The warp spell dropped me onto hard, dark stone, and I rolled to my feet and grabbed for my spear.

Surviving the next few hours wouldn’t be easy.

I was surrounded by lizards—but they were small, half my height, and they were scurrying away from me with the fearful motions of prey.

It was dark as night, but there was no moon or stars. Instead, faintly glowing red mist lay all around me, thickening into deep, luminous walls. The ground was dark stone, rising away from me to vanish into the mist and dotted here and there with a green and pink patches of glowing moss.

Lightning flashed in the clouds above, revealing more of the world before me—and I froze. Cresting the dark line of the horizon, where the slope ahead met the formless blanket of glowing red sky, I saw the silhouette of a great cat with its red eyes fixed upon me.

Then the world darkened again as the lightning faded, and both the cat and the horizon were gone, obscured by a thick wall of mist. A moment later, I felt a psychic touch against my mind, light and soft as a falling snowflake.

It was the cat. It had seen me in the lightning and was now using [Wild Bond] to track me. I guessed it was a predator who used the fog for stealth—most likely it had crept up on the pack of small creatures that I had scared off, meaning to hunt one of them.

Instead it had found me.

I closed my eyes and crouched. This cat was an ambush predator. I knew because I could barely hear it moving, its soft weight carried on padded feet that made only the lightest scuffs against the porous stone, faintly audible in the breeze.

I held still with my face forward, quietly shifting my legs beneath me as I prepared to turn toward it….

The cat paused, coiled, and pounced.

I was moving as soon as I heard its weight shifting, throwing myself to one side as the sleek figure emerged wraithlike from the mist, rolling to come up with my spear pointed at where I’d been and thrusting forward with all the force I could muster at the huge form….

My spear struck the cat just behind its shoulders, but only sank an inch or two into its flesh, barely piercing skin.

The cat yowled, landed unsteadily, then leapt away, bounding further up the slope to round on me, surprised but not really injured. I took in my first real sighting of it: a sleek, wet coat of black fur, gleaming red in the strange light of the mist.

And as I watched, I saw the wound on its shoulder close. [Regeneration], then.

My heart sank. If I’d had even a little essence, enough to coalesce an [Earth] or [Air] key that I could use to fight… but I didn’t have essence. The only essence in my future would come if I killed this beast. And to do that I had a spear, a bow, two knives, and my magic.

The cat growled, and I hissed back, low to the ground and ready to move. But the beast waited, eyes on me.

Sensing a chance, I reached out with my magical gaze, finding the world around me to be alive with primeval mana, which danced in the fog around us and welled up from what must have been a chasm behind me to flow across the rocks. Enough time and I could—

The cat pounced, and this time I didn’t leap to the side but threw myself backward, setting the spear against the ground and falling into a crouch so that the cat barreled straight into the point.

I felt a jolt of force and heard a howl of pain, but my heart leapt when I saw that the point had stuck in its chest. The cat snarled and thrashed, lunging for me and burying the spearpoint deeper, the thick haft of my spear bending and shaking from the force.

But having tried brute force, the cat planted its forepaws and pushed itself off the spear, which I wrenched free with a gout of blood before we backed away from each other.

I could have cursed. I’d missed its heart, and it was unlikely to give me another chance.

My feet carried me backward along the slope, my eyes never leaving my quarry. The cat kept my pace for a few seconds as its wound healed, but seemed unwilling to lunge again. Instead it leapt from side to side, its eyes never leaving the spear that always pointed toward it. It made a full circle of me, drool running from its toothy mouth as it decided how best to approach.

As it did this, I reached out once again with my magical gaze. I had no skills or attribute bonuses, nothing to form and shape my mana for me… but I was a grandmaster spellcaster. Given enough time I could have commanded the very lightning in the skies above us.

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Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time.

The cat lunged again, and I leapt back, struck: but the cat batted the spear away with one enormously strong paw, then lunged. I dove to one side, pulling the spearpoint back to bring it between the cat’s jaws and myself and then doing my best to keep it there.

It leapt up to the rock beside me, then again to the rock behind me, each time seeing if I rounded fast enough to stop it from pouncing. After a few tries it seemed to realize that it couldn’t get around my spearpoint, then let out a snarl of frustration and came forward to attack anyway.

I danced backward along the slope, my spearpoint moving not to kill, but defend: I would draw it back as the cat tried to bat it out of the way, then tap the cat on the chest, shoulder, or throat, the blows too light and fast to pierce skin but still enough to trigger the creature’s cautious instincts and make it flinch or back away for another moment.

But at last it let out a howl of rage, barreling forward through my spear and striking at my legs with its claws, cutting me deep through my armor and sending me sprawling to the ground.

