I moved along the high branch with a growing sense of fear and frustration. My task had just gotten harder, and far more dangerous. A primeval convergence was bad enough, but I was now being stalked by a predator that I couldn’t hope to fight without a sizeable chunk of new levels.

There was little doubt in my mind that I was going to have to kill this creature. Even the brief glimpse I’d had into their mind had been enough to show me that they weren’t going to like the thought of coexisting with two and a half thousand elves.

Blood dripped from the glove of my hand, running from the wounds where my gorget had cut into my chest and neck. Pain throbbed across most of my body. I had to find a [Life] key, but I also needed to find a way to hide from this new enemy.

They had revealed at least one crucial weakness already: they’d implied that I was the first other sapient creature it had met. Their intelligence had no doubt been instrumental in their rise to the top of the food chain while it competed with unintelligent animals, which meant that the simplest tricks, the most basic acts of cleverness—these had likely almost never failed them.

Hopefully, they would be easy to deceive. But I couldn't rely on that hope—that would make me easy to deceive.

I quieted my psychic presence using the [Wild Bond] power, but not too much: I wanted it to seem as if I were trying to hide from them, but not skilled enough to manage it. And I had a good measure of their psychic strength from their somewhat foolhardy show of intimidation.

A cruel laughter filled my mind a moment later. You think you can hide from me, little one?

It was the second time they’d called me little one, and I smiled.

I was 6’11”, taller than almost all elf men, let alone the other women. Prolonged exposure to primeval mana had altered my body, adding a few inches to my height just like it had turned my gray eyes red, my white hair gold, and my canines into lengthened fangs. It had also strengthened my blood, rendering me immune to all natural diseases and poisons.

Not anymore, I told them, still moving along the tree branch. But I must try to survive, no matter how fearsome and strong you are—do you expect otherwise?

Would flattery work? It was impossible to know without knowing this creature’s personality.

My eyes were scanning the steep cliffs that rose to the sides of the forest, searching for a hole to hide in. I’d got the sense that my new rival was large, perhaps an aerial predator… and [Earth Magick] meant that I was safest underground from almost anything.

Everything tries to survive, They said. But everything fails. Still… you are curious. Your shape and mind are new to me.

I smiled. Watch me, then. I can show you many things which are new to you.

The creature’s cold, cruel laughter seemed to fill my mind once again. You are like a snake, a fish, trying to wriggle free of my grasp—only you use your mind, not your body. I see your futile games, creature, but I will watch—for now.

The creature’s words filled my gut with a slow, sinking feeling. It was more clever than I’d hoped it would be, then. I moved on carefully, my gaze extended outward, worried that a strike from my new rival would come at any moment.

I reached the trunk of the great tree, but soon stopped: a huge section of bark seemed to pull itself free, shake once, and begin to rotate toward me.

“I didn’t see you,” I said appreciatively. I’d been distracted, of course, and the color of the lighting was strange—but still, it had good camouflage.

The creature was a circular dome of some kind of shell that looked like bark. At first I thought it was an elemental, but when I reached out with [Wild Bond] I could sense it; it was an animal.

“A giant crab?” I asked, tilting my head.

And it was: a moment later the creature shifted, moved to perch two legs on my branch, then reared, pushing itself up so that its bark-like shell was fully horizontal and I could see the segmented armor plating of its face.

I could feel its surge of defensive instincts as it spotted me, along with a sudden flash of the will to fight. But by the time it was facing me I’d already nocked an arrow and drawn—I loosed it into one of the creature’s eyes, an easy shot at this distance.

It hissed, then let out a loud sound like a cough as a long tongue shot out toward me, missing me by several feet, the crab thrown off by the shot to its eye.

It backed up along the branch as I nocked and loosed another arrow, shooting out its other eye.

It shrieked, tilting around unsteadily as it slurped its tongue back into its mouth. But I was already reaching out to it with my [Wild Bond].

