“Exactly. Now you should give it a try. Find out where your baseline is.”

“Baseline?”

“Starting point.”

“Ye already saw me stop myself from crashin’ down to my death.”

“That was different,” Aliza cut in. “That was an instinct, same as when you fell off your roof. Survival instinct. Willing your Ability to manifest itself whenever you choose is much more difficult.”

“Well, how diffycult can it be?” Perfidy said. “Gimme sum o’ that whatchamacallit—godsblood stuff.”

“I fear Narcissi’s roots are tangling themselves into knots right now,” Jereb said, but she could tell he was holding back a laugh. “Here.” He handed her a small glass vial with a tiny cork in it. She took it, peering into the beautiful golden liquid.

“I jest drink it?” she asked.

“Correct. But here’s the First Rule of New Dawn: Only one vial of godsblood per day. Do you understand?”

“Course I do. Why though? ’Cause too much’ll kill ye?”

“Only in extreme cases, but yes. Our bodies are only able to process small amounts of godsblood. Anything more, and there’s a possibility for other unintended side effects.”

“Got any examples?”

“Sure. You might just get horribly ill. Or you might grow an arm from your head.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Weird stuff happens to those greedy enough to drink large volumes of Narcissi’s blood.”

“Remember Garon Garon?” Aliza asked Jereb.

“I’d rather not.”

“Who’s the guy with two first names?”

Jereb only frowned and clamped his mouth shut. Aliza rolled her eyes. “He thinks not talking about things means they didn’t happen.” Despite her youthful age, Perfidy swore the girl spoke more adult than most adults she knew. “Twice Garon, as I liked to call him, was an impatient, arrogant fool who thought the First Rule didn’t apply to him. He wanted to grow his Ability yesterday, or last week. He didn’t want to have to earn his power like the rest of us. Thought he was above all the blood, sweat and tears part of the deal. It also annoyed him that he had two gold leaves to my three.” She smirked at that, like the man’s envy had brought her great joy.

“Whut happened to Twice Garon?” Perfidy asked.

Aliza shrugged, a gesture she wore so well it was like it had been made for her. “He drank ten vials in one day, thinking that would make him progress ten times faster, or make him ten times more powerful.”

“Did it?”

“Depends on your definition, I suppose. But yes, he got stronger, much stronger, very quickly, and then his skin peeled off his bones and he became this freaky skeleton man. I’m afraid the effect was rather permanent. Twice Garon pretty much trashed New Dawn before we were able to put him down. And by ‘we’, I mean Sinna. You should’ve seen her, all glowy and floating in the air. This huge hole opened up, not in the ground, but in the air itself, like a dark chasm turned on its side, facing vertical. It started sucking everything toward it—we lost a couple of chairs, our water barrel, half a dozen training dummies, and ol’ Twice Garon.”