“I can see that you have not yet understood me if you ask such. How is this land ours?
To that I ask how is it not? We do not claim these mountains under any illusion of sovereignty, nor do we seek to keep its borders. This land exists, and we exist as part of it. Would you ask the lightning-weasels if they own the mounds of moss they burrow in? Would you ask the rivers if they own their beds?
My father travelled far and wide and the stories he told me of your world shocked me. You lowlanders decimate entire forests, reshape lakes and tunnel through mountains. You are welcome in this land, and my people would not contest your settling here. But if you seek to change these mountains, you will draw the ire of its denizens. Should you tunnel too deep, the great bears will rise from their slumber. Should you build too tall, the storm-rooks will come down from their perches. Should you spread too far…well, then the barbarians will come calling.
Respect the land or face its wrath.”
- Excerpt from the speech of Barbarian King Solomense to the Ashkanian refugees following the fall of the 2nd age, as described in ‘the untamed lands – a warning to settlers’ by unknown author.
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Sadrianna grimaced at the predicament. At well over fifteen meters off the forest floor, she was too high to drop to the ground without injury, and if she shimmied down the Great Oak any further, her prey would surely hear her.
She was fast over open ground, and faster still in the steep valleys and narrow ridges that marked her homeland, but a Springtooth was not a creature that humans could match in power before at least their 2nd tier.
A deep, even breath brought her racing heart back into line, and she accepted the possibility of failure. An afternoon of stalking would be wasted, true, but she wouldn’t consider it time wasted. If simple carelessness and impatience cost her the hunt however, there would be no forgiveness.
Better to focus, analyse the world and draw inspiration from it. Only once that well ran dry would she act. Patience today, greatness tomorrow so the saying went. Thus resolved, she ran her gaze back down the enormous trunk of the Great Oak upon which she clung, gripping the hand-sized ridges in the bark with all four limbs, toes curling and gripping as surely as her fingers.
She was a novelty in her clan for her use of the Gecko’s Grip, a skill that no champion, berzekarr, or prize-fighter had made use of in generations. Some of the gatherers and scouts swore by it – she’d learned the art from an old man who had led the hunters back in the day after all – but nobody who dreamt of joining the heady hights of the clan’s greatest fighters would be willing to waste a skill slot for something with limited combat potential.
Indeed, that was part of what made Sadrianna such a prodigy; not only was she a dominant fighter in her clan across the first two generations – and breaking into the third rapidly as well – but she did so with an un-optimized skill-build.
Her mother had begged her to seek out one of the wizened old dream-weavers their clan had in abundance once she managed to convince her parents that she was truly set on becoming a warrior. And she had, dutifully and without complaint.
There was some complaining afterwards though, once she was done listening to the ramblings of a soul long past its prime, trying to live out dreams of glory through the young. ‘That would be waste of potential for a young lass like you’, ‘no, don’t try something new, we’d figured it out long before your birth’ and her personal favourite; ‘do you think your mother rose to such heights by disrespecting her elders so?’
It was especially ironic since while her mother was in many ways an orthodox fighter, treading straight and true the path of a berzekarr of clan White-Cliff, Sadrianna knew she started to see real success only after incorporating the unusual training style of her father.
And it was a training style she was using herself to great success. Rather than live the life of a typical warrior of the clan, training every spare moment and sparring with the other warriors and fighters in the local circle, she spent most of her free time hunting.
Most of the core skills that the clan cultivated relied on embodiment. The great shamans of clan Red-Cloud were famous for drawing inspiration from the world around them, embodying the stalwart nature of the mountains themselves, the inevitable strength of the glaciers and the unshakeable foundations of the caverns below. Clan Yellow-Peak chose to study the seasons, fighting with techniques that mimicked the slow death of winter and the rapid growth of spring.
White-Cliff had a more common style among the many clans of the Dragon-Spine Mountains though – they were animal-walkers. Sadrianna had spent many summers watching the lithe, vibrant little geckos that littered her home. She studied their anatomy as they sunned themselves on rocks, she echoed their movements as the sped away on strangely articulated legs, and she observed the patterns of their life-force as it flowed through their bodies, enhancing every action in a subconscious mimicry of the magic of sentients.
