Hellfire. The gates were guarded, even with the rest of the city deserted. Good on them, certainly, most places wouldn’t have been that diligent. But it was just my luck that the only competent city guard system to ever exist happened to be standing in my way in my own city. Sure, they were probably still working off my own plans for a rotating shift of guard duties, but I’d made them as airtight as possible, and there was no telling how the intervening years had affected that. Too many variables to even hazard a guess.

I hadn’t seen a gap larger than a mouse in their movements in the ninety minutes I’d been watching, even. Maybe I should be proud. If I’d come back wanting to take back control of this place, pride would definitely have been the right emotion. Unfortunately, that was the last thing I was after, so it was just damn annoying.

The odds of anyone running the unofficially official passwalls still being in the city were slim to none too. They wouldn’t have stayed behind, not if they were still the same greedy-minded types that they had been before. They probably were. People like that didn’t change except across generations, and that was the ones that actually made an effort to keep up with the times.

I didn’t really have a choice, did I? I was going to have to do something I really would have rather waited on, something that was going to have lasting consequences for the rest of this life, something that was better done in balanced sets of three. But I didn’t have time for that, did I? I had to choose now – right now – what my first Soulroot would be aligned to.

And as much as I loved some of the higher-tier ones, I didn’t have anything tied to them here and now.

I knelt down, arms in front of my body, palms opened upward, and cast myself into the maelstrom of elemental energies around me.

*

It was beautiful. Phantoms, but it really was beautiful. Even knowing it was a paltry amount compared to the amounts I would have seen in the higher realms, having any animus to see was a welcome sight compared to complete barrenness of Hell. The ribbons of fire anima that twirled down from the sun, the shifting strands of the wind as it moved, the veritable mountain’s worth of stone anima in the walls…seeing it felt like coming home.

And then there was me. Empty. A complete nothingness, just an outline of purest black with a triangle of knotted roots right in the center of my chest. That would be changing, but what would I take into the first of them?

It had to be something that would help through, over, or under that wall..

Something that could play nice with as many other combinations as possible.

Something that would stay useful.

Something that I’d never run out of.

That really didn’t make the choice any easier, huh? Fire could work if I cared to learn how to launch myself with it and trust I could figure out the landing on the fly. No pun intended. Stone could let me burrow through the wall and even find gainful employment later stabilizing slopes.

But neither felt quite right. Stone was too steady; it didn’t interact well with others without warping their effects. Fire was the same, but at least fire was more predictable in that quarter. It could be countered – or emphasized, depending on personal taste – with a wise choice of complements.

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Wind, though. Wind could slip in under everything. It could let me fly.

It might get me out of sticky situations. It would let me fly. It was everywhere, since the air was very rarely actually still.

It. Would. Let. Me. Fly.

There just wasn’t any competing with the ability to fly freely. There were other ways to do it, and plenty of them. In my previous life, I’d even made a habit of keeping at least three different flight enchantments on my person at all times. Pitfalls were not a thing I had expected to run foul of that frequently, but people just kept using them and it kept becoming more and more annoying to dig my way out.

There was zero chance that enchanted goodies could compare to it being innate, though, especially if it was the absolute core of my future growth. And it was vastly different from what I’d used before, so there was no risk of accidentally developing spells and abilities that were too close and would get me recognized. Wind it was.

I opened myself to the streamers of raw elemental energy tracing their way around me and began to inhale, taking in the blue animus and guiding it into my core Soulroot. It didn’t take long before it was full to the brim and glowing in my animasight. My capacity was miniscule. Clearly either the poor bastard in this body before me hadn’t trained at all or the benefits didn’t carry over. Potentially both. Probably both.

I honestly didn’t remember how well-known the Soulroot advancement had been when I died. I just remembered that the System didn’t like it much. Jealous as a dragon, that thing, and just as unlikely to share anything it had claimed.

Speaking of, shouldn’t there be something happening? Maybe it was growing craftier and sent less frequent, more powerful Crucibles after those who tried to defy it.

No, wait, the animus in the sky was doing something. Roiling, somehow, in a way that my new connection to Wind made me all the more aware was unnatural. It almost looked like a storm, but even magestorms didn’t make this kind of thing happen. It certainly acted like a storm, though, sending a bolt of yellow-and-purple intertwined animus – a kind I didn’t recognize in the slightest, as strange as that was – crashing onto me.

My Soulroot held. Barely, but it did. The fact that it was that close was worrying. This was the least of the Crucibles I’d be put through, and last time the first one hadn’t happened, for reasons I was fairly sure I knew. I’d have to confirm that at some point, just to see, but there were only so many things I could do to take up my time in irons.

I’d had a lot of time to think it over and come to a reasonable conclusion.

The pain of the Crucible’s shock faded and I shook myself back to present reality. Hopefully no one had been watching closely enough to spot it. I took one final look at the dancing animus around me and relaxed that portion of my vision to see the physical world again.

There wasn’t a unit of guards standing around me, glaring angrily and ready to take me into custody. A good sign that pointed toward a no on the observational front.

One more step and I was out. Free. Gone. Retired in a real capacity. Ready and willing to enjoy my new life. I had to fly.

Well, first I had to figure out how to fly. Then I had to fly. But it was all one item bundled together, so it was only one item. Proper listmaking had never been one of my greatest skills.

*

Turns out that swirling up a brief flight spell wasn’t too difficult. Far easier than I’d thought it would be, honestly. Pair directions to the movements of one hand, pair speed to the other, and throw a couple of high-velocity output streams down the length of a body and past the feet for momentum…it all fell into place with only a single failed attempt.

And that brick wall should consider itself flattered to have had me slam into it like that.

I took one breath in, anchored the spell’s mechanism in my mind one final time, and drew the energy from my Soulroot into the structure. The alley I had been kneeling, standing, and experimenting in began to howl as the wind sped through it. My feet came off the ground slowly. Then faster.

The spell hit capacity, my Soulroot drained to half, and I shot into the air, taking care to ramp down the speed as I got far enough up to get over the wall without being identified. Hopefully. Then I poured it all back on, darting over the guards and into the distance.

I was out. I was done. My old life was behind me. I could finally relax.

I was left with just one more question to ponder as I flew: was that an owl-person on that wall? I knew they’d been around, of course, but even I never saw hide or hair – hide or feather? – of one. What were they called…strigi-something. That sounded right. Someday I might have to get that story.

If it was ever safe for me to come back.