Snow blanketed the corpse-ridden ground around us, blood seeping up to stain the white with patches of red that were almost black in the fog-muted light of glowing mists. Palefang, too, was stained red—it smeared his fur and ran from his many wounds in lines, the greatest of which was the gash I’d cut in his neck, where blood ran down in a constant stream.

The field around us had made a large arena when I had been fighting the horde, but we were both so strong that it was now like a small fighting ring. Each of us could cross the distance with just a few simple bounds.

I could run for warmer air, but that would mean turning my back to him—something I didn’t want to try for even a moment. He could run and wait for my mana and life-dampening curse to subside, but that would mean letting me get away—and he knew he wouldn’t be able to find me again.

We would finish it here; Either de died, or I did.

He waited, eyes on my spear as if deciding how to approach. I welcomed the moments he gave me to channel some mana into my [Surge of Might]—but I had to be careful. As we’d fought, he’d been using the mana in the air, claiming it with his threshold and converting it into his cold spell. There wasn’t much left for me to take.

The air grew colder. The fog thickened. The fires at the edge of the circle faded into orange blurs. Across from me, Palefang became nothing but a pair of eyes, embers glowing in the dark.

Then he charged.

I waited as he came for me, then feinted, doing my best to make it seem as if I would leap to the right off my good leg, then surging my [Strength] just a little to throw myself to one side using my injured one before stabbing him in the shoulder just above the neck with my spear.

Palefang growled, turned, and lunged, but my spear held fast in his shoulder, sticking deep until its wings were pressing into his skin, fur flat beneath them. He pushed me back, my knees skidding across the ice and snow until he pushed me into the corpse of a gigantic spider, his movements causing my spearhead to tear the wound wider, drawing more blood.

Blood. Both of us were covered with it: Palefang pulled himself off my spear and lunged again, and I stepped back onto the spider carcass, springing first off its body and then off one of its legs to stab Palefang in the back before landing behind him, and backing away, spinning to put my spear between us as he snarled and rounded on me.

We fought on. I danced back across the uneven field of frost and corpses, my [Frost Magick] and [Sable Grace] helping me to sense the bloody, corpse-strewn ground. Our strength meant that our motions were fast and brutal—each of us could cross the clearing in only a few steps, would kick up gouts of bloodied snow just to leap or pivot.

Palefang came at me in a frenzy, trying to get past the spearpoint that was always in front of his face and seemingly stabbing him in the back or sides at the same time.

The world darkened, fog thickening until I fought with only my ears and gaze. Each of us slowed as exhaustion set in, both of us lacking the healing magic that would have sustained us.

I kept making jabs at his sides and shoulders, and twice I got a good shot at his eyes—but Palefang had learned from whatever had made the scar across his face, because both times I only scratched at his brow.

But then I got too tired, or Palefang too desperate. He backed off my spear where I’d pricked his shoulder; I snarled and aimed the point at his eye—and he caught it in his mouth.

I felt a flutter of panic in my gut. He’d let the point sink deep into the roof of his mouth in order to snap his teeth shut over both the spearpoint and one of the wings. It was a worthwhile risk: one more wound would mean little to him, but if he took my spear, I’d be dead.

Palefang shook his head and brought a paw up to grip the haft of the spear, trying to rip it from my grasp and almost succeeding, his massive strength pressing me to the ground….

I tightened my grip, then my abdomen, pulling me feet up off the ground and pressing my heels into the blood-matted fur of his neck. Then I grabbed the free wing of my spearhead with one hand, surged [Aegis] to keep it from breaking, and pushed my heels into him with all my strength to pull my spear from his mouth.

There was a sound like a splitting boulder as the wing of the spear shattered half of Palefang’s teeth, tearing them away in a shower of bony shards and blood-flecked spittle while I flipped backward to land unsteadily on my feet.

This close, I could see Palefang’s face contorted with rage, even through the fog. He let out a furious, agonized howl, one half of his mouth a bloody mess, his cheek sliced open where the spear had passed through it.

?—[Surge Pool] 20/100

?—Mana 18/280, 40% Primeval.

It would be over soon.

He lunged in a frenzy, snapping and clawing, blood flying off his fur with the sudden jolts of his movements. I backed away, evading his instinctive motions with practiced grace while he spent all his energy on his anger.

The cold ate into my body, and I began to ration my mana, spending most of it on my hands and feet. Palefang loomed out of the fog as he came for me, his mangled maw dribbling blood and spit under a pair of hateful eyes.

Soon he began to slow. I felt a surge of elation in me—it was almost over.

