Half of the backyard was claimed by laundry, so Felix and company climbed a little way uphill to a nearby park. It had a couple of benches, ornate flower pots, a view of the Abyss, and an ancient statue of some pot-helmeted soldiers from back when guns had been a thing. Most importantly, the only ones hanging around at this hour were the night bugs buzzing around the streetlights.

“Okay, how do you want to do this?” asked Linda, hefting a bat.

Felix took a stance on the cobblestone. “Let’s leave the bat for last. I’ll try some squats first.”

“Hrm.” One side of Linda’s mouth pursed into a frown. “Did I walk all this way to watch you do squats?”

“Yep.” Felix shook his legs to flex them ready. “A rare honor granted only to the chosen view.”

He went down, ass to the heels, and pushed up, attempting to absorb the movement the way he always had. The relic hummed faintly in his ear.

“Meh. Why bother?” Felix sat down. All of a sudden, squats didn’t seem like a good way to test anything. He didn’t ever wanna squat again, or even hear about them.

“Huh?” Linda tilted her head. “Aren’t you going to do it?”

Bii pinged curiously, mimicking her movements.

“Nah. I’ll try something else. Can you help me up?” Felix held a hand towards Linda.

“Well, how about some push-ups?”

“Oh yeah! Great idea.” Excited to test out his relic, Felix flipped onto his stomach and put every ounce of his strength and willpower into the movement, while trying to absorb it. The relic hummed again. He lifted a centimeter, before giving up. It felt pointless. Why would push-ups test anything?

Felix groaned and sat on his butt. “Mmmeh. This isn’t working.”

“Felix.” Linda had a thoughtful look, as if she had puzzled something out. “I may have an idea.”

“Yeah?” He perked up. “Already? But I haven’t absorbed anything.”

Linda kept leafing through his notebook, searching. “Freshly bound relics are always hard to sense, right? Try to focus on it and see if it is empty.”

“I can try, though it’s still empty…” Upon closing his eyes, Felix focused on the rope doll. One of the eight strands of its arms and legs glowed against the empty darkness. Images of Felix doing push-ups rose to the surface of the strands on its arms. Likewise, the charged up leg strands were bursting with energy and motivation to squat. Motivation?

Felix tried to release the motivation to squat. His body sprang into motion, faster than he could’ve willed it, and performed a perfect smooth squat.

“Lords! Do you have the page open?” Felix rushed to Linda’ side.

She shared his notebook, and Felix’s eyes raced to find the spot.

Uncommon abilities. During the one hundred Dreaming Abyss transformations performed, these variants occurred between ten and twenty times. Numbers denote the frequency of occurrence.

18 - Dream absorption. Most common of uncommon abilities granted by the Dreaming Abyss. Dream absorption occurred in four variants.

The primary variant, which occurred in 7 cases, enabled the relic to absorb dreams and nightmares, causing immense drowsiness in the subjects. Furthermore...

Felix’s eyes skimmed over paragraphs before locking on gold.

The tertiary variant, which occurred in 3 cases, enabled the relic to absorb intent (refer to my earlier study on Conceptual Link Between Day-Dreaming and Intent), causing subjects to momentarily lose all interest in pursuing the activity the intent of which had been absorbed by the relic. All subjects recovered their motivation within five to thirty seconds, though it is likely this period can be extended if a relic’s potency is enhanced.

Interestingly, the tertiary variant allowed the relic to partially change natural interactions into conceptual ones, when absorption or release of intent occurred. When released, part of the intent is transformed into physical movement, turning concept into movement. Likewise, subjects wielding intent absorption relics were able to negate portions of physical blows, transforming kinetic energy into intent. Preliminary tests proved that although intent of one motion could be transformed into another, some efficiency was lost in transformation.

Further testing proved inanimate objects to be the main limitation of intent absorption. If a movement was not caused by intent, it cannot be absorbed. Intermediaries, such as weapons and range also lessen the extent to which intent can be absorbed.

