The following morning was grey, the sky was covered by dark clouds and wind was blowing through the forest. Storm was coming after all those hot days, finally.
After the morning roll call I went to find Kanire.
"Do you mind if I stay a while?" He was just asking Mom when I got into earshot.
"Only if you stop messing with the weather. It should have been raining already," Mom growled.
"I promised I'll teach little Harukaze a trick, and I'm not doing that in the rain."
"Are you really wasting so much energy just to not get wet?" Mom seemed resigned.
"Yes." Kanire replied and turned towards me.
"I expect you to contribute on the hunts then, and no more messing with the weather, or using it as an excuse."
"It's not like it's such a big deal, the river is more than enough to sustain this clearing." Kanire waved his front paw in the air. "So, ready for the challenge?" He asked me.
"Yes, what is it?" I replied, and jumped up with joy.
"You need to catch me, all magic is allowed, you have until the evening." He rubbed my head with his front paw, then jumped back and up.
Instead of falling to the ground he stayed there, flying, looking down on me.
"Don't you think it's a bit too much? Not even Anaji and me working together can do that." Dad said from behind me.
"That's the point," Kanire grunted, "it's a challenge, I don't expect her to clear it, I just want to see her potential. Time is running out little Harukaze. Don't worry about hurting me."
"Just you wait!" I growled, though knowing that even Dad admitted he and Mom were no match it was not a threat, but an encouragement for myself.
"Have fun." Dad poked me with his nose and went to nuzzle Mom.
I stared at Kanire, high up in the air, I judged the distance and with a burst of magic jumped. He doesn't want me to hold back so I won't. But he didn't even move as my jaws snapped a whisker away from his paws. It was way too close to be just a coincidence.
"Nice try, good grasp on your pacing and judging how the distance you can take. But it makes you too predictable." He commented. "If you try to use more you might hurt yourself."
"Was that on purpose?" I asked.
"Yes."
I thought, landing from that height really was difficult for me, but I just needed a tiny boost. Using more magic to jump higher wasn't really feasible, it was the first thing he would expect and I wasn't going to run head first into a rock hoping it would split. Then I recalled what Dad told me 'tell the energy what you want it to make'.
I prepared again, jumping the same way as before, but just before I jumped I used magic to raise the ground under me a little bit.
It worked and I reached the height I needed, but Kanire was out of reach again, twisting away in a fluid motion.
"Nice thinking, but either hide it better or be faster with it. you made it way too easy to react to." He said and a gust of wind slowed down my fall, undoubtedly his doing.
I landed and stared up at him, he wasn't even looking at me, instead watching my siblings pile on Dad.
I thought for a moment before deciding on just making him fall. I gathered up energy and with the only command being 'make Kanire fall to the ground' I released it.
He wavered and dropped a little, but quickly regained his altitude and my energy started draining faster, begining to hurt. I cut off the flow of magic. There was no way I would win in contest of raw power against him. If I jumped at the same time I might have caught him.
"That was so stupid it caught me off guard..." Kanire let out that weird sound of his again. "Not a bad try though, using unconventional methods can give you advantage if the opposition isn't used to dealing with them."
***
After several more futile tries on my end Kanire dropped to the ground on his own. "That's about the extent of what you can show while I'm in the air. You can continue trying," he said, showing his teeth.
***
I collapsed, exhausted just past noon. Kanire sat down next to me. He had been evading my tries effortlessly the whole time. No two attempts of mine were the same, yet he still saw easily through all of them. We were resting at the entrance to the valley.
"You pass. Quite the creativity you have. Though you never tried attacking me directly. Why?"
"You said to catch you." I replied, panting.
He let out that weird sound again. "Catching me while I was healing up from serious injuries is one way to do that. Anaji's first attempt was to burn me to ash when I gave her similar challenge, but she wanted to measure her abilities."
"Did she succeed?"
"About as well as you did. Either way, thinking of creative uses is the most important ability for someone whose talent are illusions. And you aren't afraid to use even the stupid methods to get to your goal."
"It's not stupid if it works." I protested.
"That's true." He let out that weird sound again. "There are generally three types of illusions you can use to help in a fight. First is to make illusion they won't even recognize as illusion, then you can do almost anything you want to them, but it takes incredible amount of skill and experience to pull off. Second is to use illusions continuously to distract them. Invisibility is really useful for this. The more independent illusions you can control the more effective this will be. And third one is simple, but it might not always be so effective. Can you guess that one?" He asked and lay back.
"No. I never thought about using illusions in fight. I just find them useful and fun."
"They are. It's not really combat oriented talent. But it can ironically be the strongest combat talent with ideal user. The third way is to simply overwhelm the opponents senses with a lot of illusions or changes in them at once. Few might be prepared or have ways to deal with that, Anaji is good example, if you try that on her, she will just burn everything around her indiscriminately. For most though, it will create an opening to attack or run away. If you are very lucky, it will cause the opponent to have a seizure."
"What's a seizure?"
"How do I... Their body will simply stop responding properly."
"Kanire? What is your talent?" I asked. "And how did you do that thing with the body yesterday?"
"My talent... It doesn't have a name. It covers so many abilities it's hard to find a pattern, only thing they have in common is that a person without the talent can't use them. I can't use healing magic at all, and all magic except for enhancements is several times more exhausting for me than for anyone else. Not that it matters with my reserves."
"How hard is it?"
Kanire lifted his paw and a pebble floated into the air, "If this is the amount of energy you need to use for an illusion," a pile of dirt the size of my head floated into the air, "then this is how much I need to use. But given my situation I don't need to follow the rules. The two abilities I used yesterday. The first one restores the body to perfectly healthy state, at the cost of all the energy reserves, though it can't fill stomach. The second one restores all the energy reserves, at the cost of almost instantly lethal injuries. Those uses are counterparts to each other and if I wasn't the way I was I couldn't use them, ever."
"Can you use it on someone else too?"
"As many people as I want theoretically. But I wasn't around the one time it was needed."
"Sorry."
"Don't be. Anyway, I'll teach you the trick to get better with illusions and get back into the den so Anaji has her rain."