“Okay, I can’t wait any longer. I’m gonna wake him up.” Kai pulled up the goggles that had slumped from his forehead to his nose.

“How do you intend on doing that?” Galina asked.

Ace rolled over in bed. His spine felt like lead. Although he could get up, he desperately needed to sleep just a little longer—even if he was faking it.

“With this,” Kai said.

Ace could hear Kai rummaging around his bag, but couldn’t see what he pulled out.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Galina said.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll just aim somewhere non-vital, like his thigh.”

“AND I’M AWAKE!” Ace shot out of bed.

Kai slowly pulled his thumb off his revolver’s hammer.

“Could you not look so disappointed?” Ace asked, tossing covers off himself.

“Fine,” Kai groaned.

“Good morning,” Galina said.

“Morning.” Ace jumped out of bed, rubbing his eyes.

“Dude you okay?” Kai asked. “Your eyes are bloodshot.”

Ace cocked his head.

“Kai, that’s their normal color,” Galina reminded Kai.

“Oh, my bad,” Kai said. “You said you wanted to talk to us last night.”

“Yeah. Where’s everyone else?” Ace asked.

“Draxl and Halvor went out shopping for food and supplies. Riven and Cili said they were going to do some recon around the barn,” Galina said.

“That’s good.” Ace grabbed his satchel that was hanging from the bed frame. “Kai, I was wondering if you could build something for me. I tried to draw up some diagrams.”

Ace pulled out a couple of folded pieces of paper, but accidentally flipped his satchel over, sending several crumpled balls of paper tumbling onto the floor. “Shit.”

“What are these?” Galina asked.

“Things I thought either wouldn’t work or were too ambitious,” Ace explained.

“Too ambitious?” Kai asked. “Who do you think I am?”

“I’m trying to be reasonable. We have an afternoon, and I want something to be useful,” Ace said.

Galina glanced at the crumpled paper scattered on the floor. “There are a lot of things here.”

“Yeah, I went through a lot of ideas, trying to figure out what would work and what wouldn’t. I should’ve figured something out sooner, but I was flip-flopping between ideas. I wanted to get it right, which now leaves us with very little time.”

Kai flipped through the diagrams Ace had drawn up. “Yeah this should be fine, but are you sure this is all you want?”

“I didn’t want to make you do too much work,” Ace said. “Sorry if the diagrams don’t really make a whole lotta sense.”

“I’ll fill in the gaps. The big, big gaps. Just a heads up, but this probably isn’t gonna work the way you think.”

Ace leaned over Kai’s shoulder to see what he was pointing to. “Like, it’s not possible?”

“No, it’s doable, just the bullets are going to fly in every direction. You’ll be needing to stick the barrel straight into their ribcage, and even then you’ll miss half your shots,” Kai explained.

“What is it?” Galina asked.

“I want to have an infusion on the revolver that fires all the shots in rapid succession,” Ace said.

“Now I can design that infusion, but rapid firing shots out of a revolver is going to send bullets everywhere,” Kai said.

“That’s fine,” Ace said. “I kind of expected that to be honest, which actually goes into why I wanted to talk to Galina.”

“Not much of a marksman,” Galina said.

“No, not about aiming. I wanted to talk about, well, uh it’s better if I show you. Kai, do you have anything small?”

“Catch.” Kai tossed a handful of ball bearings at Ace.

Ace held out his hand with the ball bearings rolling around in his palm. “[Possess].”

The ball bearings slowly rose from Ace’s hand, floating in the air. “And then.” The ball bearings accelerated and started to spin around Ace in an erratic pattern like a hoard of metallic insects.

”Neat trick,” Galina said. “When’d you figure this out.”

“Pretty recently. [Possess] that I thought was pretty obvious. Initially, it happened with Kegan, which is what I told you guys about.”

“How he possessed you and fought that mutant raeven?” Kai asked.

“Right. So, I locked myself into thinking it was only for another person’s soul to possess me. Then, I ended up talking to Draxl more about skills, and he explained that skills are powered by essence, which is just a measure of your soul's strength. Also, he told me that skills are based on your interpretation.

“That got me thinking, why couldn’t [Possess] work both ways? Also, for that matter, I’ve seen spirits in objects, so why couldn’t I use it to manipulate objects, by possessing them myself? I tried it out, and this was the result.”

“That’s actually pretty impressive. Normally people struggle to change their view of a skill. It’s one thing to think of the skill differently, it’s a whole other thing entirely to change your subconscious view,” Kai explained.

