Chapter 3946: Swirling Wind (Part 1) "Sot!" Thanks to Zoreth’s unwitting suggestion, Elysia now used the term to refer to both her godmother and the swear word. "Sot! Sot!" "No, Zoreth! Just Zoreth. Please, Ely. I beg of you!" The Shadow Dragon said, her eyes wet with tears of regret. "Sot!" Elysia giggled. "Shot?" Valeron the Second tilted his head in confusion. "Auntie Shot?" "No, Little Brother. Just no. Call me Zor, please." Zoreth wanted to cry, but she didn’t want to scare the children. "Congratulations, you played yourself." Leegaain scoffed. "If not for my preemptive intervention, you would be crushed by both your guilt and my fist. No teaching mean words to Hatchlings, young lady." 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎 "Yes, Father." Zoreth lowered her head and whimpered. "Do you mind if we begin? I have things to do." Morok snorted. "Fix your mess on your own time." "Sure." Zoreth replied. "Is Lady Yaga here or..." "I’m here, child." The Red Mother walked up to the Shadow Dragon. "Still no progress?" "I’ve learned how to spot the energy from my Arke form, but I can’t connect with it. I tried long and hard, but nothing." "You must not see with your Body Sculpting spell, child, you must listen." The Red Mother replied. "There is no connection to form because there already is one. The humanoid aspect is a part of you, and you just need to communicate with it like you do with the rest of your body. "You don’t connect with your fingers, you just tell them to move. And when they touch something, you don’t question them, you listen to them. Now, show me what you got." Baba Yaga used her breathing technique, Sun and Moon, on Zoreth while the Shadow Dragon tried her best to call upon her Arke form. Zoreth could spot the threads of her human aspect and feel its energy, but she couldn’t hear its melody. It was akin to attempting to play a woodwind instrument without bringing it to the mouth. "It’s a good start." It was the best Baba Yaga could say without lying. "I don’t think you are a Healer talented enough to listen to the melody of someone else’s life force, but you should still manage to perceive your own. "Keep practicing Body Sculpting and spend as much time as you can in your Arke form. Are you ready?" "One moment." Zoreth closed her eyes and wished her Dragon Eyes worked with the Scanner spell as well. "I’m ready." "On my mark. One, two, three, mark!" The Red Mother exerted a delicate pressure on the human threads and, for a moment, the Shadow Dragon felt like someone had plucked a string inside of her. Zoreth’s body shapeshifted seamlessly, leaving a fading echo in her mind. "Lith. Tista. If you please." Ryla said, and the siblings shapeshifted into their Indech form. "Perfect! Now we can start our lesson." Lith didn’t miss how Ryla’s voice became more high-pitched, nor how she looked at him after the transformation. "Have you been practicing with your wings?" "Yes." Morok, Garrik, and the two Indechs said. "I don’t have wings, but I practiced hard with my arms." Zoreth replied. "That’s more than enough, and don’t worry. I thought of a solution." Ryla nodded. "Since you are closer to a Balor than a Fomor, I asked Urhen to join us." "Hi. Nice to see everyone again." Urhen stood up and gave the class a small bow before turning to Lith. "I’m glad to see that you are alright, Zoreth." "I’m Lith. She’s Zoreth." He pointed at the Balor-troll hybrid. "I know." She giggled. "Then go take care of your student, sister." Kamila’s voice was the low growl of an angry Dragon. "And you, Ryla, stop staring and start talking." "Of course." The Fomor cleared her throat, needing sheer willpower to avert her eyes from the red-skinned giant. "Before we move on to the next topic, show me the progress you made." Due to his nature and Ryla’s mentoring, Garrik stood at the top of the class, absorbing twice as much world energy as Lith, who came second. Morok’s proto-energy wings offered much resistance to the process. He still fared better than Lith in his Tiamat form, but not as an Indech. Much to her chagrin, Tista came dead last as always. Discovering her evolved human form had improved her ability to draw in the world energy through her wings by leaps and bounds, but not enough to fill the gap with the others. As for Zoreth, she couldn’t absorb the world energy as a whole and was limited to the elements corresponding to her eyes. She was slower than Tista, but the energy Zoreth accumulated was stored in her arms in the form of rune patterns. Half the skin below the elbow had gone from dull blue to elemental colors, leaving only her hands unaffected. "Is it normal that the more elemental energy I accumulate, the faster the process becomes?" Zoreth asked. "Yes." Urhen nodded. "But that only means that your skill at manipulating the elements is improving. There should be no correlation between your absorption speed and the amount of energy you store. At least, this is how it works for Balors." "You all did great, especially you, Tista." Ryla said. "Thanks." The female Indech had the sour face of someone sucking a lemon. "What I’m about to teach you will be of great help under many circumstances and should help you all to feed your eyes with a vigorous flow of elemental energy. This is what we Fomors call Swirling Wind." Ryla’s feathers turned blue, and she flapped her wings, generating a strong wind. There was no visible effect, but all the evolved humans felt that something had changed. The air smelled different, and something was pressing on their skin. "Use water magic, please. Any spell will do." Ryla said. Her students tried and failed to conjure so much as a drop of water. "Listen carefully." Ryla nodded. "I want you to absorb the world energy with your wings again, but be ready to stop as soon as it hurts." "You mean it will hurt, Mom?" Garrik asked. "Yes, dear." She replied. "That’s why you mustn’t push yourself too hard. Just take as little world energy as you can." "This sounds like a job for me." Tista unfurled her wings and felt a jolt running down her spine. "Careful, guys. It’s no joke." Garrik followed the instructions to the letter, experiencing a small sting. Lith, Zoreth, and Morok, instead, fell on all fours from the pain before they managed to stop. "Talent hurts." Morok smiled at his little brother. "So bad." "This makes no sense. I’m even worse than Tista at absorbing energy." Zoreth said in disbelief. "Thanks for the kind remark." Tista snorted. "I meant, why does it hurt me so much?" The Arke raised her hands in apology. "Because like Lith and Morok, you are used to giving your all." Ryla replied. "Since your current skill is limited, you have gotten accustomed to opening yourself completely to the world energy. "Right now, there is no water element around us, so if you let the unbalanced world energy in, it will drain the water element you naturally possess in the attempt to fill the vacuum. The pain you experience is your body resisting the pull." "What about Garrik and Tista?" Zoreth felt the ache in her limbs subside, but her blue forearm and eye kept throbbing.