Page 37 of Daemon Master

The return trip passed in silence. Adrian recalled Heartrender to rest while Seymour kept Tremorfist summoned. Though the watcher didn’t say a word, Adrian guessed it was in case Trailseeker returned. The knowledge that they might need to protect against his own former daemon filled him with fresh remorse.

Back at camp, he started a small fire and slumped beside it.

“I should go hunting,” Seymour said. “We need to keep our supplies up.”

They had nearly a month’s worth of rations stockpiled, but Adrian didn’t call Seymour on his blatant excuse to get away. He just nodded mutely.

Seymour turned to leave, then hesitated. “Tomorrow, we’ll begin your training.”

Adrian blinked, momentarily surprised out of his melancholy. “Training?”

“Sure. Now that you’ve got a better grasp on your aether, it’s time you learned to handle yourself properly in a fight. If you’re up for it, that is.”

Thinking again of his parents, Adrian jerked a nod. He might’ve failed Trailseeker, but he’d do everything he could to ensure that he learned from his mistake…and that, when Kali or other Serenity Corp agents inevitably found them, he’d be ready.

nine

Training

Adrian sat on thedamp forest floor, his eyes squeezed shut against the rustling trees. He inhaled deeply, holding his breath before expelling it in a rush. Aether wound through him like corded muscles. The energy had once been wild and untamed despite his best efforts to wrangle it. Now, his control rarely wavered, and his old dreams of daemon mastery no longer seemed quite so impossible. As long as he kept training, one day he’d be able to—

Something heavythumpedagainst his back, startling him from his meditation. His eyes shot open, and he stumbled to his feet, spinning to find Seymour standing there with a disapproving frown. Adrian’s eyes narrowed on the length of wood Seymour held loosely in one hand.

“Did you just smack me with that branch?”

The watcher’s frown deepened. “You’re lucky I didn’t thump you in your thick skull.”

“Is this a new training technique? If it is, I don’t approve.”

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Adrian stifled a sigh. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I’mmeditating, like you said.”

“No. I told you to open yourself up to the Great Aetheric Sea, not sit there and cycle aether.”

Adrian fought down his exasperation. After all, he owed Seymour for agreeing to train him…even if his methods left something to be desired. “What’s the difference?”

Seymour’s jaw tightened, and for a moment, Adrian feared he might stalk off. Instead, he said, “Close your eyes. Focus on your aether.”

Adrian did so, taking several soothing breaths. Soon, the rest of the world faded into the background as his mind floated along his aetheric flow.

Seymour’s soft voice echoed as if from across a gulf. “Imagine your aether slowly filling up every bit of your body. It starts at the tips of your toes, pooling there like liquid light.”

Obeying the watcher’s order, he envisioned his toes glowing with aether. It might’ve only been in his head, but the appendages seemed to tingle with pent-up static charge.

“Can you feel it?” Seymour asked.

He nodded faintly.

“Good. Let the light flow upward, like water filling a cup. Feel it move up your feet and over your ankles, along your legs and past your knees until it reaches your hips. But it doesn’t stop there. It flows up your chest to your shoulders, dipping down to each finger before continuing on through your neck and face until it crests the top of your skull.”

By the time he’d followed Seymour’s half-whispered instructions, his entire body blazed with inner radiance, and his skin prickled with goosebumps. He’d never felt so aware of himself.

Seymour’s voice drifted to him, a tether to the real world. “Now, picture that light, that awareness, spreading out from you, seeping into the ground and leaking into the air. You are not the light. It is not yours to contain. You are but one part of a greater whole. The light is everything, everywhere. It extends from you to me, to the trees and the daemons and other animals, to the myriad towns and cities of the League, and to the Untamed Wilds beyond the Bulwark. It encircles the entire world and then broadens beyond it, stretching to the distant stars that line the sky until it engulfs all creation, and you within it. That lightisexistence itself—the Great Aetheric Sea that binds us all together, human and daemon alike.”

Adrian didn’t know how long he floated there, his consciousness lost among the unfathomable vastness of that all-encompassing light. Eventually, though, Seymour cleared his throat. Adrian groggily blinked himself awake.

Seymour leaned against a nearby tree, a faint smirk on his narrow lips. “Thatis what I meant when I told you to open yourself up.”