Ryan paced around the small clearing in the swaying stalks of grass, practicing his spatial sense. There was something he was missing about the power. The guide in the Key whispered to him about prediction based on all the information the ability fed him, but was he supposed to predict the future?

He shrugged to himself. There was a moment during the fight with the wolf where he felt like he could anticipate its movements, but it didn’t seem right. Instead of dwelling on it, he practiced casting his ability and letting it go, trying to get a good feel for activating it without having to plunge into his aura to find it. There was some excellent progress. He was already magnitudes faster than before, and there was still room to improve.

Grinning to himself, he thought back to his nose dive into the grass earlier. Despite his misadventure and subsequent dizziness, for the first time he had felt powerful. Filled with elation, he tried not to compare himself to “superheroes” in comics and movies from home. It was hard not to, though, as he had done something superhuman; he had stretched himself out through space to take a step impossible for a normal person. Ryan calmed himself down, but the spark of giddiness inside wouldn’t die.

Continuing his pacing, he considered what Flicker said about naming his powers. He could name them whatever he wanted, and despite how easy it seemed, it turned out to be more difficult than he thought.

Ryan had been going around in his head with different names, some mundane, some grandiose, but had come back to the two things that he felt sounded the most accurate, if not the catchiest. The sensing ability allowed him to sense the space around him and understand the objects within. The concepts were simple; space and cognition. That decided, he named the ability [Spatial Cognition]. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was descriptive.

That left his new power to name. Ryan let it go, not having used it again since his first attempt and not having a sense of it yet. Instead, he turned his attention to Flicker. There was conflict in his head about what to think of Flicker. On the one hand, the man saved his life and taught him a lot of useful stuff. On the other hand, Ryan suspected his timely arrival to the scene of the attack and the aftermath was too coincidental.

What was Flicker’s involvement? There was no way someone as powerful as him was there by happenstance; there had to be some connection. And what if there was? There was nothing Ryan could do about it, so did that mean he should let it go? Should he ask him about it?

Ryan caught himself about to speak up about the events from the previous day. This wasn’t the time for interrogating a person with superhuman abilities, this was a time for pragmatism. They were about to reach the first city Ryan had been to, and he needed to concentrate on what he was going to do when they got there. Finding Mags and trying to join a Guild were his highest priorities, regardless of Flicker’s involvement with the destruction of the village.

“Don’t you think it’s time we set off again,” Ryan asks as he looked at Flicker lying in the grass, soaking up the midday sun like he was on holiday. Impatience crept up on him, especially considering Flicker’s constant lack of urgency. He needed practice with his movement ability, but it could be done while on the move so it was better to get going.

Flicker cracked his eyes for a second before rolling to his feet and giving an exaggerated full body stretch.

“Now is as good a time as any, I guess. We need to change directions a bit to intercept the road to the west. That will take us into the city.”

They each prepared their respective packs and set off, Flicker once again the trailblazer through the grass. Happiness filled Ryan at his progress with [Spatial Cognition], but tickling the back of his mind was Flicker’s comment about his aura control.

“So, what should I do to fix whatever is wrong with my aura?” Ryan asked.

“It’s not broken, you’re just forcing it to be out and about, when you need to relax or even slightly retract it. It’s simple enough. Follow my lead and try to do what I do, see if you can sense it.”

Before Ryan could answer, Flicker expanded his aura at a snail’s pace. To Ryan, it felt like a solid, impenetrable wall of pressure was bearing down on him. It was intimidating, even frightening, how profound it appeared to his own senses. His own aura was a shallow pool filled with cotton in comparison.

Flicker’s aura popped. Except that wasn’t right, it didn’t just disappear. His aura had collapsed, but it had happened almost too fast for Ryan to perceive it. It was lying close to Flicker’s side like a snug blanket. It hadn’t felt like he had deflated it so much as it felt like he had just stopped supporting it.

Flicker repeated the process as they walked with Ryan trying to replicate it. At first, Ryan couldn’t spot the mechanism by which to change his aura, but after a while of playing copycat with Flicker, he realized that it was the same feeling as unclenching his fist. His aura deflated like a sad balloon, nothing compared to an abrupt collapse. Nevertheless, Ryan progressed and kept at it until he achieved the blanket-style aura.

Ryan was relaxed. A slight weight lifted off his shoulders he hadn’t even known was there. He felt a difference in his Core and realized that he wasn’t draining energy anymore. His Core accumulated a small amount of energy as he observed it.

“Good, you’ve got it. You should work on hiding your aura too. You shouldn’t have much trouble. It won’t matter much until you’re fully Iron ranked, but your aura is a useful tool.

“Does Iron rank mean you have all nine Keys?”

“Technically, you’re already ranked in Iron, all it takes is a single Key and you have two, but nobody is going to recognize you as Iron until you’ve gotten all your Keys. And before you ask, no, you can’t have more than nine in your Core.”

“How do the ranks work? I’ve heard about it some from Mags, but she didn’t go into detail, just that there were a bunch,” Ryan said.

