The wind was being annoying today.
I stood on the flat-topped rock—the one I'd claimed three months ago when Master Kieran first dragged me out here—and watched the air currents twist around each other like drunken dancers. Most people wouldn't see them. Hell, most people would just feel a nice ocean breeze and think about how pleasant the weather was.
I saw the muted light pink wisp tangling itself in the yellow current about fifteen feet offshore.
"You gonna grab it or just stare at it all day?" Master Kieran's voice drifted up from the beach behind me. He hadn't even turned around. The old bastard was sitting cross-legged on the sand, eyes closed, probably watching me through the air itself or some other show-off technique he refused to teach me yet.
"I'm assessing the situation," I called back.
"You're stalling."
I rolled my eyes. The muted light pink wisp—soul energy from some long-dead mage who'd probably been pretty mediocre even when alive, aged for two hundred years into this pathetic little spark—was weak material. Barely stronger than found air. But it was a start, if I could capture it before it dissipated into the regular wind patterns...
The problem was the yellow current it had gotten tangled in. Found air. Literally just... air. The stuff people breathed. Useless for anything serious, but it moved in thick streams near the coast, and trying to pull soul energy through it was like trying to thread a needle while riding a horse.
A very angry horse.
That was also on fire.
"Tick tock, apprentice."
I crouched lower on my rock, feeling the wind patterns shift around my body. The ocean stretched out in front of me, gray-blue and endless, waves crashing against the rocks below with that rhythmic boom-hiss that had become background noise over the past few months. Seagulls screamed overhead, probably laughing at me.
Everything laughed at me these days.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out one of my bottles—the simple kind, round bottom, thin neck, no decorations because I wasn't some rich mage-family kid with fancy equipment. The glass was warm from being pressed against my ribs. Empty. Obviously empty. That was the whole point.
The pink wisp twisted again, starting to break apart at the edges where it touched the yellow current. If I didn't move soon, it'd dissolve completely, and I'd have wasted another perfect opportunity to actually, you know, do the thing I was supposed to be learning.
"Any day now."
"I'm going, I'm going!" I uncorked the bottle, held it up, and reached out.
Not with my hands. With my self. That weird internal muscle that Master Kieran kept insisting I had—the one that felt less like a muscle and more like trying to flex a memory. I pushed my awareness into the wind, felt it push back, found the pink wisp dancing just out of reach—
The yellow current shoved my consciousness sideways like a drunk shoving past you at a bar.
I stumbled on my rock, nearly dropped the bottle, caught it at the last second, and fell flat on my ass.
"Graceful," Master Kieran observed. Still hadn't turned around.
"That current's too strong," I said, getting up and dusting sand off my pants even though there wasn't any sand up here. Nervous habit. "The soul energy's gonna dissipate before I can separate it."
"Then separate it faster."
"Oh wow, thanks, that's super helpful advice. 'Do the impossible thing faster.' Why didn't I think of that?"
He did turn around then, and I immediately regretted my sarcasm. Master Kieran had this way of looking at you that made you feel like he could see every mistake you'd ever made, every shortcut you'd tried to take, every time you'd thought about giving up. His eyes were the same gray as the ocean behind me.
"You know what your problem is?" he asked.
"Your terrible personality?"
"You're scared of the wind."
I blinked. "I'm... what? I'm literally standing on a rock trying to grab magic out of the air. How is that scared?"
"You're treating it like an opponent. Like it's trying to hurt you." He stood up, brushing sand off his pants—actually brushing off real sand, because his pants actually had sand on them. "The wind doesn't care about you. It's not out to get you. It's just moving."
"Yeah, and it's moving the soul energy away from me, so—"
"So move with it."
He didn't even gesture. Didn't close his eyes or make some dramatic hand motion. He just... thought at it.
The pink wisp appeared in front of my face, perfectly still, separated from the yellow current like it had never been tangled at all. It hung in the air, glowing softly with that pathetic muted tint, waiting.
