Before heading south toward Darna, they stopped at Mags’ home to grab some supplies. While the property was untouched, Ryan could see the effects of the battle last night in the abandoned countryside surrounding it. No tenant farmers were working. There was no smoke from morning cook fires. Everyone had evacuated, and it seemed to have happened while Ryan was unconscious.

Ryan took the chance to dip into the bathhouse to clean off the remnants of the previous night’s activities and shave. He changed his tattered clothes out for a set made from a higher quality material, something similar to cotton, that had a nice cut compared to the work outfit he had been wearing.

He also grabbed his shabby, unused pack and stuffed it with his spare of boots and clothes, his razor, and as much water and food as he could find that he thought would keep for a long time. Sorting through his meager belongings, he decided that what he already packed would be good enough.

Searching around the residence, Ryan found Flicker outside the wall, leaning on a paddock fence and looking out over the surrounding fields bathed in the mid-morning light. He tapped him on the shoulder and showed with his spear and pack that he was ready to go.

With no fanfare, they started walking. They passed through familiar farmland, now empty of people, straight to the grasslands to the south. There were no roads in that direction, just rolling hills buried in the lush spring grass. Ryan wasn’t looking forward to bushwhacking the entire way, but the alternative was to travel due west for a day to Rild and then circle back down to Darna. Except for when he first arrived, Ryan had never been outside the area surrounding the village. Mags was overprotective, and maybe rightly so. Ryan hadn’t come to this world equipped to deal with anything others would see as normal.

The straps of the pack were already biting into his shoulders and he wasn’t looking forward to carrying it for a day or two. Flicker’s was higher quality. It was understated and looked very expensive. Looking at it more closely, Ryan could see that the seams and panels were covered in tiny Rune Script. He couldn’t tell what they did, but he imagined they were for durability and preservation. The presence of the Rune Script skyrocketed his envy at the comfortable looking luggage. Ryan readjusted his own pack straps and trudged on.

The smell of the late spring grasslands reached his nose. It smelled of morning dew, earth, and the subtle scent of flowering plants hidden out of view by the tall grass. Ahead of Ryan, Flicker blazed a path with his body and Ryan followed in his wake. With nothing to do except follow, he found his thoughts spiraling back to shadow men and their wolves.

As they walked, Ryan used his sensing ability to feel their immediate surroundings. He didn’t feed the ability a lot of energy, just enough to push the diameter of his sphere of awareness out a few meters. He encountered the same problems that he had the previous night; there was so much noise. He could feel Flicker, the grass, and the road, but mixed throughout was something akin to static.

“Flicker, when I try to use my sensing power, I see so much… I don’t know. The only way to describe it is that it feels like we should be walking through a dense dust cloud, but there is nothing here,” Ryan said.

“What is the Key telling you?”

“Telling me? It isn’t telling me anything. I just use it and it does its thing.”

“No, no. You have to look at it through your Core.

“Wait, what’s a Core?” Ryan asked.

Flicker groaned and smacked himself on the forehead. “I forgot that you’re brand new, shiny and untarnished. And dumb. You have a ton to learn. Look into the deepest part of your aura, into yourself. You’ll see it there, you can’t miss it.”

With a start, Ryan recalled that he’d seen it the night before, but the wolves had interrupted the exploration of his aura with their attack in the forest. He focused his awareness inward, and he found the globe of power. The glob of condensed aura, which he remembered was his sensing ability, still orbited around it.

Ignoring the ability for now, he touched his Core. A strong sense of his Affinity rushed into his mind. It permeated his senses and bled out into his aura before fading along the edges. Along with the Affinity, he gained an understanding of how much energy the Core held within.

He could discern the difference in what was there and the potential it had; it was the difference between when it was full and how much had been consumed. Abruptly, he realized that this was supposed to be how he knew how many times he could use his abilities, based on the amount of energy his Core held. He had been casting his sensing power earlier, and it showed in the energy's density.

