TAMASHIIMy mom is usually much better about my safety than this. Honestly, I don''t know what she was thinking. However, I guess I had to prove I could cut it in battle, so it was good to start somewhere. I needed to train, and creatures seemed scarce.

    I adjusted my gloves. Gloves, you see, were the only weapon that I could reliably use. This was because of my psychometry. Whenever I touched something with my bare hands, I was at risk of picking up impressions. I would remember where a tool had been, who the original owners were, some of their memories, and everything they saw. This meant that I would have obsessive-compulsive thoughts that unsettled me, such as touching knives and hearing a voice telling me that it needed to cut flesh and feel blood all around it. Since I had no desire to either be creeped out or go on a psychotic cutting rampage, I avoided most weapons like the plague and I had to avoid cutting my own food, instead resorting to eating with chopsticks. These gloves were a thick sturdy fabric that was thick enough to muffle such sensations and further covered with chainmail so that I could use it to fight. I rushed forward to punch.

    But centaurs are horses after all. And so, they were in another spot by the time I got there. “Hey you,” I said, “come back!” I chased after it and was about to catch it, when my mom''s fishing pole dragged me back. I glared at Mom, “What''s the big idea? I totally had...” She pointed to the last spot I stood. There was an arrow embedded in the grass. “He was baiting you,” she said, “running away and then going to draw an arrow on you when you rushed in. Luckily we noticed in time. Now, if you wanna keep practicing, the first thing to remember is keep aware. Don''t let them hurt you!”

    Sobered by nearly getting run through by a missile weapon, I advanced towards it by dodging to the left or right occasionally. I made to where it was intact, but it tried to flee. But this time, the centaur reared up in alarm as it got surrounded by my parents all of a sudden. I faced it down, and gave it a one-two punch, followed by a kick.

    Perhaps you forgot. I do have metal-lined gloves and such, but I kinda am a kid, and a callow youth at that. Perhaps with some experience this would change but for now, I hit as hard as an average nine year old. It barely bruised the creature.

    I refused to give up though. I would become stronger! And so, I launched into a series of punches and kicks, moving around as I did to avoid being in one place for its arrows to shoot. I was so expecting the centaur to draw its bow, when I got directly behind it, that I didn''t even remember that its lower body is that of a horse. And horses tend to kick.

    I had just enough time to put up a Shield, turning what might have been a deadly kick for someone like me into something that merely knocked me back a few feet into the air and covered my body in bruises. “Tamashii!” Mom screamed, “Are you all right?!?” I groaned, getting up after a few moments. I nodded, “I''m okay. But it kinda hurts!” I''d need some more training in martial arts I guess. For now, I had to remember that I did have other abilities. I was a Soulfire, after all.

    I''m sure you''ve heard people try to explain what a Soulfire is, using the words “psychic” or similar. But that''s only partially accurate. Actually, everyone is a psychic, we''re all souls trapped inside flesh bodies. It''s just... most people can''t withstand giving off large amounts of energy. Telepathy starts to give most people seizures or hallucinations, Pyromancy tends to rapidly dehydrate the body and eventually causes spontaneous combustion, Telekinesis and many of the others start the magnetize the blood and give massive issues like nosebleeds to actually having the brain explode in extreme cases. Think of it like being exposed to radiation for normal people, then exposed when your entire body is made of lead. Only this is not really accurate, because the real secret to a Soulfire''s resistance is actually their genetic resistance to psionic alteration. I had good blood, that wouldn''t magnetize, freeze, burn, or otherwise react to use of my own powers, and I had the ability for my muscles, skin, and bones to hold up to the strain of high-energy use. I couldn''t explode my brain, I couldn''t spontaneously combust, and I wouldn''t get hallucinations or seizures, no much how much power I used. I could get nosebleeds or lose consciousness, but I would need to be using much more than normal power, and my powers would typically adjust so the same level of power wasn''t a problem, similar to trying to lift 80 lb one time, and later being able to lift 250 lb after muscle training. My spiritual “muscles” were such that I could now lift about a 580 lb boulder without much help. And that''s what I did, sensing underground rocks and pulling on up, then throwing it at the speed of a bullet. The rock shattered against the centaur, splitting into fine dust The centaur on the other hand, was crushed completely into liquid, fur, skin, and bones by a huge object thrown at such speed. I grimaced. Next time, I just wanted to fight something, not completely take it apart. Sёar?h the N?velFire(.)net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    Perhaps I should explain some of my powers before we get too far into this battle. As I say, Soulfire powers are psionic, and divided into a number of categories like Telekinesis, Pyromancy, Healing, Shielding, and Empathy although there are some minor subcategories. Telepathy for instance gets subdivided into Dream Reading, Mind Reading, and Mood Reading. Mind Reading is pretty limited, you can''t just pull out deep secrets from people''s minds. I can only read shared surface thoughts or hear other telepathic conversations nearby. So if Portia suddenly shapeshifted into a boy named Bakamaru (that''s pretty specific, I dunno why I thought of that name or that scenario, honestly), I would have no way of knowing unless she directed her thoughts toward me. Mood Reading lets you see people''s moods as colors. You can tell for instance when a person has no interest in you (gray) or when they love you (full color) or when they are angry, happy, jealous, afraid, or sad. But it takes some training to remember these colors. Right now though, the yellow surrounding the other centaurs was pretty clear. They were freaked out. Creatures never expect to fight humans.

