I heaved my steaming axe out of the broken skull of its most recent victim, then called a gust of wind to sweep the poison from the air around me as I searched for any more attacking wyverns.

There were none.

I rolled my shoulders, then wiped the blood of my axehead, satisfied. Deeper into the mountains, there were fewer wyverns—I’d killed just under twenty. Their bodies lay around me in a small divot in the mountainside, a sloped valley that had given me enough space to maneuver.

I could have flown the entire time, but making a lethal lightning bolt was much harder when both I and my target were flying, and the demand on mana was harder all around.

Leaping around with the axe and flying only occasionally so as to save mana for more lightning was a much faster way to kill.

?—You have 591,748 Essence and 52 [Boon].

I couldn’t contain my elation as I hooked my axe back onto my sailsuit. I’d only been out less than two hours, and already I’d outpaced the previous half-day I’d spent hunting. I’d actually killed more wyverns by searching the slopes than I had earlier during the primeval convergence. Even if the convergence had taken less time, being able to fly forever and see so far with [Animal Sight] had made me a fast, effective hunter.

Most of my boons contained rank 2 skill keys, and some of them contained rank 3.

And it was only going to get better. My level limit had gone up to 27 sometime during the battle, and I could hopefully look forward to another increase when I gave my harvest to Hassina to be distributed among my people.

I was still level 25, of course—as with many times before, I’d increase my attributes when I absolutely knew I needed something, rather than cement the choice now. [Channel] and [Source] were my favored options, but [Strength] was also worth considering. I’d lost some when I’d changed [Wild Grace] into [Avian Grace], and since [Surge of Might] only let me double my [Strength] score any loss was a heavy loss indeed, especially given how quickly my attributes could now replenish my [Surge Pool].

The keys I was gathering were woefully outpaced by the essence. A single wyvern’s worth of essence could push anyone to level 10, at which point they’d have multiple skill cores. But that was always the way of it: killing could get you essence, but if you wanted keys you needed territory. Even Palefang hadn’t known how to strip aspects from the world around him: a group of well-protected keyshapers would only need a few days to reap an enormous amount of rank one skill keys for our people.

I scouted the slopes of the surrounding mountains, making note of the terrain as I wove between the second and third mist layers. As with before, there were extraordinarily deep ravines between the peaks, each with steep, almost vertical sides, as if they’d been punched into the earth by some unknown force. Many of them had great trees rising up out of the lowest mist layers, and a few times I even descended below this layer to see that it was much the same as it was near the cave: swamp everywhere beneath a tangle of massive roots.

Some things I felt I understood, but some were mysteries. Dozens or even a hundred wyverns nesting over the hundred or so square kilometers surrounding one of the peaks was an insanely high density of the creatures, but I could explain it. This place was a more extreme version of the same story that took place on Aranar or Thanaxes: plants gathered more essence per day because of their high mass and volume, and they almost always cultivated [Life] keys and skills. Insects ate the plants that could regenerate their leaves with the essence they gathered, and animals like the ribbontail squirrels I’d seen ate the insects, then were in turn eaten by larger animals… and so on.

On Aranar, the density of life had been incredible. On this place, life was so dense that predators were casually aggressive, almost omnipresent, and beasts like the broadwings or the giant birds had predators of their own in the wyverns.

I had also surmised that the swamps in the ravines might not be anywhere near this world’s normal sea level: any number of things might have grown up to keep them from draining. Still, we could follow the water as far as we needed to in order to find Seriana her sea. Another item for the exploration itinerary, after I explored these mountains and hopefully made contact with some air elementals.

I killed another dozen wyverns as I covered the terrain around me, and the third mist layer began to lighten once the fourth had turned completely white. Soon I caught sight of something peculiar in between the second and third layers: a strangely-shaped group of creatures moving downward, toward the mouth of a ravine. At first I thought they were broadwings diving straight down, but then I realized that they were moving too slowly for that.

I flew in for a closer look, but I was a few kilometers away, and their distance combined with the omnipresent haze made it difficult to make them out before they disappeared beneath the second mist layer. Still, I thought I’d seen ropes or ribbons trailing behind them.

Curious, I dove beneath the second mist layer and skimmed over the great trees below us. Ahead, where the creatures had disappeared, the great wood ended and the ravine narrowed into a tight canyon, where I saw another flowerfall covering both walls.

