The first thing I did once I was out of the cave was build what was arguably my favorite skill after [Primeval Power]:
[*Primeval 5] + [Lightning 3]: [Lightning Magick 8]
[Lightning Magick 8]
[*Primeval 5] + [Lightning 3]
You can ignite airborne mana within your claim to create lightning.
Lightning transfers the power of all mana it ignites into its endpoint, which then jumps to the densest source of mana it can reach. The maximum jump distance is determined by the total mana consumed by the lightning.
You can extend your claim through dense patches of mana and their immediate surroundings. You don’t suffer any distance penalty for extending your claim in such a fashion.
Lightning requires more [Focus] to cast as the mana it ignites increases: insufficient focus will result in the lightning discharging early rather than consuming all of a line of mana.
I smiled softly at my old friend as I walked out into the mists. The [Lightning] key being rank 3 meant that the skill could support two more keys, but I wanted to keep the skill pure. Hybrid lightning could be very powerful, but only the pure skill allowed one to push their claim through long tracks of mana, one of lightning’s most powerful qualities.
Only [Primeval], [Elemental], and [Lightning] keys would increase the rank of the skill without changing it—and of those, only [Elemental] keys would be easy to find. Still, even at rank 8 the skill would be deadly, especially here.
I took a moment to bind myself to my new bow:
Bound: [Aziriel’s Matchbow of Missile Conjuring] (1/3)
[*Missile 1] + [Mana 1]
Binding this item has granted you the [Conjure Primeval Missiles 7] skill.
Just as my first bow had been, minus the fact that the enchantment was slowly degrading and grossly inefficient.
Before I set out, I knew that I had two bestows left to spend:
?—Your Bestows:
1 [Bestow 12]
1 [Bestow 14]
I was building for [Air] and [Lightning], two highly consumptive forms of magic. Permanent flight, my current goal, meant spending mana slower than you replenished it, and so both of them went into [Source].
- [Bestow 12]: + 12 [Source]! (52)
- [Bestow 14]: + 14 [Source]! (66)
That done, I had one more stop to make before setting out.
Ahead of me was the same mist-ridden mountainside as before, still streaked with patches of glowing pink and green moss. I turned and climbed the small cliff that rose above the cave entrance until I found the source of the waterfall inside—a small stream that emerged from the mists to run into a depression in the stone and then fell away through the cave’s uppermost entrance.
I found Mirio and Luthiel both seated next to this entrance next to a rope ladder that had been hung down into the cave.
Luthiel stood as I approached. Arcane mana had changed him as much as primeval mana had changed me—his white hair glimmered with an ethereal light that was only just noticeable, and his eyes were a vivid indigo. As always, his expression told me nothing that he didn’t want me to know—cold and impassive, I had no idea what he was thinking as he looked at me.
As one of the firstborn, Luthiel was essentially the closest thing I had to a brother—and like many of us, we’d embraced that bond. He was my brother. He should have been in my closest confidences, here on this new world.
But now he was a traitor awaiting judgement. He couldn’t be kept close to the center of things, and I didn’t want to be seen speaking with him more than was necessary.
Mirio saw him stand, then hastily followed suit.
“I’m going key hunting,” I said to both of them. “We need all manner of boons, but I need [Air], [Bird], and [Body] keys most of all right now. You two have the best idea of what’s around us—any idea where I should go?”
“Ah, well—” Mirio began.
“We have little to tell you,” Luthiel said, his voice as steady and aloof as it always was. “Many [Missile] aspects seem to linger above the mists, and many other creatures use the mists to hide from them. I’d advise following the stream up the mountain.”
“I’ll start there, then,” I said.
I took off at a brisk trot, my strides lengthened by my powerful physical attributes. I intended to get a lay of the terrain around our temporary settlement before I came back.
This cloud-layer of mist was several times thicker than the one that was hundreds of meters below it, but as I climbed the slopes it began to thin. Soon I could see the shadow of the slopes rising ahead of me, and soon after I began to emerge into a world that felt completely different than the one I’d spent the last two hours in.
