My frustration had been increasing for quite some time now, and while I did not exactly stomp out of the fourth house I had been in, it was close enough. So far I had found three copper coins and a bent spoon. The houses had been ransacked, furniture was broken, and most everything of value was gone.

I crossed the street to enter yet another house, as I wondered why the undead Champion, or the 'Vessel' as the Order referred to it, had been left behind as it was.

While it had not been anywhere near defenseless, it would have been better off with more undead to protect it. It did not seem wise to leave the creature alone and exposed. I could not come up with all that many explanations that made sense; either the undead were less intelligent than I had suspected, or, and this was the less pleasant idea, the Vessels and their Domains were less rare than I would have preferred.

As I went through rooms, taking in broken furniture and torn clothes, I mused on the Abilities I could choose between.

Creation: Golem Core, rank 1

You can coalesce and support a single Sentience Core.

Cost: 575 Mana.

Cast Time: 45 minutes, Intentional

Range: Touch

Upkeep: N/A

Manipulation: Telekinesis, rank 1

You can telekinetically move a number of your own enchanted objects, limited by Willpower and Intelligence.

Cost: Variable, nonlinear increase for each object.

Cast Time: Instant, Intentional

Range: 3 meters

Upkeep: Variable

It was really hard to say which was more useful, both could rank up and the direction they might take was unknown. I noted that while Creation: Golem Core did not have an upkeep, the description mentioned that I could support a single Sentience Core, which might mean there was some form of additional cost associated with it.

Manipulation: Telekinesis, did not actually mention any costs at all, just 'variable' and the nonlinear increase. For enchanting, variable had meant anywhere from thirty to several hundred Mana. I doubted this Ability would be useless, but the question was how useful it could be. How many things could I move? How heavy? In what way was the Ability limited by Willpower and Intelligence?

A Golem in general was seen as a sign of a proficient Mage. They were dumb obedient constructs that were single minded in their tasks, and while not exactly common they were not that rare either. A Sentience Core implied some change to that, but still probably left me with the need to gather materials to form a body of some kind.

The Ability did not say I could coalesce a Golem, it said: coalesce a Core. Which was both a bother and somewhat of an opportunity; I could choose what to create, which in a way truly appealed to me. Another advantage the Golem had was that it was a known entity; I could visit the library and study ways to proceed.

Having a Golem might discourage others from attacking me, they were often very hard to destroy, and would keep fighting until the very end. Few would want to engage such a creature in combat if they could avoid it.

Telekinesis seemed to have the advantage of being more subtle, letting me potentially shift a battlefield to suit me, but it would also take time to develop. Being able to activate an enchantment at a range of only two meters, or possibly three now with the increased rank of Sense the Flow, I could argue that just throwing enchantments was enough, but that might change with higher ranks of Sense the Flow. I made a mental note to verify my assumption about the range at which I knew of an enchanted object, when I went to pick up the ones I had left along my planned escape route.

As such, Telekinesis might not necessarily mean much in combat right now. Though that should change with more types of enchantments, and maybe other objects, such as arrows, daggers or even swords. An Acid Splash enchanted dart for example might even let me have an enchantment go off inside of a target, which would no doubt be very effective.

I had a hard time making up my mind about which to choose.

I entered the final room of the house I was in, only to see something small streak across the floor and disappear. I had sensed the creature, it was almost as if it had a taste to it, which was putrid and disgusting. Had that been an undead rat? The body was a bit too bulky and the tail far too short, an undead hamster then? I shook my head and moved on.

**

I walked out of the village, took a sharp turn just outside the palisade, and then moved into the forest. I intended to collect the enchanted beads I had hidden as traps along my planned escape route, the backup plan in case everything had gone horribly wrong when fighting the undead Champion.

It grated on me, that searching through the village had been such a waste of time, I had even failed to enchant the one spoon I found, and the few coppers I had gathered did not amount to much.

As I moved further into the forest I felt increasingly uncomfortable, I had what was akin to an itch inside of my skull; my attention was drawn every which way without a clear sense of why. No doubt, going by the similarities in perception, this was a result of Sense the Flow having increased in rank, letting me sense some new Power I had not been able to before.

I quickly started having troubles with the increased stimuli, experiencing a sense of vertigo. I suspected this effect was due to the behavior of this new Power I could perceive, as well as the significant increase in volume to the sphere the Ability encompassed. Ambient Mana had been a rather constant and unobtrusive Power, as opposed to the one I struggled with now, which was anything but.

It took some time, but I managed to get the Ability under control, mostly by suppressing the sensations until they did not constantly draw my attention. I did wonder though, if Sense the Flow could end up overwhelming me, especially if there was too much going on nearby.

Would I have to make sure I increased my mental Attributes to handle future ranks of this Ability? It seemed as if at least Willpower was a major component in managing the stimuli the way I did. I shrugged the thought off, as I already intended to do just that, making the point moot.

