Another week passed, and Sparrow was still far from mastering the warping step.

He might’ve overestimated himself a little bit, thinking his being able to cross Death Rope Passing the first time meant he could do it again faster, but Ninmah and the children had other plans; they’d detached some of the ropes, loosened others, and made it so the winds shoved the ropes from literal end to end like swings on loose bolts—he’d be hard-pressed to even crawl across them normally, let alone balance himself on two feet while focusing on his warping.

That didn’t mean he’d declined the additional challenge, of course. It just meant in the past week, he figured he’d reached a hard limit of about eight metres per warp for now. Additional levels in strength, dexterity, and perceptivity would definitely be helpful, but not immediately necessary. Eight metres per warp was more than enough distance for him to manoeuvre around the top of the mountain range, and moving away from the ‘controlled’ training range that was Death Rope Passing, Ninmah had started bringing him into the rest of Immanu since the blizzard started weakening eight days ago—and the village in the sky was where he practised his warping.

His daily ‘run’ through the village, too, was but another part of his morning training routine.

“Ready?” Ninmah asked, popping her shoulders and stretching her legs and glancing at Sparrow as she did. “Same rules as yesterday: no warping out of village bounds, and no bumping into anyone. Whoever touches the chimes at the top of the bell tower first wins. Break any one of the rules and you lose instantly. Got it?”

Sparrow threw on his cloak and pulled his hood up, bracing himself for the chilly air outside. He’d more than grown used to the rather thin garments she’d give him—they were surprisingly effective at keeping him warm, though he wasn’t sure how it was possible—so he left both his fur coat and army-issued scarf on his bed, hesitating for a short moment before deciding he’d take his rifle with him as usual.

There was no reason to part with his weapon, he thought, as Ninmah didn’t even finish counting down from three before immediately warping out of his cabin.

… Alright.

You want to cheat?

Beginning in his cabin, Sparrow took a single step forward to warp out into the snow, and then warped ten consecutive eight metre distances to start things off—he hadn’t realised this before, but his repurposed storage cabin was actually on the far outskirts of the village, meaning there was no easy way to actually get to the village without him being able to control his warps. Ninmah hadn’t been keeping him arbitrarily confined the first week he arrived at Immanu; she must’ve figured he’d want to reach the village with his own strength, of his own accord, and as he chased after Ninmah’s tail, he felt she’d definitely made the right choice keeping the village hidden from him until he was ready to traverse it with his own two feet.

That was, as its silhouette appeared through the wintry mist and clouds, a ‘true’ village in the sky.

Nestled in a crater and walled off by four sky-piercing blackrock mountains, Immanu was a small hundred-house village made of glistening crystal wood, densely packed and filled with crooked, winding alleyways. As he warped past the wooden fences and through the giant rectangular gate, the fields of snow on the outskirts gave way to endless gardens of crystal-petal flowers surrounding the village, misty streams running throughout filled with colourful fishes and lotus blossoms bobbing on the waves.

Scattered groups of children in thick white layers spotted him and Ninmah, and they waved at them their morning greetings as they washed clothes in the streams, picked blossoms from the weaves, and played with strange toys he’d heard them call ‘slinkies’—and while Sparrow would like to nod back out of common courtesy, he was going to lose Ninmah if he wasn’t completely focused on her.

Past the gate, past the loitering children, the bonnet houses of the village were upon him, windmills on gabled roofs spinning about as he warped through the narrow cobbled alleys. The wooden walls shimmered with reflected sunlight, and each overhanging roof of every house were dangling with unique beads, talismans, and countless small treasures: some had feathers bound with bright threads, others had tiny gems carved with symbols of their local tongue, and some others had chains of wooden beads that let sunlight refract through, throwing shimmers of colour across the air. He decided it was all too much for him to take in and warped up to the closest roof, stumbling for half a second before sweeping his eyes across for Ninmah’s tail.

The view of Immanu from up high was still just as bright. Small shrines and communal kitchens and storage sheds and tanning houses stood out like sore thumbs with their colour-marked roofs, yes, but the twenty-metre-high bell tower in the centre of the village was outstanding itself. He spotted Ninmah warping towards it from the left, and he pursued—warping from one roof to another and doing his best not to hold his breaths with each step he took.

Must try to relax.

Remember the feeling of walking ‘in-between’.

Breathe, and step.

The key to controlling his warping was not to rush, after all. He was still jogging, but not throwing his entire body into a forward lean like he would a mad dash towards an enemy—and his half-urgent, half-lazy, ‘in-between’ jog allowed him to catch up to Ninmah, both of them reaching the base of the bell tower at the exact same time.

Without casting a glance at her, he began scaling the protruding alabaster bricks with his bare hands, his rifle slung on a strap behind his back. He could’ve sworn he heard Ninmah shouting something about not even acknowledging her, but ten metres up into the climb he heard footsteps eerily close to him; he looked over reluctantly and saw her running up the wall barefoot, blitzing past him while jeering at him with her tongue stuck out.

