I didn’t have time to drop my bow and grab my spear as it struck the ground and pivoted, but I knew I needed to survive for just a few more moments….

The cat lunged and I leapt as high as I could toward it, my eyes taking in its snarling face, red eyes, open maw and outstretched claws as I rose above it, reaching out with my free hand to press down on the creature’s head so that I vaulted over it.

We both landed—but the cat’s momentum carried it forward several paces, and as it slowed to bring itself around I watched its hind legs sink into the soil. It had gotten too close to the earth-creature, and been trapped.

I didn’t have time to feel relief—everything came down to that single moment, and I needed focus.

I drew in a breath, rose, nocked my arrow, paused, watched, then finally loosed.

My arrow sailed through the air—up and into the branches of the forest.

I’d heard birdsong, earlier, and moved toward the edge to get a shot at its source. I’d spied them just before the cat had pounced: many birds of colorful plumage perched on the smaller branches that grew from the crowns of the great trees, most of them undisturbed by the sounds of fighting below.

But I’d spotted better quarry past these, higher in the branches, either unseen or unthreatening to its more colorful kin: a tall, lean bird, hook-beaked with front-facing eyes and camouflaged plumage of dappled green and brown.

I didn’t have time to track the path of my arrow. With an explosion of soil, the cat ripped its hind legs free of the earth-creature’s hold and rushed me in a haphazard charge. I dropped my bow and leapt back to climb up the cliff that it had pounced from, grabbing vines and crevices and hurling my weight up the side of the mountain as fast as I could.

And as I climbed, my arrow struck true.

+ 221 Essence

I heard the motion of vines beneath me as the cat gave chase, but my mind was already snapping into the thoughts and forms that were familiar to me, reaching out to cast a simple spell that I’d cast thousands of times before, a spell that brutishly stripped the aspects from the world around me.

I coalesced a boon of aspects and immediately broke it into a skill key:

- 500 Essence: [Earth 1 / Wild 1 / Plant 1]

- [Earth 1 / Wild 1 / Plant 1]: [Earth 1]

“Hah!” I cried.

The cat rushed up beneath me, ready to tear me from the cliffside and feast on my flesh—but I fused my key to the only skill core I had:

[*Primeval 5] + [Earth 1]: [Earth Magick 6]

[Earth Magick 6]

[*Primeval 5] + [Earth 1]

You can move earthen substances within your claim.

Moving a substance is easiest when you move it toward or away from you. The best points on your body to use for this purpose are your hands.

You can sense earthen substances within your gaze, and extending your claim or gaze through earthen substances is easier.

My awareness flowed out into the world around me, my gaze extending so that I could feel the stones and soil. In a heartbeat, I had found a loose stone the size of my fist, called it to my hand with a thought, then launched it into the open mouth of the oncoming cat.

The cat made a strangled cry and fell back, but not before it sank its claws into my boots, grabbing me and tearing me from the cliff so that I tumbled down to crash into the ferns beside it, hard stones biting and bruising my side before I rolled away from the thrashing animal next to me.

I strained to spring to my feet—and I failed, overcome by pain and weakness from the fall. Beside me, the cat rose and began to retch, arching its back and leaving me momentarily forgotten.

I reached out with my magic—and up. Into the stones of the cliff-face, finding a jutting, angular formation above us that weighed several hundred pounds. I severed it from the cliff with my magic, hearing a hard crack as it came rolling and tumbling toward us, my magic still holding it, guiding it with little pushes and pulls as it bounced away from the cliff and free-fell toward us.

I didn’t have the power to give the stone the energy it needed to kill the cat—but gravity did.

The cat turned its head toward me, red eyes frenzied—and the stone struck, crushing its skull and pinning its body to the ground in one brutal, cacophonous instant, gore spraying me and the jungle around us like the innards of a crushed fruit.

+ Limit (11)!

