*COMPLETE* There are whispers across the kingdoms that the Paragon, that strangely gifted person who can wield all four Skills, has been found.
They're wrong, of course. No one has caught the Paragon. Allayria should know: she's it.
But Allayr...
As the days pass, their friendship becomes one of those that spring up out of nowhere, grown out of happy circumstance and mutual benefit. Allayria finds herself better fed and rested, despite her evening exercises, and for their part, the three appreciate the extra eyes and her talents. During the nights when a blaze would be inadvisable, she can create low-simmering coals in the fire site that still heats her companions. And when they say that they travel between kingdoms dressed exactly as they are now she scoffs.
"You attract too much attention," she says, and the next morning she wanders into a small village alone, returning with faded red jerkins, trousers, and scarves.
"When crossing over we will need to blend in as much as we can," she tells them and tosses the three bundles. She shows them how to roll the sleeves the way the farmhands do, how to apply layers of dirt to their faces and hands, and warns them to not kill an animal unless it is dying. In Roften, shooting the wrong bird will end with you dead too.
The three know little of this, and Meg admits that they had only skirted Roften before—this would be the first time they cut through Roften proper to reach Solveigard. Allayria has a hunch that there is a deeper reason for this circuitous route to the city, and it is not a good one.
Before all of this, Allayria knew that taking Ben up on his offer would make her life difficult; sparring every night, let alone suppressing her other Skills for an indefinite amount of time would tax both her mind and her body. But she hadn't quite realized what she had gotten herself into.
When her back hits the ground again with a hard thwack she feels the resigned protest of a muscle that will be complaining to her for the next three days.
The first week they had made her condition: run stretches of road, practice simple attacks a hundred times over. This second week of travel they have started having one person attack her each night.
Right now, that person is Meg, and she's not being very kind about it.
The ban on contact has been lifted for the sake of progress, with the underlying agreement that "uncle" is the magic word. Allayria hasn't said it yet, but she wonders if she might have to tonight.
The ground begins to shudder and break beneath her, so Allayria rolls to her knees and springs up, scrambling around the edge of the circle.
A lash of water slings past her face and intuitively she throws her hand around, a half-formed thought about a whip of tree branch surging in her mind, before she hesitates and feels the full impact of the water on her face.
You moron, she thinks, her heart beating like an anvil on her ribcage. She had nearly done it: instinctively called a tree branch to her aid.
You're a Smith-caller, she tells herself, sending a sheet of metal up to block the next attack. Not a Nature-caller, not a Beast-caller, not a Spirit-caller, and not the damned Paragon. She has to keep it under control. It's her mantra, breathing in her, humming through her, cycling over and over in the back of her brain. She has to keep it all under control all of the time.
"Stay focused!" Ben bellows over the crackling of earth.
Allayria begins to run around the ring again, trying to avoid the rock being torn up beneath her feet. Branches whiz past her like arrows and she sends fire their way, burning the next volley to ashes before they reach her.
Stop running and start watching, she tells herself, twisting around to get a good look at Meg. She's crouched over in her side of the circle, hands moving in fluid, ceaseless patterns as rock, water, and plant coil at her command. When she attacks her style is surprisingly blunt and harsh—her hand moves through the air like a hammer, cutting down and jabbing up as elements fling themselves at Allayria. The few fights Allayria has seen with Nature-callers—whether in sparring or earnest combat—had involved a more graceful style throughout.
The movements give her more force, but there has to be a tradeoff.
Meg sends a boulder hurtling toward her head and Allayria jumps, hearing as she does, the earth beneath her begin to crumple. She pulls the sheet of metal underneath her and lands on it as she keeps it suspended in the air. She hovers for a moment, straining with the effort of staying up as the ground settles beneath her, before she and the sheet go tumbling down.
Someone is cheering, but Allayria only turns and catches the brief look of shock on Meg's face.
Speed, she thinks. The tradeoff is speed.
She runs directly at her now, pulling up the metal as a shield as she ignites fire in her left hand. The rock predictably hurtles past her head as she dodges it, then a tree trunk. Beneath her toes the earth begins a quiet rumble, the first inklings of its disturbance, when she flings the shield down and shoots the fire at Meg's head.
Meg anticipates the shot, but not the sudden turn of the metal sheet, which veers course and slams into her, crashing her to the ground.
Of course, the time it took to prepare both the fire and the sheet meant that Allayria had no time to defend herself either, so she took a fern branch in the stomach. But at least she wasn't the only one on the ground this time.
"Very good," Ben shouts as Iaves pulls the branch off Allayria. "I've never seen anyone stand on the element they're levitating."
"That's because it's really hard to concentrate," Allayria answers, rubbing her stomach. "It didn't last very long."
"But it lasted long enough," Ben says, and then turns to Meg. "That's something to start practicing."
Meg scowls from the ground, and then glances over at Allayria.
"It was pretty cool," she admits.
"That ground trick is pretty cool," Allayria answers, now rubbing the ache in her shoulder blades. "I wish I knew how to do that."
"I'm afraid that's a little out of your wheelhouse, kid," Iaves replies, tossing her a canteen. "But maybe something similar could work on a ship."
"It could," Allayria says, frowning as she tries to visualize it. She takes a gulp of water, wiping away the liquid on the top of her lip with her forearm.
It's much more difficult to call larger quantities of items—fire, rock, water, metal, animals, insects, and so on. There are more pieces to think about, and less room to manipulate them in. She's been able, on the rare occasion, to move some thick trees or divert a stream for a few seconds, but she's never tried to crumple the ground itself.
"Tell me how you do it," she says to Meg, and the woman looks around, surprised, but obliges.
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6/28/17 UPDATE: Edited to remove a couple of unnecessary paragraphs that have caused some reader confusion.
A full view of the header art can be found on my deviantart account here: http://asimsluvr.deviantart.com/art/Ben-655475986
