The world tree looms large in the mythology of every culture, even its absence a statement – whether intentional or not. By way of an example, take the founding myths of the Plutash river-runners that lived in the sparsely populated region we know as the Southern Deltas today. By territory they would rival the largest empire in existence, and while it is for somebody else more familiar with the topic to even guess at their population at the height of their civilisation, there is enough archaeological evidence to suggest a thriving scholarly tradition throughout the many political structures they created, however alien it may seem to some of my more traditional colleagues.

As far as we know, they raised no actual gods to the firmament, and it appears that they were unaware of any contemporary ones either, if we ignore the hollow deities they worshipped themselves. No scholar that I am aware of has found mention of the World Tree, despite other contemporary peoples confirming its existence and impact. It appears that the Plutash people were not aware of the world tree at all, for no culture, no matter how arrogant, could ignore the impact this wonder would have on their myth making. Therefore, we can safely conclude that while a geographically massive civilisation with a complex social, economic and political structure, the Plutash people were a regional power at the most, and did not engage in global or continent spanning trade. In fact, their hostility to outsiders must have been quite fierce, for word of the world tree to not have reached them in such quantity as to require verification. Thus we can make inferences about a culture’s geopolitical standing based purely on its mythology and its relation to the World Tree.

To get back on track, it is my fervent belief that no one people have spent more time on the study of the origins, purpose and mechanics of the World Tree than the scholar-kings of the Ashkanian Empire. So much of what we know of the ancient world is from their writings, and so much of our current historiography is focused on the question of how we seek to interpret not what they have left us, but what they chose not to include in their vast underground libraries.

That being said, the people who seem to truly understand the world tree more so than any other would, in my humble estimation, be the Al-Sazine.

Excerpt from notes taken during an introductory lecture by Harmdel Ess – ‘The world tree as a tool of anthropological inference’ given at the white tower consortium circa .265

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I had spent weeks here now, heading ever downwards. The valleys blurred together, running at crooked angles to one another but somehow, the path forwards always seemed clear. I would feel the valley start to curl to one side, leading me away from my destination like a labyrinth writ on an impossible to comprehend scale. But just as I would start to question myself and consider if I should find another route, the valley would turn back.

I had no real way of confirming my direction this deep in the mountains, but I could see taller peaks and impassable glaciers behind me, so I had continued to move away from those towards the smaller peaks in the distance.

A few times I had reached the end of a valley and then had to endure a painful day of hiking to reach a col and pass over one of the ridgelines. However, there was always another valley waiting for me, shepherding me ever onwards.

After I had escaped the wolves, and what an anti-climax that was – they never even followed! – I had tried to hole up, to stay up in the trees and just survive. Hunger had quickly driven me from my nest, and so I had set to scavenging along the riverbank, looking for something edible.

I had found mountain strawberries – tiny things no larger than a thumbnail, but packing as much flavour as a normal berry three times its size – and raspberries were common too. I was still not brave enough to try the various types of mushrooms I had come across though. Eventually I had found a tuber of some sort and while it was probably a stupid move in hindsight, I had been so hungry that I just devoured it cold and uncooked, right on the riverbank. After that, I had started hunting properly.

Turns out stalking prey is hard, who would’ve thought? Eventually I had gotten lucky though. I came across the remains of another of nature’s many battles. This one between a frighteningly large snake and some sort of squirrel thing. My zoology wasn’t up to scratch back on Earth, let alone here, so who knew how far off the mark I really was, but the details were less important than the bigger picture.

Here was relatively fresh mammalian meat for me to eat. I wouldn’t be touching the snake, but the squirrel looked good, almost fully drained of blood already too. Lucky me!

It was getting increasingly hard to tell if my internal voice was being sarcastic or not anymore. I had been without human contact for only a couple of days by this point, but I thought that less important than the fact that I had been forced to kill two large animals, and had come closer to death than ever before, twice. Except, well…the time I had actually died, to be fair. Strange; I’d assume I’d have remembered that fact more easily.

Either way, clearly my earlier gamble had paid off, as my enhanced endurance did seem to protect me from the negative consequences of eating poorly cooked meat and drinking water from dubious sources.

I had built a respectable fire, and after portioning the squirrel up, had loaded up a spit and tried to roast it over the embers. The sizzling of the meat made my mouth water with a vengeance, and only my fear of disease kept me from consuming it then and there. My fire had brought a curious visitor though in the form of a slim little fox with large ears. Not wanting to risk another fight so soon, despite its small stature, I threw a portion to it and packed up, running off into the forest and further down the valley.

