Chapter 7: Forging a Psychic Shield

Chapter 7: Forging a Psychic Shield

The Otago Peninsula was a place of raw, untamed beauty, and Kael had chosen its most desolate corner for our training ground. We stood on a clifftop overlooking a churning expanse of slate-grey water. The wind was a relentless, physical force, tearing at my hair and threatening to shove me from the precipice. It screamed with a wild, inhuman loneliness that echoed the new emptiness in my life.

“Again,” Kael commanded, his voice a low anchor in the howling gale. He stood twenty feet away, his stance relaxed, his face grim. “Your shield is a sieve. I can feel your frustration, your fear, the argument you had with your boss three weeks ago, and what you’re planning to have for dinner. It’s pathetic.”

My jaw clenched. For two days, he had subjected me to this. Harsh, unforgiving, relentless training. He wasn’t a teacher; he was a drill sergeant for the soul.

“I’m trying,” I snapped, squeezing my eyes shut. I tried to follow his instructions, to gather the chaotic storm of my emotions and visualize a wall, a fortress around myself. But it was like trying to build a dam out of mist. My feelings were too fluid, too powerful.

He didn't give me time to regroup. A wave of focused psychic pressure slammed into me. It wasn't an attack meant to harm, but a probe, cold and sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. It slipped through my pathetic defenses with ease, jarring my teeth and sending a spike of pain through my temples. I cried out, staggering back a step, my concentration shattering completely.

“A Marrow Leech’s touch is a thousand times worse,” he stated, his voice flat, devoid of sympathy. “It won't just probe; it will tear and shred and drain until there’s nothing left. Your shield collapsed in under a second. Try again.”

Fury warred with despair. “Maybe if you gave me instructions that weren’t cryptic one-liners, I could actually do this!” I yelled, the wind snatching the words from my mouth. “'Visualize a wall' is not a helpful tip, Kael!”

He closed the distance between us in a few long strides. The sheer intensity of his presence was overwhelming, yet as he drew nearer, a strange thing happened. The chaotic noise of the world—the screaming wind, the crashing waves, the distant hum of the city I could still faintly feel—began to recede. His personal emotional void, the black hole I’d found so unnerving in the alley, acted like a sonic buffer. It was a calm, quiet port in the middle of my sensory storm. The throbbing in my head eased.

“Your problem is you’re fighting yourself,” he said, his voice closer now, cutting through the wind. “You’ve spent your whole life trying to suppress this. To pretend the storm doesn’t exist. A shield isn’t about suppression. It’s about containment. You don’t stop the river; you build banks to direct its flow.”

He was so close I could see the faint lines around his eyes, the subtle scar that cut through one eyebrow. “Think of it in your terms,” he said, and I was shocked that he’d remembered my profession. “You don't broadcast an ad to the entire world at once. You define a space. You create a billboard. The message is still there, bright and powerful, but it’s contained within the frame. Your emotions are the message. Build the frame.”

His analogy, infuriatingly, clicked. A billboard. A contained space for a powerful message.

I took a deep breath, letting the clean, salty air fill my lungs. I ignored the wind and the waves. I focused on the strange calm his proximity provided, using it as a foundation. I stopped trying to wish my emotions away. I acknowledged them: the terror of the Leech, the grief for its victims, the burning resentment I felt towards this infuriating man. I let the storm rage, but instead of letting it consume me, I began to build.

I pictured it not as a brick wall, but as a sphere of polished, mirrored chrome encasing me. It wasn’t about blocking the emotions out; it was about holding them in. The outside was smooth, reflective, impenetrable. Inside, the storm could howl all it wanted.

“Ready,” I murmured, my eyes still closed.

I felt his probe come again, a sharp, testing needle of energy. This time, it hit my mirrored shield and stopped. It didn’t break through. It slid across the surface, searching for a crack, a weakness. I held the image firm in my mind, pouring all my concentration into maintaining its integrity. I felt the pressure increase, a steady, grinding force. My muscles tensed, sweat beading on my brow despite the cold.

And then, the pressure vanished.

I opened my eyes. Kael was looking at me with a flicker of stark surprise in his gaze, the first genuine crack I’d seen in his stoic mask.

“It held,” I breathed, a giddy sense of triumph bubbling up inside me.

“For six seconds,” he replied, his composure snapping back into place. “It’s a start. Now, do it again.”

We spent hours like that. He would attack, I would defend. My shield would hold, then crumble. I’d rebuild it, stronger this time. The six seconds became ten, then thirty, then a full minute of sustained pressure. The infuriating paradox remained: the closer he was, the easier it was to focus, yet his very presence was the source of the anger I was learning to channel.

Finally, as the sun began to dip towards the horizon, painting the clouds in shades of bruised purple and orange, he changed tactics.

“Containment is half the battle,” he said, picking up the smooth wooden rod he’d given me in the safehouse. He tossed it to me. “Defense is not enough. You can't spend your life hiding behind a wall. Now you learn to fight back.”

“Fight with what?”

“With the storm,” he said simply. “Your power is a floodlight, scattered and unfocused. You need to turn it into a laser. Take all that anger, all that fear you’ve walled up, and focus it. Shape it. A shield is a blunt object. I want you to make a spear.”

He stood his ground, twenty feet away once more. “Your target is me. Hit me with everything you have.”

I stared at him. He wanted me to attack him? The idea was both terrifying and deeply appealing. I thought of the boy in the alley. I thought of the red-haired surfer, her light extinguished. I thought of Kael’s condescending dismissal, calling me bait, a liability.

I gripped the wooden rod, feeling its faint, dormant energy hum in response to my own. I let my shield dissolve, not into chaos, but into a swirling vortex of raw power within me. I gathered every ounce of negative emotion, every scrap of terror and rage, and pulled it into a single, white-hot point in the center of my being. I visualized it as he said: not a wave, but a lance. A spearhead of pure, concentrated emotion.

I aimed it at the infuriatingly calm man who stood before me, a silent silhouette against the dying light.

And I threw it.

I didn't move a muscle, but I felt the energy leave me in a searing, invisible bolt.

Kael’s eyes widened a fraction of a second before it hit. He didn't have time to brace himself. The lance of pure empathic force slammed into his chest. He staggered back a full step, his hand flying to his temple as a sharp gasp escaped his lips.

For a breathtaking instant, his iron-clad emotional fortress, the wall I had never been able to penetrate, flickered. It didn't fall, but I got a glimpse. A flash of something that wasn't pain or surprise, but a deep, buried memory of sorrow and a shocking wave of profound, aching loneliness.

Then the walls were back up, stronger than ever. He straightened, his face an unreadable mask, but his breathing was slightly uneven. He had felt it. I had touched him.

The power dynamic on that windy cliff had irrevocably shifted. I was still his student, but I was no longer just a liability he had to protect. I was a weapon.

He met my gaze across the darkening space between us. A long, silent moment passed, filled only by the wind.

“Better,” Kael said. The single word was worth more than a thousand praises. “It’s a start. Now we hunt.”