Ryan stared at the small orb throwing off crimson glints from reflected sunlight. He couldn’t force himself to pick it up. The deep shades of red mesmerized him, stealing control of his eyes and limbs. It wasn’t Gold in color. That meant it was a Mind or Soul Key, he wasn’t sure which, but either way it meant that the orb sitting in front of him was extremely valuable.

He broke his paralysis with a burst of willpower and reached down to pick up the Key. He grunted with effort, the angle and the location making it difficult to get to. The smell returned and slapped him in the face, forcing his gorge to rise. He jumped the wall and used the butt of his spear to break through the exposed ribs, unwilling to get his hands covered in sludge. Bending down, he locked his fingers around the pristine orb and plucked it from its resting place. The orb reflected the light into his eyes, mesmerizing him.

Suddenly conscious of what he held, he stuffed it into a pocket, hopped back over the wall and started walking toward Mags’ compound. He took the most direct route he could find, navigating through fields when he couldn’t use a footpath.

Ryan tried to loosen up. He felt like a bank robber trying to stroll out of the bank he just robbed, all stiff limbs and smiles. He stuck his hand in his pocket to make sure the Key was still there, like he was afraid it would disappear if he stopped paying attention for one second. It was smooth to the touch, almost oily, but left no residue on his fingers. He resisted the impulse to take it out and look at it, letting it drop to the bottom of his pocket.

Ryan started jogging. His body needed an outlet for his excitement and walking calmly wasn’t cutting it. As he approached the residence, he spotted a few tenant farmers sitting out in the fields, taking their lunch under whatever makeshift shade was available. He passed them by, ignoring their inquisitive stares, until he reached the front entrance to the main residence.

He flew up the front stairs and barged through the front door. He took a second to toss his spear into a random corner before facing the dark interior.

“Mags, you here?” he yelled, standing in the entryway. Not hearing an answer, he headed for the sitting room off to the side. He made his way to a low wooden table with a small padded bench. He set the Key on the table and took a seat, determined to stay planted until Mags came back.

Ryan again lost himself in the Key’s shiny surface. This little orb represented a great deal to him. Independence. Power. Freedom. Magic. All kinds of futures flitted through his head, his mind running wild with possibilities. He lost track of time, lost in his thoughts.

The sound of the front door swinging open interrupted Ryan’s daydreams. He looked up to see Mags march passed the entrance to the sitting room. Before he could open his mouth to call out to her, she reappeared in the doorway, eyes locked onto the orb sitting in front of him like a laser on a guided missile.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded. Before he could answer she asked, “Where did that come from? Did you show that to anybody?” Her face was a mask of shock and concern as she approached the low table.

“I found it inside some kind of dead beast outside the north wall next to the forest. I came straight here. I didn’t show or tell anybody,” he said. The look on her face was making Ryan nervous. The next thing Mags said cemented his suspicion.

“That’s a Soul Key. That thing is worth a fortune and carrying one out in the open is foolhardy. There are countless people that would be perfectly willing to kill you for it, either to use it themselves or sell it. That little ball is worth over 15 gold, more than a decently wealthy person will make in profit in a year.”

She snatched the Key up from the table and held it close to her face, examining it as though she thought she could find a flaw that would prove it was fake. Ryan watched a kaleidoscope of emotion pass over her features, not least of which was desire. He felt a spike of fear. Fear that she would take it for herself. Fear that he would be stuck here forever at the whim of others. He resigned himself to losing the Key when she thrust it at him.

“Take it and use it. Don’t hold on to it. Don’t think too much about it. It’s worth a lot of money, but the long-term benefits of using it far outweigh what you can get from it in gold right now. With a Soul Key, you’ll be able to get into a Guild without half the hassle they would normally put you through.”

Ryan nodded his head, relief flooding through him. He’d doubted her for a second, but Mags had only ever proved to be a good person who held his best interest at heart. He took the crimson orb from her and then stopped, confused.

