I was attacked moments later.

First I heard a sound like a sail makes as it fills with wind, subtle and high above me. Knowing what it meant, I spun, wound my legs into the many vines around me, and looked up into the clouds to see a dark shape diving toward me, a huge reptile with a wingspan of perhaps eighteen feet that was covered in luminous markings like warpaint.

Dread filled me, but it was only a passing thing: a necessary emotion at the sight of a mid-sized aerial predator. It flared its wings as it approached, making a wave of wind that threatened to knock me flat against the cliff face, but I pressed into the rock with my heels and lunged with my spear, catching the beast in the groin so as to keep its talons at bay.

It let out an ear-splitting cry, beat its wings—but when this blast of air failed to dislodge me or the spear I was holding, it beat its wings a few more times to rise above me and fly away, leaving me to my business.

I watched it go with frustration: my spear had held it at bay, but barely pierced its seemingly-soft flesh. Like most of the creatures in this place, it was too high a level and with too much of the [Aegis] attribute for me to kill.

It would be the same with prey animals. Whatever levels they had would go into survival and means escape, making them them poor targets even if they were less dangerous.

I continued with my descent. With luck, the cat wouldn’t have the power to heal its wounds completely—it would be hurt animal, waiting somewhere safe for its [Regeneration] skill’s [Life Pool] to replenish.

Its share of essence would likely be enough to grant my first five levels. I needed those levels: I didn’t know this place or its wildlife, and sooner or later something that came along to eat me would be too strong for me to kill or fight off.

Below me, the cliff broke off into a tumble of stones that ended in a small valley hemmed in on all sides but one, a ledge that was level with the crowns of the great trees I’d seen from above.

I looked down into the small valley with disappointment. A dark stain amidst crushed ferns marked where the cat had fallen, regenerated, and then left.

That, or something else had picked it off. Neither option was ideal.

I scanned the darkness of the vines and tangled bushes. My eyes, like my ears, were far superior to those of most elves, but I still watched the wilderness with uncertainty. If the cat had lived, there was a good chance it was still using [Wild Bond] to track me and waiting for the right moment to strike. I couldn’t sense its mental presence on my mind, but it had been so light and soft earlier that it was possible I simply couldn’t notice it anymore—not without the added sensitivity of having the [Wild Bond] skill myself.

While I watched, I took stock of everything I’d brought with me.

I wore a set of composite leather armor, padded on the inside and lined in critical areas with thin steel plates. On my belt I had two curved knives, a pair of flight goggles, a pouch of chalk dust, the pouch containing the warp jewel, a canteen of water, some strips of dried meat wrapped in cloth, a small coil of rope, a quiver of arrows, and a whetstone. On my baldric I carried my spear and bow, each hanging from a metal clip. Bound to each thigh was a sheaf of more arrows—I’d brought 66 in total.

My weapons were both etched with spiraling runes and grooves that would help me affix them with hasty, substandard enchantments—once I had the time and essence to do so.

I was level 0, now. It had been a long time since I’d been this weak, and I wasn’t using to fighting at my current strength. I queried the Verse for my attributes:

?—Your Attributes:

4 [Aegis]

25 [Agility]

4 [Strength]

4 [Channel]

25 [Focus]

4 [Source]

6 [Bestow]

102% [Primeval Resonance], 51% Base.

40/40 Mana — 40% Primeval

It was useful information, but it wasn’t the full picture. Attributes were like a permanent enchantment granted by the Verse, and they were laid over my innate capabilities. The attributes granted by skills and levels were only enhancing what I could already do—and right now, many of those enhancements were negligible when compared to what I was naturally capable of.

Thankfully, the Verse was flexible. It had no set-in-stone way of conveying information: it just showed you what you queried for. I’d long-since asked it to present information the form that I desired.

Technically only the first six values that were listed were my attributes, but it knew that I always wanted to see my bestow, mana, and resonance too. And as always, it was simplistic and minimal as possible in its messaging—the way I liked it.

I queried the Verse once more, this time requesting an accounting of the physical and magical abilities I had that weren’t granted by my class or skills:

?—Your innate capabilities, estimated in terms of Attributes:

~42 [Strength] !—Innate strength has no effect on claim or gaze.

~62 [Agility] !—Innate agility has no effect on claim or gaze.

