“Having a Skill doesn’t make it strong,” his grandfather said. “There are good doctors in the Union. Some are very good. Some just try their best. Skills are not usually as complicated as a whole profession, but they are more inexplicable than any profession.”

  “That’s entirely contradictory,” Fintan said. His grandfather didn’t like his job, and Fintan liked to argue logic with him if only to prove that doctors and scientists weren’t the only ones who could reason out a solution. “It’s par for the course.” His grandfather liked an ancient sport, hitting sticks with stones. Seemed like a waste of time, but Fintan knew some of the lingo.

  “When you came out of the portal, I didn’t see you. You appeared in front of me.”

  “I heard you and walked over there,” Fintan said. “It’s not like I popped out of thin air.” Was his grandfather saying he could teleport? That would be a useful Skill. He needed to find a way back to the living world. He’d accept being a ghost if he had to, but regardless of the options, teleportation would go a long way toward getting him to his goal.

  He knew enough about science to know teleportation was impossible. Union scientists could send information over quantum entangled electrons, but actual mass was an entirely different matter. Then again, he didn’t have mass.

  “I didn’t see you appear,” his grandfather said, “but I’m sure you weren’t there before I called your name. Trying moving around.” His grandfather motioned with one hand. He expected Fintan to pop into existence somewhere else.

  Fintan shrugged. He walked around and willed himself to the other side of the grandfather.

  An image of himself briefly appeared on the other side of the old man, but looking at himself was such a shock that the duplicate faded as he stumbled backward.

  “I was in two places,” Fintan said.

  His grandfather shook his head.

  “No, that was just a seeming. Most people from the Union can make a seeming. I guess it’s technically a Skill, but it's common. There are a lot of common Skills. You can feed it enough mist to keep it there or do something that might help you, but most people will see right through it.”

  His grandfather spent the next half hour with him, trying to figure out a way for him to be somewhere else. He tried closing his eyes as if not observing Fintan would make a difference. He tried having both of them close their eyes. Then he tried various meditations, some of which he’d learned in the afterlife. Nothing worked. Whatever Fintan had done was unconscious. His grandfather said that wasn’t unusual either.

  “People don’t learn new Skills in the afterlife,” his grandfather said. “I don’t think they have the motivation. The Skills they do have they’ve learned unconsciously, and they relearn them when they get here. I’ve never heard of a Skill that in some way wasn’t related to a life experience. We’ll try something easier. There are common Skills most have like the seeming.”

  His grandfather pointed into the sky, and a grey balloon formed. It was a magnificent manifestation, easily the match for Fintan’s conflagration in sheer size. If there were bandits around, they would see them for miles, but his grandfather explained that this place was fairly secluded and near water. Likely, they’d followed him from his trips to the portal, and after that beating, it was unlikely they would return.

  The balloon formed directly over Fintan’s head in the grass clearing in front of the log cabin. At first, it was cabin size, but then it grew and changed shape, gaining definition. The balloon looked like a boulder. It picked up mass rapidly as mist from the ground swirled lightly up into the shape.

  As Fintan watched, the soft lines became hard lines, and grains manifested in the stone. It was a floating, propelled in the air in some fashion by his grandfather’s will.

  “I want you to catch the boulder boy,” his grandfather said. “Strength is a common Skill. Untested, you will remain normal, but after you catch the boulder, you will find yourself stronger in almost every circumstance you can imagine.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  This was worse than the sword. He looked for someplace to jump, but the shadow of the boulder covered the entire landscape.

  “I don’t need to be strong as long as I can find a way out of here.”

  Fintan said the words, but he didn’t believe them. He died because he wasn’t strong enough to protect his family. He looked for a way to evade the boulder, but in part, he wondered if he deserved it.

  Maybe I’ve awakened in a bad place, and this isn’t my grandfather? The thought was undeserved. He knew this was his grandfather in a way only he could know. He recognized his grandfather’s eimai without the net telling him who he was.

  That recognition was on a personal level, and perhaps that was how he found his grandfather when he Stepped. He might be able to Step toward his grandfather and avoid the boulder. His grandfather’s eimai was like a direction. He was either closer or farther.