So it was that she clung to the Great Oak with ease, hands and feet splayed against the textured bark. She didn’t want to end this hunt with a loss, especially considering the Springtooth was a young male. It had left its mother only last winter if she had to guess based on its size, and would be looking for a territory of its own to claim.
Slipping away now could be seen as a dereliction of her duty to the clan. If it came upon one of the less-powerful gatherers, there could be serious injuries. Death was unlikely, close as they were to the lowlands and with relatively weak wildlife to contend with as a result. It was possible though, had happened before. Likely even if that oaf Sindri was assigned as support to the gathers out this way.
She pushed away the errant thoughts and refocused. She wanted to end this with a victory, but the fall was too far, and she could not hide the sound of her movements from a predator with such advanced senses as a Springtooth, even one barely out of adolescence.
If she’d had more time with Gecko’s Grip, she could try to incorporate the explosive speed that the small animals displayed when startled, into a rush to the foot of the tree, but that was currently beyond her understanding, and possibly out of reach until the skill evolved. She’d fully mastered the main draw of her skill – that of unusual movement and grip on most surfaces, but more advanced applications were still beyond her.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She examined the world around her once more. A small forest of Great Oaks, rising from the uneven mossy floor to kiss the tops of the high cliffs to her right, well over 100 meters above. The land sloped sharply away to her left, dipping into a valley with a stream in the centre, heavy with snowmelt from the higher peaks.
The Springtooth snuffled at the forest floor, routing through the boughs of the great trees’ root systems for ground nesting birds and other delicacies. Its long, prehensile nose flickered around, darting forwards occasionally and taking long, snorting sniffs of the air, trying to make sense of the riotous smells surrounding it.
It left furrows in the earth as it sniffed, ivory canines scraping against the loam and brushing aside leaves as they followed the waving snout. Deep in its search, it was insensate to the world above it, thinking itself protected from aerial predators by the thick oaken canopy.
Unfortunately for the young cat, a predator lurked above. Sadrianna eased her hand into a pouch bound to the rough skins that wrapped her legs and withdrew a small pebble with a hole drilled straight through from bottom to top. She rolled it in her palm until the grip felt right, and then took a deep, slow breath. With a momentary prayer to the spirits above and below, she whipped the stone through the air, far above the head of the Springtooth and towards the stream far below to her left.
At the same moment, she released the hold of her toes, and swung around on her remaining hand, dropping a meter or so and swinging around the back of the great oak. From there, she let her momentum carry her downward easily, grabbing holds in the bark every meter or so as she skittered down the trunk.
She stopped only a few meters from the floor when she heard the whistling cry of her rook-stone cut off abruptly. She stayed still, allowing only a small portion of air to inflate her lungs, keeping her breath slow and even to prevent any excess noise. She replayed the descent, focusing on the sounds that had come to her and separating them out into their constituent parts.
First, and most notably, there had been the whistling scream that her rook-stone had made, as it spun through the air, and the wind flew through the carved hole to replicate the keening cry of a rook on the hunt. Simultaneously, there had been the abrupt cessation of the snuffling and a scramble of ferns being pushed aside as the Springtooth whirled towards the sound, muscles no doubt tense for flight. Then the whistling had stopped as the sound of a stone crashing through thick vegetation could be heard, before an echoing crack rebounded around the small valley, where the stone had smashed into something of greater density on the riverbed.
Nothing else though, no further sound at all. She waited, breath even but hands settled on her hatchet and long-knife, ready to be attacked by a raging cat larger than most of the warriors of her clan.
No attack came though, and after another few dozen heartbeats, she heard the hiss of vegetation being parted, and snuffling resume once more. Grinning fiercely to herself, she allowed success to fill her soul for another moment before she settled onto the balls of her feet and began to stalk around the tree’s base. She had no true stealth skills, unwilling to ‘waste’ a slot, but that did not mean she didn’t study the masters all the same. She may never truly embody the grace of a stalking cat, but she could learn something of their nature even so.
