“Can you feel it?” Faryn asked.
I nodded. The wood path was now carved inside my body.
Morning sunlight spilled across the clearing as Faryn set up a doll woven from long grass and fallen twigs.
“Feel the tightness in your tendons.” She extended her arm, palm outward.
I imitated the gesture. The tightness was there, not just the strain of muscle but the presence of the wood path within it.
“Feel it in your eyes,” she said. “They are another place where the wood path is strong, forging a connection with those tendons.”
There it was, just as she had said. Like a thread running through my body, from my eyes, down through my neck and chest, along my arm, to the palm of my hand.
“Look at the target, not at your hand. The pathway will guide itself. Tighten again, and…”
A pair of thorns shot from her hand, one after the other, and buried themselves in the target.
I concentrated on the path of wood and pushed the energy through me, straining to make it happen.
A single thorn flew from my hand and hit a tree three feet from the target.
“It worked!” I laughed out loud. “I did it!”
I tried again. This time, my aim was better, almost hitting the target.
I looked at my hand. The way the thorn had flown out, it felt as though there should have been a hole there, but the skin was untouched, just the same as before.
“You can practice more later,” Faryn said. “First, you should try the other technique.”
“The other technique?”
“Plank Pillar. The reason why you absorbed that bark bear core.”
“Show me.”
“I can’t.” She looked down at the forest floor, her smile fading. “Ever since the attack on my guild, I haven’t been able to expand my arts. I was gifted for one so young, but a 12-year-old has her limits, and that day scarred my spirit in a way that has never healed. It may always hold me back.”
“I’m sorry.” I laid a hand on her shoulder. “If you don’t want to think about this, we can stop. I can find someone else to teach me.”
“No.” She placed a hand on mine and gave me a sad smile. “I want to help. I just need you to know my boundaries.”
“Boundaries are meant to be broken.”
“Such a humorous young man.” She chuckled and brushed my cheek. “But we should get to work.”
Over the next hour, she explained the Plank Pillar technique to me. Through her description, I found another way of guiding the Vigor along the paths of wood, a technique I hadn’t seen before.
When we were done, she went to the other side of the clearing.
“Ready?” she called out.
“Ready!” I replied.
Faryn came running toward me.
I let the Vigor flow down through my legs, into the ground, and back up again.
A pillar of wooden planks burst out of the earth where I was looking, right in front of Faryn. She hit it at full speed and fell to the ground.
I rushed over, worried that I might have hurt her. Instead, I found her laughing.
“Well done,” she said as I helped her to her feet. “I’m not sure you even needed me for that.”
“Maybe not needed,” I said. “But I always want you around.”
Her smile took on a sad tilt.
“And I want to be here helping you,” she said. “But I have to get back to my duties at the guild. I’ll walk with you back to the temple, but then, we have to part ways, for now.”
That saddened me too. I was enjoying learning about the Seven Realms, but it was far more fun to learn with her than with Tolin.
Back at the Unwashed Temple, I returned to training with Tolin. He guided me as I practiced the Stinging Palm and Plank Pillar, as I strengthened the channels of the Vigor within me, and as I refined my swordsmanship. While Master Softpaw dozed on the veranda, Tolin talked at length about the culture I was now living in, giving me enough of the basics to get by.
Working for a security agency, I’d become used to learning covers and bluffing my way through the bits I didn’t know. But this wasn’t simply passing myself off as a security guard or a staff member at a corporation. It was trying to fit into an entirely different world, where almost every detail was different from my own.
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months as my training continued.
During the day, I was distracted by temple maintenance and by my lessons. Both were satisfying in their own ways. It was good to see the steady improvements to the building, as we turned it from a ramshackle ruin into a proud place of prayer. But it was even more satisfying to master my new skills and know that I was growing in power.
I dressed in simple clothes and let my hair grow out until I looked more like one of the locals. The one thing I couldn’t change was my eyes. No one else I had met since coming here had eyes of the same piercing blue.
Summer was easing into autumn, the first leaves turning brown on the trees, when master Tolin brought me the news we had been waiting for.
“Tomorrow is the testing day for entry into the Radiant Dragon Guild,” he announced over a breakfast of steamed tuna and sticky rice. We were sitting on the veranda, enjoying the warm, dry days while they lasted.
I was eager to learn more about the fire guild, even if it meant leaving the Unwashed Temple behind. I’d slowly come to appreciate the old caretaker’s dry wit, and his feline friend had become somewhat of a companion, too.
Master Softpaw leapt up onto the table and made a beeline straight for the tuna. Tolin picked the cat up and deposited him on the floor, to the sound of outraged mewling.
“Not for you.” Tolin tapped the cat on the head. “Just this bit.”
He put a generous portion of tuna down in front
