The great lizard was as enraged as any beast I’d ever seen. I could feel it through the [Wild Bond], a hot anger that screamed through every muscle in its body.

It came toward me, half-stepping, half-leaping over the bodies of one of its children to approach me and launch its quartz slugs from a closer distance.

I leapt away, mind still on the far wall, still guiding my [Earth Magick] into drawing the circle as I took off at a run through the cavern, angling for another one of the fallen young. This one still had one eye, and it lunged for me as I approached—but again, I dodged out of the way, my hand coming up to quickly thrust the knife-tip into its only working pupil as the greater lizard began another volley.

I finished drawing the circle on the wall, then began another on the ceiling above it. This one would take longer—even close to the edge of the cavern, the ceiling was so far above us that I had to stretch my claim to its utmost extent just to reach it.

The lizard-mother once again tried to awkwardly navigate her own maimed children, leap-stepping over one to get closer to me, but once again I ran—this massive creature couldn’t gain the momentum it needed to catch me.

Again she tried shooting me, and again I ignored her, running, weaving, and dodging through our battlefield of bloodied quartz to slash the eyes of two more of her children and take cover behind them. As long as she was unwilling to kill her own young, the massive scatter-blast that she’d used in the upper tunnel—the best way to deal with a quick little one who had [Earth Magick] like me—would go unused.

She tried forming her willpower into a hammer meant to clench all my muscles and cause me to seize—but again I was too well-trained, my mind too slippery for her psychic assault.

I pushed back—but my push was to calm it, to heighten its protective instincts and keep it loving its blind children enough that I could use them as cover.

And while I did all of this, I channeled the mana in the air around us. The mana in the cave wasn’t as dense as what rose from the forest outside, but it was still denser and more primeval than the mana on any world I’d encountered. I pushed it, pulled it, made a kind of current that flowed into both of the circles, slowly storing more power than I could ever have held by myself.

The beast could have stopped me just by drawing a break through the circle, could have fizzled the whole spell by breaking one of the runes—but it was a beast. It had no idea what I was doing.

Instead it kept changing tactics, trying to get close and swallow me, then shooting more of its crystals at me as I scampered away, too fast for it to follow. I only deflected a few of the quartz slugs that it shot at me in a steady stream, the rest missing me, most of them by a long shot. I tried my best to keep it pivoting and turning, but its nature as a climbing creature meant that it was surprisingly good at maneuvering for its size.

When it finally began to tire, I knew that I was ready. The subtle tugs and pushes that I’d used to manipulate the movement of the mana in the cave had funneled far more into my circles than if I’d spent the last few minutes pushing it all into the circles myself.

The beast stomped toward me, and I made for the traps on the cave, adding a few runes to the sigil on the ceiling once I got close enough.

It reared up slightly, opening its jaws to swallow me as it moved beneath my trap….

And I released the spell, causing a massive blast of force to travel upward through the stones above us—all of which had been cracked and broken, but left just fused enough to support the weight above them, much like the rest of this place.

The blast slapped me down to the ground and pushed the head of the lizard down into the floor of the cave.

Then the rocks began to fall. I heard the stupendously loud sounds of boulders striking the creature’s crystal armor, scrambled to my feet, lurched forward into a run to escape the growing pile of rubble—and then was stricken in the back by a hunk of stone flung free by the cascade behind me, flinging me forward to crack my head against the ground.

I didn’t lose consciousness, though, which would have meant death. Instinctively I began to use my [Life Magick] to funnel my remaining [Life Pool] into my head, the ground still shaking beneath me as more rocks fell. I came up onto my hands and knees, crawling forward, dizzy and woozy—I had to get back to the other circle… all of this was pointless if I couldn’t get back to the other circle….

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I steadied myself against the wall as I rose and stumbled toward the rockpile ahead of me, sensing everything using my gaze on account of the suffocating cloud of dust.

Rocks and sand were still tumbling around me as I moved past the pile of stones that had buried the lizard—but I could sense within that the creature was still alive. I had expected as much—of course this creature could survive cave-ins. Hence the second circle.

