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Kerrigan tilted her head. “What?”
She turned to Kerrigan, as if just remembering she was there. “It was all purely theoretical, but all good theories are rooted in fact. Yes. Yes. You and I are from different worlds.” Cleora said it so simply, as if the fact wasn’t life-shattering.
“Different… worlds,” Kerrigan said slowly. “Like you’re from Eleysia over the ocean?”
Cyrene had crossed from Eleysia to Alandria.
“No, child. There are no oceans to cross, but dimensions.”
Kerrigan shook her head. “I don’t understand. You mean, you’re on a different planet? Like in the stars?”
“Close enough,” Cleora said, tapping her hand against her side. “Yes. See, the spiritual plane isn’t flat, like this.” Cleora drew a line in the ground before them. “It’s not flat like the physical world. It’s more like this.” She drew three circles around the line, as if each were teetering on an axis. “So, you could be here”—She pointed to one spot in one circle—“and I could be here”—and then a point in another circle—“and we could still meet.”
“Okay,” Kerrigan said disbelievingly.
Cleora wiped the image away. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t expect you to understand advanced theoretical casting. Most of my doctoral students don’t understand it.” She waved her hand. “What’s important is that you can now get your crux under control so that you’re not so noisy when I’m working.”
“My crux?”
“Is that not what you call it in your world? Magic, spirit, root, essence, chi, frippery. Whichever word you want to use. Most have gone out of fashion, and crux is the most accurate anyway.”
“So, wait, what you’re saying is that you can teach me spiritcasting?”
“Teach you? Well, of course I can.”
Kerrigan nearly did a twirl.
“If you come to Rhithymna, I’ll enroll you, and we can get to work.”
Kerrigan’s heart fell. “But you said we existed in different worlds. Can’t we meet here?”
Cleora was already shaking her head. “No, that’s impossible. Teaching you here would only give you a sliver of your education. You can only reach the smallest amount of crux on the plane, such as manipulating centri—”
“I’m dying,” Kerrigan cut her off. “I have what we call magic sickness. My magic is poisoning my blood because I have too much of it and can’t use it.”
“That presents a problem.”
“If I don’t figure out how to use my magic, then I’ll die. I’d love to come learn crux from you, but I need to survive first to do it.”
Cleora circled her once more before sighing. “Fine. We can meet here once a month at the lunar apex.”
“A full moon? Are you sure it’s the same time frame in my world as yours?”
“My lunar apex is in seven days, and yours?”
“Same,” Kerrigan said with relief.
“Then, it’s settled. You will cease to be so annoying and loud while I’m practicing, and we will meet every thirty turns to keep you that way. Now, go on.”
“Wait,” Kerrigan said before she could go. “Do you have dragons where you live?”
Cleora wrinkled her nose. “Of course we have the beasts. Hard thing to train they are.”
Kerrigan didn’t know what that meant. The hard part was training the riders, not the dragons. The dragons did all of that themselves.
“Do you have bonding and dragon riders?”
Cleora shrugged. “Of course.”
“My bond failed with my dragon. I don’t know what I did wrong. Do you think it has something to do with my spiritcasting? Or can you help me work on the bonding?”
“I’m confused,” Cleora said. “You bond yourself to the dragon? How barbaric!”
Kerrigan winced. “That’s… that’s not how it’s done by you?”
“Certainly not. The greatest among us use a coupling. They reach with their crux and hold a dragon with sheer force of will.” She shook her head. “But only the emperor and their lot are that powerful. Most use a crux bond.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a way to control the beasts without the massive amount of crux necessary for a true coupling. My brother is a dragon trainer, and his crux bonds are superior to all others. He’s even tied some for officers to use. If you have sufficient magic, you can create a crux construct like so.” Cleora used her spirit magic, and suddenly, a golden light appeared before her hands. She stretched it out until it made a long, thin line. “This is spiritcasting, but you can do it with other forms of crux. Just in the liminal space, you wouldn’t physically be able to see what I’m doing. From here, you tether the crux bond to your dragon. It puts you in charge of the beast, and once you are through, you remove it quite like any other creature. Just make sure the beast is tied down before removing it. You don’t want an accident.”
Kerrigan wanted to try it and also feared it terribly. The way Cleora talked about dragons, she most certainly was from a different world. She talked about them as if they were just larger horses. Like they had no thoughts or feelings. Just animals to their core. Nothing at all like Tieran or any of the other wonderful dragons she knew.
