Chapter 3) A new dawn

The World Tree stirs itself every few centuries. No clear pattern as to what triggers this awakening has yet been established, or at least shared widely for scholarly discussion, but there is an established pattern in its outcome. The great tree stirs, and its leaves darken the sky. They then spread throughout the world, crossing oceans and mountains, plains and grasslands. Nobody has been able to track their journey, but reports of their consequence have been delivered from all known corners of the world.

The leaves find people and bestow power. It is unknown how they choose those to whom they bestow this blessing, or even if they choose at all. The blessed are as varied as the cultures from which they emerge - men and women, slaves and kings, children and the aged. They follow no particular creed or value system, and there is no agreement between scholars, past or present, over the mechanism of the leaves. Do they seek people who would be great already, and amplify their power, giving them further opportunity to rise? Or is it only the potential imparted by the World Tree’s blessing that propels otherwise unremarkable people to such lofty heights? On only one thing can all agree though. Those who are blessed by the world tree are the heralds of change, and that is why they are loved and feared in equal measure.

Excerpt from ‘in the shadow of greatness, an investigation on the 3rd cleansing – unknown author’

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I awoke to a low growl that seemed to reverberate up my very spine. With all the finely tuned instincts of a privileged human from Earth who had had nothing to fear his whole life, I shifted my head slightly to a more comfortable position and promptly fell back to sleep.

That sleep was shattered the next moment by a piercing yowl of pain and I flailed in panic as my eyes shot open. Clearly my monkey brain was reasserting control, because adrenaline began coursing through my system before I had even understood what my eyes were telling me.

A snarling, yapping whirlpool of fur was not 10 meters below me and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes with the back of one hand while the other groped blindly for my horn. I felt something brush the tips of my fingers and roll away, and I whipped around frantically to grab the weapon before I could knock it off my perch.

Disaster averted, I turned back to the much bigger and more pressing disaster unfolding below me. Two furred creatures were squaring off below me, trying to bait each other into lunging. One looked like some sort of overgrown badger if I had to guess, and the other was clearly a wolf. Although the longer I looked, the more that description didn’t seem to fit. Its legs were too long and spindly, and its lithe body sat atop them like a house on stilts.

The badger seemed to agree with my assessment as the next moment it lunged forwards and barrelled into one of the wolf’s legs, knocking it to the ground. That was all I could really make out, as they rolled around trading bites quicker than I could track. Sure, I could still see their general outlines as they fought, but the details were changing too quickly for me to perceive.

I caught the flash of teeth from the wolf as it lunged forwards with its sinuous neck extended before a flurry of movement from the badger obscured my view again. They drew apart a moment later and I could now see blood on both. The wolf-thing had speckles of red around its mouth, dripping from its jaws and pattering onto the carpet of pine needles below. This was no doubt from the ragged wound on the badger’s shoulder and neck, where skin was hanging open and the tissue beneath glistened wetly.

It wasn’t as unequal an exchange as I had originally thought though, as the wolf whimpered and shivered, trying to put as little weight on its leading leg as possible. I was horrified at the violence on display. This was no different from the scene with the stag the day before, but seeing it unfold in front of me without my involvement, I truly felt for the first time how real the situation I was stuck in was.

I could see the consequences of the fight before me in the ruined flesh of both creatures and could only imagine the pain caused by either of the wounds each side exchanged. They fought as if without any regard for their own lives, their sole purpose in ending the enemy in front of them. I started to back up, trying to shimmy silently up the tree behind me to put more distance between myself and the battle below.

Silent I was not, as the wolf-thing twitched its too-narrow head in my direction, cruel yellow eyes pinning me in place. It’s neck undulated, and it raised its head to the sky, loosing a howl that chilled my blood. The badger chose that moment to attack, clamping its jaws around the knee joint of the wolf and baring it down to the ground again.

I was reaching for a nearby branch from another tree, frantic to get away from the battle below when I heard the echoing howl repeated from the other side of the valley. I stilled, instincts buried deep within my brain telling me what that haunting sound was. A hunting call, an acknowledgement of prey and a promise of death on the wind.

