Tomás was having a strange dream. He was at a vast starry expanse, a seemingly unending space, empty of anything except for a floating ethereal copy of him. Tomás noticed he could float too, so he made his slow approach towards the clone of himself. He inspected his own body, noticing the absolute lack of differences: even the calluses on his hands were visible, with the length of his hair, his nails, his small scars, everything being a perfect copy.

  Tomás touched the chest of his copy. When he did it, the sensation reflected back on him and he retracted his hand. He looked at his own hand quizzically, trying to understand what was happening.

  “That’s your Presence, human,” a voice said behind Tomás.

  Tomás spun around, meeting an approaching ball of light.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my dream?” he said, getting himself ready.

  “Whoa boy, don’t be so frightened. I will make my Presence easier to comprehend,” the ball of light said. It started changing, assuming the form of a boy in formal clothing, its voice changing to match its new shape. “This is not your dream, but you can only understand it as such. As for who I am, let’s say I am a Guide of sorts and leave it at that. I mean you no harm.”

  “What is this place, then?” said Tomás, unsure.

  “Well, it is a connection between you Presence and the Existence around you. It is, for some, the afterlife. It is, in my opinion, a testament to your insignificance. All of what you see is the Universe and that,” the boy said, pointing at Tomás’ ethereal clone,” is your Presence in it. It is not easy to grasp, and I could go on indefinitely, but, in short, it is your Place in the World.”

  “I don’t understand…” Tomás said.

  “And that’s okay,” the boy said. “You see, we don’t have much time to talk and you probably will never see me again. Let’s keep it short then. Don’t speak and just listen to me, okay?” the boy said. Tomás tried to object but the boy cut him. “Now, like I said, just listen. You are just being able to stand here and to see me because of your feats today. What you did was impressive, so I will reward you with some information for free. Firstly: this world is not changing, it is reawakening. Those beasts existed once and roamed this place before, they just went away because they didn’t belong here anymore.

  “Secondly: magic exists and have existed even before this reawakening; it was just hard to draw it and use it before. That boy and the girl with you have a proficiency towards it. You should nudge them in the right direction. My tip is to make them meditate and internalize the Mana around them”.

  Tomás looked dumbfounded.

  “What’s Mana? They will figure it out. You are incapable of it, but it is not to fret, we already know that you are a powerful warrior. That brings up the fact that you can use Aura, but my only tip is that it has something to do with your Presence.

  “Thirdly: this is not a game. If you die, you will stay dead. There is no stats window, no tutorial, no level ups, nothing of that videogame crap. You will have to figure it out on your own from this point on, put your experience is what dictates how strong you are.

  “Lastly: there are gods that affect this world but beware of them, they are not merciful or understanding and they will end your existence if you anger them, just like me. Well, except for maybe one, but we’ll not talk about that. Do you understand?”

  Tomás, trying to take it all in, opened his mouth to speak but was cut short by the Guide.

  “Good. Now wake up.”

  Tomás felt Silva shaking him and opened his eyes.

  “Rise and shine sleepyhead, the sun is already up,” said the Sergeant. The sun was not, in fact, up and Tomás felt himself sleep incarnated, wishing upon his soul that he just wanted just five minutes more.

  Tomás grumbled something that even he didn’t understand and sited on the side of the bed. He looked at Silva and said, now more clearly, “What time is it?”

  “Time for you to assume my watch, but, more precisely, two hours and eleven minutes. Come on, I want to sleep a little more,” he said. “By the way, you went to sleep very early yesterday and while you were sleeping everyone agreed upon nine hours of pause to rest. Wake us up at around three in the morning.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” said Tomás. He collected his kit and axe and went to the home outer room where Silva was taking watch.

  He got close to the room’s window and breathed deeply while watching the dark of the night. He looked at the Goblins’ bodies on the street below and remembered his dream. ‘Magic, huh? Let’s see about that,’ he thought. He sat down and tried what the Guide had said, meditating on his experiences yesterday. He remembered something about ‘Aura’, a way of making use of his ‘Presence’. Tomás interpreted the energy the Guide described as ‘his impact on the world’. He translated it to his feats. He then closed his eyes and concentrated, remembering his kills, his wounds, his pain.

