I had never seen Tana look quite so ragged.

Her honey brown hair had fallen out of its tie and spilled over her shoulders. Everything put her blue silk dress lay in a heap behind her, and her arms and legs were both dripping sweat onto the stone floor beneath her.

"Get yourself together, Puddles. You are getting sloppy." Precept Zetta shouted as she brought both of her Gemman back to where she stood opposite Tana.

She was not wrong.

Tana had caught the first gemman in her puddles at least a dozen times without much effort. When the second one had split off from the first, it had taken much more from her to catch them both, but she had done it. She had succeeded the ten times after that as well, but after each victory, she needed longer and longer to recover.

"I can't do it again." Tana cried, making no effort to wipe away her tears as her puddle receded from around her.

"You can," Zetta corrected her. "I know that you are near spent. When you release your power again, you'll likely be in bed for the rest of the day, but the time may come where all you need is one last working. If the difference between living and dying is holding on for just a little longer, you have to find a way to keep going. Ask yourself, Puddles. Do you want to keep going or do you want to die?"

For a moment, I thought she would quit. Her aura had nearly disappeared underneath her feet, and a sob broke through the heavy breaths that already wracked her chest.

"Ire wouldn't. You saw that yesterday. She'll keep going until I have to make her stop." Precept Zetta said and shrugged her shoulders.

It was true.

If it had been up to me, my hand would have still been being crushed by the gemman. It had not been, which was why my right palm was still sealed and I had been made to rest against the wall until class was over.

I was glad for that.

I had not spent enough time against it to realize it before, but I liked the wall.

Tana's fists clinched. She groaned as she straightened her back and stood tall. The watery blue underneath her feet came flooding back out and she nodded at Precept Zetta.

"I knew that would get you. One more time now, come on!" Zetta called out with a proud smile on her face.

The gemmen each took a single step before breaking into full sprints towards Tana.

Every step they took, threw up splashes of her watery blue.

The one on the left stayed upright and worked itself around to her side, just on the inside of her puddle.

The one on her right kicked itself into a slide that was aimed at her bare ankles.

Her eyes snapped to it a moment too late. There wasn't enough time, she would be beaten. Even if she caught the gemman with her power like she had so many before, its momentum would be too much for her to stop. As tired as she was, she would not have the strength to do it.

Plia used my cloak to hide her face, and Mallory clutched my arm like it was the only thing holding her to the ground.

Vanda only watched, but she seemed far less worried than the others did.

They were part of the reason I liked the wall.

The stone we sat on was very cold, but being close to them made it not so bad. For once, while we had been sitting together and watching Tana's struggle, I had not felt separate from them.

I would miss that too if I left Lun. Leaving would likely mean never seeing any of them again, and that was one of the few things that brought sadness to my thoughts of going back to the manor.

Tana stomped her right foot down into her puddle in frustration.

She knew that she had been bested and hated it, that was easy enough for me to see.

When her aura splashed up her leg from her stomp however, it did not come washing back down uselessly.

It flooded up her leg and carried her into the air.

The gemman struck the spring of aura at its base, where Tana had been only moments before, and met its end.

Just as quickly as she had gone up, Tana came back down like a flood and drowned the gemman in her blue. What happened to it next I did not know, but not a single sapphire sliver could be seen once Tana's feet touched the ground again.

"What was that! How did you do that!" Mallory shook my arm and cheered.

Plia peeked out from behind my cloak and clapped for Tana's success. Vanda joined her, but all of them had seemed to have forgotten something.

Tana took a deep breath and a smile spread across her face just as the other gemman appeared behind her and locked its arms around her.

She lost up there. I thought to myself, knowing that the mistake she had just made was one that I could have easily done myself.

She tried to struggle against the sapphire arms that bound her, but her will had run out.

All of her aura lost its luster as it dried to dust and she went limp.