But elation fast turned to horror. Palefang pounced, and I spun out of his way to run past him. Only before I made it clear of the great cat, he formed a small hunk of ice under one of his front paws to quickly spring off it and throw his weight to one side, toward me.

The cat’s body struck me mid-stride, throwing me off balance and then knocking me to the ground, pinning me beneath his midsection. He lashed backward with a forepaw, leaving deep gashes as his claws raked my upper arm, shoulder, and chest, then struck the snow past me and kicking up a flurry.

With no choice, I spent the last of my mana and to form the smallest icy foothold, flattening the frost beneath me so that I could push myself out from under the great cat by kicking with my leg as I surged [Strength] to heave his body off me with both hands.

!—[Surge Pool] 0/100

!—Mana 0/280

I heard my spear snapping into pieces before I had come to my feet.

I panted, icy air stinging the inside of my lungs while I pulled every scrap of mana that I could from the world around me, then spent it on my heat runes. I watched the dark shape of Palefang across from me rise—slowly, unsteadily.

I drew my last knife and raised it. I couldn’t hold him at bay without my spear, and we both knew it. But he was surely almost finished bleeding to death, and we both knew that, too. His frenzied anger had hastened the process. I stuck my knife between my teeth….

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Then I charged.

He pounced, the attack so sluggish now that it was as if time had slowed down. I leapt, springing into the air, flipping and spinning, closing my eyes as I let my gaze guide me, gaining enough air to sail clean over him… and then grabbing two fistfuls of fur behind his ears and tugging myself down onto his back.

Palefang’s body must have started going numb long ago, because it seemed to take him a moment to realize where I’d landed—he only began to buck and thrash when I drove the point of my knife into where his neck met his skull, his [Aegis] still strong enough that I had to use all my strength just to stick the blade in halfway.

I let go of the knife, grabbed two fistfuls of fur, and clung to him as he tried to throw me. He did this for a few seconds before finally rolling onto his back—but I rolled in the other direction as soon as I felt his muscles shift, keeping hold of one fistful of fur so that I stayed close to his belly.

I saw the hilt of my other knife jutting out of the bloody gash it had made and pulled it free, then lunged forward to drive it into his neck with both hands. I pulled it out and leapt backward as Palefang rounded on me, his head drooping.

Palefang lunged, and I threw myself clumsily out of the way, focusing on the motions of my feet as they moved across frozen corpses and blood-stained snow.

Knowing that it could save my life, I used some of the boons I’d got from the mushrooms:

- 3 [Fungus 1 / Life 1 / Mana 1]: 3 [Life 1]

- 3 [Life 1], 2500 Essence: [Life 2]

- [Earth Magick 1]: 200 Essence + [*Primeval 5]

[*Primeval 5] + [Life 2]: [Life Magick 7]

?—[Life Pool] 9/100

Relinquishing and then rebuilding the [Life Magick] skill didn’t give me a full [Life Pool]—but the added rank gave me a little extra magic than the 0 I’d had left when I replaced the skill. I funneled all the remaining [Life Pool] into healing my exhaustion as I leapt back away from Palefang’s snapping jaws.

He bounded forward, lumbering, his head drooping even more, and I moved out of his path with a few quick strides. He turned, caught sight of me, seemed to look past me for a moment, then came forward again, panting. I moved back until I hit a heap of several bodies, backing over it with several well-placed footsteps, my balance improved by my last burst of energy.

Palefang followed, reaching the bodies, reaching up to place both forepaws on top of the heap—and then collapsing, eyelids fluttering.

I stood and watched, spending the last few points of my [Life Pool] to replenish my own leaking blood.

He struggled to stand, seemed to make it, then collapsed again.

He didn’t rise. Instead he simply watched me with half-vacant eyes for a time while I channeled more mana into my heat runes and stared back.

His eyes closed. I reached into the [Animal Bond] and found him to be truly unconscious, and so I moved forward and sat against his belly, hoping to absorb some of his fading warmth.

+ 3 Limit! (21)

+ 101 655 Essence!

+ [Lightning 3 / Mana 3 / Wild 3]

+ [Frost 3 / Life 3 / Lightning 3]

+ [Body 3 / Frost 3 / Mana 3]

I let out a faint laugh, breath fogging in the air.

- 21 000 Essence: + 3 Level! (21/21)

+ 1 [*Primeval 5]! (1)

+ 2 [Bestow 12]! (2)

+ 2 [Bestow]! (14)

+ 1 [Bestow 14]! (1)

- 1 [Bestow 12]: + 12 [Source]! (40)

I checked the warp jewel at my hip—dim, but still glowing. I had some time left.

