The following week Ariel and the others were finally introduced to dragon bone, and their true training began in the Steel Tower.

Walter still had them in the early mornings, and made them do physical training—the usual pushups, jogs, and obstacle courses. But the rest of the day they sat in on the different classes with the other First Years. The lessons included topics on the history of the Wayfarers, the different disciplines available, and the types of affinities. There were also hands-on labs where they could practice some of those affinities they learned about; it was in those labs they were given one dragon bone ring each to wear.

A teaching assistant taught Ariel and the newcomers separately in those labs, because they couldn’t yet Siphon the Strength. As the days passed, the other shifters with her touched the Strength one by one, and slowly moved on to practicing the different Weaves demonstrated by the lab instructors. But Ariel and Michelle remained stuck, unable to achieve the Siphoning.

On Friday, Michelle finally touched the Strength, but Ariel still hadn’t. When Jett met her that weekend, she was distracted, and when he asked her what was up, she told him she was falling behind.

“I can’t reach the Strength,” Ariel said. “Though I try and try. I don’t understand it. I touched it before by accident—with your help—but for the life of me I can’t do it again.”

“You’ll get it eventually,” Jett told her.

“Sorry if I sound like a big whiner,” Ariel said. “It’s just bugging me.”

He squeezed her hand. “Listen, if you have trouble, text me during the week and I can have Ephephany send you some tips.”

“No,” Ariel said. “I don’t want to involve anyone outside the Steel Tower. I want to do this by the rules.”

“Since when is contacting an external witch against the rules?” Jett said.

“Oh, you’d be surprised at how many rules these Wayfarers have,” Ariel said.

“Well, it’s up to you,” Jett said. “Either way, I know you’ll do it.”

“Thanks for being here for me,” she said.

“Always.” Jett kissed her on the forehead.

The Wednesday of the following week, Ariel was still struggling to touch the Strength.

She cleared her mind, as taught, and then focused on the bone ring that covered her finger. She felt its weight, its texture, and imagined reaching through the ring to Strength that awaited on the other side, to the world that existed atop our own.

But she felt nothing.

“Damn it all to hell,” Ariel said after failing for the umpteenth time.

The teaching assistant assigned to her that day, one Weyona Mubarak, raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Ariel told her. “I guess I’m just not cut out for this. The only way I can Siphon is by accident.”

“By accident?” Weyona said. She was a Fourth Year and dressed in a purple robe.

Ariel told her all about the sparring lesson that had ended in Jett covered in dirt. She didn’t tell her Jett was a dragon, of course.

“Interesting,” Weyona said. “I haven’t met many students whose boyfriends accidentally gave them bracelets of dragon bone.”

Ariel wasn’t sure what to say to that. She wondered if she had revealed too much.

“Anyway, you thought your life was in danger,” Weyona continued. “If you didn’t Siphon, you would have died. Or you believed you would.”

“Yes,” Ariel admitted.

“Obviously you have a strong affinity to Earth, but you can’t access that affinity until you touch the Strength,” Weyona said. “I wonder… you’ve already Siphoned without proper training, touched it instinctively. We’re trying to train you to touch it a different way, but your mind has already developed its own pathways.” She tapped her lips. “I think we’re going to take a different approach. Drop, and give me fifty pushups.”

Ariel obeyed. She was a bit embarrassed about having to do this during the lab: even though she was in the corner of the room and away from everyone else, she was sure some of the other students had noticed, and were probably laughing at her. But she forgot about them as weariness began to take hold, and the only things existing to her in that moment were the floor, her exhausted muscles, and the struggle to get out the next pushup. While she was a shifter, and stronger than an ordinary human, fifty was still a bit of a stretch.

When she finally finished, she got up.

“What were you thinking about while you were doing the pushups?” Weyona asked.

“At first, I was angry with you,” Ariel said. “And embarrassed.”

“And then?”

“Well, and then nothing,” Ariel said. “I was completely in my body, instead of my mind. In the moment.”

“Good,” Weyona said. “That is the state you must be in to Siphon. Where mind and body are one, and no thoughts are running through your head. You must achieve that same emptiness in order to reach through the bone and Siphon.”

