Ryan took a moment to steady himself in the tree nook, the rough bark under him a reassuring feeling after being trapped in directionless nothingness.

His body ached and burned, like he just completed a strongman competition. The memory of the event he experienced in the abyss were clear, but the emotions surrounding them were blunted, as if that powerful being had wrapped his mind in a thick layer of towels to blunt the worst of the trauma. He had no way of knowing for sure how long he had spent tumbling through that internal emptiness, but he guessed that only seconds had passed in proper time.

Focusing on his aura, Ryan sensed two new strange objects floating around within the undulating waves. One was a nebulous orb of power. It had a familiar flavor to it, similar to the concepts that the consciousness in the abyss had shoved into his mind. The second was a blob of condensed aura orbiting the bigger orb of power.

Acting on reflex, Ryan reached out with his mind to the condensed aura and gripped it. Data exploded into his mind. Too much information. He gripped his head with both hands and forced down a bout of nausea. He loosened his mental grip on the pocket of aura and the information slowed to a trickle.

Awed, Ryan stared into the surrounding darkness. He saw everything. Maybe see wasn’t the right word. He sensed everything around him in a sphere a few meters wide. The branches he sat in, the tree trunk, the leaves… he sensed them as distinct presences without color, their shape and location stamped onto his mind. He recognized patterns in their movement, like he could sense where they would move based on their position relative to each other and the direction they moved.

He felt fatigue creep up on him. He recognized that it came from maintaining the effect of his ability because it wasn’t a physical fatigue, but more like his spirit and aura were straining to hold up a great weight. Before he ran out of energy, he pushed more into the ability and the sphere expanded outward by a few meters.

Ryan yelped and scrambled further up into the branches just before a disembodied maw full of teeth snapped right where his feet were resting. Right above the teeth were a pair of yellow eyes reflecting the sparse light of the dark forest, staring into his own. The wolf and its eyes fell back to the ground, out of sight. He fumbled his spear into a tighter grip and positioned himself into a crouch on the branches, waiting for the wolf to snatch at him again.

Lucky. He was so lucky. The second Ryan expanded his bubble of awareness, he sensed the wolf’s running leap at the bottom of the tree. He started shaking as the adrenaline worked its way through his system and he struggled to control his fight-or-flight instinct. Trapped in a tree by a wolf. He needed to think his way out of this situation, and fast, because there was another wolf out there and he wasn’t confident in the villagers defeating the shadow men. It was only a matter of time before the strange attackers showed up and he needed to be out of his current predicament.

Ryan pulsed his power for a second. Each time he touched it, he could sense some vague feelings inside, almost like it was egging him on to something. For now, he ignored it and put it out of his mind.

Below him, in that brief view that his power provided, he sensed the wolf prowling around. He considered his immediate options. He felt that he could fight it head on, since he was confident he could replicate his success against the first wolf. There was less open space for the wolf to build up momentum and more obstacles to control its movements. Ryan could try to injure it enough from the tree using his spear so he could outrun it, but he didn’t see it standing still waiting for him to stab it.

He pulsed his ability with as much energy as he could feed it. The information feedback was overwhelming, but he was more accustomed to what the ability told him. Despite getting a lot of white noise, he sensed out to around 15 meters and discerned the undergrowth around the tree. He didn’t sense the second wolf, so a direct fight it would be. He looked around for a convenient branch to break off to use as a distraction to get the wolf’s attention away from himself. Finding a suitable candidate about the length of his arm and half as thick as his wrist, he pried it up and down and snapped it off. He was a little surprised how easily it came off the major branch. He took a second to consider his body; he felt stronger and more nimble, not a ton, but it was noticeable.

Ryan prepared himself, searching the ground with his limited vision and pulsed his ability enough to sense if there were any unseen obstacles under the tree. He waited for the wolf to circle back to his side of the tree. As soon as it arrived, he threw the branch off into some distant shrubs, close enough that the wolf would have to pay attention, but far enough to give him some space to jump down before he could set up his strategy.

Just as the branch crashed through the undergrowth, Ryan pulsed his spatial awareness to make sure noise drew the wolf’s attention. It did not. The shadow wolf turned its head for only a second, ears swiveling, but most of its attention remained on the tree.

Ryan’s heart fell. He would have to come up with another solution. He could try to jump onto the wolf from the tree, spear first, and hope he got lucky, but that wasn’t an attractive idea. Scenarios flashed through his mind one after one, but they all seemed far fetched or ridiculous. Just as he resigned himself to launching himself out of the tree like an ancient forest hero, a bright light lit up the sky over the village.

