From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 156
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
The glorious sound of Alex's laughter rang in Millie's office, and they hugged each other again. "I'll see what I can do."
With all of the cauldrons put away and the safety panels set over the fire pits, the Training Hall felt a lot bigger, Katya thought. Nothing like The Shed, but still sizeable. When used as a classroom, much of the space was clearly segmented depending on what was being taught, but as a single room Katya felt more at home. Perhaps part of it was nostalgia for EVE's early years, when things seemed somehow simpler (even if they didn't at the time), but more likely it was how much more comfortable she was with margins of error measured in yards rather than inches.
High above, EVE's original apple core banner danced gently on the breeze coming in through the high windows, along with diffuse splashes of summer-evening sun. Since Fridays were reserved for self-defence lessons only, Katya strode alone into the centre of the Hall without fear of interruption by any students.
Well, any other students. Today she was the student, and the sight of Vita walking through the door made her suddenly contemplative of the word 'hubris' regarding what had happened in the exercise room.
Vita had doffed her suit jacket, leaving her waistcoat, and entered with her sleeves already rolled up, which meant she had a clear idea of what she wanted and was prepared to make sure she got it.
"I suppose you're going to want to repay me for throwing you around this morning," Katya said. An encouragingly large part of her hoped the answer was yes.
"Far from it. Your lessons will not benefit from being used for petty revenge. Besides, your contention indicates a belief you've done something wrong. Have you?" Vita asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't think so," Katya said.
"Then you have nothing to worry about. Now, our lessons in here have been focussed on getting you used to channelling your power regularly. How do you feel?"
"Never better," Katya answered honestly. The lessons had made a difference. Forcing her to exercise her Manifest for more than lighting cigarettes and party tricks had made her stronger and more confident with it. The point wasn't to grow her power, however, only her body's ability to handle it.
That it had provided them with even more time alone together was a side benefit.
"Good. Are you ready to proceed to the next step?"
"There's more?" Katya asked.
"Always. Growth can only be achieved beyond the bounds of comfort and experience. Growth is inherently new and novel, or else it is not growth. Recapitulation or worse, stagnation, gain you nothing. Trial, experimentation; those are the paths forward."
Going by the look in those piercing blue eyes, Katya realised she would be dealing with Doctor Ravenwood for the moment. Vita would have to wait.
At least Katya knew where she stood, in that case. "Then where should we begin?"
"By testing a hypothesis. Just a moment, please." Vita turned her attention to the room at large and let loose a pulse of magic that rolled out across the floor like a creeping shadow, leaving the concrete notably darker as it swept past.
"What did you do?"
"I changed the albedo of the dust." Vita's eyes were alight with a hunter's purpose as she double-checked her handiwork. "Explaining the reason could contaminate any result, so you will have to wait to find out why." When she was satisfied with her setup, she moved to stand a few feet to Katya's right. "A simple blast of arcane plasma, please. Away from my face, if you would be so kind."
Nodding, Katya looked to the far wall and got a sense of the distance.
Within her core was the smouldering ember of the Firebird, the personification she and all who knew her had given her Manifest. But even in its slumbering state, the power was molten and alive beyond what it had ever been. No longer under siege from events without or feelings within, the Firebird was being allowed to truly breathe for the first time, and no-one had a stronger hand on the bellows than Vita.
For her, Katya felt free to put air under the Firebird's wings, and focussed her flight into an outstretched hand, palm parallel to the far wall.
She took a steadying breath.
When she released it, the sun came to earth.
Heat like no other washed over her, blowing Katya's hair and clothing about on an arcane wind born of pure magic. One, two heartbeats her power surged, rending the air into a screaming wind.
With a mental flick, she stoppered the torrent, allowing darkness and silence to rush back in. Shuddering through her next breath, Katya gloried in the sublime power she wielded as her hair drifted back onto her shoulders like wisps of white smoke. The ones on the back of her neck stood tall a few moments longer.
"How did that feel?" Vita asked when Katya had returned to herself, though her attention was fixed entirely on the floor.
Katya turned to her partner flush with satisfaction. "Good."
"Excellent," Vita said absently to the ground. "Look."
At their feet was a pale circle in the darkened dust, one that extended right to the tips of Vita's shoes. At the very edge was a ring of piled-up detritus. "This is as far as the shockwave reached."
She knelt down for a closer look, dragging a finger through the dust and holding it up for inspection. "No scorching," she said to herself. After a moment's rumination, she marked the leeward edge of the ring with a toe. "Would you do it again for me, please?"
Intrigued by what could put such bubbling excitement into Vita's eyes, Katya let loose another fireball.
The dust ring grew no taller and no wider.
"Fascinating," Vita said.
Katya hopped over the dust ring so as not to disturb it, but the view from the other side didn't help. "What is it?"
"This is perhaps, what, ten feet in diameter? With your power, unchecked and unshielded, you could have blown out every window in the building, maybe the complex, but someone standing closer to you than Millie is tall would have been unscathed. A near thing, but only just."
