Quies woke up to the blazing orange rays of dusk.
Since the cross shaped sun rose from the same direction, that meant that sunrise and sunset looked nearly identical. Yet, for some reason, evenings always had a unique feeling.
Rising up from his bed, he looked out of his window, noting the time of day.
'Am I going to be late?'
Rubbing his tired eyes, he slowly sat up and somewhat tidied his bed. In reality, he hid the mess that was his bedsheets under a guise of a neat blanket and orderly pillows. When he tried to move his arms, though…
'Agh!'
They were stiff.
'I definitely overexerted myself.'
His arms were stuck—bent square at the elbow. Well, not really stuck, but it hurt if he tried extending them. It was the same for his right leg, but somehow not his left. Maybe Valerie's healing mantra had something to do with it
This was the effect of delayed onset muscle soreness. That was the first time in a long time where he had pushed his body that far, even reaching past what he thought was his limit. Consequently, his muscles would reach as such after a period of time. It woud be a pain if he had to make his way over to Maestro in this state.
Quies focused on that feeling of soreness, first in his right upper-arm muscles, the ones that hurt the most when he tried moving his hands. He felt his blood surge through his arteries and return through his veins, flowing through the repairing muscles.
A fraction of the pain subsided. He was now able to move his arm somewhat, but the dull ache was still there.
The pain was being caused at the scale of individual muscle fibers. However, he was currently focusing his blood enhancement on the whole muscle group—viewing it as one whole shape rather than a group of individual fibers working together. Because of this, the effects of blood enhancement were more effective on injuries or enhancements which impacted the whole group, and was less effective on ailments that were in much smaller areas.
'Right. I should try it now while I have time.'
Looking back on his bedside table, Quies grabbed the leather tourniquet he had grabbed from Valerie's ship. Loosening it, he put it around his upper arm.
'The book said not to overdo it. A tourniquet is a tool meant to completely stop bloodflow, and almost always results in the loss of a limb… This is how you use it, right?'
He carefully fastened the tourniquet around his upper arm and slowly tightened it. With each slight pull, the tourniquet squeezed his arm ever so slightly tighter. The feeling in his left arm began to dissipate. Sitting down, he stopped when he saw that his arm started to look not so red anymore. Not too tight, but just tight enough.
'Should be enough. Now…'
He closed his eyes and focused on the flow of his blood once again—just like when he started.
'Feel it flow through your body…'
He noticed that it required a significantly larger amount of focus to be able to sense and manipulate the blood in his hand. Uncomfortable and not used to the numbness, he used his blood enhancement to help his heart pump more blood towards that arm. Currently, it was flowing thrice as fast as the rest of the blood in his body—the rate accelerating as Quies became more comfortable.
It was like the difference between voltage and amperage. Voltage measures the push that drives electrons through a circuit, while amperage measures the total volume of electrons flowing through a circuit. In Quies' case, he had to manually make his blood flow faster to make up for the smaller space that was his compressed veins and arteries—increasing the push to make up for a lack of volume.
Perhaps that was how Valerie trained her thundercall—mastering the flow of electricity through her body.
With the faster flow of blood through his arm, he could feel the numbness slowly going away. As he regained feeling in his arms, he noticed that the soreness in his muscles had almost completely dissipated. Meanwhile, his right arm was still somewhat stiff.
With the smaller volume of blood in his arm, he could use blood enhancement at a much deeper and precise scale. When he was focusing on veins and arteries before, now, he focused on capillaries and smaller paths for blood to flow.
'Amazing…'
***
A sudden, chilling gust of gale swept across the main training room of the Vigils. Completely exhausted pupils sat on the ground, resting their backs against the hard wooden walls.
"If your legs are tired, sitting is the worst thing you could do right now!" An instructor called as he finished sparring a student.
Maestro Evengarde Rest watched from afar. Despite his seemingly blank look, he was always paying attention to the training. Specifically, he paid more attention to the mentors rather than the students. If the pupils are weak and inadequate, the teacher was usually to blame.
His scarred jade eye and fuschia eye stared back at the ground. Sometimes, instead of watching, he preferred to listen.
'One day, I'll take one of them under my own wing… Just not today.'
Suddenly, the sound of the wooden doors opening interrupted his train of thought.
'Huh… is it already evening? Or maybe past that? My sense of time must be rather misaligned for my age.'
He tilted his head up and noticed the young, lean bloodrender walk in. He had a tense look on his face, as if grimacing from some invisible cold. Evengarde couldn't discern what could be causing such a reaction, though…
It was strange—this young boy's existence. Of course, given his own background, Evengarde knew a fair bit of knowledge about the arts of blood manipulation. For the longest time, he had always associated blood users with the ministry. That disgusting faction and its false prophets…
But this boy was different. Well, from what Evengarde could discern.
"Evengarde Rest."
The young bloodrender greeted him.
"Good evening… at least, I believe it is evening… Quies Sokolof.
"Look… This whole conflict with the ministry, the fourth prophet, and other matters that may hold a relation… it's more complicated than you might think."
He paused.
"I'm not the type to force things on people, Quies, but these tasks are crucial, both for the execution and handling the aftermath of such… events."
Standing up straight, he stared at Quies' sharp eyes.
"Are you willing to secure the Forge of Sin?"