Page 7 of Tears of Tungsten
“Look, Mother, I’m not sleeping with three-quarters of the academy. Yes, I did make a bit of a misguided bet, but that never went anywhere. My relationship with the rest of my unit is perfectly legitimate, and there’s nothing wrong or tawdry about it. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not being irrational or careless in my romantic life.
“That being said, I have no intention of staying here permanently. I’m going to go back to Chimera Academy. Sphinx and I are one. Pretending that’s nonsense is very insulting.”
“And yet, you’re here, and your chimera is not,” my mother pointed out.
The words sounded matter-of-fact, but the underlining smugness angered me. “This is a temporary arrangement because The Grand Judiciary feels I might have at least some talent in Gaia’s Gift. It means nothing.”
I’d expected my mother to know this already. I hadn’t spoken with her before my arrival, but General Rhodes must have. Hadn’t he shared the real reason why I’d been sent back?
Apparently not, because my mother’s eyes widened in almost comical horror. “That’s impossible. You’re an Unblessed. You always have been.”
“I know that, Mother. But even so, Gaia still heard me.”
As we headed inside, I explained what had happened in the tournament. I didn’t go into too much detail and didn’t tell her our theories and worst fears, instead choosing to depict August’s injury as an anomaly caused by a solar explosion. My mother was aware there had been an incident, as there had been drones stationed around The Fields of Mercury, monitoring the race. She hadn’t realized how serious it had been, though.
“I’m very sorry you had to go through that, dear. But I don’t understand what it has to do with you and your power.”
She sounded like she did regret August’s injury and that pacified my fury a little. “Well, August was badly burned in the accident. We feared he might not survive. So I prayed to Gaia to help him and it worked.” I let out a heavy sigh. “It had nothing to do with any skill I possessed, but it didn’t matter. The Grand Judiciary still decreed I had to take extra lessons to tame this new supposed power I have.”
My mother stared at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. “Of course they did, Selene. Gaia listens to our prayers, but she doesn’t intervene so quickly unless one of her priestesses is involved. Besides, you were near Mercury. Her reach there is limited, you know that.”
That made sense since Gaia was first and foremost a deity that protected Earth. Her power was bound to our planet. But on the other hand, how likely was it that I’d been able to heal August on my own? My tachyon manipulation skills couldn’t have made a difference and my telepathy, my one unique power, wouldn’t have affected his physical wounds.
“It had to be her, Mother,” I insisted. “I’m an Unblessed like you said.”
My mother pressed her lips together in a thin line. “We’ll see. Come along now. We’ll do a very simple test and scan your essence for traces of Gaia’s magic.”
Having grown up at her side in the temple, I was familiar with most of the tests the priestesses underwent. Usually, for them, it was about power level, mental strength, and determination. But there were the very simple ones that involved dummies—the same exam I’d remembered during the Introduction to Tachyon Manipulation class.
The test was held in a special hall that adjoined the main temple. There was no sacred wood here, only stone and earth, things that could be replaced without too much trouble. The dummies were stationary and lacked the firepower of the drones on Tartarus, but that wouldn’t be a problem. This was just a demonstration, so my mother could see the source of my powers.
She took up position behind a protective panel. “You know what to do, right?”
“Yes, of course.” I shot her a weak smile. “Well, in theory. I’m not very sure how it’ll work in practice, but I’ll do my best.” After all, it could hardly go worse than my lesson with Professor Strange.
Famous last words. As I stood in front of the stone dummies, I extended my hands and reached into my core, trying to summon Gaia’s Gift to the surface. That approach didn’t work. Tartarus’s power responded instead and a tachyon aura bloomed around me.
The ground beneath my feet started to crack and crumble. Right. Things here weren’t nearly as resilient to fire as the metal at Chimera Academy. With a frustrated huff, I shook my hands, trying to do some damage control before I accidentally started a devastating fire.
“Sorry about that,” I told my mother. “I’m having some trouble.”
“It’s all right,” she answered. At one point when I hadn’t been paying attention, she’d created a seat for herself out of the earth and she’d sat down. “Take your time.”
I didn’t begrudge her for her casual display of power, although I did wonder if, on some level, she did it just to spite me. I’d never seen my mother as petty, but she’d never called me a whore either. At this point, I’d started to believe that when it came to my life, anything was possible and everything that could go wrong usually did.
On the bright side, she wasn’t pushing me and she didn’t display any of the disdain I’d been showered with at Chimera Academy. It was a nice change and it encouraged me.
Still, I couldn’t fall onto the same methods I’d used to channel tachyons. Maybe real contact with Terra would help me. If I remembered well, most young priestesses didn’t wear shoes at all. I’d asked one of them about it once and the woman in question had explained that touching the earth with her bare skin allowed her to align her center better to Gaia’s power.
I was no priestess and I didn’t have the slightest clue if this would work for me, but I had no other choice. I needed to try.
Taking a deep breath, I dropped to my knees and pressed my bare hands to the ground. There was no real floor, just earth, leveled for convenience, but still raw and pulsing with Gaia’s magic. The moment I touched it, I felt the difference.
Tartarus’s fire wriggled to the side, making room for something else, for a shier, kinder power. It was the same magic that had allowed me to reach out to August when he’d been so badly injured. I embraced it with enthusiasm, wondering how I’d missed it in the first place.
“It’s not unusual for humans to miss what is right in front of their nose,”Sphinx murmured. She said nothing else, but I felt her tug Tartarus’s power aside, assisting me despite the huge distance between us.
I’d have a horrible headache after this, but it didn’t matter, because I could see it now. I could see the hidden power that I’d been denied.