“But I already do that,” Ariel said. “I always clear my mind before I try to Siphon.”

“Yes,” Weyona told her. “But this time, instead of imagining yourself reaching through the bone, just do it. Keep your mind clear. No imagining.”

“Just do it?” Ariel said.

“Yes,” Weyona replied.

Ariel took several deep breathes and cleared her mind. She held the bone ring up in front of her face, but didn’t allow any thoughts to coalesce. She felt the coarseness around her finger, the light weight...

And then simply reached inside.

Immediately her consciousness expanded so that she was aware of every other apprentice in the room. She could hear their heartbeats, their breathing. She could see a fly crawling up the wall on the far side of the room. A spider lurking in a web beside it.

And just beyond the edge of perception, she could sense the untapped, raging flow of the Strength, waiting for her to draw it through the bone ring. She reached for that raging river...

Instantly the Strength flowed through the ring and into her body. It felt like a river that had broken through a dam, and it threatened to sweep her away.

Ariel inhaled with a hiss.

“Surrender!” she could hear Weyona saying. “Surrender to the river.”

Ariel did so, remembering her training. She allowed herself to be drawn along by the river, and her consciousness shrunk so that she was back inside of herself. She could see the river floating before her, depicted as a thin line of multicolored light that dissipated a short distance in front of her, the far edge wavering like a ribbon dancing in the wind.

“I can sense you Siphoning,” Weyona said. “You’ve done it! Good job. Now release the Strength and let’s try again.”

Ariel repeatedly touched and released the Strength under Weyona’s guidance until she was confident she could do it every time. She left the lab feeling happy and accomplished.

From that day forward, she was finally able to join in the real labs, creating Weaves of Air, Earth and Water as taught by a rotating group of eccentric instructors. No other affinities were allowed for the time being, as Air, Earth and Water were considered the safest for First Year apprentices to manipulate. Not that the students even knew the designs to any other affinities: it wasn’t like there were any books on the topic, and one couldn’t just look up the Strength on the Internet.

The Wayfarer instructors would stand at the front of the lab and demonstrate patterns by shaping colored water from different buckets. Ariel would draw the Strength through her bone ring, forming that thin line of light visible only to her eyes, and then she would Weave, doing her best to mimic the patterns the Wayfarers demonstrated.

The thin river of light produced by her Siphoning reminded her of a beam that had passed through a prism, as it contained a rainbow of closely spaced colors. Well, almost: a true rainbow didn’t contain all the colors she saw here. There was gray, green, blue, red, yellow, white and black, one for each affinity—Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Life, Light, and Dark. Those colors matched the dyes the instructors used in their water buckets, or at least they did for the three affinities currently taught: Air, Earth and Water, which were gray, green and blue respectively.

By placing mental barriers into that river of Strength, Ariel could divide the colors into separate branches. Once she formed an individual branch, if she wanted to continue the pattern, she needed to Siphon more Strength from the ring. If a different affinity was required for the next portion of whatever design she was working on, she could simply apply a barrier to the current river of light and then draw out the next appropriate color.

She made hand gestures to help in her shaping of the individual branches; apparently when you got good enough after years and years of practice, you didn’t need to make the motions, and could do everything with your mind. She also found that moving her head while Weaving was just as effective as her hand: that would be useful if she ever wanted to Weave in lion form while on the run, for example.

Siphoning was one thing, but creating a successful Weave another altogether. If the different branches weren’t in the exact shape required, the Weave would do nothing when it was completed, at least when Air, Earth and Water were involved: apparently the other affinities could backfire in dangerous ways if their Weaves were formed incorrectly. Creating a working Weave was more than a little tricky, given that the designs the instructors demonstrated with their buckets of colored water were exaggerated in thickness as compared to actual Strengthworks.

Ariel’s first successful Weave was a vaguely starfish-like shape made of intertwining branches of Air and Earth, in the discipline known as Treespeak, which involved the manipulation of plants. The lesson took place outdoors, in an area normally reserved for the Tower’s beef cows, who used it for grazing. The animals had been cleared out for the lesson, though the place still stank of manure and fur.

