Why did they choose me for this, I am no historian? I spent so many nights among those born into stations far above, being doted upon for my intelligence, fawned over by the secrets of the universe that my mind has gazed into. Once, I found the idea of Ben Alder exciting, an ascended who cared about the nature of the universe in a way similar to how I did before he vanished, but, of course, considering the ancientness of his unenlightened time, there was no chance I would find revelations among the dig. How wrong I was, how wrong I have been about everything.

  -From the Journal of Physicist Ra Fil’Aldeen

  I spark awake, flailing at something. I blink around, expecting to hear my heart pounding, but its rhythm is strangely relaxed. More, when I try to feel it, I find that I can, a steady pumping in my chest that takes just the slightest bit of concentration to sense. Rank two is strange I have decided.

  Jess kneels near me, looking me over, her expression somewhere between amused and worried. She pulls her hand back, looking me up and down. “Jumped up before I even touched you,” she says.

  I blink, the few seconds before I lost consciousness slowly sliding back into place in my mind. “Right…” I mutter, looking around the glade. Everything is still about me, serene. Those judgmental deer left, an improvement. “I was just…”

  “Oh, I know what you were doing,” she says, picking up two pieces of black cloth. “You got into a fight with a shirt eater.”

  She doesn’t fight me as I tug the ribbons of the torn garment back from her. Then, looking down at the two pieces of torn cloth in my hands, stuff down the embarrassment that tries to rise up my neck. I stow the rags away, already knowing that I don’t have anything else that will fit my new shape. I snatch the coat I bought back in Grim, tossing it over my shoulders and doing up the front.

  Jess smirks at me, still dressed in her tent of a shirt. She has her leather straps fastened over the top of it now, cinching tight and awkwardly bunching the fabric in places, but not being wholly terrible to look at. “That was quite something,” she says. “Felt you all the way over at the forge. When your aura vanished, I thought something might have happened.”

  “That far?” I take the hand she offers and let her pull me to my feet. “I tried using it, but then it was like I was everywhere all at once. I think I blacked out.”

  “Looked that way to me when I got here. Dangerous thing to do, collapse on a mountain that is a monster preserve.”

  “I’ll have you know, you are speaking to the Queen of the Mountain,” I say.

  “Right.” She looks up at me, hands on her hips. “Looks like you managed to get a far-reaching presence. Might want to go slow in testing it.”

  “You think?” Then I notice her toe lightly tapping on the grass, the set of excitement in her shoulders, and know that I would be a bad friend if I didn’t ask. “What is your soul presence like?”

  “Oh, you want to see mine?” She smiles like a kid on their birthday. “I just have a short ranged one, nothing so fancy as yours.” Jess pulls a dagger out of her belt and tosses it to me. Despite all the grace I have been working at, despite catching more than a single arrow aimed my way, I fumble the stupid knife. It plinks down into the grass, sticking straight up in the sod.

  “Would you stop throwing things at me,” I groan, bending over and retrieving the weapon.

  “I will stop when you start catching them. Alright, now, try to stab me.”

  “I can’t stab you,” I say, holding up the knife.

  “It’s okay, I give you permission to try.”

  “No, Jess, I can’t stab you. I know you are faster than me. You would have to let me stab you.” She takes a moment to consider that, and that is when I lunge forward. Never in a thousand years do I expect to actually stick her with the point of the knife, but I also don’t expect white light to pour out of her and form a cloud around her, the knife biting into and sticking into the soul presence like it were the trunk of a tree. I push the knife, but it is hard stuck, and when I let it go, it continues to hover in place.

  “You are resistant to knives,” I say, watching the blade stay stuck in the air.

  “Not just knives,” Jess says. She motions her hand, and the knife slips forward, turning over in the air, the grip falling into her hand. “All blades.”

  “You seem to have mastered using your presence quickly,” I remark, watching her slide the blade back into its sheath.

  “Of course. A soul presence is your soul after all. Would be strange if I couldn’t use it as I willed.” She looks at me pointedly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I shake my hands out. “Right. I think I probably just stretched myself out a little too thin earlier. If I try again, and try to keep it close to me, it can’t possibly be so bad.”

  Jess backs away a step. “You aren’t going to explode my shirt with your soul presence, are you? I only bought the one.”

  “It doesn’t explode shirts! That was…a different ability.”

  “You have a different ability that explodes shirts.”

  I wave her off, trying and failing to not be annoyed. She is just so damned good at getting under my skin. Am I an irritable person? “Do you know what gravity is?”

  Jess shrugs. “Never heard of it.”

  “Me either. Alright, give me a few feet, because I don’t know what will happen.”

