The documents weren't going to read themselves.
Ashen had arrived at this conclusion some time ago and resented it deeply. He stared at the page in his hand, scanned it, initialed it, and dropped it onto the finished pile. Then he picked up the next one and mechanically repeated the process all over again.
Sabrina's hands moved against the back of his neck in slow circles. The tension that had knotted his shoulders retreated to a dull background ache, which was as close to relief as he expected tonight.
The garden behind the mansion was quiet enough that he could hear the grass. Moonlight fell across the scattered files on the table, across the pale of his face, and across Sabrina's composed expression as she worked without comment.
It was, objectively, a picturesque scene. Ashen would have appreciated it somewhere in his mind if it wasn't for his work threatening to drown him in paperwork.
He initialed another page.
Soft footsteps crossed the garden's edge.
He looked up.
Alice approached carefully, as if afraid that too much noise might shatter his concentration. She caught Sabrina's eye and gave her a small nod before her gaze settled on him.
The smile came before he'd consciously decided to smile. "Alice. If you're here, it's done?"
She had spent the better part of the last several nights sealed in her newly built workshop, working on the job he'd tasked her with. Her being here, at this hour, was its own announcement.
"Yes." She settled into the chair beside him. "You now have reliable coverage across the entire territory." A pause, and then the corner of her mouth curved. "I do have to ask, though… are you happy that I'm here, or happy that the job is done?"
Ashen laughed. It was the easiest laugh he'd managed in days. "What's this…? Are you jealous of your own work now?"
"Either answer reflects well on you, so there's nothing to pout about." He pushed the remaining documents aside and beckoned. "Come here."
She didn't hesitate.
As she settled against him, he set to the particular task of pampering her, fingers tracing through her hair, brushing her cheeks, tapping the tip of her nose once just to feel her exhale slowly in that way she had when she was tolerating something she secretly enjoyed.
For a while, neither of them spoke. The moonlight stayed where it was. Sabrina's hands resumed their quiet work at his shoulders.
Then Alice said, "...Do you have to be this harsh on yourself?"
His hands went still.
"..."
He exhaled through his nose, and when he spoke, it came out softer than he intended. "Alice. We've already talked about this." He felt her shift slightly but didn't let her pull away. "I know that watching me in pain makes you miserable. It's the same for me… watching you worry."
He shook his head. When his eyes settled again, they were sharp. "But being in pain is still countless times better than being dead." He let that land. "You remember what the Astrologer said."
She nodded in a small, careful motion.
"Do you think humanity can stand up to that… even with their Sin Lords?"
"..."
"We can tell ourselves he was lying. We're good at that." His voice lost whatever warmth had been in it. "But what happens when the investigations confirm it? What will we do if we really find six other metropolises, on the same scale as what we saw from the first? How many Narkals is that?"
Alice said nothing. Beside him, he felt Sabrina go very still.
"If they converge while we're comfortable… while we're peaceful… do you think we will survive that?" He looked at Alice steadily. "You saw what that monster did to Cornelia. A Sin Lord. What makes you think he's the only one?"
Alice's face had gone pale as her rationality finally caught up to something she'd been quietly avoiding. Sabrina's had followed.
Ashen's expression softened into helplessness. He hadn't wanted to put it so plainly. But there it was.
"It's easy to ignore something that feels far away," he said. "Peace is comfortable. Peace makes us slow." He paused. "It made me slow. I told myself I was training hard. Doing my best. And I believed it… which is the most dangerous part, because it wasn't true."
He thought of those early dreamscape training sessions during his Bloodwall days, the desperate months of rebuilding himself before Cassius. He thought of the Pit. Of what he'd been willing to do to his own body when the stakes were real and immediate and had a face.
Then he thought of his garrison drills. The comfortable pace of them and the absence of any real edge.
The comparison was not flattering.
"Thankfully, my new teacher woke me up before it cost me anything." He reached up and lightly caught Alice's cheeks between his fingers, giving them a gentle press. "So no more glaring at him."
"...Oka~y."
"Master."
He turned. Sabrina seldom volunteered words when silence served just as well, which meant the ones she did offer tended to carry significance.
"Yes, my dear Sabby, what is it?" he answered gently.
She met his eyes with that vague, almost absentminded look she always wore. "What you said… I have nothing against. I admire your will to keep moving, and I understand the reasoning." A brief pause. "But is this truly the right method? What if it leaves you crippled instead?"
His first instinct was to find the question absurd.
