rest of his body had suffered deep burns from the failed spell. His companions, too, had not escaped lightly. Both the tracker and her brother, the Wind practician, were on the ground, groaning. That had been quite the concussive blast. Portions of their clothes were scorched, and their skin reddened. Some of the surrounding bushes had shriveled up, but everything else was aflame.

  Only one person remained standing; he wobbled over to Caen, muttering what had to be an incantation. The Body-enhancer.

  Flickering Soul-sense, Caen pulled out two vials of ychna from his belt bag and flung them at the man. He fell down in a violent coughing fit. The smoke here worsened all the more. Caen retrieved another handkerchief, held it to his own nose, and walked past the man.

  He reached the woman with the tracking ability and the lamp that lay beside her. He broke it with a stomp.

  Exhaustion set into Caen’s bones. He was all too aware of the fact that the painkilling herbs he'd chewed earlier would soon start wearing off. He pulled down his goggles and took off the helmet on his head as he panned the forest. Surprisingly enough, no one else had been drawn here.

  In the corner of his vision, the time construct displayed the time. Less than ten minutes had passed since he'd noticed their ambush.

  “Let’s get to it then,” he said to no one as he cracked his neck.

  * * *

  Six years ago

  Caen sat alone in the helpers’ lounge, staring quietly through one painfully swollen eye into the cup of sweetened water held in his shaking hands.

  His hands stung and were dyed various shades of blue as a result of handling dangerous chymical compounds. His knuckles were chapped and bruised. His broken ribs twanged with each shallow breath. He couldn't even move his jaw anymore. And his left eye was swollen shut. Different aches pulsed all over his body from injuries sustained in the past few hours.

  After stumbling upon them, a city guard who was friends with Aunt Vensha had brought Caen and the other boys to the tri-clinic. Caen had lied that his grandfather was here in the city, and an acolyte had sent out a runner to go find him.

  Healer naMoon—light glinting off his horns—walked into the room and sat on the sofa beside Caen's.

  Caen couldn't bring himself to meet the healer's gaze.

  “Well, they certainly did a number on you,” Healer naMoon said softly. “At least you take after your grandfather in some regards. Let me see the other side of your face.”

  Caen obliged without a word.

  “Hmmmmm.”

  A gentle tremor reverberated through Caen's body, and, following it, a tingle spread across his face, his neck. Every aching and sore portion of muscle.

  He looked up at Healer naMoon with wide eyes. Eyes! He touched them both, feeling the swelling reduce in real time. His jaw popped back into place. Breathing became easier. His aches vanished like a dream.

  Healer naMoon chuckled, shaking his head fondly. Then his expression grew serious. “Certain procedures can be very gruesome and messy, yet these things are necessary sometimes. Every healer knows that.

  “But…” Healer naMoon lifted a finger. “If you are to be a healer, young one, you must learn to clean up after yourself. Take that to mean whatever you will, but we have a reputation to uphold. This is not a reprimand. I'm simply showing you my own definition of what it means to be a healer. A healer heals.”

  He stood up smoothly. “Now, come with me.” He pirouetted out of the room.

  Caen downed his sweetened water in two gulps and scrambled to keep up with the older man's long strides. “Healer naMoon, where are we going?”

  “I just told you,” he answered with an indulging smile as he pushed open a pair of double doors into an examination room.

  Four boys lay wounded and unconscious on separate tables, attended to by mundane healers in the flowing habits of Edict acolytes.

  “Clean-up,” Caen muttered in realization.

  “You catch on quickly. Come.”

  Over the next few hours, Caen worked with Healer naMoon and the Edict healers. Caen could only cast one diagnostic Blood-healing spell, and very, very slowly at that. However, Healer naMoon had him cast it many times, patiently waiting through each failed iteration, neither encouraging nor denigrating Caen.

  Then he had Caen watch him slowly mend bones and seal wounds, all of which he seemed to be doing for Caen's benefit, considering how quickly he'd healed Caen.

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  At some point, the oldest boy woke up to the sight of Caen casting another diagnostic spell on his ribs; not that the boy would know what kind of Blood-healing spell Caen was using. He'd recently been administered an anaesthetic and currently couldn't move his limbs. His eyes widened in horror as he searched Caen’s face for injuries that the boy himself had inflicted just hours ago.

  Caen met his eyes coolly and continued muttering his spell.

  Healer naMoon had taught him something very important, but Caen left the tri-clinic that night having learned two lessons.

  Under the right circumstances, healers could be terrifying.

  * * *

  After fully Mimicking the Fire practician’s affinity, Caen extinguished the fires. Then he went around each of his downed assailants, applying a paralytic to each and every one of them. It would keep them from moving for some time. He also ensured that none of them had been injured too badly. He made tourniquets for bleeding wounds and set dislocations. Everyone volunteering here at Odaton was offering their free and noncoerced labor to the Chancellery. Killing anyone would be far more trouble than it was worth.

  He went down to the well by the kitchen and brought back the long eight-wheeled cart with him. It was difficult work stacking all their bodies onto the cart, but he managed it. He'd put his goggles back on and had retrieved the rest of his belongings.

  By the time he reached the entrance of the healing tent, he had already drawn onlookers. It was quite the spectacle, he understood. Caen began offloading his injured assailants from the cart.

  There were fewer healers here. Most combatants went into the Planes in the daytime, which usually meant that there wouldn't be as many injuries at night.

  “You’re just laying them on the ground, why are you doing that?” queried a hunched, elderly man as he rushed outside, green vest fluttering around him.

