“How—where did you get enough essence to unlock an Ability?” Sen asked, incredulous as he stared at the little girl in front of him. Tasha stared at empty air, reading letters that he couldn’t see. She seemed pensive; like a child that had found a new toy she was only beginning to understand.

At his question, however, Tasha blinked up at Sen. “Papa and I have been getting those pop-ups for days now,” she said. “Absorbing essence and stuff. It wasn’t much, but when you started um… killing the things outside, I started getting more.”

Sen felt his throat go dry. Of course. Not all of the ambient essence flowed into him—it was like a gas in the air, flooding into anyone that could breathe it in.

Glancing at Bali, Sen felt himself wince. He didn’t spur this on, did he?

“So I unlocked my Ability thing,” Tasha said, interrupting his thoughts. “I heard you talking about it with Papa on the way here.”

“You were listening?”

“U-yuh. It’s like a superpower, right? I wanted one too. Like you and Em.”

“But why did you just go and unlock it without telling anyone first? What if you got one that changed you forever? You could’ve ended up like the Hulk or something; big, green, and cursed to wear purple pants forever.”

He didn’t even want to imagine what would’ve happened if she randomly transformed into some monster. What would Bali say? What would he say? ‘Hey, your daughter and I were playing some Catan when she suddenly gained the ability to turn into a bloopy slime monster. Sorry?’

Bali would kill him. Never mind Sen’s Skill Orbs and Attributes—angry parents were a force of nature. Sen didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a pissed off dad’s wrath. And yet, the girl in front of her didn’t look remorseful at all.

Tasha crossed her arms, her lips set into a thin line. “Papa told me not to touch the glowing letters because they were dangerous,” she said. “But you’ve been touching them, and it looks like it only made you a little worse at board games. That isn’t that bad.”

Sen narrowed his eyes at her. “The interface has nothing to do with that.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

Sen pinched the bridge of his nose, then released a breath. He sent a glance to the side, at the sleeping Bali, wondering how he would explain it to the man once morning came. He knew it was hardly his fault that Tasha went and unlocked her Ability, but the girl had been under his supervision. It was hard not to feel a little at fault for letting her mutate herself with some freaky, alien interface. But that was just negative thinking; no more than pessimism. Sen chewed on his knuckles.

Right. He and Em weren’t the only ones with powers now. Everyone had access to them, and even Tasha would be able to help if she managed to unlock something useful. He just had to know what it was, and then he would be able to spin it into a good thing. Something that wouldn’t freak out Bali. Sen released a long breath, before flicking his eyes back up towards…

“Huh?”

Sen stared at the empty space in front of him. The table was gone. And in its place was Tasha, grinning, with her hand splayed just over where the table used to be.

The girl waddled over to a chair and tapped it with her finger.

Fwump.

The chair vanished with the sound of air rushing in to fill the empty space. Tasha’s grin widened as she strode around the room, poking at random objects. A potted plant—fwump.Gone. A mug, a carpet, and another chair: all vanishing into thin air. When she strode over to Misha with her arms outstretched, Sen paled. He leapt from his chair and grabbed her wrist, stopping her just before she touched the dog.

“Stop that,” he hissed. She frowned at him.

“Why?”

“You don’t just—look, testing your powers on living things is bad, okay? Misha isn’t a lab rat. What if your Ability hurts her?”

“It won’t,” she said. Then Tasha hesitated, her face slowly draining of the certainty it had before. She glanced away. “…I think.”

Sen stared at her, and she winced. Tasha lowered her arm.

“Okay, yeah. Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine,” Sen replied, nodding slowly. He released her arm. “Look, let’s just calm down and talk about it first, okay? Tell me everything—what your Ability does, what the golden letters say—all of it.”

“I think it’ll just be faster if I show you? Let me try.”

Before Sen could stop her, Tasha turned around and spread her arms wide.

Fwump!

The things she touched reappeared in front of her, neatly arranged atop the table she’d taken just seconds ago. It was an impressive display. But it wasn’t without its consequences. Tasha staggered back a step, her face pale. She blinked and blearily supported herself against a chair. “Oh,” she said. Her knees shook and she swayed but Sen was there, grabbing her arm before she could fall to the floor.

He helped her atop the seat, wincing as he watched her lips cracked. Tasha gulped dryly; air in place of spit, rasping down her desiccated throat. Sen squeezed her shoulders, forcing her unfocused eyes to look at him.