    Psionic power doesn''t use runes, just psychic effort, so it cannot be dispelled, it cannot be ruined by the rain, and it works just fine in an area of antimagic that dispels everything else. The other difference though was that while Ambrosia''s friend Zoe could use a fire spell as far as it could travel, usually curving at the horizon or hitting something, my psychic powers were very strong, but very limited. You see, a Soulfire has a territory. Inside this territory, I basically have the power to warp reality itself. I could make little streamers of light, I could turn green grass into a swamp or a desert, I could heal or shield myself, and I could move stuff around. But even one foot away from the edge of my territory, I can do absolutely nothing, making my powers mostly defensive. A typical Soulfire gradually gains territory while their power quickly increases, so I''d probably be at my full territory as a teen or adult, and keep it until old age. Also, while antimagic didn''t work against my powers, magical shields exerted territory of their own, and could at least defend against my powers. Or maybe I had it backwards, and antimagic could work but shields didn''t. I hadn''t been in a lot of battles against thaumaturgy masters, so I couldn''t tell you. I haven’t been in many battles period, honestly, except against people with farm tools. Fighting people is generally something I’ve tried to avoid.

    I did know, though, that unlike spells of antimagic or shields, I definitely did have a problem around atheists, since their reality tended to strongly reject mine. I also had to worry about other Soulfires engaging in “territory disputes” if they stood in the same area as me. I guess, you could think of it as visiting a theme park and having the memories how it was every year, but taking a child with you this year, and noticing subtle changes like the ticket price and some of the attractions.

    A couple of the centaurs fled. The remaining centaurs fired on them for cowardice, but despite some getting taken down, about two or three managed to get away. Even if I had the taste for killing fleeing creatures, they were outside of my territory. On the other hand, the other six decided to step right in. “You two stay back,” I warned, and they knew about how far to back off. My current territory was about 20 yards in a circle (including underground), although I suspected it would not be long before it expanded to 30 yards. The first centaur galloped towards me, drawing his bow and firing. Normally, a fast projectile would be too much for a caster of magic, because they had to focus runes in the air and work them into a spell. This meant a wonder-worker had to either set up a shield or have a spell already ready in case they were fired on. On the other hand, with just Telekinesis, I could lock a fired arrow in place and turn it back upon the person firing it. The reason was simple. Zeno''s Paradox of the Arrow states that, “If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.” That is, each second, the arrow is motionless, therefore if there are like an infinite number of seconds in which the arrow is motionless, motion cannot happen. This approach was totally different from how most Telekinesis worked, which still involved momentum, but as I learned to use my power, I learned that I could apply bizarre theoretical rules of physics, and defy them as well. So I used this principle to stop the arrow in mid-flight, turned it around, and made momentum and motion reassert themselves suddenly, giving a very small push with my Telekinesis to assist its already high kinetic energy. The first of the six centaurs died off. I used my Telekinesis to push the second of these back, but he charged forward again. So I lit a fire under him, and shaped it into a spiral of flame. While I could also toss fireballs, this was far more accurate and had less chance of immolating random forest creatures like foxes. The last four all surrounded me to try to attack at once. Looking around and seeing nothing besides them inside my territory, I used my Pyromancy less to create fire so much as to generate a solid sphere of pure energy. Basically, it was like an explosion came out of my body, and it was about the lowest power version of this effect. The combination of heat and force instantly destroyed such creatures. I sighed. My power was great, but I overdid it again. Those centaurs were just minding their own business when I brutalized and killed much of their tribe. Some of these poor centaurs were even giving milk to their young!