I turned back to the fight, knowing my very life was now on a timer. If that wolf lived, it would follow me. There was no way I could outrun it on the ground or through the trees, and soon it wouldn’t be alone. Wherever I fled to, it would follow and call its family down upon me to slake their thirst with my blood. Had I been in a calmer frame of mind I would have made some sarcastic quip about my flair for the dramatic, but the memory of those cruel eyes boring into me silenced any such notion.

The fight could hardly be called such any longer. The Badger’s neck had been ripped open and it was feebly kicking its back leg against the chest of the wolf. The wolf that had its nuzzle pushed right into the wound, and was now staring directly at me. My blood tried to freeze again but the persistent thudding of my heart kept me from keeling over right then and there. That gaze skewered me with its intent, promising a far less noble end than that of the badger, but one just as inevitable.

And yet, it didn’t rise and stalk toward me. It didn’t leap up onto the trunk of my tree and race at me. It simply stared, waiting for something. I knew it had called to others of its kind, either for backup or more likely to signal a good meal, but I couldn’t believe it would wait for their arrival before killing me – it would risk first dibs on my yummy organs that way.

No, this creature could have easily killed me while sleeping without the intervention of the badger. I realised at that moment that I had been anthropomorphising this whole situation, treating the evil wolf as the bad guy, with the heroic badger coming to my rescue and saving my life.

In reality, this looked like a squabble over who would be the one to kill and eat me, with the badger simply being the loser of the contest. But it hadn’t looked like a one-sided fight from what I recalled. The badger had nearly buckled the wolf’s leg in the first exchange, and I had heard a few yelps of pain while my back was turned that could have only come from the intact throat of the wolf.

It was hurt, and badly. Its not snacking on your stomach right now because it can’t even fucking stand. The thought came to me alongside a rush of relief and I knew it to be true as soon as it occurred to me. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference if I just sat here and waited for the rest of its pack to arrive though.

I started to scramble down the trunk, my horn held out before me like a jousting lance. The wolf didn’t take its eyes off me though and continued to stare at me with malevolence. It was disconcerting to say the least, but I had enough room at the base of the tree to circle around the creature without getting close enough to engage.

It kept its eyes on me as I circled, swivelling its head on that long, sinuous neck in a frankly sickening parody of what I would expect from a wolf. It was more akin to an owl the way it kept its gaze locked on mine even as I backed away.

I was now almost completely behind it and a good few meters away by this point. I was about to turn and run down further into the valley when it moved. Clearly, it couldn’t abide by me leaving its sight and so it rose on three unsteady legs, one cradled neatly under its belly as if in a sling. Even in its sorry state, I didn’t doubt it could keep up with me for a few hours, given everything I knew of wolves from my own world, and had seen from the creatures in this new one.

It wouldn’t even need to match my pace, just follow along in my general direction without letting me get too far ahead and then signal to the rest of its kind every now and then. Within an hour or two they would reach it, and then it would be a short few minutes before the healthy ones caught up to me.

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So, I couldn’t run while leaving this thing alive, and I couldn’t afford to wait for its companions to reach us. I had to act now, and a single line from a much loved book floated to the front of my mind – ‘once you’ve got a task to do, its better to do it than live with the fear of it’. I had been living with plenty of fear for the last day or so, and I doubted that would be changing anytime soon giving how things were going, but hey, gotta be an optimist.

With that final thought spurring me on, I charged directly at the wolf-thing. I would like to say that I saw shock in its eyes before I drove my horn straight through its heart…I would like to say that because it was a far nicer picture than reality. The creature didn’t falter or look even slightly shocked by my heroic charge, and instead leapt to meet me.