“Treespeak normally requires a substantial amount of Life to complete successfully,” the instructor, one Kaalis Nerobi, said. “However, there are exceptions, allowing us to give you First Years a taste of it. For those of you who have seen this already, feel free to practice on your own. But for those who haven’t, behold as Air and Earth intertwine.”

Ariel watched, and then copied the Weave, whose water design Kaalis left suspended in front of the class. When Ariel completed it, she cut off the flow of the Strength and mentally directed the work into a target she envisioned in the soil in front of her. The Weave vanished into the earth. She wasn’t expecting anything to happen, as she hadn’t formed a successful Weave up until that point, but a moment later the grass within a four by four area around the target began to grown rapidly, stopping only when it had grown to three times the height.

She couldn’t help but purr excitedly.

“Well done,” the teaching assistant said when she walked by Ariel. “The cows will eat well tonight.”

Ariel repeated the Weave again and again, and got it perfect every time. She noticed that other students who achieved the Weave had their grass grow with varying degrees of success: none of them could make it grow as tall as she did, nor over as great an area. Jacob was the only one who came close, she noted. It seemed to piss him off that she had beaten him.

The weeks passed and she tried many new Weaves the instructors taught, but only really mastered three of them. First Year apprentices weren’t allowed to wear the bone rings outside of the labs, but there was a special practice room where Wayfarers could don bone accessories and attempt Weaves under the supervision of a teaching assistant. She realized that Jacob and his friends shouldn’t have had the rings that day when they were playing Frisbee, just like Ked had said, but Ariel decided she wasn’t going to report them. After all, she hadn’t seen rings on their fingers since, though she supposed it was possible they were hiding them—the rings she had noticed before the Frisbee game were only half circles, after all, easily concealed on the insides of the fingers. Why Jacob or his friends would be secretly wearing bone rings, she didn’t know. Maybe to appear stronger in magic than they were?

Ariel spent most of her off hours in that practice room, constantly trying the different Strengthworks, but still had difficulty consistently creating anything outside of the three she knew really well. Jett brought her the dragon bone bracelets he owned so she could show off her best Weaves on Friday and Saturday nights for him, and even when she failed, he always encouraged her.

“My lioness never gives up,” Jett said.

“No,” Ariel agreed, resting her head on his bare chest. “Not when she has a dragon to lean on.”

During one particular lab on the third week since she had learned how to Siphon, Wayfarer Kaalis told the class: “I’m breaking you into pairs for this next Weave. It’s a variation on the Rock Eruption you’ve all seen.”

Weyona was the teaching assistant, and she helped Kaalis divide the First Years into groups of two. Weyona assigned Ariel to Jacob.

“Wait, why do I have to go with her?” Jacob said, lifting up his nose at Ariel. “She only knows like two Weaves. She can’t even do Rock Eruption.”

“You don’t get to pick your partners,” Weyona said.

“Fine.” He sidled up next to Ariel. “You better not mess this up. Loser.”

Ariel ignored him.

Kaalis demonstrated the variation on the Weave, which involved adding a branch of Air down the middle. Rock Eruption was part of the Earthfurl discipline, which focused on Weaves that manipulated Earth, Air, Fire and Water to affect the ground everyone walked upon. Ariel had yet to attain the original Weave, and she doubted she’d get this one, either, but she was sure as heck going to try.

The majority of the design involved the Earth affinity, and she teased out the appropriate branches of green light from her ring.

“I’m wondering how small your Strengthwork is going to be,” Jacob taunted while he created his own design, which she couldn’t see. “Assuming you can even touch the Strength today.”

How can such a beautiful boy be so cruel? Ariel thought. But she already knew. He was hot and completely aware of it. He probably had the girls eating out of his hands while he’d been in high school. If she had gone to his school, he would have been one of the uber-popular jocks she always lusted after but could never get. She realized now that if those jocks were like him, they definitely weren’t worth her time. Shallow, narcissistic types who only cared about themselves. Not like her Jett, who was beautiful inside and out.

