"The essence of a cultivator is their Will." Volkova's tone of voice was instructional, pedagogical. Clear. No disdain, no exasperation, no fury and no predation. She would teach, you would learn, and you would be grateful for the privilege.

"This becomes increasingly true as you progress, but that is not your concern at the moment. Focus." Aria hadn't even said anything that would indicate she wasn't focusing, but she also couldn't deny that her mind had immediately begun to drift to what the later stages of progression really were.

"Why do we cultivate? So that we may influence the world around us. Overcome a cultivator's Will — overcome their influence on the world — and you overcome their very essence."

Aria felt something brushing against that strange new sense of hers, that aural vision that gently faded out into every direction. It wasn't quite analogous to any of her existing senses. As prehensile as her fingers, as discriminating as taste or scent, as constant and curious as her hearing, yet as vivid in picking out fine details as her sight may have been — even things she hadn't known to probe for a few minutes ago.

"Will may be exerted through any of your soul's facets, and in truth an internally-directed exertion of Will is the key to reconstituting yourself into an immortal soul, as you've done. Amplify your Body, and you move faster, hit harder, and heal faster than any mortal. Push Will through your Externality, and you can cause your Radiance to manifest in any number of forms."

"But the most direct application — and the one you seem to have the most vocation with — is Presence. Use it as a bludgeon, and you may crush and subdue an opponent, leaving them at your mercy." Volkova thankfully spared her the demonstration.

"Use it as a dart, a scalpel, and with sufficient competence and mastery, any assault may be dismantled before it graces your flesh, any defense subverted and trivialized. At any rate, if you wish to extend your Will any further than your skin, your Presence will be the way to do it. Learn its use well, as good as your eyes and ears, your hands and feet, and then better."

"Now, I want you to try forming a basic technique. Don't try to impress me, nothing you can do will suffice. A simple, straightforward force cable. Shape your Presence, to form a channel from your body to mine. Then, push your Will through both simultaneously. Your soul will handle the finer points."

Aria did as she was told. A thick cord of her Presence snaked outwards, cautiously, towards her teacher, and she felt the opposing Will part obligingly to let her through — though she understood quite well that she was permitted through.

She didn't have the words to describe what it was she was doing, let alone how she was doing it. She couldn't explain it any more than she could explain how she grasped something in her fingers. She thought, and the motion simply…happened. Her aperture irised open, the Radiance flowing out from her core, only a minute trickle required thanks to the sheer density.

A pillar of blue-violet light erupted forth from her, center mass, and out to where her Presence made contact with Volkova. Aria almost smiled. Almost. The look of displeasure on her teacher's face strangled any joy she might've felt in the cradle.

"I said a force cable. This," she grasped the construct with her bare hands, her skin shimmering and flickering where it came into contact with the pure energy, "is a bludgeon."

Driving the point home, she sharply bent her wrist. Aria tried to move her Presence to match the movement, but it wouldn't answer her — not with the readiness it had done before.

The construct was rigid. Brittle. It snapped readily, the Radiance coming undone without her Intent to hold it together, and though Volkova could afford to discard what scraps had gone into it, Aria greedily pulled them back in, which at the very least didn't earn her any further admonishment.

"Now, again. A cable. Not a stick."

Volkova's specificity nagged at Aria. Something about the emphasis that the construct must be a cable. Must not be a bludgeon, as she'd clarified, and must not be rigid and brittle, as she'd demonstrated.

Once again a tendril of Aria's Presence snaked outwards, but her Intent differed now. Before, she'd simply thought of the shape of a cable. Long, straight, round. As Volkova said, her soul handled the finer points — what few there were to handle.

Now, she allowed the Radiance to trickle out of her, and to flow into the shape she'd defined. A tool was defined by its specifications. Its specifications were, in turn, follower to its functions. A cable's functions were simple. Strength, flexibility, and elasticity. Thus, its design could not be a singular cord. Too thin, and it would lack strength. Thick enough to be strong, and it'd have no flexibility. Either way, elasticity was a prayer.

