The javelin flew true, its obsidian tip lodging between the rat’s ribs. Paul’s second throw struck the rat’s shoulder, and he followed behind it in a sprint, spear leading the way. The rat leaped at Paul, but was slowed by the two javelins sticking from its side. Paul rolled to the side and used the newly gained muscle memory from his [Tumbling] skill to spring gracefully back to his feet. Stretching his arm out, Paul braced the butt end of his spear on the ground and held tight as the rat impaled itself on it.

Paul quickly moved to bleed and field dress the dead rat. He no longer needed the meat and materials that it would provide, but having too much salted meat and hide didn’t strike him as a problem either.

Seymore skittered out from Paul’s furred vest to inspect the kill, then turned to Paul expectantly.

Paul smiled and cut off tiny bits of rat flesh for the diminutive lizard, who eagerly gulped them down and blinked its four eyes happily.

“There you go, little guy. Hey now,” Paul admonished as Seymore butted at Paul’s fingers, “No need to get greedy, plenty more where that came from.”

Paul knew that he was probably over-feeding the lizard, but didn’t have the heart to turn it down, so he carved off several more slivers of meat.

Finally satisfied, Seymore scampered up Paul’s arm again and crawled into his vest to rest against Paul’s warm skin.

Seymore was one of several lizards from Paul’s cavern that came to investigate whenever he dragged a kill back to butcher. At first, he chased the lizards away with pebbles whenever they came near, but over time he relented, letting them come closer and tossing them scraps. He even found himself talking to them. They couldn’t answer back of course, but the act of talking to someone other than himself opened the verbal floodgates for Paul, and soon chatting with the lizards became part of his daily routine.

He would tell them about his day, about his struggles, his fears and his accomplishments. He gave them names too - Audrey, Mushnik, Orin, and Seymore. Logically, he knew that his behavior was a little unhinged, but his interactions with the lizards eased his feelings of loneliness.

Seymore had been the first to eat from Paul’s hand, and the only one to clamber up next to Paul in the cavern when he slept, luxuriating in Paul’s body heat.

Now Seymore was Paul’s constant companion, content to perch on Paul’s shoulder as he walked, only to scramble back into Paul’s buckskins to curl up against Paul’s chest when the little lizard got cold.

Seymore’s behavior wasn’t what Paul expected from a lizard, often reacting more like a dog than a reptile. Then again, Paul had concluded that the flora and fauna in these caves did not originate from Earth, and how should he know how an alien lizard should act?

Paul retrieved his rucksack and water skin from where he set them when he first saw the death-rat. He finished butchering, packed up the fore and hind-quarters, arranged his gear, willed his floating light into existence, and set back off into the dark.

Paul smiled as he walked. He had come a long way from his first day in the caverns. Where before he was naked, he now wore comfortable leathers made from the softer belly hide of the death-rats. Paul had modeled the clothing off of the buckskins that some indigenous people on earth had favored with some modifications of his own, like double-stitched seams and reinforced knees and elbows.

His [Leatherworking] and [Tailoring] skills had increased considerably as Paul tried to create clothing of greater and greater complexity.

To Paul’s surprise, it wasn’t sewing clothing that turned out to be the most significant challenge, but creating waterskins and rucksacks instead. Paul crafted the waterskins out of delicate cave muskox stomachs that he encased in thick leather, and while the concept was simple enough, it took Paul days of experimentation until he was able to create a waterskin that didn’t leak and that could be closed securely with a bone stopper that fit snugly into the spout.

The rucksack also went through several versions before Paul found a design that pleased him. The final version had multiple compartments secured with carved-bone toggle buttons, thick, fur-lined shoulder harnesses, and a wide hip strap.

Straps and loops covered the pack, which allowed Paul to carry the small arsenal he created with him.

Two jaw-bone war-clubs hung at his hips. The matched set was made from a much larger death-rat than his original club, and sported handles wrapped in raw-hide for additional grip. On his back, Paul strapped a brace of javelins. These  short throwing spears tipped with knapped obsidian were only 1.5 meters in length, which kept them from becoming a hindrance in the cave system’s narrow passages.

