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Hector was starting to get accustomed to seeing that look of surprise on Abbas' face. "Er. Well, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say I've mastered it, but, uh..."

"Hector..." Abbas turned to look at the others in the room, their audience. Members of the man's own family.

They seemed to intuit that Abbas wanted some privacy and began exiting the hollow tree in single file. Even the reapers among them followed suit, save only Worwal and Garovel.

When everyone was gone, Abbas rounded on him again. "Hector. I may not know the details of your life thus far, but I do have some idea of how young you truly are."

Oh. Hmm.

"So how in the world have you learned Sto already?" said Abbas.

Uhh. Ehh. It was a fair question, Hector supposed, but how the heck was he supposed to answer it? "It's... hard to explain."

"Try. Please."

Hector reached inside his armor and retrieved his Shard of the Dry God. "Er, well..."

"Surely you are not about to tell me that Rasalased 'taught' it to you," said Abbas, already sounding incredulous.

"N-no. But, uh. I mean, would that be so strange if he had?"

"Yes! It would!"

Ah. Yeah, maybe it would.

"Hector, Sto is an incredibly difficult thing to learn. It requires hundreds or even thousands of hours of meditative training. In my entire life, I have met very few people who could use it in non-trivial ways like what you just described. No matter how wise Rasalased may be, I do not think that he could have helped you overcome that problem by any conventional teaching method. You would still have to put in the hours."

Mm. Well, Rasalased may not have taught it to him, but from the sound of things, the Dry God had definitely played a role in him being able to learn it so quickly. Hector had suspected as much, but this was quite the confirmation.