The heavy duty cables that saw so much use around her workplace — hoisting freight, binding titanic stores of energy until it was their due time to be released, or simply resting in spools in all the various places they saw use in the Admiralty's technical and combat exoskeletons — all had roughly the same structural solution to the problem.

For material, all she had to work with was the purest expression of primordial power, the poor thing, so the alterations would necessarily have to come within the structure. Once again, a blue-violet construct erupted forth from Aria's body, from her shoulder this time, a cascade of minute fibers, all winding and twisting together towards a blunted point, folded inwards.

Aria moved her Presence, and it came readily now. Still not quite as fleetfooted as it had been without an Externality loaded into it, but it answered eagerly, the air screaming as the construct cut through it.

"Good. The force cable is the unit Externality, the bare minimum that any cultivator knows. It is a tool, a weapon, and an appendage, and critically, it is capable of carrying your Arts, as well as or better than if you were to convey them directly through your hands or feet. You know an Art, yes? It's what destroyed your channels."

Aria withered a little at the reminder, but didn't say anything. "A destructive art, Martial Mother, suggested for use with palm strikes."

Volkova mumbled something under her breath, rubbing the bridge of her nose, before looking back up at Aria. "I know the one, and it's only an Art in the most semantic sense. No art to it. Yes, if you shove that much Radiance into something it will explode, what a startling revelation. You'd embarrass me less bludgeoning your foes with your fists."

Volkova leaned lazily back against one of the boulders again. "We still have three minutes." A blade appeared in the air above her, a double-edged sword with an impaling tip pointed straight at Aria's heart. "You know how this goes by now. You show some basic measure of competence, I reward you by correcting some misconception no one could be bothered to fix before now."

The flying sword lunged for Aria. Had she still been possessed of mortal mind and body, it would've run her clean through. As it was, it only almost took her arm off.

Aria was by no means an acrobat, but she was damned athletic, even in her mortality. Something about remaking her body when she broke through had imparted a degree of flexibility that she'd never known herself to have before. Combined with the coordination and grace afforded by her reinforced mind, she quite literally danced out of the sword's path — gracefully pirouetting away before coming to rest in a low stance.

The sword didn't pause long before sweeping back around for another shot at taking Aria's head off, but Aria didn't pause to gawk either. Force cables erupted from both her shoulders, leaping outwards to intercept the blade.

Both cables fell apart into undifferentiated aether before so much as diverting the blade's path, forcing Aria to literally bend over backwards, balancing on her hands and feet, as the blade swept through the air where her head would've otherwise been.

This time the blade did pause before coming back around, just long enough for her Martial Mother to provide some illuminating wisdom. "I couldn't care to test your strength any less if I tried. This is a test of technique, and, apparently, intellect."

Aria thought through the contents of the lecture she'd just been given as her bare feet slid across the stone floor, evading another lunge from the flying blade. Her Presence couldn't hope to overcome her teacher's, that much was readily apparent. Her body might have the speed and grace to pluck the blade out of the air, but it certainly wasn't a gamble she was willing to bet on, and more importantly it felt incongruent with what she'd been taught so far.

Volkova was many things — far more than Aria could presently even begin to understand, she knew — but she'd never think to describe her master as indirect.

Aria had been holding her Presence clamped close around her, a protective shell, only casting out small shoots for a particular purpose. Now, she released it, the aural sense unfurling out from her, her senses simultaneously reveling yet almost overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information coming in from all around her.

The flood of sensations distracted her just long enough, however, to make it difficult to react in time to the next attack, a wide sweeping slash that threatened to take her out at the knees.

Her Body couldn't respond fast enough.

Her Externality suffered no such limitation.

