Chapter 47: The Shape of Parting.

I pulled Ash through the corridors of the Academy without explanation. She asked twice where we were going. I said “training” and kept walking. She asked a third time. I did not answer, and she stopped asking.

People glanced at us as we passed. Word of the Arbiter had spread, and today, more people than not gave me a wide berth as we passed. They pressed their backs against the wall, stopped their conversations at our passage, only to then resume them once we left. Ash said nothing, though I was starting to understand her now. She wanted to say something.

I did not know how to get to where I intended. One hallway blended into another, which blended into another still. When I finally considered forcing the answers out of a student, we turned a corner, and there it was. One of the training yards I had seen before.

The training yard was a long stretch of grass bordered by stone pillars, open to the sky. Perhaps three dozen students occupied the space. Most sat cross-legged on the ground with their eyes closed, their marks glowing faintly in the morning light. Most of these had Lines, though I saw the occasional Sigil. A few sparred near the far end. There were scents, dozens of different Essences blending into each other.

I glanced around, then steered us to the farthest corner, away from everyone else. A few students glanced at my horns as we passed. Whatever focus they’d had cracked in my mere presence. They stared, and they stared openly. One of them fell over from where she was sitting cross legged in the grass. Ash walked close beside me, her hand resting near the sword at her hip.

“I don’t understand what we’re doing here,” Ash said. “We are going to train, aren’t we? Like we did in the forest? But…why here?”

“We are,” I said. “This is a suitable enough place for it.” I sat on the grass, and slowly set down the satchel, before I gestured for Ash to sit across from me. She lowered herself slowly, the sword settling across her lap. I looked at it. Then I looked at her.

“My power,” I held up my right hand, “cannot heal the boy,” I said. “The wrongness and his channels are fused. Ruin decays what it touches, but it cannot peel apart two things that have grown together so completely until they have become the same thing. Not without destroying both.” I held her gaze. Then I pointed at her left arm. “But your power can. I am certain of it.”

Ash stared at me. I watched the understanding settle over her face, followed swiftly by something else. Something that made her look smaller than she had been moments ago. “I can’t do something like that,” she said. She said the words quickly. More quickly than I was used to from her. “I know I did something…with her.” Ash said, looking around. There was no one near us. I had made it so. “But this is different,” her voice was lower. “I didn’t even know what I was doing then. It was all instinct. This time you want me to use my mark…inside him. This is way harder, even I can tell that much. If I do something like this…I’ll hurt him, or worse.”

The speed and certainty of the refusal struck me as odd. One would think a Hero would reach for anything that might help the frail. “You will practice,” I said. “As you are now, you will do him only harm. We will change that.” Ash only looked more concerned now than she had before. I still did not understand.

I picked a small pink flower from the grass at the edge of the yard. I set it on the ground between us. The petals caught the morning light and held it. It was a simple thing, pretty in its own way. I might not have noticed that, once.”I want you to Sever its color from the rest of it,” I said. “You will leave the flower whole, while removing only the pink.”

Ash looked at the flower. She looked at me. “That doesn’t make sense! You’re telling me I could do something like that? What does ‘removing the pink’ even mean?!”

“If I am right about your power, yes. I believe I am. As for what that will result in, I do not know.” I said, arms folded.

Ash looked at me for a moment longer. Then, she drew her sword and moved it towards the flower. I saw her mark light up. It lit up with red, the color of the disguise she wore. Ash moved the blade atop the flowers, from petal to stem. The flower split into two perfect halves, each one still brilliantly pink, and drifted apart in the grass.

I reached over and picked out another flower. “Again.”

The blade came down. There were now two halves. I picked another. There were two halves. I picked another. It split in two halves. Each cut was perfect and each one was exactly the same. I glanced down at the remains of the flowers.”Let’s try the stone,” I said. I pulled a small one from the dirt beside me and set it between us. “Sever the hardness from it without severing the whole.”

Ash frowned. She raised her sword and drew Parting through the air above the stone. The stone split in two. Both halves were still just as hard.

