My Demesne still was a desolate mess. Something just seemed off. Like a painting, washed out by the ages or the stones of the cliff beaten down by the waves. It seemed less real, somehow, less vibrant in colors and otherwise. Less...there.

Things were very clear to me, even if I lacked the words to describe them. The forces I had wielded to repel the godlings of darkness had been real, because here, in Limbo and my own little pocket of it, my imagination was real and tangible. So was the energy I had to spend to build the space in the first place.

Rebuilding the literal destruction in the aftermath of that battle and the less tangible missing energy I had spent to defend myself was exhausting mentally and had real costs attached to it in the form of Essence I had to use to mend the wounds and repair the damages.

I found myself taking breaks in between the hours I worked on the restoration whenever I felt the headache coming on and used the time to talk to Lily or just relax as best as I could below the wind-oak tree.

Still, the tree was the only place I found true peace. I knew that among those lights above me were the souls of the Bulwark, my father, and the rest of everyone I had known in a different life. They were not gone, they were here, with me. I had all but forgotten the pain of the loss and the loneliness, with everything going on around me, but that was because I knew that we had not truly been separated. Ever since I had met the Betrayer and the fact that I could somewhat converse with my ancestors from time to time, a blossom of hope had been growing in my heart, that their death was not as permanent as it had seemed in the beginning.

Which reminded me of the woman I had met in the Fulcrum. Thana was her name. She had indicated that she might be able to teach me more about souls, and sooner or later that was a pursuit I was very interested in. For obvious reasons.

But that was a problem for the future, as I dared not enter the Fulcrum again. Instead, I pondered the gains and losses of the past battles with the insects and the Weirderbeast, and what to do with it.

Through titles, I had gained access to a couple of Skills. The strange one was [Anathema], which my brief moment in the presence of the greater god had granted me after we had awoken Kingsbane as an artifact. There was little information to access in my tome of Skills. All I could gather was that it either isolated me from something or could isolate someone else. That was all. For the steep price of 1000 Essence it was not an easy purchase to justify.

Next on the list was [Thunder of War], a Skill I had gained for defeating the godlings of darkness in my own Demesne. I knew it involved invoking a storm, and that this storm would be beneficial in large-scale warfare. It would hinder my enemies and bolster the resolve of my allies. It was expensive as well, 800 Essence, but I would have been glad to have that Skill ready in the last battle.

Lastly, I had earned [Companion Skill: Marked for Death] through the defeat of the Weirderbeast. Now, this was interesting because I could use it for myself and Zero, allowing him to mark prey for me, but it was also interesting for my knights of the Wyld and their raven companions. Could I justify investing that heavily in the small force for a third time, after already buying them the Skills [Brothers in Spirit] and [Raven Companion]? The Skill was fitting, but only because they each had a companion. It did not seem to really be a necessity to improve their chances of survival and growth on their own.

No, I had to keep my Essence together, after having spent so much on them, and focus on other areas. Restoring my Demesne, founding an order for the [Hunters], and claiming and improving my domain in the real world.

There were the Skills to consider I needed to claim the Wyld for my own. I had not found every one of them yet, but the [Elemental Key of Water] and the [Elemental Key of Earth] could be woven for 500 EP each. I still was not sure where to use them, or how, but I would never find that out if I didn‘t try weaving them, would I?

I had purchased the Dogma of freedom just before I had assaulted the Demesne of the Heron, and that meant that I now had a steady stream of Essence trickling into my reservoir. Usually, as Lily had told me, between one and three EP a day, depending on many factors which could be simplified to how well the faiths and the Dogma, in general, were doing. The more Essence was accrued by all factions, gods, believers, and whoever else associated themselves with the concepts of freedom, the more payout the affiliated powers could expect.

Furthermore, there had been a couple of believers in Ravenport popping up, foremost among them a couple of [Knights] who took their daily prayers very seriously. As they had sworn an oath directly to me, I had information about the Essence I received through their prayers. That way, I knew that not every Essence I earned through prayer was accounted for. A couple of citizens of Ravenport had picked up the habit, it seemed. That amounted to five to six EP per week, so far, with an increasing tendency.

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Lily had to fight more or less constantly against probes and spies trying to find my Demesne, ever since the incursion of the forces of darkness. So far, that had been a net profit for us, as between Lily and her Mastiff of Dread, the Web of Lies, and our newfound little black ball of doom we had created a very good net of defense against mindless drones. Last week alone she had battled five times and brought home 50 EPs from those battles.

