His first thought once waking up, however, was that old habits die hard and that waking up feeling like a piece of shit was back on the menu. He wasn’t completely cognizant at this point; the alarm had yet to ring, and he was still at the precipice between wakefulness and sleep. The naturalizing effects of his dreamless sleep on his thoughts kept being disrupted by an almost alien feeling that was making its way through his body. In a way, it was a complete inversion of his past struggle with vivid dreams. Now, it was the slumbering mind, holding the remnants of the night’s sleep, that kept its familiarity, comforting him with a vision of reality that was unchanged. In contrast, it was now his waking mind that made him feel like he didn’t know what was up and what was down, pulling him into a version of reality that felt completely foreign to him.

Still, like in most occurrences of half wakefulness, the line between reality and fallacy, whatever it may be, could only keep its blurriness as long as the scale between the two stayed balanced. In the end, it was the alarm finally ringing next to Sam’s head that brought the equilibrium crashing down and lurched him completely into consciousness and reality.

And boy, how he wished it hadn’t.

It wasn’t fun for the first feeling of the day to be a splitting headache. It was much less fun when that headache was accompanied by what Sam could only describe as going downhill on a roller coaster, only without the nausea that should have been there. Although, the lack of nausea was compensated by the mental equivalent: total intellectual dizziness on account that he couldn’t even begin to pinpoint the source of the feeling running around his body. Luckily, or unluckily considering his prerogative from yesterday, he felt like he could reasonably attribute a concrete cause for his blaring headache: The innumerable lines of color that stretched out before his half-opened eyes, each somehow carrying with it meanings that did Sam’s primate’s head in when it immediately began trying to comprehend them.

Hoping to regain some semblance of feeling in control, he stated the obvious, “The weird part must be what magic feels like. The painful part must be threads. Oh god I hope it’s the threads at least.” There was no way normal people’s Awakening was this painful and that he hadn’t heard about it. But of course it was the threads. Dan warned him that it was going to hurt and that he was advised to keep his eyes closed. Web-Web said the same thing, except that they suggested Sam should try and struggle through the pain as much as possible and keep his eyes open. But they also said to stop when he couldn’t take it anymore, and Sam was pretty fucking sure he was way past that point.

Groaning, he closed his eyes and covered them with his left hand, to further block the outside. He almost felt like it wasn’t enough. Like whatever his eyes were seeing, they could still somehow see it through the two layers blocking their vision. More troubling was that the sensation that he could also feel whatever it was that he was seeing, almost smell and hear it as well. The headache lessened but still persisted, the flashing images and half-formed concepts still ringed through his head. He almost found himself beginning to wish to go back to that senseless void where Web-Web had first kept him.

Now what? he asked himself. The threat of being overwhelmed with sensations was still present, but muted. With his eyes closed twice over, that was it for what he was told to do during his Awakening as a Thread-Weaver. That brought his thoughts back to the other new experience, ever present, much less painful but still just as puzzling. Magic… What I was supposed to do with that? Right… call Maurice. The fucking protocol.

He focused on his right hand, slowly scouting for his blaring phone in order to silence it and make the call. None too late—or none too soon, considering now there was no noise to keep him distracted—he clicked off the alarm and was left with a useless rectangle in his hand. Right, calling someone would require him to open his eyes, which was out of the question. It took him a couple of seconds, during which he kept batting his focus away from whatever it was that was making its way around his body while also not being there at all, before he finally remembered that phone makers had already designed something which was most useful for the blind despite them not being the intended audience.

“Assistant, call Maurice.” He laid his head back on the pillow with a low moan once the phone’s chime and the subsequent beep confirmed that the call had come through.

“Yes, Sam?” Sounded Maurice’s voice once the call connected. The call wasn’t on speaker, so Sam had to lay his head right on top of the device.

“Protocol time. Got my magic, or ability to sense magic or whatever.”

“Alright. Me and… Dan would be right there. Just stay put.” He hung up.

“Fuck! Not like I can go anywhere now, can I? Stupid fucking magic… making my body feel like jelly. Assistant, play upbeat playlist, will you?!” His anguished groans were soon drowned out by the gibberish that followed the first chorus of Two Princes. He tried keeping his focus on the music and not on the weird feelings magic gave him or the constant painful distractions that were the threads, somehow still visible to his consciousness.

Grunting along with the vocals into the pillow was proving to be ineffective at keeping his mind occupied and distracted. His thoughts instinctively went to the solid hole in his being that housed the same energy that he felt rushing up and down his body before losing his consciousness on his first day here. And now that the adrenaline had finished its job of driving him wide awake, he was finally able to make heads and tails of the onslaught of sensations that were upon him.