“The leaf,” I said, holding one out. “See how it stands? Sever its rigidity.”

Ash split the leaf, and both halves remained just as rigid as they had been as one whole. I was beginning to see it now. The pattern in how Ash was using her power. Or perhaps how her power was using her. I said nothing. “We will try smaller things,” I said instead. I gestured toward the grass around us.

The targets changed. There were insects in the grass, if one looked. I found a beast Ash called a beetle. It was a small, red-shelled thing that moved slowly across a stone. I set it before her. “Sever the red from its shell,” I said. “While leaving the creature whole.”

Ash raised her hands. With the sword, she drew a line in the air. The beetle fell into two halves so clean they did not separate at first. They sat together, still touching, then one half slid from the other, and the red was still there, bright on both pieces. I found another. A worm-like thing that curled when I picked it up. Ash drew another line in the air above it. The creature split. Its two halves trembled next to each other.

The trembling had started in Ash’s hand. It was slight. She hid it by tightening her grip, until her fingers turned pale.

It was impossible not to notice, with how keenly I watched her. I had seen demons do this before, when they faced something they had no hope of facing. I did not think it was the same thing.

A flying insect landed on the grass between us. Ash looked at it. She looked at me. On my nod, she raised the blade. The wings separated from the body in perfect silence. The creature writhed in the grass.

I reached down and picked it and the wings up. It had not yet died, but it would soon. There was still a flicker fading even as I held it. I whispered Bloom between the tiny body and the wings and ignored the impression that came. White light pooled from my left hand, and I felt the shape of what had been severed, and I filled the gap. The wings attached again. The creature twitched, then fluttered, then lifted from my palm and disappeared into the air.

I looked at Ash. “You should have told me this was difficult for you.”

Ash watched the insect go. Her grip on the sword had not loosened. “It wasn’t bothering me that much.” She paused. The morning light was in her hair, and I could see the line of her jaw, set hard. “I do not mind killing, when there is a purpose to it. I’m good at killing. That’s what I was made for, after all.”

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Something inside of me stirred. The Ember Core hummed beneath my ribs. I pressed my hand to my chest for a moment and then I let it fall. “Give me your sword.”

Ash went still. It was a different stillness from her concentration. I recognized it well. It was the stillness of a creature that has heard something it does not wish to hear. “Lys-“

“You heard me.” I held out my hand. Ash looked at it. She looked at the blade across her lap. Her fingers had whitened around the grip. I waited.

“I can’t use Parting without it,” she said. “I’ve tried.” The words came quickly. Too quickly. I had not heard Ash speak so before.

“You used it on yourself when you were carving your Essence Core,” I said. “There was no blade then. You needed no sword. You needed nothing but your will.” I kept my hand extended. “The sword is making the cutting be about the weapon. This power is yours alone. You must learn to use it, alone.”

Ash did not move. I could see the war on her face. She had buried her armor once, but I had not seen her consider burying her sword beside it. I did not understand once, but I understood something of it now. I waited. It was still a hard thing, to wait instead of take. I would wait. For Ash, I would wait.

Her grip loosened. One finger at a time. The knuckles went from white to red to the color of her skin. She lifted the sword from her lap and held it out, and the motion was slow. I took it. The steel was warm from her hands. I set it on the grass behind me, far enough that reaching for it would require reaching and choosing.

“You will try again, and you will learn. The sword makes the cutting about the weapon,” I said. “Without it, the power is yours alone. If you think about it only in terms of the blade, then you will only learn how to cut as a blade does. Your power is more than that. It is you who decides how and what you cut.” I looked at her steadily. “Am I wrong?”

Ash did not argue. She looked at her own hands, empty now. Her fingers flexed once, and then squeezed shut. She tried to grip a pommel that was no longer there. “You are not a Hero anymore, Ash. The class is gone. If you wish to keep the sword, then keep it. But do not carry it because you think you must.”

Something crossed her face. “And what am I now,” Ash asked quietly, “if not a Hero?”