Krieger insisted it was the first type of cultivation anyone had learned. Rain dances, prayers for the sun, even calling lightning down on their enemies—all were things the earliest cultivators had supposedly done. Legends were filled with tales of sorcerers so powerful even the greatest swordsmen feared to oppose them.
I cleared my thoughts and focused on the next step of this process. I kept a tight leash on my core and let only the smallest fiber of jinsei flow out of it and into the crucible. I watched, not with my eyes but with my spirit, as one aspect manifested, then two, then five. A thimbleful of water appeared in the crucible, a teaspoon, a tablespoon. More aspects gathered around the crucible’s mouth, and still more found their way into the vessel itself. The aspects were more than willing to heed my call, they were eager. In the space of a few seconds, the crucible was half full.
I was doing it.
Finally.
And then my serpents appeared, and everything spiraled out of control.
Before I could banish them, all six of the insectoid limbs flashed through the air to harvest water aspects. I ordered them to stop, but it was as if the serpents had minds of their own. Once I started the process of harvesting aspects, my ever-helpful supernatural appendages continued it. They were brutally efficient in snaring the aspects out of the air and shoveling them into the crucible.
“Stop,” I snapped, urging my serpents to just go away. There were times when I needed their help, and I was always willing to accept their sudden appearance to defend me.
But this was too much. The crucible was filled with thousands of aspects, all potential water waiting to be made real. I clamped down on the thread of jinsei from my core, hoping to starve the aspects of the sacred energy they needed to manifest. The serpents, though, were jinsei incarnate. They’d sensed my need to create water from nothing and were eager to satisfy it.
Water filled the crucible, then swelled over its lip and splashed onto the stone floor, soaking into my boots. The liquid lapped against the jinsei barrier that prevented it from escaping my cell. More aspects swarmed into existence, drawn to the swiftly growing pool my serpents had created in an out-of-control chain reaction. The more water there was in the cell, the more aspects the serpents manifested, which created more water and drew in even more aspects. In the blink of an eye, I was soaked to the waist.
The first nibbles of worry chewed at the edges of my mind. The cells couldn’t be opened from the inside. That was a safety feature to protect the professor and the other students in the event a dangerous experiment ran amok. I was trapped inside a prison that was filling with water at an alarming rate. My eyes shot to the front of the classroom, but Krieger wasn’t there.
“Hey!” I shouted and hammered my fists against the jinsei barrier. “Hey! Open my cell!”
I didn’t know if anyone heard me or not. The water was up to my chest, and droplets formed on the ceiling and slithered down the walls. I was caught in a rainstorm of my own making, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
Something similar had happened with the other sorcery experiment I’d tried. The air aspects had buffeted me so badly I’d been left with a black eye and bruises over the top half of my body. An attempt to sculpt earth aspects into a simple vessel had buried me to the waist before I regained control. Those mishaps, though, had only been annoying and embarrassing. Water was different.
I had to do something, quickly, or I’d drown.
If I couldn’t pull down the jinsei barrier, I’d have to find another way out. The stone walls around me were thick, the granite strong enough that even my fusion blade wouldn’t cut through it. But that strength was also a weakness.
I activated my Thief’s Shield discipline and pressed my palms against the wall to my left. The water had covered my mouth. It would only be a matter of seconds before I was completely submerged.
My technique ripped strength aspects out of the stone beneath my palms. It was a slow, difficult process. Inanimate objects were harder to weaken, and stone this strong wouldn’t give up its power easily.
The water covered my nostrils, and I spluttered before I could hold my breath. Where was Krieger?
The stone turned chalky and brittle under my palms. Pieces of it flaked away as I pulled the wall’s strength into my aura. It was working.
Not quickly enough.
The water was above my eyes. It wanted to carry me up to the ceiling, but I wedged myself in place with one leg pushed against the back wall and the other braced against the wall I was trying to destroy. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and it distracted me from the very important task of turning the wall into a brittle piece of clay I could shatter with my fists.
I couldn’t breathe, so I meditated to the beating of my heart. My pulse slowed, obeying the commands of my mind to conserve oxygen. Time slowed, drawn out into a thin, bright wire that separated me from the world of the dead. If I didn’t escape the cell, not even my core would save me from drowning.
The wall chipped and gave way to my fingertips, but only its surface. It was too strong. I couldn’t defeat it like this.
But maybe there was another way.
I couldn’t stop my serpents from gathering more and more water aspects, so I helped them. I focused everything I had on pulling more aspects into the chamber and fueled them with bursts of jinsei from my core. I didn’t hold anything back. I needed more water,