  After minutes like that, Tomás started visualizing his body just like the ethereal form he saw on his dream. He now could comprehend its colors, those being o gradient of oranges, reds and yellows. He made to move his right arm but, instead of moving his physical arm, the ethereal one moved. He stood up and watched the world change its colors. He turned and looked at himself seated and meditated. Tomás panicked, fearing that he forced his soul out of his body. As his concentration broke, his Presence was sucked back inside his body, making Tomás gasp for air.

  He tried it again, this time holding his axe. When he achieved concentration, the ethereal form of the axe appeared on his hands, its colors different from those of Tomás. The gray tones of the metal on the axe head, the green and brown on the wood of the handle. He first tried to absorb the Presence of the materials, but he was unable or it was impossible. He then tried forcing his Presence on the axe, slowly inserting his colors inside the axe. In this he was successful, transforming the colors in the handle to those of him. Satisfied, Tomás opened his eyes and saw the axe handle emitting a light glow. He wondered if this was Aura.

  ‘But if this make the axe stronger, the handle will not be enough,’ Tomás thought. He concentrated again, this time, when he achieved concentration, he held the handle with one hand and the axe head with the other. Now, the whole axe was covered in Tomás’ colors. He opened his eyes and looked at the axe, now fully emitting the light glow from before. It felt light. Tomás swinged it, the movement leaving behind an after image of the axe’s blade. He, again, wondered if this was Aura, but he was sure that the blade was now sharper.

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  This put so many ideas in Tomás’ mind. He entered concentration again, this time, he aimed to move his Presence to his arms. As he did it, he noticed the color of the rest of his body changing evenly to yellow and his arms becoming more and more red. He opened his eyes, this time noticing how the veins on his arms were bulging, feeling a surge of strength. Tomás touched the wall with an open hand and closed it. The plaster crumbled in his fingers.

  Tomás breathed, thinking in the possibilities. He imagined what he could do if he could enhance himself.

  But, as the thoughts raced through his mind, Tomás started feeling his arms tingling and hurting. He looked down to see the muscles on his forearms twisting like when he got a cramp, making him uncomfortable. He wondered if the Aura was the cause of it, so he started getting in Concentration again. He balanced the color of his Presence, evening the color to yellowish orange, causing his arms to stop hurting. He breathed a sigh of relief and stood up, as he still had to watch over his sleeping squad mates.

  For the next two hours, Tomás took turns watching and experimenting, and, because the night was proving uneventful, he was doing more of the latter.

  With mixed results, he discovered that he could enhance his senses by moving his Presence to the respective sensory organs, enhancing the palate being the worst, as he felt even the taste of the air around him; From the materials he coated with his Aura, metal was by far the one who retained with for more time and with the most apparent effects; together with his last finding, he also found out that he could change the effect he passed on to the material depending on the feeling on his mind in the moment he performed the process, as he could doble the weight of the axe head or make the wood exhibit the same characteristics of the metal; Lastly, he discovered that he could also apply this characteristics to his body, he just needed to move the right amount of Presence to place where he wanted the property, but he founded it hard due to the amount of Concentration he had to achieve and the short duration it yielded, being, at most, ten seconds.

  Satisfied with his experimentation, Tomás turned to his kit. He serviced his M249 firstly, cleaning the weapon with great care. Tomás was sad that he didn't have more ammo for the gun as he loved shooting it, imagining himself as a writer using one of those old typing machines, going tac-tac-tac on its keys. He then organized his med kit bag, making an inventory of what he had: four doses of stimulant, three of anesthetic, three of anticoagulant, full flasks of internal and external antibiotics, two bags of physiological serum, some clotting bandages, two rolls of regular bandages, some of his sterile surgical tools, syringes, tubing, sterile needles, emergency blanket, etc. He took out the bandages and tubing he used on Silva and organized it too, discarding the used tubing and separating the bandages, as he pretended to use it for another thing.

  He checked his bulletproof vest, searching for the place where one of the Goblins backstabbed him. The vest, with its high collar and padded textile, proved effective at protecting Tomás from the wounds up until now. As much as he could, he also discarded his waste in the bathroom, replenished his canteen, and ate some of his rations, as he was positively famished.

  Tomás finally took out his axe. After all this time, he finally had the time to take a good look on the thing: it was a simple tool, with a wooden handle and a carbon steel head, but, at the moment, was covered in small nicks and dents at the metal part and chips on the handle, as well as being extremely dirty. He started taking care of the thing. Firstly, he cleaned the axe body with alcohol, removing the now dried blood, using some of the used bandages. He then started using some of the bandages to make a cover on the axe handle, twisting the bandages to make them more comfortable for the touch.

