He closed his eyes and looked inwards. Feriona had incited his mana, and while the effect had certainly waned, it still lingered. He visualised his mana coursing through his ducts slowly, not quite crawling like it had in the past. He took conscious control of his mana and guided it, stirring it with more intent. In many ways it felt like breathing. As an autonomic process, breathing required no conscious or voluntary effort, but one could choose to take control of that process and intentionally regulate it for whatever reason. Internal mana was the same. Steering it through the body helped gradually improve its quality, but proper mana refining wouldn’t be possible for him until he got his Class and entered the first Elevation.

With his eyes still closed, Aleem inspected the slight improvements to his Skills in his schema. [Trance] had all but caught up to [Meditation], with the former being at level 12 and the latter, level 13. He wasn’t sure why [Trance] was levelling so quickly; it hadn’t even been three days since he’d gotten the Skill.

He checked his attributes in his soul schema.

Name

NOT APPLICABLE

Race

ERROR

Age

14

Class

NOT APPLICABLE

Elevation

NOT APPLICABLE

ATTRIBUTES

Strength

6

Agility

15

Resilience

7

Cognition

29

Pathos

-97

Will

21

His Cognition was only two steps away from the fourth tier. In ‘Tales of Woe’, attributes had been categorised into tiers. The first ten values constituted the first tier. Then values 11 to 20 made up the second tier, and so on. If the same reasoning held true here—and he’d been having less and less reason to think otherwise—then Aleem was currently in the third tier of both his Cognition and Will attributes, while Agility was in the second tier.

In the game, moving any attribute into the fourth tier (31 to 40) provided perquisites, which were boons attached to a specific attribute. Not a single player character had begun the game with their Cognition below the fourth tier. Aleem strained his memory to remember what the fourth tier Cognition perquisites were. Danger Sense, Improved Acuity and … something else he couldn’t quite remember. Every tier after the fourth brought new perquisites with it.

He dismissed his schema and focused more intently on guiding his mana. He called to mind the illusory matrices from the desire-moulding exercise he’d been practicing the day prior. The illusory image was complete, but it felt unstable in his mind. After futilely fussing over the imaginary network of grids, he opened his eyes and checked the booklet to find where exactly he’d gone wrong. The matrices, he soon learned, were referred to as ‘illusory’ because the goal was to make them stable enough to be perceived even when the eyes were open.

Aleem almost laughed. How was this material for children? It wasn’t just foolish pride nagging. He’d been a devoted art major, and he’d had a rather vivid imagination growing up, but this was some Augmented Reality level of craziness. He suppressed a sigh and got to work.

Desire-moulding wasn’t about sitting down with the eyes closed and envisioning complex mental imagery, it was also about being able to overlay that work of fancy on the visual perception. So a little like the soul schema. Something that came across as a hallucination, apparent to one’s perception alone.

As was his wont, Aleem started slow. He reconstructed small portions of the network, then opened his eyes, intentionally unravelling the visualisation, after which he would try constructing it with his eyes open. The visualisation fell apart, and after the fifth time he stopped counting. It was a bit harder than he’d thought. His pride had already taken a hit, so he called it what it was and moved on.

He paused his practice several times during the day to weigh in on more ‘terrain talk’, which was something Aleem found particularly boring. He tried his best not to show any of that, however. Salgad was a small fishing village in the Deyegint stretch, and due to the route they were currently taking, they would need to descend by foot once they were close enough.

As soon as it’d gotten fairly dark, Clund bought the wagon to a halt. While the horses were being unhitched, Bebson and Aleem sat a ways off on a very small knoll that had rocky footholds. There was a cleanness to the cool night air, a preciousness to the nebulae staining the darkened sky.

Under the muted gaze of Soros, and Bebson’s guarded expression, Aleem cast ‘Self Lantern’. He skipped the hand gestures as he had all the other times and merely muttered a verbose and flowery sentence. His fingers gained their sickly glow.

“You must have watched someone cast this a lot,” Bebson noted, as he inspected Aleem’s fingers.

“I have,” Aleem said, surprised. “How could you tell?”