The excitement in Vita's eyes had reached her voice, and she finally turned her considerable attention away from the floor and entirely onto Katya. "What were thinking about in the moment?"
"I… just… summoning and releasing it. That's all you wanted."
"But you gave me so much more! Look at this control!" Vita hopped back into her own footprints. "Inches, Katya! Yet I am unharmed, not even a singed hair. It was hot, yes, but not unbearably so. You kept it from harming me."
"I… didn't intend for it to stop here. Consciously, that is," Katya amended quickly.
Vita had to bite back her smile. "That makes this doubly interesting, doesn't it? Your control is subconscious! Increasing the intensity of your power by densifying it should be easier than I'd thought, with even less chance of collateral damage! You're doing it already! Your constructs—the serpents, the butterflies—I've never seen you once burn anything with them on accident. Think back to the Council; in a room that small made of mostly wood, it should have been an inferno. Instead it was merely—"
"Intimidating. That's all I'd wanted it to be."
Memories of that day were still strong. Of how angry she had been at Octavia, the exhaustion that had followed Versailles. She could have easily killed everyone there, including Vita. In a fit of pique she could have decapitated the entire leadership of witchkind in Europe. "But I don't remember thinking about it. I never do."
"Yes. Your control is innate, and you have been relying on it unconsciously." Vita held out a dust-covered finger. "But that's only a starting point. Think about where I began, and where I am now. Millie. Elise. Sveta is out there changing the world with her Manifest, and it started as a burden!"
Mention of Sveta sent a pang shooting through Katya's chest. Having a member of her Coven missing would never not hurt, no matter the success she found outside it.
"To what end, though? All of your examples seem like obvious extensions, even if only in hindsight."
The black caterpillar over Vita's left eye made to visit her widow's peak. "New insight and understanding into your capabilities. The opening of possibilities you hadn't yet imagined, a newfound respect for the power you wield and perhaps a deeper and more satisfying integration of it into your life. Need I go on?"
Knowing Vita, she could well 'go on' into morning, leaving Katya little choice but to concede. "Then what do you prescribe as the next step, Doctor?"
"A demonstration of my intentions for you."
Vita took Katya's hand and held it a moment before lifting it straight out. Keeping their palms together, Vita turned until she was standing directly in front of Katya, then backed away until only their fingertips touched.
"I can't say I enjoy this dance as much as the others," Katya said.
But the woman before her was still too much Doctor Ravenwood to even register the remark. "This should be enough. A constant flame, to this distance. The shape is irrelevant, whatever comes out will suffice."
"What are you going to do?"
"Change it," said the Raven.
The moment the words were out, Katya was engulfed in Vita's Manifest. Being so suddenly bathed in that cold, omnipresent power felt like being dropped to the bottom of a lake.
It was unspeakably glorious.
Magic crawled over every inch of Katya's skin as she fell into the Raven's embrace, sending spiders skittering up her spine to lay shivers in her shoulders. The power was incredible, but it was the control that took Katya's breath away every time she felt it. The very fundament of the universe was the tapestry on which the Raven performed her art, displacing the natural world with one of her own design.
Into it the Firebird flew.
But rigorous training and endless experimentation bested latent talent in moments. Amorphous emotion was shaped into ordered precision with ruthless efficiency as the pressure on Katya's power built, tightening around the blinding white teardrop of arcane plasma and extruding it into a straight line.
Katya thrilled at the sensation of Vita's magic coiled around her own.
Just as she had bested Vita physically, so Vita had done to Katya metaphysically, with even less effort. But nothing came leaping out of the dark recesses of Katya's mind, no horrors came raging back to strike her down at such restraint. In her magic, as in her body, she was safe with Vita.
But the Firebird wasn't going to stand passively by and let the Raven have her way. Power surged, glorious heat roiling from Katya's fingertips.
Straight into winter's grasp.
"No more power. That's not what this is about. A steady state, please. Good. Thank you."
The Raven's power didn't fluctuate. It remained firmly in control, leaving Katya extra freedom to feel out just what was happening.
Tighter and tighter her magic was being squeezed, growing more intense as a result. Even if it wasn't interacting with anything, she could feel the change happening.
Katya had been taking her control for granted without realising it. Her constructs and displays were simple extensions of her willpower; she'd just thought about what she wanted and it happened.
Now she could see.
Vita wasn't innately stronger, it was the relentless interrogation of her abilities that made her so powerful. The constant breaking down and building up was how she grew it, enabling her to understand her magic and how it affected her body better than any witch in history. It had nearly killed her on more than one occasion, but she had learned and adapted. There was no such thing as 'good enough' for her, no avenue she wouldn't throw herself down in pursuit of understanding. Her Manifest was perfectly aligned with her personality, and that, combined with her methods made her potential practically limitless.
And Katya was part of her.
Their dances, their wrestling through self-defence lessons, and now having their magic intertwining this way added a sudden, shocking intimacy to their relationship, like they were touching each other's minds.
Day by day, now moment by moment, Katya was opening herself to Vita, and the rewards were starting to become overwhelming. It was all happening so fast, but she didn't want it to stop.