+ 2841 Essence, [Animal 1 / Melee 1 / Wild 1]

“Hah!” I cried, tasting both the cat’s blood and my own even as I filled with new power:

- 2500 Essence: + 5 Level! (5 / 11)

+ 2 [*Primeval 5]! (2)

+ 5 [Bestow 6]! (5)

+ 2 [Bestow]! (8)

I spent my bestows on new attributes right away:

- 4 [Bestow 6]: + 24 [Strength] (28)

- 1 [Bestow 6]: + 6 [Source] (10)

I sat up, painfully aware that the earth-creature was still coming toward me. I wasn’t terribly injured: my lungs were both still fine and the blood in my mouth was from biting my tongue… but pain accompanied my every movement. I needed to find a [Life] key.

A moment later I felt the same force pressing against my claim as before—only now, with the [Earth Magick] power, it was easy to push back against the creature’s own claim and keep the stony ground beneath me for myself.

It came into view a moment later, but it wasn’t so threatening, now: it launched another stone slug at me, but I imposed a slanted counterforce on the missile as soon as it entered my threshold, causing the shot to bounce wide without costing me too much mana.

“You’re an ooze,” I exclaimed, examining the creature and breaking into a smile as I deflected two more shots. I waited to see if it would try another form of attack, now that its two main methods of assault were ineffectual.

None came. Ignoring me, the white blob of a creature slowly pulled itself forward using what I counted to be ten appendages. I peered at it as it came closer, stepping out of its path and getting a good look. Its arms weren’t really arms, just pieces of its body that had been elongated and filled with long strips of stone so that it could move them around. The shadows in its belly-ball weren’t organs, but more of the stone slugs that it had launched at me.

Each of its makeshift feelers ended in a small, wiggling tentacle, and none of them actually supported its weight—instead it dragged itself over the ground, pulling itself forward with earth magic while its limbs glided across the world around it, touching every surface they could find.

I watched it for another minute. It moved past me, found the dead cat with its feelers, then positioned its central mass above the corpse before lowering itself and beginning to spread to envelop its new find.

It was fascinating. I wondered if it was the creature that had made the round holes which the striking insects I’d seen earlier lived in—perhaps it ate them now and then.

“I have no way to kill you,” I whispered softly, watching the blob spread over the carcass like a second, ten-legged skin. It was a shame: something told me this thing would be ripe with essence, and levels 6 through 10 cost 1100 essence, whereas I only had—

?—443 Essence

I smiled. The cat had been somewhere over level 20—so strong that I’d rushed the first five levels just from killing it. My class was tier 5, which meant 5 extra [*Primeval 5] skill cores spread across the first 10 levels—at 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8.

I walked out of sight of the ooze to manage my affairs, just in case it decided to keep paying attention to me.

I’d gotten two more for levels 2 and 4, along with a skill key from killing the cat. And I almost had enough essence to coalesce another key, once I got far enough away from where I’d made the first.

I knew that I must have spent most of my starting mana pool on throwing a rock down the throat of the cat, then crushing its skull with another rock. I checked:

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?—Mana 32/100, 40% Primeval

Mana would replenish according to how much [Source] I had. But there was another way to replenish mana, and that was to channel it out of the world around you. And the world around me was more ripe with mana than any I’d ever seen.

Of course, channeling mana into yourself was like pouring water from a glass back into a narrow-necked bottle: far more time consuming than channeling it out into the world. Still, I drew more mana into myself just by concentrating, then queried once more:

?—Mana 100/100, 29% Primeval

“Well that’s interesting,” I whispered. I did some quick math and determined that the mana in the air was more than 20% primeval, a stupendously high portion for natural mana. I’d know this world was steeped in power, but this was more than I’d expected—which was both good news and bad.

Primeval mana channeled faster than bare mana depending on how primeval it was—in my case, 29%. But that value would go up to 40% in short order, thanks to the fact that my class granted me the most powerful skill I’d ever seen.

It was the reason that I had been the one to come to this place alone, bearing the warp jewel that would summon the others. I was [Primeval Champion]. I had [Primeval Power].

?—Primeval Power:

[Primeval Power 30]

[*Primeval 5] + 5×[Primeval 5]

Primeval Mana + 40%

Base [Primeval Resonance] + 100%

Locked: this power cannot be relinquished or modified.

I made a small noise of approval. I’d never get tired of seeing it.