I had managed to keep myself somewhat satiated for a couple of days off that one find. In fairness, it was a huge squirrel, more akin to a medium sized dog than anything else but I wasn’t particularly adept at butchering animals yet, and so I suppose it was the best I could hope for.

After that, I settled into my niche as a carrion feeder. I would alternate between hiking and running for most of the day, keeping an eye out for fresh kills to grab before scuttling away from the scene of the crime and hiding in a tree a few miles away to cook and devour my catch.

It took me three days of this before I gained my second skill. I had been trying to level up my Sure-footed skill, remembering the parting words of Vera from a few days prior. I had tried to stumble on purpose and catch myself before falling but after a few attempts I just felt stupid. No use risking a twisted ankle at this stage, with such a mammoth journey ahead of me and danger all around.

So instead I tried to focus on where I placed my feet, what angle I hit the ground and with what part of my foot. The leather boots I wore, while tough and hardy at the top around my lower shins, had a surprisingly thin and supple sole allowing me to feel the ground beneath my feet as I moved. I experimented for an hour at least with different foot-placements, trying to find a rhythm that felt most efficient.

Skill gained – Running. Open skill slots available, skill integrated.

I was surprised to learn that such a foundational movement could be considered a skill at first, but within a few steps I noticed that a new instinct encouraged me to shift my hips forwards slightly, allowing my foot to land directly below me instead of a few inches in front as it had previously.

I didn’t notice any difference in efficiency at first, after all the minute differences would likely stack over time rather than straight away. However, I did feel slightly lighter on my feet when I ran, and I let a grin wash over my face as I moved, banishing some of my more intrusive thoughts about the hopelessness of my situation.

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I didn’t eat like a king, but I did eat most days.

There were always fresh kills about. I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on but over the week I had spent travelling, the predator/prey dynamic did not match my expectations. Creatures I thought I recognised – like my extra big squirrel friend! – acted in unexpected ways.

I had seen a marmot-looking rodent thing leap out at a small bird of prey sunning itself on a rock and wrestle it to the ground before pulling its prize back into its burrow. That seemed like a reversal of roles that I couldn’t account for. Everything seemed far more bloodthirsty than I would have thought possible.

How did this ecosystem sustain itself if prey animals were killing the predators as often as each other, and the rate of attrition was so high? Surely they couldn’t be replacing themselves as quickly in any natural way?

I found no answers in my wanderings though, simply glad that most animals still had a sense of scale. Sure, a marmot killing a hawk was unprecedented, but it was at least conceivable. No matter how ferocious and blood thirsty the little rodent was though, it would stand no chance against a human that out-weighed it by a factor of 10 at the least. The little critters seemed to know that too, for I was never attacked by rats or squirrels while sleeping in trees or moving through the forest.

That’s not to say I was safe, however. I drew the attention of larger creatures without surcease and ended up near death another handful of times in that first week alone. I received no significant injuries though and found myself to be healing inordinately fast from the various scrapes, scratches and bruises that are collected simply by living in the wild.

I picked up a few more skills and levelled my existing ones slightly too.

Current skills:

Sure-footed: Level 2.

Running: Level 3.

Meat preparation: Level 1

Hill foraging: Level 1

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Meat Preparation – Passive. You have experience dressing a carcass and preparing meat for the cookfire. Further levels will guide your hands in selecting the choicest cuts from a corpse, and ensuring the meat is cooked as best it can be with the crude methods available to you.

Hill foraging – Active. You have eaten the fruits of nature and the roots within the earth, relying on a discerning eye and your own guesses to judge what is harmful. Use this skill to guide your senses, smelling and tasting danger before you risk your life. Further levels improve the fidelity of your sense and can expand this skill to encompass new environments if used heavily outside the hills you have grown familiar with.

It was almost counter-intuitive, but I suspected that the advent of my Running skill had made gaining levels in my Sure-footed skill more difficult. I felt far more steady as I moved now, and therefore I experienced fewer issues that needed correcting in real-time.

My pace had also noticeably increased without a similar increase in exhaustion, and the Meat preparation skill had dramatically increased my meagre standard of living. I got more meat from my scavenging, and my cooking massively improved. Combined with my Hill foraging skill, I ate more often and larger meals, finally slowing and eventually even reversing the increasing feeling of apathy I had been trying to outrun.

I was worried that a week of near constant running, hiking, stealing food from dangerous animals and generally being scared for my life had started to take a severe toll on my psyche, but it seemed like I just hadn’t been eating enough. What a relief.

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As I continued my journey, I became more and more comfortable with my new reality. I took more risks with the foraging, gaining another skill level in the process.