More than two kilometers above me was yet another layer of cloud that blanketed the world, only this one glowed with pure, white light. Not only was it so bright that it was like stepping into daylight, but the colors of the world around me were reflected in full, vibrant hues. I saw the green of the trees that cloaked the mountain, the sparkling clarity of the stream ahead of me, the bright, sunny yellow of the flowers that grew in the field of coarse, blue-green grass to my left. It was like my eyes had out of the bitter cold to warm myself at a cozy fireside.
“Wonderful,” I breathed, breaking into a smile.
A shriek sounded from above me, and I looked up to see one of the web-winged flying lizards—on Aranar they were called broadwings—diving toward me. Its orange skin and the green, glowing lines that covered its body like warpaint were now highly visible in the bright light.
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I didn’t need to worry about conserving my [Surge Pool], and so I surged [Strength] and launched an arrow at it, the missile striking the lizard’s heart and burying itself in the creature’s chest up to the fletching. Another two followed it as the creature lurched in the air, bringing it to the ground.
+ 1186 Essence, [Animal 1 / Reptile 1 / Wild 1]
I searched the sky for more. I saw a few, but they were all too distant, each a small speck in my vision.
I had another thing to take care of:
- [Animal 1 / Reptile 1 / Wild 1]: [Wild 1]
- [Animal Bond 6]: + 200 Essence
[*Primeval 5] + [Wild 1]: [Wild Bond 6]
After all, while I might sense a little farther with the more specific [Animal Bond], and [Life Magick] meant I could still trace the contours of the ground beneath grass or moss, [Wild Bond] would let me gaze into the minds of any hostile plants I encountered.
Somehow, I expected I’d eventually find some around.
A haze still blanketed the world, making it hard to see distant sights. Still, I could see that other mountains rose up beyond the one that was nearest, other prominences that were lost in the higher cloudlayer.
The field of bluish grass and flowers stretched away to my left, and I saw a pack of lizards grazing in the distance, then cut toward them while I recharged my [Surge Pool]. Not for the first time, I wished I could stop and examine everything I encountered—the yellow flowers around me, the grass that prickled my bare feet, the moss that still grew in patches here and there. But I knew I didn’t have time.
As I approached the lizards, the largest of them saw me, split off from the pack, then reared up in an intimidating display. It was a massive quadruped, ten feet tall at the hip. Its skin was striped with the same glowing lines that the sky lizards wore, though these were blue, not green. Its body seemed strangely shaped to me: a long, flat torso that flared out to either side of its neck and head. Its forehead, upper neck, and back were all plated with bony, spiked armor—and spikes grew from the two protrusions that flared out from its shoulders, each sticking out next to its head.
“I see,” I murmured, not slowing my charge but holding off from shooting the creature for a moment while I watched.
It fell back down onto all four legs, then inhaled air through not just its mouth, but several slits that opened along its sides. The bottom of its flat torso expanded, inflating—and then the beast made a hissing sound as it shot its protruding spines toward me, one after the other.
I’d known they were coming, and could sense each with my gaze—it was trivial for me to sidestep the missiles, moving economically so as not to disrupt my aim.
Soon all of the creatures were forming up behind this largest one to launch more spikes my way, but I surged [Strength] once to bound forward, closing the distance between us in a heartbeat. Then, picking one of the smaller ones in the back, I ran along its side and launched three arrows: one through an eye, one through its throat, and one through the ribs that lined its side.
They had high [Aegis], because the arrows only sank six or eight inches—and the one that I planted in its eye, less than that. But this only meant that their [Strength] and [Agility] were comparatively low, and I took full advantage of this, hanging close to the beast, using it as cover from the rest of its pack while it tried to lumber around to face me, slowly swinging its tail at me in an attack that was easy to simply leap over.
I planted a half-dozen more arrows into its throat, which had seemed like the weakest point, then dismissed them so that blood ran from its neck in a steady stream.