“Mierda, this is why you—” Sen bit his tongue. He shook her lightly. “You’re overdrawn. Don’t use your Ability any more, okay?”

“O… Okay,” she rasped.

Sen nodded. With a gesture, he used up his essence to conjure a Flow Bead. He raised it to her, meeting her eyes. “Eat it,” he said. She nodded numbly and took it—swallowed. Tasha let loose a shudder as the Flow surged back into her, curing the dryness spreading across her flesh. Face pale, she hugged herself, suddenly quiet once again. There was no excitement now—just wariness. Fear; as if she had just burned herself over a hot stove for the first time.

With another sigh, Sen took a chair and sat in front of her. She stared at him like a deer in the headlights. It looked like she was expecting a scolding—a slap on the wrist or some kind of anger. In place of that, Sen gently shook his head.

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“This is why you need to listen to me, alright? There’s a lot you don’t know, and this… system, or interface, or whatever—it’s dangerous stuff. You can’t mess around with it.”

Tasha lowered her eyes to the floor and nodded. Her teeth chattered as cold Flow surged through her.

“S-Sorry.”

“It’s okay, so long as you promise to take this seriously,” Sen said. He removed his jacket and draped it over her in an attempt to soothe the chill of Flow replenishment. “Do I have your word on that?”

Tasha gave a quick nod. She pulled the jacket tighter over herself and shivered again. “I… I promise.”

“Good. OK. Great. Let’s start with what your Ability does, okay?”

“…Do I read all of it out loud?”

“If you can.”

Tasha gave another nod as she spoke again, reading the Ability description word for word. Sen grabbed a stray piece of paper from nearby and quickly wrote everything down.

Ability: Spirit Vault [Mind] – Tier 0

Active. Varying Flow cost. This Ability creates a metaphysical storage in the user’s mind. Nonliving materials up to the user’s Tier may be pulled inside at a touch, and may then be released at will. Targets stored within the user’s Spirit Vault experience time at a slower rate and cannot interact with each other. Sapient objects with a Spirit Attribute higher than the user’s may resist this effect. Flow cost scales with volume, weight, and Tier of objects stored.

Sen stared at it. “Tasha,” he said. “What kind of trial did you get when you unlocked your Ability? A coin toss?”

The girl gave him a weird look. “Isn’t a coin toss just two options? I had a lot to choose from. Y’know, like a whole table of stuff just appeared in front of me—pencils, vases, books? Just stuff we had in our old house. I chose the one that looked like the backpack I wear to school.”

“Right,” Sen nodded, going over the text again. So it was true, then. He had asked Em about it before, and her Ability selection had been different from his. Where his had been a simple coin toss, Em’s had been… what did she call it? A gacha? Sen wasn’t sure; all he knew was that hers had been reminiscent of a slot machine of some kind. Sen had chosen when he had no choice, and it gave him the power to control the world around him. Em had gambled on some Japanese slot machine and got… anime. While Tasha—

She chose a backpack.

And now, it seemed that was what she had. A storage space that only she could access. The question was: just how big was it?

Sen glanced at the table beside them. The Flow cost was hard to gauge, with it being listed as ‘varying’ as opposed to Sen’s ‘high’ cost. But if it could store an entire table just like that… he turned his eyes back to Tasha.

“Do you think your dad will be mad if he finds out about this?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“So we don’t tell him.”

Tasha blinked up at him, surprised. “Isn’t this usually the part where you go snitchy on me? Like a responsible adult?”

“I feel like your impression of a responsible adult might be a little off.”

“So does this mean we’re going to lie to Papa?”

She looked a little conflicted at that, her face scrunched up into a small frown. Sen pursed his lips and squatted down in front of her, before placing a hand on Tasha’s shoulder. “We aren’t lying,” he said. “Lying is for liars, and liars go to hell. That’s not us.”

“What are we doing, then? If not telling Papa isn’t lying?”

“Saving the truth for later.”

Tasha gave him a look.

“What?” Sen asked.

“…Priya told me there was a term for boys that talk like you do.”

Sen grinned. “Persuasive? Handsome?”

“Sleazy scammist.”

His smile dropped. Sen narrowed his eyes at her innocent expression. “You’ve got a surprisingly nasty tongue under all that baby fat on your face.”

Tasha grinned.

“Priya taught me how to make fun of people properly.”