A force cable erupted from her waist, the far end already wrapped around a nearby boulder, and pulled her sideways and clean off her feet, the tip of the blade only just managing to break her skin. Aria made a point to take some time — later, once she wasn't fighting for her life — to be stunned at the painlessness of the cut, the amazingly sharp blade causing minimal tissue damage besides what it intended.

"A diffused Presence is an intrinsically offensive posture, whereas a focused one is intrinsically defensive. Now you understand that intuitively, and I don't have to waste my time explaining the whys or the hows."

Aria found that as much as she wanted to hate her teacher for trying to kill her, she really couldn't bring herself to. Credit where it was due, it certainly made for effective pedagogy.

Assuming she survived, that was.

The lesson here was about the use of her Presence. That much should've been obvious, in hindsight. A test of technique, not of strength.

A dart, not a bludgeon.

The sword's posture shifted, as though in response to Aria's own realization. It didn't go for massive, wide, sweeping cuts that gave her time to dodge, time to think in between, turning from an arcane flying sword to merely…a sword. Wielded by a foe, an opposing duelist.

It was beautifully subtle, and infuriatingly obvious. Her master — no, her opponent's Presence was clamped close and tight. Her unfurled senses brushed against that leaden wall, and saw no fault, no flaw she could exploit, and her own Presence moved freely through the air all around her, except where her opponent stood.

But the essence of a cultivator was Will. The instrument of its exertion, their Presence. The blade she wove around and dove under in this brutal ballet was an implement of her opponent's Will. Presence, and by extension the exertion of Will, must be contiguous, at least as far as she knew.

Aria leapt backwards, carried by a force cable tied around a boulder, and focused her Presence into a dreadnought lance before her. Out of the corner of her eye, she was dimly aware of her teacher giving a sigh of disappointment as she sprinted forward at the blade, seeking to shatter the envelope of Will holding it together.

Of course, that wouldn't work. Aria knew that quite well. Well enough not to bother trying.

In the span between one immortal breath and the next, right as it was too late for either her or her opponent to alter their course, Aria lifted her feet off the ground. She didn't jump — the motion would've given up the feint — she simply…stepped, onto the flat of the oncoming blade.

Aria leapt skywards off the platform below her. Radiance it may be, but a sword was a sword. Physics were not so trivially defied. Ultimately, the blade functioned by virtue of its leverage, the same leverage that now sent it careening towards the floor.

Aria knew it wouldn't stay there long, of course. She'd bought herself a bare moment.

A bare moment was all she needed.

She rotated the shell of her Presence, pointing the lance of her Will down through her feet, focusing it into the finest point she possibly could. She'd put everything behind this strike, leaving only the barest feelers emitting outwards to ensure her aim was true. She wouldn't get this chance again, and she saw no reason to gamble on it.

Her target was half a hair's breadth.

Her aim was unerring.

The total force of her Will slammed into that thread of her master's Presence, the one contiguous component binding that nimble fencing blade to its wielder, the string by which it was puppeted almost straight through her heart.

The thread gave.

Aria forced Radiance into her Presence. She would not lose here.

For just a moment, the string broke under her insistence. It did not part gently to give her way. It did not retreat away from her. It well and truly broke beneath her.

A moment was enough. Her Presence moved to fill the gap that had been left and, severed from its progenitor, the thread no longer had the animating Will to resist her.

Aria turned around slowly. She'd left herself wide open on that final assault. If she was to be struck, she would've been.

Her flesh remained — mostly — unparted, which implied that no such thing was forthcoming, a conclusion that was confirmed when she saw her foe dissolving into bright, crimson starlight, before being reabsorbed into the body of its creator.

"You continue to intrigue and amuse, Firebrand. Interesting footwork."

"Thank you Martial Mother!" Aria bowed.

Volkova scoffed, but she was smiling. "Alright, keep your secrets. You're short on time anyway. Come on then, I promised you an Art, didn't I? A proper one. You know how to weave your Radiance into threads. And you presumably know the way your own channels are structured? Branching fractals that grow increasingly fine?"