“Thanks. Draxl explained in a way that made it pretty easy to understand,” Ace said.

“Just a heads up, it’s fine to praise him behind his back, but please do it when he’s here. For my sake,” Kai pleaded.

“I can do that.”

“So why did you want to talk to me about it?” Galina asked.

“Well, I figured this was pretty similar to your telekinesis. To be honest, it’s pretty difficult for me to move anything super heavy. I’d have to focus all my essence if I wanted to move a chair,” Ace said. “I was wondering if you had any advice since this is sort of similar. Any chants that maybe work well?”

“Before we get into chants, can I ask you a question?” Galina asked

“Sure.”

“The way you're moving the ball bearings, have you practiced that at all?”

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“Like this specific pattern?’ Ace asked. “No, not really.”

“Huh. Stand still.” Galina walked around Ace, closely inspecting the orbiting ball bearings. “Could you do me a favor? Stop the ball bearings, and put half in one hand, and half in the other.”

Ace did as Galina requested.

“Now could you make the ones in your right-hand spin counterclockwise, and the ones in your left spin clockwise.”

Once again, Ace did as Galina said.

“Now switch.”

Ace effortlessly alternated the rotation.

“You can stop now,” Galina said.

“Can I ask what that was for?”

“It seems your method of controlling objects is fundamentally different from mine.”.

“How so?” Ace asked.

“Doing what you did, just now, took me months of constant practice. The amount of times I hit myself in the back of the head trying to control an object that was behind my back, I can’t remember.”

“Probably because you hit yourself in the head so much,” Kai said.

“Very likely,” Galina said.

“So I’m some sort of genius?” Ace asked.

“Well,” Galina said. “The other thing is that when I started, though I couldn’t move objects out of my sight all that accurately, I could toss around things a lot heavier than a chair.

“You already touched on it slightly, but could you elaborate on what exactly you imagine your [Possess] skill to be?”

“I view it as me passing my essence into these objects, and them becoming an extension of myself. Sort of like an extra limb, if that makes sense,” Ace explained.

“Compared to Galina, your control is a lot better, but your power is a lot worse,” Kai said.

“Okay. Not really sure how to use that though, but I’ll think of something. Control can be fixed with practice. Power is harder to improve for sure.”

“To that point, from what it sounds like, you can use [Possess] to pour your essence into an object to take control of it as an extension of yourself, does that sound right?” Galina asked.

“Spot on,” Ace answered.

“Wonderful,” Galina said. “Kai, could I trouble you for two empty glass bottles?”

“Target practice?” Kai asked to which Galina simply smiled.

Kai set two glass bottles on a table in the room.

“Now, how do you stop the skill?” Galina asked Ace.

“Uh, sometimes it works if I just stop thinking about it, but other times I have to keep thinking about it before it turns off,” Ace replied.

“Skills are ultimately about shaping your essence, so it might be useful to create something that you can associate with disabling your skill,” Galina suggested. “It’s not ideal, and a thought should be enough, but it’s a helpful method when starting out.”

“I can snap my fingers,” Ace said.

“Go for it.”

Ace snapped his fingers, and the ball bearings collapsed into his hands.

“Good job. Now, I want you to use your skill on one of the ball bearings and fire at one of the glass bottles.”

“[Possess].” Ace sent the possessed ball bearing flying across the room. It struck the glass bottle cracking it open. The bottle fell on its side and rolled off the table.

Galina levitated the glass shards over the waste bin in the room. “Now I want you to do something a little different. Try using a chant.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. I only got my first skill pretty recently,” Ace said.

“It won't alter the skill greatly, so it shouldn’t use too much essence,” Galina assured Ace. “Instead of imbuing the object with enough essence to control it, now I want you to try pumping in as much as you can. Try adding the word focus before the skill.”

Ace glanced down at the ball bearing in his hand. He envisioned the ball bearing as a hollow shell, completely devoid of essence. Traditionally when using [Possess] Ace imagined coating the exterior of the object with his essence to control it now. Now, he tried to fill the hollow shell with his essence.

“Focus, [Possess].”

The ball bearing accelerated across the room in a blur of glistening metal. It tore through the glass bottle sending a satisfying crunch echoing throughout the room as glass shards were sent flying into the air.

“Holy shit! It worked!” Ace’s jubilation was quickly cut off by a sudden onset of lethargy. He doubled over and slowly regulated his breathing. “I’m good. I’m good. Just didn’t expect it to take that much out of me. Still, though, that’s way better. It was only a single word too.”