Startled, Ryan peered through the dense tree canopy. He shielded his eyes with his arm from the unexpected brightness, trying to get a look at the source of the light. A giant tornado made of shadows sprung up over the village, twisting erratically as though controlled by a drunken puppets master. Giant tongues of flame and chunks of wood spat out of the shadow funnel, only to fall out of sight below the tree line. A second later, a thunderous crash echoed through the forest, no doubt the result of the shadow twister ripping buildings apart and throwing them around like toy blocks.

Shock rooted Ryan in place. Mags was still in the village. Was she sucked up by the shadowy tornado or hit by the debris? Abruptly, he realized that the wolf had focused its attention on the spectacle over the trees. He refocused his attention on getting himself out of his current situation.

Ryan leapt out of the tree. He didn’t leap out and up; he leapt straight toward the distracted wolf, intending to skewer the it with all the force he could muster. He flew, arms poised to thrust the spear like a lightning strike. Ryan stiffened in surprise. His trajectory was too high; he had grossly miscalculated, didn’t consider the feeling of new strength in his body.

Flying too high to get a direct hit on the shadow wolf, Ryan made a last ditch effort to get a hit in as he flow over the its back. The impact tore the spear from Ryan’s hands; the spear plunged into the wolf’s side and stuck straight out like a javelin.

He hit the ground on the other side, the impact strangely muted, not as painful as it should have been, but still with bruising force. He rolled out of his fall and regained his feet like his body was a sack filled with steel springs. Other than the pain from the impact and the pain from the wound in his leg, his body ached pleasantly, the kind of ache one has after a heavy workout.

While he marveled at his mostly uninjured state, a pair of yellow orbs came into his vision through the bushes a few meters in front of him. Ryan focused on the orbs and recognized them as a pair of eyes; the second wolf waited for him. He glanced back at the first shadow wolf and only saw his spear in the low light. The wolf’s eyes turned toward him, getting closer.

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Not hesitating any further, Ryan sprung from a stand still into a full blown sprint into the forest. The first wolf blocked his way back to the village, so he chose a path that ran parallel so he could circle back around.

He flew. He ran faster than he ever had before, his legs feeling like compressed air pistons, driving him forward. Exhilaration bolstered his steps as he wove through tree trunks in the low light of the forest, occasional low hanging leaves and branches reaching out to slap or entangle him.

He tried to make it hard for the wolves to make a direct path to him. He pulsed his ability hard, searching for the wolves. His ability only picked up one wolf behind him, the one without the spear, and it was gaining on him fast.

Ryan didn’t know what he was doing with his ability. He guessed from how it showed him what was going on around him that his senses were augmented to allow for increased perception, and probably the ability to understand the information, but he was operating purely based on guesswork. He didn’t know anything about the fundamentals of what it meant to use his abilities. Despite this, he would need to rely on it to get him out of this situation.

He felt strained on the inside, the overuse of his spatial sense leaking weakness into the rest of him like a poison. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could use the ability. He pulsed it with less energy, waiting for the wolf to make its move. It was close enough that Ryan could hear its paws pounding the ground in sync with his own footsteps, but not close enough to spring at him.

Listening to the sound of the approaching paws behind him, Ryan timed his next pulse carefully. He needed the wolf to be close enough to lunge at him, but he also needed to be close to a tree trunk, which meant he had to slow down a bit. Waiting for a tree to present itself in a convenient position was out of the question, so he curved his path to a promising tree trunk ahead. Approaching the tree trunk, he slowed down from his full out sprint, just enough so that the wolf gained on him, and then pulsed his spatial sense. He watched through his senses as the wolf sprung.

Ryan planted his foot on the tree and used his newfound strength to thrust himself up and away from the tree trunk. He launched himself into the air, the wolf sailing beneath him through empty air, snapping at his dangling feet, but not catching anything between its jaws.

Landing with only a slight stumble due to his leg wound, Ryan didn’t wait to see what the wolf was doing and took off running in the town's direction. He didn’t know how far he had run, but he could still see the diminished glow of the tornado’s aftermath in in the sky.

Making his way back toward the village, Ryan continued to use the dense trees to evade the wolf’s teeth. The wolf became harder to trick, and Ryan was reluctant to try the same thing twice. It appeared to maintain just enough distance to be a threat, appearing to wait for Ryan to make a mistake to take advantage of.

Ryan couldn’t use his spatial sense often anymore, the consequences of the strain too much to handle while trying to maintain top speed. He relied more and more on his growing general understanding of the space and distances between objects that must come from his affinity. It wasn’t potent like his spatial ability, but it was enough to keep him out of immediate trouble. That and his speed. Everything just felt easier, more natural. Ryan navigated the forest as if he was born there, the space and distance a familiar friend. The dangling branches and shrubs proving less of a barrier as time stretched out.

