Total pages in book: 214
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
Put people in life-or-death situations often enough, and I guess they have to blow off steam somehow.
I find my eyes scanning the room for Raith. He's not hard to find. He's at least half a head taller than the next tallest first-year, his broad back stretching the white uniform across shoulders that seem carved from stone. The other fires all eat quietly with him in the center, occasionally shooting him admiring glances.
My gaze drifts further, and I notice Bastian at the legacy table with the handful of other legacy airs. The legacies make up the smallest number of us, and there are only three other legacy airs in the first-years. Unlike the animated chatter at our table, his face is serious as he barely touches his food. Suddenly, his eyes lift and point straight at me across the large room with unsettling precision. I quickly look back at my plate, a shiver crawling up my spine.
Bastian knows more about me than anyone here, and yet I know next to nothing about him. And if the unbound book says I’m something so dangerous I shouldn’t be allowed to exist, what does it say about Bastian if he’s trying to protect me? Trying to help me?
I make excuses to go straight back to my room after dinner. Ambrose, Beck, and Mireen all insist on walking me to my room because it's not safe to be around campus by ourselves anymore.
As soon as I'm alone again, I pull the unbound book from beneath my bed and decide on a different tactic tonight. I'll decode the first few words of each chapter until I think I've found one that might give me some clues on how to use this affinity to channel better. History lessons and deeper truths can wait until after I survive the water trial.
I pull the folded paper key Bastian gave me from my bra, frowning when I notice it has smeared slightly after a day of sweating and training with it tucked so close. I may have to find a better place to hide it from now on.
I honestly don't know how Bastian had time to decipher the book and create the key from scratch in such a short period. The intelligence required for such a thing is frankly terrifying. On one hand, it’s reassuring to know someone so capable is in my corner. On the other? It’s worrying. Someone that sharp could easily manipulate me. Use me for their own goals.
But there’s nothing to be done about it for now. All I can do is focus on learning more about what I am. Until I know that, I can’t begin to guess what the right path is.
My fingers are clumsy with anticipation as I work through the cipher. It takes nearly half an hour, but I finally spot the word "channeling" in the first sentence of a page about halfway into the book. I spend the next hour lost in the work of decoding the pages, my eyes burning and back aching from hunching over the book.
Finally, the words begin to assemble into something coherent, revealing secrets that just might mean I'll finally be able to make some progress. The relief is like water after a full day in the sun pulling heavy nets of fish.
Progress.
A slow smile spreads over my face as I let that idea sink in.
The pages talk about something I’ve sensed but haven’t known how to do yet. To not just absorb the elemental essence of objects or people I touch, but to draw it inward from the world around me through the air itself. If possible, it could completely change my fortunes here.
I set down the book and start practicing the new techniques until I'm too tired to keep my eyes open.
For the first time since arriving at Confluence, I fall asleep with something that feels dangerously close to hope.
9
Passages from the book Bastian gave me have run through my mind on repeat all morning like a desperate prayer I can't stop reciting. The book is currently hidden beneath my mattress, leaving me to poke and prod the ideas in my mind instead.
Even my increasingly terrifying nightmares of a beast in dark waters hunting me can’t dim my excitement. Not today.
"Unbound are vessels. Empty chalices waiting to be filled. The paradox of flesh—to be nothing and everything at once. In their emptiness, they promise both creation and destruction."
After weeks of being left to probe in the dark for answers about what I am, I'm finally getting scraps of truth. Even if most of the passages are vague and often unclear, they're starting to stitch together to form a fuzzy picture about what it means to be unbound.
Last night's reading did provide one clear, undeniable insight, though. An insight I should be able to use. All this time, I've been trying to pull water from within myself. It's how our instructors teach us to channel, and it's the way I hear everyone else talking about what it feels like. But that's not how my affinity works. The unbound don't generate power; they borrow it. They take it.