Ninecloud City, crown jewel of the Ninecloud Continent
Greater Palace of Celestial Radiance, Prismatic Foundation Academy
Leiala 239 / 984 ADW
I waited patiently for the cloudborne building to finish drifting beneath me, then I dropped three stories and landed in a silent roll on the roof of an empty storeroom.
Not bad for four months past my first birthday.
My advancement to Copper had compacted and transformed the pool of energy -Madra, I reminded myself- inside me into a compact sphere of power. It had become enormously more potent as a result, and now produced more madra each moment than I'd had in my entire body before.
That abundance flowed through me and let me summon strength on an entirely new level. No longer did I struggle to make my body move as I wished, or have to strain against my own weight when I did so. Between my advancement and another eight months of physical growth, I could already move in ways that a normal human could not dream of. Even the limits of what a mage could achieve with mana enhancement felt like I was on the verge of surpassing them, and I'd hardly begun my career as a sacred artist.
I'd started out simply determined to advance so I could pursue whatever occupation proved most favourable without being held back, and sure that my family would demand it of me if I did not advance of my own accord.
Only after experiencing the benefits firsthand did I understand.
Of course my parents wanted me to advance. For the same reasons that a parent wanted their child to study well and stay healthy.
Advancing hadn't just made me stronger, but faster, and in mind almost as much as in body. I needed less sleep, and yet found myself better rested when I woke up. I needed less food but my bottle had tasted better even before my mother 'increased the dosage' and I'd found myself flooded with madra after every meal. I could even hold my breath for longer. It would be insane not to want more.
Not being insane, I found myself with a third reason to advance as a sacred artist.
A quick glance around from my new perch confirmed that the fourth reason had yet to arrive, so I crawled into the gully between two roof slopes and tried to get comfortable on the tiles.
My time in this world was clearly affecting me, because the Aurelius in me was appalled by the autumn leaves that had collected in the space. Not at the mess per se, but that nobody had cleaned up such a thing in the Iron School of the Prismatic Foundation Academy. It was at odds with the dignity of the lofty establishment.
Lofty in more ways than one, being as the Academy's buildings floated in a loose column above the Greater Palace itself; Copper School at the top then Iron beneath that and Jade closest to the barrier separating us from the Palace below. It was an arrangement that didn't even pretend at trust for those in the Palace below, clearly intended to protect the most vulnerable students even at the cost of elevating them above their stronger peers. Protection from above was provided by the simple fact that the home of my most honoured aunt pierced the sky just a few kilometres away. Anyone trying to get through the top of the barrier would be target practice for one of the lances of colour and light that I had once seen spear out from that stronghold to end some threat that dared draw too near to the city.
The 'tch' noise my father made that day had filled me with fear, but clearly the Luminous Queen was merciful enough not to hold it against him. Or so I hoped, given my own home was also clearly visible from her Immortal Spire.
Of course, my definition of clearly visible had also expanded with my advancement, and not just because of the improvements to my eyes, or even the increased range of my Arelius senses.
Reaching the Copper stage came with a unique benefit. One that my parents had had to hurriedly explain when I was brought home after advancing. Aura sight let a sacred artist see the truth of our world, but without knowing what it was I had worried if I'd suffered some kind of seizure.
As they explained it, the semi-transparent lights I had been seeing overlaid across reality were not some ghost of damaged neurons, but a very real energy that suffused this world. Vital aura, it was called, and its many varieties would gather naturally around any physical object that matched their trait. I had only to focus my mind in a certain way and I could see fire aura spiralling through flames, or wind aura being swept along in the breeze, or blood aura running through my veins alongside the actual red stuff.
There was no need to learn the types, because something about it spoke directly to the senses. To look upon aura was to know exactly what kind it was; More like reading words than identifying natural phenomena. If words could be written in the language of reality itself.
All of which meant that I could not only keep watch over my surroundings -still an empty isle and an extremely boring storeroom- and count the larger details of the Immortal Spire at the same time. I could also flip a mental switch and see the aura flowing through everything I saw.
It ebbed and flowed around the Spire as though caught in the orbit of a celestial object, the Luminous Queen's power distorting the normal flow of aura. Which was a handy reminder of the stakes of what I was doing.
I had been re-introduced to my aunt in a formal ceremony after I was declared Companion to the Luminous Heir, and she had been kind in the distant and formal manner of an immortal god queen who could turn a continent to rubble on a whim. Despite my father's antics she seemed to have positive feelings for my little chunk of the greater royal family, and after more than a year I was confident that he was a capable enough plotter to ensure that didn't change.