I formed my willpower into a mental spike that I thrust into the mind of the crab with a singular command: relax. And for a brief moment, all through its body, its muscles did as I told them.

It fell from the side of the tree, briefly caught itself on the branch in front of me with two legs, the rest flailing beneath it… and then I hit it with the same mental assault a second time and it fell away beneath me.

I watched it fall, disappear beneath the lower cloud-layer, counting the time….

+ 492 Essence

“Extraordinary,” I whispered. These trees were, by my guess, half a kilometer tall. I channeled more mana from the air into myself, replacing what I’d spent.

I leapt to another nearby tree-branch, intending to move from tree to tree while I got far enough away from where I’d coalesced the [Earth] key to coalesce another. While I moved, I searched for caves and ledges along the cliffside, conscious of the malevolent presence still blanketing my mind.

You are… a cowardly fighter, it said after a time.

I am a little one, I reminded it.

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My gaze darted upward to watch the sky, expecting this predator to swoop down at any moment. I could sense it thinking, struggling to understand what I was, how I spoke. It wasn’t stupid, just unfamiliar with communication like this, and unfamiliar with elves.

I spotted a cluster of holes in the side of the cliff-face, then tried to coalesce a boon. The spell failed, meaning it couldn’t find enough aspects around me to strip and form a boon with. I still hadn’t traveled far enough. And something told me that if I ran underground, I was less likely to find a [Life] key than in these treetops.

I cut toward the center of the forest, scampering across the branches and keeping my eye out for camouflaged crabs, predator birds, and anything else that might want to kill me.

It was an eerie journey. Moving across tree branches wasn’t a strange experience to me, but the glow of their many-hued leaves and the red mist layers both above and below me were disorienting. It was as if the entire world had been filtered through a stained-glass window—and the red light made me feel like that window showed a scene of great violence.

I thought of shooting as many birds as I could—levels cost 1100, and I could surely gain a few. But I’d brought only two sheaves and one quiver of arrows, and I was down to 63.

Finally I found that I could cast the spell that coalesced another boon:

-500: [Bird 1 / Life 1 / Wild 1]

- [Bird 1 / Life 1 / Wild 1]: [Life 1]

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

[Life Magick 6]

[*Primeval 5] + [Life 1]

+ 100 [Life Pool]

[Life Pool] replenishes very slowly, but its replenishment can be hastened by spending essence.

You may spend [Life Pool] in conjunction with mana to heal injuries, alleviate exhaustion, remove magical maladies, cure sickness, and cause certain living things to grow. Increasing this power’s rank will cause each point of [Life Pool] to have greater effect.

The rate at which you can spend [Life Pool] is limited by how quickly you can spend mana. The rate at which [Life Pool] replenishes while you spend essence is limited by how much [Focus] you assign to this power.

You can sense organic substances, such as flesh, wood, or compost within your gaze. Extending your gaze or claim to include such substances becomes easier. You cannot sense inside the body of an unwilling creature.

I let out a sigh of relief and began to use the power to close my cuts and heal my many bruises. The essence cost for replenishing a [Life Pool] was normally a significant limiting factor to sustained healing magic, but in this place that was steeped with power, I had little doubt I’d be swimming in essence, soon enough.

It was one of the many uses for essence that went beyond leveling up. Essence wasn’t just used for leveling up and fusing skill keys. It was used in all forms of magic that created permanent matter or everlasting enchantments, along with some very specialized rituals.

Right now I was starving for more essence to level up with, but I expected that very soon I’d have more than I could use. All classes had an upper limit on their level, one that only increased when they acted in accordance with their class’s calling.

?—Your Class Calling:

Foster and protect yourself, your pack, and your territory.

Be passionate, cunning, and strong.

I scowled as this information flitted through my mind. Fighting for survival would raise my level limit, especially if I accorded with the second line. But did the Verse know that everything I was doing now was for the future of my people? The more that my actions’ accordance with my calling became a matter of narrative framing, something that needed to be argued for, the less likely I was see my limit increase.