0 [Aegis]

~120 [Channel] !—Note that this is simply an approximation of how fast you would channel mana if you were to focus entirely on that task in your current mental state.

? [Focus] !—Because the mana-structuring component of every spell differs, your [Focus] cannot be estimated.

0 [Source]

I read all of this over, my attention split between the words of the Verse and the wilderness around me, watching for the cat or other predators.

I might be level 0 now, but I was as far from weak as a level 0 could be.

I was one of the first elves. I hadn’t been born to a pair of parents, but was made by my creator goddess, Sabina. I was innately stronger and faster than the elves who had come after me, and the Verse’s estimation of physical abilities reflected this. But where [Strength] and [Agility] were simple enough to understand, the other attributes were more complex.

There was no innate analogue to [Aegis] and [Source]. [Aegis] was a magical reinforcement that applied to both the body and wielded equipment; the cat’s [Aegis] had kept my sharpened spear from piercing deep into its flesh. [Source] was the ability to store mana in a metaphysical vessel that only I could access and that I carried with me everywhere. Without [Source], spells had to be cast by gathering the mana in the world around me.

[Channel] was simply the speed at which one could channel mana. The attribute allowed one to do this without any thought or effort, but I could also channel mana with brute force of will, a talent that I’d honed with many, many years of spellcasting experience.

Where [Channel] emulated the external component of spellcasting, [Focus] emulated the internal component—the structured, focused thought that told mana what to do when it was expended. [Focus] could structure any form of magic that was granted by my skills, even if I had no idea what that structure was actually supposed to look like—any fool could pick up the [Fire Magick] skill and start setting things ablaze, no training required, as long as they had some amount of [Channel], [Focus], and [Source].

My own [Focus] was inestimable because there were some forms of magic, such as conjuring forcefields, that I knew next to nothing about. But with the forms of magic I knew well, such as those using [Lightning] and [Surge] aspects, I would be able to emulate literally hundreds of [Focus].

All in all, I could lean on my innate spellcasting talents for a while yet, and I could lean on my higher [Agility] to keep myself safe—but I needed [Strength] badly in order to kill anything with the weapons I’d brought. With it, I’d need [Aegis], if only to keep my equipment from breaking under the force of my blows.

I had two skills. One had been a gift from my mother-creator, and was the reason that my [Agility] and [Focus] attributes were so much higher than the others. I queried the Verse, requesting that it show me my [Sable Grace].

?—Sable Grace:

[Sable Grace 20]

[*Arcane 5] + [Body 5] + [Dark 5] + [Diamond 5]

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

+ 1.75×[Bestow]×[Primeval Resonance] to [Agility] and [Focus]. (21)

+ 20% Efficiency with Mana.

Extending your claim or gaze through darkness, moonlight, or starlight is easier. Your gaze now conveys the contours of surfaces that are in darkness or that are lit by starlight or moonlight.

You see well in darkness, unless it is perfect darkness.

Locked: this skill cannot be relinquished or modified.

I smiled. [Sable Grace] was as precious to me as a baby blanket, a skill that had been with me all my life. I’d just been deleveled to 0 so that I could warp to a hostile world steeped in power, but [Sable Grace] had stayed with me on account of being a gift from a god. It was quite useful.

[Bestow] was how much I could increase an attribute upon leveling up. [Bestow] itself increased every 5 levels—meaning [Sable Grace] and any other attribute-granting skills would level with me, granting more and more attributes.

Like many skills [Sable Grace] also strengthened my claim and gaze in certain circumstances.

Claim was the area around me that I could affect with my spells—essentially, my magical territory.

Gaze extended through claim and beyond it, giving me a magical sense of the world around me. By default, gaze only detected mana, but skills would add more things to its contents.

In other words: claim was what I had magical grasp of, gaze was what I had magical sight of. They were both somewhat fluid in their shape: I could push them outward in one direction by simultaneously relinquishing them in others. [Strength] and [Agility] strengthened claim and gaze as they increased, and spare [Focus] could always be used to extend it—as long as it wasn’t being used to cast or maintain spells.

As I watched, listened, and considered my gear and attributes, I began to notice the motions of many small living things on the vines. There were black beetles, each with yellow and blue markings on their backs. They were marching to and fro along the vines, some of them carrying little white pieces of moist fruit.

