"They only had twelve Essence Crystals between the five of them?"
Arran looked in disappointment at the void bags in front of him. He had hoped there would be dozens if not hundreds of Essence Crystals among the mages' belongings, but after half an hour of careful searching, he had found no more than twelve.
Snowcloud had taken all the herbs and potions the bags contained, but other than that, she seemed to have no real interest in the mages' belongings — not even the Essence Crystals, whose quality she had deemed insufficient. That left Arran with a princely sum of gold, as well as a small pile of valuables. And, most importantly, twelve Essence Crystals that looked to be of decent quality, no matter what Snowcloud said.
"You're lucky you found even that much," Snowcloud said. "Most novices use Essence Crystals as soon as they create them."
"You don't," Arran pointed out, well aware that she carried around a stash of high-quality Essence Crystals.
"I'm not most novices," she replied with a shrug.
It was true, of course — as the granddaughter of the Sixth Valley's Patriarch, Snowcloud probably had access to resources that Arran could only dream of having.
"If you're so wealthy, there's no need to be so stingy," Arran said, only half-joking. While the deserters' Essence Crystals would keep him supplied for a few weeks, he knew he would soon run out again. And then, he would once more have to rely on his own limited skill in purifying Essence.
"I barely have enough for myself to last the year," she said. "But if you want, you can earn one right now."
"What do I have to do?" Arran asked, his interest immediately sparked at the prospect of earning more of Snowcloud's high-quality Essence Crystals.
"At the fortress, you spotted a novice while she used a Shadowcloak," Snowcloud said. "I'll give you an Essence Crystal if you tell me how you did that. Two, if you can teach me how to do it as well."
"Deal," Arran replied. The exchange was little more than an act of charity from Snowcloud, he knew. There was no need for her to promise payment for the answer — if she told him to reveal the secret, he would have little choice but to share it with her. But fortunately, it seemed that she was willing to reward him for teaching her the technique.
The prospect of two more Essence Crystals in the back of his mind, Arran explained the Shadowsight technique in as much detail as he could, but even so, it didn't take him much time to cover all of it. The technique was almost comically simple, and some small part of him feared that Snowcloud would laugh at its sheer plainness.
He quickly discovered that he need not have feared Snowcloud's reaction, however, because she looked on in wide-eyed wonder as he explained the technique. From the look in her eyes, it was almost as if he was telling her some profound secret.
"That's amazing," she said when he finished the explanation. "I've never heard of anyone using Shadow Essence like that. And you can use it to make out any solid object?"
"It works with anything that doesn't let my Shadow Essence through," Arran confirmed.
"I can't believe I've never heard of this technique before," she said. "It's so simple, but it completely counters Shadowcloak."
"Nobody in the Shadowflame Society has come up with it before?"
"I don't know," Snowcloud replied. "But if anyone thought of it before you, they definitely didn't share it with the rest of the Society."
"How could so many people miss something so obvious, though?" Arran asked.
Although he would like to believe he had made some genius invention that thousands of others had overlooked, that seemed too unlikely an explanation to be true.
"I think it's because Shadow is one of the most difficult Realms to train," Snowcloud said. "By the time most Shadowflame members' Shadow Realms are strong enough to use this technique, they've already spent years training and relying on their Sense. By then, finding another technique to achieve something similar might not be as obvious."
"Shadow is difficult to train?" Arran asked. He had never actively tried to train it, so he didn't know how it compared to other Realms.
Snowcloud raised an eyebrow at the question. "Don't you know?" she asked, looking at Arran as if he just told her he didn't know what bread was.
"I opened my Realms using Realm Opening Pills," Arran explained. "I never actually spent any time training my Shadow Realm."
"Pills? More than one?" Snowcloud gave him an intrigued look. "Just how strong is your Shadow Realm?"
"About the same strength as my Fire Realm, I suppose," Arran answered. He had never given the matter much thought, because he'd had little use for Shadow Essence until recently.
"That strong?!" Snowcloud gaped in astonishment. "Your Shadow Realm is as strong as your Fire Realm?!"
"That's unusual?" Arran asked, startled by Snowcloud's reaction.
"Unusual?" She looked at Arran with wide eyes, then shook her head. "It's completely unheard of."
"Then what makes it so difficult to train?" Arran asked, understanding that there must be some obstacle that he had skipped over with the help of the pills.
"It's a useless Realm," Snowcloud said. "At least, until you become strong enough to use spells like Shadowcloak. You can train Realms like Fire and Wind just by using them during combat practice, but training Shadow requires years of dedicated work before you can do anything even remotely useful with it." She sighed, then added, "You have no idea how lucky you are."
"Does that mean I'm strong enough to learn the Shadowcloak spell?"
"A hundred times over," Snowcloud replied, some envy in her eyes. "But you need more than just strength, and your control of Essence isn't good enough."
Arran nodded in understanding. That he needed to improve his control was no news to him, but to do so, he needed more Essence Crystals. And right now, Snowcloud was his best source for those, reluctant though she might be to part with them.
"So can you use the Shadowsight technique?" he asked, wondering if he'd earned the second Essence Crystal.
Snowcloud didn't reply immediately. Instead, a look of concentration appeared on her face, and Arran knew she was attempting to use Shadowsight. Yet after only a few moments, a disappointed expression appeared on her face.
"I'm not strong enough," she said, sounding dejected. "I can use the technique, but I can barely extend my Shadow Essence a pace around me before it becomes too thin to Sense."
"Do I still get my Essence Crystals?"
Snowcloud chuckled, then reached for her void bag. "I'll give you three. The technique is excellent, even if I'm not strong enough to use it yet."
Arran accepted the crystals eagerly. With these and the ones he'd taken from the deserters, he had enough for several weeks of steady progress, provided he didn't use them all at once.
"You'll be able to get your hands on more of them soon, though," Snowcloud said. "There's a city about two weeks from here, and that's where we're heading next. Once we're there, you can trade some of your treasures for Essence Crystals."
"A city? Here?" Arran frowned. To his mind, the lands beyond the border only held a vast and dangerous wilderness, with perhaps a few scattered villages. After everything he'd heard about the dangers that lay beyond the border, he had a hard time imagining an entire city in so hostile a place.
"You didn't think the world ended at the border, did you?" Snowcloud gave him an amused look. "There are countless towns and cities on this side, and if you travel farther from the border, you'll even find kingdoms and empires."