“Pick up the pace a bit, Will,” Noratuk said, her voice steely. “I’ve already explained this.”

“Yes, yes,” Will said impatiently. “I know.”

After only three weeks of constant training and practice, Will was starting to get a hang of the way the others talked to each other. He’d been afraid that Noratuk might smack him the first time he’d snapped at her dry tone, but she’d only laughed. ‘Look who’s growing a spine’, she’d said. From then, her treatment of him hadn’t changed, but she was a bit more patient. Only a bit.

“Pull your heat in,” She ordered. When he’d done so, in a remarkably short time compared to his first efforts, she nodded. “Now, no cheating. Close your eyes, and sense me.”

He was training his heat sense. Noratuk had explained to him sometime in the second week that, as he got used to using his flame, he could recognize the same heat in other creatures, and spot them at all times. She claimed that it could be used without conscious effort, but first Will had to master using it manually. He closed his eyes, shivering slightly, more from anticipation than cold. He could hear her boots crunching the snow for a second, then nothing. She was in the grass now, and deliberately stepping quietly. Focus, he reminded himself.

The only problem was that there was a lot of heat around him, as there were a lot of the other Fire Nexus members about. They each lit up in his heat vision like miniature suns, so that he wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly where Noratuk was. She could walk up from any angle and hit him, which she promptly did, smacking the back of his head with enough force to make him stagger forward. He let out a frustrated growl and opened his eyes.

“Maybe we should focus on something else,” Noratuk said. “You’re clearly struggling with the graceful side of your powers.”

“Maybe because I’ve been focusing on nothing but powering up the past three weeks,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’ve worked me like a dog every night.”

Which was perfectly true. Nearly every night since they’d decided to start training, he’d collapsed into his bed in the late hours of the night, too tired to do anything but sleep. Then he’d wake up the next day, sore all over, and take a quick shower before getting right back to it. His only reprieve came when he ate or used the bathroom. He couldn’t complain too much though, as he looked at himself. Between his Nexus training and helping the others master using their bodies more often, he was in the best shape in months. He had to admit that, after his last tournament, he’d gotten a bit soft.

“Really?” Noratuk asked, arching an eyebrow. “Then you should have something to show for it. Let me see your fire.”

He complied at once, bringing his heat in and creating fire in each hand. The flames were three times the size of what he’d started with, and the drain wasn’t quite so immediate. After all, he had spent nearly two hours every day training his Condition, as Noratuk had insisted. Now he could maintain his fire, even at full strength, for over an hour. Noratuk stopped her pacing to stare at his flames, and nodded begrudging approval. “Not bad.”

He let the flames drop, feeling pleased. “I discovered a trick to it.”

“And what would that be?”

“Well,” Will said, holding up just one hand this time and conjuring fire there. “It’s linked to my breathing. If I hold my breath, the flame gets smaller, but much more powerful.”

Noratuk let out a laugh, and James echoed the sound. James walked over now, shaking his head. “It’s not holding your breath that does the trick, Will. You’re pushing your Condition.”

“Which is incredibly dangerous if you don’t know your limits,” Noratuk said. Her face was set in stern lines now, which always preceded a lecture. She stepped forward at once, swiping her hand through the fire he’d conjured. It dissipated at once as she stole the heat, another of her special talents. He lowered his hand, trying not to look too disappointed. “You think breaking your Condition is painful? Watch what happens when you force it and it breaks.”

She lifted her own arm to demonstrate. Her flame started out as a large pillar, but quickly shrank, becoming a small jet that emitted from her palm. Making sure Will was watching closely, she pointed her hand away from the group. With a sharp crack, the flame died at once. Then, an instant later, a massive explosion was released from her palm, releasing a burst of fire that ripped through the air. It scorched the dry grass on the ground, blackening and withering a large patch.

“Woah,” Will exclaimed softly. “Is that as powerful as it seems?”

“It is,” Noratuk confirmed. “But don’t you dare attempt it. Learning to control that is a very advanced technique, and very few of us know how. Even Edward can’t do it with one-hundred percent accuracy.”

Will silently nodded his understanding. Deciding that it was better to get back to training, he conjured more fire in his hand. At a small upward gesture from Noratuk, he increased the firepower as high as he could go without restraining it, producing a pillar of flame in each hand that just barely reached a foot high. She indicated her approval and left him, grinning broadly, to focus on keeping the flames up.

Just like the last time he’d attempted it, Will lasted just over an hour before he felt the sharp pain in the back of his mind, and let the flames fade, sinking into a sitting position. To his surprise, James’ Condition broke only a few seconds later. He too sat down for a moment, and they both watched the other members of the group practice holding their flames. Noratuk paid them no mind, pacing silently in front of the line. It was only a few minutes later, when Will got back to his feet, that she spoke.

“That’s enough for now,” She said crisply. At once, the others lowered their flames, looking politely curious. “Time to switch it up. We need you lot to learn faster if we stand any chance, so today I’m introducing a new move.”