I stared at it. Then at him. "How—"
"Bottle," he said, like he was asking me to pass the salt.
Right. I held up my bottle, and the wisp drifted inside like it had always wanted to be there. I corked it quickly before it could change its mind, and held it up to the light. The pale pink glow pulsed weakly against the glass.
My contribution to that capture was... standing here uselessly. Nailed it.
"Good," Master Kieran said. "Now do it again. Actually do it this time."
"What? There's no more—" I looked out at the ocean and saw three more wisps. Two more muted pinks, one slightly brighter orange farther out.
And something else.
Something black.
Not the yellow-white-clear of found air. Not pink, orange or red. Pure black, less like a color and more like a lack of it, drifting slowly along the coast about fifty feet out.
My breath caught.
"You're seeing them now," Master Kieran said. It wasn't a question. "The more you practice, the more you'll see. The world's full of dead mages' power, kid. You just have to stop fighting it long enough to notice."
He started walking down the beach, hands in his pockets. "Wait," I called after him. "Do you see the black one?" He stopped. Didn't turn around.
"The what?"
"The black wisp. Out there." I pointed. "It's just... floating. Moving south along the current."
A pause. Long enough that I started to wonder if I'd said something wrong.
Then Master Kieran turned around, and his expression was perfectly casual. Too casual.
"You been in the sun too long?" he asked, walking back toward my rock. His voice was light, almost amused. "Hit your head when you fell on your ass earlier?"
"I'm serious. There's a black—"
"Kid." He stopped at the base of my rock, looking up at me with that same easy smile. "Soul energy comes in pink, orange, and red. That's it. Those are the colors. There is no black."
"But I'm looking right at—"
"There is no black," a voice said directly into my mind.
I flinched. Master Kieran's mouth hadn't moved. He was still smiling that too-casual smile, but his voice—his real voice—was speaking through the air itself, bypassing sound entirely.
"You're tired. You've been training hard. Sometimes apprentices see things that aren't there when they push too far." His mental voice was calm, measured, but there was something underneath it. Something sharp.
Out loud, he said, "Come on down. Let's call it a day. You've earned a break."
But through the air: "Don't look at it. Don't point at it. Walk with me. Now."
I glanced back at the black wisp one more time. It was still there, drifting slowly, impossible and real.
Master Kieran couldn't see it.
I could.
And for the first time since I'd met him, I saw something in his eyes that I'd never seen before.
He was scared.
And that made me absolutely terrified.
I climbed down from the rock slowly, deliberately, trying to make my movements look casual even though my heart was hammering against my ribs like it wanted to escape my chest entirely and make a run for it down the beach without me. The bottle in my hands felt heavier than it should have, the little pink glow pulsing against the glass, and I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what kind of soul energy would be black, what kind of mage would leave something that looked less like color and more like a hole punched straight through reality itself.
I guess I followed him without really deciding to, my legs moving on their own while my mind stayed stuck on that impossible darkness drifting on the coast behind me. I wanted to look back, the urge crawled up my spine like ants. Very small ants. Very cold, very determined ants. I shivered, despite the warmth, earning an inquisitive glance from Master Kieran. "Nothing, nothing, all good," I said, embarrassed. His eyebrow didn’t come down anyway.
We'd barely made it twenty feet down the beach when the air changed.
Not metaphorically. Not in some poetic “the mood shifted” way. The actual air changed—pressure dropping so fast that my ears popped, the temperature plummeting from pleasant coastal afternoon to something that felt like winter had decided to show up uninvited and angry about it.
Master Kieran stopped walking. His shoulders went rigid. “Kid,” he said, and his voice had lost every trace of that forced casualness from before.
“How far away was that black thing when you saw it?”
“Fifty feet, maybe? It was moving south along the—”
“Are you absolutely sure?" Kieran asked. "Yeah, it's in the same—” it wasn't. Instead it was zooming towards us. “What the—”
Kieran shoved me to the ground as a chunk of stone sailed over my head. I blinked, surprised.