The rockpile lurched, sending several stones bouncing. The creature was surely low on mana, but could still use its [Earth Magick] to get out even if it wasn’t strong enough to throw them off. I only had a little time.

I struggled to focus enough, drawing more runes to compensate for my dazed state—my [Life Pool] had run out and I had no idea how well it had restored my head wound.

Suddenly I remembered missing a good shot at one of the earlier younger lizards—the thought spurred me to push myself to focus. I had to be very precise, here.

I gathered and shaped the massive amount of mana in the circle, adding more runes to make the spell more precise, carefully judging the position of the lizard in the rocks….

Finally it heaved its head free with a cascade of dust and stone—and I loosed my spell, sending the mana in the circle forth in a thin line as thick as my arm that flowed forward toward the lizard even as it ignited into a blazing stream of bright red spellfire.

The creature let out a pitiful moan, and I stumbled toward the farthest place in the cave wall, then huddled down for cover as the cave around me became an oven filled with screams of pain, hot particles of dust, and a smell that made me want to stop breathing. The discharge was only a couple of seconds, but when it finished I was relieved: any more and I’d have started burning myself.

The lizard fell silent after one long moan. I stood, walked over to one of its children, killed them by punching my spear wholly through their eyes, then used my [Life Magick] to double-check the position of its vital arteries—the mother had a bigger gullet, and I tried to get a good idea of where the arteries would be displaced to in relation to—

+ 4021 Essence, [Boon]

Your level limit has increased to 12!

I let out a sigh of relief. In order to get at that thing’s neck, I would have had to rip a piece of its armor away—which would likely have meant grabbing a hold of the quartz hunk with both hands, distracting the creature with a psychic attack, then seizing a small section of its claim and spending a huge amount of mana to rip the quartz away—just with the hope that I could cut a vital artery.

That the fire had killed it was fortunate indeed.

Fortunate, and less monstrous. True, a creature that’s been covered in bodily burns is weaker to attacks via [Wild Bond] because pain is driving it insane… but to cook a creature alive is a hideous cruelty. Better if it dies fast.

I moved around the cave, dispatching the smaller lizards with a sense of disquiet and gaining more than 1600 essence for it. I touched the warp jewel at my hip. I could feel as bad about this as I liked, but my people were counting on me. I’d butcher every baby in and on this mountain if it meant saving a single elf.

I told myself that there would be more glorious fights than this, fights where I did not shelter from a mother’s wrath by hiding behind her maimed babies… and as if on queue, Palefang’s presence in my mind flared, and he began to speak:

What are you?

The corner of my mouth curled upward. I am the elf Aziriel. But you had the right of it before—I am a little one.

They didn’t answer.

They had to be close by. A high-ranked [Wild Bond] could reach far, but without added powers, it wouldn’t span a distance of kilometers. My guess was that my enemy was perched on the rock overtop me, hundreds of feet above. They couldn’t see through my eyes—my pretense of hiding from them was effective enough to stop that much, at least. But they’d probably seen the whole thing through the lizard’s eyes instead.

With any luck, they’d watched this fight and correctly surmised that stopping me from doing what I’d just done involved breaking the circle. I knew how to make some pretty deadly traps that would trigger when a circle was broken: it was just a matter of different runes associated with different concepts in my mind.

I could count on his pride. I knew I could because he’d had no reason, none at all, to tell me that he knew I was hunting him the last time we’d spoken. If he believed that to be true, and if he believed that I stood any chance of harming him, letting me know was just a bad idea.

He’d seen my rune circles and realized that I knew things he didn’t, powerful magic he’d never seen. I’d met his expectations. The question now was whether he’d realize the danger in keeping me around, or let his curiosity get the better of him.

Hopefully the latter.

I grabbed my spear, carrying it at the ready as I moved around and reclaimed a few arrows from the eyes of the dead lizards.

It was time to spend some essence, gain some levels, and figure out which key I was going to take out of the boon.