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“No,” he said sharply. “You’re not anchoring your will. You’re letting the words move you. You must move them instead.”

I tried again. Focus. Clamp down. Push the fire back.

The air snapped against my skin.

The fire pushed harder.

Cassius frowned. “You are not asserting your will. Try again.”

“No,” I said, staring at the flames. “It’s… more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“My power… it’s not responding to the chant, the words, nor finding root in the conviction of them.”

Instead of trying to force it, or simply telling me to make it happen, he stepped back and eyed me curiously. “This is mighty interesting. What do you suggest?”

“What do I suggest? Really?”

“Yes. Indeed. Have at it.”

I shifted my weight. “I’m going to draw on what I did to contain the Hellfire up at the Compound. When it erupted, I just reacted instinctually, my power knowing just what to do in order to contain it, despite the fact that I’d never come up against anything like that before.”

“Hmm, with that being your method, why couldn’t you extinguish it? Why did you require help, and even the feathers, which Cornelius then had to teach you how to spell into dust that you blew on the Hellfire to extinguish it?”

“I… I guess, it just seemed beyond me. And once I’d manage to contain it, I was afraid that if I tried to take it further by actually extinguishing it, I could fail and it could rage, maybe even breach my containment.”

“Your fear of collateral damage, harm coming to others nearby, and of your instincts not being correct impacted your conviction.” He eyed me pointedly. “Your will.”

“I see what you did there. My will.”

“There’s no chance of collateral damage now.

Now harm to innocents. So experiment. Push it further than you did last time.

Listen to your power, your will, not that which the True Celestials wish it to be.

” He shoved his hand through his long hair, obviously distressed by what had been realized here.

“Your will is not bound by them either, just like you’re not directly linked to the Celestial Plane in the inescapable way that I am. ”

“They wanted you to teach me their way, though, to try to enforce that, right?”

“It would seem that as you’re uttering the chants and following the teaching path given to all other True Celestials, that it was being used to try to bind you.

I believe that was why you couldn’t extinguish the Hellfire while using that method.

Your magic, your very being, was fighting it, and you were being weakened by their attempt to bind you. ”

Oh my God. “You weren’t just sent to prepare me then. They had this in mind, too.”

“Although I was not made aware, yes, it appears that they meant to attempt to control you and your power.”

“You realize that by telling me to do it my way, you’re going against their orders?” I winced. “Again.”

“I’m well aware.”

“Cassius, you could be severely punished and… I’ll just figure this out on my own time. You can just teach me the way they want and—”

He burst in front of me. “I can’t allow them to succeed in binding you. If we continue in this vein, they could obtain a hold on you. While you are learning and open to said learning, it puts you in a vulnerable state… clearly something they’d been counting on.”

“I don’t need you to save me, or to risk—”

“ I’m not saving you. You don’t need me to save you.

Hades, aberration, you don’t technically need anyone.

I am merely guiding you away from a disgraceful and very wrong path.

They continue to violate free will more so as time marches on.

I’m in a position to prevent that here. And you are the greatest of all, a force who could ensure that for others far beyond yourself. ”

As I fought to take in the weight of his words, of all of it, the danger and manipulation from the Celestial Plane, the disturbing much bigger picture, I stared at the Hellfire flames still raging.

And I let instinct guide me.

I found myself turning back to the fire.

I steeled myself.

And then I let my power loose, thrusting my palms out, my silver flame erupting.

It swirled around the Hellfire until I had it within my hold, confined by me.

I listened.

I listened very carefully, very deeply to both my power and the innate part of me.

And then I watched, utterly enraptured, as white light infused my silver magic.

It threaded around the root of the Hellfire.

I choked out a gasp as the threads started to extinguish the roots, bit by bit, then the white magic traveled up the flames doing the same further along.

“Are you hurting?” Cassius called to me.

“Not at all.”

“Weakening? Feeling an unsettling pull within you?”

“No.”

Why was he asking?

I couldn’t worry about that now, I needed to focus.

And I did. Now that I was locked onto the Hellfire steadily, I pushed harder and watched in amazement as the white power emanating from me extinguished it entirely.

I called my power back and gazed at the area. Completely unblemished, unharmed, as if the Hellfire had never raged.

Cassius swept away the containment circle and the runes with a wave of his magic, and then he was in my space, staring intently at me.

“You didn’t attack the Hellfire. You healed. The white light you employed is your Celestial Light, the same you’d use to heal.”

Yeah, it had felt the same as when I’d used it for that purpose.

“It was what the flames were calling for, what the grass and air being ravaged by it were calling for.”

“That is incredible,” he breathed, actually looking in complete awe.

He took my hands then, startling me, but I didn’t pull away.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, concentrating, and I felt a brief warmth at the point of contact, before he pulled back.

“Miraculous. There was absolutely no damage done to you from employing that against Hellfire. No weakening, no depletion of your reserves or power stores.”

“Is that not… normal… for a True Celestial?”

He released me and stepped back. “Any time another employs their Celestial Light, it is straining and temporarily damaging to them, and they require time to heal afterward. That wasn’t the case with you.”

“What does that mean in the grand scheme of things?”

“It means, Ariana, that you are more than they even realize.”