Alex stepped out of the guildhall and into the last of the day’s light, letting the heavy wooden door swing shut behind him.

  For a moment he just stood there, breathing in the fresh air of the village.

  The Side Quest Heroes guildhall was ridiculous in the best possible ways. Polished beams, epic staircases, the incredible training yard, their own bar and trophy walls with spaces for monster skulls and broken blades, artifacts and whatever else his team, no, his guild, would find in their adventures.

  He could have spent all night exploring every nook and cranny in the place, but the prickle at the edge of his awareness wouldn’t let him.

  All afternoon he had seen a blurry patch of what looked like an aura hovering across the roofs of the village. He didn’t really understand what he was looking at since every other aura he could see was attached to a person or creature. It was almost like some powerful creature had been there and gone, but left a smear of its aura behind.

  Except that everywhere they went, the strange, blurry aura seemed to follow.

  He didn’t know what he was seeing. It looked a lot like an aura, but could it be something else? Some kind of tracking or observation spell? That would be interesting. Alex had only really thought of magic in practical terms so far. Things he could create and hurl at an enemy mostly. If this thing on the rooftops was a spell though, it was persistent and following them.

  And it was definitely following them, back and forth across the village, and now sitting on the roof of a warehouse down the street. Even if he couldn’t see it anymore, he wanted to go up there and see if there was any trace left to find.

  Alex crossed to the warehouse side of the street. These buildings had marked the outskirts of the village before the company moved the palisade wall back a hundred feet to make room for the guildhalls. It made the street look a little odd now though as it was the rear of all the warehouses that fronted this new street.

  He made his way for the long, timber-framed warehouse close to the corner where he had last observed the aura. Barrels were stacked beneath an overhang that ran down the near side of the building alongside a cart full of empty sacks.

  Scanning the structure, his eyes climbed the rough wood siding looking for a ladder or access point. He didn’t see anything on the guildhall side of the building. Not to be discouraged, he made for the far corner. He would at least walk around to the front to see if there was some way up.

  He turned the corner of the warehouse though and nearly collided with a man walking out of the alley towards him. They stopped and looked at each other, less than three paces apart. Alex froze.

  Dark hair. Calm eyes. Lean build. The man had a rigid posture and wore dark layered clothing cut for mobility, not ornament. He almost looked like a monk except for the long hair and sword at his hip, but Alex’s attention went immediately to something else.

  The man had a strong aura. Everyone seemed to have some kind of aura field around them. Most were faint, almost passive. He’d been thinking of it as energy bleed, like heat radiating from skin, but he wasn’t sure exactly.

  This was different.

  This man’s aura was tight, dense and structured. It didn’t drift in the wavy way that others did. It still bled around the edges, but it looked thick and dense to Alex’s eyes and it pressed out like a physical presence.

  The man’s expression looked as shocked as Alex felt and then Alex had an overwhelming feeling that the man may attack him.

  Alex started to reach for enough mana to prepare a shield of some kind, but something made him pause. Just the one look, but he was pretty sure this man could use magic at a much higher level than he could. Reaching for mana might be construed as an aggressive action and he didn’t want to make this worse than it already felt. The man was only standing there so far.

  So he held steady instead. Neutral posture. Hands visible and breathing controlled. Ready to pull mana in an instant if he needed to. He just hoped he’d be fast enough.

  The pressure lingered for several seconds. Then it eased and finally was gone. Alex resisted the urge to rub his brow or wipe sweat from his eyes.

  The man studied him, the look of surprise gone now, eyes narrowing but not hostile.

  After a few long moments Alex cleared his throat. “You’ve been following us,” he said. “All afternoon.” He wasn’t sure, not really. But the man’s aura was extremely similar to what he had observed on the rooftops.

  The man didn’t say anything, but he didn’t deny it. Alex thought he saw the man’s eyes squint a little more before returning to his blank expression.

  “Why?” Alex pushed but still got no response from the man.

  Alex looked back up towards the roofline. He couldn’t see the spot from here, but he was trying to remember what he had been looking at earlier. It could have been an aura, but it had looked blurry. Like there was interference somehow. He had thought it was some sort of persistent spell, but…

  “You made yourself invisible.” It wasn’t a question. “How?”

  That got a reaction. The man’s eyes widened visibly. He watched Alex for another moment and then said, “The better question would be: how did you detect an invisible person?” The man's voice was crisp, clear. The ANIP translated in real time and Alex could hear the slight buzz of the overlapping words as he admitted to being able to make himself invisible.

  “Well,” Alex started and then paused. He didn’t want to tell this stranger that he could see mana and the flows of energy in this world. According to Mei Lin, his ability was rare to the point of being myth. That wasn’t the sort of information you shared with just anyone. He finally continued again with the first thing that came to his mind. “You were just standing on the rooftops. Not exactly subtle.”

  “I was invisible.”

