As she watches, a pyre of Hysh starts to upwell within Ishaza, raw conviction upwelling from her core. It seethes, shines, sheds - it wants to be free, but Ishaza's discipline guides it onward, pouring from her heart out of her eyes, along its natural affinity for sight - 

Then she squeezes sharply, and a bolt of hardened light leaps from her eyes to the target she's looking at, the closest one. It blows a ragged hole through the canvas bag and scatters burning straw for a good two meters. 

She directs her gaze onward to the other four bags in turn, forming and controlling the pyre within her, and they too are smashed flat by concentrated light. The last bolt expends all her reserve, clearly in a calculated fashion, and she exhales and steadies herself as the internal pyre dims away. It all takes less than half a minute.

That is incredibly cool and also she feels like she understands more of Hysh simply by watching it happen. It's like light, and of course it's like light, but there were so many ways it could have been like light and now she feels like she knows which one it is.

All of that said, the fact that Ishaza is empty now is sort of surprising. She'd somehow anticipated that if she could slowly clean fields she had a larger well to draw on, but- wait, she doesn't know how long refilling those reserves would take to fill up once more. A process whereby she much more slowly and gradually takes in and directs Hysh seems entirely plausible from what she's seen.

She will not in fact say anything immediately just in case it remains important that she be quiet.

Ishaza takes a moment, and a little more Hysh returns to her body, but not in excess of what Alethia was able to see from her ambiently before. It seems she's rebalancing her reserves. 

After a few moments she smiles at the spectators. "Now you can clap," she says to the assembled guards.

They do. One of them shouts a word that's probably "Bravo". 

Ishaza takes a small bow.

Alethia will join in the clapping! Ishaza deserves it, that was very cool.

Ishaza looks over at Alethia and smiles, then comes over across the range.

"So," she says. "See anything interesting?"

Sophia, meanwhile, is shepherding the guards back into the fort with a "show's over" kind of attitude.

"I very much did. Hysh is- it's like it's water under pressure, it wants to escape out of any container it's in out of any opening it has and once it does it moves in straight lines. And I think I could see how it's also- tied to sight, that's why unleashing it from your eyes like that worked. And then the way Hysh tends towards movement in straight lines means you can use that to very effectively aim. It's ingenious. It's also as beautiful as I was expecting, the sheer brilliance of it."

"It's a delicate and exhilirating process to channel it. Dangerous, but still one of my favorite activities. I've never regretted asking Rhya for this gift."

"How does channelling it feel? I find myself incredibly curious."

"It's like... trying to solve a very delicate math problem in your head where the answer is the sum of your ideals and your willpower. It's cerebral and intense. I've heard other Winds are different, but most mortals can only harness one, so I'll likely never know."

Oh, huh. That- that really sounds like something she'd enjoy, honestly. Something she'd be good at, too, even independent of her new Spirit-given abilities.

Something kind of- incredibly well suited to her talents, really. She wonders if that will even matter, when she eventually learns it, compared to the strength of her new abilities. It's a thought halfway sad, but she sheer joy of magic and new things is in her enough for it not to quite tip over all the way in that direction.

And even beyond that, being sad about something that she can turn off just feels sort of silly.

"Shyish- what it feels like I cannot speak to, but it moves very differently. Hysh is- more consistent. Shyish changes. It clings, and then it flows, and then suddenly it surges."

"I gather from discussions with Crin that Hysh is more stable. Shyish wants to end. Hysh less so."

She nods. "Indeed. It looks like Hysh wants to- radiate, more than any other single thing."

"Yes. It has a sense of coherency in a beam, but getting it to that state when it wants to effulge is quite difficult."

"And thus the virtue-math."

"Indeed. Strong will and conviction provides a channel it will follow."

It really does sound perfectly matched for her.

"I'm curious what the Hysh equivalent is of the narrow range of Shyish flow speeds where it neither pools nor surges. A- way to manipulate or move Hysh that's kind of- optional for standard casting but required for battle magic."

"That would be choir casting. Large quantities of Hysh are best managed by groups of practictioners working together."

"Ah, so it's less a feature of the way Hysh flows than its- conceptual resonance with order. Which I suppose comes down to the same thing a few levels down, but it's less the kind of thing that would be potentially visible in the amount of Hysh being manipulated by one person working alone."

Ishaza nods. "Indeed." 

She clasps her hands together. "Would you like to watch a shaping exercise as well?"

"I very much would."

She once more desires to bounce.