Even when Katya had experienced Vita's magic directly when she'd walked her through the fence at the hospital had been different. That had been done to her, this was like weaving parts of themselves into one another.
Manifests were an extension of a witch's will and her feelings, to mesh them together was more than Katya had been prepared for. She was a witch, a being of magic, connecting to the person who meant most to her on a level that few would ever understand. Tears clung to the corners of her eyes as she turned them away from the Raven's power to her physical body, needing to see her, to know she was feeling the same thing—
She might as well have been waiting for the bus.
Deflated, Katya snatched back her power and the experiment was over.
"Is something wrong? Are you overtired?" Vita asked, the Raven retreating along with the overwhelming presence of her magic.
"No." Katya swallowed. The feeling of connection persisted, swirling and swimming within her. She missed it already. "I want to know what you were doing."
"As I suspected, the amount of…" Vita spun her hand in a circle, "…pressure behind your flame is almost negligible relative to its intensity. So I increased the atmospheric pressure around it to constrict its shape and thereby increase its density. I wanted you to experience the feeling so that you might reproduce the effect. Was I successful?"
"In some ways," Katya said. "Did you… feel anything?"
"Many things. But this is about you, Katya. Do you understand my notions of compressibility better now?"
As she had been since the day they met, Vita was earnest to a fault, and wore her enthusiasm for what she was trying to accomplish without a hint of self-consciousness. She was in her element.
Which meant Katya was, too. 'Partner' went both ways.
"Yes, I think so. Would you like me to try now?"
The smile she got made Katya only too aware of how privileged she was to be the only one to see it. If Vita could ever be persuaded to share it with a camera, Katya would wear it over her heart like a talisman forever.
For the fourth time, the Firebird stirred.
The notion of photographs struck an immediate chord, and Katya called to mind all the camera shutters she'd looked into over the years. She thought of everything Vita had ever said about concentrating power, and reached out to touch the memory of their magics interweaving, shaping them into a lens of willpower.
When she cracked open her aperture of control, what came out was a focussed shaft of white light that lanced straight and true clear across the Training Hall.
And into the wall.
With a yelp of surprise, Katya cut off her magic and raced towards it, Vita right on her heels.
The hole they found was a perfect circle about the size of a shilling, and just as shiny for the daylight coming in through the other side.
Turning to Vita, Katya's mouth fell open, only without the benefit of having anything come out of it.
Vita peered into a vertical layer cake made of brick and plaster. "See! I knew it!" Spinning away from the wall, she threw herself full force at Katya and wrapped her into a tight embrace. "I knew you could do it!"
It was enough to shock some sense back into Katya.
Some.
"I broke the school!"
"Yes! Isn't that wonderful?"
"Can you put the bricks back?"
"No, you vaporised them! There's nothing to move. Or even reconstitute. I'm so proud of you!"
Dumbfounded, Katya could do little more than let herself be hugged, unable to take her eye off what she'd done. But as Vita's heartfelt encouragement sank in, childlike giggles began bubbling out of Katya, and she swayed with her partner back-and-forth as they got worse.
And contagious.
Soon enough they were both laughing hard enough that Vita had to let go in order to breathe. Cheeks reddened, her eyes were soft and warm, flooded with giddy excitement. Her lips worked as if she were trying to form words, but didn't know which ones.
So, in the spirit of the moment, Katya put them to better use.
Unable to breathe, unable to think, Victoria stood pinned to the floor by Katya's lips. Between surprise, excitement and a healthy dosage of fear, Victoria quickly grew lightheaded, leaving the inside of her skull a vacuum of sense.
Then, with a sharp, shaking inhale, it was over, and the world started up once more in a flutter of eyelashes.
"You kissed me," Victoria said, raising trembling fingers to her lips. When she looked down, she didn't know what she'd expected to see, but her fingertips were wet. The sight, as banal as it would have been at any other instant, sent her heart hammering, and suddenly there wasn't enough air in the world for what her lungs were trying to draw in. Her mouth refused to function. Her tongue felt fat, her throat dry. She couldn't swallow, she couldn't speak, her lips working of their own accord at the phantom kiss that still tingled across them.
"Yes," Katya said. Her smile was preternaturally bright.
Shaking with the strength of her own reaction, and the consequent realisation of the magnitude of her inexperience to deal with it, Victoria found her reason less than useless.
Surely Katya expected a response of some kind. Victoria needed to say something, but what? With none of her usual tools available to her, she defaulted to honesty: "Please don't mistake my lack of reciprocation for offence. It was my first."
Katya's laugh was lustrous and full, propelled on a wave of fleeing tension as she gathered Victoria into an embrace that was immediately different than any other they had shared. Katya's head settled atop Victoria's, accompanied by the tickle of gentle fingers in her hair. "I could tell."
Despite herself, Victoria laughed. For a brief moment, she pictured what she must have looked like when their lips met, and was grateful for the fact that Katya had closed her eyes first.
"I didn't expect things to advance this quickly," Victoria said into Katya's shoulder.