Jacob’s words distracted her, and Ariel had to allow her design to dissipate so she could start over again. This time she poured more Strength into each branch, so that the tree-shaped Weave which began to form was thicker than her usual creations. She wasn’t sure if it would take, because in the past bigger branches had failed her. When she was almost finished, a large shard of rock abruptly thrust to the surface of the earth in front of her, about the size of a waste-basket: Jacob’s Rock Eruption. She refused to let Jacob’s success distract her, and she ignored the taunting words he spoke, letting them bounce away unheard. Nothing could pierce her concentration.

When she completed the design, she let the Weave settle into the Earth just in front of the rock Jacob had created. She released the Strength and held her breath expectantly. When nothing happened, she slumped.

“Ha!” Jacob told her. “Like I said, loser.”

The earth began to shake underneath her, gently at first, but then growing to an outright rumble. A moment later a veritable boulder thrust from the surface, completely obliterating Jacob’s relatively tiny rock in the process.

Jacob stepped back. Ariel merely stared, shocked by what she had done. But when she glanced at Jacob and saw his terrified face, she couldn’t help but smile. She remembered Weyona’s words: Obviously you have a strong affinity to Earth.

She heard confused whispering coming from some of the students behind her. “How was she able to create something so big, giving how little Strength we can Siphon from these tiny rings?”

“Who did this?” Kaalis said, hurrying toward them.

“She did,” Jacob quickly told the white-bearded Wayfarer. His words sounded accusing, like she’d done something wrong.

Kaalis merely stared at the boulder. “Good, apprentice. Very good.” The shock was evident in his voice. She thought she heard a bit of awe in it, too.

Jacob never bothered her again after that.

The weeks passed. She continued practicing in her off hours, and became better and better with the different Weaves she knew so that soon she could create a solid eight without any problems, including Rock Eruption. When Jett visited on Fridays and Saturdays, sometimes, when the moon wasn’t visible, he sneaked her past the tower grounds and over the exterior wall to the woods beyond. There, he’d let her transform into her lioness to roam free for an hour. He’d catch her shortly thereafter, and she’d change back for their lovemaking session.

Ariel had stopped worrying about getting caught weeks ago, but leaving the grounds always made that fear come rising up again, and when in the woods she usually wanted to get back as soon as she and Jett had their roll in the hay—or grass, as it were.

There was a special class for shifters-only taught by a Werebear named Chalms Kadorbus. He gave Ariel and the others loose bone bracelets similar in style to Jeremiah’s, bracelets that slid easily along her forearm but could withstand a transformation intact. Chalms had them all change while wearing the bracelets, and the shifters practiced creating Weaves in their animal states. Ariel found it wasn’t really much more difficult than Weaving in human form, though it did require the utmost of focus, since clearing her mind made it easier for her animal instincts to rise to the surface. Chalms taught them to gesture with their heads while creating the designs, instead of their paws—or wings, in the case of Michelle—something that Ariel had already learned on her own. And just as she had suspected, doing so allowed her to create Weaves while on the move in addition to standing still.

Jett wanted her to show him, but unfortunately he didn’t own any dragon bone she could wear while in lion form. He promised to remedy that situation sometime, but offered to borrow a bracelet from Jeremiah in the interim, but Ariel thought it best not to. Jeremiah had no doubt paid a fortune to get his hands on those bracelets, and she wasn’t about to deprive the lion witch of the very things that made him who he was, even for one night, just to show off to Jett.

Though the training she experienced under the rigorous Tower schedule was exhausting, Ariel felt happier than she would have thought possible, maybe even happier than her time with Blue Hurricane. Jett was partially responsible for her blissful state of mind, yes, but as the days passed, and she unlocked more and more of the power hidden inside of her, she couldn’t imagine a life without the Strength. It had become as much a part of her as Jett himself. Every day was exciting, with her looking forward to learning whatever new designs the instructors might present. She soaked up all the knowledge like a sponge, and she could imagine staying here for ten years, or twenty even, until she knew every design in every discipline. Each time she learned a new Strengthwork, it was like opening a gift-wrapped present for a birthday she never knew she had. Every day was Christmas.

Yes, she was happy.

She couldn’t have known that something was about to happen that would change that happiness forever.