“Analysing trifling magic is nothing impressive. Just from looking at it, I can glean the intent behind this cantrip. You seem to have a clear idea of what it is you want, but your desire-moulding is just … look, it’s atrocious, alright? It’s clear to me that you’ve seen this cantrip in operation so many times that you even eliminated gestures and used a subvocalisation. Impressive, but sloppy. This is supposed to be a whole body-illumination cantrip, isn’t it?”

Aleem nodded. “I tried running through the hand gestures yesterday, but nothing changed.”

“Your problem is desire-moulding. And now don’t let that dishearten you. It’s the singular mass hurdle for caster types. At the lower levels, Skills don’t necessarily need you to shape your desire since your soul does all the heavy lifting. Spells, however, are specifically being engaged by your intellect and your focus. Above all else, magic is about mental discipline. You need to practice more.”

“I’ve been working on some basic illusory matrices,” Aleem admitted. “I think I’ve almost succeeded in nailing down my visualisation.”

A sportive smile wrinkled the man’s grey moustache, and even in the low light Aleem thought he saw the man’s eyes twinkle. “Mm. Right. You keep working on that, okay?” He chuckled lightly. “Matrices. How could I forget. Those are very important.”

Aleem narrowed his eyes, but before he could say anything more, Wulry called them over for dinner.

Much like the previous day, Aleem ate light. It was a fairly lively night, and even Clund sat by the heating dish to listen to Serend play some apparently popular tunes, which the others sang along to. At some point, Aleem, tiring of company, refilled his waterskin and retired to the wagon. He nestled himself on his own side of the front-facing bench, then he retreated into his mind as he guided his mana and practiced the desire-moulding exercise. It was much easier to sleep this way.

The next day was more of the same. The wagon continued to plod on. Aleem answered questions about Daibon and Orotaz, went over specifics about the relics, and then there was lots and lots of that tedious terrain talk.

He and Serend compared notes to make sure they hadn’t missed anything from her [Confirm]ation. Their visions tallied quite well, though hers was far more comprehensive. Significantly so. ‘Beware the Deyegint Stretch’ and ‘Caution!’ sounded like generic enough advice, and Serend further assured Aleem that it in fact was quite generic. Still, the group decided that they would stay alert. Wulry had even passed this one to Clund.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The Barveyna driver had claimed that he was making even better time than he’d hoped. All through the day, Aleem guided his mana, read the primer and practiced visualisation exercises.

His increasingly futile efforts at properly overlaying the network of matrices over his vision, yielded fruit in another direction.

ALERT

+1 to Cognition

+1 to Will

[Mana Control] has levelled up

[Mana Control] Level 6

His anxiety mounted as their destination grew closer. There was a soft decline to the terrain now, and the giant horses moved in a hearty canter.Aleem’s window showed him much more than the occasional rock formation.

It happened after the sun had set.

The sounds of the wagon, creaks, pounding hooves, soughing wind. This was the fastest the horses had been moving in days. Aleem, seated cross-legged on the bench, was investigating elemental shadow, for a change. His eyes were closed and he carefully perceived what his mind interpreted as a signal from outside their wagon where Clund sat. For some minutes Aleem had been investigating the hint of something barely eluding his mental comprehension.

He brought the weight of his attention to bear on his task of grasping this sliver of shadow. There were vague impressions.

Something, something bad.

Wobbly.

Something, something not, not.

Not safe.

Aleem opened his eyes, puzzled and tense. Dusk had greatly dimmed the interior of the wagon. Serend waslightly strumming her instrument, while R’shai was reading a book. Everyone else was either sleeping or meditating.

Bad, wobbly, not safe.

R’shai lifted her head and closed her book.

Wulry wrenched off the napkin covering his face and jerked his head sideways as if looking through the wall behind him where Clund sat.

ALERT

+1 to Cognition

Other notifications roled by, but Aleem wasn’t paying attention to them. Uh-oh.

“I think—”Aleem began.

The wagon lurched sharply. Wulry and R’shai instantly retreated to the extremities of their bench as a mass of brown broke through the wall between them and, airborne, ploughed towards Aleem. He was already moving out of the way when Serend shoved him hard, helping him dodge much faster.

The brown mass broke through the wooden inlay, taking most of the back wall with it. Aleem couldn’t grab on to anything in time and almost fell out of the still moving vehicle but Serend shoved him against the side wall with her foot and held him there.