  He checked the weapons balance, just for fun, and noticed that it laid very close to the head, making it unbalanced. But Tomás didn't troubled himself with it, as he could simply apply his presence on it to reduce its weight. He now wanted to sharpen it and remove the nicks and dents on the metal, but he didn't have a sharpening stone or anything like that. He stood up and went to the house's kitchen looking for the sharpening stone. Tomás looked the place up and down but found nothing. He then wondered if there was one in the hardware store where he picked the thing up.

  Now wanting to go there, Tomás looked at his watch, reading five and forty-seven. He sat down and decided to wait for the right time to wake his team mates.

  The last thirteen minutes of his watch were the longest. The anxiety nagged at Tomás' mind and he wanted to prematurely wake his team, but he held on.

  Silva was the first to wake up. Tomás met him on the room he was keeping watch, the sergeant rubbing his eyes to try and scare the sleepiness away. “Is it already six?” he asked.

  Tomás looked at his watch, saying “Five and fifty-five.”

  “Eh, good enough. Good day to you, madman. What are you doing?”

  “Preparing to go out. Been thinking of doing a round of reconnaissance around the place before we venture out,” the Corporal said.

  “By yourself? Need any help?” asked the Sergeant, sitting down.

  “No, I you just go some distance to both sides, checking for anything wrong.”

  “Well, suit yourself, but radio in if anything happens.”

  “Thank you, sir, I will,” Tomás said. He then thought about all of his experimentation. He would like to pass the knowledge on to his squad mates. “Sir, I think I discovered something. Care to indulge me?”

  “What’s it?” asked Silva.

  “Well, I been thinking: ‘if these monsters come from straight out of a fantasy book or game, what about magic’? So, I experimented and insisted until I was able to do this…” Tomás demonstrated what he had done the entire night to the Sergeant. Having trained insistently for the past hours, Tomás was now able to get in Concentration standing up. Holding his axe, he coated it in his Presence and showed its effects to Silva. In the darkness of pre-dawn, the axe shimmered and the swings left a beautiful silver afterimage.

  The Sergeant was impressed, but said “Well, you made your weapon glow, what about it?”

  “It’s not just that. Watch,” Tomás said, now moving his Presence to his arm. He put his hand in the wall closest to him and crushed the building block, turning it to dust. This time, Silva was more impressed. He stood up.

  “How did you do that?” he said, inspecting the broken segment on the wall. With enough strength, one could break blocks, but Tomás had simply crushed it with a mere flex of his hand.

  “Get the other two awake and I will explain,” said Tomás, moving towards the home entrance. He turned and saluted Silva, saying “I will be back, Sir.”

  Tomás left the dumbfounded Sergeant behind and went down the residence stairs, making his way towards the street. He left his machinegun behind because of the lack of ammo and took only a bag, his service pistol and axe, leaving behind the rest of his kit too. He made his way stealthily across the street, crouching down and slowly covering the sidewalk. He firstly made his way towards the opposite direction of his objective. Finding it uneventful, Tomás simply turned and directed himself towards his real objective, the hardware store.

  On his way, he crossed the Drake’s carcass, noticing the start of the decomposition of the thing’s body. Flies swarmed the exposed meat, and maggots were already finding their way in the muscles. They were ferocious in their work, devouring the corpse like a power drill. Tomás wondered if this would have the same consequence on them as it had on him and on the Goblins. He shuddered at the thought of the flies being supercharged with power, the already fast critters now packing a nasty bite. He moved on, but kept a close eye on this new threat.

  Tomás searched the store, looking for any useful items. He searched for the sharpening stone, finally being able to find it near the knives and cutlery. He also picked up tapes, an extra handle for his axe, a utility belt, an axe sheath, and a leather satchel. Now he found the futility of his attempts at making his axe handle more comfortable: he simply removed the bandages form the handle and used the tape to do the same job. It was much more presentable. He also sharpened the axe, making the edge glint in the half-light.

  He felt satisfied, taking a look at the additions to his kit. He hid the things in his bag, not wanting anyone confiscating it from him when he hot back to base. The irony hit him, with him accusing Olivia of looting just yesterday. But he didn’t care, things were already bad as they could get. Tomás simply hoped that he could use it to help, not destroy.