Whilst Emily played with Julius the others all made subtle attempts to grab the attention of the cub. Kajal tried getting more meat to tempt the small cat away, but the cub was having nothing of it and ignored the food until Emily finally grabbed the meat and offered it to him. It was clear before very long that the cub had completely imprinted on her.

The early evening was a time to relax. Cleaning up after the meal was fairly quick and nobody wanted to wash themselves in the stream at that time of day. It made a good time to plan what they were going to do.

“So how long are we going to stay here?” Mark asked.

“This seems like a really good base for supplies.” Charlie stated.

Nobody disagreed with her as they instead were looking at a spot of light that appeared directly above the fire, they were all sat round. As they watched the spot of light grew bigger, becoming first a sphere and then turning more into a human shape. Finally, they were able to make out the features of Dr Adham.

“I bet you weren’t expecting to see me here in New World.” He started saying with a small smile.

“We started you in a beginner area where it was easy to obtain gold and food. By now you should have determined that almost everything that looks like food is edible, but the strange red plants of all varieties will make you very ill. There are a few poisonous plants but fortunately neither this group nor any of the others have managed to kill yourselves by poisoning.

That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been deaths as accidents, predatory beasts and even teammates can kill you off. Not that any of this group wants to kill anyone else.” He said the last with a big grin.

“By now you should be starting to find out what your powers are. None of you should have the same powers so it will be a struggle for you to work out just what you can do. If you want to find someone to train, you then I’d head into one of the villages or towns. Sometimes they will ask you to do a service for them or they might prefer to train you on a strictly cash basis. Just to make your lives easier I’ll tell you that a copper will buy you a loaf of bread, ten coppers are the same as a silver and 20 silvers are the same as a gold. A gold is about 30gm or 1 ounce. A simple worker will earn maybe forty coppers a day.

Anyway, I have a couple of minutes, any questions?”

“Where’s Torin?” Mark asked.

“It’s about 6 months walk due South of here. Not that you can walk due South without going through lands that will probably kill you.”

“What happens when you die in New World?” Emily enquired.

“Unless you get brought back to life really quickly by a healer or cleric or possibly a god then you are out of the game. We’ll have you stay at a base until this alpha test is over, then you get paid and sent home.”

“Why were we kidnapped?” Charlie demanded.

“I had nothing to do with that, know nothing about it and can’t help you. I only dealt with people who volunteered to join the game.” Dr Adham’s answer was extremely unhelpful.

“Are we near any of the other groups?” Mike asked.

“Every group started at least 15Km from every other group.” However, you all have the same goal, which is to get to Torin, so you might meet others on your journey. Last question.”

“What are the natives like?” asked Jo.

“They’re a lot like people everywhere, some are good, some are bad, but most are just trying to make the most of their lives. They might not look the same as you lot, but they behave similarly. Also, they all speak a language you don’t know. It would be a good idea to learn it quickly.”

With that the image of the doctor shrank until it was just a point of light and then disappeared.

“Well, that was something else!” Mark said. “Bit of a data dump.”

“He clearly only wanted to tell us a limited amount of information.” Stated Charlie. “What did he mean by powers? I don’t have any.”

“Haven’t you noticed that you’ve grown?” Jo asked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you have had a few other changes. Same with Mike.”

“I hadn’t really noticed any change in height, I mean, you’ve got smaller but everyone else seems about the same.” Charlie replied.

“I guess you and Mike have both grown a couple of inches and Jo has shrunk about the same, but it’s not just height.” Said Emily. “I notice that you and Mike also seem to be stronger. I’m fairly sure you’re both faster as well.”

“I’d agree with all that.” Mark added. “Having asked around I know that Emily, Mike, Jo and I can all sense something around us, but I get the impression we all sense something different. I sense energy and the distance I can sense it is increasing.”

“I sense living things,” added Emily. “Again, the range is increasing over time, and I can now tell more about what I’m sensing, like whether it’s a plant, animal and to some extent if it’s something else like fungi, lichen or whatever is in that cave over there.”

“I can sense light and shadow.” Said Jo. “Whilst you’re all here I want to try something.”

With that Jo started to get harder to see, almost as though the shadows were covering her. After a short while it was almost impossible to see her, even though she hadn’t moved. Then with a gasp she suddenly appeared before them again as visible as ever.

“What happened?” Jo asked.

“You faded into the shadows, until we could barely see you.” Emily replied.

“Wow, it worked. I had this feeling that it might, but I couldn’t test it on my own.” Jo stated.

“That was amazing” Mark commented. “How did you do it?”

“I sort of gathered the shadows towards me and wrapped them around me. I feel like I might be able to do better with a bit of practice.”

“I wonder what would happen if I drew energy towards me?” Mark pondered. “Shall I give it a go?”

“Go for it.” Jo and Mike both said at the same time.

Mark paid more attention to the energy around him. There was a lot in the fire plus some in the people around him, some in the plants and even some in the ground, especially that near the fire. He tried to draw all the energy that he could sense towards him but before he got very far the others started shouting to him to stop.

“That felt like I was having my strength pulled away from me.” Stated Mike.

There were murmurs of agreement from the others apart from Kajal.

“I didn’t notice anything.” The shorter man stated.

Mark looked at Kajal with his energy sense and noticed that there was some sort of energy barrier around the man. He mentioned this to the others, and they speculated whether they could also form a barrier. There was a concerted attempt by the others and soon Mark could tell that Mike, Jo and Emily also had barriers. If the energy could be represented by colours, then he would have said that both Kajal and Mike had a golden tinge to their barriers whilst Jo’s was grey, and Emily was green. However, that was just Mike associating the energies, there were no actual colours.

“I wonder if I can just draw from a single source instead?” Mark wondered out loud.

The others were less keen for him to experiment but as they mostly had barriers, they also wanted to see whether the barriers worked.

He tried gathering energy from the fire and very soon there was a ball of energy that looked like fire in front of his face. He could feel the heat from the ball and could see the flames of the fire die down.

He then tried to gather the energy from the rocks around them and the flame ball grew. As it enlarged Mark found it harder and harder to hold it in place. He could feel the heat increasing and his eyelashes and eyebrows started to singe. Reflexively he pushed the ball away from and it shot away until it hit a tree and set light to it.

Mark cheered loudly “Yes. I’m a wizard. That has to be a magic missile!”

The others looked at the tree which was still burning and then back at Mark. Suddenly Emily started laughing and pointed at Mark’s face. “You look a very silly wizard with no eyebrows!”

The others also looked at him and started laughing. Even Julius seemed to give some kind of cat laugh.