Maeryn sat next to the fire, lost in thought as the wind howled on the other side of the Ice Wall enclosure. She’d taken third shift tonight, in order to wake Terrance up in the morning. Next to her sat Frankie, who was practicing a simple Candlelight cantrip, born of fire magic’s Light concept. Of course, the lecture on light’s nature was the hard part. It was difficult for some people to grasp that light was made up of countless infinitesimally small packets of energy. As a result, any fire magic that leaned heavily on the Light side of things—like fireworks, or signal flares—required a proper grounding on light intensity and wavelengths.

  Which was another hurdle, to be honest. It wasn’t very intuitive for light to be both a beam and a wave, but such was nature.

  A flame swirled into existence over Frankie’s index finger, only for her to swear and shove her hand into the snow. “Why does it keep burning me?” she whined.

  “Because you’re not applying the Light concept properly, and you keep thinking about how fire burns,” Maeryn told her with a shrug. “Don’t worry, every fire mage has been where you’re at. Learning to compartmentalize the concepts you’re trying to focus on is tricky. I’ve burned my hands more times than I can count. You’ll get there.”

  Frankie grumbled under her breath as she got ready to try again, and Maeryn glanced out at the Ice Wall nearest her. She wasn’t concerned about any random attacks, not with these kinds of protections, but… one could never be too careful. For all she knew, some massive beast might take offense at the walls and knock them down.

  But Maeryn’s thoughts drifted once more to Terrance, and his new void magic. He’d sounded so… vulnerable. Like the attunement had genuinely pained him. Which wasn’t something she had experienced before. Sure, it could be unpleasant, or downright disturbing, but directly drawing on an emotional trauma? That sounded horrible. And yet she couldn’t help but wonder whether her own time in house arrest would qualify her for void magic. Incarceration, Stillness, Vacuum. Maybe it did.

  All of her hunter training said that having a tool in her belt beat not having it at all. Who knew when it might be useful? But… Maeryn lowered her gaze to the crackling flames of the campfire. If it meant revisiting that dying, rotting version of herself who failed, again and again, every single day? The version of herself whose hope kept slipping away, piece by painful piece, as she was relentlessly crushed under the pressure of her own expectations?

  Her stomach lurched. She didn’t want it. She absolutely did not want it. But could she afford not to have it? And what did it say about her, if she was willing to let Terrance shoulder a burden that she spurned? Maeryn’s hand clenched. No. That wasn’t who she was. She wasn’t someone who made someone else do something she wasn’t willing to do herself.

  But… she also knew that Terrance wouldn’t want her to hurt herself like that. He’d already attuned. What was done was done. So she didn’t need to. But if she didn’t, she’d have to live with the fact that Terrance was plunging into the void of despair and isolation every time he used that magic, and she was too cowardly to do the same.

  What was she supposed to do? Attuning risked breaking herself even more than she already was. Refusing meant betraying her principles. Maeryn wished that someone could tell her the right answer, but she had the sick feeling that there was none. Just whatever she was willing to live with.

  She missed her parents; this was exactly the kind of thing she’d talk to them about. And they’d walk her through everything until they found something that Maeryn could bear. But they were gone, held by Captain Erina in some abyss-forsaken airship somewhere. She’d find them eventually, but for now, Maeryn would need to figure this out on her own.

  She considered each of her attunements, trying to imagine what they’d say about the problem.

  Ice Maeryn, her face hard with frost in her eyebrows, would coolly examine the pros and cons of each, before saying “If we don’t need to hurt ourself, if it doesn’t further some goal, we shouldn’t. Just comfort Terrance when he needs it.”

  Wind Maeryn, loose and relaxed as a wisp of off-green magic played in her hair, would frown before shrugging. “We survived the house arrest. It can’t hurt us anymore if we don’t let it. If the memories are useful, use them, and get some hot cocoa afterwards.”

  Necro Maeryn, intense and sharp-eyed, would glower with Mist curling around her feet. “We survive and kill the enemy, by any means necessary. Even if it hurts. Just attune and be done with it.”

  Holy Maeryn, kind and empathetic, would shake her head as she tried to dissuade them. “We’re still in the process of healing. If we tear ourselves down now, who knows how long it’ll take for us to recover? You should only do it if you absolutely have to. And right now you don’t.”

  Earth Maeryn, dusty but steady, would think for a while before planting her feet. “I also say no. If we break ourselves further, we can’t reasonably support the rest of the team. They’re counting on us to be able to make good decisions.”

  Every single one of herselves made perfect sense. But Maeryn turned her thoughts towards her oldest self. The one she valued most, the one she most wanted to be again. The one who blazed a path forward.