A tier three mutation, most likely.

Most systems have a wall-clinging mutation as one of their tier three mutations.

He wasn’t worried, though. She may have beaten him to the top the same way the past eight days, but he’d spent all night practising in his cabin by climbing the pillars to the second floor railings. That was, he flung himself up with two hands while letting go of the protruding bricks–

And warped the last eight metres to the top of the tower, slapping the bundle of chimes before he began to fall.

Taking a step was just one form of warping, after all. He’d figured out last night that any sort of movement that involved the shifting of weight could be used to trigger the warp, so he ignored Ninmah’s dumbfounded look as he fell past her, landing hard on the fluffy mound of snow at the base of the tower.

The impact was nullified, but his spine still felt some of it—he was only four times as tough as the average man—so he had to hold in a groan as he lay flat on his back, letting sunlight hit his face like a cold shower in the morning.

[Strain: 68%]

… Ow.

As he forced himself to sit upright, rubbing his neck and rolling his shoulders, a bunch of children started gathering around the village square with curious looks. Most were dressed so thickly in fluffy white cloaks he could’ve easily mistaken them for snowmen in the distance, but this was his third day in the village and there was no mistaking anything anymore—there wasn’t a single adult in this village. There were no elders with grey beards weaving baskets on the streets, no childbearing mothers tending to the stoves and disgruntled hunter fathers looking for a bed to crash on. The oldest pale person he’d seen in Immanu was Ninmah, and she didn’t look a day past his own age.

He was… fourteen.

He thought.

He could be wrong.

But the dozen or so children gathering around him, laughing and chatting and filling the air with their warped voices, couldn’t have an average age of over ten.

"̵... Alri̷g̸ht, ̸alright! ̴Go a̶way! P̶lay ̷s̵omew̶here ̴else!̴ I'̷m ̵tryin̴g̷ ̸to ̴tea̸c̵h̴ dar̴k ha̴ir̶ to n̷o̶t̷ get s̵ic̵k̸ w̷h̸en h̵e̸'s ̶w̵arping̵!" Ninmah said, shooing the children away with her warping voice as she landed on her feet next to him. The children stared at her blankly for another second before she started kicking snow into their faces, making them squeal and laugh and warp away in droves; soon it was just the two of them, and she turned to offer him a helping hand with a small smile. “You finally figured out how to warp while climbing, huh? You’re a slow learner! The kids here learn how to do that when they’re four! And they’re gonna keep laughing at you if you keep falling after a warp you’re not ready to handle!”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He scowled as he accepted her helping hand, letting her pull him onto his feet. While she helped pat snow off his hood and he straightened the flaps of his cloak, he turned to look up at the top of the bell tower—wincing for a moment as he looked straight into the sun. It might not be an achievement to Ninmah and the Worm Mages, but within his own battalion, he’d never lost in a foot race to any one of his comrades.

That he finally beat Ninmah after eight days of continuous failures was nothing short of cathartic, though, of course, he didn’t let his emotions show.

Ninmah frowned as she started leading him through the village on ground level, scrunching her brows hard as she tried to discern anything from his face.

“You’re no fun,” she grumbled as she sidestepped, narrowly avoiding a group of children who warped in front of them and warped away immediately after. “If you’re happy, you should just smile. If you’re sad, you should just start whining. You’ll be much easier to handle if you just started talking to me, you know? I don’t really know anything about you.”

“...”

“Here. Snack.”

She grabbed his hand, gave him four small worms, and he chewed on them as another group of children warped past them with a fit of laughs and chatters.

[Unallocated Points: 64 → 66]

The bright and gleeful smile she gave him made him feel a little guilty, but he wasn't going to try to speak regardless. Even if he could without cutting his teeth, speech was a right reserved only for officers and generals of the Attini Empire, not for lowly grunts like him. He’d hold himself to that standard even if nobody was going to know if he spoke in Immanu; discipline of any kind would keep his mind sharp and his body stalwart for when he eventually returned to his battalion.

The Worm Mages wouldn’t understand, so there was no point even trying to communicate that with them. Just like usual, Ninmah was going to lead him back to his cabin, let his strain drop for a bit, and then he was going to do the run through the village all over again all on his own. Even if he wasn’t necessarily increasing his attribute levels or unlocking new mutations, the more he practised, the better he felt he was going to get at controlling his warps.

He didn’t exactly need to talk or tell the Worm Mages anything.

“... Well, if you’re not gonna tell me anything, then I’m not gonna teach you how to make wormholes either.”

When she realised he wasn't going to change his mind, though, Ninmah crossed her arms and pouted, puffing her cheeks as they trudged silently through the cluttered alleys. The village was like this every hour of the day. Nobody really strolled on two feet normally; everybody warped with every step, which meant the streets weren’t really streets, but more like narrow two-child-wide gaps between buildings that nobody really walked. Sparrow and Ninmah could walk side by side now, but a light sway would have their shoulders bumping either into each other or into the walls.