I saw many tiny rodents with long tails and mottled brown fur, blending in well as they leapt from vine to vine like small squirrels. As I watched, one of them leapt to a vine below it and ambushed one of the beetles, using its ribbon-like tail as a tongue to wrap its prey up before stuffing the beetle into its mouth.

“Beautiful,” I whispered, watching the creature leap away into the trees with bulging cheeks, demonstrating all the wild grace that I would expect from a squirrel with a prehensile tail.

I could kill it, but it would be a waste of an arrow. This place was teeming with essence, but not so much that a beetle-eating rodent would be carrying any significant amount. Killing a creature granted around a tenth of the essence it had spent on levels. Very little, even to a level 0 like myself.

There was a scuffle in the vines, and my eyes darted over—but I saw nothing save for a rustle of leaves and one of the ribbontails retreating further down the cliff. I watched the stirring of the leaves, peered at them, then realized that something was wrong: there were still two beetles sitting on the shaking vines, unmoving, apparently not frightened away by the noise.

I made a noise of curiosity, then stepped nearer, looked closer. The beetles seemed like beetles, but were really colored, knobbly protrusions—fakes attached to two long, slender black legs that disappeared beneath the vine cover. With my gaze, I could detect a small burrow made in the stone cliffside. Another ambush predator.

I drew my knife as I moved to poise myself above the vines, then very gently prodded one of the fake beetles with my the butte of my spear.

Instantly, a black shape rushed forward, headed by a nasty-looking pair of mandibles. I brought my bootheel down on the creature, pinning it with surprising difficulty, then knelt and stabbed it many times through the gaps in its glinting insectile shell.

Soon it had gone limp beneath me.

+ 52 Essence

I smiled at this as I pulled the creature from its burrow—it was long, twelve-legged, almost like a cross between a spider and a centipede.

“Gorgeous,” I whispered, breaking into a smile as I held up the corpse, rotating it to see its pale, segmented underside. These things ate birds, had to: they were too large, their mandibles too great and powerful, to eat nothing but the ribbontails. I wondered if they made their own burrows, or if they inhabited holes made by other creatures—they didn’t seem like they could burrow through basalt, or even tuff.

I pushed the carcass back into its burrow, then continued down the cliff. Once I had 500 essence, I’d have enough to level up or to coalesce an aspect into a skill key. Given that I already had a skill core, [*Primeval 5], the skill key would be more useful—I could fuse the two to make myself a new skill.

An [Air] or [Earth] aspect should have been easy enough to coalesce, given that air and earth were everywhere around me—and a skill like [Earth Magick] or [Air Magick] would greatly heighten my chances of survival. The aspects were so common that both my weapons were affixed with small bands of air and soapstone sealed in metal so that they could be moved around magically, once I had the skills.

At that thought I glanced at the skies, then glanced at the overgrown cliffs around me, still searching for more flying reptiles or the ominously absent cat. I saw neither.

I made my way down the overgrown cliffs, extending my gaze to search for more of the bugs. Many of the dark burrows that I sensed were empty—but I could spot the false beetles they used to bait other creatures with my eyes easily enough.

Soon I’d found and killed a second one much like the first.

+ 41 Essence

“A few more,” I muttered.

But I’d only killed six more and gathered a total of 381 essence when the cat came back.

Slowly, I distinguished the rustling motions of something coming toward me from the sounds of the dark jungle below. My head snapped toward the noise—and I saw the cat some thirty paces to one side and above me on the cliff face, a dark figure clinging to the vines and stones, muscles bulging under its sleek coat of fur.

“You got above me,” I whispered, breaking into another smile. It is no easy thing, sneaking up on me. Even with the noise of the wilds around us to mask its motions, this cat had gotten within thirty meters of me before I heard it.

Then it moved, and so did I: both of us leaping down the cliffside in sinuous bounds, my own path a frantic set of drops toward jutting stones or easily-grasped vines, each slowing my fall just enough before I dropped to the next until—

The last outcrop of rock I landed on gave way as soon as my feet touched it, tearing itself free of the vines and tumbling to the small clearing below, taking me along with it. I struck the glowing ferns, rolled to a halt on rocky soil, came up with my spear pointed upward… only to find that the cat hadn’t pursued. I looked at the slope of fallen rocks in front of me, then up the cliff wall above it—nothing.