Dark red air whipped around him in spirals, and I could see the currents bending to his will like they’d been waiting their whole existence for him to ask.
I, meanwhile, was face-down in the sand. I got up only to be shoved again by air from Kieran, once more saving me from a boulder. Turning my head around I saw a man with large plate armor, it looked ancient, covered in symbols that I didn’t recognize. He grabbed the soil, wrenched a chunk free and hurled it at Kieran. Kieran didn't open his eyes, didn't even move but the air collected itself and rammed the boulder, fast, fast enough to implode it.
Holes in the sand, coming from nowhere—moving towards Kieran.
They hit him, I felt it. A shock. Heavy, like taking damage in a video game and losing 9 out of 10 bars. Dents filled his skin and he winced. ”Kid. Get the hell out of here. Now.” I turned to sprint but saw the black wisp hanging in front of my face. I ducked and tried to roll but my hand hit a rock and I came up short.
‘Um’
I froze. ‘Do you… can you…’ it said. Its voice trailing off. “You’re the black wisp.” I stared blankly at it. ‘Well, I think that’s obvious no?’ “And you’re talking.” ‘Still obvious.’
Something hit my foot with a wet splash. I slipped and hit the sand, again.
I grabbed my pink wisp and felt a disapproving look from Kieran that somehow shook his head without moving or looking at me.
Pulling the pink wisp out of the bottle, like Kieran taught me, I got it out and tried to use it toward the water. It didn't budge, just floated there, probably grinning.
A woman stood up from inside the shallows. She raised a hand, fingers trailing through the air, and purple water coalesced around her fingertips into a spinning eddy. I jumped to the side but it hit the black wisp. It screamed and started evaporating.
The pink wisp stiffened and shot toward the stream and stopped it short. I looked in shock at the wisp—I hadn't even moved it.
“Go.”
Kieran's orders. Sorry black wisp. I started running down the beach, the pink wisp guarding my flank.
'Don't go—' the black wisp said.
I kept running.
The pink wisp came up to me and slapped me across the face. Hard.
“What the hell was that!?”
'An order,' the black wisp said. 'So. Um. Do you think you could not go?'
I glanced at the pink wisp. It glanced back.
I looked at the black wisp. Still evaporating.
“...Fine.”
I spared a glance to look to Kieran’s side of the battle. He wasn’t holding his own, he was owning it. The armored man was on his knees, breastplate in pieces beside him. Dents came rushing at Kieran, he didn’t move. They got closer. He didn’t move. They got closer—then, disappeared, like they had decided trying Kieran wasn’t worth the risk.
My eyes traced the retreating dents, finally finding the source: a long hood with a longer face under it. I caught the face’s eyes, they caught mine. The face was cracking, flakes of skin fell off and it was grimacing like 1000 volts of electricity were being passed through its veins. I tore my gaze away from the hooded figure and focused on the water-woman who was currently trying very hard to kill me.
The pink wisp hovered beside me, waiting. Actually waiting, like it had developed a personality in the last thirty seconds and that personality was along the lines of “impatient bodyguard”.
“Okay,” I muttered, “okay, okay, okay.”
The water-woman raised both hands then pulled one back in an arc. Water flowed up to meet her fingertips as the other hand served as a scope.
I didn’t think. I just—pushed. That weird internal muscle, the one that felt like flexing a memory, finally decided to cooperate.
The pink wisp shot forward and met the stream head-on, weaker but more determined. Water exploded in every direction, showering me with droplets that burned, despite them not being capable of anything remotely like burning, where they touched my skin. I hissed, stumbling backward. My skin turned pale and numb as they splashed on me, then flushed with burning cold. I yelped, trying to brush the water off without making it worse, and got an eyeful of the woman standing in the surf moving her arms like she owned the ocean, which, from what I saw, was at least partially true.
