Gifted

I winced as the front door creaked quietly, breaking the tranquility of the night. Holding my body still, I glanced towards the stairs and listened intently, waiting for the sound of a door opening that would indicate I was busted. Long seconds passed as I controlled my breathing, and after half a minute I was satisfied that the noise hadn’t been loud enough to wake anyone.

With silent steps I slipped through the small gap of the open door and out onto the outpost’s road facing facade. The air was crisp, my breath misting in front of me, and I rubbed my hands on my cheeks for warmth. Across the expanse before me lay pockets of dirty brown snow still clinging to the road’s edge. Another week and even they would be gone.

Straight ahead lay the dusty, rock-filled road, and beyond the Kellins’ house and trading post. The small windows of their shop were dark but I could see a small flicker of light in the section set aside for their home. The pale, white smoke coming out of their chimney was the obvious cause of the light as they kept their house warmed while they slept.

It’s not like we’re short on wood, I thought as my eyes drifted to the Kellins’ new neighbours’ home.

If the Kellins’ house looked almost as well put together as Etta’s, then the prospector’s home looked like a ramshackle piece of shit that was on the verge of falling over. I knew my opinion was coloured by my dislike of the men, but even so, it wasn’t a good house from what I could tell from the outside. Logs looked slightly misaligned and beaten into position rather than shaped. Most of the long nails, from their own supplies, had been fully hammered in but a few hung out of the edges like sores on a sickly, oaken beast. Soon to be sicker, I reminded myself as I checked the pocket of my fur jacket to make sure the potion that Magatha had given me was still safe. It was.

The two days since my chat with Magatha had passed in a flurry. Gramps had allowed Etta and I to watch him work as he took buckets of fine sand from the storage area of the stables, then melted it with a spell that seemed to generate a sheen of intense heat, before using a relatively simple tool in the form of a metal rod to shape the glass. As he had worked he’d explained that the task was made easier since he could control the amount of heat which meant that the molten glass didn’t cool until he was satisfied with it. Just being near the process had seen my Path of Aethersensing continue to progress which brought it to the next Tier and added another point to my Aether stat.

Gramps wasn’t the only one who was satisfied, as Magatha had seemed very pleased with the new batch of potion bottles. Then, she had pulled me aside before leaving and handed me the potion that now rested safely in my pocket.

Her instructions regarding the potion had been very straightforward while revealing absolutely nothing about what it would do. I was not to get any of it on myself or my clothes. It was odourless and to get it to work I just needed to drip it around their house. I had asked if it was dangerous to breathe in, apparently it wasn’t.

Magatha had told me to sprinkle it around the outside of their house, but that wasn’t what I was going to do. My question about inhaling it was specifically because I intended to enter their house. After all, the goal was twofold. Punish the men who had thought it was alright to harass my mum, and perform a successful infiltration for my Path of Infiltration. If it wasn’t enough to progress the Path to the first Tier then I would likely have to perform a second break-in, almost certainly of the Kellins’ trading post.

Path of Aethersensing, as the most recent Tier up, had been removed temporarily in favour of the Path of Infiltration. It meant losing a day of progress but that seemed like a small price to pay for the rewards I should get from reaching the first Tier on the Path of Infiltration. It was an elite Path afterall.

With everything ready, it was time to tempt fate. I peaked out from beneath the outpost’s wooden awning and surveyed the clear night sky. Stars twinkled far above along with the gentle light of the moon. I took my time searching the sky to make sure there was nothing flying up there that might decide to swoop down and attack a small child. I couldn’t see anything, though that didn’t mean it was safe. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Satisfied that this was as good as it was going to get, I did one final scan then sprinted across the intervening space. The rocks and old snow crunched beneath my feet as my short legs pumped furiously. The entire time I expected talons to pierce my back or wrap around my arms and lift me into the sky. So, it came as a surprise when I reached the edge of the prospectors’ house without issue.

I paused, catching my breath and hunkering down in a spot of darkness as I listened for any noises inside. I heard someone mumble and a small amount of shuffling, before a head poked out the open window. While Etta’s house had windows already, courtesy of grandpa, he had given no such assistance to the new miners. Their window was just a square area cut out of the wooden logs and open to the night air.

The head was hard to recognise in the dark but it looked like it had hair so it wasn’t baldy, the one who had tried to grope my mother. I could tell he was looking around a bit and became worried that maybe they had some sort of night sight. It would’ve been a useful Skill for someone who worked in mines, though any such usage would require aether. I held my breath, expecting to be noticed in my little pocket of shadow along the wall. A second later the man leaned back inside and I heard more shuffling and the sound of fabric rustling.