"You're dead, Puddles. If my workings were sorcerers, witches, creatures, demons, or any other thing that would love to snuff your little light out, they would have," Zetta said as she went to the honey haired underwitch and took her from the gemman. "But what you did before that, the whole springing into the air, that was something. That was growth. That was what all this is about. Well done."

Vanda had stood without being asked, and she took Tana from our teacher as soon as she reached them.

Zetta turned back to all of us without taking a breath. "To dance on the edge of what you are able to do and what is necessary, cutting a path forward when the one you have been in ends, thats is when you find yourself, girls. That is when you learn what you truly are."

Vanda took Tana out of the room as she began to cry, but Zetta did not call one of us to the center of the room like she normally would.

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She strode over and threw herself on the floor in front of us before slicking her blue black hair back with her one hand.

"When I was younger, back when this side didn't get colder than the other," She started and patted the place on her middle where her missing arm should have been. "And no one knew me as Mon or Precept, I got cornered in a cave by several of Mythmaker's abominations."

A sky filled with acrid smoke, a beast flying on wings shaped metal, The Lady in Red putting an end to it with her implement, I remembered it all at the mention of the mythmaker's name.

Mallory started to raise her hand and blurt out a question, but I placed mine over hers and held my finger to my lips to try and keep her silent.

Zetta was telling us something for free, none of us had needed to earn a question for her to start. That could only mean that it was important, and interrupting her might make her change her mind.

Thankfully, Mallory understood. She relaxed back against the wall and used my knee to prop up her feet as Zetta continued.

"Nasty things they are. You can't just incapacitate them or scare them off. If they can still draw breath, they will hunt you until they can't. For every one that I managed to slay, another came crawling into the cave. Fowl with razor talons and breath made of fire, wolves that walked like men and would tear into each other with fangs of steel, coiling serpents that were made of blades, whatever you are imagining, it was worse."

Plia had curled up behind my cloak so tightly that it would have choked me if she clinched her fingers. Mallory had kept herself quiet, but only by clamping both her hands over her mouth.

Zetta laughed. "You just wait until you get your first crescent, Plia. Then you will be fighting them."

The little underwitch nearly snatched my cloak out from around my shoulders as she shook in obvious fright.

"I was losing ground, was coming to the end of my power, and had no hope of winning. There were too many for me to slay. When my back literally pressed against the back wall of the cave, I knew that the tale of Zetta would end there," Our teacher carried on as I comforted Plia. "But then, I saw daylight leaking through a crack in the cave. It was not large enough for me to fit through, but I was a sorceress. If I willed it to be it would."

Mallory could control herself no longer. She threw herself forward and nearly head butted Zetta as she rolled onto her hands and knees. "You broke it open and escaped, didn't you?"

"No. I could have, but I didn't. The entire reason that I had led the abominations to the cave was so the group of refugees that I was escorting to Zenithcidel could escape. If I had fled, all I would have done is put those I was meant to be guarding in danger." Zetta corrected her.

Our teacher took a breath and looked up at the grey stones of the ceiling. "This is my point. I could not run, but I was not strong enough to fight my way out. It is what I said before, I was on the edge of what I could do and what was necessary. That edge is sharp, it cuts and you will bleed, but there is no greater teacher than pain. I learned something about myself then. I understood with no uncertainty that I was not someone who would abandon my duties to save my own life. In that understanding, I became myself and found the strength to survive."

"You transformed? Like Underwitch Maletta during the attack?" I asked in barely more than a whisper.

Zetta raised an eyebrow. "You saw that did you? Transformation is the wrong way to think about it. You aren't becoming something new, you are manifesting what you already are, what the truth of you is way down in your soul. It always starts small, a leg, an arm, your head. Mine was my missing appendage here. So no, it was not like what Maletta did. She can manifest herself fully."

"But you survived? You killed all the monsters and lived?" Mallory demanded, her face only a hands breadth away from Zetta's.

Our teacher made a sour face and knocked her head against Mallory's. "Have you been drinking? Mothers help me, I can smell it on your breath."

