Fury dropped down into a squat and twisted his head almost upside-down so he could look Lindon in the eyes. “It's going to be hard to talk like this.”

Lindon rose to his feet, staring into the wall, but Fury bobbed and weaved so that his face was always in front of Lindon’s. Finally, Lindon gave in and met his eyes.

“Saw you were practicing a palm strike. It just so happens that I...who's this? Hey there!”

To Lindon's horror, Little Blue had scurried up to the Herald's feet, staring up at him from the ground. Lindon darted forward to grab her, but Fury had already squatted down again.

He gave a broad, open smile, holding one hand out to Little Blue.

With a cheery ring, Little Blue reached up to grab Fury's fingers, hauling herself up onto his palm. She immediately ran up his arm to his shoulder, staring at his face from an inch away.

Lindon was afraid to move. This looked friendly enough, but he was terrified that the Herald would grow suddenly offended and crush the Riverseed from existence.

“What's your name?” Fury asked gently, and Little Blue gave a series of chimes in response.

“That does make sense. Are you having fun here? No problems? ...yeah, training can be lonely. You'll be back with your friends before you know it. Speaking of friends...” He turned to look at Lindon, and so did Little Blue. “What do you think of him?”

Lindon had never before been so worried about Little Blue's opinion.

She made a long, complicated whistle. It carried more meaning than Lindon could untangle.

Fury's drifting, shadowy hair rose to a point. “Really? Well, I look forward to that day.”

Little Blue squeaked and hopped off his shoulder, sliding down his robes like a child down a hill. Then she scurried back over to her toys: a pile of miniature junk that Lindon had arranged for her to play with.

Lindon tried to smile. “Apologies. I'm sure she intended no disrespect.”

Fury gave a blank look, as though he didn't understand what Lindon meant. “Oh, okay. Anyway, she seems to think that you'll pose a threat to me one day soon.”

Lindon felt as though every pore in his body had started to squeeze out sweat. “She didn't mean it! Certainly, I wouldn't oppose the Akura clan. Did she really say that?”

“You should give yourself more credit. Sylvans with a state of existence this complete are good judges of character. And I hear the leader of the gold dragon team is out for your blood.”

Lindon winced—he could imagine why the gold dragons might be after them. But Fury beamed at him.

“If you can't threaten me in a few years, I'll be disappointed!” He gave a broad, hearty laugh as though he expected Lindon to share it.

Lindon forced a few chuckles.

Fury ran a finger under his eye as though to wipe a tear away. “Ahhh, that's enough business.” He clapped his hands together. “Charity says she has you doing focused technique training. Let me see that palm strike again.”

Again? So it hadn't been just a Sage watching Lindon train, but a Sage and a Herald?

He pictured an entire room full of people crowding around to watch him lose fights and practice his self-taught techniques, and he suddenly felt very self-conscious.

[Don't worry about that,] Dross said. [You already have me watching you all the time. What's a few more?]

Feeling Fury's eyes on him, Lindon hesitantly stepped up to the post that Charity had delivered to him.

The script on the center was three concentric rings. He was trying to control the output of the Empty Palm so that he could light up either all three or just the one in the center. The ultimate goal was to improve the effect of the Empty Palm so that he could use it for more than just disabling the enemy's core.

Lindon drove the Empty Palm into the script, trying to spread his madra out as much as possible. Two rings lit up.

He shook his head and prepared to try again, aware of Fury's attention on him, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Okay, that's enough.” The Herald pulled him away from the pole. Fury put his chin in one hand, thinking, as his black hair drifted away behind him. Finally, he snapped his fingers. “Seems to me you've got a few options. You could go with a standard Enforcer attack technique, like this.”

Lindon felt the madra moving in the Herald's body, sure that the man had exaggerated the spiritual movement for illustration. Fury gently slapped the pole, there was a surge of black madra, and all three rings lit purple.

“If you keep developing it in this direction, you could make it so that a direct hit on their core blocked out their powers for a little while, or even crippled them for life. A hit anywhere else could deal some real damage to their madra channels, which is about the same thing.”

He took a few steps away from the pole, then slowly drew his hand back, pulling madra into it with the motion. His spiritual movements were overstated again.

When he thrust the hand forward, a black lance of madra speared through the circle from five feet away. All three circles lit up.

“You are projecting madra, so you could develop it into a Striker technique. It's a little slower and weaker, and you'd be giving up the ability to lock down their entire spirit for a while, but you could still disrupt their madra channels. In most fights, that will be just as good.”

Fury laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, walking past the post. “Or you can try for the best of both worlds. It'll take a little more work, but I like the flexibility.”

He cycled his madra obviously once again, this time in a more complicated pattern. He was facing the metal-plated wall, in between the bands of script that ran along the ceiling and the floor.

When his hand crackled with black madra, he gently pushed it against the wall. A palm strike at one-thousandth the speed.

When it touched the wall, a dozen black hands, Forged from madra, struck at the same time. The room thundered as though he'd cracked the wall in two.

Every hand left a ragged handprint blasted into the metal.

Lindon stared in awe. It was as though he'd struck with thirteen palm strikes at once.

Fury turned, grinning and shaking out his hand. “This is the Crushing Black Palm. It's a Forger echo technique and an Enforcer attack technique all together. Not that you need to do exactly what I did, but you should be able to learn something from it, yeah?”

Lindon was staring at the wall, his mind churning. Dross, did you get that?

[I mean, I remember it, but I don't know if I can help you do it. He's using shadow madra, and he's just...you know, a lot better at this than you are.]

Dross ran him through a quick simulation in his mind. Lindon moved slowly on the outside, cycling his madra, trying to create the feeling that the Herald had just produced.

The first models that Dross fashioned didn't work well. It was a hard feeling to grasp; Fury had been using shadow madra, and Lindon was trying to make use of the same principles with an entirely different aspect. Not to mention that he'd never tried Forging something so quick and rough. It was more like a Striker technique than like Forging a scale.

He ran through the motions, both spiritually and physically, at reduced speed as Dross worked to process new possibilities and present them to him.

After a few false starts, Lindon made an attempt. It was like localizing the Soul Cloak just to his arm while executing the Empty Palm as he always had, and at the same time projecting a second copy of the technique off to the side. It took all of his concentration, aided by Dross, and it still felt as though he'd cobbled the technique together.