Part I — The Window
Derpy had managed to stay on his feet until the first voice from the sitting room drew his attention back to the veil.
After that, Celica lost him.
He sat on the ash with his knees drawn up, watching his own hand move on the other side of the window. Sinister rested it on the table, lifted it to make a point, and let it fall again with an ease Derpy could feel only as a distant echo. When he spoke, familiar people turned toward Derpy’s face and found someone else waiting behind it.
The orders to Riven had been his. He could not put those on Sinister, no matter how much he disliked what he was watching now.
That did not make surrendering every other movement easier.
He pressed his nails into his palms when Sinister’s voice softened deliberately. The change was small, a warmth Derpy recognized as something he might have used to reassure someone. Hearing it chosen for an answer meant to unsettle them made his teeth ache.
“I cannot even stop my own hands,” he muttered.
Celica stepped into the edge of his view.
“You can move the ones you have here.”
He looked up at her. “That is not much use to anyone outside.”
“It will be less use if you spend the entire lesson watching a room you cannot reach.”
Blight approached from farther along the shore. She glanced through the veil, then down at the marks Derpy’s fingers had pressed into his skin.
“Come on. If you are going to be angry, at least give it something to do.”
Derpy unfolded his legs and stood. Ash clung to his hands when he brushed them against his clothing.
Celica waited until he faced her before placing a hand against his chest. Blight touched the other side, close enough that he felt both contacts at once.
Heat moved inward beneath one palm. Cold followed beneath the other. They met with a pressure that caught his breath, then spread through his shoulders and down his arms.
He caught Celica’s wrist.
“What are you putting into me?”
“Support,” she said. “Enough to let you practice without struggling for the power first. You still have to shape it.”
Blight removed her hand. “Borrowed strength will not do the thinking for you.”
Derpy released Celica and looked at his fingers. The sensation remained after her hand left his chest, a cold awareness beneath his skin that became sharper when he paid attention to it.
Celica pointed to a clear patch of shore.
“You know the ice-flower that forms through touch. This time, decide what it will look like before you touch anything.”
“And then?”
“Put your hand on the ground and make that shape. Only that shape.”
He knelt.
A black rose came to mind. Its petals folded closely around a dark center, with a narrow stem and thorns he could picture more easily than he could explain. He held the image for a moment, then pressed his palm into the ash.
Ice surged beneath his hand.
The stem rose too quickly. Thorns spread along it, and a blossom larger than his head forced its way open. For an instant, the rose stood complete, dark petals catching the dim light.
Then it vanished.
The recoil ran up his arm. Derpy pulled his hand back and gripped his wrist until the sensation passed.
Celica crouched beside the disturbed ash.
“You gave it more power than the shape could hold.”
“I made what you asked for.”
“For less than a breath.” She looked at his hand. “Reduce the power. Keep the image.”
He glanced toward the veil. Sinister was speaking again.
Blight moved into his line of sight.
“The rose is down here.”
Derpy looked back at the ground.
His second attempt stayed small, but he formed the petals before giving them anything that could support their weight. The stem bent. Fine cracks opened around the base of the blossom, and it collapsed against his fingers.
Celica picked up a fragment before it dissolved.
“You remembered to use less. Now remember the whole flower.”
On the next attempt, he built the stem first and concentrated so hard on keeping it straight that the petals thickened into blunt plates. He knew what was wrong before Celica touched the edge of one with her claw.
“I can see it,” he said.
“Then correct it.”
He dismissed the shape and tried again.
The work became irritating in a way he could manage. A stem leaned. A thorn split. One blossom opened evenly until he looked toward the veil, and half its petals crumbled while the others remained intact.
Celica made him study each failure long enough to name it before starting over.
Eventually, he stopped reaching for the magic as though more force could carry him past the part he had not understood. He pictured the rose from its base upward, allowed the image to settle, and touched the ash with only enough power to begin.
The stem rose between his fingers.
Petals formed around the center, each thin enough for the light to catch its edge. The last folded outward and stopped. Derpy kept his hand still, waiting for the usual fracture.
Nothing broke.
“Take your hand away,” Celica said.
He did so carefully.
The rose remained.
Derpy let out a long breath and sat back on his heels.
Blight leaned closer to inspect it. “Better. You finally allowed it to be a flower instead of an argument.”
