Through peaks where the cold winds do bite,

I climb in the pale morning light.

With cliffs rising tall,

And echoes that call,

The mountains are wild with delight!

Goldie Honorhide

I think Goldie liked being out here in the mountainous wilds. I did, too. It was different from home, but not too different.

We returned to moving quickly for a few days, and Yoboc covered our tracks. The snow helped. Then we slowed down again. We would walk for about three-quarters of the daylight, and in the evenings, we would spar and practice our skills, just not Solar Flare.

We spent the rest of the time hunting and learning all the skills we should know, like skinning and butchering. Makara and I were used to biting into carcasses, not cutting them into dainty little pieces. The idea was to appear like we were hunters and prospectors. I could appear similar to a human, but Makara couldn't. She was a Shark Mer; there was no way to hide it.

I enjoyed the times I went hunting with Yoboc. He let me kill steal a few times, but it was not enough to level my class. There were deer, moose, and woolly mountain goats, and the sled was piled high with fur—so high that Goldie made more straps. I pulled it in my bear form while Makara pushed. I liked that Felix was in front as the Team Leader, and I followed.

Yoboc and Goldie also collected ore samples as they encountered them, which would hide the ore we had brought with us from the Arctic. We found some gold nuggets, and my scavenging creeped toward the next level, but it wasn't there yet. Levelling really slows down when it gets to Journeyman levels.

Our slower pace also allowed me to explore the area more. I filled in our map and learned about the creatures and environment in this mountainous region. As the weeks passed, my explorer class added a level. I put the spare attribute into Mental Strength, but I really need to put everything from now on into the Spiritual attributes to support my affinity.

My eye didn't slow me down much. The time I spent in the cavern using my other senses helped, and I now had Void Sensing, which I relied upon more.

I took Felix hunting. He was a liability at first, but then he learned the skill Stalk and could sneak up on prey better. None of us had that skill, so that was all him. It levelled fast as well. He soon learned Sprint from me, as he needed the speed burst to catch his prey after stalking it. I realised I had been teaching him all wrong. All I had to do was give him something to chase.

With his Olfactory, he soon learned Tracking, which pushed Olfactory to Journeyman. My tracking went to Journeyman level at the same time, so we were learning from each other.

It was like Felix had come alive. He certainly had a new attitude to life and loved learning new things. I was realising more and more how restricted his old life was.

The biggest breakthrough was getting my Map Skill to the Journeyman Level. When Map passed the Journeyman level, I got a point in Physical Perception. I was standing on a rock protrusion at dusk, scanning the area with my non-farsight, and plotting out our camp and several other features I had seen from the ground.

Then I had to sit down. My eye picked up the evening star, which moved a bit differently than the other stars over the months I had been observing it. My affinity then merged with my Map skill, creating a new map skill called Astral Map and a point in Mental Agility.

Astral Map combined all my star maps and created one map that could be accessed at any time I liked. It matched the common stars at the time I observed them. The more I observed them, the more accurate the map was. This included all the astral bodies that I observed. The sun, the moons and the strange stars like the morning star.

Some of those were not that accurate yet, but they would get more accurate over time. I could choose to see where the stars would be next week, and it would give me a map. The accuracy of the map will improve the more I observe the stars.

I got the feeling that the more I levelled the skill, the more detailed the information would become and not just a flat map, but in three dimensions. Even at level 1, I felt the moons were much closer than the sun.

How does this help me? I am not sure. As I thought about it, it meant I could navigate by the stars even in the middle of the day or in the worst storm once my maps became more accurate. The first thing to figure out when navigating is to know where you are. Then, you can plot the course to where you need to go. My original Map skill will always let me know where I am. Therefore, I can always map the stars above my position at any time.

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I actually don't know how else this could help me. Maybe it would help me navigate to the stars? That is a pipe dream. I feel there is much more it could help with if I only knew how.

For now, it is neat, and I like playing around with it. I will work on making it more accurate. I did feel that the few months of observations were not nearly enough.

We now travelled at a much easier pace, the sort of travel and adventuring I envisioned. Felix and I can get away and hunt or explore by ourselves, and we have time to train our skills. The sled is getting very full and heavy, but we have slowed our pace to match. There is less snow as we get further south and out of the mountains. The spring thaw is almost complete, and I watch the green forest come alive. The sled would already be causing problems if Makara didn't periodically soak the skids in water, and I froze them.

