Striding around the chamber, Skippii observed the brass pipes with an analytical mind. Their latticework was like a maze, their purpose unclear. Touching one, he found it wet with steam, but there was no rust in the metal. He wondered how old they were. It must have been one of Eirene's duties to maintain them, and the hundreds who preceded her. Coming upon the marble door at the rear of the room, he ran his finger down the slit between its slabs. Pushing and pulling, he tested their weight, but as he suspected, they were unyielding. It wouldn't have been much of a trial if they had opened at his touch.

The gears which were set into the wall, too, were stiff. Largest beside the door's hinges, they spread out, overlaid by brass pipes and their barrel-like bulges. Skippii tapped one of the pipe's bulges with his knuckle, and it rang metallically, but did not sound entirely hollow. Perhaps there was more mechanism hidden inside.

Sitting by the small pool, he inspected its waters. It was warm and steaming. Reaching beneath their surface with light in his fist, he attempted to detect its bottom. However, the pool's depth far exceeded his light's reach. He wondered just how deep it was. Perhaps this trial was a misdirection, like an enemy waving flags upon the battlefield while their cavalry flanked for the rear charge. Perhaps he was meant to swim down and find a secret chamber or key at the bottom of the pool?

But what would that prove, and what would he have learned? That was the sort of trial invented for children to ponder in stories, not the kind created by a God. The thought gave Skippii pause. He knew, or had been recently taught, that all of humanity was created by the Gods in their image, and that the material which formed their bodies–and the bodies of all animals–came from the Primordials. But his bloodline was different–he was a marriage of the Gods and ancient Primordials. And yet, he had never felt unlike his peers, except in this extraordinary magia. How many more like him had gone by through the ages without their powers ever awakening? And to whom did he owe this strength? His mother, or his father–whoever he was–for his mother had never informed him.

As Ardenia had told it, their union had been brief, and his father had gone away into death soon thereafter. But could it be that her tale was a fiction to disguise the truth? Would his mother have lied to him if it was necessary? Almost certainly. Perhaps then, his father was significant after all; the strong, wizened man who had forever dwelt in the shadows on the edges of his boyhood dreams, watching him, but never breaking bread, never embracing him. Never once being there.

Skippii shook himself, resurfacing his thoughts to the steamy chamber. He felt… odd. Like the exhilaration before battle, and a strange prickling in his mind. Perhaps just nerves.

Focussing on the brass pipes, he inspected one of the eight which hung over the pool. The pipe's entrance opened up like the mouth of a trumpet, suspended one handspan above the waters. Steam rose into its funnell. He traced its path with his finger as it branched out, joining with the others, forming an evermore complex tapestry of woven brass. As it divided and lengthened, he soon found it impossible to trace. But it must end with the cogs set into the wall. The pipes would open the doors. That much seemed logical.

Curiously, he dipped his hand beneath the waters of one pipe and drew in his energy. The fires rose through his knees, swelling in his chest, alighting his core. His power shone solidly in these sweltering halls, as though the very stone was keen to make of him its vassal. Each layer of his core glowed brightly, keen for his direction. Controlling his breath, he directed a sliver of energy into his hand.

The water boiled as his heat gathered, creating a cloud of steam which billowed upwards through the brass funnel. Over the bubbling water, Skippii heard a fluttering sound come to life, like a flag flapping rhythmically in the wind. Above his head, the sound rose, echoing in several of the brass barrels which branched from the pipe, loudest in those nearest him. And there upon the wall, the cogs turned. The largest among them clicked a single peg upwards.

Excitedly, he jumped into the pool without undressing. Swimming to its centre, he drew energy from the waters, finding it as effortless as standing upon the stones of the temple. Honing the outer-layer of his core, he expelled the fires upon his skin's surface. Gradually, the pool heated to boiling. Though his flesh reddened, the heat did not cause him pain. His magia had attuned him to it.

Steam rose all around, shrouding him in a cloud that concealed the brass mechanism. The whirring sound returned as, what he assumed were turbines–like those of a watermill–spun in the steam's updraft. Squinting through the mist, Skippii sighted the cogs, unsure if they were moving, but confident in his method. If, by powering one pipe with steam, he had moved the largest cog one iteration, then by powering all eight, he would surely open the door. Likely, this trial was a test of how much energy he could draw from the waters–how much his core could store and re-direct. Excitedly, he rose to its challenge. Panting like a dog, he drew breath after breath, overflowing with fire.

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The water riled as his heart raced. The heat intensified until even he felt uncomfortable submerged within it. But he pressed on, listening for the marble door's opening. His ears throbbed and his lungs burned from the steam. But no such sound was detectable over the boiling waters and churning wheels. He could not see beyond his nose in the thick fog.