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Even with the prospector gone, I still held my breath and realised that if they were sleeping that lightly that I would need to wait. I settled in, trying to flex my leg and arm muscles within my coat and woolen pants to keep warm. The minutes stretched and a voice in the back of my mind that hated the discomfort I was in from crouching in the cold kept telling me to just sneak inside and get it over with. I ignored it, choosing patience and waiting in spite of my unhappiness. It was hard to track time but I thought it had been maybe half an hour when the sound of breathing grew deeper with a slight hitch like they wanted to snore but couldn’t figure out how.

Crawling out of the shadow, I activated Muffled Steps as I approached the window, cursing myself for not doing so during my mad dash across the road. I had never actually tested how well it worked while I was moving quickly, but in hindsight it may have saved me from shivering in the cold while I waited for the light-sleeping prospector to return to the world of dreams.

The window was at my head height and I had to pull myself up to peek inside. With my head cresting the window the first thing I noticed was the smell. These men had felled the trees for their house themselves but being in such a rush they hadn’t let the wood dry first. With the moisture leaking from the wood, even in the cold weather, a musty smell pervaded the interior.

At the back of the room were three, not four, sleeping pallets. Two of the men were curled up with each other while the other two slept separately on their own makeshift beds made from what looked like rolled out reeds that felt out of place in the Horndale Mountains. I guessed they brought those with them from Ajinport or wherever they had been in Ajinar as I had never seen reeds like it on my few walks with mother.

All four breathed slowly, indicating they were asleep, but I still wasn’t taking any chances. I would’ve used the door but they had managed to rig up a few pieces of wood and bound them with rope to function as an entrance. Glancing at it from the inside, I doubted I could have even moved it, which just reinforced my initial thoughts that these men specialised in Strength.

As quietly as I could, I slowly pulled myself up onto the wooden frame of the window, activating Muffled Steps sporadically whenever I moved my feet, until I was straddled across the frame. Getting up hadn’t been too hard, but lowering myself back down was another feat entirely. My arms burned as I tried not to bang my knees or feet into the wooden wall and alert the prospectors. Carefully, my feet touched the floor, not making a single sound as Muffled Steps masked the contact. Finally, I released my hold on the window frame and turned slowly. The sound of four slow, deep breaths answered me. I was in.

Ha! Infiltrator extraordinaire. No one ever expects the kid saboteur to break in! I crowed mentally.

With my successful ingress, it was time to get to work. Taking the potion out of my padded fur jacket I started to slowly move around the edges of the room, keeping Muffled Steps active. With each step, close to the ground, I dripped just a little bit of the potion until I had covered their storage area, which was mostly backpacks, pickaxes and other tools for mining. Next was their makeshift table and kitchen and I made sure to drip a little of the potion around their food supplies without putting any on the actual food. Didn’t want them to eat it by accident and die or something. Finally, I moved close enough to their sleeping area and let a few drops fall along the wooden floorboards. One drop landed atop another and the normally gentle drip sounded like a shout to my ears.

I crouched down in fear, thinking I was about to be caught. One of the prospectors made a loud snoring noise and rolled over while another grumbled. None of them woke but I was forced to remain crouched with only a metre separating me from the nearest miner as I waited for their breathing to even out. It was faster this time, but I still thought it must’ve been ten minutes. The entire time my calves burned but I wasn’t willing to move an inch.

Only after the sound of their breathing returned to that slow and deep cadence that I associated with a deeper sleep did I start to move once more. Muffled Steps hid the sound of my footsteps as I crept back towards the window, though I knew I didn’t have much aether left in me. Maybe enough to get out the window but that was it. My escape took just as long as my entry and when I finally lowered myself to the cold ground outside I was covered in sweat from the exertion.

Remaining careful, or paranoid depending on your viewpoint, I scanned the sky once more. Nothing stood out, but given how I woke one of the miners up with my sprint last time, I wasn’t willing to start sprinting so close to their window. I tried to activate Muffled Steps but felt nothing but wisps of fuzziness in my stomach. With no aether left and my escape almost a certainty, I began a slow and quiet walk towards the road.

I got as far as the road’s edge when a piercing cry split the night. Without a thought or glance around I bolted, sprinting for the outpost door that hung just slightly ajar, how I had left it. The piercing cry came again, but I couldn’t tell if it was closer or further away. I reached the door in a tangle of limbs and only a last second fear of being caught kept me from crashing into the wood. I turned as I slipped through the gap and noticed a shadow against the sky in the distance, vast wings moving like wavering shadows as it climbed into the sky.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Whatever the winged menace had been hunting, it wasn’t me. I slipped inside and closed the door silently, turning towards the stairs where I noticed a rat watching me from the second landing. The moment I looked at it the little vermin scurried off, as quiet as I was.

Gramps needs to do something about the rats, I griped as I slowly climbed the stairs and headed for my room.

The notification blinked in the corner of my vision but it could wait till I had reached my bed and no longer had to worry about being caught. I grinned with every step, my first raid a resounding success.