Gifted

I stood by the front doors of the outpost with Mum and Gramps. The warmth from the crackling fireplace in the common room was fighting against the cold night air trying to leak in under the entryway. Mum had made sure I was wrapped up, with dark, woolen pants and a shirt. For good measure, she had then made me wear my new wolf fur jacket that hung down almost to my knees and was tied closed with small threads of wool that ended in wooden pegs.

“I’m still not sure about this,” Mum mumbled, kneeling down next to me. She was every bit as dressed as I was, and I had no doubt that if she thought I was in danger, she would come charging out of the outpost after me.

“This was partly your idea,” Gramps grumbled. “I’m still not convinced these ‘rituals’ make any difference. We could just go sit in the common room and Bastian could drink his Shadow Affinity potion and be done with it.”

“No,” I stated firmly. “I’m trying the ritual.”

Magatha’s words had resonated with me. I understood better than most the importance of a soul. Memories of the Ocean of Souls besides, I was fairly certain that my Shadow Affinity had come from drawing the remnants of the demon into me before I was born. What could that have been if not my soul fighting for supremacy. Fighting, and winning. Now I had the opportunity to improve that advantage, even if only marginally. Gramps had made it clear to me that because my Shadow Affinity was already rated at Strong that the potion would likely only improve it slightly. Still, any progress was worth pursuing even though it wouldn’t be enough to get me to the next tier. The progress, much like my Stats, would improve the performance of my Shadow Affinity.

“Fine,” Gramps agreed. “But if you get swooped by a grimfaced owl it’ll be on your head.”

I shot a glare at Gramps seeing how Mum instantly went rigid, and for a moment, I felt the rumble of fear in my stomach that she would decide not to let me do the ritual after all. My fears were put to rest though as she matched Gramps’ blue-eyed stare with her own. Just like every other time, the old codger backed down after a moment before my mother’s unbending will when it came to anything related to me.

“Go on then. I’m sure that won’t happen, and if it does… well, I’ll just make sure it doesn’t.”

I flashed what I hoped was a confident grin at the two before opening the door and slipping out into the night. I’d barely taken a few steps when I paused and gazed at the starry night above. The evening was blessedly clear of clouds which made it marginally easier to search the sky for predators. My eyes roved over the open air searching.

Was that a shadow? I wondered.

Nothing came of it, and I decided my eyes were playing tricks on me or my paranoia about aerial assaults was getting to me. I patted the knife I had swiped from the kitchen, hidden beneath my coat. I was pretty sure Gramps knew I had it, but Mum definitely did not. The steel tucked tightly against me gave me the courage to start my jog across the road. Muffled Steps activated, reducing the sound of my leather boots on stone to barely a whisper. Something so soft that only those listening for it would hear me.

Across from the outpost, the Millers’ trading post puffed smoke into the night air, the fire within casting shadows across their window. Beyond the prospectors’ home and the trading post, Horndale pines rose into the sky, towering above the buildings and making me feel even smaller than usual. Beyond them, a sliver of pale yellow moon hung in the sky, the only light besides the outpost behind me and the trading post in front.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the darkness that got to me, but the vastness of the world. Normally it was easy to forget, the day was filled with sounds. The night, however, was for predators and as much as I wished to be one, I wasn’t there yet. Another glance at the sky told me I was still safe and my mind had definitely been playing tricks on me. I kept telling myself the same thing, in the vain hope that I would eventually believe it.

I arrived outside the prospectors’ window, breathing controlled and slow to keep the sound down and because the run just wasn’t that far. Day in and day out I ran, always trying to improve my Path of Running. The steps in my Path were one measure of my improvement, but my endurance was another. I could’ve done that same lap back and forth ten times before my lungs started to demand oxygen. If there was a fitter four year old, I would’ve loved to meet him, just so I had a peer to compete with. Etta may have been outdoing me at aethersensing, but in every other aspect, despite having a year and a half on me, she fell short.

I squashed my competitiveness down where it belonged, reminding myself that the only person I needed to be better than was the person I was yesterday. That done, it was time to focus on the task at hand. With one last glance behind me at the silhouettes of my mother and Gramps in the outpost doorway, I turned to the house before me.

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Controlled Grip pulsed through my fingers, making climbing into the empty prospectors’ home childsplay. I grinned at my joke as I dropped inside. They had done very little to the place since my last visit, which wasn’t surprising since they were barely using it. I was guessing they had built a second house near their mine and were just using this one for storage. The proof of that was the barrels piled against one wall, each one rough hewn and half-filled with pieces of stone striated with ores.