Her centre of gravity dropped as she lowered herself closer to the floor, and she reached out with each foot carefully, questing for a stable foothold, before transitioning her weight from back foot to front so slowly that no sound escaped beneath her soles. The loamy earth added extra padding and prevented vibrations from travelling far, but the steady dusting of the continuously falling leaves was a difficult challenge to navigate.
Sadrianna was a prodigy, and as proud of her skill as any other young warrior of the various mountain clans – that is to say; she was brash, confident, and unapologetic in her ability. However, that aspect of her personality was tempered by the perspective granted by her mother’s sparring, and her father’s patient acceptance. How could one revel in the stream when they had seen the lake from which it drew?
So it was with humility that she accepted she would draw no closer without alerting her prey, when she crouched in the earth only a dozen meters from the big cat snuffling through the undergrowth. Five breaths; one for each of the great peaks, and seven more for the endless valleys, and she was ready.
As the final breath filled her lungs, she exploded forwards in a charge that had won her many fights in the first round. Markhor’s Rush activated, and the world seemed to blur slightly at the edges of her vision, as she catapulted towards the cat at superhuman speeds.
She saw the Springtooth tensing, reacting in an instant to the rush of noise. Her feet crushed the earth as they landed, heavy thumps sounding with each impact as the distance between warrior and predator dwindled. The cat’s back legs bunched, muscles contracting to launch the heavy mammal two meters into the air, all the while its elongated fangs swung around, aiming for the approaching threat with deadly precision.
Luckily for Sadrianna, her people had lived alongside, and fought with, these animals for millennia. They had named the mountain cats as they had for a reason. She continued her charge, unperturbed by the surprisingly fast movement and the wicked teeth baring down on her, for the skill she had activated was not simply to close distance.
No more than a few heartbeats after she had activated the skill, she had crossed the dozen metres between herself and her prey. Simultaneously, two immense curled horns formed of molten rock shimmered into existence above her head. She ducked low and whipped her neck up and angled directly at the cat, intercepting the ivory teeth and knocking the large cat sprawling through the air.
A picture-perfect application of the skill, and her opponent was tumbling to the floor no more than a few metres from her. She threw her hatchet overhand even as she dashed forwards, and the cat, having seen the weapon heading for its eyes, dove to the right…directly into an extended thrust by her long-knife.
There was a pained scream from the creature, but she twisted the blade sharply and cut off its misery in an instant. A few moments had passed, and she had killed a – technically – adult Springtooth. Just like that.
You have killed a Western Springtooth (level 65). Experience gained.
She dismissed the notification, and quickly set about binding its legs together and trussing it to a large stick. She plugged the wound with a salve to clot the blood and wrapped it in a rag to prevent a blood trail directly to her clan, and then heaved the carcass onto her shoulder.
Setting off back down towards home, she pondered her accomplishment. In many ways it seemed far too easy a kill, but that was only true on the surface. If you looked at the battle itself, yes it was a simple and rapid affair in which she took no damage at all. If you considered the context though, she had spent all afternoon stalking the creature, waiting for the perfect place to ambush it. It was also an ideal matchup for her – Springtooth’s were ambush predators after all and didn’t take being ambushed themselves all that well.
You also had to make allowances for her most prized skill, activated in all life-and-death encounters, that made her much more lethal than she had any right to be as a warrior still in her first tier; Razor-Beak. The skill she had spent so long working towards, that elevated her hatchet and long-knife from mere sharp pieces of metal into the most dangerous of weapons that could threaten anyone.
As it was, the skill had allowed her long-knife to easily pierce through the cat’s thick hide, and glance off the bone of its ribcage and straight towards its heart without breaking. If any of the above factors were not present, she may have faced death back there. As it was, she was returning victorious.
Such is life. Patience today, greatness tomorrow.