  Would that make him stronger?

  Fintan held up his hands as if to catch the massive rock. His grandfather looked approving, but Fintan felt like there was room for a compromise.

  “Showing me how you make it float might be more useful than carrying it around,” Fintan said.

  “That’s another level. We have to start at the beginning.”

  His grandfather scarcely said the words before the boulder dropped out of the sky.

  Fintan had manifested things, and they all had mass and weight. The boulder whistled in the air, but such was the distance, the whistle wasn’t long before it hit his arms with the resounding crack of broken limbs.

  His legs crumpled under the weight, and the boulder smashed his chest into the soft ground. He sank through the dirt a half meter while the crushing weight pushed down on his chest. His legs were above him, and his face was pressed against the side of the boulder. He tasted rock dust and granite on one side of his face and earthworms on the other.

  If he hadn’t been recently skewered, he would have thought he was dead, but he focused on manifesting air in his lungs and breathing out dirt while he gathered his thoughts.

  “Are you under there, boy?” His grandfather asked the question as if he could be anywhere else.

  “Yes!” Fintan called. He coughed loudly as he breathed in dirt, but the dirt didn’t stay in his lungs.

  “Oh, okay,” his grandfather sounded disappointed. “I thought you might have traveled somewhere else.”

  “Was I supposed to?” he said. He thought the whole purpose was to lift the boulder.

  “I mean, if you could, that would have been good, but lifting the boulder is important too. It’s a more mundane Skill, but mastering the basics is good.”

  “How am I supposed to lift the boulder when my feet are over my head?” he asked the old man.

  “You can’t expect to land on your feet every time you fall.”

  The words sounded more distant, as if his grandfather was walking away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to take care of the boat.”

  His voice sounded easy and even more distant. Fintan understood one part of that. Walking toward the river was like walking downhill. It was easy, even peaceful—and fast.

  He couldn’t put away the thought that his grandfather struggled to walk away from the water. When the old man turned to the water, a surreal expression of peace came over him.

  While his grandfather was talking, the old man’s eyes often darted to the river. There was no escaping, not even for a moment.

  The old man was going to check on the boat, and Fintan was trapped under the rock. He pushed against the stone, and it didn’t budge. He could bend his effort toward turning the stone back into mist. He’d done that before with other objects, but he felt like that wasn’t what his grandfather wanted.

  He needed to be stronger. Certainly I’m stronger than a boulder made out of mist? The thought was a question, but his belief hardened into fact. The longer he was pressed under the rock, the less real it felt. Perhaps he cheated a little and let the dirt around his face dissolve.

  It’s not real. At least it was less real than he was. He pushed down with his legs. The earth beneath him gave way, and he crunched his abs, until he got the boulder on his shoulders. Then he lifted. He didn’t try to unmake it, but he focused on his belief that he was stronger. His thighs felt like they were made of iron strands and his arms felt enormously swoll.

  Strong enough to lift a mountain. The boulder came up out of the air, and he tossed it to the side, but instead of falling, it dissolved into mist. He looked at his arms and legs but if they’d grown bigger they were back to normal size—that was disappointing.

  His grandfather was already at the river inspecting the boat.

  Fintan bounded out of the hole and ran downhill to see him. He almost didn’t stop when he reached the edge of the river, and he windmilled to pull himself back.

  “Don’t fall in,” his grandfather said. “You might make it back out, but many don’t. Fishing isn’t a pastime in the afterlife. I guess we were all supposed to get that done before we died. No one told us it was a luxury.”

  “I did it,” Fintan said. His voice held a hint of pride. He felt stronger. He’d leveled up. Many of his weaknesses disappeared simply because he wished them to.

  “I can see that. It was a passable first effort. With no one other than yourself paying attention to it, you defeated the boulder.”

  “I realized it was empty, and I made myself stronger.”

  “Yes, you did, but in the future, you will encounter worse than a paper-thin boulder full of helium. When people want something to be true, no matter how impossible it is, they have a way of making it so. That’s when the real challenge begins.”