His second instinct, arriving a beat later, was the memory of how he must look by the end of each day… The zombie-walk... The collapsed form... The blood… From the outside, he supposed, the question wasn't unreasonable at all.
"Sabby… you know I'm a Sloth Pathwalker."
A nod.
"And you know what Sloths do best?"
A small pause. "...Endure."
"So you don't need to worry." He gave her a genuine smile. "And the teacher is a professional in these matters. If anything, I can feel my control over my strength improving. The body isn't breaking down. It's adapting."
"Yes, master." She lowered her gaze briefly. "I apologize for intruding unnecessarily."
"Don't." He shook his head. "Thank you. I mean that."
She said nothing. But her hands, still resting at his shoulders, resumed their movement.
'I'm really blessed,' he thought absently, looking between the two women… one curled against his chest, one standing quietly at his back. 'Genuinely, embarrassingly blessed.'
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
"Teach."
Edward opened his eyes.
He'd been seated under the large tree at the garden's edge, still as bark, for what was probably the better part of an hour. He looked up without urgency.
"Why are you always out here?" Ashen settled into the grass across from him. "Is the mansion that stuffy?"
"...No." A faint smirk. "I simply feel somewhat unwelcome inside."
Ashen's expression turned sheepish. He scratched the back of his head. "I'm… sorry about that."
Edward waved it off. If anything, he looked mildly approving. "Their attitude simply means they care about you. Genuine devotion is rarer than most people understand. I find it more refreshing than anything else."
"Hm." Ashen let that settle, then tilted his head toward the sky.
The first pale suggestion of dawn was somewhere behind the eastern ridge, but it hadn't arrived yet.
"Dawn is still ten minutes out. Why are you early?" Edward asked.
A pause. Then Ashen said, "I wanted to ask you something. About the pressure."
Edward's expression remained neutral.
"During the siege, I fought a Second Step Pathwalker once... and I didn't feel the suppression I'm feeling now. Not to anything resembling the state I'm in during our training." He watched his teacher's face. "So it isn't simply a matter of Step. What's the mechanism?"
Edward let out a short sound through his nose. "A Second Step who couldn't suppress a Fifth Step, even one as gifted as you, is not a real Second Step in my books."
"...Is that possible?"
"More common than it should be." The older man's voice took on a particular flatness, the kind that came from a long-running opinion rather than fresh irritation. "I have a name for such people. Fake Pathwalkers. Those who found shortcuts to their Step without earning the conceptual understanding that is supposed to accompany it. It's a title without the substance."
He paused.
"Sadly, by my reckoning, the majority of Pathwalkers in the current era fall into that category."
Ashen absorbed that in silence.
"To answer your actual question," Edward continued, "I am not a fighter. My thema concerns teaching, not combat, not suppression in any conventional sense. I am not even on the Second Step. Under normal conditions, I could not pressure you in any meaningful way."
"Then how—"
"Conditions." Edward held up a finger. "Three of them. First, the one being pressured must be a student of mine. Second, they must consent. It need not be spoken aloud. Third… the pressure must serve the purpose of learning or training."
He lowered his hand. "When all three apply, I can do considerably more than most fighters twice my Step. I can push your body to its structural limits, suppress your mana, dull your senses, and weight your mind simultaneously. The range is quite broad, as long as the purpose holds."
Ashen was quiet for a long moment…Then… "Could you make it harsher?"
Edward looked at him.
"Now that I understand the mechanism, could you push the parameters further than you have been?"
The old man held his gaze for a moment. Then he rolled his eyes with a weary, unsurprised expression.
"No."
Ashen blinked.
"What you're already enduring approaches the upper edge of what I'm willing to apply. Push further than that, and you risk fracturing your mind. You will encounter persistent hallucinations and trauma that don't resolve with rest." He fixed Ashen with a look that brooked very little argument. "I will not do that to a student."
"...Understood."
He said it cleanly, without visible protest. But in the back of his mind, a quiet and deeply ironic voice murmured, 'coach… I already have all of that.'
The Liminar Dreamer trait sat where it always sat…
He was already rising to leave when it came.
"Catch."
Ashen looked back and caught the thrown object easily.
He looked down at what he'd caught.
It was a spear identical to his own in weight and length, save for one detail: near the base of the blade, someone had inscribed a face. A Small, crude. smiling face.
"I call it the Mischievous Spear." Edward's voice was entirely too calm. "When you can wield it as naturally as your own… when I can no longer tell the difference… I will reconsider the question of increased pressure."
Ashen studied the smiling face.
It seemed to smile back.
"...Alright."
⛧ ⛧ ⛧