More importantly, I had realised that, since he obviously had no hope of replacing her, he was just jockeying for a better position in her Court. He might not be loyal, but he certainly wasn't stupid enough to go against her.
Which might have calmed me down more if I hadn't confirmed the relative lack of danger from that avenue after I stumbled into a far riskier position of my own accord.
Since my father first declared I was advanced enough to attend the Prismatic Foundation Academy and brought me to be introduced to my fellow scions of the Ninecloud elite, I had felt the jealous eyes of my fellow Coppers on me. The next youngest of them had been two or three years old, and since advancing at a younger age was considered a sign of promising talent, my achievement in trailing behind had not earned me many friends.
My title as Companion though? That had ensured I had only enemies among the other Coppers.
I couldn't even try to improve my position, or blame them particularly, because my fellow Coppers were toddlers and young children and none of them really understood what was going on anyway. They just knew that their parents and teachers were disappointed with them compared to me, and hated me for it. Talking to them was pointless and frustrating.
It made spending so much time around children even more intolerable, and so I had resolved to sneak down to spend time with a more mature sort…but that plan ran into the same problem that made it impossible to hide my title.
More like a descending meteor than a silent shadow, my cousin slammed into the roof next to me and smashed most of the way through the tiles.
"Who made this roof so fragile!" She yelled as she hefted herself out of the hole she had made. "What if someone fell through and hurt themselves?"
Sha Miara was a tiny ball of angry pride, with eyes that looked at once more wide and innocent than my best attempt at looking cute, and far too knowing for her to ever be mistaken for an ordinary child. Assuming her tendency to throw around power like someone twice her age didn't make that clear enough.
She was a Copper too, but where I -like most of our peers- was still learning to use my Madra in the four basic training techniques taught to all of the children at the Copper School, Miara had shown up on her first day and immediately demonstrated all four like she'd been using them for decades, then told the teachers to stop wasting time on her when the other students clearly needed their help more.
Where I had to study frantically to match her grades in the various curriculum -except for mathematics, which thankfully also used base ten on this world- Miara achieved perfect grades with the bored air of someone reciting knowledge they'd long since memorised, only occasionally showing rapt interest when we covered more recent developments and then devouring the information in moments only to grow bored again.
The teachers had nothing to teach her, and she spent most of her time at the school meditating, but she had insisted on attending ever since I made the mistake of answering honestly when she asked why I couldn't spend more time with her.
Being as I quite enjoyed the actual lessons, I supposed I should also have tried harder to speak negatively about the Academy experience to her, but it was hard not to be delighted everytime I compared it to the miserable situation of children at the orphanage in my last life. Compulsory schooling truly was a wonderful thing to experience again, especially from the most elite institution I could possibly have attended.
If only it wasn't for all the other children, I think I would have been very happy.
Miara had kept ranting while I was thinking, so I stomped my foot a few times both to draw her attention and to demonstrate the flaw in her complaints about shoddy construction.
Instead of seeing that I was right, she promptly bustled up to me and started patting my sides with a concerned frown. "Tanya, you're still so skinny. I told you to eat more!" She stomped her own foot to punctuate the sentence and I hurried to move away from the hole in the roof when I saw how the structure shuddered.
Climbing down was easy, and when I turned to offer my hand to help Miara down she simply hopped down in another blur of multi-coloured light and cracked the stone courtyard that surrounded the storehouse.
"You won't be able to obtain a perfect Moonheart Iron body at this rate." My cousin continued to berate me as we wandered over to the edge of the island and looked down in search of our next step.
Iron was the next stage, and reaching it meant crafting yourself an Iron body. My parents refused to tell me how to do it, and the school restricted those lessons to those without permission, but I did understand that there were an endless variety of possible Iron bodies that a sacred artist could seek out, and that since Miara had decided that I was going to have the same one as her I needed to eat more in order to obtain it.
Honestly, it wasn't as though I didn't enjoy the ridiculously delicious food that I was starting to progress to, even if my teeth hadn't yet finished the all-too-painful process of emerging. It was just that after a lifetime of malnutrition followed by military rations, a lack of appetite seemed to have been embedded in the ragged fragments of my soul. Anyway, I had no intention of letting someone else dictate my choice of Iron body before I reviewed all possible choices and made a rational decision as to my best option.