He also sensed his ability. There was a small, but strong, thread connected to his Core that weaved its way to the condensed aura. There were eight other pockets of empty potential in his Core, which Ryan guessed were waiting for other Keys to fill.

“I’ve got it, I can see it now. Will I always have to concentrate so hard to figure out how low I am on energy, or power, or soul, or whatever it’s called?” Ryan asked.

“Nah. That’s beginner stuff. All of that, your aura, your Core, and your abilities, they’re all an intrinsic part of you. You don’t need to focus on them to sense or use them. It’s the same as blinking your eyes. For you though, it will take a bit of practice to get there."

Ryan once again focused on his Core. Examining the connection to his ability, he mentally poked it. A presence jumped into his mind and Ryan hurriedly broke the link. He waited for something to happen, but breaking the connection seemed to have stopped whatever had happened. It hadn’t felt intrusive, but it hadn’t been passive either.

“Hey, I just tried to look at my ability from my Core and something jumped into my head. Should that be happening?” Ryan asked of Flicker, worry leaking into his voice.

“Yeah that’s normal. The Keys are a guide, after all.”

“A guide? Guiding what?” Ryan asked.

“The Keys give you hints about how to progress. They’re a cheat created by that damn meddler. They don’t give you any power though, except for when you first use it. You have to understand the guide, yourself, your Affinity, and the world around you to progress. If you don’t, you’ll end up like all those loafers out there that get stuck for the rest of their lives. Useless. Even those who can grow get stuck for a long time because they can’t understand what the Keys try to show them.” Despite his harsh words, Flicker’s demeanor was as nonchalant as ever.

“Why are the Keys a cheat?”

“I’m not going to give you a history lesson. It has to do with meddling gods, humans being weak, and a bunch of other stuff.”

So many questions and only half-answers. Ryan was unwilling to push too hard, though, so he changed topics.

“Do these abilities have names? I can’t just keep calling it ‘my sensing ability’,” Ryan said.

“There are names for common types of powers shared across affinities, but it doesn’t much matter. You can call them whatever you want, they only mean something to you.”

“So, what? I should let the Key fill my head with stuff and then absorb it? How do I apply it?”

“It’s going to fill your head with all kinds of ideas, but you might understand none of it. Usually the early ranks aren’t too bad though. You should consider the applications of your power on your own too, otherwise you’re sure to get stuck, not able to progress.

Ryan had to think about a name for his ability, but first he needed to understand it better. He examined the connection from his Core to his ability once again, but this time let the presence settle into his mind. After a second of acclimating, his mind felt like it floated through a murky soup of concepts.

The first thing he noticed was that it was telling him what the power was, sort of. There was a framework, a bubble, from which concepts like knowledge, direction, and anticipation hung like ornaments. Knowledge of his surroundings, of the plants and animals, how they were moving, and how they related to each other. More importantly, the idea of prediction, of using the knowledge to make judgments about the world around him.

Most of the soupy impressions were unrecognizable; he didn’t have the context to understand what they were. There were two, however, that pulled at his attention. Both whispered to him about nuance and selective awareness. He understood what that meant abstractly, but he wasn’t sure how they applied to his ability. There was so much to know, and while Flicker was being helpful, he doubted it would extend beyond this brief trip they were on.

“Will the Guilds train new recruits? If I were to join one that is?” Ryan asked.

Flicker stopped in his tracks and looked back at Ryan, not fully focused on the present, but obviously peeved.

“You want to join those pests? Those jumped-up kids? Well, I guess that’s not the worst option for you. You seem like the type that could use some structure. If there was only one thing they were good at, it’s structure. As for training, that’s a tough one. There are a lot of similar powers and applications for those powers, so finding someone with the same understanding as you to directly train you isn’t impossible, but it is difficult. That being said, there are commonalities between powers that have similar abstractions of theory, like sensing, for instance,” Flicker said, giving Ryan a pointed look at the last part.