He was too relieved to answer her.
Celica rose. Cold gathered around her claws, bright at the edges and painful to look at for long. Frostburn sharpened the air between them.
Derpy stood more cautiously this time.
“What do you want me to make now?”
“A decision while someone is moving toward you.”
She stepped in. He shifted back on instinct, losing his footing in the ash before he recovered it.
Celica stopped just short of reaching him.
“You have learned to hold a shape while nothing interrupts you. Sparring will tell us what happens when that changes.”
Lewd had spent too long in the sitting room explaining why she did not want to go back.
At first, she had called it caution. She needed to understand what had happened to her before allowing the connection to take her again. Then the conversation turned toward Derpy, toward the instructions she had heard, toward whether another visit might reach something in him the others could not.
Everyone had a reason she should try.
Some spoke gently. Some were too frightened to manage it. After a while, the words began to sound alike.
He needed help. She had reached him once. She might be able to make him listen.
Lewd had walked from the table to the window and back until Lenora moved a chair out of her path.
“I heard him give that order,” she said. “You keep talking as though I only found him hurt.”
Lenora stayed beside the chair. “I heard what you told us.”
“Then you know why I do not want to look at him and hear him defend it again.”
That silenced the room for longer than any refusal she had offered.
The fear beneath her anger was harder to admit. She wanted to find Derpy waiting for someone to save him. She had found him planning what other people would do while he remained beyond their reach.
She did not know how to help that version of him.
In the end, she sat down with Blight Vein in her lap.
“I will talk to him,” she said. “I cannot promise what happens after that.”
When the connection opened, she made herself follow it.
Cold air touched her face. Ash settled beneath her boots, and the palace disappeared.
Derpy stood some distance away with Celica facing him. His shoulders were tense, his attention divided between her hands and the veil beyond her. A dark ice-rose stood on the shore nearby, untouched by the movement around it.
Lewd started toward him.
Blight stepped into her path.
She stopped so quickly that her boots scraped through the ash. Her hands came up before she decided whether she meant to defend herself or ask for space.
Blight noticed. For a moment, Lewd expected a remark sharp enough to make her regret coming.
Instead, Blight sighed.
“I need your help.”
Lewd lowered her hands slightly. “With what?”
“He is not the only one who needs to learn how to use what he is carrying. Neither are you the only person here who can make that difficult.”
Lewd looked past her toward Derpy. He had turned at the sound of her voice, but neither of them moved closer.
“I came to speak to him.”
“Then you are in the right place,” Blight said. “You can begin by staying.”
Celica let the Frostburn fade from her claws.
“You will work together. First, I need to see what Lewd remembers.”
Lewd looked at her. “Remembers from what?”
“Lenora’s training. Choosing what you want the power to do before you release it.”
Lewd’s gaze went to the rose.
Celica followed it. “The same exercise. The ice is a shaping lesson. We will get to your grimoire afterward.”
Derpy stepped aside, leaving her a clear patch of ground. The small courtesy made her chest hurt more than she wanted it to.
She knelt without thanking him.
Lenora’s instruction returned more readily than she expected: choose the shape, hold it, and breathe before doing anything with the power. She remembered how often she had mistaken urgency for effort, and how little patience Lenora had shown for the distinction.
Lewd pictured a flower small enough to fit in her palm.
She decided where the stem would end, how the petals would overlap, and what would keep the base upright. Only then did she touch the ground.
Ice spread beneath her fingertips. A short stem rose, followed by a closed bud that opened slowly into the shape she had chosen.
She waited.
It held.
Blight smiled before she appeared to think better of it.
“You remembered.”
Lewd lifted her hand. “I did not think I would.”
“Do it again,” Celica said. “Find out whether you can choose it twice.”
The second flower formed with a thinner stem and more even petals. On the third, Lewd corrected a bend before it could spread into the blossom.
Derpy watched in silence.
She looked up and caught the tension in his jaw.
“What?”
“It took me longer.”
“Lenora already taught me the part you are practicing.”
He looked at the flowers, then nodded once. “I know.”
Celica moved between them, inspecting the results.
“Good. You can both hold a deliberate shape. Now we find out what happens when the material behaves differently.”
Blight joined Lewd beside the three flowers.
