What they don't know

Part 21

Lance ducked and rolled, faintly noting the stinging graze as his knees skinned themselves against the bridge's torn up floor. Lurching up into a kneel, he patted out the embers in his hair with one hand as the other flicked a high-powered orb of quintessence in the druid's direction, missing by a hair.

"It's not working!" 

The alchemist spun out of the range of the druid's elongated nails, watching in satisfaction as he bounced back from the repulsion array he had set up around the bridge's pedestal. 

"What's not working?" 

The druid had given up on trying to break the repulsion array awhile ago, redoubling his efforts on hunting Lance down instead. With everyone else trapped behind Lance's array - safe from the druid for the moment but unable to escape - Lance had been left with essentially one option;

Defeat the druid or find some other way to protect the others. 

"It's not opening," Estel shouted back as he and Lotor crowded around the pedestals at Coran's instruction, "The wormhole isn't opening!" 

"Your quintessence doesn't match Allura's-"

"We know that!" 

Lance bit back the temptation to roll his eyes as he smacked the druid around the face with a blaster that had been left discarded on the floor, "But you both have a decent amount of blue quintessence. You just have to focus on-" He grunted as served out of the way of an attack, his body dodging with pure muscle memory and instinct, "-Harnessing!" He righted himself with a little effort, firing off his own share of attacks, "Harnessing your blue quintessence!" 

"And how would one go about doing that?" The other Lotor sounded annoyed. Lance couldn't blame him, he was essentially ordering around a very prideful (and potentially arrogant) prince as a lowly part-human alchemist. 

Lance sighed, his mind automatically flicking to his memories of Blue - of their late night talks, of the early mornings spent grumbling together, of the joy of flying and competing.

Quintessence could be described and categorised in a number of ways. Its effects were objective and measurable, clear to witness and recognise, but they did not describe how a person would access it. 

It was like breathing or thinking - actions so naturally woven into every person's being that describing or explaining them was never necesary. It was hard really, how could one teach an action based on instincts alone - something had never been taught before because it wasn't ever learned, just naturally understood. 

Lance knew what blue quintessence was and how to access it as intimately as he knew his own name and the sound of the voice in his head.

"Blue quintessence is..." Lance paused in the midst of an attack, changing directions quickly as he switched to defence, "Laughter, the thrill of competition, satisfaction and curiosity..." He twirled once more, nearly losing his balance as he avoided a blast sent by the druid, "It's the joyful feeling you sometimes get when you breathe. It's the ebb and flow of your chest filling and emptying. Focus on that, that is blue quintessence."

It was as his foot snagged against a piece of debris that Blue's face flashed before his eyes - the cold feeling that filled his chest when she rejected him and the warm glow that he got from her every other time. He wished he had properly said goodbye back then, that he had taken the initiative to pluck up his courage and pride and finally talk things out between them. The measly farewell he had offered all that time ago seemed to mean so little now. 

As he fell through the air, he caught scents that he hadn't picked up in years, listened to sounds that seemed impossible to his ears. The scent of honeyed pastries, the laughter of his niblings, the clucking of his family's chickens, the music his mother was so fond of.