The active skill was interesting to me, after having only experienced passive ones so far. I had to actively focus on the skill to activate it, and the second I let that attention slip, the effect vanished. It took a bit of experimentation to figure out what it did, as it only came into effect when I was smelling or tasting something I planned on eating.

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I had no idea how the skill knew whether I planned on eating something, but it did seem to work off intention, conscious or otherwise. If I tasted a rock, I received no feedback from the skill even if I tried to pretend I was planning on eating it. I assumed that if I truly was desperate and stupid enough to start gobbling up pebbles, and focused on activating the skill while doing so, it might have an effect but who knows? Not an experiment I was planning on carrying out in any case.

As I sat beside the river I was still following along the valley side, I sighed to myself in weariness. I was in possibly the most beautiful environment I had ever been in my entire life, and yet I was struggling to really take it in.

Spending every moment on the lookout for fresh kills was exhausting. I had already long given up on attempting to maintain a constant state of readiness in case I was attacked by other predators. I wouldn’t be reckless, and always made sure to sleep high off the ground and never settle down near a recent fight, but while I would travel the small animal tracks along the riverside, increasingly at a jog rather than a walk now that my endurance and Running skill were involved, I found myself unable to really hold on to the sense of danger.

Truthfully; I think I was just tired of being afraid all the time, and I was getting equally tired of scavenging fresh meat from a natural battlefield. If I could hunt my own food, I could do so when I wanted, and then travel with intention, taking in the wonderful surroundings to my heart’s content.

I had been heading towards this decision for a while, but the palpable relief I felt at coming to this conclusion told me it was long overdue, and something I had been putting off thinking about. I had my knife, and my trusty horn, and given how keen everything seemed to fight to the death, I didn’t think I would have much difficulty finding food for a night.

Thus began one of the most frustrating afternoons of my life, failing over and over again at sneaking up on woodland creatures or enticing small animals out of their burrows to line my stomach. I tried, with everything I had, and still failed repeatedly. I had half hoped to gain myself a skill like stealth or sneaking but instead, my afternoon of hard work left me nothing but hungry and dejected.

I curled up high above the ground, nestled between a thick branch and a tree trunk and my belly howled its hunger long into the night, until eventually my need for sleep overruled it.

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I awoke with the dawn light seeping through the trees, long shadows creeping up the valley and a cool mist rising gently from the river nearby.

My hunger sharpened my mind and stripped away my misgivings. In the fresh light of dawn, I made the decision to hunt bigger prey. If I couldn’t catch something myself, why not let myself be caught?

I had fled from enough encounters with larger beasts to know that I was a sought-after prize in some circles, so why not let my potential meals do the work of finding and approaching me themselves?

I began to plan as I went through my morning ablutions. As I strode through the uneven, mossy embankment next to the small river, I considered how I could go about bringing down an animal large enough to consider me prey. I’d gotten incredibly lucky with the Tarkenzi Maned-Wolf from just a few days past and knew my likelihood of doing enough damage to a similar creature before it killed me were slim.

I also needed to win, not just by a hair’s breadth and with significant damage, but decisively and easily, in a manner I could repeat hundreds of times throughout my journey. Although, if these kills gave me enough experience to level a few times and increase my other attributes, things could change quickly.

I looked up through the trees, to the ridgeline and the steep meadows between us, considering. A plan was forming, and I started to hike away from the river, cutting up towards the higher forest and the promise above.

I collected a few thick sticks if they looked fresh and supple enough. It was a delicate balance; they had to be dead long enough for me to break them away from their trunks, but not too brittle that they wouldn’t stand up to a significant impact. I whittled the ends as I walked, feeling a not-insignificant amount of satisfaction with each stick I completed. Once I had 6 sharpened stakes prepared I had to stop as I was reaching the limit of my capacity to carry them.

When I reached the invisible line delineating the forest from the meadows, over which only a few intrepid pines would dare encroach, I started to hike along the valley horizontally, skirting the tree line and looking for a suitable target.

The sun moved through the sky in its endless journey, and I tried not to think too hard about any parallels that could be drawn there with my own situation. I was starting to consider giving up and returning to my scavenging ways, but a find of a large group of raspberries gave me enough satiation to continue.

Only a few miles later did I find what I was looking for. This wasn’t the first den of some kind I had found today, but unlike the others, there were signs of recent activity outside as well. I settled in to observe and before long, a snuffling sound heralded the return of the den’s occupant. Safely ensconced in a tree within sight of the den, I had been lucky with my timing - while I was keen to test myself against a true opponent of my calibre, I was not intending to do so without preparation and a few tricks up my sleeves just yet, and running into this boar without warning would have been suicide.