Taking that last part as a hint, Ryan went back to allowing his mind to float through the ideas the Key presented to him as they continued their journey. The landscape was unchanging, chest height grass and low, rolling hills. A slight breeze pushed waves over the tops of the grass, producing a pleasant sound as the stalks brushed against each other.

Midday came and went, and Flicker decided it was time for a break. A whirlwind of flying grass jolted Ryan out of his ruminations and he looked up to see a blurry Flicker with his sword out whizzing around in a circle trimming the grass away to leave a clearing for them to settle down in.

Appearing satisfied with his work, Flicker plopped his pack down and laid next to it, using it to prop his head up. Ryan joined him, pulling out something to snack on and some water from a waterskin. He set the pack down and used it as a back rest.

As he sat munching at his impromptu lunch, Ryan cast his sensing ability while thinking about the only two ideas he could understand from the Key. Nuance and selective awareness. He still sensed the white noise in his sphere of awareness, but the remnants of the grass massacre floated through the air along with it, creating complicated patterns that hurt his head. Air.

Ryan wanted to slap himself; how could he overlook something so simple? He looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, and let himself laugh at his own oversight. Air was made of tiny particles, so small as to be invisible. He was sensing tiny bits of white noise everywhere, but there was nothing he could see. Of course it was air. He was just sensing all the air and the bits of stuff floating around in it.

Thinking about the general meaning of selective awareness, Ryan stared off into the air that was now so obvious. Could he just choose not to sense the air? Was it really as easy as that? With no other ideas presenting themselves, it was worth a shot.

Ryan focused on his ability, which still fed him information about all the air around him and just willed it away. The white noise disappeared, along with his awareness of most of the grass around, rocks and dirt on the ground, his hair, and a host of other things he hadn’t been aware he was sensing. It was like he’d taken a scorched earth approach and taken out other things unintentionally, which he supposed was why the other idea from the Key was important; nuance.

Focusing on his ability, he tried again. This time, instead of just a blanket ban of air particles, he shaped his will to exclude specific shapes and sizes of particles. He examined his surroundings again through his ability and deep satisfaction oozed through him. The white noise was gone, the grass was there still but not as noisy as it had been, and only the larger rocks on the ground distinguished themselves. The pressure on his mind from trying to process all that information was gone.

He stood up and walked around the small clearing, examining everything through his power. It didn’t require as much effort to maintain, so he pushed more energy into it, expanding his sphere until it felt like he hit a wall past which it wouldn’t budge. All around him he sensed the waving grass as a solid entity. He adjusted the fidelity again, and the grass popped into clarity, bringing with it information about the direction the stalks were blowing.

Marveling at the feeling of almost absolute knowledge of the sphere of his senses, he felt a change in his power from his Core. He cut off his ability and examined the connection in his Core to discover that the thread, while still thin, had grown marginally stronger. He poked at the connection to his ability and felt for the concepts held there.

The two he understood were gone, leaving the space emptier. It felt like progress, like he was passing milestones to achieve a greater level of power. Ryan sat back down next to his pack and leaned back to relax, absorbing the world around him through his ability. It was short-lived though, as Flicker soon interrupted.

“This is as good a time as any to use that Body Key. Not a good idea for you to be prancing around a city with one of those on you,” Flicker said. “Remember, you want to move,” he continued, the last word drawn out using a sing-song voice. He shook his hips to emphasize his point.

Ryan smiled and considered what Flicker said earlier about people new to their power dying because they couldn’t avoid taking damage. If it was damage he was worried about, then why not take a defensive ability instead?

“What’s wrong with a defensive ability? Wouldn’t that work better than movement for not getting injured?”

“Sure, defending is good. And defensive powers are usually very strong. The difference here is that movement abilities often double as utility, and sometimes triple as an offensive or defensive ability. A movement power might let you reach places you couldn’t get to, it might get you closer or further away from danger. It might even let you travel farther and faster, but usually that kind of power comes from Mind Keys. Trust me here, right now you need as much as you can juice out of one ability as you can. You can worry about pure defense later.”