“I don’t know how to use it. What do I do? Eat it?” he said, a note of embarrassment creeping into his voice.

“No no no. You use it the same way you use Rune Script. You use your aura to crush it…” she trailed off, a bit of horror creeping into her eyes. “You can’t use your aura yet. I can feel that you haven’t changed.” It wasn’t even a question. She was familiar with his frustrated attempts at activating the Runes. “You don’t even know what you’re in for.”

Without warning, she grabbed the arm holding the orb and yanked him to his feet. She marched him back into the entryway and down the hallway until they reached his room. She pulled him around and thrust him down onto his bed, his token resistance about as effective as that of a newborn in front of her. Her casual display of strength shocked him. She’d been holding back on him.

“You are to sit here in this room until you can figure out how to use your aura. I’ll bring you everything you need, but you will stay here,” she said. There was no room for argument.

“I’ve tried everything I know. I haven’t managed it. The best I’ve managed is to barely sense something I think was an aura, but I have no way of knowing what it feels like!” he said.

“It’s just like flexing your hand to make a fist, or clenching your teeth. It’s like flexing any other muscle. It’s a part of you already, all you have to do is do it, the same way you use your hand to grab a spear. You don’t think about the concept of a hand when you grab it, you just do it.”

“That’s not something you just know. Even babies have to learn how to use their hands, and they take a while to figure it out.”

“Well, then I guess for this purpose consider yourself a baby and go figure it out,” she replied. “Sit tight, I’ll go prepare something to eat to give you some energy.”

Mags left the room, not quite slamming the door on her way out, and leaving him holding the mesmerizing Key in his hand. He nodded his head at the empty room, shoulders slumped, dejected at what seemed like an impossible task.

Mags soon returned with a prepared lunch. Setting it before Ryan, she said, “There are a couple of things you need to know about how Keys work. There are basically three things a Key will do. First, it will increase your body’s base capability across the board, for each Key, until you have all nine. Then it will further augment your attributes based on the type of ability the Key grants. One of my abilities grants me stone and earth armor around my body, which you’ve seen. Because of this, the Key augmented my attributes to be able to handle the ability, so I have further increased strength and endurance. Then, you add in the actual capability of the ability itself. Does this make sense?”

Ryan, who had already started eating, took a second to finish chewing. “Basically, you get generally stronger overall just from using a Key, and then your ability grants you a boost in specific attributes. So, with my Soul Key, I’m guessing I’m going to get an extra boost to something to do with my soul?”

“Yes, but it’s more specific. It will most likely be a boost to something having to do with your ability to perceive physical or mental effects, based on the types of abilities that Soul Keys usually give. You’ll still get the basic physical and mental boost that all Keys give on top of that. Without the extra augmentation from abilities, anyone who used all nine keys would more or less be at the same level physically, but the augmentations from the abilities are what really differentiate what you’ll eventually be capable of.”

Ryan nodded and continued to eat. What if his affinity was something like Fire? Would all his attribute gains be something to do with endurance or pain resistance? What was an attribute? Were they limited to a small set of things, like strength or agility, or were they even more specific than that?

“I’m going to investigate around the edge of the forest, see if there is anything out of the ordinary. Finding a Soul Key might suggest higher ranked beasts out there. Best to find out now. I’ll try to return before evening,” said Mags, as she turned to leave, closing the door on her way out.

Ryan finished up the meal and wasted no more time. He brought his legs up onto the bed and sat in a cross-legged position, trying to emulate a meditation pose as much as his inflexible legs would allow.

Ryan flexed. He wasn’t sure what he was flexing. His chest? His brain? All he knew was that when he had his initial, yet underwhelming, success so many days ago, he had been in the middle of his morning exercise. He continued to flex everything, trying to find the “muscle” that Mags compared his aura to.