I was also lucky to have found a prey animal, or at least a herbivore, although I couldn’t be sure I was using the terms correctly since I recalled something about boars eating the eggs of ground nesting birds when they came across them.

In any case, I was lucky to have discovered a creature that didn’t hunt other human sized animals routinely. I would not be keen on trying my current plan out on a large hunting cat to say the least. I spent some more time observing the creature before it squeezed itself into its den and disappeared from sight, hopefully to rest, and not to come charging down at me as soon as I descended from my hideout.

The boar had a ruddy red coat and must have weighed in the region of a hundred kilos. I tried very hard to not think about what the short, stubby tusks on either side of its snout would do to my body if they impacted me, and I found refuge in laying the ground work for my upcoming battle.

Once that was done, I reviewed my plan. It may have had more holes than a leaky bathtub, but I intended to sail the seas of chance with it anyway. The first step in my master plan involved luring the boar from its den, the quicker the better. I wanted it startled, reactive and as far from cautious as humanly - porcinely? - possible.

I started throwing rocks at the chaotic jumble of bracken and bush that served as the front door of its den. With my incredible powers of foresight, I had even laid out a bunch of large rocks with which to bombard the den from a respectable dozen meters away.

It took me a few attempts to get the range, but by the fourth rock, I was heaving them through the air like a prized shot-putter, crushing the boar’s carefully managed entrance and causing clods of earth to erupt from mouth of its den.

I almost dropped one on my foot in startlement when the boar emerged from its den in a blaze of speed, despite this being the very outcome I was hoping for. It squealed in rage at its rude awakening and charged directly at me without hesitation.

I turned and fled, with half an eye on the terrain in front of me, snatching quick glances behind to make sure I hadn’t underestimated its speed. It was hot on my heels, but unable to close the gap, as my two legs pushed me down the slope as fast as its four could propel it. A ringing inside my mind tried to distract me, and I focused on it just long enough to acknowledge the skill level in Sure-footed I had gained before pushing any such considerations from my mind as I passed the marking cairn I had created earlier.

A dozen meters past the cairn, I jumped to catch a branch hanging a few meters above the ground. Latching on and swinging myself up as fast as possible, I turned to see the boar charging past, its front legs raised off the ground as it swung its tusked head at the air I’d inhabited not moments before. As it landed from its first attempt at goring me, I snatched up the horn I had placed in a nook on the slim branch above me, and enacted part two of my grand plan – a move I was calling ‘the drop bear’.

I leapt off the tree branch with the horn raised over my shoulder in an overhand grip and sailed down towards the wheeling boar. I brought the horn down as I landed on its back, driving the broken end deep between its shoulder and neck. Another tortured squeal split the air, and from my position on the creature’s back, I felt the noise reverberate through me.

I rolled to the side as it spun in place trying to buck me off and managed to dismount without any holes appearing in my flesh, much to my delight and the boar’s misery.

It oriented on me rapidly though, allowing me no time to catch my breath after the fall and subsequent impact, before it pawed at the ground and charged again. I turned and fled, weaving through trees before emerging onto the top of a steep hillside covered in rocks. I hurtled down the boulder field, trusting my footing without thought. I laughed as I leapt from rock to rock, barely touching the earth as I ran from the snorting mass of angry flesh behind me.

Down the slope we flew, one leading and one following like the mad dancing of a two crane flies on a warm summers eve, no less chaotic for the difference in scale. I reached the bottom of the field and barely slowed as I entered the forest below.

Bolting through the sparse trees, juking left and right between the trunks, I leapt over rocks and finally slid to a halt behind a particularly thick dead trunk that had made its grave of the forest floor. A snorting huff rolled down the valley behind me, the sound bouncing around strangely, reflected by the steep of boulders above.

I stayed tucked behind the impromptu wooden barricade trying desperately to keep my breathing under control, but my eyes were alight and I could hardly contain my grin. I loved this feeling – the wild chase through the valley, the knowledge that while a single missed step might see me dead, my feet would land as surely as the sun would rise each morning.

I shuffled along, taking care to keep to keep my head down and pressed to the decaying trunk. I would rather bump my head against the odd broken branch than on what lay on the other side.

As I heard the beast closing in towards me, I jumped up from behind the thick trunk, only my head and shoulders appearing above it. I drew in a breath to loose a bellow of my own to draw its attention, but before I could release it, the boar had seen me and thundered down the last few meters towards the downed tree.

As it closed the distance between us, time seemed to slow. I saw the muscles in its back legs bunch, watched as its neck dipped, preparing to wrench its massive head up into the air – no doubt planning to drive its stubby tusks through my chest. I dropped back to the floor at the last second, seeking refuge behind the enormous tree trunk and twisting on the floor to watch as the Boar’s great bulk sailed above me over the tree…and directly onto the small forest of sharpened stakes I had braced into the ground.