One day I would learn more about the various ores. Maybe blacksmithing too. But not tonight. Sitting myself down in the shadow of the window I relaxed against the wall. Reaching into my coat I pulled out the Shadow Affinity potion. In the darkness I couldn’t see the swirls of colour, the elixir within looked like liquid night. The basics of the ritual were all around me. I sat, concealed in a shadow cast by a waning moon, in a place I did not belong and utterly alone. All that was left to do was drink.

I unstoppered the potion and quaffed it quickly before I could change my mind. The first potion I had ever drunk was a minor healing potion and it had tasted like dirt. Then I had been treated to months of scar rejuvenation potions, which bore the taste of the berries that were one of their main ingredients. Those had gone well with breakfast. The shadow affinity potion tasted like neither of those. The dark liquid left an acidic bite in my mouth and elicited bile from the back of my throat. I swallowed regardless and waited. Magatha had said drinking the potion should feel like warmth suffusing my entire body and only when that warmth had passed would the process be finished. That warmth was caused by the base for this particular potion, which just so happened to be coldfang poison, neutralised by the coldfangs’ own blood. Or at least, so we hoped.

I didn’t have to wait long. The acidic taste wouldn’t leave my mouth, but it took a back seat to the warmth spreading from my stomach outwards. At first it felt nice, like being curled up in bed beneath warm furs. But the heat didn’t stop rising, and my arms started to shake as sweat beaded on my brow despite the cool air.

Trying to stand caused my legs to spasm and my eyes widened in fear. Had Magatha messed up the potion? Was the poison not neutralised? Was I dying? The warmth continued to spread in the wake of my worries, sliding down my arms like flowing blood. An apt comparison since I assumed that was what was spreading the poison. As the heat increased, feeling like a roiling ball of lava within my stomach, the clawing vines of heat reached my fingertips, and I felt my consciousness teetering on the verge of collapse.

At the edge of passing out and unsure if I was dying or not, I felt the truth of Magatha’s words. I could, for this fleeting moment, sense my aether core clearly. If the potion was an expanding sphere of fire within my stomach, then my aether core was a small gently pulsing moon in all the shades of darkness. And it was small. I could see that clearly now. But more than that, there were imperfections across its surface. Splotches of tattered shadow, scattered piecemeal through my aether core that reminded me of when I first arrived in this world. Of my first enemy and first victory.

The ripped and shredded remains of a lesser demon prince, imperfectly absorbed into my own soul.

I could see now, in this semi-aware state, why the potion was affecting me far worse than it should have been. The liquid lines of poison carried pieces of the coldfangs’ Shadow Affinity through my veins where they were being drawn into my aether core. Instead of flowing in though, they tore and frayed like old threads as the liquid tried to reach out and touch every disparate fragment of the remains of the lesser demon prince staining my aether core. I knew then I was in fact dying. The threads were tearing me apart as the potion tried to meet its equal in the form of those tattered pieces stuck onto my soul.

But, despite that knowledge, I didn’t feel any fear. Not now, in this moment. Instead, I heard the words of Gramps. He had explained that anything that could be accomplished with an advanced attribute, could be done without one. Aethersensing was just one example. The attribute would make me better at it, make it easier, but I could already do it. So, why not Aether Manipulation? It was my aether core… my soul… if anyone should be able to manipulate its flows and structure, it should be me.

As a fetus in the womb, I had simply drawn in the fragments of the lesser demon prince, but now I bent my will to absorbing them. They had always been a part of me, but now they would be me. I almost lost focus when I felt the first ripped piece of shadow on my aether core move under my will. When the second shifted ever so slightly, I was less surprised. By the third, I knew that I just had to finish the task before the poison killed me.

Piece by piece I drew the fragments together, combining them into my aether core so that it was impossible to see where one began and the other ended. With each new piece that vanished, the threads of fire from the shadow affinity potion seemed to stabilise, flowing into my aether core in a steady stream. When the final fragment vanished, my aether core looked more like a dark sun within my chest rather than the multi-hued ocean of darkness it had been before. The last of the potion followed, flowing into my core as my chest finally cooled. The last dregs of poison were expended delivering whatever ingredients within the potion there were to nourish the Shadow Affinity within my aether core.

Notifications started pinging in the corner of my vision, but for a moment, all I could do was curl over and vomit. Sweat covered my face as though I had run a marathon and it hurt to move. Even the small amount of vomit on the dirt floor smelled disgustingly acidic and looked like I had spat up a glob of tar.

Laying still, I opened my notifications to see what my efforts had bought me.

Achievement Acquired! Advance an Affinity to Potent.

Reward: 1000 Steps on any Basic Path OR 100 Steps on any Advanced Path OR 10 Steps on any Elite Path. Cannot be applied to the user’s mutated Path.