I have no doubt that my throat would have shared the same fate as the poor badger’s if the beast before me hadn’t been grievously injured already. As it happens, the wolf’s leading leg buckled as it hit me, and we both sprawled to the ground together. My grip on the horn was weaker than I realised, as it clattered to the ground next to me when my back hit the floor. Only the unexpected snagging of one of my assailants ears kept me alive, as I managed to use the appendage to desperately yank the lunging maw to the side of my head. I bucked my hips, sending the injured animal, already overbalanced from its extension, over my head and onto its side. It yelped in pain when it hit the floor, clearly having landed on something already injured.

I rolled to my side, grabbing the horn as I got to my feet and then before I could hesitate again and squander the moment, I leapt at the wolf. I was more like a falling tree than the feline grace I had aimed for, but no matter how slow, a falling tree still caused an impact.

My body hit the creature below and all my weight drove the horn through its chest. I had gotten incredibly lucky with the angle and I tucked my chin to protect my neck. That didn’t do much to protect me from the wolf-deer-snake thing below me, as its head twisted up over my shoulder and managed to dig its teeth into my back.

That shouldn’t have been possible, but the length and flexibility of its neck was beyond anything I had seen before. The silver lining was that it couldn’t close its jaws properly at least, so I was left with only deep furrows in the flesh of my back, rather than a crushed chest to go along with it.

I screamed in pain, twisting the horn in my grip and shoving with all my weight against it. Something within the chest of the beast gave way, and the teeth carving burning lines across my back suddenly halted. A choking sound echoed from its throat and its legs stopped scrabbling against me, before its head flopped to the ground.

You have killed a Tarkenzi Maned-Wolf (level 11). Experience gained.

You have reached level 5. Attribute points available for allocation.

I whimpered, the adrenaline still coursing through my system and dulling the pain. Despite that, I could feel the burning lactic build up in my muscles, the fiery lines of pain in my back quickly settling into a sharp, cold reminder of every inch of flesh that was out of place.

I hauled myself to my feet, pulling the twirled horn from the dead beast below me and trying to stand properly. I felt like I’d spent the last 3 days permanently hunched over and trying to straighten my back for the first time almost felt like relief. The pain inflicted by sharp teeth mere moments ago still managed to dampen any positive feelings my body might be trying to give me however, and I choked out a sob.

I had to move, I couldn’t stay here to die. That fight had probably lasted less than 30 seconds, but I wouldn’t be moving at a decent pace after that. I needed to get to the river, clean myself off and try to put as much distance between myself and this scene as possible.

The thought of the river made thirst rear its ugly head, and I realised I had not drunk since this insanity started yesterday. My saliva tasted thick and sour in my mouth, and I tried to spit to the side, barely managing more than a string of drool. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, tasting the blood that coated it. I was unsure if it was mine or not at this point, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

The world felt off, unnaturally far away from my eyes and moving far too fast for me to keep up with. I was going into shock.

With a jolt I started stumbling off in the vague direction of ‘down the fucking hill’, hoping that I would stumble upon the stream that had created this valley when I reached the lowest point. I knew I had only a few more moments of lucidity before the shock took over, so I set my body on a path and fervently hoped it would continue to follow the last instructions I had given it.

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The world slowly came back into focus as I drunkenly wobbled through the mossy trees around me. Not sure how long I had been wondering without thought, I tried to look around but that stretched the newly scabbed over wounds on my back enough to make me gasp. I leaned against the soft, mossy surface of the tree in front of me and methodically tried to breathe through the pain.

A few minutes later, once I felt I had mastered myself again, I continued moving. The damp feeling to the forest around me made me think I had moved a fair distance. Every mound or boulder was covered in moss, with long, thick grasses fighting for dominance on the ground. The lower branches were covered with more of the soft, spongy moss while lichen and mushrooms adorned many of the trunks.

After a few more minutes of now slightly more controlled movement, I emerged onto the bank of a river. No quaint mountain stream this, the river spanned at least 4 meters across at the narrowest point in view, and looked to be at least chest deep in pools. I could see rocks breaking the surface of the river, disrupting the smooth flow and finally I realised that the steady noise I had been hearing over the past few minutes was that of water flowing fast and free.