There was no difference between [*Earth 5] + [Earth 1] and [*Primeval 5] + [Earth 1], and this was because skill cores and skill keys would emulate their lower-order aspects whenever they were present in a skill. [Earth] was a subtype of [Element], which was a subtype of [Primeval].

Hence my skill cores, [*Primeval 5], could not only form all of the versatile, powerful, and class-defining “pure” skills such as [Earth Magick], [Wild Bond], [Life Magick], or [Might]—they could also form all of the other skills that the geomancers, wildspeakers, healers, and berserkers were capable of forming, provided I could find the right skill keys.

This versatility was one-half of my class’s real power. The other half was that only I could form the pure [Primeval] skill, [Primeval Power]. And like most of the free, granted powers that came with classes, its core rank, key amount, and key rank were all equal to my class’s tier—making it the highest rank possible, 30.

The 40% bonus to primeval mana profile was, essentially, a 40% bonus to my channeling speed. Even the mana that I absorbed from the world around me would be quickly converted to mana that was 40% primeval, maintaining my potent force multiplier.

But that part of the skill was secondary. The real power was in [Primeval Resonance].

[Arcane], [Divine], [Eldritch], [Primeval]: for each type of mana, there was a resonance that gave the same effect. Resonance was not bought with essence or aspects—to resonate, one had to be in the right state of mind.

For [Primeval Resonance], one had to be sensual, instinctual, and passionate. [Primeval Resonance] tended to rise while in battle, while eating, and while making love. Battle-rage was the most common and easiest way for a novice warrior to raise their [Primeval Resonance], but there were many other methods; I’d invented a few.

Much like using primeval mana, [Primeval Resonance] increased the rate at which one could channel, in effect increasing the speed or power of one’s spells. Unlike primeval mana, [Primeval Resonance] also gave an effect bonus to all passive, attribute-providing skills that had been made with the [Primeval] aspect or any of its subtypes—which even included [Sable Grace], given that it used a [Body 5] key.

Hence why a legendary class was ill-fitted to anyone who was not extraordinarily talented: one of their greatest bonuses, a doubling of resonance, was wasted on someone who had not trained extensively to have a resonance that was extremely high. Like raw spellcasting or martial prowess, resonance was something that all serious essence-bearers had to train in, and was seen as a mark of their prowess.

A trained fighter or firedancer might reach 20% resonance in battle. A veteran berserker or shaman, 30%. A master wildknight or archdruid might reach 40%—especially if they used some of the meditative techniques I’d invented many centuries ago.

I took a quick look:

?—Your Primeval Resonance:

52% Base, 104% Effective.

Not the best at the moment, but it went up when I was stressed. Once I had some skills, especially passive skills, I could really take advantage of it.

Speaking of, I had two [*Primeval 5] skill cores, and a boon granted by the cat that I could fuse with it to make a skill.

?—Your Boons:

1 [Melee 1 / Wild 1]

[Melee 1] or [Wild 1]? It was hardly a choice. [Melee 1] would combine with [*Primeval 5] to make a skill that let me hit things harder and pierce the high [Aegis] attribute of these relatively high-level enemies, something that [Strength] already did.

But the alternative was [Wild Bond], an absolute essential for hunting prey and surviving predators. Information was both a sword and a shield… and [Wild Bond] granted more than just information.

- [Melee 1 / Wild 1]: [Wild 1]

[*Primeval 5] + [Wild 1]: [Wild Bond 6]

[Wild Bond 6]

[*Primeval 5] + [Wild 1]

You can telepathically sense, communicate with, and even attack all natural forms of life that are within your gaze.

Extending your gaze to include such creatures becomes easier, though you detect only their mind and external shape, not the internal composition of their bodies.

Unwanted telepathic contact with another creature costs mana to establish, use, and maintain. This skill also strengthens your ability to defend and hide from any such telepathy.

Like [Earth Magick], it was another extremely versatile and useful skill. I would mostly be using it to find threats. Many predators would know how to use [Wild Bond] to hide themselves from potential prey with [Wild Bond]—but I was skilled enough that my gaze would be hard to escape, even at the lowly rank of 6.

Of course, [Wild Bond] was also the key component of the clearest and most present threat ahead of me, a threat that I’d have to deal with before I could call my people.

