The sound of a baby crying brought me out of my momentary stupor as I struggled to put out the blazing inferno, and I soon realized that it wasn't me that was on fire - it was the red-feathered monster bird that I had been grappling with. There was far less heat than I would have expected, and as I disentangled myself from my burning opponent and rolled free I patted my clothes down to check how bad the damage was. Strangely, nothing I was wearing had caught fire when the monster exploded into a sudden conflagration, and my [Weak Forcefield] hadn't activated to keep the heat from damaging my eyes even though my face had been right next to the burning bird's neck (to keep my head out of the attack range of its beak).

I carefully stood up, ignoring the slight pain from my scratched-up torso (where the bird's claws had raked) and bruised shoulders (which its wings had buffeted) as I surveyed the scene. Both of the monsters now looked like nothing more than large burning coals taken from the fires of the Smithy, but right away I could feel that the heat they were generating was wrong. I had spent enough time around forge fires to know what the heat radiating off of something that was burning that intensely should feel like, yet there was essentially nothing coming off of them as if they were perfectly insulated and the heat was somehow being contained. And it wasn't just my surprise that the cobblestones weren't being blackened and cracked from the heat - not even the groceries scattered around the scene of the battle (some of which I had rolled over in my struggle) were affected.

"Thank you, Great Lady! Thank you for saving my baby!"

The voice of the woman whose baby I had saved drew my attention, and I saw her bowing deeply to my mother as she clutched her infant to her chest (having finally undone the straps holding it to her back).

Did she just call Mom 'Great Lady'? And, wait, hadn't she called me 'Blessed Chosen' or something? It had sounded almost exactly like Wolfram's title, although there were minor differences that I didn't know the significance of.

I looked at my mother and saw her studying the skies around us vigilantly before turning to us and saying, "There is no Lady here, fool, simply a Firehand protecting the life of a witless villager and her baby from a beast attack. Now leave your bags behind and find shelter. Now!"

The woman gasped as her eyes widened, "No, it can't be! You are Isa Firehand, the disgraced noble... But... the boy, I saw... no, he surely must be a Blessed Chosen of-"

"Silence! You saw no such thing, idiot woman! He has been taught nothing, and unless you wish to repay his brave yet foolish attempt to save your life by having my family arrested, interrogated, and tortured, you will keep any such misguided musings to yourself. Understood?"

My eyes went to the squirming bundle held tight in the woman's arms, glad to see that the baby was alive and still strong enough to move about with such vigor. There was a spot of blood on the swaddling that concerned me, but there was nothing that could be done right then as getting to safety was the primary concern. Hopefully, the stain was from the woman's wounded shoulder, not the baby itself.

She stared at my mother with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open for just a moment before her attention was drawn back to her child. She began to try and unwrap the infant, as if eager to check it for injuries, when my mother interrupted by yelling at her again, "Bloody beasts, you stupid woman! Get to the shelter!! Do not unwrap your mewling infant out here on the street while the bells yet ring!"

Mom threw up her hands and reached forward to grab me, picking me up as she began jogging toward the nearest building. I looked back to see the woman following us, the swaddling cloth hanging down from her precious bundle where she had stopped unwrapping it midway. The door of the shop we were approaching opened just before we arrived, and the armed shopkeeper and his assistants waved all of us inside before securing the entryway behind us.

I heard someone helping inspect the baby once we had reached safety, but my attention was drawn to my mother as she set me down against the rear wall of the shop away from everyone else. Her eyes were closed as she swayed on her feet, catching herself on the wall before sliding down to slump against it in an undignified sitting position on the floor. Her breathing was even, yet sounded strangely forced as if she were straining under a great weight, or performing some kind of strenuous exercise.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Mom, are you ok? What... what happened out-"

"Heller. This is not something we will speak of. Be silent, my child, be still. Mother is weary, and must rest for a spell."

There was a strange - almost hypnotic - rhythm to her words that I had never heard before, and I found myself drawn to the bizarrely patterned sound of her breathing as I let myself relax against the wall. Isa Firehand... why had I never heard that name before? And did that mean that I was a 'Firehand' too? Or was it more like a title, and not actually a last name... also, either way, why hadn't it been mentioned when I had asked my parents what their names were?

No, more importantly... disgraced noble?? What the hell, Mom! And why had the birds burst into flame like that? And what was 'Heavenward Flame'? Was it a person, who had acted to save me at the last moment? And why was Mom suddenly so exhausted!? There were just so many questions that I felt like I was going to explode, but there was one that rose to the surface of my churning, chaotic thoughts: Had anyone else seen me use my powers??

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Primary Statistics

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 7

Intelligence: 24

Fitness: 8

Willpower: 14

Perception: 12

Charisma: 21

Powers

[Minor Shock] 241% mastery

[Weak Forcefield] 21% mastery

I gazed at my stats in quiet contemplation several days later. Overall, my progress was quite good, and my constant practice with the two abilities I had purchased so far had paid off fantastically in my first-ever battle, but I was frustratingly unable to get any answers from my parents regarding my other concerns. (Not that I hadn't tried; in fact, I had asked so many times that Mom had, for the first time in my life, threatened me with corporeal punishment in the form of a spanking. Truth be told, however, what really got me to stop wasn't the threat of punishment, but the pain I could see in her face whenever I brought the topic up. And Jaws was no help either - he simply said, "I am sorry, Heller. I cannot answer this," when I had tried to ask him about it.)

Regardless, back on the topic of my stats, I was pleased to see that this single combat had taken [Weak Forcefield] out of the final stages of 'training' and straight into 21% 'mastery'! It was a far more expensive power than [Minor Shock] had been, and singlehandedly accounted for the majority of my CP expenditure over the years, but it was something that I had designated as essential shortly after I had first witnessed how dangerous my new home could be. What would be the point of slowly accumulating energy as I grew if a single unlucky encounter with an errant monster could so simply snuff out my poor little life?

The design of the forcefield itself had been quite difficult, but eventually I had been able to come up with something that accumulated power over time by using my own biological processes to attract the ambient 'qi' in the air around me. The only way I got it to actually work was by piggybacking on the natural aura that I (and every other living being) was constantly surrounded by, and the triggering method was tied to my aura as well using a convenient trait of auras that I had accidentally discovered - they reacted to each other when they made contact, which occurred just fractions of a second before actual physical contact was made (since auras themselves were projected outside the physical body)! Not only that, but the reaction would change drastically if one aura detected that another would actually pierce or otherwise damage it, giving me an easy way to focus the small amount of power generated by [Weak Forcefield] in a specific location for maximum effect.

The downside, of course, was that ranged attacks and weapons were not nearly as simple to defend against (even if the lingering aura on them was strong enough to be detected in the first place, which wasn't a guarantee). I could trigger the forcefield manually if I saw an attack incoming, of course, but without the force-focusing effect of using the interplay between auras to automatically detect, and subsequently deflect, an incoming blow with a precise counter-reaction, [Weak Forcefield] was nearly useless (thus the name). But that was outside my control for the moment as the next closest (and cheapest) ability I had managed to design, [Personal Forcefield], was hundreds of times more expensive (and therefore not something I could even come close to affording at the moment).

Luckily for me, the main threat to our civilization seemed to be from animalistic monsters, so my discoveries regarding the nature of auras (and aura interactions) were a major boon when it came to keeping myself alive.