“Looks like she didn’t teach you any vocabulary, though. It’s scammer. Not… whatever butchery that was.”

She blushed. “I knew that. I just stuttered.”

“I guess that makes you a stuttist, eh?”

Tasha glared at him. Smirking, Sen rejoiced over the intellectual victory he just achieved over a twelve year-old girl. He stood up from his seat and paced around the room, keeping his voice soft as to not wake the others. “So going back,” he said, “we aren’t going to tell your dad because… well, honestly speaking, what does he think of the system?”

“He said it was Satan’s way of tempting us with power.”

“Yeah, I thought as much. Do you believe that?”

“Not really. I’m an attetist. Like Priya.”

“…Right,” he said, choosing not to comment. “And I’ve already seen my share of angry religious parents on Facebook. I’d really rather not deal with that in real life. Especially when it might lead to a disagreement. So we won’t tell him anything and I’ll show you what I know about the interface—at least until we’re at Maladh.” She nodded at that, bobbing her head along to each word, until Sen raised a finger and stopped her short. “Under one condition.”

“What condition?”

“Before you do anything with your interface, you tell me first. I don’t want you accidentally mutating yourself into some weird monster because you chose the wrong upgrade,” he said, remembering some of the Augments that had become available to him. Some had already changed him, and others could do far worse than giving him slightly sharper teeth. “If you can’t agree to that, I won’t help you. I’m going to tell Bali as soon as he wakes up, even if it means a disagreement.”

Tasha stared at him in disbelief. “You want to backseat me? That’s not cool, bro!”

“Don’t ‘bro’ me. You're twelve. You don’t get to ‘bro’ anyone,” he said, crossing his arms. “Supervising you closely is my condition, and it’s yes or no. No compromises.”

She glared at him, and Sen could practically hear the thoughts going through her head. If she saved the truth for later, would he notice? Could she keep it secret? The answer was… yes. Probably. At the very least, Sen wouldn’t be able to sense the essence shifting inside her after an upgrade if she didn’t do it near him.

But that didn’t matter. Because sooner or later, he’d know. And after that, he would have to come clean with her dad; hand off the responsibility to him before Tasha did anything stupid under his supervision.

The girl in front of him kept glaring, until her face slacked into a disappointed pout. Tasha huffed out a breath.

“Fine,” she said. “I promise to tell you before I do anything.”

“Good,” Sen said, extending a hand. “Let’s shake on it.”

She shook. Reluctantly.

“The handshake makes it feel really final, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” she grumbled, and Sen laughed.

“Alright,” he said, releasing her hand. “Now that we’ve got this sorted out, you should go to sleep. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.”

“We aren’t doing anything with my interface today?”

“Nope. Because I’m testing you. If I sense any essence changing you, I’m breaking off our agreement. We’ll hold off on changing anything until tomorrow, and until then, you’re grounded from using your Ability.”

She tried to glare at him again, but quickly gave up. “…Fine. I changed my mind. You aren’t cool anymore. You’re just a control freak who’s bad at board games.”

“Controllist.”

Tasha huffed and stomped away, heading for the mattress Amir had set up on the floor. It was in the corner of the room, arranged for them to sleep on. The Emirati had said that it was to keep an eye on them, but…

Sen glanced at him.

Amir sat on his chair, head knocked back. He released a long, droning snore.

He wasn’t doing a very good job at keeping watch, by the looks of it. Sen grunted as he stretched, his back arched and his arms up. He glanced at the clock and saw it ticking past 1AM. He knew this was around the time he was supposed to wake up Em—he was supposed to swap places with her, sleeping while she kept watch.

But one glance at her was enough for him to decide otherwise. Em looked tired. Enough that her sleeping face was the most relaxed he’d seen her since they met. Sen didn’t want to pull her out of that.

It wasn’t like he felt sleepy, anyway. His Attributes had reduced his need for sleep. Sen guessed he had at least another day in him before he started feeling drowsy again.

So for now, he’d take responsibility of staying awake for the rest of the night.

Sen sat back down with a low sigh, before raising his finger to the air. Ping! The usual sound went, reminiscent of his iPhone’s message ringtone, as his interface sprang into existence with a flurry of golden letters.

Darkvision (Tier 0 – Blue) [Mind]

Passive. The user’s eyes adjust to the darkness. Darkvision is improved. Vampiric origin; future skill augments affected.

Available Augments…

Sen stared at the list and smiled.

It was always good to get another upgrade.