Here we go, folks! Have a great evening. :)

-Plum

39 – The Depth of Perception

Long after Lucy had left, slipping through his door into the darkness, intent on finding some sleep, Andy sat awake, staring into the low, flickering amber light of his tiny oil lamp. It was a crude little light—one of James’s early experiments—made from an old tuna can and some other scraps. The things that made it special were the glyphs carved inside the bottom of the can.

Eduardo had helped James come up with the glyphs in the early days, back when Andy and the others had been gone, exploring the vermin dungeon. The magic wasn’t anything special, and James had improved on the design a dozen times over, but Andy still liked the little lamp. It could burn a tablespoon of any kind of oil with a warm, reddish-orange glow for days.

It was a nice little flame to stare into while he thought about the many choices before him, the many choices that had kept him stalled, doing nothing—saving up Improvement Points to the point where a choice had to be made. With ten points, he was getting close, and he figured he might not be in a situation where he could sit around and ruminate when he earned the two more he needed for an Evolution Point, so he was going to figure things out right then and there. He wouldn’t sleep until he did.

That was what he’d told Lucy, and she’d sat with him for a while, but it had been late in the evening by the time she’d slipped out. Andy still wasn’t sure of his best move. The way he saw it, there were a number of things to consider. First was the original idea that Evolution Points were close to invaluable and that raising his baseline attributes beyond their natural ceiling was imperative. After all, if he didn’t have his superhuman Speed, he might have died a dozen times over.

Of course, he had the Speed, and he had the Perception to go with it; there wasn’t any evidence to say that what he could gain from improving his class spells and abilities wouldn’t be more valuable than boosting his other baseline attributes—at least in the short term. That was another part of the argument; it wasn’t as if Andy had a time limit on when he could earn Evolution Points. He could grind Improvement Points on new classes anytime. At that moment, though, during the war, his primary classes were important.

Naturally, the devil’s advocate in him would argue that there would always be some kind of crisis around the corner. It was the nature of the world they lived in now. He might never feel relaxed about grinding Improvement Points. Nevertheless, Andy felt like he’d already made good choices; his Speed and Perception were enough to cope with someone who was exceptionally strong or tough, and they put him on even footing with a foe who might be extremely fast.

Another point in favor of improving his spells and skills was the fact that there were other ways to break ceilings: Codex pages, powerful elixirs, natural treasures, and even just class breakthroughs.

As he ran those points through his mind for the hundredth time, Andy decided he was pretty much determined to spend some Improvement Points; the next problem was figuring out how he’d spend them. Denise’s pointed question about whether he’d hit the ceiling on his Perception attribute again had caught him off guard. Why hadn’t he? He supposed it was just a single-minded, almost blind focus on reaching the next Evolution Point as soon as possible. He’d only improved his Perception so he could learn Axiomancy, after all.

Andy couldn’t deny the value of Perception, though. It worked with his Speed on many levels in a fight; he saw things coming before they happened and was able to react in ways that left his enemies confounded. It was more valuable than that, though. All of his senses were sharper than was possible for a natural human.

Even as he closed his eyes and exhaled softly, he heard the murmur of conversations that were taking place dozens of yards away. He could smell individual spices on the breeze coming through his window—someone was cooking with dill and parsley, someone was making cider with cinnamon, and someone else was baking sourdough. The scents were things he wouldn’t consciously recognize, but if he just let them drift through his nose into his lungs, he understood them.

Beyond his senses, his unnatural Perception affected the way his mind processed the information he gleaned. He understood what was going to happen sometimes before it happened, all based on cues he’d subconsciously picked up—that was the crux of his argument for why he ought to continue to improve it. It was directly applicable to his ability to capitalize on his Speed in a fight or dangerous situation.

Before he talked himself out of it, Andy opened his status sheet and applied an Improvement Point to his Perception attribute. Hot tingles ran from the top of his skull down his arms and spine, all the way to his toes and fingers; his eyes flickered with exploding stars, and his ears echoed with buzzing static. Andy held the edge of the table, steadying himself as the rush went through him. Over the next few minutes, it gradually faded until he felt normal again.

“Damn,” he muttered. It seemed to him that the single point had affected him more than the ones he’d put into the attribute back when he’d been trying to comprehend the Axiomancy Codex. Bracing himself, he tried to apply another point to the attribute.

He’d half-convinced himself that he was at the ceiling again, so he was surprised when, once again, his body lit up with sensory feedback. It seemed a little briefer than before, but Andy still had to grip the table as he reeled for several minutes—maybe longer. It was hard to tell while his every sense was overwhelmed.

When he finally swallowed a mouthful of saliva and could move his tongue around in his mouth without exploding sensations, he blinked rapidly and looked around his tiny house. Despite being in his Axiomatic Pathfinder class and lacking his Flame Sight ability, the tiny flickering lamp on his table was plenty for him to see every corner of the place, even into the shadows under his bed. “That’s an improvement…”

When he looked at his status sheet, he hesitated; the last two upgrades had taken something out of him, and he wanted a minute to recover, just in case he wasn’t at his new ceiling yet. To pass the time, he studied his current class abilities, trying to devise a path for improvement:

Axiomatic Artistry – Bound: 3Greater Axiom of Passage – Bound: 5Axiom of Separation – Bound: 2Axiom of Time – Bound: 1

Andy thought back to how he’d improved his Axiom of Passage, how he’d applied Improvement Points with the intent on increasing the spell’s ability to breach barriers with a greater application of mana. It had seemed to him that the System had recognized his understanding of the spell’s limitations and how to make it better. When he’d managed to gain “mastery” of that one spell, it had allowed him to advance the class to level ten.