I tried to focus… but there were too many insects chirping, too many birds calling, too many scrapes and hoots and alien sounds coming from the great forest behind me. I couldn’t hear the creature’s breathing, or its footfalls, or see the stirring of bushes where it had undoubtedly leapt down into the overgrowth to stalk me through the brush.

But why hadn’t it pounced on me?

The leaves of the ferns and trees around me were high enough to block my sight, and the undergrowth was thick enough to hinder mobility. It was a poor place for fighting.

But there was another cliff behind me, one leading down into the forest of great trees. I began to back toward it, slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible while I listened for the cat, hearing only birds instead.

As I backed up, I untied the leather lace that held shut the quiver on my hip, then drew out an arrow. I crouched low into the ferns, looking beneath their uppermost leaves and not seeing the cat, then lay my spear down and unclipped my bow from my baldric.

I reached the spot where the cat had clearly fallen—blood stained the rocks and crushed ferns, seeming black in the dark, eerie light of the red cloudlayer above. I nocked my arrow, still backing away.

Then, listening for the cat, I sensed a sudden magical pressure pushing against the soil beneath me—another creature’s magical claim. At the same time, a I heard a scraping noise coming from the rocks at the base of the cliff.

My heart began to pound as fear spiked through my gut.

While the gaze of two creatures could overlap, their claims could not. Skills, such as [Earth Magick], could allow one to extend their claim and gaze much further through substances that matched the skill. Whatever had made that noise at the base of the cliffs, its claim was strong enough to push against my own even at this distance, but only through the earth. It was quite literally threatening to steal the ground out from under me—something that meant almost certain death against any earth mage.

I reached out with my own magic, broadening and strengthening my claim in case this new enemy tried to shift the earth beneath me. Through the ferns, I could see something move in the overgrown rockpile at the base of the cliff—a long white limb that emerged to slowly grope its way over the rocks, looking very much like a malnourished finger. It was followed by a second, then several more.

I kept backing away as the creature emerged and I saw it in full: a round, white blob at the center of nine or more pale, slow-moving limbs. It was translucent, and I could see long, thin bones through the flesh of its arms and a dark collection of objects that might have been organs in its lumpy, unformed center.

It moved up the stones at the base of the cliff, away from me, seemingly paying me no heed.

But I wasn’t fooled. This was why the cat hadn’t followed me—it had feared this thing. I watched carefully for the slightest burst of motion from the creature….

Then, at a sudden lurching of its central mass, I dove to one side just in time to avoid a fist-sized slug of stone that hissed through the air where I’d been and kicked up a gout of soil where it struck the ground. I ran hard through the ferns while I heard the hiss-and-thud of the creature’s shots tearing through plants and striking the earth behind me.

I dove for cover behind some fallen stones at the edge of the valley, still pressing my claim as far as I could into the world around me. I heard a few stone slugs shatter against the other side of my rockpile, then silence.

Then I felt a powerful presence push against my claim in an attempt to steal the rocks beneath me. Instinct guided me to lash out at the creature, to push back and hold my own magical claim over the space around me.

It was a mistake. Even at this distance the creature overpowered me with magical brute strength, stealing the stones beneath me. I leapt back just as the stones where I’d been standing suddenly shattered and began to churn, swallowing the twigs and pebbles that rested on their surface.

I cursed my own foolishness as I tried to back further away from the creature, along the edge of the cliff and out of view, but the shelf of rock continued for another twenty paces and then ended, falling away to form more of the sheer cliff face that led down into the great forest below. I stopped at the edge, then waited—but apparently the creature couldn’t reach that far with its claim.

Still, I was in a bind—soon it would either round the corner to shoot me or come into range and try to suck me into the ground. The crowns of a few great trees were nearby beside me, but the closest sturdy branch was more than forty feet away—barely out of leaping distance if I had a running start. The cliff that rose beside me was climbable, but only just: fewer vines, fewer cracks, fewer ledges. And it offered no protection from my pursuer.

So I stood still, my eyes scanning the distant branches of the great trees, my face lighting up in a smile as I found what I needed.

Then I heard a cascading sound of disturbed pebbles, snapping vines, and hissing leaves from above me, and I threw myself to one side as the massive bulk of the black cat came down on the ground where I’d been standing.