He was pretty sure that his core was the feeling of porousness that engulfed his entire body, but at the same time was most strongly felt at one point that kept moving at random. Sending his mind peering down those figurative pores gave him a glimpse into what laid inside the supposed core, even if he wasn’t able to figure out what the core itself looked like.

Inside was obviously magic. It must’ve been magic, because what else could it be? Well, if his old regular sensations were something to go by, then it was nothing. But this was a new world with new rules, and that sort of physical empiricism couldn’t fly any longer. Because, despite not being able to see it, he knew it was there. Despite not being able to feel it, he knew what it felt like. It was pretty much as he’s been told. There was a new sense available to him, and it governed all to do with magic.

It was right then, following the track change, that curiosity won over and Sam opted to try and test tracing’s intuitiveness all by himself. This, despite the raging headache still hounding at him, buoyed by what must be magical threads baying at his awareness through every sense but, funnily enough, his newly developed one for magic. It’s just as well, he lied to himself after his third failure in a row to make the square ball around in him that held his magic do something with said energy. My head might not blow up. But I might see a thread or two in my magic that I’m not supposed to see yet, which will drive me insane. Yep. That’s the correct way to go about it. Better be prudent in this kind of matters. Just don’t pay attention to the fact that all the threads I’m seeing are coming from outside and that my body and core don’t have anything resembling the bastards. Besides, a new song had just started, and it was totally inconceivable to let Johnny sing oldies-goldies all on his own.

Just in his time, because less than a minute later and he heard the door opening, admitting rapid footsteps. “Sam, how are you feeling?” asked the voice of Dan right after the door opened.

“Dan. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m mostly annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t come up with a funny answer to that question in the time it took you to get here.”

“That’s good to know.” Maurice’s voice came from above him, right about when the sound of music was cut in its tracks. Soon enough, he felt both of the doctor’s hands on him, one on the top of his head and the other in the middle of his back. “Alright Sam, just relax. I’ll just finish my observations and we can move on to getting you used to magic. Speaking of, you’re probably feeling a little lost right about now, right? That’s reasonable. The first time sensing magic is even more overwhelming for us Taken than it is for regular people. Did you take a look at your core yet?”

“I don’t think looking is the right way to describe it, but yeah. Couldn’t ‘see’ shit but only sense what I assumed must be magic. Figuring it out did lessen the vertigo, though.”

“Indeed. But we can still lessen it further. The problem is that your core exists throughout the whole body, but your mind can’t grasp it just yet. So there’s this point in your body when your core feels the strongest, but it keeps switching up, right? Simple solution. Just force it to be at one point. Do it by imagining the core as being at only that one point. It can be whichever point you want, and whatever you choose won’t matter in the long run. It’s only to help you ground the sensations from the core in a way you’ll have an easier time understanding. You can choose whatever you like. Most people choose somewhere in the chest. I chose my heart, Sarah the lungs.”

Sam’s mind immediately went into overdrive. First came the instinctive thoughts about where the core should be, but they were quickly overwhelmed by irrational anxieties about making the right choice for the location. Ironic, came the third line of thought, bemoaning Sam’s conundrum while at the same time flaring with self-flagellation. It was that very line of thoughts, however, that provided Sam with the push needed to make a split second decision and picture his core at the back of his right heel. Nothing wrong with the classics, right? He held a sardonic smile as he kept repeating the process of observing and stopping to observe his core through the body part.

“I think I got it,” he said after upwards of a dozen successful attempts. The whack a mole feeling that the core had elicited in him up to now was gone. Replaced by the mental pull his right heel had on his mind and the almost complete focus of his new sense for magic on that very same spot, just not really because it was directed inside and through it.

“Good,” Maurice said. His hands, by now, had moved to a different position on Sam’s body. “Just keep focusing on the core. Looking in and out of it. I’m almost finished here. Shouldn’t take too long.”

“Sure, take your time. Quick question though, the headache and creepy crawlies trying to make their way through my body are due to me being a Thread-Weaver, right? That’s the threads, and not something that regular people have to go through?”

“Creepy crawlies?” Dan asked.

“It’s like, when I opened my eyes; there was all this… stuff, that I assumed must have been threads. It was everywhere, and it gave me an awful headache just by looking at them. But even after I closed my eyes, I feel the same feeling I got from looking at them, trying to worm its way into my brain through all my other senses.”

“Hmm… Yes… That’s… normal. That is, I mean to say that it sounds normal from what we’ve been told it will feel like to you.”

