After failing to so much as nick either of the monsters that Zetta had created, I had spent most of the night recovering from the loss that holding my cord for hours had caused. When I woke the next morning, still tired and very sore, I had hoped that my teacher had changed back to how she had been before.

She had not.

From the moment I had stepped into the classroom and succeeded at ignoring Alexei for the entire walk from my quarters, I had been under attack.

My chord was no help. The wolf was too fast, the false Azeralphane was never where it had been when I had attempted to strike it. Over and over again I would try to defend myself, only to end up struck and falling back down to my knees.

Precept Zetta would give me just long enough to take a breath and drag myself back up to my feet before sending her gemman at me again.

I failed so many times that I had forgotten how many times I had tried. Mallory, Plia, Vanda, and worst of, Tana, had watched me fail so many times that I knew they must have been bored with it.

Somewhere around the time we should have been going to the dining hall for lunch, I was offered the chance to quit.

I refused.

I had not forgotten about Rory or the seemingly infinite amount of dark and terrible things that waited for me outside of chaos. It may have been because I had come face to face with sorcerers and horrors both, but Zetta's story had left a mark on me. I should have given up. What I was being asked to do was far beyond my abilities, but I just could not force myself to say the words. Maybe it was the high from my aura, maybe I was just too dumb to know when to quit, I did not know, but I had climbed back to my feet again without the need to understand it.

Not even Plia complained that I was the reason they would be stuck watching me flail around and fail instead of having their midday meal.

My instance brought a tight lipped smile to my teacher's face, and that was just another reason for me to continue.

I could not have what I wanted, not then at least. Erosette had never felt so far away, but if I could find a way to break the sapphire shapes that were breaking me, I would have done something that Tana had not, and that small victory would be enough for a time.

Just as it had been for nearly, Zetta sent the twisted gemman rushing at me. I swung my bright blue cord, missed, and was knocked back down to my knees.

Stand up, swing, get hit, fall, stand up again.

My sweat soaked Ire's black hair, and long after the time we should have been returning from lunch, I had stripped down to nothing but my uniform dress and my black laced boots.

My cloak and jacket lay in a pile behind me, with the vial necklace of good things that I normally wore around my neck resting atop them like a pillow.

I was felled once more, but unlike all the times before, my focus failed. Sweat dripped from my brow and flooded the azure dust my chord had left beneath me as I leaned forward and panted on my hands and knees.

What sounded like distant footsteps echoed in my ears, and it was not until I felt the hand on my back that I realized Zetta had come to me.

"Easy, Ire. We don't want you ending up hollow. Have you had enough?" The sharp featured sorceress whispered to me.

Before I could find the breath to answer, Tana called out from where she sat. "It's obvious that she is too weak to succeed. When will it be my turn?"

"Can I tell you a secret, Ire?" Zetta ignored the honey haired underwitch and asked.

I nodded, still unable to speak.

"I care about all of my students, but she might be the one I care about the least." Zetta chuckled through a raspy whisper.

I was too tired for the sound to come out, but a laugh shook my whole body as it worked its way up from my belly.

Growing even quieter, Zetta spoke again. "Listen. I know it seems like this is impossible, but you are so close to succeeding. If you are spent, it's best we stop for the day, but I can't make that call. It's your decision."

Her hand on my back was not a comfort like it was when it was Anna's, but being touched made it far too easy for the tears to fall from my eyes as my afterglow washed over me.

"But I'm so bad at that!" I cried, my voice echoing out in the mostly empty room.

"You're not bad, you're young. What are you, twenty five? The fact that you can make that whip of yours so consistently is far beyond what most first crescents can do." Zetta chuckled again.

"No! I'm bad at decisions," I sobbed and rolled over onto my side. "And I'm only nineteen."

"What! You're a baby!" Mallory stood up and shouted from the far wall.

Tana had stood as well, and had taken a step towards the center of the room. "Can she not do this in the covery? She is a baby, and a baby that cannot stop crying should be put down for a nap."

Zetta snapped her fingers and silenced both of the underwitches before turning back to me. "Well, what do you want to do?"

I wanted to lay there and cry until all that was left of me was skin and bones. I wanted Tana to suddenly find that her mouth had been sown shut. I wanted Alexei to hurt the way he had hurt me.

I wanted Rory to still be one of Azza's pearls instead of a victim of Azeralphane.