I thought about what Zetta had told us and found it to be true.

When I had first pulled my cord from the channel in my navel, it had been because I was watching Anna be carried out of my reach and into the sky by one of the lich's hand horrors.

Opening the channel on my left hand had been because The Circle of The Nine Mothers had just sealed my right.

Finding my blue and felling the arrogant tree had only happened because of the looming threat of Azza.

Apparently, I was the kind of soul that could do impossible things if I was scared enough.

Mallory covered her mouth and scowled at our teacher. "No. I wouldn't do that before class. I did last night, but that's it, I swear."

"Well then, you need to brush your teeth better. Get out of here and go do it. You too, Plia. Class is over for the day." Zetta said as she stood.

All of us helped each other stand, and I stretched so fully that I thought I might faint at the top of it.

"Take Puddles's things with you. She doesn't need to be worrying about them right now. And Plia, come to class prepared. Tomorrow is all about you," Zetta said as we walked towards the door. Just before I stepped out into the hall after the others, she placed her hand on my shoulder and stopped me. "Not you, Ire. I told you that I would give you detention if you showed up out of uniform again. We will see to that now."

I swallowed and looked down at the rose red color of my nails. "Yes, Precept Zetta."

Knowing that nothing she could do to me was anything close to what I had been through before was one thing. Walking begin my teacher towards a door at the end of the hall without fear was another.

Punishment was punishment. It did not matter if it was being stolen out of my bed or dusting the library like some of the others had been made to do, it was all the same.

I had done something wrong, and I would pay the price.

"This is fairly simple," Zetta said as she opened the door and pushed me out into a snowy courtyard that was almost identical to the one that Sam had taken me to not very long before. "You are going to learn why you are given boots instead of sandals. You are to stand out here until you agree to wear your uniform properly. Understand?"

As soon as the outside air touched the exposed skin of my feet, I realized just what that price would be. She wanted me to freeze. She wanted me to get so cold that I fell to my knees and begged for my boots through chattering teeth.

I thought about giving in. If I knew my nails were painted, what did it matter if I couldn't see them?

I thought about it, but I could not bring myself to do it.

It was a silly thing, but I wanted to wear what I wanted to wear, and that was enough for me to make my decision.

"Yes, Precept Zetta." I said as I planted my feet in the powdery snow and tried to ignore the cold.

Zetta stepped out of the door with a curious look on her face. "You would willingly suffer through this just to wear those sandals?"

"Yes, Precept Zetta." I answered with no doubt in my mind.

My teacher smiled and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. "Strong girl, get inside. You figured it out."

"Figured what out?" I asked in confusion, unable to make myself move.

"The uniform rule, it's meant to be broken. What better way to make you girls want to express yourself than to give you something to rebel against." Zetta laughed and shook me free of my frozen state.

"So I can just wear what I want now? Just like that?" I asked as she led me back inside.

Zetta laughed again. "Haven't you seen the underwitch that walks around in nothing but her cloak? We want you to be yourselves, but each of you has to find the courage to do it."

I thought I was beginning to understand, but the thoughts of the nearly naked underwitch made it hard for me to be sure.

"Now, there is a binding that I'm supposed to perform to keep you from telling the others. If they don't figure it out for themselves, there really isn't a point." Zetta explained.

She meant to bind my words like The Mothers had done to my mother. I didn't want that. Far too much of me was already bound and sealed. I would have rather locked my sandals away and wore my black laced boots for the rest of my life than have that happen.

"But, I don't like bindings. Nasty things they are. So it is fortunate that I feel like I can trust you, Ire. Am I right in that feeling?" Zetta asked.

My name wasn't Ire, the eyes she was looking into were no mine, and the person she thought she knew was a disguise to hide my real identity, but she was not wrong.

"Yes, Precept Zetta. I will not speak of it to the others." I said and meant every word.

She ruffled my hair with her one hand and repeated the two words that I would miss dearly once I was gone. "Strong girl.

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