Still, the alleys weren’t completely untrodden. There were crates here and there they had to step over, broken pots and vases nobody had bothered cleaning up, and as they passed a beautiful branch canopy growing out a window with dangling translucent pears—almost as an afterthought—Ninmah rapped the wall with her knuckles before twirling her finger in a circle.

A moment later, a ripe pear fell through the glowing circle she’d drawn in the air and shot up through another circle on her palm, allowing her to catch it with her other hand.

Then she sent him a wide, teasing grin before munching down on it loudly with both hands, the glowing circles blinking out of existence without so much as a fading thrum.

Naturally, his eyes widened.

… ‘Wormhole’.

Powerful ability.

Probably another branch mutation.

I must learn.

He didn’t speak, still, but he definitely tried to make a wormhole of his own as they passed a second branch canopy. She’d done it so smoothly while walking, but he wasn’t about to take any chances—he grabbed her by the wrist and held her still, trying to relax every muscle in his body as he pointed up at the lowest-hanging pear just half a metre above his head.

…

And he wasn’t sure how to do it.

If it was another ability that he could just ‘do’, it’d not manifested the same way his warping step had—with warping step, he physically couldn’t stop warping until he learned the sensation of walking ‘in-between’, but making wormholes was another matter altogether. If there was a sensation he was supposed to get, he didn’t get it. If there was a trick to making two glowing circles appear out of thin air, he didn’t know what it was.

The only thing he got was a snicker out of Ninmah as he twirled a circle in the air and made a complete fool of himself.

He hadn’t so much as managed to make his fingertip sparkle, let alone leave behind glowing circles of light that could connect two spaces together.

“No, no, you’re not drawing it perfect enough,” Ninmah chided, still laughing softly as he looked at her with a finger raised. She raised a finger of her own and winked at him. “Look closely, alright? It’s just like warping. You don’t really stress about it. You just… calmly… twirl your finger… and then–”

A glowing blue circle hovered where she twirled her finger, and a second circle immediately appeared a few metres in front of her, a ‘wormhole’ opened.

He blinked.

He rubbed his eyes.

He didn’t learn anything from her whatsoever.

“You try!” she chirped, grabbing his hand and guiding his finger as she did. “Remember how you first tried to relax last week. You gotta… um, you gotta feel the ‘in-between’. Don’t think. Don’t worry. If you already have the wormhole core that lets you warp, you can make a wormhole. Just try.”

And he tried, of course—it just didn’t work. Over and over again he merely watched as Ninmah pulled his finger around in circles, and over and over again he focused everything into his fingertips as though he were trying to bleed light from under his nails; he had nothing of the sort to emit. For his part, he wasn’t even sure if Ninmah was confident about what she was saying. It didn’t sound normal that a tier one mutation would allow access to more than one ability, and that wasn’t usually the case for any system.

Maybe he had to unlock one of the tier two mutations to make wormholes?

Regardless, the two of them continued to make fools of themselves as they spent the next ten minutes playing puppet and puppeteer; Ninmah held his finger and dragged it every which way, and he focused so hard on emitting a thread of light from his fingertips that he felt his eyes beginning to dry from how long he was forcing himself to not blink. It was the exact opposite of stress-free, and Ninmah seemed to realise it herself after her hundredth failed attempt to get him to open a wormhole, letting go of him so they could both put their hands on their knees and pant for breath.

Somehow, they’d burned more energy trying to do something that never worked than warping through the entire village for a race up the bell tower.

“... You know, I’d love to stay with you the entire day until you can make the teeniest-tiniest wormhole there is, but I have chores to do as the village chief,” she muttered, wiping spread from her forehead as she glanced up at him, smiling weakly. “Go back to your cabin for now, alright? Just keep practising your wormhole step. I’ll be free tonight, so we’ll eat dinner together and maybe we can try again in your cabin–”

He grabbed her shoulder before she could warp away immediately, and she yelped as she evidently tried to step into a warp—both of them jerked ten metres off into another alley where they crashed into a mound of unshoveled snow.

Sparrow got up quickly enough to pat off his cloak, but Ninmah grumbled as she shooed a passing group of children off from laughing at them, unable to get up in the cramped alley.

“What is it?” she asked, looking up and sending him a suspicious glare. “You wanna follow big sister?”

He nodded plainly.

“You’ll have to help me do the chores, you know.”

He nodded again.

“It won’t be easy, you know.”

And he didn’t blink, he didn’t hesitate—now that he already knew the ‘trick’ to it, he could master the wormhole step gradually, but he wasn’t going to figure out how to make a wormhole by sitting still in his cabin without a frame of reference to draw on.

If he wanted to get stronger before returning to his battalion, he needed to see more of the Worm Mage’s abilities in action.

So he nodded one last time, offering her a helping hand.

“... You’re asking for it, then,” she replied with a laugh, taking his hand. “Come. I’ll take you to the Barrows. You might as well visit the other half of Immanu’s population before they come to visit you at night.”