I wanted the warden to come and tell me that there had been some unexplainable accident that had only made him think Tana was his daughter.

All of those things were impossible.

I wanted Anna to suddenly sense that something was wrong and come running up from the library to make me feel better. I wanted my mother to appear and take me to bed like she used to when I was little. I wanted Sam to come back out of the inner halls and be nice to me.

I wanted a glass of milk and something sweet to eat.

All of those things could happen, but not when I wanted them to.

I wanted to stop getting hit.

I wanted to catch those twisted gemman and shatter them into so many pieces that not even Zetta could put them back together.

I could do that, right then, but I had to stop crying first.

"I want to try again." I sniffled as I tried to stop my tears.

Zetta patted my back and gave me the softest smile I imagined she was capable of. "Strong lass, I knew you were tough like me."

She stood then and turned to face all the other moons. "Let's see if any of you have been paying attention. There are two things that Ire has failed to do. Either of them would have brought her to victory. Who can tell me what they are?"

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Mallory was the first to speak. "If she had broken those things, she would have won."

"That might have been the most stupid thing I have ever heard. Do you ever stop and-" Tana began.

I could see none of them. My back was turned as I crawled to my cast off uniform and took the little glass vial into my hands. Holding my cord for so long, keeping my channel open and my aura flowing into my working, it had brought on a sorrow that I was terrified my necklace could not shack off.

"Alright then, Puddles," Zetta said and cut Tana off. "If that was so stupid, then what do you think they are?"

The edges of the little silver moon dug into my palm as I squeezed the tiny glass. What remained of the aura that The Mother in Yellow had used to hide a little firefly in my clothes glimmered against the raven black lock of Anna's hair. It was a small jar of very good things, but in that moment, I wished that it was big enough for me to crawl into and hide.

"I, uhm." Tana stammered.

"You should know at least one of them, you were struck by it on our first day of class." Zetta said through a rough sigh.

Plia cleared her throat. "The explosion?"

"Hey! There you are, Plia. Well done!" Zetta cheered as she beat her fist against the half cloak that covered her chest.

The sorceress that had been charged with teaching us Conflict and Resolution was not a comforting woman. No part of her reminded me of my mother or Anna, but she had called me a strong lass. She had said that I was like her, and as I was drowning in the river of sorrow that my afterglow had brought onto me, that gave me the foothold I needed to rise above the surface once again.

"The first mistake that Ire has made, is that she has not used the full extent of her abilities. The second is the reason for the first, take a stab at it, Ire. What have you failed to do?" My teacher asked me as I climbed back up to my feet.

That was a long list, a very long list.

I looked at the wolf and at the false Azeralphane. I could see Alexei standing in the doorway out of the corner of my still teary eyes, but it was becoming easier and easier to ignore him.

I could not fail while he was watching.

I could not let him think I was weak.

I needed to show him that I was strong enough that his place as my guard was useless, that The Mothers had done nothing but waste his time when they had made me his ward.

From the first time the gemman charged me, I had been unable to hit them. My cord, no, my whip, that was what Zetta had called it, had been too slow. By the time the sapphire statues had reached me, they were too close for me to strike at again.

It had never occurred to me to try something else.

My fireworks might as well have not existed.

Just before I could answer my teacher's question, Tana opened her annoyingly cute mouth again and beat me to it. "All she has done is stand in one spot, swing, miss, and get struck. I have been watching it for two days, she has not even tried to adapt."

My fists clinched in anger at her words. She was exactly right, but it was the way she said it that made me want to lash out at her instead of my teacher's workings.

"Well done, Puddles. Listen," Zetta said as she walked back to the center of the room. "We are sorceresses. We shape reality to our will with the power of our souls. Vanda, why did you not try to break the gemman the other day?"

"Because I did not wish to, Precept Zetta. They are much too pretty to try and break." Vanda answered.

"Exactly! Ire, why did you choose to whip and lash my workings when there are countless ways they could be shattered?" Zetta asked me.

"Because it was what I knew how to do." I answered honestly.

"Naturally," Zetta nodded. "Puddles, when you broke yours, why did you choose to use your puddle?"

"It was the best way to do it. But why am I the only one still being called a stupid nickname?" Tana answered and asked.

Zetta ignored her question. "It was the best way for you to do it. There are sorceresses that could have broken it from a distance with nothing but a glance, and there are others that could never make one of Ire's whips. Do any of you understand?"

