I returned through the lower entrance—the only one not created by the waterfall either flowing into or out of the cave, the one that opened onto the large, flat area where most of the elves still resided.

I hadn’t been gone long, but military earthmovers work quickly. The entrance to the cave had been widened, and four thick stone pillars had been erected across it, forming five gaps just broad enough for one elf to walk through—gaps that would deter larger creatures. Hasty battlements and steps had been made over these, and archers were stationed above me with a plentiful stock of arrows. Elves were already bustling about to make trenches, widen the battlements, and move the growing piles of rubble. Inside the cave I could hear the repeated crack-and-tumble of more stone being broken away to form new structures.

There were windcallers at the entrance, and would be at the others as well. They were siphoning the air, taking only that which hadn’t been stripped of its [Air] aspect and funneling it into the cave while funneling the “dead” air out into the world. I didn’t envy them their task—sifting air with your mind alone wasn’t easy.

What was more, coalescing a key like this was no easy task, either. I’d made two since arriving, but I’d done it by simply tearing all the aspects near me out of the world and coalescing them into a boon. It was a highly wasteful, but very easy way to make a boon.

Whoever was making these keys was having to strip the aspect out of just the air in the cave, which was why I could feel the higher pressure as soon as I walked in through the entrance. They were really having to pack it in.

Kelharus, captain of the squad above the gate, called for a salute as I rushed in through the new semi-gate. I gave him a hasty nod in return, then found Hassina near the entrance, speaking with a few of the windcallers. She dismissed them when she saw me approaching, and I offered her my hands and gave her all the essence and boons I had left.

This time, I got a well-earned reward—providing for my people was in accord with my calling, after all:

+ 1 Limit! (22)

She gave me something in return:

+ [Air 1]

“That’s it,” said Hassina. “That’s all you get for now.”

“I see,” I said, not hiding my disappointment. I knew she wouldn’t have all that I needed by now, but I’d been hoping to turn [Wild Grace] into [Aerial Grace], something that would have taken another 3 keys.

“We’ve made three keys, total,” Hassina explained. “The air here… it’s not being cooperative. I gave Zirilla the second key, and we’ve got six more elementalists in line to speed the process, but you’re going to have to wait. Since full flight isn’t going to be possible until you get another twelve, I figured we’d just make up for as many shortcomings as we could with mana knicknacks. Speaking of, did you get your [Primeval Mana Hide]?”

“Yes.”

Hassina grinned. “Great!” She turned, picked a nearby elf who was carrying cargo, and told him to go get me my flight suit. Then she turned her attentions back to me. “Fireesha made you some wrist bindings that’ll have to do for now.” She grabbed two rolls of white linen fabric from a crate behind her. “Arms out.”

I held out my arms, and Hassina began to wrap the strips of cloth around my wrists in a precise and practiced manner. Both of them had charcoal-made runes written along their lengths, and I bound each of them once she’d finished putting them on.

Bound: [Aziriel’s Temporary Wristwrap of Mana] (2/3)

[*Mana 1] + [Mana 1]

Binding this item has granted you the [Primeval Mana 7] skill.

!—Warning: this enchantment is unstable. It will degrade as it is used and dissipate after 8.12 days.

[Primeval Mana 7]

[*Primeval 5] + [*Mana 1] + [Mana 1]

+ 2.2×[Increment]×[Primeval Resonance] to [Source] (64).

+ 17% Primeval Mana

Bound: [Aziriel’s Temporary Wristwrap of Channeling] (3/3)

[*Surge 1] + [Surge 1]

Binding this item has granted you the [Surging Power 7] skill.

!—Warning: this enchantment is unstable. It will degrade as it is used and dissipate after 4.58 days

[Surging Power 7]

[*Primeval Mana 7] + [*Surge 1] + [Surge 1]

+ 3.3×[Increment]×[Primeval Resonance] to [Channel] (96)

“I’ll be sure to find a use for them,” I said.

“I have to ask,” Hassina said, leaning in and lowering her voice a little. “What’s the pure [Surge] giving you?”

