Jay waved his arms. Despite supposedly being liquid, they didn’t waver and flow like I would expect real water to do. “What do you think?” he asked. “If I’d been watching you, you never would have seen me. When I’m not moving, I can smooth out the edges.” He demonstrated the maneuver, his form losing the gentle curves at the edges of his shape that I was using to track where he was. He released the Skill, turning fully visible again. The brown leather of his armor was a shock after having looked straight through his body just a second ago. “See?” he said.

“Okay, good point,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have seen you unless you wanted to be seen. I had no idea your Skill was so amazing!”

“It… is?” Jay asked hesitantly.

“Are you kidding? You can become transparent! That’s so cool! I would have bought a Brand like that if I could afford it. Invisibility was always a favorite super power of mine when I was watching shows as a kid. I know yours isn’t perfect, but it’s still really cool. Are you, like, made of water?”

“Not exactly,” Jay said. “I just get covered in a very thin film of water. It stops working either when I make it stop, or when the water dries off.”

“Way more useful than glowing hands,” I said.

“Probably,” Jay agreed. “I know I shouldn’t get jealous of other people’s Skills, but sometimes I can’t help it.” He looked away. “Sorry for freaking out earlier.”

“There was nothing to be jealous of,” I said. “Those were just basic Brands. I didn’t even pick them out myself.”

Jay leaned down to examine the foot prints. He traced a finger along the edge of one. “Looks like a woman,” he said. “Small frame. You can tell she didn’t compress the soil as much as a man might have.”

“Huh,” I said. They just looked like foot prints to me. “You don’t think someone else is out here?” I asked. “Bandits or something?”

“No,” Jay said confidently. “We’re alone. I’ve circled the campsite a few times. I would have noticed if someone else had been around recently. It’s kind of my job.”

“Okay,” I said. That meant my list of suspects were now down to Victoria or Alloha. Or Jay himself, since he could just be feeding me a line of bull about the footprints. It’s not like I would know any better. “Why would Alloha or Victoria follow me into the woods?” I asked.

Jay shrugged. “You were probably acting suspicious,” he said. “You were talking about black magic earlier today. Normal people don’t do that sort of thing. I’d bet it was Victoria. She’s protective of us. She already scared off three potential party members Grant tried to recruit. Said they weren’t good enough for us. Whatever that means. She wouldn’t admit it, but she cares about us as much as Torra does.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said.

“Thanks for being cool,” Jay said.

I returned back to camp. The soup was starting to boil and Torra was stirring it with one of his fingers, leaving a glowing trail behind as he did so.

“Does that not… burn?” I asked as I sat down.

“Eh,” Torra said. “It’s fine. I think my Skill gives me a little heat resistance. But just on my hands. Skills are complicated like that. They’re always creating little side effects you don’t even realize until you test them.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “They sure do.” I’d been in Earris for the better part of a week and I was still learning new things about my Skill. Now that I’d tested it on animal remains, I wondered if I could drain food. What about plants? Then there were my Brands. Manifest Inspiration had so many edge cases once I got a better sense of its limitations. There were so many things to test and experiment with. It was hard to pick what to spend the rest of my MP for the night on. Manifest Inspiration’s limits seemed like the most relevant to the contract at hand. I had a good handle on what I assumed were its mass limits, now I just had to figure out what the best tools I could create for help with transportation and combat would be.

Alloha wandered out of the woods and flashed me a smile. She sat down on the log next to me in front of the fire. “Thanks for taking care of those guts,” she said. “Watcha thinkin’ about?”

“Oh, just… I was kind of wondering what the limits on this Brand I got are,” I said honestly.

“Which one?” Alloha asked.

“The one I used to make those chips,” I said. “I can make anything I can think of, but it only lasts an hour. It’s interesting to speculate what the limitations might be. Like, how well do I have to understand something to recreate it? And what happens if I tried to make something that was alive?”

Torra grunted. “I wouldn’t try to do that,” he warned me. “Creating life out of nothing? Sounds too much like playing god.” He pulled his finger out of the soup pot and shook it off, replacing it with a wooden spoon. “Be ready soon,” he said. The liquid started to bubble more rapidly.

“If you could use your Brand to summon allies to help us fight,” Alloha said, “I don’t think Marketh would have a problem with that.”

“Oh? You know what she wants now?” Torra asked.

“Like you do? What if he could make a pet pursuer beast that saves one of us from dying? Ever think maybe Marketh gave him that Brand so he could save us?”

“I might believe that if it was his Skill,” Torra said, “but it’s not Marketh’s plan for us to have Brands.”

Alloha sighed. “Here we go again. Look, neither of us are moral philosophers. Can we just agree to disagree about Brands?”

“I’m not, but Father Koril is,” Torra countered, “and he says Brands are the mark of Fayden.” He nodded at me. “If you want to try to summon allies, I won’t stop you.”

“It’s a moot point anyway,” I told them both. “There’s a weight limit on what I can summon and even if I could summon a friendly pursuer beast it would be too big. I think my limit is…” I trailed off as I tried to do the math. Earlier I’d manifested a 12-pack of coke and 67 party-sized bags of doritos. I pulled out my phone to do the math. I knew cans were a standard twelve ounces, but I was less sure about bags of chips. They seemed slightly heavier so I estimated about fifteen ounces and did the math. My phone’s calculator spit out an answer. “Looks like I can manifest about 72 pounds or 32.5 kilograms of stuff,” I told them. “Did those measurements translate?”

“They did,” Alloha confirmed, “but what’s that thing? And what were you just doing with it?”

“Oh, this is called a phone,” I explained. “Where I come from everyone has them. Its main function is to allow instantaneous communication with anyone else in the world, but it doesn’t work here in Earris. All I can use it for now is the flashlight, camera or calculator apps.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Alloha said. “Is that a glowing, moving picture on the front.”

“Yeah, and it’s also how I control it,” I said. “I tap the pictures to tell it what to do.” I flipped through the settings and made sure it was in battery saver and airplane mode, then closed all the apps that were left open to maximize the battery life as much as possible. Alloha watched me with wonder in her eyes.

“I have never seen an artifact like that before,” Alloha said. “Where is the gem?”

“Gem?” I repeated.

“Artifacts all have gems,” Alloha said. “It’s the focal point for the enchantment as well as the source of MP.”

“Uh, ogre artifacts work differently,” I said, trying to put it in a way she would understand. “There’s a battery on the inside that powers it with a force called electricity, instead of MP.”

“So strange,” Alloha said. Grant and Torra were also watching me closely.

While I had the phone open I went ahead and snapped a picture of Alloha’s face. She flinched from the sudden flash of light. I just laughed at her reaction and turned the phone around to show her “That was the camera,” I told her. “Think of it as an instantaneous painting that is as detailed as real life. The flash helps it see you better. I can also record videos.”