“Well, the Guilds made up the ranking system in their mindless need to classify and structure everything. Regardless of their names, the different levels of power correspond to how many Keys you have, and how far you’ve progressed them. Bronze requires you to have all your Keys and have progressed at least three of them to the second level. Silver requires you to have all your abilities at Bronze and have progressed at least five of them to Silver. Same with Gold and Platinum. Gold requires seven abilities at the fourth level, and Platinum requires all your abilities at the fifth level.”

“That’s odd. Why does it require that you have more and more abilities at the next highest level before you’re officially there?”

“The more powerful you get, the more your Keys have to compensate by augmenting you for your abilities. That being said, Rank is almost never the best measure of how powerful someone is, outside of a general sense. There is some wiggle room between ranks where it gets real fuzzy who would win in a fight, especially between Iron and Bronze,” Flicker said.

“So Platinum is the most powerful Rank then?”

Flicker continued walking for a while, silent, before answering. He looked reluctant to say anything, but opened his mouth regardless.

“No. Beyond Platinum is where the rules everyone follows stop mattering. The Keys don’t matter, there is no guide, the meddler stops meddling. They’re Ascenders. It’s not a Rank so much as a description of what they’re trying to do. It won’t make much sense to you now though, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“Do you dislike the Guilds? Every time you talk about them, it’s like you’re trying to eat something sour,” Ryan asked.

“It’s not so much that I dislike them as I think all their fighting and posturing and hopping around is ridiculous. They have their uses, but putting up with their antics is a chore.”

Unwilling to poke at Flicker anymore, Ryan dropped back a way to think. It sounded like Flicker was jaded. The Guilds were powerful organizations that ran everything, if not in name, then in practice. Ryan expected there to be politics and fighting, but Flicker made them out to sound like a bunch of pompous kids playing at being grownups. Even if he was right, it didn’t change his current plans.

Ryan gauged the distance between himself and Flicker and determined that there was enough room to try out his second ability again. When was there a better time than when they were walking, which the ability required?

Timing his next stride, Ryan activated the power as soon as his other foot came off the ground and he leaned into the step. Everything around him appeared to stretch and compress into wiggly streams of reality, like someone had thrown multicolored spaghetti at a wall. The scenery in front of him appeared the same as it always was, but his body warped and molded itself through the weird passage. His step landed on the other side, and he struggled to maintain his balance. The dizziness wasn’t as bad this time around, but it was still giving him trouble and he stopped and doubled over to let it pass.

Ahead of him, Flicker looked back over his shoulder and cackled, slapping his thigh like some old-timey hillbilly. With no warning, he seemed to fade out of existence and pop back in at about the same spacing they were at before Ryan tried out his ability.

“I’ll give you a few tips about movement type abilities. You can’t concentrate on what’s going on around you, you need to focus on the destination, otherwise you’ll just give yourself a headache and hurl your lunch all over. Your brain will get more accustomed to it after a while, but those first tries are bad. Also, with movement, it’s almost more important to figure out what you can’t do, instead of what you can do. Nothing worse than trying to get somewhere, only to realize too late that you can’t. That goes double if you’re trying to get somewhere you’re not supposed to.”

Despite the nausea, satisfaction buoyed Ryan’s spirits. [Spatial Cognition] was fine, but it didn’t make him feel powerful. This power, though, changed everything.

They repeated that pattern a few times. Ryan activated his ability and tried to ignore all the warping effects to concentrate on the destination and not lose his lunch, and Flicker would zip ahead again to give him space. Before too long, they reached the road, and Ryan took a break.

He had been thinking about what to name this ability between uses. It turned out that he couldn’t just keep using it without a break; there was some measure of strain that prevented him from chaining it together, almost like a recoil he had to overcome.

Warp-ness was the defining characteristic of the ability as far as Ryan could determine and also stepping. So he decided on [Warp Step]. It was uninspired, but it would do, and maybe he’d change it later. Ryan came to realize that his naming sense wouldn’t win him any awards, but at least he could think about them now without using vague terms.

Ryan moved up to walk beside Flicker, there being room for both of them on the well-maintained road. In the sky ahead of them he could see a slight haze from cook fires and other human endeavors, marking the location of the city. Mags had said that there was a large river and a port in the city, but he didn’t know what that meant in terms of population size.

Soon enough, the kilometers being eaten away by Flicker’s casual jog-walk, Ryan spotted what looked like the outskirts of the city. By the time he caught sight of any buildings, the sun had already touched the horizon, throwing long shadows and taking the light with it. As they approached closer, the sight disappointed Ryan. It was a shanty town. Buildings leaned into and supported each other like the layout designed by a madman, and constructed out of whatever was lying around.

“Let’s stop here and find somewhere to nap the night away and you can plan for what you’re going to do once you reach the city, for that is where we part ways.”

That surprised Ryan, although it shouldn’t have because he expected their impromptu party to disband once they reached the city. Now that it had been said out loud, Ryan exploded with nerves. He was about to be by himself in a strange city in a strange world without knowing a single soul.

They walked off the road and into the grass, where Flicker repeated his whirlwind lawnmower trick. They settled down for the night, the warm night air a comfortable backdrop to the stars that were now showing themselves. Ryan had made excellent progress on his abilities and aura, so he allowed himself to settle down for the night with a clear mind to prepare himself for the next day.