But since I had learned how to handle Miara's bossiness months ago, I just kept quiet and resolved to apologise when the time came for her to learn I had no intention of doing as she demanded. Demanding as she could be, my cousin had never gotten mad at me for defying her actual instructions in favour of obeying the spirit of them, and I was sure that what she actually wanted was for me to obtain the best possible Iron body.
Another building came into position and this time we jumped together. I tucked my limbs in and fell a fraction faster than Miara, landing in another smooth roll. A moment later she did the same thing, whisper quiet and with a considering look at the garden we'd landed in this time.
"Good thinking Tanya. It would be rude to mess up such a nice place."
Not needing to turn my head to look around, I was very aware of the gardener who had frozen in the middle of tending a flowerbed when we appeared, but Miara either hadn't seen him or was ignoring him. Either was probably for the best, since her talking to him might bring out one of the guards that I was certain were following her as we 'snuck out'.
My cousin's presence made stealth a pointless endeavour, and guaranteed I was going to get in trouble for my rule breaking, but there had been no chance I could vanish for so long without her following me. Anyway, while she was an actual child, Miara was such an absurd prodigy that I thought she might be even more out of place among the other Copper children than I was, even without her status as Heir apparent.
Experience with other children was important, and having found myself so close to the next immortal god queen of the Ninecloud Continent, I felt a responsibility to ensure she developed properly. That and a crushing expectation to keep pace with her so I could make sure she didn't do anything insane.
Lucky for me, she was at least pleasant to spend time around, and capable of holding a productive conversation when she wasn't too absorbed in her own thoughts.
She poked me in the arm, probably having gotten bored with the garden, and we strolled over to the edge then jumped down to another storehouse, then to an island that was mostly ponds where we had to grab one another to keep from tumbling into the water, then finally to a tower with a number of ornate bells and a building that I was certain functioned as a break room for the teachers.
Miara insisted on swiping a few treats when I shared that information with her, and I halfheartedly munched on a hard savoury cookie as we made our final leap and landed in the Iron School.
Then we promptly had to dive out of the way of a tumbling pile of limbs as two boys and a girl did their level best to drive one another into the stone floor.
We had landed in a courtyard where the children were having their morning break for light physical exercise, and the greater age of Iron children was immediately apparent. Though there were only a few outright teenagers, and they all had the withdrawn and nervous look that older children among the Coppers also had, the children around us were all still significantly older than those in the Copper school. The youngest I could see looked to be at least five years old, and most had to be somewhere between eight and twelve.
This was the realm of super-powered preteens, and where they weren't throwing one another around the courtyard, they were throwing multi-coloured light around instead.
A few promisingly dignified young ladies were taking turns to blast a set of ornate metal targets with madra. They took turns to throw a punch at the air, and each time the distinctive light of Royal madra would fly along the path of their fist and strike the target. Showing easy mastery of the elementary Striker technique that I still didn't have down completely.
Elsewhere a host of young children were gathered in a circle around a rapid succession of wrestling matches. Enforcer techniques were used to enhance a sacred artist's body in various ways, and watching a ten year old hurl an older boy through the air, I was sure they had to be using that too.
There were plenty of other such displays to be seen, but as I took a moment to look around I realised that for as violent and intimidating as it had first seemed, it was all still just children playing around. A few on the edges of the courtyard were even using their techniques to carve symbols in the ground for some complex game that reminded me of a fragmented memory of playing trading card games with my fellow brats, decades ago.
I'd only just arrived and already I had to wonder if I was going to find any more intelligent company amongst these children than I had above.
Then a child made to shove me in the back and, as I casually stepped aside with the ease of someone who had seen his muscles bunching even before he moved, I sighed in exasperation at the state of the next generation.
The little brat -for all that he was more than twice my current height- stumbled and fell, but he was up again in the blink of an eye and puffing up with anger.
I supposed he couldn't be blamed for not recognising us as Coppers. There was no uniform for the Academy, and having dropped into the chaos of the morning there was nothing about us to suggest we weren't just absurdly youthful Irons.
He could certainly be blamed for trying to bully Irons so much younger than him though, and I was about to step forward and put my recollections of orphanage diplomacy to use when Miara beat me to it.
She had her hands folded in an imperious bearing that the older child clearly did not know how to respond to as she said, "You tried to strike my cousin. What is your name?"