Paul created a bow as well and earned skills in [Bowyery] and [Fletching] for his troubles, but he found that in the twisting caverns, he rarely had the range that would allow him to use it to its full potential. The crude, fur-fletched arrows he was able to create also didn’t seem to slow down the denizens of the caves as much as he’d like unless he struck a vital area. Despite his practice and the [Archery] skill that resulted, hitting the eye of a charging death-rat was beyond his abilities at the moment.

The javelin proved more useful. Once they were lodged in their flesh, the creatures that were hit would be slowed, in addition to the wounds that worsened the beasts’ movement. Paul practiced throwing them every night, prompting the acquisition of the [Thrown Weapon] skill.

The most important weapon that Paul carried, however, was his spear. With its reach of 2.5 meters it allowed Paul to keep his distance from his prey. It was carved out of one of the trees he found in the sun-cavern, it’s wood hardened in fire and tipped with a long tapering piece of knapped obsidian.

The spear had been a game-changer for Paul. No longer did Paul have to approach to tooth, claw, or constriction range of his prey. Instead, he could keep his distance, first injuring then dispatching the beasts with  deadly stabs. [Piercing Weapons] and [Thrust] skills aided him in his practice, turning his halting movements into fluid strikes.

He was more proficient with his light as well, earning additional ranks in the [Light Essence], [Intent Focusing] and [Channeling] skills.  He was able to keep it shining for hours at a time now without difficulty and could change its position and size on a whim. Over time, he also found that he was able to manipulate the consistency of the sphere of light, from dense and hard to airy and ephemeral.

He experimented with using the light as a weapon, throwing it with his mind at the creatures that inhabited the caves, but was unsuccesful. He couldn’t propel the light any faster than he could throw it, and even when he focused on making it as dense and as hard as he could, it didn’t have any more impact than that if he had just thrown a small rock instead.

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The range of the light was a problem as well. He had made significant progress, from struggling to manipulate the light just a few feet away to now comfortably extending his control to about ten meters. After that point, however, it became harder and harder to focus his intent, and the lights would fade once thrown too far.

The light did prove itself useful as a distraction - by moving it directly in front of a snake, spider, or death-rat, Paul was able to blind them temporarily.

He was still vaguely uncomfortable with the entire concept of the light. He tried not to use the word “Magic” when thinking about it. The world he found himself in was strange enough without having to try to wrap his head around that, and while the invaders that landed on Trappist-4 had used abilities that seemed magical, Paul was reminded of the phrase “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” If the huge ships that the invaders had landed with weren’t evidence enough of “advanced technology”, he didn’t know what was.

Attempts to create other things than light by focusing his intent was unsuccessful, but the failures had a silver lining: they prompted a message. The first time it happened, Paul had pictured a small fire instead of light when focusing his intent. Instead of a flame appearing in front of him, he received a message, similar to the ones that informed him of skill gains.

*Affinity limited reached. No further affinities available.*

The same communication flashed across his consciousness when he pictured water, stone, electricity, and a dozen other things. Each time, the message was the same. Whatever this ability to create light was, it was all Paul was getting, and Paul’s daydreams of raining down lightning bolts and tossing fireballs, as the invaders had, were dashed.

However, the message and the limitations it communicated reinforced to Paul that whatever was happening to Paul was part of some system. He just wished he could just figure out its rules.

Paul arrived at his destination, one of the large, lighted caves he had found during his weeks of exploring. With practiced movements, he built a fire with the coal carried in his pack. This cavern marked one of his furthest forays from his home fungus grove, a full “day’s” walk away. He had identified several of these caves, well lit and with a good water source, which could serve as way-stops for further exploration.

After a simple dinner of cooked rat meat shared with Seymore and water from a slow trickle that flowed down the wall of the cavern, Paul climbed up on the spongy surface of a shelf-fungus and draped a cave-musk ox pelt from his pack over his body.

Seymore curled up next to him on the warm fungus, the lizard’s four eyes watching Paul as he went through his nightly ritual.

He practiced with his light essence before he fell asleep as he did every night, changing its size, position, and density, stretching his ability to manipulate the manifestation of light. The more he practiced with the glowing energy, the more he began to picture it like a balloon that he had to keep blowing air into to stay inflated.

It raised a question in his mind.

If it’s like a balloon, is there a way to tie it off? To keep my intent powering the light without forcing more into it?

He considered the problem, visualizing the connection of intent that flowed from himself to the light. The problem with “tying it off” was that it wasn’t a balloon, and there was no barrier to keep the energy contained. He wondered if he could change that.