Yoboc did find me two places to practice my Solar Flare. We actually stayed an extra day at one of them, and I practised. It was a steep, narrow gully with very little to burn. A rock protrusion protected us, and there would be little to show outside the gully.

"Best to practice before we get near civilisation," he said.

I didn't need to watch the flare at all. My Void Sensing told me everything I needed. I was an idiot before. A lucky idiot.

Even then, Heat Resistance went up to the early 20s, but I avoided Fire Resistance going up more than a couple of points. This was an incredibly dangerous skill. I pushed it into the Apprentice levels, and I could now vary the intensity a little. It still dragged a lot of Spiritual energy on ignition, but I started to be able to reduce the flow and tamper it down after the initial flare. I had some energy left to cool the rock with Frigid Void. Both Felix and I spent a lot of energy cooling the rock of what was left of the gully.

Solar Flare is another skill that I have no idea when I will use. It is massive and barely controllable. I was hoping for something where I could melt the ice from Frigid Void. I mean, it does that, but… it also melts rock.

My affinity is complicated, and I have no idea what I am doing. I need to be more like Felix and just be content with what is. Unfortunately, that will lead me to being trapped in a position I don't like, and I need the power to go my own way. Hence, I need to get control of this. I guess I have the ultimate get-out-of-trouble skill if I want to burn everything to the ground, including me.

The other big thing was when I pushed my Cosmic Aura into Journeyman, earning me a point in Spiritual Agility. I had been using my Cosmic Aura as my space to assist my skills, especially my affinity skills. That was not wrong, but it was also incomplete. Very incomplete.

When Cosmic Aura reached the Journeyman level, I was suddenly aware of how much the aura was MY space. I could obviously sense things in that space, especially with Spiritual Sensing and Void Sensing, but the Journeyman level took it … well, I guess it took it to another level.

I already sensed physical matter, from rocks to water to air. I could sense Mental activity in the aura. No, let's call it what it is: It is MY aura, not the aura. Mine firmly and permanently mine. I have to be in the aura. I cannot move it in such a way that I am outside it. So my aura could also sense Mental and Spiritual things from the Apprentice level on. Now I can sense things I didn't use to sense, like the temperature of things in my aura. Void Sensing and Spiritual Sensing did not sense this.

However, I can now sense so many more things passing through my aura. Things like Gravity. I can feel the pull of gravity passing through my aura. Light passes through my aura. There is something else that is not passing through my aura but is bouncing off, and I don't know why. I suspect this is what Makara's Electroreceptors sense. Why would that bounce and not pass through like light and gravity?

That is another thing that is more apparent now that my aura is at Journeyman Level. It is the boundary of that aura. I used the boundary before to guide and control skills. It was especially apparent when I used it to guide Tremor. Now, there is an obvious distinction between what is in my aura and what is not, and I can start to control better what is in my aura.

I try to stop light from passing through my aura. The area around me dims slightly. Ok, that is good. I can definitely control what passes through my aura. It is just going to take practice.

I tested it on gravity. I feel no different. I jumped up and down a few times, but I can't tell if it is working.

What about if I try to let in the stuff that is bouncing? I think Makara called it electromagnetism. I can feel something, something unpleasant. I relax and let it bounce back again. I think I might have my own version of this electro thingy, which is incompatible with the world's. I have no words for this. I have no understanding of this. It is just a feeling. I feel I am right. That is dangerous, especially if I am wrong.

My mind blossoms. This Astral Affinity has made me like a miniature world, and I am clashing with this world. No wonder Solar Flare is massive, wild and uncontrollable. I am operating on a planetary scale… no, that is wrong. I am operating on an astral scale. The sun is not part of this planet, so my scale needs to be bigger than a planet.

That is why Tremor came to me so easily. I am operating on the planetary; no, I am operating on the astral scale. With my new understanding of my affinity, I knew small, discrete and subtle were not going to be a big part of my future.

My attributes currently limit all of these things. I think about the monster buried in the ice in the Arctic. It was massive and, therefore, how massive its attributes had to be. It travelled the stars. Maybe my Astral Map will show me how to do that.

Then my thoughts are brought back to earth. I will be long dead before I manage to raise my attributes high enough to travel the stars. The astral monster must have had a massively long lifespan.

Then, I had another thought. Something killed the astral monster.

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