The approach of some other children gave him enough courage to ignore the oddities in the situation and sneer, "Shut up fatty." Then he drew back an arm to shove her, probably thinking that he'd knock her into me and beat us both in a single movement, one that was a blur of speed to me and would probably have broken a normal human's bones.
As last words went, 'shut up fatty' was not a great choice, so he was lucky Miara was merciful and whatever guards were staying hidden were probably happy to regard this level of violence as just childish roughhousing.
I doubted he felt lucky though, not when Miara vanished and reappeared with her fist buried in his gut, executing the elementary Enforcer technique perfectly. One of the other boys, having moved behind her and to the right, made to sucker punch her with his own Enforcer technique glowing, so I slipped forward and kicking his foot out of alignment as he advanced.
He caught Miara's backhand fist as he fell, and she swivelled into a high kick at the remaining child in the same motion.
A high kick for her still barely reached his chest, and his guarding arms absorbed the blow while he created some distance. The Striker technique she followed up with blasted right through his defence and imbued him with its power. A moment later Miara swung her arm and he flew with the motion, scraping an impressive line of dirt with his chin.
She'd only used Royal Fist and Skin, two of the four techniques intended to teach Sha children the basics of how to use Royal madra before being abandoned when they began to practice the real thing. She hadn't even bothered with Palm or Breath, and my cousin had demolished three children a stage above her.
Given that I still couldn't even use any of the techniques reliably, I resolved to redouble my efforts at training.
Miara had already lost interest in her defeated foe, or his name, and was wandering off to explore the Iron School. I followed in her wake after committing the three boys' faces to memory.
Following in her wake, I found Miara already making an imperious declaration that she would participate in one of the games taking place at the edge of the courtyard. This one was a contest of Royal Breath, with both sides trying to take command of the aura inside a rough circle drawn on the ground. It quickly became clear that the girl she was competing with had an actual Ruler technique, and between that and the gap between Iron and Copper, Miara's defeat was inevitable. She still fought it out though, and when the glimmer of her opponent's Royal aura finished taking over the circle Miara bowed gracefully and with a fire burning in her eyes.
Then she dragged me off to the next game.
I quickly found myself a silent shadow to Miara's exploits. My cousin tried every game but the wrestling -not that I'd have let her if she had been stupid enough to try and compete physically with Irons who weren't caught by surprise- and while she lost most of them, the experience only emboldened her.
Despite my having come up with the idea of visiting the Iron School, Miara was the one who seemed to be getting something out of it. I tried to talk to a few of the children, but their greater advancement didn't change that they were just children, and my hopes for mature company were quickly dashed.
Though…it was nice to be surrounded by children who didn't know who we were. Being glared at by children didn't bother me, exactly, but it was hardly fun.
Shadowing Miara and offering the occasional word of advice actually made for a much more enjoyable morning then normal, and I was trying to keep my expression appropriately dignified when I saw something interesting among the wrestlers.
Miara was handily obliterating some of the children at the strategy game I had seen earlier, whose rules I would have to learn from a more reliable source than an eight year old at some point, and nobody was paying much attention to me. Which let me focus on weaving my senses through the occasional disruptive patch of Royal madra that might steal my madra web away from me, and watching the more interesting children for their potential as future allies and enemies.
So I was able to see clearly as a boy of around ten was shoved out of one of the school buildings and hustled towards the wrestling ring by a crowd of boys in much finer clothing than he wore. Not that there was much comparison on that front.
Almost every child was dressed in the kind of junior finery that the Sha preferred. Which made sense, because the Sha Family was absolutely vast and for reasons that unfortunately did come down mostly to nepotism they had a stranglehold on the countless government positions necessary to maintain an advanced bureaucracy -some of my lessons had been downright cheering, with how much of a civilised governmental structure the Sha had built over the millennia- across a space as vast as the Ninecloud Continent.
So most children in the Prismatic Foundation Academy, meant as it was for the future employees of the Ninecloud Court, were from the many many branch and descendant families of the Sha. And dressed like it.
Then there was the boy being shoved into the wrestling ring, who wore clothing made of what I could only describe as leather cloud. The pants and boots were more substantial, but the open jacket he wore over a simple shirt was thick and bulky and would probably have given him an intimidating silhouette if he hadn't been so skinny.
Instead it made him look like a child who had stolen the leathers from a celestial biker.