Mallory crossed her arms and nodded with a satisfied smile on her face. "We are each special in our own ways."

Zetta held up a finger and shook her head in disagreement. "No. You are each unique, there is a difference. What works for me, what I am able to do, could never work for you. The same is true for your talents. This uniqueness is beautiful and rare in a way that nothing else I have ever known is, but it comes with a grave danger."

Her sapphire aura game to light at the tips of her fingers and her twisted gemman came to life once again.

"Never let yourself become a prisoner to your own will. Using your aura, performing workings, think of it as knife blade cutting notches into a scrap of wood. If your strokes are too narrow, too focused on one place, you will become stuck. Before you know it, that wonderful potential you all carry would be caught in a rut, and you will limit yourselves." Zetta said as she turned her hard eyes back to me.

"It is not the strongest or most powerful that leave the field of battle alive, it is the ones who can think, grow, and change that survive. Which are you, Ire?" She asked as our eyes met.

Something began to well up inside of me.

Only long enough for me to notice, my teacher glanced towards the door.

I followed her gaze and saw that Anna had joined Alexei in the doorway.

What welled inside me overflowed and became a flood of cold will.

"Show me." Zetta commanded and her gemman rushed at me once again.

I stepped forward and threw my arm out to my side.

My whip unfurled from my palm like coils of freezing water. With a roll of my wrist and another step, I sent it streaking towards the false Azeralphane like I had so many times before.

I broke the flow of my aura not a moment later and ran forward.

That cold flood filled me further and it was all I could do to keep it from spilling out of my channel.

Zetta twitched her glowing fingers. Her gemman moved just far enough for my whip to miss them and crumble to the floor in a line of bright blue dust.

She was not fast enough to move them again before I reached them.

The second night of Amoranora, when the sky over Erosette had still had enough light for it to not truly be dusk, a firework had exploded over the city. It had thrown little werelights so far, that they had filled the garden behind the manor.

What erupted from my palm when I closed on the gemman put it to shame.

It put me against something hard and knocked the breath from my lungs, but I knew I had won before I ever heard the crystalline rain of what was left of my slain enemies.

My ears rang for so long, that my breath and my sight faded back in before it went quiet.

When I could finally make sense of where I was, I realized that I was being carried.

"There you are. Listen." Zetta smiled down at me.

"We are going to have to work on the recoil, but that was, Mothers help me, I can't think of a word that is good enough to describe it. I love it when I'm right, Ire. You know that don't you?" She said as she carried me towards the door.

The other new moons were still lined along the far wall. All their eyes were wide and all of them had my azure dust caught in their hair.

I began to cry again, and the loss that my firework had taken nearly put me to sleep.

"How are you carrying me? You only have one arm." I cried as my teachers sharp face went all blurry.

Tana stood in the aftermath of what I had done, rolling down her stockings and pulling them off of her feet.

Zetta laughed at my question and I saw that we had reached the door. "I shall leave her with you then? Take good care of her, she will likely be a mess for the rest of the night."

"Not him!" I shouted as I felt myself being lowered to my feet.

Sapphire dust rained down onto my boots and I would have fallen into it if Anna had not wrapped my arm over her shoulder and taken my weight from me.

"Come on you little monster. Let's get you what you need." My beloved said softly as she limped me into the covery.

My words came between the deep sobs that wracked my chest. "What are you doing here?"

"It's late, almost midnight. I was worried about you. The creep said you have been at this all day." Anna laughed.

She laid me down on one of the bare cots in the dark room and I flailed against the hard surface.

"Easy, easy, easy," Anna whispered and smoothed my hair back from my brow. "What's wrong? What do you need?"

That was a long list, a very, very, long list, but for all the things that were on it, all I could think about was Tana's stupid nails.

"I want to make my nails red, but I can't!" I cried out and beat my fists down at my sides.

It was far too small for two people, but Anna turned me onto my side and lay down next to me.

"Shhh. We can paint your nails. Take a breath, when you feel better, we will get you something to eat." She sighed as she brushed my hair back with her fingers.

I had never used more aura.

I had never felt an afterglow quite as deeply as I did then.

If Anna had not been there, if she had not been worried about me, if she had not been holding me, I knew without a doubt that I would have come apart at my seams.

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