Chapter 67: Feedback
I walked onto the field.
Hiratsuka had said: show me what you have and how you use it.
I had already decided what to show and what to hold back.
I started with Ether Authority.
Mana answered immediately, the ambient density high enough that the aspect ran without drawing on reserves. The light moved along my arms. I cast Vector Authority across the section of field to my left.
Not full strength.
The gravity settled without announcement. Grass bent flat. Dust that had been shifting in the morning air stopped moving entirely. A crack spread through the nearest stone formation with a slow, deliberate sound, the kind that made you aware of how quiet everything around it had become.
At the observation line, nobody moved.
Hiratsuka did not look at the cracked stone.
She looked at my feet.
Then she continued writing.
I held the field for five seconds and released it.
Most people at the observation line were watching where the crack had gone. Cian’s eyes tracked along the field surface, steady and without any particular expression. Leon was not watching the techniques at all. He was watching the decisions.
One of the assessment wards at the field’s edge flickered as the gravity released.
Just once.
Hiratsuka did not look up. But she wrote something separate from the column she had been working in.
I cast Aether Step.
Forty meters in the fraction of time the distance implied. I held position in the air above the field, working through the control I had been building in the early mornings since the estate.
The technique required precision on the way up and more on the way down, and the gap between those two was where most demonstrations failed.
I came down clean and let Ether Authority reconfigure.
Crimson Veil. The compressed mana ran across the surface of my skin for ten seconds, absorbing the impacts I generated against the nearest stone formation. The force distributed rather than landing directly. The technique was invisible unless you knew what the stone should have done when it was hit that way.
Reinhardt’s expression changed. A small line between his brows that had not been there a moment before. Beside him, Cian had stopped looking at the field and was looking at me.
Hiratsuka’s pen stopped.
One second. Then it continued.
I walked back to the observation line.
The silence lasted a beat longer than it had after anyone else’s assessment.
***
After the final assessment, Hiratsuka stood.
"Observations. Full individual feedback tomorrow before the first session. Today I am giving you the one thing each of you most need to hear."
She looked at Tessira.
"The spirit arts combination, healing distribution and sustained flight simultaneously, is the most immediately useful dual-output technique I have seen from an incoming student in four years." A pause. "The limitation is transition time between outputs. Address that."
Tessira nodded.
"Valmont." Hiratsuka did not look up from her document. "You have good instincts about what to show and when. The lightning is carrying more than what you demonstrated." She made a note. "The people watching you will notice the same thing eventually. That is not a compliment. That is a warning."
Leon received this without reacting.
"Ashford." Hiratsuka looked at Selene. "The domain is complete. The illusion precision is excessive. You spent more mana on accuracy than the assessment required. In combat, habits become predictions. Predictions become counters."
Selene received this with the composure of someone who had been told less interesting things by more impressive people.
"Amagi."
I waited.
"Find the limit of what is yours before you lean on what was given to you. Power you inherit is easier to trust than power you understand."
She moved on.
I did not ask what she meant. I already knew she had clocked the Crimson Veil.
We moved back toward the main building in small groups.
Reinhardt fell into step on my right.
"You held back," he said.
"Of course."
"Why."
"Because today wasn’t a battle."
He walked beside me for a few more steps without another word, then moved ahead.
I was at the edge of the field when Violet Ashford fell into step on my left.
Tessira was ahead, talking with Iris in low voices. I looked to my left.
Violet was looking at the field.
"Your gravity field was offset," she said.
I looked at her.
"Two meters left. It was not a miscalculation."
"No."
"You did not want anyone inside it."
"No," I said.
She let that sit.
"The Crimson Veil is not in the academy curriculum," she said. "The compression pattern is not standard blood mana technique. Someone taught you that specifically."
"Yes."
"Someone with a great deal of experience."
"A great deal."
She was quiet for a moment, watching the path ahead rather than me.
"You made every decision before you walked onto that field," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Why."
I thought about it honestly.
"Hiratsuka’s assessment was for her benefit," I said. "Not mine. I showed her enough to be useful to her without showing her what she would have stopped to examine."
Violet looked at the main building ahead.
"She noticed," she said. "She just did not comment on it."
"I know."
"You read people."
"I read situations," I said. "People are part of situations."
She said nothing for the rest of the path to the entrance. At the door she stopped.
"Violet Ashford," she said. "Since we will apparently be sharing a class."
"I’ve heard of the Ashfords," I said.
She held that for a second.
"That is either reassuring or concerning," she said. "I have not decided which."
"Both. Depending on the day."
The corner of her mouth moved.
"Tomorrow," she said.
"Tomorrow," I said.
She went through.
I stood at the entrance for a moment and thought about the forty-one pages of her character file, and the arc that had been built around her, and the version of that arc the author had stopped writing before finishing.
Then Hiratsuka’s voice came from behind me.
"Amagi."
I turned.
She was standing at the training ground entrance with her cup and her remaining documents.
"The blood mana," she said. "Whoever taught you that technique has been in combat for a very long time."
I said nothing.
"Are you marked?"
"Yes," I said.
She held on this.
"Tell them their control work is still some of the best I have seen." She turned back toward the training ground. "Whoever they are."
She walked away.
I went through the door.
***
On the training ground behind me, Hiratsuka looked once at the crack in the stone.
The fracture pattern was wrong for the output level she had logged.
She found the first note she had written beneath my name.
Crossed it out.
Wrote another.
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