  Alex waved a hand like he was brushing away the argument. “Only mostly.”

  That made the man burst out with a single crack of laughter followed by a quiet chuckle. He shook his head. “I’d like to call you a liar, but here you are to prove your point,” he said. “My masters would be very interested in testing that sharp sight of yours.”

  “Masters?”

  The man stared at him for another moment and then off into the sky, deep in thought. He stared so long that Alex was about to ask the question again before the man finally stirred and answered. “Yes, my masters would like to talk to you I think.”

  “Wait…” Masters? Alex shook his head and tried to focus on why he was here in the first place. “Who are you and why were you following me?”

  “I am Jinhai, inner disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect, Azure Prefecture; Guardian sect of the Celestial Empire.”

  Alex just stared at him for a moment, trying to parse out what he had said. He had learned about some of the bigger ‘countries’ in their area. There was a loose coalition of citystates and kingdoms to the west that mostly stayed together to present a bigger, united front against the large empire to the east. If he remembered correctly it was called the Empire of Ten Thousand Suns, or something like that. He had never heard of the Azure Cloud Sect or Prefecture.

  “Okay. Jinhai. My name’s Alex.” That seemed safe enough to share. “Why are you following me?”

  “I want you to come East. I was watching you because you seem to possess great power for someone who is young and untrained. If you return to the sect with me, you can learn to control your energies better.”

  Alex just watched him for a moment. Travel east? There was no way. He was still in the middle of his training here and now his friends were going to be signing on too.

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  “You can’t yet control your energies and if you don’t learn it will start to cause problems for you and those around you.”

  “I can control my power just fine, thank you.” Mostly anyway. Better than he could a week ago and he was confident that he could continue learning what he needed. Confident enough that he wouldn’t take off on a crazy trip east with some guy he didn’t know just on his say so.

  “Better than you could. You didn’t break any tables at the Inn today.”

  What did that mean? Alex stared at him for a long moment before recognition bloomed in his memory. So much had happened over the past weeks that he had almost forgotten. That first night, the night he accidentally pulled too much mana to his hand and smashed it against the heavy bar table. All that had happened after he saw two easterners on the balcony overlooking the Tavern. Two people who had been drawing the mana to themselves.

  “That was you? On the balcony of the Silver Gate?” The man just nodded in response. “Yes, well, I have learned a lot since then.”

  “But not enough. I found you then, and now because you allow your energy to leak,” the man said. “Your presence flows without restraint. It’s like a bright lantern for those that can sense it.”

  It didn’t seem like this man could see auras in the same way that Alex could. He called it ‘presence’. Alex thought about the intense pressure he had felt when first encountering the man.

  “You’re saying other people can feel me,” Alex said.

  “Yes.”

  “From how far?”

  The man didn’t answer directly. “Far enough.”

  That wasn’t helpful, but the point stood. If Alex could see an aura or the use of energy from a distance, it was logical that others could sense it in other ways.

  “How do I stop?” Alex asked.

  Instead of answering, the man stilled his posture and his breathing. His aura, already more compact than what Alex had seen in other people, tightened further. Alex focused on the man’s core, watching the energy compress and his aura shrink.

  Then, the man released it.

  His aura expanded in a controlled surge out from his core, into his aura and out into the space around him like a growing bubble. A clean outward push that again increased pressure in the space between them.

  Alex felt his body respond before he consciously processed it. His foot shifted back a few inches in reflex. It felt like a great weight had been laid on him.

  The man held the flare for a second, then drew it back in. The energy receded smoothly, and then fell back into its normal state.

  “That is control,” the man said.

  Alex replayed it in his mind. Aside from what the man was trying to explain, this demonstration confirmed Alex's thoughts on what exactly Auras might be. Everyone seemed to have them, if faintly. Some were stronger than others. He had figured they had something to do with a person's inherent energy. Their personal electric state maybe.

  But he had also noticed that the auras of the forest animals had all been stronger than what he saw on the Earth folks, and Jinhai’s was stronger still. It seemed that auras were the effect of energy leaking from the body. The more energy, or types of energy one had, the more they leaked and the stronger the aura.

  And here now, Jinhai showed that he could regulate his internal energy with great control. Not for casting and not to enhance himself… just to control the output of his energy system. And increasing that output had felt like a great weight.

  “If you can control your energy leak, why not stop it altogether? All the time?” Alex asked.

  Jinhai looked confused by this and said, “It is not a leak, it is presence. And it can be suppressed.”

  Suppressed yes, but Jinhai didn’t stop it altogether. Alex let it drop. “Nevermind. But you’re saying that I’m doing that…” Alex waved his hand at the space around them, “all the time?”

  “Yes, and it can be dangerous.”

  “Like, I’ll lose all my energy?”

  “What? No. This is why you need to come east. You know nothing. I don’t understand how you’ve made it this far without hurting yourself. No, I mean that, power attracts power. If you use your internal qi in great quantities, it will be felt a long way off. You are walking around like a lantern in the night and it is just a matter of time before it attracts problems.”