  Fire Maeryn, arms folded with defiance and confidence practically screaming from her face while wisps of flame curled from her shoulders, would stare directly at her in challenge. “We should attune, because preparedness is important. It’s better to know now whether we even can, instead of blindly expecting to be able to do it in a pinch.”

  …Well. That answered that. Now the only question was if she had the courage to follow through. To face down the drowning despair that Void Maeryn would embody. Maeryn could almost see her now. Her expression painfully empty, a black hole within her sucking away all idea of motion and passion. Only the hint of translucent purple behind blank eyes, hidden behind loose, barely-cared-for hair. The same face Maeryn had seen every day in the mirror for more than a month.

  Even remembering it, her chest tightened. Her mana began to shift against her will, recalling the concepts of the void: Vacuum, Stillness, Isolation. She shuddered, clenched her teeth and reasserted her control. No. Not yet. If she was going to do this, she would do it on her terms, when she was ready.

  Maeryn raised her eyes from the fire, once more scanning their enclosure. No Mist had crept inside yet, not after she’d purified the area at the beginning of her shift. No signs of any threats. Still, though, she made a decision. Not tonight. Not when she was on guard duty. If something went wrong, she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer the consequences.

  Besides, Agatha had told her to focus on recovery. To let her soul heal. Of course Fire Maeryn would attune, because she was whole enough to roll with the punches and hit back. But the Maeryn she was right now… wasn’t.

  A sick combination of relief and self-condemnation at her avoidance filled her, and she swallowed bile before anger took its place. She was prioritizing her own health, damn it! That was the right thing to do! The thing literally everyone had been telling her to do! So why? Why did it feel so wrong?!

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  “Maeryn?” Frankie’s hand landed on her knee, and Maeryn’s head shot up to meet her gaze. Abruptly, she realized that her vision was blurry, and her cheeks wet.

  Blight. She’d started crying. Just what she needed right now. Maeryn roughly wiped at her face with her sleeve, knowing full well it was too late even if she wanted to lie to Frankie. Which she wouldn’t. “Sorry. Just… Figuring stuff out.”

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  Maeryn could already foresee how that conversation would go. She’d tell her friend everything. How she felt like she could attune to void like Terrance, but that she was scared of it. Scared of immortalizing a connection to the version of herself whose foundations crumbled beneath her, the ones whose days were static and unchanging, the one who couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get out, couldn’t even scream as she failed over and over and over again.

  And Frankie would pull her into a hug, and tell her firmly that under no circumstances was she to go through with it. Because it didn’t matter how useful it could be, she wouldn’t be able to take watching her best friend shatter again. Even if, this time, Maeryn couldn’t possibly push her away.

  Maeryn would argue that she might need it someday, and Frankie would adamantly refuse to accept the possibility. Maeryn would point at Terrance and his need for support, and Frankie would scream at her that she couldn’t take care of anyone else if she couldn’t take care of herself. That she was no good to anyone else if she was dead, in body or in spirit. So if she needed to be useful so badly, she should do anything but attune.

  Oh.

  Maeryn’s jaw went slack, and then a grateful, tender smile lifted her lips. She picked up Frankie’s hand with both of hers, holding it between them as her friend looked at her with naked concern and confusion. “Actually, Frankie? I think you just saved me.”

  “I’m… gonna need some context,” her best friend said slowly. So Maeryn told her. And the conversation went almost exactly like she’d imagined, though a lot less fiery as she made very sure to point out that she’d already taken Frankie’s side.

  The engineer huffed in a mixture of annoyance and pride. “Well, it’s good that you know me so well that even my imaginary self can talk you out of stupid things,” she muttered, though her thumb brushed reassuringly against Maeryn’s knuckles. “Honestly. You barely got out the first time, it should be common sense not to try your luck again.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s hard to deny that void magic could be incredibly useful,” Maeryn pointed out. When Frankie turned to glare at her, she raised her hands up in clear surrender. “Not gonna do it! Just saying.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Frankie cleared her throat. “I’m gonna say something that might come out bad.”

  Maeryn frowned at her, but nodded. “Okay?”

  Her friend took a deep breath. “I’m glad that you don’t have your fire right now. Because if you did, I think you would have gone and attuned to void anyway, despite how stupid an idea it is.”

  Maeryn stared at her friend. She didn’t even know what she was feeling right then. Shock, anger, betrayal?