Hetti in turn was holding Serend firmly, but Serend’s schlöck was nowhere to be seen. The wagon was still careening forward at an unsustainable speed.

Through the Clund-sized hole on the wall opposite him, Aleem could see that the driverless horses had been spooked. What had done that to Clund? Were they under attack? What was going on? The horses whinnied and jerked wildly, seemingly tugging against one another and their restraints, tails swishing to and fro as they struggled to balance themselves on the steep terrain, unable to halt their frightening calamitous speed.

“It’s a Boundary Field,” Wulry called out over the rush of air. “I didn’t sense it till we were close.”

“These horses are out of control,” R’shai said.

“Nothing you can do for them?” Wulry asked with a pained grimace.

She shook her head. “Clund’s not dead, or at least he’s dying very slowly. They’re still locked onto his Skill.”

“Me neither,” Bebson said. He and Hetti were locking arms. “I can’t—”

The wagon lurched sideways perilously and Serend almost lost her footing on Aleem, who scrabbled in vain to keep himself steady.

“Fuck, we need to jump!” Wulry announced.

“Like out of the wagon?” Aleem asked, scrabbling for more purchase but getting none.

“No, into the wagon, you derp gobdaw,” Hetti screamed at him. “Aaarh! I can’t hold this position for long,” she declared in a strained voice.

“Take Serend,” Wulry said to her. “R’shai—”

“I’ve got Twenty-two,” she said, surging from her awkward position by the corner of the wagon.

She was upon Aleem before he could blink twice, wrapping an arm around his torso and sailing through the vacant back wall with him.

She landed first, but it still knocked the air out of him. Somehow, R’shai took the full brunt of their very brief tumbling. She threw him off her once they came to a stop. She’d done all the work yet Aleem was the one panting like he’d run a mile. He lay beside her on his back, world spinning lazily, as his eyes adjusted to the ash of dusk against the backdrop of stars and an enfevered Soros.

‘Boundary Field’, Wulry had said. In ‘Tales of Woe’, those were very expensive and powerful defensive wards that could cover large tracts of land. Such intricate formations were better utilised in regions with dense ambient mana, and should have been all but unable to activate in a mana-starved region like Ontnmor. However, it was clear to Aleem that the Daibon cult was taking full advantage of the vast network of tuv lodes—veins of concentrated planetary energy—buried deep beneath the highlands.

Boundary Fields always had exclusion parameters, those onto whom access was denied. For a large expanse of land like this, the parameters would have to be quite broad and impersonal. Something related to Elevation most likely.

Aleem pulled himself into a sitting position. “What elevation was Clund?”

“Second Elevation,” R’shai said. “Why? You’re thinking about its specific restrictions?”

“Yes,” Aleem said, nodding. “But since you, Wulry and Bebson are second Elevation, then it must be some other—”

“We’re all first Elevation,” she said distractedly, as she looked out over the terrain. “Your theory probably checks out.”

Aleem had gone all this while operating under the impression that Wulry and his core group were at least at the budding stage of the second Elevation, but apparently they were all just peak first Elevation.

He panned the horizon with her. The wagon had already disappeared behind a dip, but he could make out three vertical silhouettes not too far away.

Three?

“Wulry, you ass,” R’shai muttered under her breath. There was more fatigue than exasperation in her voice. She sighed heavily as she rose to her feet.

It wasn’t difficult to put the facts together. Wulry hadn’t jumped off the carriage because he’d tried to save the horses. It was … perhaps foolish, but also such a Wulry thing to do.

Aleem got off the ground and trailed R’shai as she made her way to the others. They all seemed okay, though Serend had an uncharacteristic blank look on her face. If she’d been a bit quiet all through their journey here, now she looked like she might be in mourning.

“Do you want us to go look for it?” R’shai asked Serend without preamble. Aleem supposed she was speaking about the shlöck.

Serend shook her head and sniffled softly. “It’s gone. I can—I can tell.” She looked away towards the directions the wagon had continued in. “Wulry’s fine, right?”

“He wouldn’t have done it, if he thought he was in danger. I tried to stop the idiot though,” Bebson said with a tired frown, still looking out over the dip.