Paul attempted to create a bubble to keep the light constrained, winding his intent around the glow and encapsulating it. The effort made his head throb with pain. It was like trying to knit with cotton candy, his ephemeral wisps of intent stretching and breaking with each attempt.

He tried a different approach, weaving his intent together in an interconnected fabric of will. It took all of Paul’s concentration, visualizing each strand of purpose that he pushed from himself and their place in the weave. It wasn’t a process that Paul could see with his eyes or feel with his hands, and instead, Paul was forced to rely on the strange awareness of his intent that he had developed along with the light.

Slowly the weave took shape, forming a fabric of intent that Paul stretched over the light. Excitement built in Paul’s chest as he secured the pattern around the glow. For a brief moment, the light persisted without Paul pushing more intent into it. Then the weave frayed, then broke.

Paul panted, sweat dripping from his head. The mental effort to create the weave was staggering. He clenched his fists in frustration. He didn’t know enough about his intent, about the light, about any of it. He didn’t even know if what he was trying to accomplish was even possible.

Sighing, he relaxed back on the shelf-fungus and resigned himself to sleep, struggling to ignore his throbbing headache.

Try as he might though, he couldn’t relax. He had felt like he was so close to a breakthrough before the weave disintegrated, and ideas of how to improve the pattern danced in his head every time he closed his eyes.

I’m not going to be able to sleep until I figure this out, am I?

Paul groaned, sat up, and turned his concentration back to the mental challenge.

The weave is good, but the individual threads of intent are too weak. What if I create stronger threads of intent?

He absently fingered the Cave Muskox scarf that lay beside him. To create it, he had spun the soft, long hairs from the animals around each other to form a yarn before knitting them together into a loose weave. Could he do the same with his intent?

Paul closed his eyes and set himself to the task. It was a maddeningly slow process, visualizing his intent as separate threads, then twisting them around each other to create long, dense ropes of will. Paul had to keep mental track of each thread and where it was in the yarn until the different strands of intent secured it in place as they wrapped around each other. If a piece slipped out of grasp of his will, the string would fray and disintegrate.

Compounding the problem was the fact that while spinning thread and weaving were useful analogies for what Paul was attempting, he was painfully aware of the fact that they were just that - analogies. Intent wasn’t thread, and while the mental framework helped, the challenge that he set himself to was altogether different than a task of dexterity or strength.

The pain in Paul’s head increased, and he knew that he didn’t have much time to finish before he ran out of the medium that he focused his intent through. He hesitated to call it mana - doing so would invoke the other M word, which Paul didn’t want to consider until he had ruled out every other possibility - so instead he thought of it as potential energy, like a cart on the top of a hill, waiting to be pushed. Currently, the cart was very near the bottom.

He didn’t want to rush the work either, and so he unclenched his jaw and let the pain wash over him as he had before, letting it run through him instead of consuming him. He completed the weave of intent, each piece composed of dozens of individual threads. Gently, he wrapped the weave around his light, containing the leaking of intent, then wove the entire construct shut.

Paul held his breath and opened his eyes. The light remained, floating above his head, but Paul wasn’t pushing intent at it any longer. He could still feel the light in his mind, a delicate leash of awareness connecting him to it. Through that tether Paul could feel a tiny drain of potentiality, keeping the weave in place around the glow, but the concentration and intent it took to maintain it was infinitesimal to what it was before.

*New Skill Gained: Essence Perennity Level 1*

*New Skill Gained: Mental Resilience Level 1*

*Channeling has reached Level 4*

He let out his breath and fell back to his spongy fungus bed. Sweat covered him, and his head felt like it might split open at any moment, but Paul had one more experiment to perform.

With the last of his intent and potentiality, Paul envisioned a second light while maintaining his connection to the one that he had “tied off.” It seemed harder than it usually was, but Paul wasn’t sure if it was because he was so low on potentiality or if there was another reason, but eventually, Paul was able to form a second light, hovering near the first.

*New Skill Gained: Manifold Intent*

Paul turned to Seymore, who had watched Paul’s silent struggle in confusion.

“This is going to be interesting Seymore, just you wait.”

Seymore didn’t understand, but the little lizard cocked his head as if he did, which was enough for Paul. It snuggled up to Paul’s side, and they fell asleep together, a small glowing sphere hovering above.