With a sigh, he ceased his magia and lay suspended for a moment, panting from exertion. As the steam cleared, he climbed out of the pool. All about, the air was so thick that he could not see the walls. Slowly, his feet became visible on the black stone floor.

Stumbling through the mists, he bent to avoid the overhanging brass pipes and made towards the marble doors, expecting to find them ajar. Even if they had opened just a crack, he might find a way to pry them further. However, they remained firmly closed. He traced the seam with his finger, feeling it no larger than when he had first entered the chamber. Above the door, he read aloud the inscription carved.

"Trial of Flux." He scowled. "Okay then." Gradually, the air cleared as the steam rose to the roof, and there filtered through cracks and vents in the stone, dissipating. A memory found him in the swell, entering his mind as easily as the mists filled his lungs.

Skippii was sobbing on the wagon's wooden deck, huddled beneath a cloak. It smelled faintly of Whillian, and the brush of its fabric against his cheek felt like the roughness of his hand. A fresh wave of devastation washed over him, upending him. He wailed, and drowned in its thrashing depths. Whillian was dead. The legionnaire, who had seemed so ferocious and full of life had been felled by a single stone, shot from an Ürkün sling. Skippii could hardly believe it, but his mother's voice had been grave and riddled with grief when she'd given the news. Of all the legionnaires Skippii had met, Whillian had been the kindest towards him and the most righteous amongst his peers. Act out, and he would admonish Skippii. But were he to behave himself, he was rewarded by the older man's smile and certain eyes; eyes which did not look upon him with derision, as though he were a stray dog, but with genuine fondness. Kinship. Though Whillian was not his father, and he would never know his father, in a way…

Wiping his eyes, Skippii raised his head and beheld a gleam of brass set against a pitch-black curtain. He glanced down at his hands. They were glowing softly, illuminating his lap. Drawing his power, he lit the chamber. The cloud had cleared, and he could once again see the maze of brass pipes above his head. This was not the time for lamenting on the past, but just as his mind returned to the present, he felt it drift askew with each new breath. Something was shaking him–probing him–unearthing his darkest thoughts. The mind of Cor, perhaps.

Skippii shivered, and rose to kneel by the pool. He cupped the water, moving it in small waves while he thought. What did he know? The steam powered an apparatus of some sort, which moved the cogs. But too much steam, and the turbines would not work. If he could discover why that was, he might be able to prevent it.

Boiling the water beneath one vent, he heard the turbines come to life within the mechanism. But rather than move on, he kept the power constant, listening keenly to its effects. The steam travelled through many pipes–and their bulbous turbine chambers–before finally reaching the cogs. By then, much of its energy had dissipated throughout the mechanism. Once again, the smallest of the cogs turned minutely, but the marble door did not move. As he observed, he noticed that some steam was expelling upon the water's surface, blown back down the end of a nearby pipe.

"Ahh," he said, observing the current. The air was flowing the wrong way. How had he missed it before? Reducing the waters to a simmer, he reached out with his other hand and felt beneath the pipe's mouth, sensing as the draft died down. Then, boiling the waters beneath his first pipe, he stretched and inspected the second, counting in iterations the time it took for it to expel air.

"Twelve," he said, then first detected the cooling vapour on his hand. The puzzle formed shape in his mind. If he heated each pipe in sequence like the hours of shadow encircling a sundial, he would prevent the counter-flow of air. Skirting around the outside of the pool, he heated the waters beneath the first pipe and counted to six, then began to boil the second. Once he reached twelve, he shifted to the third, and so on, allowing the steam to circulate the brass maze sequentially. Though he was expelling much less energy, the steam wheels whirled louder than ever in their brass barrels above his head, and behind him, the cogs began to tick.

Skippii raced around the pool's edge, quelling his excitement so as not to hasten his count. "Four. Five. Six." He thrust his fist into the waters beneath the eighth pipe and raised his head towards the marble door. "Ten. Eleven. Twelve."

A crack had appeared between the marble, large enough for him to fit a finger through, but the cogs powering it had stopped turning. The wind swirling around the brass pipes hummed like a discordant orchestra of battered trumpets, but their pitch had stopped rising, and with each moment he lingered, it softened, deepening as the steam's passage slowed. The cogs ticked back on themselves, and the marble doorway began to close. Scowling, Skippii continued around the pool, returning to the mouth of the first pipe, keeping count, but he was fighting a losing battle. He considered jamming his spear in the crack and trying to force the slabs open, but thought against it, saving such extreme measures for a last resort.

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