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Taika instinctively sat up straight as Drayce strode into the dusty room, struggling with the weight of a canvass bag slung across his shoulder. He let the door slam behind him, rattling the windows. After picking his way through the clutter that lay strewn across the floor like a paper maze he took a seat opposite from Taika, on the other side of the narrow table, dropping the bag at his feet.
“You can put your books away,” he said with a slight smile whilst indicating his student’s neatly arranged tomes. “Today will be a practical lesson.”
Taika stood and carefully cleared the table. When she was done, she sat again. Comfortable, she gave Drayce a slight nod to signify she was paying attention. With an elaborate flourish, Drayce produced a rose from his sleeve and laid it on the table. It was somewhat worse for wear and several of the petals were crushed and twisted. He then reached down and loosened the drawstring of the bag. From it he withdrew a block of grey stone, roughly the size and shape of a brick. He unceremoniously dropped the block next to the rose.
“Today’s exercise is one of dexterity and patience,” Drayce began to recite in the commanding tone that Taika thought of as his teaching voice. “The rose is your subject, the stone your medium, the mind your only tool. I want you to form the stone into the best facsimile of the rose that you can.”
He paused briefly to observe his student but continued when there were no objections. His voice softened somewhat.
“I know this task is difficult. You’ve never done anything this complicated before. Take your time. Remember your basic principles. Above all things, make no actions until you have achieved your perfect focus.”
He gave Taika an encouraging smile.
“Begin.”
Taika inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. She began to guide herself through the meditative exercises that would allow her to shape the stone before her. She began with her hearing. Initially concentrating on the low sounds, she let her concentration glide across the range of pitches in the room. Her own heartbeat thumped rhythmically in her head. The floorboards creaked and the wind sang through the gaps in the doorframe. She focused more deeply and layers of sound began to slowly open up to her. It had rained earlier and drops of moisture pounded the earth as they dropped from the windowsill. She heard the footsteps of a spider as it made its tentative way across the beams above her head and the impact of dust motes upon the table surface. She heard the thermal vibrations of the air itself. Her attention encompassed all of this and more in a unified field of motion.
Next, Taika turned to her breathing and the smells that permeated the room, from the obvious odour of her own human body to the memory of the storm clouds that had passed over the night before. One by one, she engaged her senses. No detail escaped her attention. No aspect of the small universe in which she lived was beyond her focus. She was aware of every stimulus that acted upon her, and they resonated in her mind like a perfect note. Taking these elements, Taika mentally wove them into a tapestry of sensation. A map of her world began to coalesce, perfect in form and detail. She was one with the symphony of atoms surrounding her. The next stage would be more difficult and before continuing, she took a deep, affirming breath. As the air left her body, so too did her sense of self. The barrier that separated her being from her environment blurred then faded. Her body was simply a part of the room, nothing more than an arrangement of particles amongst other particles. No longer bound to a body, Taika’s will expanded to enshroud the environment that was her.
With a thought, Taika superimposed the pattern of the rose onto the pattern of the stone. It was intensely difficult. The rose was immensely complex and to hold its pattern unchanging took all of her mental skill. With the shape of the rose affirmed as potential in the heart of the stone, Taika began to remove the superfluous material that did not conform to it. It was easy at first. The stone’s outer shell seemed to disintegrate into the air, leaving behind a vaguely cone-shaped lump that might reasonably become a flower. But when Taika began to work in greater detail, her focus began to slip. To hold form of the rose in the stone whilst simultaneously reshaping it proved to be too much. The pattern slipped and unbound by its strictures Taika’s will became wild, like the errant blow of a chisel. A crack appeared in the stone and it crumbled.
Drayce reached forward and swept the debris from the table. Taika opened her eyes and looked at him. Her gaze was imploring. Hesitantly, she spoke.
“I can do better.” Her voice was tremulous but determined. “I know what went wrong. I want another chance.”
Drayce reached into the bag and pulled out another block. He set it down on the surface before him with care, seeming almost to study it before letting go. He glanced at Taika and motioned to the piece of stone before speaking.
“Very well. Again.”
Taika was careful. She spent nearly an hour in expansive harmony with the space around her before making even a single cut into the rock. Each thought engineered a precise shape into the solid mass before her. Before a second hour had passed, the crude outlines of petals began to take shape. It was for naught. As she began to form the leaves on the stem a single particle seemed to fall out of place from the flowing latticework that shaped her will. The pattern trembled and dissipated.
As the dust settled, Drayce calmly removed another block from the bag.
“Again.” His voice was devoid of any hints of encouragement or criticism. Taika nodded dumbly and obeyed. For hours she worked, sometimes meticulously, sometimes with furious recklessness. Every time her sculpture collapsed, Drayce would place a new piece of stone before her and motion to try again. Every time, she failed. Hours extended into days. Teacher and pupil both took short breaks to eat and relieve themselves but once their basic needs had been met they returned to the dusty, rubble-strewn room to begin the work anew. Finally, on the evening of the fourth day, Drayce’s hand emerged empty from the bag. Taika saw his hand, saw its emptiness, and when she spoke her voice was quiet.
“I failed.”
She cast her eyes downward and refused to meet her master’s gaze so when he spoke she was surprised that he sounded neither angry nor disappointed.
“The aim of this lesson was failure. It is a lesson all Aspects must learn, and it is a hard one. The principle you have been shown is hard to define, but it is mostly known as the entropy problem.” Abruptly, Drayce stood. “Let’s go outside,” he said and began to make his way over to the door, stepping around the old clutter and newly created rubble. Taika followed. The evening air was mild, and gentle gusts sent ripples across the grass of the rolling hills. Drayce eased himself to the ground and gestured for Taika to sit beside him. Then he continued.
“There are infinitely more ways that matter can be arranged chaotically than constructively. For every iron tool there are countless lumps of ore. For every structure that is in some way purposeful there are unlimited arrangements that are essentially random. Chaos and meaninglessness are the world’s default states. Order is the aberration. What this means is that the slightest mistake made when warping can destroy the subject. If you lose the form of your subject and your power works chaotically on it, the chances of it randomly reintegrating into anything useful are exceptionally slim.” Drayce turned to Taika.
“Why do you think that with all its potential, warping is almost always used for destruction? I’m sure you had great ideas about the things you could do with your new abilities. I’m sure you were convinced that you could escape the cycle of violence that other Aspects seem trapped in. You can’t.”
Drayce waved his hand. Taika followed it, taking in the hills and the sky.
“This world is a sculpture; intricate, complex, beautiful yet regretfully fragile. In learning to warp, you have been handed the tools to modify it, as if armed with a crude hammer. To smash and deface it – to destroy it – is easy. To work constructively is extremely difficult; even the slightest error will split the stone and bring the sculpture crashing down. Actual creation is impossible. An artisan can only work with the material he already has.” His speech was broken by a quiet sigh.
“The point,” he said after a moment, “is that no matter how much you practice, no matter your skill, no matter how much you wish you could sculpt that rose, the most primal use of your power is as…”
“A weapon,” Taika finished for him.
The descending sun had turned the sky orange and the wind was growing cold. Master and student both stood and entered the house, locking the door firmly behind them.
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The Rose [Fantasy]