Three of the stakes were knocked askew, scoring shallow cuts along the boar’s flank but unable to penetrate the thick, bristly hide and too weak to withstand the massive weight. They scattered on the ground at odd angles, lying flat and useless.

I had dug deep though, bracing sticks the width of my arm at least a foot or two down into the loamy earth, and my work paid off as the other three held. Two of the remaining stakes snapped upon impact, bouncing off plates of bone and unable to take the strain. These did more damage, contributing to the pained squeals the boar released upon landing.

By far the most successful though was the stake that had been pushed deep into the beasts belly before shattering, lodging bits of wooden shrapnel deep into its stomach. Blood was already pooling on the floor as I pushed myself to my feet, rounding on the boar and watching it frantically try to reach its belly to dislodge the agonising spike buried within itself.

I watched its attempts to paw at its own belly grow more feeble, and it eventually focused on me once again. I could see it accept its death – there was no surviving the damage I had done – but it seemed determined to make me pay for it all the same.

Pawing the ground, it charged again, lowering its head for a final time to deliver its brutal punishment. I stood my ground as it charged me, waiting until the last minute to jump aside and rushing back in immediately after avoiding its swipe.

It may have had far superior attributes to me - If animals even had attributes, I honestly had no idea at this point and there was nobody around to ask – but it was exhausted from blood loss and must have been in constant, excruciating pain.

I lunged for the horn still embedded in its shoulder and yanked it out and sideways, ripping out its throat with a roar of pent up emotion. Blood fountained over me, covering my face and chest, and I staggered away as the boar’s legs gave out under it.

I backed up and leaned against the fallen tree, watching the last signs of life leave the beast as its blood soaked the earth below. Breathing hard through my nose, I tried to think through the buzzing in my mind, but it was all too much. The taste of blood, the feel of viscera coating my face and arms, the persistent noise in my head and the choking smell all around overwhelmed me entirely, and I fell to the floor, retching up red bile.

I panicked, thinking I must have been hit after all and that the adrenaline would wear off shortly to unveil a deep wound in my stomach, but after a frantic patting down, I found only a deep graze in my shoulder where a broken piece of one of my stakes had stabbed me, likely while still embedded in the boar. The deep colour of the vomit inches from my face was the result of eating industrial quantities of raspberries and nothing else for an entire day.

I let the bitter feelings wash over me - fear and pain, self-loathing at both taking another creature’s life in so brutal a fashion, and at being too weak to do so in a less cowardly way. Hatred that this was how I was forced to live, battling for each meal in an endless nightmare of pain, exhaustion and fear. I also felt satisfaction that I had managed to bring down such a creature without help, and joy in the simple act of surviving in the face of life-threatening danger.

The contradictory cocktail of emotions swirled through my brain, battling for primacy, to be the one I would feel first and most strongly. I let them fight it out, feeling my mind battered from one extreme to another until eventually acceptance won out, floating alone within my mind, battered and tired, but still present. Acceptance of the choices I had made today, and the choices I would make in future too.

I rose to a sitting position, and forced my attention to the messages waiting behind the pounding clamour in my head.

You have killed a Bloodmane Hill Boar (level 12). Experience gained.

You have reached level 6. Attribute points available for allocation.

Skill gained – Simple Traps. Open skill slots available, skill integrated.

Skill gained – Improvised Weapons. Open skill slots available, skill integrated.

Improvised Weapons – Passive. You have shown remarkable ability to use whatever is within grasp to bring down your foes. Whether it is a part of the world around you or a part of your former enemies themselves, anything can be a weapon with the right application of knowledge, skill and intent. Further levels increase the efficacy and toughness of weapons you have created yourself from scavenged materials.

Simple Traps – Passive. You are able to plan in advance of life-or-death struggles, utilising the terrain to your advantage, and altering the environment in simple ways to suit your needs. Further levels will provide innate knowledge of the best materials and construction methods to create simple traps to suit your purpose.

I swallowed thickly and acknowledged the new addition to my skills, crawling to my feet and drawing my knife, before beginning the grisly task of butchering my kill. My kill. The emotional turmoil from moments earlier tried to rear its ugly head again but I found it easier to suppress considering the amazing gains from the experience.

As I let the meat preparation skill guide my fingers in the mechanical motions of butchering the carcass, I thought ahead to how I could refine this plan for next time, because while this was without doubt one of the most emotionally confusing moments of my life so far, I knew I would be doing it all over again tomorrow.