  She does so, backing up to the water. I can feel that new muscle in my mind, almost like the same sensation of new anatomy that I had when I summoned the wings, but far more intimate. Like licking my finger and touching a hot stove, I poke at it, flex it a bit, afraid that applying too much force will burn me. The light springs away from me, and seeing its speed I shrink back, and so does it, seeping once more into my skin. I let out a long sigh.

  “Try a little harder,” Jess says. Exeter, I know that she is trying to be helpful, probably.

  “Trying softer,” I mutter, setting my feet in the grass. I tap that bit of energy inside, the barest bit that I can manage, and watch as a hazy outline creeps out of my skin, all gold and red, following my hand through the air like an after image. I press just a bit harder, and the shroud extends out a foot, then with just a little more effort, another foot. By the time that it is as large as Jess’ was earlier, I still feel like I am just barely pressing on it.

  “It’s pretty,” Jess remarks. “I knew it would be.”

  “I think they are all pretty,” I say, looking through the haze of color. The aura surrounding me is more red than gold, the light color appearing in momentary veins that run through the entire shroud like a mineral through a mountain. The veins of color slowly rotate, always spiraling down and to my right, giving the impression that the entire aura is constantly spinning.

  “So, what does it do?” Jess asks, her eyes tracking a particularly forked vein of gold as it slowly spirals to the ground.

  I feel the ground around me, the shifting blades of grass, as if the edges of the soul presence and every part inside were some uncovered nerve. Just this much is so distracting that I can barely keep my attention on Jess. Exeter, how am I supposed to wield it at its full size?

  “I don’t really understand it,” I tell her. “Make people kneel, supposedly.”

  “Your presence makes people kneel?” she asks, as confused by it as I am. “I’ve heard of shrouds that can do a whole mess of strange things. That is most certainly in the strange category.”

  I can only shrug in reply, unable to disagree.

  Jess creeps forward, approaching the barrier between my soul presence and the open air. “Alright then, make me kneel,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Charlene, I just had you try to stab me with a knife. Do you think that I am going to be put off by a little squat?”

  “You had me stab at you because you knew that I couldn’t hurt you. What if this does?”

  “Well, we’re leaving here today anyway, and if I get hurt you will be able to find a healer for me back in Grim.” She presses red fingers to the edge of the aura, taunting me. “Come on, I want to know what you can do. I showed you mine.”

  “This feels like the kind of thing that I should use on a monster before a friend,” I say.

  “You would actually try to fight a monster, given that using this soul presence just made you unconscious, instead of doing a little essentia testing on a friend?” she scoffs.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m coming in.” Before I can back away, Jess walks forward, stepping into the bounds of the soul presence. I cringe, but she merely stops, standing a few feet away from me, hands firmly back on her hips. “You aren’t using it on me,” she says.

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  “I told you that I don’t want to hurt my friend,” I say.

  She tsks, then seems to notice her own lips. She repeats the sound, smiling as she finds a pleasant note of disappointment. Then, Jess looks back at me and holds up a fist near her head. “I’m going to punch you Charlene,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to walk over there, and I am going to punch you in that pretty nose of yours. You will have to stop me.” She begins to walk.

  Well, I certainly don’t want to get punched in my pretty nose; I just got it. There is practically no effort involved, one moment I consider Jess my friend and don’t want to hurt her, the next I am more concerned with not having my nose broken. The soul presence responds.

  Jess’ foot falls hard on the grass, digging into the soul and roots beneath, and she grunts. She tries to lift her back leg but loses her balance and stumbles sideways. Her entire body slaps into the grass floor of the glade far faster than it should, her face pressed into the turf, hands tugging at the grass.

  “Huh,” I say, looking down at her as she struggles, trying and failing to turn over. “So, that is gravity."

  The light of Jess’ soul presence presses out of her skin, and I feel a pressure in my mind, some force pushing against me that I can oppose. I don’t. She gasps in air as she rolls over, an impression of her face left in the grass next to her.

  “That wasn’t quite a kneel,” I say, looking down at her.

  “No,” she agrees, staring back up at me. Then she smiles, and I can’t help but smile too.

  “Want to see my wings?”

  There is something about sitting on a golden throne, hands resting upon disturbing and garish ornaments, watching the world shift past you all around at merely the suggestion of your will. Perhaps it is the gold, very likely, though I remain constantly aware of the fortune upon which I sit. I snagged the Guildmaster’s ship out of the vault on a whim, still a bit annoyed at Arabella, wanting to make sure that I had a way to return to Gale on my own. It was only afterward that I inspected what exactly a flying ship was, and the extreme cost of one. Knowing even that, it was not even close to the most expensive item in that vault, but it was turning out to be my favorite one.

  I also discovered that Arabella’s mansion hadn’t even been a flying ship–flying house–like the others I saw docked. Jor’Mari told me about how she had accidentally crashed hers in a river on her way through Gale, he had no idea how that had happened, but he had been there for it. The woman had merely purchased a new mansion in Westgrove and had flown it all the way back to Grim under her own power. Gods, I can’t even imagine how such a feat could be done.