  Behind him, a number of auxiliaries watched curiously from the entrance but parted to let a woman in military uniform through.

  She had a hand on the firearm strapped to her side. “What's going on here?”

  “These people attacked me; an ambush. I defended myself. They’re all alive, but heavily injured. I'm here to treat their wounds.” He held out his badge.

  Both the elderly healer and the military official glanced at it.

  “You're a healer,” the elderly man said, blinking.

  “Huh. I know some of these people,” the military official said, peering at the face of the Wind practician. “But I think you'll still have to file a report.”

  “That won't be a problem,” Caen replied.

  The elderly man looked with distaste at the bodies on the ground. His eyes lingered on the burly Body-enhancer whose skin was partly blue. He blinked some more. “Well…” He cleared his throat. “Unless it's life-threatening, healers here aren't obliged to attend to injuries born from foolish brawls between children.”

  “Nothing critical or life-threatening,” Caen confirmed as he offloaded the last person from the cart. He'd made sure of that. “I can handle them all by myself.”

  “Looks to me like you already did,” the military official chuckled, shaking her head. “I'll come by to get that report from you later.”

  Working quickly with two auxiliaries, Caen moved his injured into the tent. He nodded his thanks to the auxiliaries for their assistance, then he connected to Akab, the chatty Blood-healer from earlier, who was currently attending to a patient with burns.

  With a boosted Blood-healing affinity, Caen mended the deep cuts and scrapes on his own skin. Then he healed the light burns on his face and the bruises on his body. It was the most mana he'd ever used to heal himself. It brought a pleased smile to his face, then a wince. Blood-healing spells really worked up the appetite of their target, and he was already starting to feel some serious hunger pangs.

  Caen took some time to think over the fight and all the things he could have done better. He should have expected retaliation and prepared for it. He went over the fight in his head, noting mistakes he'd made and opportunities he'd missed, of which there were few. Killing was so much easier than simply subduing. There were so many ways that things could have gone entirely bad for him, and it was abundantly clear to him how much of a difference it would have made if he could Mimic affinities in seconds rather than minutes. He needed to give priority to cutting down the time it took him to Mimic an affinity.

  Caen spent the next hour or so properly attending to the wounds of his injured assailants. Several of those who'd passed out were starting to rouse by this point, but most of them were already very awake, eyes wide open, bodies paralyzed. Caen did not speak to any of them as he worked, not stopping his softly muttered incantations.

  There weren't too many fractured bones, and only two people had sustained a concussion. He didn't know any spells that helped with head trauma, so he gave them something for pain and left them to rest. He mended a stab wound, which took much more time than his own cuts had. Fortunately, he hadn't hit any organs. He extracted bullets, then soothed burns of which there were several. With a boosted Blood-healing affinity, it was only a slight inconvenience to do all this with his spirit tendrils unfolded and prodding their spirits intermittently for maximum discomfort.

  Whenever Akab stepped out of the tent—which was irritatingly often—Caen would switch back to mundane healing or focus on mending the spirit of the Fire practician whom he had channeled Ardor through. The man had sustained several tiny tears to his spirit. In his abjection, Caen couldn't do much for him, so he worked very slowly. His spells collapsed far fewer times than he’d expected them to, which made him so happy that he almost started giggling. It was good practice anyway, though he'd had to temporarily retract his spirit tendrils for this.

  Soon, the paralytic he'd applied to all of them had begun to wear off. The first Body-enhancer he’d downed rolled out of the cot she was lying in, slurring something unintelligible as her panicked eyes darted to and fro.

  With an annoyed sigh, Caen placed her back into her cot and applied anaesthetics to the twelve of them. This wasn’t as potent as the paralytic, but it would last for much longer. Caen wasn’t under any delusions. Any one of these idiots with a high enough affinity in Body-enhancement could grab him by the throat and end his life without using any spells. They didn’t know that, of course. But being reckless was unacceptable. He returned to his task. Someone else was making panicked sounds in the back of his throat, and the woman he'd stabbed started thrashing as if trying to force her limbs to move. When Caen gave her a withering look, she stilled immediately.

  Caen went back to working on the Fire practician's burns using the Blood-healing spell he'd recently adapted. It was just so fascinating to watch fresh, peckled skin spreading out in real time. But Caen wore an expression of boredom. He had an audience now.

  The Fire practician looked pale, though that was most likely a result of his spiritual injuries. He wheezed out a slurred, “What… are you... doing to us?”

  Caen took his sweet time replying, fingers still flitting through the components of a spell. The bored expression on his face stayed in place, despite how exciting it was to be practicing Blood-healing. He still had his crafting goggles on. All the better to sell an image of clinical detachment to them.

  He'd been thinking all this while about what he could say to instill the most fear in these people.

  “The next time you try something like this,” Caen began, “I will break your bones, test out more chymical compounds on you, stab, burn you, cause you immense physical pain.” He turned his goggles on each of them, letting his spirit tendrils prod every one of their spirits roughly. “Then I will repair what I have broken just so I can do it all over again and again. For as many times as I'm willing to practice my healing techniques on you.”

  A red, unburned patch of skin writhed into place like an island forming around the sea of burns on the Fire practician's face.

  “Invasive surgery remains my least trained skill. I'm sure you can assist me with that.”

  None of them spoke up or made any trouble after that. Even the large, bluened, Body-enhancer was demure, never making eye contact when Caen came to check on his bullet wounds.