Page 46 of Legacy Elite

He's been out here the whole session. Voss has him assisting with the advanced practical work, which — fine. Obviously. Of course the academy hands the most controlled person on campus to the people learning control.

He's good at it. That's the annoying part because I am so terrible at it.

"You're waiting for it," Soren says.

I turn around. He's about ten feet away now.

"Thank you, Professor."

He doesn't react to that even slightly.

"That's why it isn't happening."

"Oh, excellent." I push my hair off my face. "He speaks direwolf."

"I don't speak direwolf." He comes closer. "I've watched you for forty minutes and you do the same thing every time. You stop. You close your eyes. You wait for something to arrive."

"Because it did arrive. In April. That's the only data I have."

"You're trying to make yourself shift."

"That is literally the assignment."

"It isn't what you were doing when it happened."

And that — okay. That stops me.

"You didn't decide to shift at that bear," Soren says. "You decided to fight it. The shift came after."

"I decided not to be eaten."

"Exactly."

I look at Voss. Voss is writing something on his board and pointedly not rescuing me.

"I can't recreate a rabid bear," I say.

"Then stop trying to," Soren says. "You keep making the wolf the objective. It wasn't the objective. It was how your body solved a problem." He shrugs, one shoulder, like he's just told me where the bathrooms are. "Give it a problem."

"That's not how—" I stop. "Is that how it works?"

"I don't know."

"Fantastic."

"Nobody knows. Nobody's had to know since the Fourth House fell." He glances at Voss. "It's a hypothesis."

"Test it," Voss says, without looking up.

Sparring with Soren is like sparring with a building.

He's bigger than me by a completely unreasonable margin, he's years further into his training, and there is not one wasted movement anywhere in him. I go at him and I get precisely nowhere, and then I'm on the mat looking at the sky.

I get up.

"You're dropping your left shoulder," he says.

"I'm trying to hit you."