The runes had become so familiar to her that Quylla could see them like notes on a musical score, each one with its sound, requiring a different tempo according to the spell they were meant to produce.
Soon she seemed to be dancing with a shadow partner that kept trying to get close but missed her by a hair’s breadth.
Like Lith had earlier said, Quylla was definitely a genius.
She had learned fake magic from books when she was barely six years old and had just learned how to read. She had managed to survive even though no one had explained to her anything about the complexities of hand signs, accents, and the risks that mistakes implied.
She had created her first spell by herself when she was seven, to help her patients and she had never stopped improving it as she discovered more about magic. Quylla had enrolled in the fourth year of academy when she was just twelve, competing the whole time with Lith for the top spot.
She had reinvented magic from scratch in the few weeks she had spent inside the Fringe with just a few whispers from Mogar,
becoming the first true human mage in history.
Her lack of achievements, when compared to Balkor or Manohar,
wasn’t because of a gap in talent. Quylla wasn’t a frog in the well, but a majestic Dragon who had been scarred by Yurial’s death and had hidden in a shallow pond for years.
Now, however, she wasn’t afraid of spreading her wings anymore.
Quylla had already learned how to make the runes flow through her body from her studies about fusion magic. She wasn’t an Awakened nor a magical beast. She didn’t know the runes instinctively and had had to discover them one by one.
After that, she had to learn how to make them move from her head to her toes to gain their effects. Now that her mana flow wasn’t constricted to just her core, conjuring the runes through movement and channeling them through her auxiliary cores was second nature to her.
The auxiliary cores closed one after another, turning from vortexes into perfect spheres. The bright blue light that coursed throughout her body turned into deep violet the moment Quylla overcame the natural restrictions of an Awakened core.
The mana flow kept growing in might until it became light violet and new auxiliary cores appeared. Awakening them was no different from the first time and the experience gained made it much easier.
Quylla felt her body brim with power as her core went back to violet,
its vigor intact even after completing the Awakening process.
She took a few deep breaths, witnessing more auxiliary cores forming inside her body, but she could instinctively tell that they weren’t enough for another breakthrough.
Quylla turned toward her family and friends, smiling from the bottom of her heart before falling head-first on the floor.
“Good gods, how is she?” Phloria asked while covering her sister with a cloth.
“Alive, but weak. Too weak.” Faluel said. “Did she share with any of you her Injection spell? Because she needs to drink tonics faster than we can give her while she’s unconscious.”
“No.” The others unanimously replied, clenching their fists in helplessness.
“Good. It means that Quylla hasn’t broken her vow.” Faluel used the spell that Quylla had bartered with her to take part in the apprenticeship and injected several tonics into her student’s body at the same time.
Once an Awakened reached the bright blue, the body was completely ridden from impurities and the resistance their body offered to their own mana flow was nigh-zero.
Even though the breakthroughs into and through the violet core were painless, they still required huge amounts of energy that the body needed to develop the auxiliary cores.
Quylla had survived the process thanks to her careful planning and preparations, but going straight to the light violet had left her skin and bones. She would need plenty of rest and food to recover.
“That was really odd.” Lith said after they rnade sure that Quylla was alright and she rested in the safety of her own room in the tower.
“Quylla formed new auxiliary cores as she regained her strength yet l’In still stuck with those I developed after reaching the bright blue.”
“I’m sorry, but Quylla isn’t the odd one, you are.” Faluel said. “Breaking past the deep violet is supposed to be just a matter of patience after developing a proper breathing technique.
“New auxiliary cores were supposed to form as you accumulated more energy. Then, all you have to do to break through is to turn the vortexes into spheres until you have enough to amplify the power of your core to the next level.
“It’s how it worked for me, Quylla, and how I expect it to work for everyone else.”
“What’s wrong with me?” l.ith asked, looking at his body like a traitor.
“I don’t know. New species, remember? Unlimited potential but also unpredictable problems” She shrugged. “What I can tell you is that your cores are now overloaded with mana akin to the violet core of a fake mage.
“The power you diligently accumulated is not lost, just blocked by a dam. l‘m certain that you’ll figure out something, you just need some time.”
‘Time.’ Lith thought. ‘Something that most Awakened take for granted without realizing that it’s a luxury, especially in times of war. I have no idea what’s blocking my growth nor how different my race is from the others.
‘If only Tista was already at violet, I could at least know if l’m the exception due to my previous lives or if it’s a problem that plagues my entire bloodline. Fuck me sideways.‘
‘Don’t worry too much.‘ Solus said via their mind link. ‘It’s been four months and a half since you achieved the deep violet and usually it took you much longer to step into the next level. The fact that your aura and eyes already have light violet streaks is a good sign.
‘It means that you just have to take one more step to overcome this unprecedented bottleneck. Remember what you learned about the art of weaving spells with your body. You don’t use magic, you are magic.
‘The more you stress over this problem the longer you’ll be stuck at deep violet. The block is likely something of your own making. You just need to understand what it is and how to get rid of it.‘
‘Even if you are right, l don’t know if I can afford to wait.‘ Lith replied.
‘The war is not going well and even if Thrud doesn’t seem to care much about me, Orpal is clearly plotting something.
‘l can’t stop thinking that the branch of the Undead Court where he lured me was more than a trap for the Council. It was some kind of trial run for something bigger.’
***
Quylla needed to spend the next three days in bed doing nothing, just like Lith after he damaged his life force. She had no cracks, but the immense strain her mana core and body had undergone had left Quylla in a state similar to Lith’s after he saved Protector.
She ate more than when she was at the academy and during the first day even reading blurred her vision.