"Yes, Martial Mother." Aria listened with rapt attention to her teacher's every word.

"Good. Now, this Art is known as the Thousand Riving Roots. A simple Art — foundational, in fact — but with immense skill expression to be had, should you care to refine your use of it. The method is simple."

Volkova placed a hand on one of the nearby boulders. "Push a thread of your Radiance into the target. Then, split it into two. Two into four. So it goes, as far as you can take it. Given enough time and Radiance there's hardly any limit; the trick is in learning to make do with the least amount of both."

"Of course, the roots are considerably more difficult to lay inside of something with a Will, but it gets easier if you grind their Presence down to nothing first. Once inside, however, they are extremely difficult to remove. Even if your will retracts from them, the threads simply run amok until they exhaust their…considerable energy."

"The Art doesn't provide any functionality by itself. Like I said, it's foundational. Build atop it. You may use it to sense, to mend, once you have the skill for such things — or to destroy."

Volkova clutched her fist shut, and the boulder simply…fell apart. One moment it was there, the next, a pile of rock dust in its place. Not even gravel remained.

"Destruction comes much easier to our sort, naturally. Try to make certain you don't end up on the receiving end."

"I-I'll do my best, Martial Mother!"

"Good. Now, you have another two minutes of direct instruction. Use them well."

Thousand Riving Roots was a deceptively simple Art. Aria wouldn't call herself a peerless talent by any stretch of the imagination, but she'd never struggled with learning anything quite this much. The problem was that there were a thousand ways to use the art correctly, and ten thousand ways to get it wrong, and it was impossibly difficult to distinguish the two from inside.

Nonetheless, even with the small time she had, the direct instruction of her Martial Mother — the first time Aria felt she'd actually earned the title, though she wasn't going to say that out loud — allowed her to rapidly resolve the insidious flaws that would've hobbled her power and precision.

"Good. At the very least you won't embarrass me like this. Now," Volkova snapped her fingers, and Aria's shoes — her nice running boots, not the work boots she wore with her uniform — clattered to the ground before her, alongside her beloved Tenet. "Get dressed. You've got a date in…fifty minutes, or around about."

Aria's shoes contracted themselves around her legs as she stepped into them, the electroactive polymers designed to perfectly match her measurements and compensate in realtime for both her gait and the underlying terrain.

They really were excellent running shoes.

But Arborhaven was roughly 300 kilometers away, even in a straight line. The city was built into a vast, circular valley nested amidst the same mountain range where the Citadel had been installed, due to the terrain's preternatural terrestrial and aerial defensibility, with the jagged steppes providing countless opportunities to conceal fortifications and defenses.

Even with a cultivator's body, pushed to the absolute limit, she wouldn't be able to make it there, not fast enough. The terrain simply added far too much distance.

Which meant she would have to circumvent the terrain.

Aria quickly ran some numbers in her head.

The mesa she stood upon was one of the smaller mountains — on account of the top having been shorn off by cultivators — which meant she couldn't simply go over the mountaintops.

Aria withdrew her linker from within her coat pockets, and reviewed the topological map from the Citadel to Arborhaven, nodding as she adjusted her calculations accordingly, drawing a path on the map. It was narrow, but plausible.

Well, mathematically plausible, she had no clue if she could pull it off.

Still, it was the only shot she had. Aria replaced her linker into her coat's pocket, and withdrew her holographic glasses. She usually used them to overlay schematics while she worked, or to catch up on her reading while droning away in the workshop.

Aria slowly walked towards the center of the mesa. It wasn't that she wasn't in a hurry — she absolutely was — it was just that she was absolutely terrified of what she was going to do next.

Volkova looked over at her, grinning lazily, as she always did. "Got a plan in mind, Firebrand? Honestly, I was planning on just throwing you there, but now I'm far more intrigued to see what you've come up with."

"Martial Mother?"

"Hm?"

"I would just like it to be known that if I splatter on the rocks, that would reflect very poorly on your teachings."