My hand snapped to my knife as my other arm came out to catch my fall, but I was too slow for the beast: I felt the weight of its body slam my chest down into the rock, then caught a single glimpse of its jaws descending for the kill.

But its teeth sunk into the steel plate of my spiked gorget, and while its jaws were easily strong enough to crumple the metal and crush my neck, it still reared back, confused by the sudden painful resistance—giving me a moment to bring my arm up and drive the point of my knife into its eye.

The beast howled and jumped, crushing my chest under the paw it had used to pin me and pushing all the wind from my lungs. I scrabbled back along the slope, no time to breathe, reaching out with my magic to sense the mana in the air around me… and then I smiled, tasting blood in my mouth, backing away slowly as I watched my opponent and focused on preparing a minor spell.

The cat thrashed for a moment, batting at the knife in its eye with a paw several times until finally the knife was knocked free, clattering to the stone at our feet. Then, letting out heavy, growling breaths, it brought its head up to stare at me.

Blood ran from the hem of my jerkin and from my fingertips, but I was glad. The cat had two choices—pounce now, or wait for its eye to heal.

It chose to pounce.

The cat sprang into the air, all its weight uncoiling toward me, and I threw myself forward and to one side, spinning in the air to face the cat as it sailed by me in one frozen instant—and then loosing the rudimentary spell that I’d been preparing since I’d stabbed it in the eye, striking it with a chaotic blast of thunderous force that sent it flying backward through the air to fall into the mists—and disappear.

I’d backed us into the chasm I’d sensed earlier, which meant I’d just thrown the cat off a cliff, the distance of its fall unknown to me. I took a painful, gasping breath, relieved to feel that both of my lungs were still fine. I could feel my gorget stabbing into my chest in several places—its teeth had pierced the metal plate and bent it inward. I winced as I carefully removed the now-useless piece of armor and cast it aside.

I grabbed my spear from where I’d dropped it, then my knife where it had fallen, then moved to the edge of the chasm and peered into it with a sinking heart. The Verse never failed to grant a creature’s loose essence: if the cat had died, I would have known by now.

What was more, the face of the cliff was cracked in many places and covered in creeping vines and moss. Judging by the difficulty I’d had in piercing its flesh with a well-sharpened spearpoint, the cat was likely level 20 or more, with [Aegis], [Strength], and [Agility] to match. It would have no trouble climbing back up to reach me.

I tested the strength of the vines with a gloved hand, then clipped my spear to my baldric and swung down, minding the pain in my chest and bloodied ankles. I descended quickly, but soon paused as the mist began to thin. I could see a scattering of lights below me, almost like those of a city.

I descended another fifty feet, then, seeing that the mist had mostly thinned, stopped my climb near an outcropping of rock and moved away from the cliff to look out at the world beneath me.

My face broke into a reverent smile at what I saw.

A distant mountain’s silhouette was revealed by a new flash of lightning, rising above the clouds with the shadows of great birds and flying reptiles in the air around it, their size impossible to judge at a distance.

The city lights I’d thought I’d seen below were the lights of a vast forest that glowed with vibrant hues of blue, green, and pink. Trees that were big enough for fifty elves to encircle with linked arms rose like dark towers topped by luminous, broad-leafed crowns.

But it was the cloud that drew my eyes. Looking down, past the canopy of the forest and past the gaps in the heavy mat of glowing vines and twisting branches below, I saw another layer of glowing red mist—another layer of cloud to match the one above me. The whole of the jungle seemed to disappear beneath it.

No sky, no ground. Only craggy mountains and titanic jungle, crashing lightning and deadly beasts.

What had once been nothing but a furtive hope flared within me. This place could be our home. 

Primeval mana swirled in the air around me, visible only to my magical gaze. The mana’s chaotic nature would scatter divination spells, making it impossible for the rest of the cosmos to find us.

So much raw, unbridled power. This mana, this power, would be the means by which I struck a killing blow to the elves’ most ancient of impediments. If I succeeded here, the elves would be able to have children as fast as humans or orcs.

My thoughts sank into memory, to my last sight of home: a wave of smoke and fire as tall as the sky itself swallowing the land and the sea. In the wake of the Doom, I had to succeed, had to bring my people here and show them a much-needed miracle, had to ensure that they thrived.

But first I had to survive. For that, I had to get stronger, and fast.

I checked the warp jewel that was stowed in a steel-lined pouch at my hip. It was still safe, blue light spilling out before I shut it away again. Until I broke the jewel and called the others, I was alone.

My hand moved to touch the haft of my spear. I left the ledge to resume my climb; with luck, my quarry waited below.