None of that really drew my attention though. My senses swept over him just as they did the other children who wore different clothes and acted wary of the crowd. We had those up in the Copper School too and they were even more resentful of me if anything.
What drew my attention was when a shout of 'Rootless filth!' finally got him to stop trying to leave the wrestling ring and he promptly wreathed his fists and feet in multi-coloured clouds.
Royal Cloud madra.
I recognised it from one of my father's personal lessons to me on the nature of Royal madra, which I had not inherited in full but certainly had sufficiently to benefit from such lessons.
Royal madra was a variation of the Pure madra that all children were born with. More accurately termed Royal Pure madra.
Like normal Pure madra, it was useful as a resource -able to power many devices, or be consumed by a sacred artist who didn't mind diluting their own power a little- but lacked any particular strength or corresponding aura to control in the world around us. Its Royal nature made it far more useful to a sacred artist than regular Pure madra, but just as most sacred artists outside of the Sha would take in vital aura to dye their Pure madra with a particular aspect, so would many of the Sha.
Of course their madra would retain the gifts of our bloodline. So where a Fire artist out in the wider world would cycle fire aura to obtain Fire aspected madra, a Sha Fire artist on the same path would wield Royal Fire madra.
I wasn't entirely clear what the advantages and disadvantages of it all were, and I hadn't yet decided what to do, though my mother's skill and power made me long to dance through the sky with Royal Wind madra flowing through me. I did recall one thing very clearly however, and that was the age at which most Sha, our most distant branch families included, would allow a child to dye their madra.
Royal madra was hard enough to master, and my father had told me that trying to control aspected Royal madra before Jade was a good way to slow your advancement to a crawl.
Which made me very curious about the boy with the clouds.
He began the fight by dashing into the sky, blasting out a much wispier version of Royal Fist at his opponent. With a fight limited to enforcer techniques immediately off the table, the other boy swept up an arm and manifested a disc of Royal madra Forged into a solid shield against the Striker technique. Royal Palm was a little oddly named in my opinion, but clearly someone had a theme in mind when they came up with it, and the technique could supposedly be used to Forge madra into more elaborate shapes then the simple discs children used.
Nothing like that was necessary against the Cloud madra that dissipated easily against the shield. Then the boy on the ground struck out with his own Striker technique and easily caught the cloud boy. A moment later he was plummeting to the ground under the technique's pull, only to slow as he seemed to grasp at the air with the clouds on his hands and feet.
He skidded to a stop with inches to spare, then he was off in a dash as the Striker technique ran out of power. This time he charged into close combat, bouncing off the air to dodge multiple follow up Striker techniques then putting his entire weight behind a punch that his opponent caught with a laugh.
The cloud around that fist vanished a moment later. Cloud boy's weight shifted with the loss of it, and then he was being thrown to the ground and things became a lot less formal and dignified. He tried to protect his face at least, but I recalled plenty of fights at the orphanage that resembled this part and it never ended well for the smaller kid on the bottom.
Curious or not, I would probably just have watched, but Miara had noticed at some point and was already interrupting her opponent to play out the last dozen moves for both sides, then rushing towards the wrestling children.
Following at her heel I summoned my own Royal Skin and hoped that her guards would intervene before things got too bad.
We had the element of surprise again as we reached the edge of the mob. Thankfully most of the children had lost interest and left for other games once the bullies fully took over, but that also meant that the knot of those children was smaller and tighter around the fight.
Miara knocked down two of the older children and was lunging for a third when they noticed us and began to respond in earnest.
I promptly threw myself ahead of her and tackled a girl who had been chambering a kick. Royal Skin let me control my body like it was a doll and I was a clumsy telekinetic, filling myself with Royal Madra and then hurling my own body like a missile. Unfortunately I lacked Miara's absurd talent to perform the technique perfectly.
Fortunately, I was a veteran of actual wars and had no qualms about playing dirty, so I jabbed my fingers into the other girl's eyes in midair and used her distraction to bring her down to ground where I could drive my knee into her face until she went limp.
My senses made it easy for me to slip aside as several children tried to drag me away from my victim, the fools didn't know how pointless it was to attack from behind and I gave them a few liver punches as I dodged past and got back to Miara.
The Luminous Heir had not wasted my distraction and after landing a clean Royal Fist on the instigator of this mess, she used it to hurl him directly up into the air. Then she frowned at the cloud boy as he stayed on the ground instead of taking advantage of the opening, and the instigator was free to drop back to the ground unharmed.