    AMBROSIA

    Tamashii complained about my methods of training her. “I don''t like killing creatures if I don''t have to,” she said. Honestly, kids today. Why, when I was on my adventure we killed critters and we liked it. The nerve, a nine-year-old not wanting to be horribly traumatized. I understood though, adventuring was a bit of an ugly business, and I wanted to protect her from as much as possible. A person shouldn''t have to kill unless others were actually trying to kill them.

    So instead, I started some training from my worst imagination. Tamashii was only as strong physically as a child, had no fighting style or technique, and probably would not be able to survive long if she became mentally exhausted from using her powers. We needed to fix some of that. “Okay,” I said, “you won''t have to kill any creatures. I''m going to train you hard though.”

    Tamashii''s abilities didn''t use mystic power, they simply required her to concentrate hard. This meant she could slowly use energy, surrounding herself or the areas nearby with energy. While this meant that normally, she was able to reshape what she saw, it also meant she could buff up her own body with psychic energy. Tamashii''s grandmother Queen Victoria had some abilities as a Soulfire, and she had been able to do this, according to Nevras. But Tamashii was dependent on what she saw, on her purely psychic abilities, and was unable to do this currently. This would need to change.

    I began my blindfolding her, and directing her by hand to Tsukuyomi Mountain. “You are too reliant on your powers being used outside your body. Today, you''re going to learn to strengthen yourself and heal yourself.” So saying, I turned my fishing pole into a hammer and brought it down hard on her knee. Sorry, my daughter, but this hurts me more than it does you. Honest. Because immediately, she used her Empathy to transfer the pain over. “Okay, good,” I said, “you can heal even without your vision. Now, we try training your body.” I had her push a boulder roughly as tall as her around. The idea was for her to get the feel of pushing something heavy and to subconsciously use her power to boost her physical strength.

    It didn''t quite work out the way we''d hoped. A week had passed and her muscles were sore, and she was no closer to figuring it out. “I can''t see!” she whined. Nevras, having had to sleep on rocky ground for all this time, finally just said, “Why don’t you do something about that?” Tamashii suddenly had a revelation. Apparently, I was wrong about the whole subconscious use, and we should have just told her. “Oh,” she said, “I could just use my powers on myself.” After that, she walked right up to the boulder like she could see it. She pushed it and pulled it around, then lifted it and threw it in the air to catch it. This didn''t go all that well, because we had to get out of the way when she missed. So I told her to clean up her mess. She used her power to make herself faster, so she got in front of the boulder. I was really frightened, until she punched it, and it crumbled apart. I felt like I was watching a wuxia show.

    Satisfied that she now had developed a second sight, and had a basic grasp of how boost her body strength, I had her hug small forest creatures so she could learn to turn her power boosting on and off consciously, since it probably was not a good idea to have her really strong all the time. Satisfied that her fear of killing them prevented her from doing so, I moved on to martial arts and psychic training. Since we were spending an extended amount of time outside, and Nevras didn''t want to use the tent, I typed into my Console. The Console is an MMORPG style drop-down menu, but it primarily operates in Script. So I typed ?Reshape Matter: Earth and Stone, Soften to Foam.? I saw the rocky ground convert into a sort of foam made of silicon polymers, and had her mold it with her powers to a mattress at least as good as the one at home. It felt weird openly using my powers, but I had tested this ability before. Nevras never seemed to remember what I had done, his mind constructing false memories to fit the strange events, an townspeople seemed to have a similar problem. Only Tamashii, as a Soulfire with her naturally heightened awareness seemed to notice this, and she seemed to be one for keeping secrets; she only knew that it was a gift from God, not the real reason why I had it. But in fact being unnoticeable was exactly the problem, for each time I used this, I got a little closer to being God, fading from sight for increasingly long periods. Soon, like God, I would be omnipresent. Once that happened, time and space would distort around me. When I was present, they would never remember I left, but since I would have a universe to run, I probably couldn''t stay. When I was gone, they would remember me as having died sometime last year.

    After she reshaped the foam into a bed, we had her sleep, since it was a major transmutation of matter, and all of us were sore from any nights out in these woods. Next, Nevras and I taught her martial arts, so she had actual skill. She was forbidden to use her boosted strength, instead teaching her to block, sidestep, boost herself up from lying down, and some martial arts moves, mostly ones from tai chi chuan that I had learned, but Nevras taught some other forms that he had learned in the Phoenix military.

    Satisfied that she was ready in terms of physical fighting, we worked more on her psychic abilities, having her sort out and move grains of sand by color, using her Telekinesis to sculpt solid stone, and finally, I got her to use her powers to do things like stick to surfaces like trees or rocks, and to walk on water. Yup, we were totally training her as a ninja. Tamashii asked, “Could we get back to killing creatures?”