  Not that I haven’t tried to puzzle it out, but the forms for spellcraft are so far beyond me that even making the attempt would be a waste of time. Perhaps I will look again at some point, but I already have one magical craft that I have put my mind to mastering, no need to take on another.

  Trees sail past us, the clouds oddly still. If I look straight toward the sky, I can almost imagine that we don’t move at all. Jess sleeps on the mattress in the corner. Well, the ship actually has no corners…on the starboard side then, left of the chair. The morning passed so quickly, each of us showing off for the other, but it became quickly apparent that she had so much more she could actually show off. She had liked the big golden door, but the empty room beyond was admittedly a little disappointing. When she saw the wings I could manifest from my back, that next time I remembered to remove my coat first, she had remarked that they looked so similar to her aunt’s.

  We’ve swapped a lot of stories over the past two months, hunting the mountain together, and I’ve learned a lot about her. The lizardkin of the Uranaga Plains seem like a strange folk at first glance. They are not really a nation as I have known one to be, but then again, I have been so ignorant of the world my whole life, who am I to judge. The Kalithkar, what the tribes of the Uranga Plains refer to themselves as, are a people made up of two-hundred and sixteen separate tribes. The tribes are then further divided into three major clans: the Adris’Kinari, the Adris’Fin, and the Satalaan, with a few further, more minor clans holding making up less than twenty of the total. Jess comes from the tribe of Tess’Falla’Aldin, a part of the Adris’Fin.

  What she hadn’t properly explained to me before today is that not only are the different clans competitors with one another but are actually different in physiology. There exists a structure of caste within the tribes. The Amis, who are the average members of the various clans, make up the bulk of all populations, the middle caste. Below even them, are the Rathgari, the exiled. Jess spat when she spoke of them, describing them as a withered breed, wicked in both appearance and character. I didn’t press her on it. Then, there are the Eto, the caste to which Jess is a part of, the high caste. It was not lost on me in the moment of her description that meant that she was someone important, all of my friends seem to be, but I was so busy trying to keep up with all the names that I couldn’t really contemplate that.

  What causes the difference in physiology among the castes seems to come down to endowment. The rulers of the tribes and those close to them, those who can gain the empowerment and longevity that endowment imparts, are changed, essentially what had happened to Jess when she attained the second rank. The women begin to take on appearances more aligned with the other races of the world: similar to humans, elves, celenials, or dwarves, while the men grow bulkier, more muscled and fearsome in their reptilian appearances. Apparently, they believe that this is due to their bodies moving towards the ideals that their two creator gods symbolize. Who am I to try and dispute that.

  Jess is of the Eto caste, but she is a daughter too far removed from her father to have gained endowment from him, and she explained that in appearance she had always looked Amis. More, the different clans have to themselves different traits. Jess’ aunt is from the Satalaan, the Skysingers in her native tongue, and all of their Eto women bear brilliant wings. I found the conversation incredibly confusing, too many foreign words, but also so very interesting. I ended up promising to allow her to take me on a tour of the Uranaga Plains one day. Only now, thinking back on the conversation, do I start to see the similarities to Gale, and that dampens my enthusiasm.

  It requires almost no concentration to keep the ship moving on its course. I leave Galea to it, pacing over to the plush chair at the back and the table. I sit, thinking, contemplating the day. I actually managed it; in just over six months I have pushed to the second rank. With all the fighting and struggling Halford did, it took him a year, and people considered that extraordinary quick. But what now? In two and a half years, Arabella Willian will appear out of nowhere and force me to participate in another one of these guild contests, this time against other guilds. That is if I even manage to make it to the third rank by then, and if I don’t, I will find myself buried in enormous debt I can’t hope to crawl out from underneath. I don’t know which is worse. Given how the Willian Guild’s last competition just ended…it is still the debt. Three hells, the idea of owing them so much scratches at me.

  Sifting through my inventory takes my mind off my troubles. Over the last two months, burning, corroding, and exploding every monster on the mountain, I have built up a vast array of natural treasures. Sorting all of them has seemed like a nightmare for so long that I never really bothered. I pull the Stone Elemental Core from my inventory, holding it in my hand, finding its weight satisfying. This will probably fetch a high price if I try to sell it to the adventurer’s guild or maybe some enchanter. If I do that, I might be able to buy myself out of debt. Do that and get incredibly lucky while I burn half the monsters in the world down, find a legendary essentia, and sell that off as well. But there is something else that intrigues me about the stone core.

  Holding it in my hand now, that strange magical sense comes alive. I can see with my eye the faint emanation of magic from it and know that to be the escaping of its potency, the magic lost as it leaks into the air. But I can taste it as well, a strong earth texture, dry and sucking away moisture, a bite like salt on the back of my tongue.