The boy was only ten or so, and very finely dressed. So much so that after a few moments of gawking at the two of us, he actually developed a look of horror and I realised his family must have been high up enough for him to have attended one of the Luminous Heir's audiences.
Though by the point it was far too late for him to stop his lackeys from attempting to kick us right off the island.
My Royal Palm hardly slowed them down, and Miara's had broken after absorbing a few blows but with two of the children still flying at us. With the grim determination of knowing this couldn't possibly have escaped my aunt's notice, I threw myself in the way.
The Royal Fist that hit my back came as a complete surprise, as did my cousin using it to flatten me against the ground so she could take both kicks herself.
She caught one on her crossed arms, and despite the absurdity of it, her guard held. The other kick caught her full in the face and sent her bouncing along the ground like a finely decorated ball.
I was sinking my own fist into the attacker's kidney before even I realised I had moved. Then I slipped around the other child's fist and landed a combination into the little brat's gut. With both of them down I was halfway to Miara when she shot to her feet and spat blood on the ground. Possibly along with one of her freshly emerged milk teeth.
The image of the pudgy toddler squaring up for another round, blood and dirt staining her clothes, was beyond absurd. The older children gaped at her like they were realising for the first time just how young their opponent was.
It made a great distraction as I used Royal Skin to reverse direction and shot towards the instigator with every intention of taking some teeth in kind.
Of course that was the moment that one of her guards finally decided to show up, multiple teachers trailing behind them, and everyone but Miara and I found themselves pressed to the ground under the sheer weight of an Overlord's spiritual pressure. Even I felt myself losing control over my madra despite remaining free to move.
Which was perfect, because I was already airborne and just had to bend my arm a little to catch the kid with a flying elbow.
It hurt like hell without my Enforcer technique active, but my senses let me track the spray of blood as I knocked a full three of his teeth free, and I called that a victory.
Hopefully our parents would agree.
Ninecloud City, crown jewel of the Ninecloud Continent
The Immortal Spire of Celestial Radiance, Inner Chambers of Sha Leiala
Leiala 239 / 984 ADW
"Restore."
Miara's pain vanished like it had never been, and when she pressed her gums together she found her milk tooth back where it should be.
Since this was a private audience, she hugged her mother in thanks.
The glory of the Luminous Queen faded away for a moment, and it was a woman with hair and eyes much like her own that wrapped her arms around Miara and pressed lips to her forehead.
She savoured the touch and tried extra hard to commit it to memory. Miara hardly ever got to touch her mother with so little in the way, and she breathed deeply to cherish the scent of safety and love, without the usual overtone of overwhelming power.
Then the moment passed, and it was once more a figure of glorious light who drew away from her, beautiful, and painfully out of reach.
But Miara was closing that gap as fast as she could, and she was proud to have taken the first real steps to do it. Her memories said over and over that combat experience was essential, and clashing with the Irons had done her as much good as they'd said it would. Danger had pressed her in a way no amount of training or cycling had been able to.
Plus, she'd done her duty and protected her future subjects. From one another, and from themselves, with the minimum of damage to them.
If only Tanya would stop forgetting which of them was stronger and putting herself at risk. Her cousin would say that she was in charge and acknowledge her superior advancement, but then she'd turn around and throw herself into harm ahead of her, like Tanya was the stronger sacred artist and Miara was the one who needed to be kept safe. It was dumb and annoying and felt like Tanya was babying her, and that felt even worse because Miara kind of liked it a little bit and she wasn't a baby. She was already Copper and she'd be ready to advance to Iron soon.
Her memories surged up to remind her of what was proper, and Miara straightened up and focused on her mother. Her presence offered stability in the face of her confusion, and Miara was a little inpatient as her mother finished looking over some memory tablets before putting them down and turning back to her.
Guided by her memories more than the etiquette lessons she'd breezed through months ago, Miara dropped to her knees and bowed low.
"The Luminous Heir begs your guidance." She intoned carefully, before smiling at the pulse of approval that rippled through her mother's spiritual pressure.
"You have done well Miara. For Rallan's daughter to suggest such action was…unexpected, but you seized the opportunity for your own aims as the Luminous Heir must. As you have before."
It had been her mother's advice that guided her from the start.