“If they’re so good, why doesn’t everybody take only movement powers?” Ryan asked.

“Some people do. Some people take pure offense or defense. There are as many builds as you can imagine, for better or worse, but the more important fact here is that almost no ability is just one thing. As they grow, so does your skill in applying them to many situations.” Flicker replied.

Ryan couldn’t argue with that. He wanted to ask Flicker what his Affinity and powers were, but at the very least he knew that it was rude to ask, let alone ask someone who was little more than a stranger.

Ryan took the translucent golden orb that was the Body Key out of his pack and held it cupped in his hand. Taking a deep breath, he suppressed the blunted memories of the pain from the last time he had done this, and along with it the apprehension.

Ryan flexed his will on the Key. It shattered, just like the first time, and the shards zipped into his aura. Ryan flinched, expecting agony to tear through him, but the only thing he felt was a mild, if uncomfortable, buzz fill his aura. After a second, he sensed a pair of distant eyes resting in an unfathomable darkness turn their attention to him. A feeling of intense pressure rose up from within him and bloomed into his aura, building a foundation of intent that molded itself into a query.

What do you choose?

Movement, Ryan thought as hard as he could, willing the presence in the deep to hear it. He felt assent echo back from the being, the echo building in intensity to match the pressure within. The two built until Ryan felt a sharp snap that compressed a new blob of aura circling his Core alongside the first one. The attention from the abyss didn’t leave, but faded away slowly while throwing off faint echoes of amusement.

Starting from his chest, a burning sensation worked its way through his body, increasing in intensity until Ryan almost spoke up to Flicker in a panic. Before he could, it faded away, leaving a satisfying ache in its place and relief.

“What is the burning, and why do I ache? I kind of remember this happening the first time, but I was caught up in a dangerous situation,” Ryan said.

“The Key increased your body’s base capability. You’re stronger, faster, can take more punishment, stuff like that. If you took a movement ability like I said you should, depending on what ability you got it probably also gave you an extra boost in agility, strength, and maybe even your ability to process thoughts quickly to adjust for the effects of the ability. So what did you get?”

“‘That damn meddler’, as you call him, keeps laughing at me. The first time he thought something was funny too. Is he a masochist?”

“That’s either a very good sign or a very bad sign. There is no way to know, because you know, meddlers gonna meddle. Now tell me what he gave you.”

Curious himself, Ryan took the path through the connection from his Core to find out. Just like with his sensing ability, concepts and ideas flooded into his mind. It told him of condensed space and long strides. He got the impression of a world that was vastly compressed, allowing him to move about freely.

His excitement rising, Ryan stood up and faced the wall of grass where Flicker’s earlier slice and dice activities hadn’t yet cleared it away. It was about three meters away, which should be enough space to experiment.

Ryan activated his ability. Nothing happened. Disappointed, he reached back through his Core to his ability and let the concepts wash through him again. Ryan understood what the problem was. He had missed a key activity in movement; walking.

Readying himself, Ryan took a step forward and cast his new ability once again. The world compressed, as if the other side of a tunnel through space had reached out and dragged him through it. He didn’t skip the intervening space, but was strung out like spaghetti until his foot landed on the ground on the other side.

Ryan smacked into a wall of grass, lost his footing, and fell face first to the packed earth. His head swam from vertigo, the sky spinning in circles like he’d thrown himself down a hill inside a tire. Looking at his arms, he didn’t see any evidence of his brief existence as a piece of stretched out taffy. Everything was where it should be.

In the clearing, he could hear Flicker laughing at his unfortunate dive. Getting back to his feet, Ryan shuffled through a few meters of the waving grass, trying not to jolt his head. He plopped onto the ground and propped himself up on his pack.

“It looks like I need some practice,” Ryan said, embarrassment coloring his speech.

“That you do. We can stick around here for a bit. I’ll give you some pointers.”