Gifted

I couldn’t remember exactly how the maths went, but I knew there was something about my size, speed, and the strength of the impact. Right now all the maths were telling me was my nose and forehead hurt. I swallowed the childish cry that bubbled up inside me demanding my mother come look at my boo-boo. I was an independent baby that didn’t need a kiss on the top of my head. Definitely not.

“What was that?” called my mother from the main dining area of the outpost.

“Bastian facing the consequences of his actions,” stated my grandfather as he walked up and easily pried his pipe from my fingers.

“You better not have spanked my boy, dad!” yelled my mother. I smiled in spite of myself, though I knew I should look contrite at being caught making off with my ill-gotten gains.

“I didn’t touch him,” Cornelius called back. “He ran straight into the wall all on his own.”

My mother swooped in a moment later and cooed over the bump on my head. I just lay on her shoulder and relaxed as she ferried me back to the dining room. The woven basket that once served as my makeshift prison hadn’t survived the middle of the cold winter. After my many escapes–and there were many–Cornelius had tossed the basket into one of the fires.

Instead, I was set down on the fur rug where my mother could see me as she cleaned and dusted the room. The snows outside were already retreating and I guessed she was preparing for the supposedly warmer months, when we would see a little foot traffic either in the form of merchants or adventurers.

While my mother worked I focused on the notification that had distracted me in my mad dash escape and been the cause of my unplanned impact with the wall.

Reward: Skill Seed (Stealth) (Minor)

Free Skill Slots available. Would you like to use your Skill Seed (Stealth) (Minor) to gain a Skill?

I didn’t make an immediate decision. On one side, I definitely wanted to say yes. So far I had no skills, and a stealth one, even a minor one, sounded like it would suit me just fine. When I still hadn’t answered the question a minute later a second message appeared.

Would you like to receive your Skill Seed (Stealth) (Minor) as a physical object?

I perked up. It seemed that if you didn’t want to use a reward, at least for Skills, you could get a physical object, which I was assuming could be used by anyone to receive the offered Skill. I kinda liked that. It meant that someone could decide at a later date if they wanted to use the skill. Maybe they could even trade or sell their rewards.

I wasn’t going to do any of those things. With three available Skill Slots and no idea how they worked, I was going to have to take a risk sooner or later. Unless I wanted to wait till I was old enough that my questions wouldn’t be unusual. I still didn’t even know if other kids could see their Status since mine had unlocked early. So, with no small amount of trepidation, I mentally agreed to using the Skill Seed to fill one of my empty slots. A new notification appeared immediately.

Skill Seed (Stealth) (Minor) used. Three available Skills.

Muffled Steps - Reduce the noise you make while moving. Shadow Blend - Become harder to spot when you are unmoving within a shadow.Reduce Presence - Minor effect of making yourself harder to notice.It was easy to see that the three Skills offered were related to sneaking about, hiding, and making yourself harder to notice, which all seemed related to my Path of Stealth. I glanced at my Paths of Sneaking and Hiding. Both were around two thousand steps, which meant I was only one fifth of the way to completing them. At the rate I was going I would probably manage to do so by the time I was four unless I focused on them to the exclusion of everything else. But, what if using Muffled Steps or Reduce Presence made my Path of Sneaking advance more quickly? All three would help with my Path of Stealth, while Shadow Blend would only help with my Path of Hiding.

Decision paralysis had seized me, because I absolutely wanted all three of them and at the same time none of them. None were clearly magical in nature. They weren’t saying I could pull shadows around me like a cloak, hang upside down off a balcony and in a deep voice tell people that I am the night!

But I was already committed. I had said yes to using a Skill Slot. Despite my misgivings, I wasn’t going to spend years agonising over my choices. So, I picked the one I thought had the widest usage in my current environment.

The notification faded as Muffled Steps began to settle into me. I felt something twist inside of my stomach as some basic knowledge flooded my mind. I winced and squirmed like I was going to poop myself even as my head ached like I had run into the wall a second time. The feeling took over a minute to abate and by the time it finished I was lying on the rug, rolled away from my mother so she couldn’t see the discomfort on my face.

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When it finally passed, I breathed a sigh of relief and examined the new sensation emanating from my stomach. The knowledge in my head made me giggle in excitement. There was magic. I knew it! Skills were imprints of Spells. I knew that it was designed to grow with usage and would improve by adding additional facets to what it provided based on my direction. The information provided also included that it would evolve once it reached its one-hundredth step. Finally, it wouldn’t function without aether. For the first time since I had arrived into my new life, I had magic at my fingertips. Or at my bellybutton, I guess. You know, since that’s where I felt the Skill connected too.