For the first time, Aria heard her master outright laugh. It was a shockingly…warm sound. Not edged with malice, not concealing a slow, cold death beneath the bubbling surface. Just, sincere joy.

"Well then it's a very good thing it won't come to that. Go on then, Firebrand. Show me what you've got."

Aria took in a deep breath, and contemplated whether she was really qualified to even attempt such a thing. She was a technician, and an engineer, certainly. Her ballistics were utterly impeccable, and even those who loathed her on a personal level never denied how quick of a study she was.

Aeronautics were, of course, a standard part of the course of study of the physical sciences, so she certainly had a solid theoretical grasp.

Now it was time to see if she was a quick enough study to turn that to practice before she hit the ground.

Aria's Constellation spun into action, pushing a solid trickle of Radiance out to all of her Facets. The expense stung, but it was necessary.

The air and the ground exploded beneath her as her body rushed forward, faster than ever before. Her shoes made the minute adjustments her gait required to keep her from tripping — any interference at this much energy would be catastrophic — letting her focus on really understanding every minute facet of the absolutely moronic thing she was about to do.

Aria leapt through the air.

She soared.

And then she dropped.

Her Presence lanced outwards, a force cable spawning into existence a quarter-breath behind, the end wound together into a rigid spearpoint.

Aria fell, the air rushing around her, her clothes fluttering, the rocks below getting closer, and closer, and closer—

Her fall arrested.

She swung forward, pendulous, on the hold she'd established in the mountain side. Her glasses showed her the perfect course she'd plotted. She'd deviated from it slightly — losing around 8% efficiency, if she had to guess — but she had no time to worry about such things.

As her body intersected the lines she'd drawn, Aria withdrew her presence, letting the cable she'd summoned dissolve back into her.

Once again, Aria soared, rocketing straight upwards, far above the mountaintop and up towards the clouds.

She thought, for a moment, that it was a beautifully overcast day. Very pleasant. The sky looked so wide open. So free. She'd always loved flying, though she'd never flown quite so light before.

Aria turned her body, pointing herself downwards, diving straight towards the ground.

The wind howled in her ears, her coat flapping behind her, loud as the cracks from the very rifle that sat slung snugly at her side.

Her blood rushed. Fear threatened her. She threatened it back. She would not be unmade, not here.

Aria flattened her body and forced her Radiance out through her Externality. Her Will gave it structure in the face of the immense forces bearing down into her. Her Intent defined its purpose. And within her Domain, her power obeyed.

The howling of the wind ceased, all at once. Aria's whole body wrenched upwards, as the force of the wind roaring around her suddenly met resistance. She looked down at the ground that seemed mere moments ago to be rushing to meet her. The mountain steppes seemed to flee behind her, scrolling beneath her like a rushing waterfall.

And Aria soared on wings of violet starlight.

She looked around herself, awestruck by the beauty of the construct that enveloped her. Swept-back wings, with split ailerons at the wingtips, and canards extending out from her shoulders, all wrapped within her Presence, answering to every twitch and flick in an instant.

She scarcely had any intuition for it — she would handle drone flyovers for assessing the conditions of remote sites, every few weeks, but nothing that had this much power behind it — but she knew the numbers, and all she had to do was follow the lines in front of her.

At about a quarter the speed of sound.

Through a series of narrow mountain valleys.

As the first of those narrow turns came upon her, Aria wondered briefly if she'd always been this insane and simply never had an outlet for it, or if too much exposure to Radiance simply did this to people.

As her wingtips pitched her sideways, running her along the face of the cliff — close enough she could reach out and touch it if she didn't mind having her hand torn off — the ground effect sent her speeding out from the valley and into the lower basin beyond.

In spite of the dire circumstances — in spite of the fact that the two people she loved most in this world were both in mortal danger — Aria couldn't help herself. She cackled, madly. Inhuman freedom.

An Immortal's freedom.