“That sucks. Did they tell you whether painkillers work for this kind of headaches?”

“They didn’t… But, they did assure us that once you turn off your… sight, the headache and any other feeling of discomfort would soon disappear.”

“And did they bother this time telling you how I’m supposed to do that?”

Dan cleared his throat again. “No… they just said that it was instinctual.”

“Fucking hell with the instinctual bullshit again.”

“Alright,” Maurice declared. “All done.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“And the verdict?” Sam asked.

“Nothing out of the usual. Same as any other Taken on record.”

“Gee, try not to sound too disappointed.”

“I’ll endeavor to do just that. Meanwhile, you should compose yourself, and when you’re ready, I’ll run you through tracing. We’ll empty your core, which will help you feel much better. At least as far as the non Thread-Weaver aspects are concerned.”

Sam took a couple of deep breaths and straightened his back. Still keeping his eyes closed, and left arm further shielding his sight, he called out, “Ready.”

“Good. Now, like we told you, tracing is incredibly instinctive.” I beg to differ. “Even if you were completely alone, you would have figured it out sooner or later.” You’re gonna look like such a fool when it turns out that I’m a complete and utter idiot and can’t figure it out by myself. “But, that doesn’t mean we can’t make that later into now. So first things first, try and trace. Take magic from your core and place it at a point on your body. Don’t be troubled by needing to discern what’s your body and what’s a pathway. You will insti—automatically trace to the pathway.”

Sam tried. He tried once. He tried twice. He didn’t try a third time because he couldn’t keep his annoyance bottled up and blurted, “Nope. Can’t do it.”

“That’s understandable. Try and focus on a particular body part. Say, your right hand. Can you raise your hand and spread your palm wide open?” Sam could indeed. “Good, now imagine the energy inside your core also being in your hand. Don’t focus on the process of the magic going from your core into your body. Instead, think of it as teleportation. The magic just suddenly appears in your hand. Your core doesn’t have anything to do with the process besides being the spot where the magic was a second before that.”

“Still nothing,” Sam whined after a couple more tries when he kept trying to superimpose the feeling he got from his core onto his hand.

“Keep trying. Focus on just one point in your hand. Think about how it’s going to have magic in it any second now.”

Sam did. He kept trying, but his failures kept piling up. His anger at himself and his panic got so bad that it took him a couple of second to realize that he had actually succeeded. He had kept picturing the magic concentrating on the knuckle of his index finger, and that’s exactly what was happening right now. The same energy that was held inside his core kept popping up all throughout his hand, at random points, and began flowing through what he now realized must be his pathways to the point he kept focusing on. He had a hard time keeping the picture of the pathways in his mind; they kept dropping out of focus whenever he stopped focusing on one point and tried the track the magic’s movement through his hand.

Despite this, he could clearly see the part of his pathway which corresponded to his index knuckle, and held the concentrated magic as clear as day. What was less clear, however, was what exactly the magic was doing once it reached its destination. It wasn’t really staying still, but at the same time it wasn’t going anywhere. If he had to put it in words (and with no one to accuse him of lack of imagination), the magic performed as multiple particles while it was being traced to its desired position, but once at that point, it transformed into a wave that hovered around the focal point and which size kept changing as more particles were gathered to it.

He must have been taking too much time focusing on the wondrous and almost paradoxical sensation of the magic in his hand because Maurice tapped his shoulder. “Everything alright?”

“I got it. At least I think I got it. Is it weird that I stole one of the core aspects of quantum theory in order to understand what was happening?”

“Not any weirder that plenty of the other analogies people have made in order to understand how magic functions. But you’ll have plenty of time to consider the subject for yourself and under the direction of your teachers. For now, let’s empty your core. Keep on tracing to your hand like you’re doing. Just enlarge the point you’re focusing on. Do it slowly, but bit by bit, keep tracing more magic until you’ve encompassed your entire hand. Don’t worry about getting there, though. You’re going to run out of magic before that.”

And indeed he did. Sam got only to three quarters of the base of his hand before he couldn’t see any new magic tracing towards it. Focusing on his right heel and looking at his core, he saw that while it still appeared to him the same way, the energy that he was able to sense from it was almost completely gone. He could feel it slowly increasing back up, which must have been his natural regeneration of magic. Focusing back on his hand, he sensed that there was still magic being splashed around in the center of it, but the size of the wave kept decreasing as more magic dissipated.