The wolf and its prey swiftly approached the edge of the forest and the village walls came into view. Ryan continued to weave through the trees to trip up the wolf, even though the wolf wasn’t trying to take him down, as though it was waiting for something. Ryan could no longer use the spatial sense ability at all, his spirit wrung out like a used wash cloth.

A blotch of shadow detached itself from the nearby undergrowth and launched itself into Ryan’s path. Ryan couldn’t change his direction in time, too much momentum and nothing to use as leverage to change direction, damning him to a collision. The form of the second shadow wolf filled his vision before it tackled him, sending them both tumbling out of the forest and onto the dirt track surrounding the village.

Ryan had no time to react before the wolf that was chasing him through the forest was on him, savaging his arm, blood blooming from the lacerations and puncture wounds from its dagger-like teeth. The weight of the wolf kept him pinned to the earth, but he tried his best to leverage his newfound strength to throw the wolf off his arm, with no success. The second wolf appeared in his vision, jaws wide open and going for his throat.

He got his arm between his neck and the wolf, but the beast bowled right through it to sink its teeth into his neck. It shook its head, its teeth shredding the skin and muscles around his throat. Ryan tried to scream, but couldn’t force any sound beyond the shadow wolf’s clamped jaw.

Despair filled Ryan’s heart. He was unwilling to die like this, but unable to do anything about it. Anger, fear, and resignation flashed through his mind, but he fought through it, determination lending him a reserve of internal strength.

Desperate, he flared his spatial sense as hard as he could, his aura on the brink of crumbling under the strain. Ryan used the patterns in the wolves’ movements to lever himself off the ground. The wolves hung on as he reached his knees, their weight preventing him from moving any further, their jaws like vices holding him in place.

He had lost too much blood. Ryan’s vision blurred, his head felt too light to stay connected to his body. He still flared his senses, straining, looking for anything he could use to turn the tide.

A presence popped into his awareness, so fast that his spatial senses couldn’t tell where it came from. As suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared. Then reappeared. In and out of his bubble of awareness, the presence moved too fast for him to track.

Ryan lifted his head to look, straining against the wolves. In front of him he caught sight of an ordinary looking man with a slim sword in his hand, dressed in a plain brown leather jerkin and tight-fitting trousers. Ryan saw him for a split second before he disappeared and reappeared to his side. Afterimages of the man popped in and out of existence all around him. The sight of the man inject some hope into Ryan’s heart, but he sunk back toward despair. He was hallucinating from the blood loss.

The weight of the wolves fell away from him, freeing his mangled arm and neck. Ryan collapsed to his hands and fell face first into the dirt, his arms too weak to carry his own weight. The remains of the wolf that had ravaged his arm lay in his line of sight.

It sat in large precise chunks, cubed, like a chef had strolled through and carved the wolf up to throw in the cooking pot. Its eyes were still wide open, lifeless, and unconcerned with their new position resting on the packed dirt of the road. There was no splatter of blood, only gentle pools growing around the remains.

“Wooooooweeeee!! That was some chase you led through those woods,” someone exclaimed nearby, his jovial voice carrying through the night air.

Ryan shifted his head to get a view of who he assumed was the phantom man who teleported all over the place, elated that his dying delusion wasn’t a hallucination. He was standing a few meters away, dueling the air with his small sword, cutting and thrusting at imaginary foes, elaborate footwork maneuvering him through imaginary attacks.

“Too much adventure! Too much drama! Too much emotion! I can’t handle it!” The man continued to fight his invisible enemies, his boisterous demeanor a stark contrast to his fluid and precise movements.

“Help…. me…” Ryan croaked through his ravaged throat. Blood blocked his mouth and nose, making it difficult to breathe. Ryan’s vision continued to blur, the blood loss forcing him to descend into near unconsciousness.

The man looked down at Ryan as if just remembering that he was prancing around stabbing at the empty air. He disappeared, only a fuzzy afterimage fading away into nothing, leaving no evidence of his presence. Seconds later, the man appeared from thin air next Ryan’s head.

“Here, put this in your mouth. Can’t have you dying after all that excitement. To think, a real Offworlder right here fighting off wolves in some backwoods farming village,” he said as he shoved something crumbly into Ryan’s mouth.

Whatever he shoved into his mouth, it melted into a warm wave that spread down through his neck and the rest of his body. A familiar sensation rose in his neck and arm where the wolves had destroyed flesh and bones. They itched. They itched so badly it was as if a giant swarm of mosquitoes had burrowed into his flesh and left thousands of bites behind to torment him.

Before he could do anything more than flinch, his eyes closed and unconsciousness sucked him down, blessedly away from the pain and itchiness, into a dark and comforting abyss, where a deep and distant laugh bubbled up from the depths. Then nothing.