  “Like you?” Alex asked with a grin. He didn’t wait for an answer though. He was curious. He couldn’t really see his own aura. Sometimes he was aware of it, just a shimmer at the edge of his vision, like becoming aware of seeing your own eyelashes. But most of the time he didn’t think about his own aura.

  Alex closed his eyes, Jinhai forgotten for a moment.

  He’d learned to gather mana and to control that draw. He’d learned to anchor it and push it outward when needed in the form of a spell, or what he thought of as spells anyway.

  He had never considered regulating his baseline output, or to even consider what his level of output was. He turned his focus inward.

  It was strange, but he almost felt like he had internal channels for mana these past few days. He had really noticed a difference, returning to Earth3 earlier in the day. He could feel it circulating around his core and chest. It was just sort of a constant presence now.

  He focused on the circulating energy. He imagined it like blood working its way around his system, feeding his body. Although the analogy ended there apparently, because this mana system was bleeding into the atmosphere around him.

  Could he seal it? The whole system? Create some kind of containment? He tried, but it felt like trying to stop water from seeping through loose fingers. Instead, he thought of how he pulled mana to him out of the environment. That felt like he was flexing a muscle.

  He narrowed his intent, focusing on his core. He could feel the body of energy there. He tried a few times before finally finding a new muscle to flex. This one controlled his core.

  Within moments he could feel the change. He smiled and pulled harder.

  He felt like he was compressing his systems energy into his core with this action and wondered if it would make it easier to draw from later, or in emergencies.

  He opened his eyes.

  Jinhai was staring at him now without any attempt to hide his reaction.

  “That,” the man said slowly, “is impressive.”

  Alex gave him a small smile. “You could see that?”

  Again Jinhai looked confused. “No, you cannot see another’s presence, only feel it and I felt yours recede. So fast though?” He shook his head in disbelief.

  Alex considered that phrasing. “Is that good?” he finally asked.

  The man didn’t answer immediately, instead, he studied Alex with a new intensity. “I think you would make a good Fang, Alex of Silvergate.” He held a hand out, very close to Alex with a surprised look on his face. “I can’t sense any presence now.”

  He watched Alex for another long moment. “You must return with me. You are strong and have a unique control, but know so little.”

  “No,” Alex said. As amazing as magical training sounded, he couldn’t run out on his friends just as he was convincing them all to come to Earth3.

  “You refuse training?”

  “I can’t leave. I have training here, and I’m a guild master now,” Alex said as he gestured back in the direction of their new hall. “I can’t just leave.”

  Jinhai looked confused. “Guildmaster? At your age?” He shook his head.

  At that moment the sound of footsteps and voices grew from the direction of the street behind Alex. People were laughing—it sounded like Jake and Ryan.

  The man heard it too and his stance shifted slightly.

  “Without control you will hurt yourself or those around you. Even if you do learn to control your output, you might push your boundaries too far. You could destabilize your foundation or even invite tribulations.”

  Alex considered his words for a long moment. He already had the sense that too much mana could be dangerous for him. Ever since that first incident in the tavern. But he really didn’t think he was at any risk of tribulating—himself or anyone else.

  “I know how to be careful,” he said, but the man just shook his head like he didn’t believe Alex at all.

  “Alex?” a voice called from the street. Kira. He didn’t look away from Jinhai.

  “Give me a second,” he called back.

  The man’s gaze flicked toward the approaching sound and back again. “Consider my offer,” he said. “Power without structure collapses and attracts. Either would be bad for you”

  Alex held his ground. “I’ll consider it,” he said.

  The man stepped backward towards the deeper shadows and then, when all Alex could see was his aura shimmering in the dark like heatwaves rising off pavement at the end of the day, Jinhai did something that let him fly up to a roof across the street on the far side of the warehouse and then bounded away.

  Alex watched in amazement. He didn’t want to leave the village to train in the east, but watching that display certainly made him consider it. Could he learn to fly, or go invisible too? How long would he have to train to get to that point? Jinhai didn’t look that much older than Alex and his friends, maybe late twenties.

  He turned as Kira and the others rounded the corner and peered into the darkening alley between the buildings.

  “Alex?” she asked then continued after he answered her. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh yeah. I thought I saw something over here. I’m good.” He walked back to his friends smiling. And he really was good.

  Now that he knew he could learn to fly, and go invisible and control his internal mana flow better, he was better than good. If all that was possible after all, it opened up entire new categories of spell options. He just had to crack the code on making mana do more than just create physical items.

  He had a long list of questions for Mei Lin now and needed to stop putting off that conversation.

  ***

  Cast a stone in silent water;

  circles widen without command.

  Small force stirs the near shore only;

  a great force reaches distant lands.

  And so too moves the breath of men.

  Proverb of the Celestial Empire