“It’s a pretty common misconception that the longer a chant is, the more powerful it is. Short chants can be just as effective and are a lot quicker too. Though they still aren’t quite as fast as crosses, just because of the need to pause,” Galina said.

“So you’re going to use [Possess] to control the bullet spread from the rapid-fire?” Kai asked. “Since the gun is all the speed you need, it compensates for the lack of power.”

“That’s the plan,” Ace said.

“Take these.” From his bag, Kai pulled out something and tossed it to Ace.

Ace looked down to see three massive bullets in his hand. They were longer than his palm with a bright red tip.

“They were my attempt at downsizing dragon piercer rounds to fit in my rifle,” Kai said.

“Dragon piercer rounds?” Ace inquired.

“Rounds meant for hunting dragons. They’re normally way bigger and more powerful than those. Those are red dragon ones, which are the easiest to make,” Kai explained.

“What do they do?” Ace asked

“Explode. That’s why they didn’t work in the rifle. They would’ve just blown up halfway through the barrel,” Kai said. “If you use them, especially with a chant, you might be able to cause some serious damage, since it should be fast enough to trigger the detonation.”

“Thanks man. This is more than enough,” Ace said.

“Is it?” Kai asked.

“With all due respect, I’ve already asked a lot of you guys. You probably have stuff you want to do to prepare for the auction as well,” Ace said.

“If you wanna feel better about asking us for stuff, I was gonna ask you for something,” Kai said.

“Oh, uh, okay,” Ace said.

“You talked about how you can sort of hear spirits sometimes?” Kai asked.

“Yeah.”

“And that works even for alive people because it worked with that captain in Wickerbound?” Kai asked.

“He didn’t talk to me, but I felt his spirit tugging me in a direction, so there was some kind of communication,” Ace explained

“Right, and you haven’t tried it since, so you might be able to talk to the spirits of people who are still alive,” Kai said. “So I was wondering since it seems like you either need to talk to the person or interact with some item that they had some connection with, if when we get the locket my parents gave me, would you try to talk to their spirits? I’ll be there with you, and you’ll kind of just be a medium for me if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, of course,” Ace said, a little stunned.

“I’d actually request something a little similar,” Galina said. “There’s somebody I know who passed away that I’d like a chance to say a few things to. Not anytime soon, but if we stay in contact, could I ask that you come to visit where they are buried and help me speak to them?”

“I’d be honored. I’m sorry that I can’t promise anything since I don’t fully understand how my skills work, but I’ll try my best to figure it out.

“I think I want to offer this to everyone else too. Let them speak to the people they’ve lost. It’s the least I could do to repay everyone.”

“That’d be very kind of you,” Galina said.

“And very, leaderly. Is that a word?’ Kai asked.

“I don’t know,” Ace said. “But I do feel less bad about asking for stuff now. What was your concern, Kai?”

“Now I don’t have a whole lot of experience, but it seems like telekinesis, at least how you manage to imitate it, is most effective when you can put distance between you and your opponent. Does that sound right, Galina?” Kai asked.

“That’s accurate,” Galina confirmed.

“Yeah, and that goes especially for you since you’ll be using a firearm to fight,” Kai said. “Now for someone like Galina with a ton of experience and probably some other tricks, that’s fine, but in your case, this is really all you have.”

“I get what you’re saying. If someone gets up close I need some way to fight,” Ace said.

“Or some way to keep your opponent at a distance to prevent them from getting in striking distance,” Kai suggested. “However with there being a ton of movement skills and your lack of battle experience means you’re going to find yourselves in close quarters.

“Why not something that does both? Keeps your enemy away and lets you fight up close. Ideally, if it takes advantage of you having expert control, it can help bridge the gap in combat skill,” Galina said.

“Something that helps me fight up close, but also keep my opponent at a distance and takes advantage of having fine control over it.” Ace’s eyes drifted from the floor to the ceiling and around the room, before widening. He quickly went on his knees, picking up and uncrumpling the papers that had fallen out of his satchel. “It was one of my more out-there ideas. Ah, found it!”

Ace showed the crinkled design to Kai and Galina. “What do you think?”

“I think it suits you quite well,” Galina said.

“Can you pull it off in time?” Ace asked Kai.

A glint of delight sparkled in Kai’s eyes. His smile, stretching from ear to ear, was the kind only somebody deeply obsessed with challenging themselves when it came to what they love most could have on their face. “I can work with that.”