“Done,” he told Maurice. “At least I think it is. When I look at my core, it still… ‘looks’ the same, but I can barely sense any magic from it.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to be like. Well done.” Sam gave a long exhale, releasing most of the tension he didn’t even know he held. “You’ve handled this perfectly well, Sam,” Maurice assured him. “Don’t worry about not being able to trace at first. Like I said, you’d have been able to figure it out by yourself eventually. But because it can be uncomfortable, especially for us Taken, there’s no reason not to get a little help.”

“Yeah.” Sounded a chipper voice from Dan’s direction that was obviously not Dan’s. “Only pretentious asshole—nobles and the such—force their children to go through Awakening all by themselves. And let me tell you, the only thing those kids get from the experience is emotional trauma.”

“Jesus Christ! That scared the hell out of me. Who that fuck is that?” Sam turned towards the source of the voice while asking the entire room the question.

“Farris Ninae, Supreme Commander of the Sarechi-Terran Armies in the East. It’s my great pleasure to finally meet you in person, face to hand covering face. I heard a lot about you in the last couple of days.” The man then unceremoniously grabbed Sam’s right hand and vigorously shook it, almost knocking Sam’s left hand from covering his eyes.

“Farris? As in the elf that threatened to kill me?”

“Why are you emphasizing me being an elf? That doesn’t have anything to do with it. What, if a Terran threatened to kill you? You were going to just smile and shake it off?”

“Listen here mate. You’re the one threatening murder. You don’t get to take the high ground and try and paint me as the bad guy.”

“Why not? You think being a murder is worse than being a racist?”

“Yeah, of course it is. Besides, I’m not racist. I only hate elves.”

“Yeah, that’s called being racist. You Terrans changed the meaning once there were different sophonts living among you. Get with the times, old man.”

“I don’t have to sit this and take this kind of abuse. Especially not from a… Nah, that’s going too far.”

Farris laughed. “Oh, c’mon. What were you going to say? I can take it. Besides, how will you know which words are off limits if you never say them, right?”

“Alright… I was going to say from a knife-ears like—”

“What?! How dare you! I’m going to—”

“Farris.” Dan cleared his throat. “Maybe a little more decorum is in order right about now? Leave the comedy act until after Sam can open his eyes?”

“Comedy act?” Sam objected, even though he knew in his heart that Dan was right. “What’s funny about the guy threatening to kill me? That’s literally the first thing I knew about him.”

“Oh, lighten up will you,” Farris rebuked him. “It was a joke. What, you’ve never been threatened by a high-ranking general that if you upstage his prodigious niece, he’s going to have you killed before?”

“No… Eisenhower was already president by then.”

“Eisenhower.” Farris chuckled. “That’s a good one. He was the general in charge in World War Two, right?”

“General in charge of what? Wait, why the hell do you even recognize his name?”

“So I was right, was I? He was the ‘me’ of back then, no? That’s what makes the joke clever.”

“You’re giving me way too much credit, man… I don’t even know who you are beside being prone to threatening murder. How the hell should I know whether you’re akin to Ike for the joke to have two meanings?”

“Who’s Ike?”

“Jesus Christ, this is worse than the fucking threads.”

“Not bad, huh?” Farris boasted and clapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t know about that Ike guy, but I sure am a master of distraction. Forgot all about peering into causality now, did you?”

“Yeah, right up until you reminded me of it. Seriously, Dan, Maurice, what’s this guy doing here? Isn’t he a big deal, your boss’s boss or whatever? What the hell is he here bothering me for?”

“Good question. Dan? Maurice?”

Dan cleared his throat. “General Farris is… here of his own volition. He said that he wanted to appraise you himself... when I first spoke to him about you. He also promised to help you with turning off your ability to sense threads, the Threadsight. If you would be so kind as to get to that, general?”

“I’m was just excited to meet someone from the golden age of Earth,” Farris said. “All the other Taken were kids, which really shortens the amount of time they had to soak in the culture. Maurice, the oldest, was technically a teenager, I guess. But that’s not much better, and he’s never fun to talk with.”

“I apologize for my childhood and personality having failed to meet your expectation, general,” Maurice said. “But if you could please not take it out on my patient and get on with helping him adjust his senses.”

Farris sighed. “Oh, very well, if I must. Still, it was oddly fun talking to someone’s elbow. So, Sam, let’s get you back to normal mediocrity for the time being, shall we? If you could just open your eyes for a second and tell me what you’re seeing.”

Reluctantly, Sam complied with the weirdo’s orders and uncovered his eyes. What greeted him was a veritable explosion of color swirling around and emanating from the man above him. Farris had a whole plethora of different lines reaching out of him and into the wider worlds, which finally made Sam realize why they were called threads. The sight, however, also brought back Sam’s headache with a vengeance (in this case, vengeance was roughly equal to a multiplier of ten) as his head was filled with too much garbled and nonsensical information carried by the innumerous threads.