I dipped a hand in and almost recoiled at the cold. It felt like mid-spring here, but the water was bitterly cold, leeching all warmth from my hand in an instant. I grit my teeth and plunged both hands back in, washing away the blood and grime. Once I was satisfied, I cupped my hands together and drank. I couldn’t say how many handfuls I levered towards my face with varying degrees of success, but when I was finished, my throat was no longer parched and my belly felt full to bursting.

I planned to cross this river – it would hopefully help to hide my scent from the wolves if they followed my trail, and I knew I needed to clean the wounds on my back as well. Might as well wash my clothes while I’m at it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I trudged up the riverbank for a hundred more meters or so before finding a shallow-looking pool where the river was fast flowing but clear enough to determine nothing was hiding below the surface. My wits had not entirely failed me, and I made sure to move upstream from the blood I had released into the water earlier, just in case some species of super leech was hiding beneath the riverbank waiting for me. I shuddered at the thought and stripped off quickly. Its not going to get easier by thinking about it, and no matter how many things can go wrong, you still have to do this. Get it done.

After that delightful pep talk, I threw my pile of clothes to the opposite riverbank, and stepped into the river. I shivered as the water enveloped my legs, my knees nearly buckling from the change in temperature. Knowing I only had a few minutes before the cold overwhelmed me, I got on with scrubbing.

I emerged onto the riverbank red and raw from the cold and my vigorous scraping. Dried blood and viscera had caked my forearms and turned out to be harder to remove than expected. I had resorted to using my nails to scrape away the worst of it, before picking up a handful of rounded stones from the riverbed.

I had tried to clean the wounds on my back as well, but they were far too tender to touch directly. Even submerging myself had nearly been too much, the feeling of the chill water seeping into my back reigniting the dull ache into a crawling, prickling burn. I hoped that the clean rushing water would scour away any possible infection, but I honestly had no idea how much danger I was truly in.

With that thought, I hastily allocated the single stat point I had earned from my recent level up into endurance again. I wasn’t 100% sure, but I was betting that endurance represented not just physical fitness, but also the rate at which my body healed, and my ability to brush off disease too. It was a gamble, but I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind to sit around and play out the various options.

Endurance of 13 then, and another intoxicating boost to wake me up in the morning. I didn’t want to overstate things, but I really could see somebody getting addicted to allocating stat points in this world. The rush was indescribable, the knowledge of bodily improvement incomparable.

Sure, I had worked out on Earth, and improved my body over months and years of hard work. But it always took so long! Even rapid changes in fitness would only occur over weeks and were mostly noticeable by other measures like tracking distance and time on runs, or miles on a long cycle.

There was never such a dramatic, instantaneous, and obvious feeling of power and capability. I knew that I could run for longer than ever before. I felt as if I could burst into a sprint and keep going for dozens of seconds before slowing to ‘just’ a hard run. Sprinters on Earth could maintain an impressive pace for 15 or so seconds before slowing, and that was professional athletes. I was nowhere near as fast as them, but I could endure that strain for just as long.

And I only had to risk death twice to get here. The sardonic thought didn’t hit me particularly hard though. I was fitter than ever before, than I could ever have been back on Earth…and I had got there in a single day, give or take.

Shit, this could actually be amazing. I just needed to survive long enough to enjoy the endless possibilities this system could grant me. I thought of sprinting down mountain paths quicker than my old bike could carry me, weaving in and out of trees, around bushes and leaping dozens of feet off rocks before landing in a run without breaking stride.

I thought bigger, dashing up a mountain and leaping from the top. Could I get enough speed to use a peak like a ramp, and fling myself through the air? I almost giggled, the absurdity of my new reality, of what was now possible and within reach, finally settling in. I just needed to survive.

A fire had been lit within me, not from blood and pain and fear and hatred, but from joy. From the promise of fantastical, exhilarating and utterly new experiences just waiting for me to grab them. If I could only endure, I could have everything I had never even dreamed of.