It was ineffective. The only thing he accomplished was making it feel like he had to use the outhouse. It was perplexing. How was he supposed to flex a thing he wasn’t aware of? Ryan perked up. Awareness. Awareness was where he should start. He needed to be aware of the thing he needed to use. During his workouts, he sometimes fell into a state where he wasn’t thinking, just letting his body do its thing, letting his mind wander.

Ryan settled back into his meditative pose, but this time concentrated on just being aware of himself. He started at his toes. He tried to be aware of what his toes actually felt like, as individual digits and not just the tip of his foot. From there he worked his way up to his feet and ankles, concentrating on what made them a part of him.

He let his mind drift into the task, losing awareness of the surrounding room as time dragged on. He let his senses of smell and hearing fade into the background of his awareness, leaving him in an insulated cocoon in his mind. He moved his awareness up through his torso, trying to feel his muscles, his organs, bones, and heart. He felt the blood flowing through his neck and shoulders, down into his arms and hands.

Ryan knew that he had reached his head, sensing the throbbing of the blood in his skull and the hair on his head. He drifted further, his awareness growing into a sense of his whole body. He sat in that state, letting his awareness steep like rich coffee, absorbing the qualities of his body into a holistic awareness that suffused his mind.

Something snapped into his awareness. He could see it. Or sense it. It felt like trying to see behind your eyes, like seeing movement out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn to look there is nothing there. The feeling grew stronger until he realized that it wasn’t just behind his eyes, it was behind his everything. It was everywhere. It was in and around his body, like an undulating wave of pressure that washed over his senses.

He tried to reach out a mental tendril, unsure how to interact with the pressure. Nothing. It felt like he was flailing at empty air.

Ryan jerked out of his trance. He tumbled over onto his side, muscles stiff and cramped. He had done it. He tried to suppress the moisture in his eyes welling up, but failed as tears streamed down his face. A giant weight lifted from his shoulders, a sense of relief suffusing him like the warmth of a heavy blanket. He would not be stuck on the farm forever. He had made genuine progress. He could do this.

Ryan got up from the bed, wiped the traces of tears from his face and stretched out his aching muscles. He opened the door to peak down through the hallway. There was light from the single Script Lamp in the sitting room, but he didn’t see any light leaking in through the windows. It was dark outside. He lost hours in his state of concentration.

He shut the door and sat on the bed, his back against the wall, legs stretched out over the edge. He didn’t need to be in that silly pose. He restarted the exercise, concentrating on his awareness of his body. His progress the second time through was easier. When he tried to reach out to the pressure emitted from his aura, he was once again knocked out of his meditation. He tried again and again, gaining speed every time, until it took him only a few seconds to reach the state where he could feel it.

Ryan didn’t affect any change to the pressure, no matter what he did. He restarted his meditation a few more times with similar results. Starting one last time before giving up for the night, he abruptly stopped when a vague pressure revealed itself.

He felt his aura. The pressure crept into his awareness, pushing it into his body and the space around him. He stoked his awareness like a small fire, trying to grow it into a steady blaze to light up the sense of his aura.

Ryan let out a wild whoop and thrust his fist into the air. Success! He was sensing his aura. He couldn’t do anything with it yet, but that didn’t matter. Progress. He made so much progress. Soon enough, he would figure out the trick to using it, and then he’d use the Soul Key.

Ryan wondered what was taking Mags so long. It was late evening and into the early night. She should have returned from her investigation. He hopped off the bed and made his way down the hallway to the front entrance. He opened the door and stepped outside into the chilly night air.

Ryan caught his breath and rushed out into the courtyard to get a better look to the northeast sky. A dozen bright red flares filled the sky, ever so slowly falling toward the earth. He couldn’t hear any bells, which was a bad sign. Ryan hopped from foot to foot, uncertain about what he should do. Something catastrophic was happening to the village. Should he go? Would he be able to help?

Deciding, Ryan ran back into the residence to grab his spear, and after a second of hesitation he also grabbed the Soul Key. He ran back out and headed for the road leading into the village.