As I felt better, and less distracted, I started using up some of my healing enchants in between collecting enchanted beads from my ambush points.

Iron bead of Minor Heal

Restores a small amount of Health to a target.

Healing: 3

Quality: Good

There were many things about the Iron beads of Minor Heal that made them rather lackluster in combat. While they did restore slightly more Health than beads of Minor Shield protected from, my recent experiences made me believe that Minor Shield actually made getting hit hurt less, which I felt was a rather major consideration. The small amount of additional Health Minor Heal restored felt rather insignificant in comparison.

I should enchant some larger objects with Minor Heal and Shield, to get their effect to be somewhat respectable, though I only assumed that size impacted every enchantment, since I had not tested that properly. If I could fasten them on something, keeping them far enough apart that I could activate each without issue, that would be very useful. Now I just needed an idea of something I could carry with me and the coin for it.

I mused on the final thing I had noticed when preparing for the fight with the undead Champion, but then put aside; It seemed as if I could not activate an enchantment if it was crowded by too many others.

At the point when I could no longer tell how many individual enchantments there were in a location, I could not activate them either. This seemed to happen when eight enchanted objects were in close proximity, and it struck me as strange.

I would have thought it reasonable if I could not activate all of them at the same time, that could possibly be due to insufficient ambient Mana, but why not even one? I had theorized earlier that enchantments possibly interfered with each other when too close, and therefore kept me from keeping track of their number. This was possibly caused by distorting the ambient Mana even when inactive, but I had no idea why this should affect my ability to use them, even if true.

It was most frustrating.

As I collected the last few enchanted beads I wondered where all the undead had gone, while I wholeheartedly approved of their absence, I would prefer to know where they were.

Come to think of it, I had only seen two or possibly three undead creatures during all my time in the swamp, and I suspected that it had been all but depopulated of living creatures. Perhaps they had been used as sustenance rather than an undead army? I could hope.

I had confirmed that my new range for knowing about an enchanted object had increased to three meters, or sufficiently close. I took this as proof that the ability to know about enchantments was indeed dependent on Sense the Flow, which also indicated that I would be able to increase my range along with the Ability, a welcome piece of information.

**

I walked along the road that led back toward Logate. It had taken quite some consideration to reach the conclusion I had, truth be told it had been tempting to travel elsewhere. But in the end I decided that the resources I knew I could gather in Logate outweighed the danger, especially when I considered the total uncertainty that leaving brought with it.

None of the Guard had acted overtly against me. The three in the village could have attacked, rather than leave me for the undead. They would have had a far greater chance of killing me, compared to the horse and rabbit. The fight with the undead Champion had been a choice on my part after all, I could have just left.

Their choice puzzled me though, did they need to be able to truthfully say they had left me alive? Either way, it made me reasonably confident I would not be openly attacked inside Logate, at least not by the Guard. The small amount of trust I had started to hold for that organization, despite the corruption I had known of, was now gone though.

Did that make me a mercenary then, if I kept taking their coin? Or had I always been?

While I had not wanted to move along the road before, the lack of undead in the forest and the fact that I could move so much quicker on the relatively flat ground made me choose to do so in the end. It was also true that I would have a considerably harder time finding my way back to Logate if I stayed off the roads.

I did carry three active beads of Minor Shield and kept an eye out for ambushes. Not that I could see why anyone would bother: If I had not been hunted down during my time in the forest, most of which I spent sitting still, I doubted anyone would have made elaborate plans now. But as I had noted before, one should not underestimate creative stupidity, and so I kept alert.

It was at the narrow strip of forest which I had crossed to enter this valley, that things became interesting. There was a horse standing on the road.

I moved into the forest to the side of the road and crouched down, while I studied my surroundings. The horse seemed to be alive and well, from a distance at least. While I doubted that undead would just leave the beast alone, I did not really have any knowledge that supported my supposition. So far I had been the first to attack any undead I had seen, not the other way around.

Would the Unraveling Spirit have left me alone if I had not thrown enchanted stones at it first? The thought struck me that perhaps I was the aggressor in all of this, but as I remembered the rows of murdered villagers I shrugged that idea off as ludicrous.

I moved closer to the horse until I could confirm that it lacked the putrid feeling the hamster had given off. But why was the horse here alone? I did not believe one had magically appeared to make my journey back to Logate easier.

Having moved up to it, I clumsily patted the animal, perhaps more to comfort myself than it to be honest, the horse was very large after all.

My search for someone to whom the horse belonged had not truly even begun when my attention was drawn by the Power inside the beast. It was the same kind as what I had felt all around me inside the forest, and now suppressed my sense of as much as possible.

I had never even considered that I might feel what was inside something or someone before. Which probably meant I had not been able to, until I reached the second rank of Sense the Flow.

I focused inward to see what I could sense from myself, and what I found was three distinct types of Powers; Mana, the same Power as in the horse, and a third I had not felt before.