There were the spoils of the last battle as well. Almost all Essence earned from the excursion to the insect queen had been spent on the [Raven Companion] Skill for the knights. So I now sat on 1399 Essence earned from killing Nightmares, the titles, and the Weirderbeast itself. Lily had estimated another 120 EP or so to be used in restoring the damages to my Demesne.

All in all, I was more than happy with how things were going. The prayers were a thorn in my side, my mortal side. It just felt wrong, but not enough to forgo the Essence I so desperately needed. The fact that I had several streams of passive income coming my way was a relief as it quite literally meant I would not have to put my life on the line for every improvement I wanted to make.

I could not, however, decide on how to spend my Essence. To improve Ravenport directly, I needed a temple or something like it, and for that to work I needed a priest to consecrate the ground for me. That was just a whole bag of trouble, as it meant founding a religion. That was, as all things, easy and complicated at the same time.

There was something fundamentally wrong with playing with the beliefs of real people. That was not something I wanted to do half-heartedly, just for the sake of being able to spend more Essence. Belief had real consequences, for them and for me. How would I find an answer to all the problems and prayers waiting for a divine ear to hear them? I just could not force the issue. I had to wait, the people deserved that much, at the very least.

I debated buying [Thunder of War] outright, just to be prepared if another force came knocking on our door. But then again, deep in the Wyld as we were, we were well protected from outside dangers. It could very well be a wasted investment for a very long time. The same went for [Companion Skill: Marked for Death]. It was enticing because my personal prowess was a trump-card of Ravenport, there was no denying the fact.

But Cogar was at war, my brother in spirit, and I had battled the Weirderbeast for one reason only. To pursue the quest to gather the Elemental Keys the Guardians were keeping, to claim the Wyld for my own, in the eyes of the system and the world alike. I had done so in the hope of helping my brother and his Wyldlings in the skirmishes and battles they were fighting up north, against the corrupted Wyldlings of the Snake Clan.

Why not, then, buy [Elemental Key of Water] and [Elemental Key of Earth] and start the research needed to complete the quest? I would have to do so sooner than later and it might give me valuable information on where and how to acquire the missing keys.

With the decision done, I finished my work repairing my Demesne and wove the Skills.

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Wielding the Skills was like tasting the salt in the air at the seashore, in the sense that you had a feeling for the taste of the sea, even if you just stood there and saw it. It was some inkling of what awaited me, where the keys ever to be brought to the corresponding lock. A tugging in my senses, the desire to remove the blindfold and finally see true. Not only did I feel the sea beyond the walls of my ship, I felt the pull of the earth from the other side.

They were calling to me.

A very real feeling of connectedness to my surrounding washed over me, stronger than I ever had felt under the influence of my [Favorite Terrain: Mountains] Skill. Rather than feeling at home in the territory the skill designated, the Elemental keys truly were part of what in fact was my home, now.

But as to what they did...I had no idea beyond the fact that a key would unlock something and that this something would have something to do with the body of the Dragon of Life. I felt that they were made to pull something into me, which was very unlike any key I knew... if someone were to ask me.

What they did not do, to my chagrin, was to give me a hint of where to continue my search for the missing keys. I was not, however, finished with my research.

Now that I had woven both key Skills, I could put them into the Skillforge and look at the fractals and composition of the Skills with more detail and, even more important, the never drying sea of knowledge that was the Forge Spirit.

I would be a fool to try to combine both Skills, I reckoned, for they messed with the intricacies of the system itself, as they were quest-related Skills, but it could not hurt to take a look, could it?

“Tell me what you think about the function of these Skills.“ I asked the advisor of the forge as I summoned him.

A second went by, then his impartial and always kind of bored sounding voice spoke up: “The fractals indicate the absorption of something very specific - so specific that it has its own rune that is not part of the library of the forge. The Skill seems to be very simple, besides the complicated nature of the runes involved. Absorb and notify the system. The Skill does nothing on its own, so it seems. I would estimate the Skill to be a kind of detection for the system, where otherwise it cannot reach. Why would it need to be informed otherwise?“

“You mean to say that there are places in this world where the system cannot reach? You cannot be serious.“

“I am just the representation of the library of the forge. I do not mean to do anything.“

And yet, he so casually had, as a few others had before, undermined my worldview to the point of shattering it completely. The system was not almighty, that much I had learned before... but now I knew the system was not everywhere.