“So then, I suppose that if you were able to defeat even one of those men, then you must have been sensing what attack he was going to use?”

As Essan asked his question, Kaleb was sitting, his arm in a sling, on the second airship he had ever taken. He and Essan were in their private quarters. They had got a shared room this time, since their attempt at subterfuge and secrecy had already failed. They had stayed at Veillard only long enough to get another ticket for a few bells later, and they would be another day arriving at the next stop. Kaleb had slept, then eaten, and recovered somewhat from the events of the previous day. Thus far they had heard nothing of Erid, but that was to be expected. Kaleb hoped he was doing well.

“Yes… I could… kind of tell. But not very clearly”

“Hmmm!” Essan looked impressed, “this is very promising! So, tell me. Would you like to have a rest today? Or would you like to do something… more?”

Kaleb thought about it. He could do with the rest, but he also… wanted to be distracted. He didn’t want to dwell on that black knife he’d seen, nor on the face of the man who’d died by it, even if it wasn’t his hand that was holding it. It was engraved on his memory already, and he didn’t want to etch it any deeper. So, he made his decision.

“I’d like to do something, yeah.”

“Very good, very good!” Essan rubbed his hands. “Then let’s see: Can you tell me what fields I’m using at the moment?” Kaleb felt the tingle of field generation, but subtle and delicate. He was beginning to feel the differences in people’s fields now, and Essan’s was a gentle and soft touch – backed up with the same ineffable steel technique and power as Erid’s.

“Pushing” Kaleb said, saying what he thought he felt in the small tug of the field’s accumulation. A moment later, the field pushed a tin cup on the table before them away. There was a pause and Essan smiled and then began to charge his field again.

“Pulling” Kaleb said, and the cup responded in kind. Essan’s grin broadened, and a mischievous look came to his eyes. There was another sparkling sensation as he readied another example.

“... Rotating… I think.” The cup tipped over. Essan’s eyebrows were raised up now in glee, and he looked truly happy. Kaleb felt his face flush a bit at his obviously pleased appraisal of Kaleb’s deductions. But then another field began to charge, and Kaleb found himself stumped. “I…I don’t know this one.”

“Hmmm… That’s okay. I am impressed. I didn’t think that you would have been able to make the leap from the exercises you were given to this understanding, but you’ve done well. However, in a real battle against anyone except basic grunts such as those you encountered, you will need a far more finely tuned ability to detect other’s motions and the vagaries of their control. And also to do that at a much faster pace than you are currently able. It takes you a good second at the moment – these kinds of judgements you will have to make immediately. On top of that, currently only the most direct and simple of movements make their way through to you. In time, you must understand the complexities of those who are well trained or well engineered… as such, I think we’ll try and pick up where our first set of training ended. I’m going to send you outside in town when we arrive, to find out what kinds of arrays of spikes individuals have. I’ll give you a list of challenges too. I know some of the people around the town, you see… But we can start this onboard too. I’ll come with you on deck.”

“Oh… ah okay.”

“Alright then, do you have your disguise ready?”

Kaleb pulled himself together, and breathed deeply, then plugged the ten pools in his body. It felt easy now, after the protracted time in Arbistrad, and then Veillard, when he had the fake capacitance spikes in his body. He knew though, that he still only had about an hour before the effort of maintaining them became insurmountably difficult.

“Alright.” he said, once he had finished constructing his (he thought, quite ironically) invisible camouflage.

Kaleb followed Essan as he moved out into the hallways, up a set of metal stairs that let off a loud sound that made Kaleb wince when anyone climbed them, and up onto the ‘deck’ of the airship. It was really only a small space, as most of the airship was enclosed. Everyone did their best to keep the mists out of their interiors thanks to the dust that it left behind, and the dangers of inhaling it – Essan and Kaleb had already put their masks on, Kaleb fumbling with his, as his single hand was not quite nimble enough to do it right the first time. Despite all this, there were some people on deck, those who were either travel-sick, or enjoyed watching the mists, they stood on the deck or passed by it. The crew too, made regular passage across it.

Essan guided Kaleb to the edge by a railing, facing him away from the other people, and out into the orange mists.

“Now, then. Don’t look at our other patrons, there’s a good lad. So… The object of this task is… hmmm.” Essan was whispering, and Kaleb came in closer to hear him. Essan closed his eyes “Yes, you should know where everyone is, how many there are, and what arrays they have, without being able to see them. This is a very useful skill.” He paused “I mean, you shouldn’t know that by the end of this session, but you might be able to get an idea of where some people are. No looking! I’ll tell you if you’re right or not.”