I backed away as the other lizards closed around me, leaping between them with ease and then making a few bounds to put myself at a distance before rounding on them and launching another dozen arrows.
They still hadn’t regrown their spines, but they didn’t retreat, instead charging me. But it was no trouble for me to get clear of their path, then run around them, back to their dying brethren.
+ 218 Essence, [Armor 1 / Life 1 / Missile 1]
“Useful,” I said. The boon was exactly what I’d have expected: [Life] is needed to replenish biologically-made missiles.
But what I really wanted was to examine its internals—I saw that my arrow to the eye hadn’t killed it because of the shape of its skull and got a good sense of the angle of entry that I would want to use, now. I also saw that I could have gotten at its brain through the base of its jaw.
I spent another minute with the pack, dispatching them in order from smallest to largest because I thought that would make them less likely to run. A [Surge of Might] combined with an arrow through the eye would kill them more or less instantly, and their slow speed made it easy to manage.
In the end I’d picked up six [Armor] keys—not enough to add to [Primeval Hide], but a good start.
Of course, I’d also left six massive carcasses in the middle of a field with no intention to dispose of them. Masses of decomposing bodies meant more than scavengers, they meant swarms of breeding insects that could carry disease. Our healers could deal with the disease well enough, but I wasn’t keen on meeting the resulting bugs. With luck, the corpses would attract some things with [Bird] keys… that I would make into yet more corpses.
I scanned the field for another pack of the creatures, saw one in the distance, then set out toward them.
In my many years, I’d heard a lot of words for what I was doing: harvest, deplete, liquidate, slaughter—all the same. In time, we’d grow conservative, learn how to hunt and kill without severely upsetting the balance of a local ecosystem, but for now it was essence first.
The philosophy of conservation was rooted in pride. You couldn’t assign yourself the role of protecting something without believing, in some sense, that you had dominion over it. Only once we’d reclaimed some of our old strength could we start working to preserve the world around us, taking only what the hills and forests could stand to lose.
Until then, this was a struggle for survival. The only thing I cared about preserving were elven lives. I’d burn every wild thing within a hundred miles to ash if it meant giving my people a better chance at survival.
As I moved for the other pack, I sensed many creatures in burrows, small mammals with coarse, blue-green fur to match the grass around them, each of them leaping from their holes to attack as I approached—and promptly being struck through by an arrow that carried enough force to throw them backward through the air. They gave no cores, but I needed all the essence I could get.
I engaged the second pack much like I had the first, though now I killed them more quickly. Another one of the flying lizards dove for me, and I shot it through with several arrows and then watched it fall to the ground.
A quick check showed that I’d gathered enough [Armor]-containing boons to upgrade my [Primeval Hide], but I didn’t have enough essence to fuse them into the three more [Armor 2] keys that I needed to combine with the one in my skill and make an [Armor 3].
I’d also strayed far enough from the colony that it was time to turn around. I cut back toward the mists, diverting my course a little to intercept a small group of three more of the missile-shooting lizards on the way.
So far, rather disappointing. I’d diverged from the stream, but I could see how far it stretched up the mountain—and I could see that I’d only be able to follow it a little longer through the coarse grass before I’d feel the need to turn around again.
Instead I headed for the mists, wanting to explore them until I found the very same place I’d arrived at and could connect the mental maps I’d made. It wasn’t long before the grass had given way to course, moss-streaked tuff, the luminous red mist coming up around me.
I saw a few of the small, bipedal lizards that I’d briefly seen on my arrival, all of them fleeing at the sight of me much like they had before. Then I felt an animal with my [Wild Bond] whose presence made me smile. It was a great cat, one much like the sleek predator I’d met when I first arrived. I looked in its direction, unable to see it through the thickening mist.
“Well?” I asked.
The cat charged, reached me, and pounced, appearing through the mist as a dark figure an instant before I put an arrow through the front of its skull , halting its momentum and causing it to fall limply to the ground.
+ 2125 Essence, [Body 1 / Wild 1]
I carried on past it, eager to scout ahead.