The high-walled training yard, the manicured hedges, the granite fountain—all had been efficiently replaced, repaired, and scrubbed clean by the house servants before dawn.
There was no visible trace of the Stillstorm explosion.
Elma sat at a small, polished wooden table in the nursery, a stack of blank parchment before her.
She was four years old, and her body was a map of dull, lingering aches, a stark reminder of the concussive force that had hurled her into the shrubbery.
The pain was irrelevant. What mattered was the efficiency of the power she had briefly commanded.
Her gaze, flat and intense, was locked on Christa.
She listened to every word.
Slacking, even for a moment, could be fatal; it was clear now that this power demanded knowledge and control.
Christa sat opposite her. The silk robes of the previous day had been replaced by severe, slate-gray dress silks, and her silver hair was pulled back into a braid so tight it seemed to tug at the corner of her eyes.
Her usual softness was gone, replaced by the precise, quiet focus of a master artisan reviewing a fatally flawed design.
"What you did yesterday, Elma," Christa said, her voice low and controlled, "was dangerous. Not brave. Not clever. You came within seconds of tearing the air itself apart. You must never attempt something like that again."
Elma felt a flicker of the shame that Christa had so meticulously conditioned her to feel, but D-66's logic overruled it.
I was trying to stop the water, she thought, the veteran's mind dissecting the incident.
I reacted to a kinetic threat with a counter-kinetic defense. It failed because I didn't know the mechanics.
"It will not happen again," Elma stated, the words clear, deliberate, and entirely emotionless. It was a promise of competence, not obedience.
Christa looked up, studying Elma's gaze for a long moment. She seemed to understand the distinction.
She nodded once, a sharp movement.
Christa raised her hand, and with a soft, rhythmic pulse of intent, a perfect orb of water materialized above her palm.
It hummed with a quiet, crystalline stability that made Elma's previous explosion look like the work of a clumsy animal.
"You tried to build a wall of air to stop a few droplets," Christa said, her eyes fixed on the floating sphere.
"You used a mountain of pressure to answer a needle's worth of force. It was inefficient. It was reckless."
She tilted her hand, and the orb drifted toward Elma, stopping inches from the child's face.
"You already know how to touch the world directly. You did it with the fountain. You didn't need a storm, Elma. You could have simply... stopped the water. You could have claimed it as your own."
"Feel it," Christa commanded softly. "Don't fight the air. Just claim the water."
Elma raised her small hand. She didn't reach for the orb with her fingers; she reached for it with the invisible extension of herself—the Aegis.
She felt the boundary of her influence touch the surface of the sphere. It felt heavy, cold, and surprisingly vibrant, like holding a heartbeat in a net of glass.
Slowly, Christa lowered her own hand.
She withdrew her will, peeling back her control like a layer of silk.
For a terrifying millisecond, the orb wobbled, its surface tension shivering as gravity tried to reclaim it.
Elma's eyes snapped open, glowing with a sudden, predatory focus. She gripped the space around the water, pinning it against the air with a silent, iron-willed command.
The orb stilled.
It hung there, suspended beneath Elma's tiny palm, a perfect, shimmering prize. She wasn't just holding it; she was dominating the space it occupied.
Christa's hand moved in a series of sharp, rhythmic flickers.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Three more water orbs materialized, each the size of a fist. With a casual flick of her wrist, she sent the first one whistling through the air toward Elma's chest.
Elma didn't flinch. She reached out with her mind, expanding the invisible boundary of her Aegis. She felt the orb enter her space—a cold, dense kinetic intrusion.
She didn't crush the air this time; she simply commanded the volume of space the water occupied to halt.
The orb stopped dead, suspended six inches from her nose, shivering under the sudden, absolute arrest.
Christa threw the second, then the third.
They followed the same trajectory, slamming into the invisible wall and hanging there like beads of glass.
Elma stared at them for a second, then with a sharp, dismissive wave of her hand, she shoved the air.
The three orbs were hurled aside, splashing harmlessly against the polished stone floor.
Christa smiled, offering a few light, dainty claps.
"Beautiful, Elma. That was... much better. Precise."
But Elma's eyes didn't soften. They narrowed.
The efficiency of the exercise made the previous day's disaster feel even more like a calculated failure.
"Why didn't we start with this?" Elma asked. Her voice was flat, cutting through Christa's praise like a blade.
"Yesterday, you let me call a storm. Today, it is simple. Why the risk?"
Christa's smile faltered. She pulled her hands back, her fingers nervously twisting a loose thread on her slate-gray sleeve.
Her eyes flickered away, searching the corniced ceiling for an answer.
"You... uh... you needed to feel it through battle first," Christa stammered, the words sounding hollow even in the quiet nursery.
"True instinct isn't born in a classroom, Elma. It is forged under pressure. I needed to see your limits."
Elma watched her mother's throat move as she swallowed hard.
The veteran consciousness of D-66 didn't see an instructor's strategy; she saw a tactical retreat.
She's lying, Elma realized, the thought cold and crystalline.
She isn't holding back a secret technique. She's guessing. She has no experience in teaching anyone.
Elma looked down at her hands, then back at the damp patches on the floor where the orbs had shattered.
"How do I make it?" Elma asked, her gaze returning to Christa, sharper now.
"I can move the air. I can catch your water. But how do I make the water appear from nothing?"
Christa let out a short, breathy laugh—a sound of genuine, weary disbelief.
"Make it? Elma, that is... that is Pattern Mastery of the highest order. It requires years of studying the fundamental geometry of the aether. You have to feel the exact vibration of the 'Pattern' before it can manifest as matter."
She leaned across the table, her expression turning somber, almost pleading.
"You are still so young. For now, we must focus on the foundation. You must strengthen your connection to your Aegis. You must learn to feel the boundary as clearly as you feel your own skin."
Elma sat back, her face a mask of four-year-old compliance.
"I understand," Elma said.
But internally, the weapon was already calculating.
If the Pattern was just geometry and vibration, she didn't need "years." She needed a sample to dissect.
She needed to see the lines Christa was drawing in the air when she wasn't looking.