My first theory was that the Powers were Mana, Health, and Stamina. Just like in my Status. But that would then mean that the horse lacked either Stamina or Health as a Power, which did not make sense to me.

With reconstitution and how the body worked when one had a class, I thought that Health might be a Power. But stamina did not fit my idea of what a Power should be, and if the horse only had one, Health did seem the more likely of the two.

A problem with that theory was that according to what little I knew, you only really had Health in the sense the Order referred to it once you achieved a class. Though I had my doubts about how to ascertain such a claim, while I had never seen anyone without a class exhibit reconstitution, that could possibly be explained by a lack of Constitution among the classless. The idea that everything around me had Health did seem quite reasonable, I supposed.

Quite interesting, was that while an exact comparison was difficult to make, I clearly had more of this Power than the horse did, but the order of magnitude of the difference was hard to define.

I turned away from the horse to search for its rider, and quite quickly found several dark spots on the ground, making a clear trail into the forest. I slowly moved in their direction to see what I would find, while fishing out a few beads from my satchel. I assumed I would find someone hurt, but I did not want to be too stupid about this.

It did not take long before I sensed a gathering of unstructured Mana I recognized, but there was more detail to it now; I could sense a core of the third Power I had within myself inside the gathering of unstructured Mana. But there were also two small pockets of the putrid feeling I associated with the undead nearby. I moved closer, suspecting I knew what I would find. Or rather whom.

I spotted Charles sitting against a tree, a hand held against a blooded side, a small flask in his other hand, and a bloody arrow on the ground next to him. He was pale faced and unconscious. I watched him for a moment with mixed emotions.

I was glad he was here, I assumed to look for me. At the same time I thought him an idiot for coming here and getting shot with an arrow.

From the looks of things he had removed the arrow from his side and then drunk from one of the flasks that held Mana and whatever the third Power was. The two sources of the putrid feeling were in Charles' coat pocket and the arrow that lay on the ground. As I did not even consider putting my hand near something associated with the undead, I took my small knife and slit the pocket open.

Flakes of black glass fell to the ground, and as they did I could sense how tendrils of Power reached out from them, towards both me and Charles, some of the tendrils sank into our bodies while undulating in a sickening fashion.

I felt horror and panic, far beyond the sick feeling I had associated with the remains of the Unraveling Spirit before, as I scrambled backwards. I fell hard on my butt sensing the tendrils that had reached inside me moments before wave ineffectually in the air in front of me.

My face scrunched up in disgust as I could sense how the tendrils drew out waves of Power from Charles. I swiftly moved forward, grabbed one of his feet and started pulling him away from the horrifying flakes.

I swore angrily at him for being a heavy oaf, as another tendril reached for me. I flinched as it sunk into my chest and I swallowed bile as small amounts of Power left me. But I steeled myself and dragged Charles away from their reach.

He had better appreciate this!

I sank to the ground next to the idiot I had just saved from being eaten by pieces of undead glass. No doubt if I told him of this, he would look at me with one of his strange expressions and complain about his coat pocket. I found myself almost looking forward to that, as I began to check his wound.

I opened up his coat to get at the wound properly, as I thought on what had happened. The sick feeling I had gotten before I gained the second rank of Sense the Flow and could not sense the tendrils from the flakes, had seemingly come from when they were inside me, drawing out Power. That thought was decidedly disgusting, creepy, and horrifying.

The pertinent question though, was: why did this large idiot keep carrying the flakes around? Did he just ignore the sick feeling they gave off, like the fool he was? I grudgingly conceded he might not be able to feel it, but I put very little stock in that. Stupidity was far more likely.

His wound was all but healed, but the edges had a dark purple color to them. With a disgusted suspicion I concentrated further on what was inside Charles. The first thing I noticed was that he had three types of Power inside, just like me. Two of them we had in common, and one was different for each of us. One of the Powers was the one we shared with the horse, then there was one both of us had but the beast did not, finally I had Mana and Charles had something else.

Did that mean that my thought in the library was wrong then, that Force was not just Mana channeled through the body? Or had Charles harnessed some other Power? I would have to ask him when he woke up.

Just as with the horse, it was hard to judge, but the Power we had in common with the beast was one that I had far more of. The remaining one Charles and I shared, he had more of.

I frowned at this, while I thought my Health was rather impressive, I seriously doubted I had a greater amount than Charles, who had a physically oriented class and no doubt many levels on me. His almost closed wound suggested he should be near to what was full Health for him. It had either been a scratch, and thus he had not lost much Health, or he had recovered enough Health to reconstitute the wound. I sighed as I guessed at what I would find, which would no doubt complicate my theorizing. I refocused on the injury, having sorted out the distracting sensations and thoughts.

I could make out very small tendrils that ate at Charles' Power from the inside, something in the wound spread the putrid sensation of the undead.

I swore quietly to myself.