To the stars, we must return. Our home is beyond here, far, far beyond. Return to the origin, remember what we were, and see how this place is but a shadow.

  “Power doesn’t come from nothing.”

  Those are the words Corinth leaves me with before heading back to the house. My brother had the gall to look exasperated with me as he said it even, throwing his hand up like it should naturally be the most evident thing in the world.

  I push away thoughts of him, focusing on the small rock in the middle of the dirt patch in front of me. After asking him for instruction, I should be the one embarrassed by actually expecting any to come. Instead of telling me how to do what he asks, he just screws up his face like he is trying to puzzle out how I can be so ignorant.

  This isn’t going so well.

  With the sun having fallen past the horizon, I continue sitting at the top of the hill, ignoring my mother as she comes out onto the porch to call me in to eat. She gives up after a minute, throwing up her hands as well, mumbling as she stalks back inside. Corinth must get it from her.

  A small fire sits on the top of the hill beside me, a light giving flickering illumination to my trial. Sweat has long dried on my clothes, the cool evening breeze made stink of my toil throughout the day.

  “Corinth,” I can’t help but scoff, staring at the rock. “Just wants to impress everyone. Sure, I’ll carry that tree, no need to strain yourself. Look how cool I am. No need to dig, I’ll just wave my hand and the earth will jump out of my way because I am the big impressive man.”

  Even my insults have lost any bite. Today has been shit.

  I fall back, catching myself on my hands, and stare at the arriving stars for a while. I notice so many more twinkling overhead than I ever did as a child, seeing color painted in the heavens that was absent to me before. These new eyes are a blessing; there is so much to the world that I was never able to notice before.

  Movement catches my attention, and I see Janna walking out from a new guest house built behind the main property. She wears simple clothes, no armor on her now, a sword slung over her shoulder and a lantern held out to the side. She pauses for a moment as she passes in front of the closed barn door, turning her face to look up at me. Our eyes meet for a moment, the woman offering me a nod before she continues around to behind the barn. I watch her a while longer, seeing her place her lantern down and begin to move through flowing sword-forms.

  I know almost nothing about weapons. Halford tried to teach me more than once, and I allowed him, finding his enthusiasm for them to be so cute, but nothing about it ever stuck. The issue is how rigid they are. My brother could paint a picture with the blade, but when I see him fight it is so simple, so formulaic. His strength is incredible, but it is not a path for me.

  My mind returns to the conversation with Corinth, trying to understand what he was talking about. He tends to use flowery, learned, language when he tries to explain things. I should make more of an effort to show that I don’t understand the explanations. The more he talks, the less I want to show him that though. He is like Halford in that way, too caught up in his own words to watch how they land.

  “People think we call ourselves mages because we throw around magic,” he said. “But everyone produces magic if they are a magician. It is not the role that defines the mage, but the mage’s relation to power.”

  He was talking about mana, trying to show me something, but after just having burnt through my entire supply of mana over the course of a few hours, it was difficult to pay him the proper attention. Mana, the fabric of magic, and according to my brother, tiny round objects that are attracted to mass and carry some connection with will. We generate it somehow. No idea how, but that is what he said.

  I take a few deep breaths, refocusing my mind as I watch Janna down in the yard, practicing her swordswomanship by lantern light. I told Corinth that I would work harder, harder than anyone, so how could I let myself be outdone now? Checking my vital energies, I find my mana almost fully recovered.

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  My soul presence rolls off me like a simple breeze. It is harder here to release it, like something is always pushing down on me, a suppressing force that comes from the red-haired magician eating baked turkey in the house. Even struggling, the most I can expand it is ten feet away from myself, but five is enough to fully encompass the stone on the barren ground.

  I push at it, willing it to move, and nothing happens for a long moment. Eventually, it wiggles a bit, but now I know this to be the false wiggling of my soul presence affecting it. I strain, trying to push my mind into it, but it refuses to budge. I find that I am holding my breath, and all of my concentration evaporates as I pants on top of the hill. With a groan, I fall back into the grass, turning my eyes to the sky once more.

  Dark clouds overhead obscure the stars, leaving me only the hazy moon to look at. How could this be so difficult? I am able to do so many things with magic, conjure fire, create an entire extra-dimensional space to store things inside of, and create and manipulate the black sand. How can moving a rock be beyond me? Sighing, I pull some of the black sand from my inventory.

  Within the shroud of my aura, the sand flies, churning in on itself in a ball that hovers over my hand. Not the first time that I have taken the sand out today, I try and study what it is that I do with it. The mechanism for my manipulation of the sand remains hidden even to me. Somehow, I know in my mind that I have control over it, the natural instinct embedded on my soul from the essentia that grants me the power. My fingers play like at piano keys, the sand hopping and rotating in the air, forming patterns at my whim.

  Corinth said that power doesn’t come from nothing before he stormed off. Staring at the sand, I try to understand what he might have meant. How is it that I can manipulate it? Simply changing its shape, and moving it around, takes some mana from me. Not much, but the drain is noticeable if I use it for a long time. Where does that mana go? How does it go from invigorating my soul and move into the black sand? Suddenly, I must be doing something to make inanimate matter levitate in front of me.

  Novelty strikes me, and I close the Eye of Volaash as I watch the sand, looking at it with only my dragon's eye. I focus on it, pushing the ball to rapidly change shape as fast as I can, straining the drain on my mana as harshly as I can. I keep at that for more than thirty minutes, forcing transformation after transformation on the black mass, watching it all the while.

  At first, I think that what I catch might be a trick of the light, an interplay between the sheen of the sand and the fire that I started in a pit nearby. I run the sand through the transformations again, catching the same reflection. It is only when my one eye starts to drift, the world becoming unfocused and a bit blurry, that I see the gleam. There, extending from my index finger like a fine, gossamer silk, is a strand. I freeze, not daring to move, catching the link in a state of suspended animation. Terrified that I might lose the sight, I still bring my hand closer to my face, keeping my vision unfocused. There are more strands as well, spider silk extending from each of my fingers, extending out toward the mass of dark sand where they split into too many pieces to count. So thin, I can’t see any movement in them, but I know that my mana travels from them and into the sand.

  Still watching, I attempt a manipulation, gasping as I see the strands roil and jump as if each one is connected to a separate grain of sand. The complexity of the interplay overwhelms me, and I have to drop my hand after only a moment. How can I possibly be doing something like this without seeing it? The forms of the dancing strands are beyond me, their movement far too coordinated to be something that I am doing. And yet, who else is there but me to move them?

  Hours pass as I stare at the strands, watching them move and writhe as I shift about the sand. This is what Corinth was talking about, I am convinced of that. Power doesn’t come from nowhere, I see that. Picking myself up, I return my attention to the stone on the ground in front of me. I reach out with my free hand, keeping the ball levitating above my other, focusing on the strings of mana to give me inspiration. Nothing happens.

  The strands of mana never come. For hours I try, I strain, I burn through all of my mana trying to bring the barest hint of connection between me and the stone. Nothing.

  Corinth arrives after the first cockcrow, finding me defeated at the top of the hill once more, a plate of eggs in his hand.

  “Any luck?” he asks.

  I look up at him. “I tried all night.”

  “I can tell.” He puts the plate on the ground next to me. “And?”

  Looking down at my breakfast, I shake my head. “I can move the rock, but not how you said to do it.”

  My brother studies me for a long while before shrugging. “As long as you are doing it with magic manipulation, I don’t much care for the method. Now, show me.”

  A bit surprised by his reaction, I hold up my hand, and show him.

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