“Fucking Christ!” Sam cried out while covering his eyes and rolling on his back. “This is so much fucking worse than it was before. What the hell is wrong with you?! And who the fuck is Erianna?!”

“Oh?” Farris sounded impressed. “You managed to get Erianna from that as well? That’s some talent you got there, my friend. I kept her in mostly as a joke. I was really pushing Ike hard.”

“What the fuck is that are you talking about?! Why do their names keep bouncing around in my head?!”

“Eh, it’s just a little Ruler trick. Doesn’t work on anyone but young Thread-Weavers or the really shitty assimilated Epiraks who, despite being Rulers, ended up as Brutes. I’ll teach you when you’re a Ruler. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried about that, asshole! I’m worried about my head being split open.”

“Oh, quit being such a baby. So you saw my full and unfettered existence, big deal. It’s just your brain trying to make sense of all facets of my being in order to determine my fate. That isn’t anything special. We’ve all been there.”

“What?”

“Farris,” chided Dan.

“C’mon. The kid keeps disrespecting me. I have to show him that I mean business in order to instill fear of me in him. What am I gonna do otherwise when one day he becomes stronger than me and decides to kick my ass? I need the psychological trauma to give me the upper hand!”

Sam scoffed, face to face with the grinning Farris. “You realize there’s a deep difference between disdain and fear, right? The only thing you’ve managed to instill in me is the assurance that you’re a weirdo and an asshole.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to the Ruler who decided to personally come and help you with the drudgery that is Awakening as a Thread-Weaver. There’s a reason why you can look upon my beautiful visual visage without being overwhelmed by my inner one when you couldn’t just a minute ago.”

Sam frowned at the widening smile in front of him. “You’re saying you’re the reason?”

“Of course I am.” Farris bowed with a flourish. “And that’s a job well done. You may now offer up your gratitude.”

“You didn’t do anything you jerk.”

“I beg to differ. It has been proven time and time again that the fastest way to help new Thread-Weavers turn off the Sight is to have them look upon a Ruler. There’s nothing quite like primordial fear of a being greater than you to get your mind to follow its instincts.”

“You said that he’ll manage to handle fine on his own,” Dan said.

“Well sure. But that could take up to a whole day. Look at me, for example, it took me not succeeding until dinner for my mother to give in and have me look at her. And no, I know what you’re thinking: she was still a Ruler then. Anyway, when it came Erianna’s turn to surprise the whole Web, I managed to convince my mother to only let her struggle with tracing on her own.”

“Just a moment,” Maurice said. “Following Esther’s confirmation that Sam was a Thread-Weaver, I researched the topic and found only a few references of needing them to look at Rulers. Most cases were able to turn the sight off on their own without much trouble.”

“Sure,” Farris said. “And I’m willing to bet that those Thread-Weavers were adults, right?”

“Yes…”

“Mm-hmm… So, two things there. One, quite obvious, older, higher-level people have a better understanding of magic, higher tolerance and all that other crap. They can figure out the Sight faster while also being much less troubled by its view. Second point, the younger you are to awaken your talent as a Thread-Weaver, the more talented you are. Which means that your first time using the Sight will be more headache inducing. Of course, it’s not really age that’s on trial, cause Sam is by all accounts rather old to display such startling talent, it’s levels. There’s a distinct difference of talent between those Thread-Weavers who are thus from the get go, i.e. before their Awakening, and those that only discover their talents after. Thread-Weavers like me and Sam are always best served by forcing us to see a Ruler.”

“Don’t put me together with you, man,” Sam said.

“Ah?! Why not? You think you’re better than me? As good as my niece? Are you saying you’re even better?!”

“Farris,” Dan said.

“What? I was only joking. There’s no way that the only Thread-Weaver Taken in history is going to come up short of an idiot like me. Now, Erianna, that’s a different—”

“So he really is the only one history?” Maurice asked. “You’ve confirmed it?”

Farris shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve seen your archive on Transit. It’s not much worse than ours, Maurice. And yes, I couldn’t find any mention of a Taken who’s also a Thread-Weaver, and I checked twice just to be sure. Now I know you and I disagree on the logic behind the Taken but you’ve got to face the facts. It’s pretty obvious that Sam is the only one of his kind. Which”—he turned to Sam, his eyes shining—“is exactly why I just had to come and see you for myself.”