“Neat.” Felix leaned back, re-reading the snippet. Intent absorption had a few weaknesses his old relic hadn’t had, but the perks more than made up for it. There were so many fun things to absorb beyond the obvious of taking away someone’s desire to punch his face. Could he take away someone’s urge to argue? To haggle for the best price?

“Neat,” Linda agreed.

“Punch my face.”

“Really?” She cheered up way too much. “Can I use the bat?”

“Hold up, why are you so excited about this? And no, no bats. We start with fists and move up from there.”

“Bah. Fine.” She rolled her eyes, completely ignored his earlier question, and threw a punch.

Felix caught it with his hand and focused on sucking in her intent. The strange hum re-appeared. It was the sound of desire and intent, the sound of a punch.

Linda’s knuckles patted weakly against Felix’s palm. She groaned. “Meh. I’d rather not.”

He chuckled.

Linda scowled, staring dumbfounded at her hand. “I… don’t want to punch you? How? Lords, I feel violated!”

Felix continued to laugh. “Perfect. This is perfect. Okay, let’s try the bat.”

“With pleasure.” Her frown flipped into a grin, and Linda grabbed the bat. Results were almost identical. The hit left a slight sting on Felix’s palms, but not nearly as bad as if he had taken the strike without the relic.

They moved on to figuring out the bones, and hit an immediate dead end. They had no fancy ability to absorb or project anything. No matter how he clenched his thinking muscles, Felix couldn’t walk into Linda’s dream, or project his thoughts outside his body, or conjure his mindscape into an illusory reality. Nothing seemed to work.

So, with pen, paper, and some basic deduction, the two took a look at Felix’s notes and narrowed it down to three possibilities, Dream Reality, Dream Sensing, or Dream Divination.

Dream Reality was a rare conceptual power at only two occurrences in the relicwrights’ study. Both instances had unique quirks, but in essence granted the relic’s wielder an ability to once in a while ignore reality they weren’t aware of. In one example, a subject had been shot in the head by a powerful conceptual relic, but emerged completely unharmed, because they hadn’t been aware of it.

Dream Sensing was an uncommon conceptual ability. It allowed the relic wielder to sense dreaming individuals, and, with training, sense anything that can dream from ants to denizens to people. The catch was that it took a lot of practise to use, without accidentally falling asleep while doing so.

Dream Divination was one of the few causality related abilities in the list. Felix hoped he hadn’t gotten it, because the text mentioned that half of the subjects who’d tried mastering the relic had gone insane within a month.

Felix studied the options in deep thought. “This’ll be a pain to puzzle out. I guess we could try to create a situation where—” Felix yawned. A deep drowsiness had crept up on him. “Oh, must be the drawback.”

He yawned again. “Anyhow. Maybe you could try throwing things at me when I’m not looking? Try to do it when I least expect it, and if it doesn’t bounce off, we can cross one option off the list.”

“Uhu. Way ahead of you.” Linda poked Felix in the ribs.

“Ouchy ouch! Hey, quit it.”

“That’s the last mystery solved,” Linda announced smugly. “I poked you for two minutes, and you didn’t notice.”

“You did?”

“Mm-hm!” Linda nodded, smugness increasing. “You may now show your gratitude to the great relicwright, Linda Andersson.”

Felix crushed her in a hug. And told her she was the best sister ever.

Four days flashed by. Linda, Bii, and Hannes were happy to help Felix with getting used to his new relics—Intent Bank and Out of Mind. He cut a couple seconds off the manifesting time, and got the basic hang of transforming intent to other types of movements. Out of Mind was a trickier relic to train, given that it specifically required Felix to not be aware of it being used. Two hours was the longest he could keep either of the relics manifested without a nap, which should hopefully be enough to pass the interview for Knights of the End.

Felix was proud of himself. This time, he felt like he had a real shot at becoming a delver. He felt as if he’d finally taken a step closer towards the Abyss.

All the same, his guts still did their usual pre-exam backflip training of nervousness, when the day of the interview arrived.