“96 [Channel].”

Her eyebrows went up. “No wonder you make it look easy—it actually is, with skills like those.” But there was something else under her smile, an authentic admiration that, as my close friend, she normally did a good job of hiding from me.

“While I’m waiting for my suit, I may as well give you the lay of the land,” I told her.

I used [Frost Magick] to draw a small map of our landing sight as I’d explored it thus far, making small hatch marks on the ice to indicate where the fog layer met the ground, then writing a few labels in small script—grassy fields, forest, flowerfall. It wasn’t a lot of territory, all told—the cliffs around our cave along with some fields in one direction and the extremely deep swamp in another.

“I’m heading into the swamp,” I said. “There were [Armor], [Body], [Water], [Surge], [Mana], and [Life] keys to be found there earlier. Plus, I want to check on my prize.”

“The giant animal carcass?”

“Palefang, yes. I was in a hurry when I stored it, earlier. We might have to abandon it—it won’t be easy to get it up here, and it could be gone already. I just sealed in ice and buried it.”

“How much does it weigh?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, a normal adult male lion weighs, say, 500 pounds. A good-sized one.”

“I… yeah, all right.”

Hassina’s shoulders sagged as she gave me an exasperated look. “What do you mean, all right? You’re the [Primeval Champion]; I was just giving a good guess because I thought you would correct me. How much do you think this one weighed?”

“I’m not sure. Five thousand pounds?”

“How much bigger was it than a fairly large lion?”

“Two and a half times as big?” I said uncertainly. “Ten feet at the shoulder.”

“That’s eight thousand pounds, Aziriel.”

“All right, Hassina. I trust you.”

She made a show of frowning at me. “But should you have to, though? Like I said, you’re the [Primeval Champion], one would think you’d know these things. In any case, there’s no chance you’re lifting that with [Air Magick 6]. Dragging it up the side of a mountain is an option, even if the healers won’t be thrilled. Still, I can’t imagine the carcass is in good condition as it is.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I can get it up into a tree,” I said. “If I have enough rope.”

Hassina shook her head. “Just try and keep anything else from eating it, if that’s possible. We’ll sort it out later when we can path a decent way down into that swamp. But for now—ah, here’s your suit—I need more essence.” She took the sack from the elf she’d sent earlier, a city elf I didn’t recognize. “Lay this out for me and I’ll help you get it on.”

It was a tortoiseshell sailsuit—a flight suit meant to be entirely controlled by [Air Magick] and not the user’s arm and movements, leaving their limbs free for fighting. A set of straps crisscrossed the whole body and bore a small sail of canvas that was made to fill with air and be kept close to the body.

The sail was rigged to a set of cables which were themselves attached to air-filled clasps of steel that could be pulled tight or let out using [Air Magick], allowing one to manipulate the sail without the use of their hands: either pulling it close to their body to bind it in place, or letting it our to steer and fly.

It wasn’t the most efficient way to carry yourself around, but it was the meeting point between efficiency in mana, maneuverability both in the air and on the ground, and low [Focus] requirement when it came to the [Air Magick] needed to use it—high-[Focus] windcallers could simply keep the air tight against their body, flying without the aide of a suit.

Within a minute I’d lain the thing out and Hasseena and another attendant—Vannalae, a windcaller who’d been occupied with siphoning the air—had helped me get it on.

“Right,” I said, rolling my shoulders. “Well, thank Fireesha for me.”

Hassena fixed me with one of her broad, slightly ironic smiled. “She’s be happy to help, Lux Irovex. Now get out there and… well, kill everything you see, I guess. Especially birds—they might just have some [Air] keys. Good hunting!”

I nodded, then left the cave at a brisk trot and headed for the canyon. I took a good look at my attributes as I did so.

?—Your Attributes:

185 [Aegis]

170 [Agility]

123 [Strength]

112 [Channel]

54 [Focus]

130 [Source]

108% [Primeval Resonance]

1300/1300 Mana, 57% Primeval

100/100 [Life Pool]

100/100 [Surge Pool]

Enough mana that I could have skipped the earlier circles when striking the giant mantis bugs with deadly lightning. Enough [Channel] that I could have formed the bolt almost twice as fast as I had before. I was well and truly coming into my power.