I knew that if I was going to lose consciousness and bleed out, I had to break it now, call them all here—but after a minute or so of channeling my new mana and essence into [Life Magick] and healing myself, it became obvious that I would survive.

Soon mana began to seep back into the clearing, and I channeled it into myself and [Life Magick]. The slow, steady supply of healing was enough to keep me alive, fixing the end of my stump arm and then healing some of the deeper damage of the gashes that Palefang had made.

I spent a minute or more covering Palefang’s body, first gathering the fallen snow and packing it over him into a layer of ice, then covering that with a thick layer of earth. With luck, scavengers would focus on the feast around my makeshift tomb instead of breaking into it.

Later, the body could be recovered and healed, then used by our artisans and enchanters. Objects remembered the lives they had led, and the Palefang’s parts would be well-suited to quite a few different kinds of magical enchantments.

I was tempted to use the boons: a [Lightning 3] had quite a lot of potential, in my hands. But I could break them and use the resulting keys if I really had to—otherwise they, along with all the other boons and essence I had gathered, were for the colony. Leveling myself to the maximum was my prerogative. Other than that, Hasina would decide what I got to keep.

Looking at the boons, I also had to wonder: no [Behemoth]? Had he really grown that from primeval mana and natural size alone?

In the meantime there was no primeval convergence to worry about—that had ended when Palefang had cast his blizzard, and ended in my favor. A few creatures had apparently tried to return after the fright of the lightning had worn away—but the freezing cold had killed the smallest of them, leaving a ring of corpses just outside the fallen mushrooms. Everything else had likely been driven back.

I gathered the broken pieces of my equipment bundled them them into my jerkin, awkwardly clipped the bundle to my baldric, and began to run along the roots once more. I avoided all the creatures who came for me. I was faster than they were, and could easily sense them coming.

As I ran, I channeled as much mana into my [Life Magick] skill as I could. When I spied the cliff at the end of the swamp, I had healed every serious injury and restored all my lost blood. All that remained was to mend my split and torn skin.

I climbed one of the trees, using [Frost Magick] to generate hand and footholds when I needed them—but this was mostly unnecessary. The bark of the trees was rough, and I was strong enough now to throw my weight up the side of the tree with a single arm.

I kept checking the jewel, watching my remaining minutes drain. I reached the crown of the tree, leapt to a nearby cliff, then climbed that until I was back on the slopes of the mountain that I’d first arrived on.

I searched for a spot to break the jewel, scaring away the occasional flying lizard with shards of ice and still funneling my [Life Pool] into healing my cuts, scrapes, and bruises. I cursed as I ran, my gaze extended as far into the earth as I could manage. The slopes were a better place to call my people than the swamp had been, but I’d been hoping…

The jewel’s light turned yellow—a sign that it was almost depleted—just as I found what I’d been searching for. It was a cave-mouth hidden in the red mist, a craggy opening that blended so well with the mountain around it that it would have been hard to see even without the mist keeping it hidden.

But I could sense the mana of the mist penetrating the rock with my gaze. As I approached, I began to discern a large cavern inside—and then I heard the rush of falling water. Palefang had been strong with the [Wild Bond], but he’d still been limited to a range of just under a kilometer at full focus, I was sure. I’d expected his lair was somewhere near the place where I’d arrived.

I went inside, then conjured a witchlight and did a quick search of the cave.

It was roughly divided into three areas. The floor of the cave was a depression of packed earth with a pool in its center, one that was fed by a waterfall above and that drained via stream through a passage eroded into the lower cave wall. Rough stone pillars rose up around the pool to support the middle level, a flat expanse of stone that was big enough fit dozens of houses. The highest level was a smaller ledge that jutted out from the cave wall, home to both a pile of bones that Palefang had collected and a well-worn patch of dry vines that I guessed was his bed. Above all this was a large hole in the roof of the cave that served as the entrance for the waterfall. The cave walls were covered in a bright blue moss, bathing everything in a ghostly light. Red mist filtered in through both entrances, but thinned and faded the further one got inside, making the air mostly clear.

I grinned as I looked it all over. Water and shelter—as good as I was going to find in such a short time. The largest open area was the middle level, so I conjured a witchlight there, then broke the jewel by smashing it against the ground.

Glowing tendrils of blue light burst out from where the gem broke, filling the cave around me before coalescing into thousands of tiny points. Their light built in intensity, then flashed as the spell within the warp jewel concluded—and I was suddenly surrounded by more than two and a half thousand elves.

I looked around at my people, took them in, and smiled.

“Welcome to the new world.”