“The ice stays where you put it,” she said. “Mist will not be so obliging unless you give it a boundary.”
Lewd held her hand above the ash. “And the bubbles?”
“Decide where they belong before you start making them.”
Celica stood where she could watch both Lewd and Derpy.
“Your grimoire carries poison and miasma,” she told Lewd. “Use the same discipline. The flower was practice, not a change in what the book is.”
Lewd flexed her fingers. This was the power she should have understood better, which made the prospect of failing with it worse.
She closed her eyes.
The image came in layers. First, a low green-gray haze, heavy enough to follow the ground. She imagined damp warmth beneath it, the smell of decay mingled with something almost sweet. Then she placed bubbles inside the mist, bright against the murk: pink, lime, and electric blue.
She opened her eyes before releasing it, checking the space she meant to fill.
Mist spilled across the ash.
It spread farther than she intended at first. Lewd drew a breath and held the edge in mind until the outward movement slowed. Bubbles rose through it, their colors clear enough to look harmless beside the dark shore.
One burst.
The hiss made her flinch. A sharp smell cut through the sweetness, and the nearest edge of the mist loosened.
“Keep the boundary,” Celica said.
Lewd fixed her eyes on the ground. The haze drew back into the shape she had intended.
Blight crouched near it, watching the remaining bubbles drift.
“You felt it change and stayed with it. That matters more than pretending it did not startle you.”
Lewd let the formation disperse before trying again.
This time, she made fewer bubbles. They rose in a line, spaced far enough apart that she could follow each one. She held them there while the mist moved beneath them, then brought them into a ring.
The last bubble drifted too high. She corrected it without pulling the others out of place.
“A barrier,” Celica said.
Lewd changed the image. The ring opened and lifted into a shallow wall, colored surfaces shifting above the green-gray haze.
Derpy stepped nearer, remaining beyond its edge. Lewd watched his gaze follow the bubbles, and for once she could read the concentration on his face without wondering what he meant to conceal.
“It would draw someone’s eyes upward,” he said. “Away from the mist at their feet.”
Lewd looked back at her work.
The arrangement was almost pretty. That made the smell beneath it harder to ignore.
“That is horrible,” she said quietly.
“It is poison,” Blight replied. “Better to understand what you are making while no one has to stumble into it.”
Lewd lowered her hand and let the wall come apart deliberately. The bubbles thinned without bursting, and the last of the mist withdrew across the ash.
She kept watching until the ground was clear.
Derpy noticed the change in the shore when he tried to look back at the veil.
It was still there. He could still see the sitting room through it. But the distance seemed harder to judge, and the sound reaching him had become less distinct.
He turned toward Celica.
“What changed?”
She did not pretend to misunderstand.
“Neither of you will be waking for a while.”
Lewd looked up from the cleared patch of ground. “I agreed to come here. I did not agree to stay indefinitely.”
“The work will take time.”
“Then tell me how much.”
Blight’s expression lost its earlier amusement.
“Enough to make this something you can use when you need it. One successful exercise does not mean you are ready.”
Lewd turned toward Derpy, then caught herself.
“Did you know?”
He shook his head. “No.”
The answer came quickly enough that she believed it. She disliked how relieved that made her.
Derpy faced Celica. “There are things happening outside that cannot wait for us to finish a lesson.”
“I know.”
“Riven is out there.”
Celica watched him for a moment. “You knew that when you gave her the order.”
Lewd’s eyes returned to him. The flowers between them suddenly seemed a foolishly small achievement beside the conversation they had not had.
Derpy looked toward the veil. Sinister moved through the distant room with no sign of the interruption Derpy wanted to make.
“And he stays in control while we are here?” Lewd asked.
Celica lifted her hands. Frostburn formed along her claws again.
“That is the situation we have.”
Lewd moved nearer to Derpy, though she did not touch him.
“You still owe me an answer about Riven.”
“I know.”
“A real one.”
He looked at her. “I heard you.”
Blight took her place beside Celica. Power gathered around her, carrying the same sharp sweetness Lewd had just learned to shape.
There was no clear path back to the room, no agreed hour when the lesson would end. Lewd looked once more at the veil, then placed her feet carefully in the ash as Lenora had taught her.
Derpy noticed and adjusted his own stance.
Celica advanced before either could ask another question.