And soon I’d be in the air.

Not all elements are made equal when it comes to being pushed around. Earth, by its nature, is the most resolute. It takes more mana to move a given mass of earth than it does other elements, because earth is not meant to often move. Ice, however, is made of everflowing, evershifting water, and even if it has been frozen it has no compunctions about being pushed and pulled. Water is a little easier to move than ice, and air, soft air, is the easiest of them all.

This comes with a tradeoff, of course: it takes a lot of [Focus] to push any mass of air into the shape it needs. Simply shoving the air into a baglike sail and telling to rise isn’t so hard. Wrapping oneself in a sheathe of air and carrying oneself around, though, is enormously [Focus]-intensive.

I was fairly skilled at flight. I didn’t have the grandmastery with [Air Magick] that I did with [Lightning] or [Surge] skills, but I could at least compete with some of our better windcallers. Constantly having to concentrate to fly, though, wasn’t an especially good idea in hostile skies. When it came to moving air, my spellcraft was better suited to the combat arts—pushing myself from side to side, putting the wind at my back while I sprinted, empowering a leap or diverting a projectile. For continual flight, it was best to rely on actual [Focus] lest a break in concentration cause a fall.

I didn’t use the [Air 1] key yet, because I knew I’d be canceling my [Frost Magick] to make [Air Magick], and I wanted to use [Frost Magick] to further entomb Palefang’s carcass. Instead I descended the cliffside until I could surge [Strength] to make an easy leap into the thick branches that crowned the great trees, then ran along the branches, making easy jumps to move from tree to tree.

I ran parallel to the edge of the cliff until I found the ravine that I knew led to the flowerfall, then turned inward to retrace my steps toward the small island where I’d fought Palefang. I couldn’t see it through the lower mist layer, but it was easy to see when I was getting close. An enormous number of carrion birds were already circling, some of them weaving in and out of the lower mist layer.

Most of the birds were only the size of a dog. This, along with the fact that they were clearly scavengers, made me doubt they’d grant any keys.

But every now and then I saw one of the huge birds I’d fought during the convergence diving into or out of the mist layer: great, brown-feathered creatures with bodies like owls and wingspans that reached twenty feet in length.

I descended the trunk of one of the great trees by conjuring frost shelves to jump between, liberally spending from my new mana pool.

Then I perched inside a groove in the bark, made myself a platform of ice to stand on, and began to launch arrows into the nearest one of the large birds. It shrieked in pain as my arrow pierced its back, but by the time it had rounded on me midair I had shot it eight more times, including twice in the head.

+ 3302 Essence [Animal 1 / Body 1]

I scowled. Anything that granted [Bird] had a chance to grant [Animal] and a smaller chance to grant [Wild], but those chances weren’t set in stone. The apehounds from earlier had granted [Animal] far more than they’d granted [Mammal]. I hoped it wasn’t the same here; I wanted those [Bird] keys.

Releasing the bowstring was now so loud that it might have startled the flock of birds on its own, but the shrieks of my target, followed by the crash it made as it struck the ground below us, removed any chance at killing stealthily.

As it had been above the flowerfall canyon, nothing was fast enough to reach me. I shot two more of the large birds out of the air, each of them granting [Bird] in their boons. Then, having run out of targets, I laid into the smaller birds, which granted a few hundred essence each. I must have killed almost a hundred of them, along with two more freshly-arrived giant birds, before the skies around me were clear.

After that, I descended through the fog layer, hoping to find a few more of the massive birds feasting on the field of corpses below, undisturbed by the recent rain of the corpses I’d made.

Instead I saw why most of the birds had been circling. Four huge, six-legged frog like creatures occupied what had once been the mushroom clearing, each of them eating corpses. They had glistening blue and gray skin, bulging throats, and high-set golden eyes.

