Warmth spreads in Tory’s chest.
Today, Sena made something grow.
“Westrice has taken the byproducts of your Seeds and presumed them to be the whole of you. Channeler. Neutralizer.In naming you, they diminished you.”
“Wait. WhycanI channel energies?”
Iri shrugs. “By accident, really. The Worldseed and Voidseed exert some level of control over all energies because time affects all things. But it’s much easier for a Worldseed to use their true power with life energy, because that energy is native to them. Most often, their first successful attempt to handle time is with the human body, but until they’ve extensively practiced with other energies, the best they can do is clumsily grasp and throw them. Like infants crawling before they walk, Worldseeds usually learn to pull or stretch or throw energies back before they learn how toturnthem back.”
“So I’m crawling,” Tory says.
Iri laughs. “It has its uses, as I’m sure you’ve realized, but it’s a pale imitation of your true power. A fortunate byproduct.”
“Then why call Sena a Voidseed? How does that not diminish him?”
“In your language, it might. But think about it.” Iri gestures up. “A void may evoke ruin and emptiness, but it’s so much more. It’s the void of space, birthplace of stars and planets and everything that lives on them—avatar for the Celestial Beast, a cosmic womb for all life. A peacefully coexisting duality: creation and destruction.” Iri gestures to the potted plant he brought. “That’s eliheni, by the way. Great in soups. Sena, I was hoping you could give me a nice big bush of it, but I suppose you’ll want to stop and get that hand looked at.”
“No,” Sena says, and Tory flinches at his expression. He’s never looked so young. Happy. Unburdened. Tory’s chest aches. “It doesn’t hurt. What’s next?”
“Well,ideallywhat’s next is that you learn to control your power so you’re not indiscriminately unmaking things, but that’s not the work of an afternoon and it’s certainly not work I can do. But for now . . . I think perhaps we can do a little bit of practice letting Tory handle your energy.”
Sena startles, stumbling back. “No.”
“You won’t be harming anyone. What I’d like Tory to handle is merely the plentiful energy you create by being alive—the field that neutralizes other Seeds. Heshouldbe able to handle it. All right?”
Sena settles, offering a careful shrug he instantly regrets by the way he pales. His ribs must still be giving him trouble. “All right.”
Iri positions Tory several strides from Sena. “Is this far enough? You can still access your abilities? I’m not sure how far his nullifying field extends . . .”
Tory spreads his awareness out and senses a faint buzz of ambient Seed energy beyond the clump of tents. So therearepeople still here. Patrols, maybe. The roughness of it reminds him of the energy at play in the Rec Room testosterone battles. “Yeah.”
“Very good. Try to find Sena. You did it before on the training blanket. It will be harder this time, since there’s more to distract you.”
He tries, but his senses keep swinging toward whatever’s happening beyond the clump of tents, jagged and wild and so clearlythere. The trees here hum with their quiet industry.
It really is harder to seek Sena’s energy with everything else, but Tory forces his awareness in front of him, nudges it out until it runs into the shape of something. What he finds expands beyond Sena by a few feet on every side, a massive, static void.
“Found you,” he says.
“Good. If you can discern it, you can use it. First, would you try to expand it?”
If he expands Sena’s bubble of nullification, he’ll temporarily disable any other Seeds in this camp.
Which would be pretty damn neat, actually.
He could make use of that—could’ve made use of it the other day. A wholebattlefieldworth of Seeds, defanged. If the assholes at the Box knew this was a possibility, they’d have been all over it.
Disable and demolish. They could have made a weapon of mass destruction of him. On second thought, Tory can’t help the rush of dizzying gratitude that they didn’t know. “ . . . Do you have permission for this?”
Iri’s eyes flash terrible joy. “I find it easier to beg forgiveness.”
“Sena? You okay to try this?”
Sena gives an aborted twitch of one shoulder. “Go ahead.”
When Tory reaches for it, the energy jumps to him like it was waiting for an invitation. It’s slick and buzzing, pins and needles all up his arms. It’s dense as anything, so heavy it nearly drops him to his knees.
Thisis what he felt in the lab with Helner, just before Sena reached out and ended it—that brimming possibility, the charge in the air before a lightning strike.