Miara's mother had told her, months ago, that when she believed action was necessary then she must not hesitate. She should be aware of the consequences, but act while accepting them. So Miara had not hesitated to follow her Companion to the Prismatic Foundation Academy, despite the danger she knew leaving the Spire would place her in.
She wished to accompany Tanya and ensure that the two of them advanced together, and no sacred artist could achieve their aims without accepting risk.
The classes were useless, and the teachers annoying, but she had achieved her goal. Tanya was advancing with incredible speed. Already she could perform all four techniques of the Path of Celestial Adept, if not reliably, and while Miara agreed with some of her memories that it was a dead end path only useful for teaching basic Royal madra skills to children, it was still bringing Tanya closer to Iron. She could pick a proper Path later. One with a better name.
Then Tanya had mentioned that she wanted to see the Iron School, and the risks of that had hardly even needed considering. So she went along to keep her cousin safe and test herself against those who were worth competing with at her level.
Not only had she proven herself, she'd even been able to intervene and protect a young scion of the Cloud Wanderers. Thanks to Tanya drawing her attention to the boy.
Her mother had mentioned to her once how the ancient branch of the Sha family had been resistant to her attempts to prove her goodwill. Miara hadn't understood why, other than that they hated grandmother, but she had been delighted at the opportunity to help her mother.
Now she basked in her mother's praise. Even if she knew it would be followed with some kind of punishment, since she had broken numerous rules by descending from the Copper School.
Sure enough, when she glanced up her mother's face had become stern and Miara bowed until she was pressed to the ground to show how seriously she was taking the consequences of her actions.
"For your disregard of the Prismatic Foundation Academy's rules of conduct, you are hereby forbidden from dessert for a week."
It was an unfortunate sacrifice, but Miara made it gladly.
Then her mother's presence chilled and Miara was confused by how much colder her voice was when she continued.
"Your violence against children at the Iron stage however, is a far more serious transgression. For that, you are forbidden from seeing your Companion for the same amount of time."
Not being able to see Tanya for a full week was, it wasn't-
"That's not fair!" Miara raged, all etiquette abandoned as she stood up and glared at her mother. "They were the ones fighting! And they're Iron! I'm just Copper!"
Her mother didn't even twitch, "You are the Luminous Heir, and you could have stopped the fighting with a word. Instead you beat those who could not stand against you." Her mother's voice was more amused than angry and cold, which was a relief, but still didn't make sense.
"But you said I did well."
"You did. You fought well, and bravely, and I am proud of you for it."
"...but?"
"But, you did not need to fight. More importantly, you did not need to humiliate the children of my Court." She knelt down to lay a hand across her daughter's cheek and transfix Miara with shining eyes as she asked, "Do you understand Miara? I am proud of you as a sacred artist, but as the Luminous Heir there are other burdens you must carry. No matter your age, I know that you can grasp that, because I once had the same gifts and burdens to carry."
The words were warm, and understanding, and Miara didn't understand them at all. She had done things properly, and somehow she was in trouble? And her mother talking about being the same as her was wrong too. Miara focused and the memories went from a vague impression of contradiction to clear knowledge that her mother was wrong. So she told her so.
"That's not true. You weren't Luminous Heir until you were a hundred and thirty, something." The memories weren't clear enough for her to be more specific, and the way her mother flinched away from her as she said it filled Miara with a panic she had never known before. The Luminous Queen was standing again, and something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
She dug deeper in the memories to fix it and said, "For, um, twenty three min-minutes…and, um, um…" She trailed off before she could recite the seconds, suddenly terrified at the way her mother was staring down at her.
"Miara. How do you know that?"
Despite the fear that chilled her bones and churned in her guts, Miara latched onto that thread.
"I, um, I remember. Like you?" It was hard to string words together when it felt like the world was falling apart around her, and only the strength of her dream kept Miara from surrendering to the urge to scream until her mother made the feelings go away.
"That's…not how it works. That's not how it should work. Not yet."
"Oh." Miara didn't know what to say, so she asked a question. More information always helped. "How did it work for you?"
"Instincts. Impressions. Recollections from a dream. Even that was sealed by my advancement. Miara, I need you to tell me how much you remember."
"Um."
The glimpse of uncertainty faded away, and it was the Luminous Queen who asked Miara, "What are the principles of Royal madra?"
It was near rhetorical as a question. Miara knew her mother knew that she knew the principles, but she obediently summoned the appropriate memories and recited, "The unique properties of Royal madra are defined by two Principles. The Principle of Conquest -also known as the Principle of Assimilation- and the Principle of Dominion."