Kaleb frowned. This would be a challenge to do while he maintained his disguise. He began to charge his field, careful to maintain the capacitance in his body at the same time.

“Ah-ah! No, this will be done… passively. No generation. Only sensory field reception. Like what the sensory field generators do.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, it will be hard, but it will be very well worth it. If you can get even a shadow of their sensitivity, then it will put you in good stead – not only to encounter such beings, but also in your own attempts to master camouflage and even to master field manipulation.”

Kaleb nodded, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was not going to be able to do this.

“Uh… how exactly do you do this?”

“Well, you can feel when people are generating fields can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it is like that, except you need to be able to do it without them generating fields.”

“Oh. Right.” This was impossible. Not to mention Essan’s explanation left a bit to be desired.

“It’s not impossible”

Kaleb started. It was like Essan had read his mind. The man smiled cheekily at him. Kaleb couldn’t help but smile back. He supposed it was a predictable thing to say, but Essan was a member of the brethren, and no one could have predicted him meeting up with someone like that, nor taking lessons from them. Predictability could, perhaps, go out the window. So Kaleb closed his eyes, and tried to feel the fields that surrounded him. A thought occurred to him, and he opened them again.

“Are you faking capacitance spikes?”

“Yes”

“So I should be able to sense that.”

“Yes. But perhaps there is another thing, even easier than myself to sense – the difference is that it is really a field that already envelops us, but you should be able to sense it too, at least here outside.”

“Oh… oh you mean the mistship?” Kaleb took a moment to break the rule of not looking and peeked down at the mists that swirled around the ship, and at the very obvious footprint of pressure that the ship exerted on the surrounds, maintaining itself through a constant application of a field that, in its enormity, Kaleb thought he would have been able to feel on his skin… but which in actuality barely seemed to register, much like the parallel field, which he could never feel except directly in its exertions on his body.

“Yes! Exactly.”

“Hmmm… I’m not sure what that should feel like. I think I’ll start with people”

“Fair.”

Kaleb once again let his eyelids closed and tried his best – not to let a sliver of his field out to touch others but instead to receive those subtle pressures that others were exerting on the world. They would feel, he supposed, like his own pools, but seen externally rather than from the inside. He focused himself outward and tried to find them.

Three quarters of a bell later, he was sweating slightly and had developed a headache to match the growing discomfort of his wrist, and he could still only vaguely sense Essan beside him, more like the breeze of his passage than his actual location or what kind of array he was simulating. When the man wasn’t generating any field, it was nearly impossible to get a fix on it, or the location or the nature of the capacitance spikes he was pretending to have. There were the occasional tickles of something, and the flares of people on the exterior of the ship who were using their fields would occasionally light up his perceptual awareness, as well as the dull hum of what Kaleb assumed was the mist ship… but people’s inactive fields were not something he was finding any real purchase on. Strangely, Kaleb was finding it difficult to admit his failure or to ask to return inside. After his initial successes, he was suddenly determined to perform well at these exercises, to learn what Essan and Erid were teaching him, and learn it well. But as his wrist twinged and he began to wonder at the sense of continuing, he decided it would be unwise for him to continue right at that moment. Maybe he did need to rest. He sighed.

“Time to call it in?” Essan asked, seeming to once again read his mind. Kaleb smiled and opened his eyes

“Yes. I still can’t make any sense of it when people aren’t actively generating a field.”

“That’s to be expected. It is not a very strong pull that people have when they aren’t generating. It’s very hard to distinguish it from the noise… very hard to detect any of it at all, even the noise, let alone signal! Let’s head back inside.”

They walked back along the corridors, and down the creaking stairway, and into their room. Kaleb let the pools of his fake capacitance lapse and plonked down on a seat with a sigh. He stretched his left arm, feeling the joyous weightlessness of his body after pushing himself. His right arm stayed pinned to his chest, though he wiggled the shoulder as best he could. It would be another three weeks of healing for him. But, he thought, it had been a worthwhile sacrifice. Not only was he alive and in reasonable health, he understood now, in a way that Erid’s statements on the matter hadn’t been able to fully crystalise for him, that natural field generation had its own powers and strengths – and he was going to gather them to himself, and, he thought, someday he would never have to worry about being at anyone’s mercy ever again.