Exposure to primeval mana could cause creatures to develop adaptive mutations, or to have offspring with such mutations. And this fact was why such a high density of primeval mana was bad news.

Certain powerful creatures could wipe out entire ecosystems. Against such threats, primeval mana had a particularly potent adaptation: the primeval convergence.

In the presence of something that a creature with [Wild Bond] determined to be a highly dangerous threat, they could send or relay a psychic signal to all nearby creatures. A single creature sending such a signal would usually be ignored, but enough of them in short succession would start to trigger a deep-set instinct in other nearby creatures, causing them to relay and amplify the signal—and to converge upon, and attack, whatever triggered it.

It didn’t matter that many of them, even all of them, would be killed. It was a drive that went beyond self-preservation, like how parents would die for their children or how insects would die to protect the hive.

I wouldn’t necessarily trigger one by myself, not killing creatures just to level up. But a creature with [Wild Bond] detecting a group of more than two thousand elves certainly would, whether the elves were attacking them or not.

I wouldn’t just need to fight a few things and gain a few levels. In order to properly ensure the safety of my people upon their arrival, I would need to fight a swarm—one that had been psychically drafted from every able species around me.

Once I’d survived, I’d be recognized by the local ecosystem as a part of it, accepted because there was no other option. Further calls for a primeval convergence would be ignored. And once that was done, the other elves would gain the same benefit.

Hopefully.

I checked the warp jewel at my hip. Its light had already faded a little. I had to trigger and fight off a primeval convergence before I brought my people, and I only had a few hours to do it in.

But that wasn’t so bad. On the whole, I was rather excited.

I reached out with my gaze to try and sense the ooze that had enveloped the cat’s carcass. Sure enough, I couldn’t sense it with [Wild Bond]—oozes were not “natural” forms of life, at least not according to the Verse.

Then I turned toward the crowns of the great trees, made sure I was pointed in the right direction, and made a running leap off the cliff’s edge, soaring through the air to land at the narrow end of the closest branch I could leap to, four levels of added [Strength] giving me enough power to make the jump.

I grasped the branch, reaching out with my [Wild Bond] power to sense the life all around me as I pulled myself up and crawled inward toward the trunk of the great tree, standing once I had surer footing.

That was the great gift of [Earth Magick] and [Wild Bond]—my gaze now mapped the world around me, helping me to find sure and perfect footing.

I couldn’t help it: I broke into a grin as I extended my gaze into the world around me. Close by, I could sense insects moving beneath the bark of the branches, feeding on sap and leaves. I could sense the birds that had flown to higher branches, startled, when I’d landed. Further, I could sense—

I froze. Something was wrong. There was a presence weighing on my mind, so light that I almost didn’t feel it even with the [Wild Bond] power—another predator tracking me.

As soon as I noticed it, the strength of the creature’s psychic presence flared, the mental equivalent of an animal rearing up and roaring in a display of intimidation.

And I was most definitely intimidated.

I could sense that they were likely far, far more powerful than the cat I’d just fought, and I could sense that they were utterly malevolent. They flooded my mind with raw images and sensations: the taste of bloody flesh torn from still-wriggling prey, the shadows of beasts fleeing before them in terrified, frenzied stampedes, the forest I now moved through, seen from a high place in the mists—its domain.

And then something I did not expect happened: the thoughts it was assailing me with crystallized, connecting with my mind in a way that formed words I could understand.

This creature was sapient. It didn’t speak Aranian Elvish, but the Verse translated its raw, wordless thoughts good enough for me to understand it.

You, it said to me, inner voice booming with power. Little one.

I froze on the branch, my eyes sweeping the forest above and around me. Wherever this thing was, I needed to get away from it—and fast.

You see as I see, it said, recognizing my own sapience with a flutter of surprise. I wondered at this: was I the first intelligent creature it had ever met?

Yes, I answered. I am like you, I said. I see much.

A deep rumbling seemed to fill my mind. You see as I do, it said. Then, after it had a moment to think on this, my mind flooded with more images: my head cracked open between powerful jaws, a tongue darting out to lap up the juices that flowed from my ruined skull.

I will eat you, little one.