Instead of her usual pride however, her mother oozed dissatisfaction at her answer. Miara had to fight not to burst into tears at that response, but she held strong and maintained her bearing as the Luminous Heir as she waited to learn how she had failed.
Her mother spoke with the echo of authority as she said, "This is not the reign of my mother, or my great great grandmother, or her aunt, or any of the other warmongers. So long as I am Luminous Queen, it is the Principle of Assimilation. Do you understand, Miara?"
She wanted to nod. She wanted very badly to nod, but it would have been a lie, so Miara shook her head miserably.
Another embrace calmed the urge to sob that had been bubbling in her chest.
"That's alright. I understand now. And you will someday." Her mother drew far enough back to look at her properly. "What you must remember for now is that you do not understand yet."
Her mother was definitely right, because Miara didn't really understand that part either. Her panic hadn't gone away and now she felt like she was failing to meet expectations and she wasn't used to any of the things she was feeling. Memories came unbidden and showed her fragments of what happened to some Luminous Heirs who didn't meet expectations, but Miara refused to be afraid. She would take her punishment and emerge from it stronger.
Instead of locking her in a hostile pocket world or throwing her into a dungeon though, her mother just hugged her again and whispered, "Forgive me my failure Miara. I did not foresee what my success would mean for you. I thought it would be like it was for my sisters and I, but more. I was wrong."
A lot of Miara's memories had things to say about the Luminous Queen saying those three words.
Instead of listening to them, she listened as her mother said, "You will need to learn to ignore the memories. Or you will be more a slave to the past than any other in our line." Miara wasn't sure her mother intended to be heard when she murmured, "No small feat."
"Now, since I have missed this, I will have to work hard to remedy it now. Starting with this."
Abandoning any attempt at dignity, Miara's mother shed her mantle of light and then tossed her royal garments away like so much trash. Left in no more than her underclothes, a simple sacred artist's shirt and pants, Sha Leila plonked herself on the ground in a rough meditative pose, and gestured for Miara to come and sit in her lap.
Miara's mind was stunned at her mother's total loss of decorum, but her body did not waste time and she was happily snuggling into her mother's embrace before any memories could scream at her about how wrong it was.
"Good. I'm sure that's disrupted them for a while. Now I want you to answer my questions and I don't want you to use those memories to do it. I want to give me your own understanding, and nothing else. Is that clear?"
Miara nodded rapidly, then listened attentively for the first question. Eager to prove that she was still worthy, despite whatever had gone wrong with her.
"Explain the Principles of Royal madra."
"Um." The memories came to her, but Miara pushed them down and focused on what she knew.
It wasn't like there was a clear line between one and the other, but she could always just ignore the ones that felt like that long ago dream. Which left her with the problem that she didn't have a lot of things she understood outside the context of those memories.
But she could manage. She was the Luminous Heir and whatever problem her mother had noticed was just one more challenge to overcome.
"Assimilation is like, like, painting. A sacred artist adds Royal to madra, or to aura, and then it's Royal. On top of whatever it was before."
"Good."
"Tanya can do that one."
"Well done. Now the other principle."
"Dominion is the same as madra and vital aura. The same way madra controls the same kind of aura, Royal madra controls anything that has been made Royal."
"That's good. And how is your cousin at that?"
Her mother already knew the answer, but Miara was enjoying herself too much to care.
"Tanya is bad at it. She can barely do it to her own Royal madra."
"Good. Now for the next question, how-"
"Um."
"Yes Miara."
"Don't you have to leave soon."
Her mother sighed and looked at the wall like she was watching something far away, then she shook her head and said, "No I don't. This is more important. I'm not going anywhere until this is fixed. At least a week."
A whole week with her mother was something out of a dream. Miara would have lost a thousand teeth and endured any number of horrible feelings if she knew that was what was waiting for her.
"Then, then can you tell me a story tonight, like the Keepers do?"
Her mother stroked the hair back from her forehead and pressed a kiss to the skin there.
"Of course Miara. I know just the story to tell. Now, how does a sacred artist advance to Jade?"
"Um."
A/N: Probably a heavier one then some were expecting by the end, but this was necessary to get Miara's arc started properly. Now that's the elements of Royal madra as I'm doing it fully established.
Alongside exactly what Tanya and Miara each have to work with. Speculate away folks.