  Looking to the side, a window appears, showing a representation of the index made of and attached to my soul. It has grown in scope along with my transformation, now housing twenty sides. Many are filled with affixed mana, none powerful enough for me to be able to adhere them onto my soul directly, claiming a new affinity. The lack of power in the sky affix had been especially disappointing in that respect. With the additional sides comes more space, which also means that I can finally test something I have been itching to do since I first found out I could this morning.

  I activate my Disenchant ability and marvel as the stone core in my hand begins to crumble in upon itself. It does not turn to pink mist, like the bodies of monsters do, but becomes a fine dust that spills out of my hand, clinging to my skirt or vanishing into the air. Within seconds, the stone core is gone, turned entirely into vanishing particles. A rune appears on the window in front of me, a new one taking up an unfilled spot and I do not even need to bother with the glossary to recognize it as stone. That taste of mana before must be stone then; I will be able to recognize it now.

  I clap my hands, but the dark dust clings to my palm. Trying to brush it off my skirt only seems to dirty my hand more. I cannot feel the dust as I grind it between my fingertips, but it carries some sensation to it, something. Almost unbidden, a faint trickle of my soul presence seeps from my skin, and the dust floats atop the aura. I manipulate the aura, pushing the dust into a ball, a dark ball, almost black. Something in the swirl of the dust sparks a memory inside me, a memory of the dream.

  “Black Sand.” I look down at my skirt, extending my will, and more of the dust begins to coalesce in the air in front of me, swirling and mixing into the ball hovering just an inch above my palm. Dust seems to filter out of the air, tiny spots so insignificant that were my eyes any weaker they would be invisible. More peels out of the fabric of my clothing, in the few seconds since the core fell to nothing having already melded with the material. In a moment, a ball roughly the size of my thumb floats over my palm, slowly spinning, individual particles inside of it churning like a beehive.

  “Galea,” I call in my mind, not caring that she is busy piloting the ship. The spirit seems not to care either, appearing next to me, only a momentary drop in the ship’s height of half a dozen feet before the flight levels out again. “Identify this.”

  The little dragon hovers right next to the ball, peering around it this way and that, bringing one eye right up next to it. “I cannot,” she says, sounding excited for some reason. “Whatever this is, it does not possess mass. My ability to identify is limited to such things.”

  “It is?”

  She looks up at me. “Mass is a component in almost everything. This limitation has never been exploited before, not that I know of.”

  I mentally jot down the word as something I need to read up on further alongside gravity. Then when Galea looks up at me, opening her mouth, I flick my hand and send her back to the throne, not wanting to hear whatever complex oversimplification she will spout about whatever this mass stuff is.

  My control over the swirling dust is absolute. I lower the ball to my palm, but even as it spreads out over my skin, I cannot feel it in the least. Trying to command it to slap down into my hand only makes it splay out more, some of it puffing up into the air, some of it seeming to even merge with my skin. It all forms once more into the ball when I call it back. No, this is not the black sand, it’s something else.

  I remember in my dream walking on the sand. That had weight to it; it had almost sparkled in places with the starlight, had been as deep as night in others. I am pushed further, some part of me knowing that this is an incomplete form of the black sand, it needs to be joined with something, something pure, something with heft to it. There is only one thing that I can think of.

  My free hand reaches out, plucking a single golden coin from the air. I hold it up to the light, admiring the shine, feeling the weight of it. Could it be so simple?

  Moving the two together, I feed the coin to the dust. Under my will, the dust moves over the gold, circling around it, enveloping it until the point that a dark disk floats in the air above my hand. I hold it there, watching as the swirling hive of dust grows more still, darker, more substantial. I shift the coin of darkness in the air, and a chewed-up bit of gold falls to the floor, bouncing off the tile, getting lost behind the leg of a chair. The loss of the coin is nothing, my attention fully captured by the perfect sphere of darkness floating over my hand, black sand. This time, as I lower the ball to my palm, I feel the weight of it. As I press harder, I find that I can allow it to squash, turning into fine particles on the surface of my hand, but I can also will it to stay together in a hard ball.

  I return the ball to the air, making it form loops around my outstretched hand, darting this way and that through the air. Then, with a flick, the black sand races away from me, crashing into the back of the chair across the table from me, flipping it over. A small indent is left in the fine leather of the chair; the ball of dark sand floating in the air above it, perfectly still.

  “That is nice,” I say, calling the ball back to me.

  “What is?” Jess asks from the mattress at the not-corner of the ship.

  “Nothing,” I call over to her. “Go back to sleep.” She mutters something about throwing around furniture, before laying back down and putting a pillow over her face. I admire the ball of sand for a moment, but my attention is called back to my crowded inventory window. “So much work to do.”

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