Apart from fire elementals, there were no classes whose calling was merely to kill and destroy. And a good thing, that. I shuddered to think at what the cosmos might look like if the universal path to power was to constantly seek new things to destroy.

Still, essence always had its uses. Level was only half the power: fusing skill keys cost essence, and I’d need to do that to rank up my skill keys and make more powerful skills with multiple keys—a skill could only have as many skill keys as the lowest-ranked key it contained.

While I’d been thinking, I’d been moving back toward the caves that I’d seen in the cliffside earlier. But very quickly I felt the presence of the predator again—only now I could sense it was angry, offended.

You fear me too little, they accused.

I’ve been fleeing from you from the moment you first spoke to me, I said. Even if I don’t know where or what you are, I still flee.

It was partly a lie. I was fairly certain that whatever this thing was, it was either in the air above me or looking down on this forested valley from the heights of the mountain overhead.

You fear me too little, they said, sounding disappointed. And you bore me too much.

Not good. Even if it was exactly what they wanted me to do, I needed to think of a way to get them to keep up whatever game they were playing, to stay interesting….

I cannot fear you more than I fear you now, I told them. But perhaps I can cease boring you. Would you like to see magic, spells unlike anything you’ve ever known?

The creature seemed to consider this for a moment… and then hollow laughter boomed through my mind. Little one, they said. Again you squirm with words alone.

I searched the forest around me, considering possible escapes. I still had no idea where this creature would come from.

You should have run for the hole, little one, the voice said, laughing again.

I saw what was happening the moment before it happened: the dense mana in the air around us, much of it primeval mana, suddenly moved together, whorls and eddies of loose power converging and connecting in one single, ordered stream, creating a jagged line that reached up and away from me, into the sky….

I leapt from the tree branch as fast as I could….

At the same time, I reached out and pushed my claim as far up the line of mana as I could manage, then scattered a segment of the mana with my channeling, breaking the line….

Then the lightning came, ending just before the point that I’d scattered as the mana ignited in an instantaneous, blinding blaze, air around me flash-heating into a furnace wind as I hurtled away toward a branch below me. I couldn’t see with my eyes, but I used my gaze to sense the coming branch….

I felt the branch strike my chest like blow, my arms coming round to hug it even as it knocked the wind from my lungs, bending beneath me. I slid down the branch a little, bark chafing against my armor as I blinked to clear my eyes. I reached out with my gaze, but I couldn’t sense another line forming—either the creature had spent all its mana to do that, or it had lost interest.

Even so, I ran leaping across the branches with as much haste as I could manage, making as straight as line as I could through the trees to get back to the caves I’d seen earlier, dodging to evade one of the tree crabs as it lashed at me with its tongue.

Little one, said the voice. I adore how you scurry.

I considered hiding myself from them with [Wild Bond], instead of just pretending that I’d tried to and failed… but I didn’t want it to start chasing me until I was long underground. I would hide if they threw another bolt of lightning.

Soon I spotted the caves ahead, braced myself, then gained as much momentum as I could manage while running toward the end of a branch before throwing myself through the air and aiming for the lowest of the dark openings that dotted the cliffside.

The jump was poor, and the cave was far, and the wind whipped at my face as I arced toward it, reaching out with my magic to sense the floor of the cave as it came up to meet me, hitting the dirty stone hard and coming up in a painful roll.

I conjured a small, white light with raw spellcasting, seeing that the cave continued deep into the rock, twisting out of sight ahead of me. I wandered farther into the tunnel, until I was clear out of sight of its entrance. I could still feel my enemy’s weight on my mind: a sort of sadistic curiosity emanated from it.

I could have smiled as I moved forward, into the darkness. That was the last chance I was giving that creature thing to kill me.

And they had wasted it to play stupid games.