  Frankie hurried to continue. “I mean, that’s why you learned all these other elements, right? Because they’d be useful? Because they gave you more tools for whatever weirdness you needed to deal with? And you were right, they were useful. But that kind of pattern feeds on itself until something breaks. So you would have pushed past your fear and done it, and it would have crushed you.”

  Maeryn’s breath caught in her throat, her blood going colder than anything the glacier they were traversing had done to her. Frankie… Frankie was right. Even in her imagination, Fire Maeryn had pushed her towards the void, in the name of preparedness. Because it was a challenge that could be met and overcome. Just one she wasn’t ready for. One she might not ever be ready for.

  “I… I…” Maeryn’s voice broke. Her soul trembled from this harsh truth. Her fire would have consumed her entirely. Her fire would have edged her closer and closer to oblivion until she tripped. No. Not just her fire. She would have made those choices. The fire would have called to her, but it was up to her. It had always been up to her.

  Maeryn lurched to the side, falling to her hands and knees. The ice bit at her fingers, but she didn’t care as she expelled everything she had in her stomach. She’d never felt more betrayed. The fires of purpose that she’d lived with, that she’d grown up with… the flames that fueled her drive, that gave her the strength to pick herself up every single time she’d fallen… it would have led her to her own destruction.

  Against her will, she felt her own understanding of fire magic grow: the concept of Destruction. Fire didn’t just destroy directly. It ate, and it ate, until all the support that had resisted it collapsed under its own weight, destroying itself.

  Maeryn knew, then, that if she ever did reclaim her fire? It would be stronger now. And that felt like the ultimate betrayal. How could it? Why?

  Frankie rubbed Maeryn’s back, murmuring soothing words, but she couldn’t hear any of them. It was like the world had gone completely silent, except for the dull ringing in her ears and her thundering heartbeat.

  The worst part was that, despite knowing now how fire would have egged her on to her demise… she still wanted it back. She still desperately wanted that spark back in her chest, to exult in strength and burn in righteous fury.

  Frankie pulled her into a hug, rubbing her back. Maeryn collapsed against her and buried her face into the engineer’s shoulder as she tried to pull herself together. She was so sick of this. Every time she thought she was recovering, life punched her from an unexpected direction and tore her back down. When would she be able to stand again? Was this the last nasty surprise? Abyss, she hoped so.

  After a few minutes, sound slowly returned to Maeryn’s ears, and she felt steady enough to pull away. “Sorry,” she whispered, wiping her eyes again. “I just… you’re right. I wasn’t expecting to realize how badly fire magic would have messed me up.”

  She looked away. “It’s… hard to accept that something I trusted so completely would have hurt me so much. But I promise, I’ll be more careful.”

  Frankie gave her a wobbly smile. “That’s all I ask.”

  Maeryn stood then, and decided she was done with her emotions for the night. She focused on ice: Cold, Dark, Preservation, Unification. She envisioned a Maeryn who stepped back from feeling, who made her choices based on what made the most sense to reach her goals.

  The Ice Maeryn who had counseled caution, simply because Maeryn needed to preserve herself, too. Who knew that even unfeeling logic could be kind?

  Her mana congealed into frozen crystals within her, and she opened her eyes with the clarity of an ice mage. It took only a few moments’ work to encapsulate the evidence of her sickness into a large snowball, which she promptly flung out of the enclosure. But then she jerked her head to the side, feeling something off.

  The ice inside her trembled, ringing through her as like called to like. The wind howled, and for an instant, Maeryn thought she heard something else. Goosebumps ran up her arms underneath her warm coat. “Mana resonance?” she breathed, and focused on trying to identify what she was feeling.

  Then she felt it. The storm around them… there was ice magic in it. There was ice magic everywhere in it. This wasn’t some weird natural phenomenon. This was an active working. Something was making this storm. And Maeryn could only think of one thing that could possibly do that.

  Unwilling to believe, she threw all of her focus into her mana sense, reaching out as far as she could. Connecting to the storm, she threw together an ice magic variant of Clairvoyance, asking the ice what was at its center. The snow obligingly shifted, painting a picture.

  “Maeryn?” Frankie asked confusedly, but Maeryn’s eyes simply grew wider and wider as she stared at what the snow had drawn.

  She took a stumbling step back. “By heart and hearth…”

  “Maeryn! Talk to me!”

  “That’s…!” Maeryn turned terrified eyes to her best friend. “Frankie, there is something casting ice magic. Very, very far away. I shouldn’t be able to sense that far. Not unless the magic itself was absolutely monstrous.”

  She swallowed, and gestured at the snow drawing. Frankie looked, and gasped.

  There, painted white and ice blue, was a dragon.