Displaced

Chapter 12

"No! Wrong! What did I just tell you?"

"Stab upward instead of downward."

"That's right. If you stab downward, the only force you get is from your arms. Stabbing upwards allows you to power the strike using your entire body, straight into the heart. Now try again."

"...okay..."

Arlette Faredin rubbed her forehead as her hapless subject attempted the saddest attack on a tree trunk in history, the girl's hands fumbling and limbs weak. Sofie Ramaut was easily the worst student that Arlette had ever seen. She lacked strength, coordination, conviction — it didn't help that the girl seemed entirely reluctant in the entire endeavor. Sofie seemed highly disinterested in the prospect of fighting anyone or anything. This was going to be a slog.

Eventually Arlette couldn't bear to watch anymore, so she signaled for the young woman to stop and beckoned her over.

"That's enough for tonight," she told her dispirited student. "We can work on it more tomorrow. Besides, before we go much farther, we need to consider how you will work in your abilities. Are you an Observer or a Feeler?"

"A what or a what?" came the reply.

Arlette slumped against the practice tree and fought back the urge to strangle something. Every time she thought she'd found the bottom of the barrel, Sofie would reveal some new layer of ignorance. It had gotten to the point where Arlette was amazed the girl knew how to chew.

"Feeling and Observing are the two ways that people can leave their mark on the world. How should I put this... People like Basilli and I are Observers. That is because we influence the world by observing something into existence. So when Basilli wants to create fire, he observes a flame and it appears."

"So he just sees a flame in his head and it shows up?"

"No, he doesn't 'see' a flame, he 'observes' a flame. You can't just visualize it, you must experience it. You need to feel the heat, see the light shining from it, hear it... You must understand the flame and believe that it is there, and then it is there."

"So can you make flames too, if you want to?"

"To a degree. It's not that simple. As I said, you have to understand the flame in its entirety, and that's not easy to do. People all understand things differently, so some people just grasp concepts naturally that others don't. Basilli is somebody who just naturally understands flame. I don't. If I wanted to become as capable as he is right now I could, but it would take years and years of study and training. That's why nobody usually bothers. Instead, find what you naturally understand and focus on pushing that as far as it can go. It will take you much farther."

"So can you make fire or not?"

"Anybody can make a small flame, including Feelers. Even the few poor people who have the smallest amounts of soulforce can manage a candle flame with a little practice. It's just that it takes hard concentration and many times more energy than something you're better at. If I need to I'll make one to start a fire, but anything beyond that is just a waste of my soulforce."

"So if an Observer 'observes' things, a Feeler... feels things?"

"Observers and Feelers are two sides of the same coin; one concerns the outside world, while the other concerns the inside."

"So Feelers change their bodies?"

"Precisely. I've heard that they concentrate on some feeling inside them that they once felt, like a time when they felt especially strong or powerful. Jaquet could explain it to you better."