That piqued Will’s interest at once, and he fidgeted impatiently as he waited for Noratuk to continue. She didn’t speak however, but raised both hands to the side, palms upward. It looked as if she was going to conjure flames for a moment, but instead, fire slowly coursed out of her hands, flowing over her arms and down her torso. In about a second, the flames coated her from head to toe in some kind of bizarre shining aura. Will let out a murmur of interest, and he wasn’t the only one. Even James was leaning forward eagerly.

“Flame cloak,” James said excitedly. “We finally get to learn it?”

“Yep,” Nora said with a grin. “But take it slow. You three, you already understand the principle behind it. Will, step over here, and we’ll explain it to you.”

“We?” He asked, already stepping forward to obey. But at that precise moment, he saw Charlisa coming into view around the corner of a nearby building, and let out a quiet laugh. “Of course.”

“She is the recognized master of it,” Nora explained. “I might be the person that teaches you, but I learned the finer points of it from her.”

By way of demonstration, Charlisa’s entire body began to emit a steady stream of fire. Unlike Noratuk, who had conjured it to her hands and spread it across her body, Charlisa seemed to release fire from every pore of her skin. It draped over her shoulders like a long cape, and even more was cascading off her body onto the snow, melting it at once. Curiously, neither the grass at her feet nor the clothes she was wearing were affected by the heat.

“Show-off,” Noratuk said, smiling. “You want to walk Will through it?”

Charlisa nodded. “Make some fire, Will.”

Will quickly did so, coating both hands in fire. His skin was still a little sensitive from the sheer amount of time they’d spent coated in fire today, and he shifted his feet uncomfortably at the sensation of the flames licking his skin. He still couldn’t quite get rid of that tiny thought that he’d be burned by his own flames, regardless of how many times he handled it safely. 

“Now pay close attention,” she said, lifting her own hand and passing it along his arm from wrist to shoulder. “Do you feel my own heat?”

Will nodded, his face contorted in fierce concentration. Charlisa continued, “Try and mimic that feeling on your arm. You can choose to try to create the fire there, or you can spread it from your hands. There is no right way. All that matters is that you cover your arm.”

Will frowned. Conjuring the fire in his hands was tricky enough, even if it had been easy at the start. He’d never put much thought into potentially spreading it. Did this also mean that he could spontaneously create fire from his feet? The moment he had the thought, he felt a little heat coming from his feet, and glanced down in surprise. His feet were aflame, catching the ends of his jeans, setting the fabric to smolder. Charlisa let out a short sigh and drew the heat out of his feet at once, extinguishing the flames there.

“No,” she said, sounding a little impatient. “Stick to your arm for now, unless you want to lose your clothes.”

“Oh, right,” he said sheepishly. There was a reason he was training while wearing a tanktop, he remembered. He didn’t know how to control what did and didn’t get burned by his flames yet, so he’d been advised to limit the fire to his hands and arms. He mentally kicked himself for getting that fundamental lesson. “I’ll try again.”

So it seemed that his impulsive thoughts affected his use of fire too, he mused. It was similar to martial arts in that way. If he wasn’t completely focused, he’d make mistakes. And with fire, mistakes could be very, very bad. So he directed all his attention to his hands, trying to focus only on them, and dragging that sensation of heat across his arms. It was by no means fast, but, inch-by-inch, he managed to coat his forearms in fire. Then he felt his Condition break, and let out a quiet curse of pain, his head spinning.

“Why did it break so fast?” He grunted, holding his head with one hand. “That was barely ten seconds.”

“Because you’ve been building your power,” Charlisa said kindly, offering him a hand up. Her casual strength surprised him. “Your endurance is okay, but you have a lot to learn about control. Once you get a handle on the cloak, you can train all three categories at once.”

“Okay,” he said brightly. He went to start once more, but stopped at a warning look from Noratuk. “Right. After I take a break.”

“Take the rest of the day,” Noratuk said, shooing him away. She caught the disappointed and hurt look on his face, and rolled her eyes. “It’s not a punishment, Will. You’re teaching tonight.”

“Alright,” he said, a little mollified. “I’ll go get a shower, then.”

He headed back to the dorms then, pausing every once in a while to watch the others resuming their training. James had picked up the cloak quickly, and had his entire body coated in fire already. Charlisa still had her cloak up as well, pacing along the line with Nora, stopping every few seconds to correct something or offer advice. Will found himself smiling. Charlisa was a natural teacher. She’d probably take over for Noratuk when the older woman retired.

A quiet ding came from his phone, distracting him. It was a text from Charlisa. Stop by my room after classes. He wondered what that was about. Maybe she had something to share with him, some secret tip or other. Of course, she wouldn’t want to look like she was favoring him in the class. Shaking his head wearily but looking forward to a moment alone with her, he pulled open the large glass door and entered the dorms.