The pink wisp circled back to me, dimmer than before. Using it as a shield had cost it something, and I felt a pang of guilt that I immediately shoved down because feeling bad for soul energy seemed like a great way to die on this beach.
'Help me,' the black wisp whispered, its voice fainter now. 'Please. Before I—'
"I said I won't!" I snapped, not sure why I was making promises to impossible colors that shouldn't exist. "Just stay there. Don't evaporate. Is that a thing you can control? Can you just... not evaporate?"
'That's not how it works.'
"Well, how does it work?"
The water-woman answered for me by sending another purple stream my way. I dove to the ground, impressively face-planted, then felt something in my shoulder pop in a way that suggested my shoulder and I were going to have a very serious conversation later. Behind me I could hear the sounds of Kieran's fight. Impacts that shook the air, currents screaming past each other. I rolled onto my back just in time to see the hooded figure—the one with the cracking face—turn away from Kieran and start walking toward me. Not running. Walking. Like they had all the time in the world and I was already dead, just hadn’t realized it yet.
“Oh, that’s not good,” I muttered.
The pink wisp pulsed weakly beside me, and I could feel its energy fading. Whatever soul had left this behind, they’d been barely competent, worse than even me, and now their remnant was running on fumes after blocking one attack.
‘Um. Capture me,’ the black wisp said.
“What?”
‘Capture me. In your bottle. Quickly.’
“I don’t even know what you are! Kieran said that black doesn’t exist!”
The black wisp rolled its eyes. ‘Your master is wrong about many things. Now. Capture me?” The wisp’s voice crackled, fading further. The hooded figure was getting closer. The water-woman was already gathering another attack, purple water streaming around her.
I fumbled for my second bottle—the empty one I carried because Master Kieran insisted on backups—and uncorked it with shaking hands.
“If this kills me, I’m haunting you,” I told the black wisp.
‘That’s…’ the black wisp started, ‘um… fair.’
I reached out with that internal muscle again and tried to do what I’d failed at a dozen times before. I closed my eyes, and felt it. The black wisp. I could feel it, like I was holding it. The muscle never worked, it would cramp, it would hurt. But this time I wasn’t fighting the wind. I wasn’t treating it like an opponent.
I just asked.
The black wisp moved just as an arc of lightning raced toward me. The bolt hit the wisp. The bolt disappeared, the wisp didn’t.
I raised my eyebrow.
‘That’s just how I roll, now, use me on that woman. She’s really getting on my nerves.’
The muscle flexed, the wisp moved, and suddenly I had a weapon made of darkness shooting toward the water-woman. She saw it coming. Her eyse went wide and she threw up a wall of purple water so thick it looked solid. The black wisp hit it and went through. I kept flexing.
The woman screamed. Not a battle cry, not a spell, just a raw human scream as the wisp touched her chest and she crumpled into the surf.
‘Told you,’ the black wisp said, sounding smug. ‘Now the fire mage, fast, before he takes out an ember.’
“An ember—”
'Something bright caught my eye and I discovered that a wildfire had magically appeared in front of me. A tree toppled and started rolling towards me, trailing ashes behind it. It picked up speed, another tree joining it. I tried to flex the muscle but it hadwent back to being a memory, possibly drunk.
“Kieran! Help—”
I didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it. No one could. I didn’t even blink and the fire was out, only black char a reminder of it. Kieran glided in front of me. ”Get out of here already!” I stayed and stared at what was happening in front of me. Trees flew up and out of the ground, dirt exploded in brown showers. The figure stood up, his hood burned, grimace gone. He screamed and ran toward Kieran. Kieran stayed where he was. The figure got closer. Kieran stayed where he was, eyes still closed. the figure launched up it the air and started disintegrate. A large rock floated up from his remains and started floating toward Kieran. I looked at the man’s body, a gray husk smoking at the edges.
“Kieran? What was that?” I asked, my voice trembling.