Three of them sat at the edges of the island, each in the shadows of the twisting roots. One of them, the largest, had apparently intimidated the others into leaving it along as it ate in the center of the island—it was currently devouring one of the large birds I’d killed, right next to the makeshift earthen mound where I’d stored Palefang’s carcass. The birds below the mists were clearly afraid of these creatures: they swooped in to pick at the bodies that were furthest from them, and startled at any sudden movements.

It made sense that this was the first I’d seen of these creatures: a primeval convergence called the largest and smallest creatures last, and the one that Palefang had triggered hadn’t run its full course, even if I’d apparently been successfully inducted into the local wildlife.

I picked the smallest of the six-legged frogs, descended into the roots away from the island, then circled until I was right behind my target. I was ready to throw lightning, of course, but I didn’t want to scare the others away.

I used the whole of my [Surge of Might] to loose arrows into its head from above, aiming for where a frog’s brain would be and striking my chosen spot five times in rapid succession. It gave a startled, throaty cry, a noise that was deeper than I would have expected, then turned drunkenly toward me before collapsing.

+ 4162 Essence, 2 [Amphibian 1 / Body 1 / Water 1]

I grinned. So far, it was looking like the swamp was a good place to hunt aspects, and [Amphibian] or [Fish] keys would be much-needed among some of our hunters. Even if they were rank 1, a creature granting 2 boons was always nice.

I heard a deep, vibrating roar from the center of the clearing, and looked up to see that the largest of the frog creatures had spotted me. I leapt down to stand next to the corpse of the one I’d just killed, getting close enough to get a sense of its vitals.

The other frog behemoth stamped the ground, warning me off. “You’re a little late for the real fight,” I told it.

It charged, and I got ready to leap over it. Then it opened its mouth and launched a long tongue at me, and I dodged to one side instead. It was fast on six legs, coming at me and trying to stick me with its tongue twice more before I decided not to take even small risks and blasted it to instant death with a lightning-bolt.

I sighed as I heard the others retreating into the water at the sudden noise and sound, but they were animals: they’d be back. I needed to further secure Palefang’s carcass, then see if I could find any more clearings of mushrooms and apehounds that I could turn into fields of corpses. With multiple places attracting scavengers, I could alternate between the two to harvest the most aspects.

But as I moved for Palefang’s makeshift tomb, a patch of the corpses intrigued me. At first it looked as if they’d been thoroughly picked clean. But even a moment’s glance showed them to be too cleanly picked: the skeletons were so bare they were being ignored by all the scavengers, and there wasn’t a single tooth, beak, or claw mark on them. And they were all perfectly arranged the way the creatures they’d belonged to had fallen.

I reached down and felt the moist, hot black earth beneath a set of bones. Then I grinned. “[Decay Magick],” I said. {Decay} was a hidden aspect made by [Change], [Life], and [Death]. They were strong aspects, even if I could grab only one or two. [Death] was not a subtype of [Wild] like [Life] was, but we had 4 [Druid of the Cycle] with us—[*Wild] cores with [Death Magick] as their granted power. They could each use [Life Magick], [Blood Magick], [Decay Magick], and [Death Magick] to compose extremely powerful rituals for agriculture, healing, mana creation, and war.

Apart from them, Ranival and his necromancers could easily make [Decay Magick] themselves with the [Change] and [Life] keys.

Best of all, the size of this patch of skeletons suggested a powerful enough monster to grant high-ranked keys, which were necessary for the stronger abilities.

I’d be spending some time in this swamp, and I’d be doing plenty of killing. With luck, more of the creature who had consumed these corpses would show themselves in my wake.

I used my newfound mana pool to give Palefang another layer of ice, freezing and then pulling huge slabs of it from the water before packing them in around my prize. Once I was satisfied that I’d added enough to his makeshift tomb, I did what I’d been itching to do since I’d left, relinquishing [Frost Magick] to take [Air Magick] in its place.

- [Frost Magick 6]: 200 Essence

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

Then—grinning with anticipation and excitement—I let out my sail, filled it with air, and took flight.