R’shai chuckled and patted the man’s shoulder. She was tall enough that if she patted his head instead, it wouldn’t have looked out of place to Aleem. “Come on, let’s go pick him up.”

“What about the driver?” Aleem asked, looking back in the general direction they’d come from.

“Dead,” R’shai said without slowing. “First thing I checked after we jumped.”

Well, damn. Aleem looked back again. He’d picked up on something right before the incident, but hadn’t been prompt about sharing it. Had his hesitation just gotten a man killed? He filed the thought away. Guilt always tended to slow him down, and he couldn’t afford that now.

He and R’shai shared their theory about the Boundary Field to them.

“If he was second Elevation, then why didn’t he get off the horse in time?” Hetti asked.

It was a valid question. Entering into the second Elevation without the first perquisite in Cognition was not uncommon in the slightest, so most people in such a situation just acquired a Skill that granted them some equivalent form of danger sense. Clund should have had more than enough time to flee the Boundary Field.

The answer probably had something to do with his Thamiorite affiliations. Someone from the forums had referred to them as adrenaline junkies. Their obsessive desire for excitement and adventure was without compare. Aleem kept all this to himself.

The group of five hiked down the gradient in relative quiet. Even Hetti seemed to have taken on a more mellow disposition. More than once he caught her glancing over her shoulder in the direction of their dead driver.

They crested a small mound and the lush valley came into view, ingloriously sprawled out below them, and surrounded by rolling hills, much higher than the one they stood on. The range of mountains that had seemed so distant the day before, hung imposingly as a backdrop to the verdant hill chain.

“I see him!” Hetti said, pointing away from the valley. Off to the side, and further down the gradient, lay the terribly wrecked remains of their wagon.

Aleem had left his cloth bag in there. It was a silly thought to have, given the situation. There was hardly anything of true value inside it. Still, the sense of loss persisted. It intensified even more when he realised that Serend had probably lost her shlöck in an attempt to keep him from falling.

There were two very large horses behind the wreckage and a silhouette standing among them; the silhouette resolved into Wulry’s proportions as they drew nearer.

“What took you so long?” he asked, a smile on his face as he worked. Unlike his confident and usually arrogant smile, this one seemed apologetic. He had completely taken off the hitch, and was presently undoing the harnesses and bridle on the orange horse. “Clund?”

“Doesn’t seem to have survived the fall,” R’shai said.

“Shame. I liked the rascal.” He moved to the green horse, but the completely unharnessed beast stayed put. He looked at Serend, and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” He paused, as though not sure how best to phrase his next words. “I know that instrument meant a lot to you. Will you be alright?”

“I wasn’t a music type to begin with,” Serend said, shocking Aleem and, it seemed, no one else. “I’ll be fine.”

Wulry nodded. “Good.”

“You’re just going to release these horses into the wild?” Hetti asked. “Aren’t there wild beasts here?”

“They’ll be fine,” Wulry said, inching his head to the side and narrowly avoiding a bite on the ear from Orange. Aleem shivered. Once the man was done with the beasts he patted Green on the rump and sent both creatures trotting in the direction they’d come. There was grass aplenty and the occasional pond for them to drink from.

“I think Twenty-two might be right about how the Boundary Field denies entry to anyone above the first Elevation,” Wulry said a few minutes later as they made their way down the gradient. They side stepped another small hillock that overlooked the valley below. A sparkling tributary meandered along the basin, and ran past a tight cluster of one-storey buildings in the far distance.

Salgad.

“But we have no quick and accurate way of testing any of this out,” Bebson said. “Is it still safe to proceed?”

“We’ll do so with caution,” R’shai said. “And we’ll,” she hesitated, “keep a close eye on you, Twenty-two. Just let me know if you feel anything different.”

He took in a deep breath and exhaled, nodding. “I will.”

Hetti in turn let out a sigh overladen with melodrama. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Aleem looked up at the pink-hued moon hanging dourly in the sky. An entire civilisation of Vriorians lived there, ancient and old and powerful, and yet, here he was cleaning up after their goddess.

“Zraazrondre, I'm on a precipice,” he muttered. “If I live through the night, your children’s children will worship me.”