The Dead Scout's Handbook of Afterlife Survival

Chapter Twenty-Two: Once more, Together this Time

Overnight, sleeping away from the group as she preferred, Sarah had spent the dark hours pondering how to improve their skills as a whole. For some reason, she shuddered at the realization that she was planning team building exercises sans icebreakers, and God help anyone that dared speak the word 'synergy' in front of her. By morning, Sarah already formed a schedule. Team members would spend ¼ of the sun's path with one another and hone their abilities in pairs.

At partner swaps, they offered pointers to each other, for the dual effect of improving abilities, and also subconsciously discovering how they moved and behaved when using their powers.

With six hours and waning enthusiasm, they switched to their final partner, where Sarah joined Cayden. Despite only a half-day passing, Cayden's legs felt weak and his stomach queasy. His vision relentlessly switched from clear to blurry and could hardly muster a few sparks with the snap of a finger.

"Cayden, are you alright?"

Wobbling back and forth, he steadied himself as if speaking would throw his balance enough to topple him.

"Something's not right. I used everything, but I figured I was saving a lot for this session."

"Maybe we'll take this one easy..."

"No. Not a chance."

"Easy will help here. A couple of weeks back, I told you at that I figured out what you were doing wrong. Today, we'll correct that."

"I... okay, I'm not having any problem guiding wind or lighting fires."

"Nope. The problem is that you're inefficient. You're blasting heat everywhere when you do anything. I don't know if Charlie and Rebecca noticed, but your warming radius picks up ten degrees whenever you use your ability. Let me ask you this: Where does a fireplace add more warmth in a house, in the living room or on the front lawn?"

"That's thesaurical right?"

"Rhetorical, yes. You see, you're a fireplace on the lawn and still heating the house adequately. Your energy is spreading all directions in complete chaos, and just happens to be enough to do what it needs. You need focus"

"Do you do that?"

"Yes. I started with the small stuff, freezing individual droplets, creating lone icicles, all while leaving the surrounding droplets and cascades intact. Powers such as ours, they can be wasteful. Charlie's got full control of his strength because he's practiced it his whole life on a lesser scale. With regard to Rebecca's telekinesis, the very nature of it requires concentration to work at all. Ours are different. For example, Gregory could incinerate a boulder, or warm a few dozen miles, but he probably couldn't incinerate a few dozen miles."

"How do I go get better?"

"Same way I did. Let's work on precision." Grabbing Cayden by the shoulders, Sarah guided him toward the tree line.

For the remainder of the afternoon, they would knock snow from the treetops, swapping freezing and melting drops before they hit the earth.

The following three suns brought the same team building exercises. Charlie and Cayden volleyed flames, gusts, throws, and brutish swings. With Rebecca and Sarah improving, they could form a swirling hailstorm a couple dozen yards in diameter. After two days, Rebecca and Cayden could ignite debris mid projection and incinerate them to ash before hitting a target. Sarah's ice barricades strengthened to near invulnerability while Cayden lasted longer without fatigue during Sarah's afternoon training.

An unfortunate consequence of their training: REM sleep transformed into a doomsday event. Have you ever kicked in your sleep? Charlie has too. Rebecca changed sleeping locations when the tree next to her exploded in the night, with Charlie's bare toes replacing its position. On several occasions, fires erupted from the embers floating from Cayden's nightly snores and coughs. On the third night, Rebecca had a nightmare and the entire group awoke to the sound of an air raid as hundreds of rocks pelted them from above. Probably a fortunate habit, Sarah had slept separately already, and a bed of clear stalagmites surrounded her every morning. Finally, despite being able to see the future, Martha never refrained from guffawing at the new horrors they seemed to find for themselves in slumber.