?—[Life Pool] 100/100

I smiled to myself as the wind rushed by my face. I’d been following the contours of the slopes, hunting the wyverns while I replenished my [Life Pool], for almost twenty minutes—it had taken longer than usual because I had less [Focus] to assign to replenish the skill while I was flying.

I spotted another wyvern nest, then swooped over it. Instincts woke its occupant as its [Wild Sight] sensed a creature coming close, but it was already too late—I fell onto its head with a wind-propelled downward blow, driving the upward point of my axe between its eyes before regaining my balance and tearing the blade through its brain and out the side of its skull.

+ 11,684 Essence, [Boon]

I took off again a moment later, in search of more. I hadn’t triggered a primeval convergence, which meant that these creatures were linked with the ones of the other slope—I must have fought some wyverns from this mountain, yesterday.

I also hadn’t run into any relatives of the fascinating lizard that I’d fought on the peak. I didn’t know how his ice-bombs had actually worked, but I was definitely curious. Had it somehow infused the center of a compacted shard of shaped ice so that the steam broke the shard and released a huge amount of pressure at just the right moment? To me, that seemed impossible, and I felt that it must instead be some combination of aspects that I’d never seen before.

Crumpled, forest-covered terrain lay below me, cut by the occasional stream that ran down from a spring in the mountains. I found another wyvern, killed it, and picked up more essence and keys.

It was essential that I get a lay of the land. If the air elementals were sapient, we’d likely need to build our settlement within a day’s journey to a peak—which would essentially mean in the shadow of said peak. Not all of us could fly, or even cover ground quickly.

Even if the air elementals weren’t sapient, a settlement nestled in the mountains had a lot of advantages. We’d have to scout our options soon enough, and I didn’t want to make a return trip.

There were a lot of things to consider. I was personally worried about superpredators. Primeval convergences existed for a reason, and that was the threat of invaders who were so strong they required an army to deter. I knew the kind of havoc that an itinerant killer could wreak on an ecology because I was one.

The best defensive strategy against such a creature, flying or walking, would be to settle somewhere that they were less likely to hunt. A place below the mists, not visible from the air. A place in a more sparsely populated ecology, one less likely to fall victim to a hungry wanderer. Someplace recessed into the rock, or flanked by high cliffs, but best of all a place that was separate from, but nearby to a much richer source of food for any potential predator: a forest, a swamp, rolling plains, a large body of water….

These were the things I cared about most. Resources I knew we could traverse great distances for, or create with our abundant essence and creation magic if need be. Food could be hunted for, or grown with [Life Magick] if hunting was somehow disastrous. There weren’t a lot of us, and we would be powerful and carry all our magical knowledge—our needs could be met fairly easily.

These were my thoughts as I passed over the mountain, killing wyverns as I saw them. If I asked the elves to live in a recessed cave for the next generation, to be hidden away from the sky just to alleviate my fears, would they accept it? Probably. But perhaps not without murmurs of dissent, depression and stagnancy….

I made a third circuit of the second mountain, decided that I’d memorized the terrain and picked off enough wyverns, and then turned onward, toward a higher mountain whose peak rose in the distance. Breaking the third mist layer, I saw that the fourth had indeed been lightening—their color change was the closest thing to a sunrise this place had.

I scowled. That was another thing I had to consider.

We needed to see the sky. Not these mists, but our Lady Sabina’s night sky. Hassina and Seriana had said little of it, but there could be no true worship of the Midnight Queen without sight of the sky. And it was the high elves, not the wild elves, who most loved her.

But what were we going to do? Fly them kilometers into the air each night? Find a mountain whose height rivaled that of the tallest on Aranar and keep our whole civilization there just to be sure they were never parted from proper worship?

These thoughts gave me the sudden urge to do what I should have done when first I’d gained the power to fly. I took flight and rose into the sky, intending to go as high as I could.

I broke the third mist layer and began to head for the layer that was high above it, watching my mana pool as I rose. Air got thinner the higher one flew, and while my skills could keep me from the harmful effects of low-pressure air, it grew harder to hold the air needed to fill my sail and raise me up.

It was a strange and beautiful place, the upper layer. The whiter mist above me was so far that it felt like a real, proper sky—just one completely covered in cloud. The mountain-peaks below me were small, snow-covered protrusions, white islands in a sea of red. There was still a haze in the air, a light fog that made distant peaks invisible.

The air grew cooler, and a few elementals tried to give me a playful shove as I rose, but I avoided them. I drew in deep breaths, trying to vacate my mind and simply absorb the beauty that lay below me.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Then I came close to the upper mist layer, and I extended my gaze into it, fearful that it might contain dangerous elementals. My mana had begun to deplete from the effort of rising, and as I entered the mists I wondered if I’d made a mistake. A huge mass of air, an elemental, formed a spike and launched itself toward me, but I pulled myself to one side to evade it, still rising.

Unlike the other layers, which had increased with thickness as one rose, this layer was only half as thick as the one below it. I came out of it only moments after I’d entered—and my heart fell.

Another layer of mist shone above me, perhaps three kilometers distant, far out of my range. I sensed the elemental spread itself into a wide breeze and rose quickly to avoid it, but my mana was dropping fast.