The most important takeaway from all that, in Andy’s opinion, was that he’d confirmed the System’s appreciation of intention. It took intention into account not only when awarding new classes and abilities but also in the mechanics involved with how they might change and progress. Andy liked his current axioms; the ability to travel great distances had almost peerless utility, but the Axiom of Separation was also his only “damage” spell, even though it didn’t seem designed for that. Of course, the Axiom of Time suggested almost limitless potential.

The thing that gave him pause was actually something that had happened over the last couple of days—spending time with Denise. He’d seen the way her spell repertoire had begun to expand. She could make herself and others invisible; she could see great distances; she could make impressive lights; she could blast things with lightning or fire—or turn the earth into a quagmire. He knew there was more, too. It was something they’d talked about on their hike toward Gavax’s settlement. Her list of spells had begun to expand as she mastered the schools of magic that were part of her Sorcerer class.

When Andy looked at his three spells, he wondered if pouring points into them was the right move. Would it be wiser to invest in Axiomatic Artistry? Or, he supposed, maybe he ought to just work on gaining more levels in the class. Maybe that was the way to unlock more versatility.

Or maybe it’s all of the above—can’t master a school of magic by just focusing on one spell. His eyes were focused on his Greater Axiom of Passage as he had the thought—it was really the only spell he’d invested in with any intention.

Feeling significantly steadier than just a few minutes before, Andy refocused on his attributes and applied another Improvement Point to his Perception attribute. This time he was sure he’d be met with a System message letting him know he’d hit a new ceiling, but he was wrong. Once again, his body came alight with sensations. The tingling was even more intense, coursing up and down his body, traversing every millimeter of his flesh. His ears roared with a rush of nonexistent wind; his eyes flashed with expanding balls of light that numbered in the thousands, and he swore he could smell the wood grain in his old, beat-up table.

Andy fell forward, resting his cheek against the table in order to ground himself. When the rush finally faded and his senses settled back to something close to normal, he looked at his status sheet to confirm his mental tally was right:

Perception: 14Will: 8Strength: 9Vitality: 9Speed: 13

His Perception was now higher than his Speed. “Okay,” he muttered, inhaling deeply. For some reason, he’d been sure his Perception ceiling would be lower than that of his Speed. Then, when they’d both been 13, he’d thought he must have reached the new cap. Now, though, with Perception a solid point above his Speed, he couldn’t see how it could possibly go up again. Bracing himself, he applied another point.

He sighed with relief, chuckling softly when the System flashed a message before his eyes:

**You have reached a deeper limit of Perception. Your senses and awareness have been honed far beyond their original potential, yet further refinement is now constrained by the limits of your present form. To move past this barrier, you must attune yourself to what lies beyond ordinary senses, uncover truths hidden beneath appearances, and endure transformations not yet revealed.**

Andy closed his eyes, both excited and apprehensive. His little home was quiet and dark, but if he tried, he swore he could hear the wood in his walls breathing—expanding and contracting with the gentle rush of the breeze and the minute changes in temperature. He could feel the warmth of the tiny flame a yard from his face. If he let his concentration expand, almost like he was stretching himself out his window, he could hear a woman softly telling someone a bedtime story.

The wind told the story of fires, candles, fragrant blossoms, and musky rodent nests. He smelled sweat and perfume, food and…coffee. Andy stood up and walked to his door, stepping outside into the dark night. The nearest lamppost threw a pool of bright light on the pathway about twenty yards away, but if he looked away, into the grove, the darkness didn’t hold any secrets from him.

He knew it was dark; things looked different than they did in the light, but he could still see just fine. The world was shaded in cool blues and grays, but even in the deepest shadows up in the dark branches, he could see the individual leaves, the caterpillars, and the night moths.

More amazing than his heightened senses was his simple awareness of everything. He walked away from his house, between two big mesquites, and he knew where all the leaves were falling around him. He could track every movement caused by the breeze, the many little creatures moving in the dark, and the flickers of the flames in the lamps.

Truly, his perception of the world had gone from superhuman to something magical—something beyond what he’d imagined. It was amazing, but at the same time, it was overwhelming; Andy was having trouble thinking with all the sensory input, and even when he closed his eyes, he found his mind trying to track the individual sounds—from the rustles of leaves to the scrape of tiny claws in sandy soil.

He was subconsciously building a map of smells, trying to gauge how far away a vanilla-scented candle was, from which direction he’d caught a whiff of sandalwood, and whose familiar body odor was lingering on the back of the wind.

Andy went back into his house and closed his window, and then he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. He wasn’t done with his Improvement Points—not by a long shot. With seven left to spend, he had to decide on the best way to show intention as he broadened his understanding of Axiomancy, and he had to decide how many points he’d save for Brimstone Stalker; his primary class was rare and limited, and he wasn’t going to let it fall behind.

He couldn’t focus, though. He needed time to get used to his new Perception. His plan was to sleep, letting his body adjust naturally, but even with his window closed, he found the stimulation of his senses intense—sounds, smells, vibrations. Before long, he had a mental image of the grounds around his tiny house. He knew where bugs were crawling, where a rabbit was lingering to nibble on a shrub, and where an owl—was it Cheechee?—had settled in the branches above.

At first, he feared he’d never be able to rest again, but even as he lay there with his eyes closed, picturing the branches in the tree outside, adding new ones to his mental image as they creaked and swayed in the breeze, he drifted off, exhausted by the effort.