With excitement bubbling through my veins and the feel of the silky fur rug beneath my palms, I reached for my new Skill. Something rushed into the complicated loops and whorls that were Muffled Steps inside of me and I felt a slight fuzzy feeling around my feet.

“Are you practising out there, Penny?” called my grandfather from his office.

“No, father. Just cleaning…still. Feel free to come help!”

I immediately stopped using my new Skill, a cold feeling of worry replacing the bubbling celebration that had filled me just a moment ago. Had I given myself away? I hadn’t even considered that the old man might be able to sense me using magic. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he meant something else. When I saw him poke his head around the corner, narrowed eyes scanning the room, I knew he had sensed something.

I smiled innocently, lying on my back on the fur rug and pretending to just play. Grandfather must have lingered for a moment because I didn’t hear him retreat for the count of a few breaths. I breathed a sigh of relief, even as my Path of Deception gained another step.

If I was going to make use of my new skill, I would need to figure out the limits of my grandfather’s senses. I guessed I was maybe ten metres away from him if I was lying on the rug. That was in a straight line, ignoring the walls of course. I looked around before picking a destination and quickly crawling towards it. My mother scooped me up immediately and placed me on my feet.

“You can do it, Bastian. Practise walking for Mummy.”

I gave her a big toothy grin and toddled over to the other side of the room until I was as far from Cornelius’s office as I could get. Then I activated Muffled Steps again. Something flowed through my stomach as I felt the skill activate. That sense of fuzziness around my feet returned. So did the sound of Cornelius’s steps. I immediately stopped using the skill and hid in a cupboard, pulling the door closed behind me.

“Penny, are you sure you’re not using any aether?”

Cornelius’s voice reached me even in my dark hidey hole.

“No, father. Just cleaning. Where’d Bastian go? Bastian?”

My mother was calling for me, a hint of worry in her voice. I debated climbing out of the cupboard just to put her fears to rest. Instead, Cornelius beat me to the punch.

“He’s hiding in a cupboard behind the bar.”

Some quick footsteps slapping against the wooden floors warned of my impending capture. I scrambled to escape, all thoughts of appeasing my mother gone in my dash for freedom. She caught me one cupboard over and pulled me out of the dusty and mostly empty storage space. I grinned up at her through a few spider webs I had caught on my face in my attempted flight.

She sighed, brushing off the dust and webs with gentle fingers.

“What am I going to do with you, you little rascal?” she asked.

“Mum!” I yelled in response, knowing that wasn’t truly an answer, before laying down on her shoulder and sharing the dust and spiderwebs with her clean clothes like a dutiful son.

As she turned, I could see Cornelius watching me with a scrutinising gaze. I’d poked the old codger twice with the use of my skill. It was clear that he suspected something was amiss. My elation about my new skill was ruined. I wouldn’t be able to practise with it till I was out from under his gaze. Which was almost impossible because I wasn’t old enough to roam a little wider yet, and the old man rarely left the outpost.

Still nuzzled into my mother’s neck, I started making plans. There were other options. He’d asked my mother if she was using aether, which meant he couldn’t differentiate between one person or another easily. At least not in such close proximity, or perhaps not without having his eyes on us? After all, both times he’d come out to get a closer look. If I was right, there was another time I could practise. When we had guests. If I only used it while the guests were around, then the old man might chalk it up to the adventurers or merchants using their skills.

The thought was small comfort, and though my mood remained low, I focused on the next big thing. I only needed a hundred and a bit more steps on my Path of Linguistics - Helenian to complete it. Which would not only grant me a few more Unallocated Stats to invest in my Talented Attribute, it would also have me complete the next Tier of my Path of the Completionist.

My thoughts were interrupted as my mother took a wet rag and started wiping my hands and face, removing all my hard-earned dust and grime from the cupboards. I fought, hands trying to slap the smothering wet beast away, but my tiny baby arms were for naught. When she finally relented, depositing me back on the rug, I was clean once more and only a little damp.

“That was me, by the way, father,” called my mother as Cornelius once more popped his head around the corner.

I glanced at my mother curiously. The rag, I realised. It should’ve been dirty. But I felt clean, pristine skin with tiny beads of water still on my face and hands. Where’d that come from?

My question went unanswered because I didn’t say it out loud and let my mother know I was a weird baby. Instead, I focused on my almost completed Path, humming so that my mother would sing. The morning turned to afternoon, then to night, and the cycle repeated for three weeks.

Then, on a morning like any other, with the snows in full retreat and the green of the grass beneath once more revealed, with the sun turning the sky a light grey as it waited to crest the horizon, I was woken by the most beautiful sound. Someone was banging on the door.

“Oi! Wake the bloody hells up! I’m hungry!”

You have Completed your Path! Path of Linguistics - Helenian X (10000/10000)

Reward: 2 Unallocated Stats