Then I drew in a sharp intake of breath as I looked around me. From where I was about two hundred feet above the sea of luminous cloud below me, I could see far—very far. The hazy obfuscation of the lower levels was gone. I rose higher, spending until I had less than a tenth of my mana remaining—and gasped.

It was impossible to tell quite how far it was, but in the distance I could see the peak of a great mountain just barely breaking through the cloud layer, a peak that ended in a sheer, slanted cutoff only a few hundred meters above the mists.

I blinked. Smiled.

Then I dove as my air elemental tried to catch me once more, pushing myself to greater speeds with the last of my mana. I broke the mist quickly, then looked down once again at the faded archipelago of nearer mountain peaks, keeping in my mind the location of the distant giant.

The lower temperature of higher elevations would make them the home of less aggressive frost elementals. They would also make them poorer roosts for wyverns, who would prefer the lower peaks, the ones adjacent to broad stretches of forests.

But [Frost] keys….

[Frost] keys favored the attunement effect, reducing [Focus] requirements. Attribute-increasing [Frost] keys tended to increase [Focus] itself. And mages—which we had plenty of—were trained in [Arcane Resonance], increasing the effect of their focus.

More [Focus] meant a greater ability to sustain conjured ice, and many [Frost] abilities meant that icebinders—or cryomancers, as the mages called them—could easily assert their claim over ice.

All of this meant that if I could return with a high quantity of [Frost] keys, our icebinders would be able to quickly conjure enough fortifications to shelter the whole of our people. And we were pushing out into the plains and the swamp, gathering the [Mana] keys needed for missile-conjuring bows.

When it came time to move to a new location, I’d feel much more comfortable knowing that we could summon a small fort and place a hundred of our best archers within it, all strengthened by attribute-increasing skills and possessing infinite arrows.

I wouldn’t even need to reach the summit I’d seen. If there were higher mountains between it and me, unseen through the haze, then they might be home to the elementals.

Finally, there was a potential promise of safety in the whole affair: a frozen peak was not particularly attractive to most things that might seek to eat our flesh, and rose far from the sight of passing superpredators. It was worth checking out as a potential colony location, hostile as it might seem.

I fell, grinning, and swiftly cut through the third mist-layer, then slowed my dive and took flight once more, angling toward where I’d seen the mighty peak. I set my sights on the next mountaintop emerging from the mists, a many-peaked meeting of two slopes that ran in a line above the mists for almost a kilometer.

There was a single wyvern nest positioned along this line, one frosted tangle of corroded trees that had been set into a crook in the peak. The mists above had mostly finished lightening, but the nest still held its occupant: a massive wyvern, easily twice the size of the one I’d fought over the lake of the first mountain.

It raised its head to look at me as I dove for it, then rose, planting its winged forelegs to crane its neck before letting out a loud shriek. As I passed above it, it breathed out an extremely long gout of its poisonous breath, a geyser of deadly, phlegmatic fluid.

But as the poison entered my claim, I simply diverted it away from me with my air magic, continuing my dive. I landed on the creature’s back at the base of its neck a moment later, feet slamming into scaled flesh. I caught my balance as the creature shifted beneath me, then surged [Strength] and leapt away, taking flight.

But halfway through my leap I began to channel mana out into the air, and as I filled my skysail and flew away, I continued to do so. It was all about timing—I needed a bolt strong enough to seriously hurt or kill this creature, and that meant taking the time to release a huge amount of mana. But I also needed my lightning to strike its neck or face….

The wyvern ceased spewing its fruitless poison, then turned toward me as I flew away from it, still dumping mana into the air between us. Its winged forelegs snapped the wood of the nest beneath them as it spun, lumbering around and then launching itself up into the air, its head rising to meet my line of mana and give me the perfect shot.

The mountain around us was awash with pure red light as my ears filled with the familiar, violent sound. In my gaze, I saw my lightning bolt reach the end of its mana trail and discharge all its power into the nearest body of mana it could find, the wyvern’s head.

+ 51,257 Essence, 3 [Boon]

The beast’s body fell limp, its skull a twisted, smoking ruin whose flesh had been vaporized.

I landed on the peak and looked over my spoils, smiling. I’d spent almost all my mana to kill the creature, but that was hardly a problem: if only all my battles could go so well, and have such excellent rewards.

I had to frown at the fact that there were no [Frost] keys in the boons it had granted me. The Verse was universal, and creatures such as this with [*Body] cores would easily be able to form skills like [Icy Grace] or [Frost Hide] out of any they found. Wyverns didn’t naturally prey upon elementals, but they were also intolerant of them in their territory. If I was right about these peaks having more [Frost] keys, then this creature could have confirmed it by giving me some.

The absence of them wasn’t a sign that I was certainly wrong… but it wasn’t the sign I was looking for.

?—Mana 1081/1940, 44% Primeval

Then I sensed something with my [Animal Sight] that made me smile—more wyverns, rising toward me through the mists. Killing the big one had triggered a primeval convergence all by itself.

“Heh,” I said, standing, and touching a hand to the haft of my axe, then leaping into the air and flying down towards the oncoming creatures. With luck, another twenty wyverns or more would be coming to fight me.

And once I’d found a suitable arena, I’d be more than happy to oblige them.