Page 100 of The Last Syphon

Hop.

Hop.

Nothing happened, except making herself look like a downright fool.

“Okay, stop. Stop,” Prince Walder guffawed. “I cannot watch this any longer, no matter how amusing it might be.”

Inara huffed and turned to face him, hands on her hips. “Please.” She waved a hand through the air. “Educate me.”

“You must find the power deep within you. A lot of abilities you take from your Guardian require nothing but the will to use them, as you’ve worked out for yourself. You wish to see something in the distance? Your will alone grants you the ability through your connection with your Guardian. We call this passive access. Something you can do without much thought or action. To jump requires far more than that. You must access that power directly through your soul-link. This is called active access.”

Inara was following along so far. Well, a little bit. She understood what he was saying, the logistics of it, but not the how.

His hand touched the centre of his chest. For the first time, she noticed a ring he was wearing on his middle finger. It was big and thick, encased in silver with a bright red jewel embedded in the centre. “You should feel it here. A hum of power.”

Inara touched the same spot on her body. She closed her eyes, focusing intently.

There. It was exactly as he described; a hum in her chest.

“You have to reach for that connection at the same time you want to jump,” Prince Walder continued. “Focus on those two points at the same time. You must always have that connection at the forefront of your mind whenever you’re attempting the manoeuvre. Otherwise, it will not work.”

Okay. Simple enough. Inara kept her hand on her chest to better focus on the soul-link, shifted her gaze to the spot in front of her, raised her foot as if she were about to take a step in that direction, and⁠—

Inara disappeared, reappearing in an instant in the spot she’d been staring at. A wave of dizziness washed over her immediately, and she swayed, light on her feet.

“Whoa.” She stuck her arms out to her sides for balance, trying to regain control of her senses.

“Well done,” Prince Walder said, inclining his head. “Try again.”

She took a deep breath, focused, and jumped. There was another bout of disorientation that hit her hard, but she ignored it, far too enamoured to stop and continued doing it again and again, over and over, jumping around the lakeside, blinking in and out of existence as she moved. It was such a thrill. Such an exhilaration. To move as if gravity had no effect on her.

She finally stopped after the tenth or eleventh jump, and all of the movement caught up with her quickly. She felt her stomach drop, roll, do a zig-zag, and⁠—

“Ughhh.” There wasn’t much left in her stomach. She’d thrown up most of it onto Prince Walder’s head, and yet, somehow, she’d managed to throw something more up, hunching over and vomiting everywhere.

Prince Walder winced ever so slightly, as if the act triggered the memory of what had just happened to him earlier.

The nausea disappeared quickly, and Inara regained her composure. She shuffled a few feet to reach the lake and used the water to clean out her mouth and wipe her lips. “Ugh.” She grimaced, whipping the droplets from her fingers. “Why do I keep throwing up?” She’d never had this problem before. Granted, Inara had never appeared and disappeared like that before, but still, she had a pretty strong stomach.

At least, she thought she did.

“The manoeuvre is difficult for your body to adjust to at first. It can be quite debilitating to your senses.”

Oh. Well, that made her feel a little better. It was a normal reaction, then.

“So it happened to you too when you first jumped?” she asked absent-mindedly, washing her hands in the lake as she glanced over her shoulder.

He said nothing, one arm resting on the hilt of the sword at his waist, expression blank.

Inara narrowed her eyes and stood. She realised her mistake quickly. “Of course.” She chuckled to herself. “Even if you did, you would never admit it, would you?”

Again, there was no response, but Inara didn’t need one. She was quite perceptive.

“Will I always throw up like that?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Eventually, your body will get used to the strange sensation of jumping from one spot to another. It will just take time. And practice.”

“Thank Fates for that.” The possibilities of such power were endless, and Inara couldn’t wait to experiment with it. Especially now, knowing the nausea would fade over time and eventually be non-existent.