There was no sign of the strange creatures I’d seen diving, and so I expected they must have stopped in the mist. But as I drew closer, I didn’t sense them with my [Animal Sight], either in the mists or below it.

Then I noticed something else peculiar: there were no insects here, neither feeding the vines nor drinking from the flowers. The flowers themselves still bore high amounts of mana in their nectar, but the whole of the vine appeared to have no defenders.

I flew closer, my eyes on the cliffs. There were a great many cave openings hidden behind the vines, and soon my [Animal Sight] detected a great many small, winged creatures hanging from the roof of the caves within. Bats?

Suddenly my mind was assaulted by a powerful psychic force, one made of a great many minds pressing up against my own, each of them sending an image or impression of something undesirable: being pierced by teeth, being consumed by fire, being drained of life while tangled in the vines on the cliff….

The message was very clear. Leave.

Rare was the creature who learned to use [Wild Bond] to do more than hunt and hide. Unintelligent creatures almost never built the multiple bond skills needed to truly overpower something else’s mind for more than a moment, and when they did they left themselves without other skills to rely on. This made them slower and weaker than they otherwise would be, which meant they had to deter more predators than they otherwise would… which inevitably led to their demise. Creatures who traveled in packs could often push on other creatures with a rudimentary psychic skill, but not like this.

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This was powerful. But they weren’t trying to knock me out of the sky or lead me to my death. They just wanted to be left alone.

And their attack was still somewhat rudimentary, a sustained force instead of a calculated spike of psychic power. I drew on my training and used my own [Wild Bond] to break most of the attack down into patches of discordant sensations instead of an overwhelming, overriding experience, then let it wash over me.

I couldn’t leave, not without assessing what threat this colony of creatures posed. Not only was I almost sure they could fly, but their psychic abilities meant they could find—and potentially attack—exploring elves.

I reached out with my [Wild Bond], choosing one voice among the many that assailed me and singling it out. Peace, I told them, sending the impression of calm skies where birds flew peacefully, calm waters where beasts drank together without enmity.

The chorus of assaults on my mind ceased a moment later. Then I was contacted by just a single one of the creatures.

Leave, violence, it said, sending an impression of their canyon shrinking beneath me.

I tried to get a sense of the creature I was speaking with. It was smart enough to communicate with me, but not as intelligent as an elf—more like a dolphin or a gorilla. This was good: with the aide of psychic communication, smart animals such as those could share much of their understanding with us.

Then I realized what it had meant when it sent the impression of violence. It hadn’t been making a threat: leave or there will be violence. Instead it had been referring to me, as if by a name.

Leave, violence, it repeated.

I suspected they were plants. The likelihood that all of them could hide from my well-honed [Animal Sight] was too low, and I didn’t believe they were the bat-like animals that I could sense. If I got a little closer and used [Wild Bond], perhaps I could see them….

But I couldn’t get closer. I had to leave.

It was just that simple. They were asking me to leave their territory because they didn’t want violence. Instigating with creatures who had peacefully asked me to leave was out of the question.

Your territory? I asked, already rising away from the ravine. It was a concept I was sure they’d understand.

Here, it replied, indicating the ravine and the flowerfall. Up. It indicated the air above, rising through the mist layers. It paused a moment, then added: Here and up.

I smiled. You asked that I leave, I said, trying to keep my communication simple. So I leave.

The voice was silent a moment. Good creature, it said at last.

I rose away from the ravine with mixed joy and frustration. Those creatures were perhaps the most fascinating thing I’d met since coming here, and yet I didn’t even know what they looked like, not really. Hopefully I or the wildhearts could learn more about them in the coming days. They’d seemed peaceful enough.

Of course, I’d still have to be absolutely sure that nothing followed me back to the colony. I was fairly sure they were no danger… but in the long term, a certain degree of paranoid defensiveness would pay off.

Violence, they had called me. It was more or less accurate to the last day and a half. Really, it was more or less accurate but to my general role to the elves.

Over the second mist layer, I saw a field of craggy rocks dotted by what appeared to be long-necked armored quadrupeds. I reasoned they were in the domain of the mysterious ravine-dwellers, and moved past them toward the next mountain. I rose above the third mist layer to see the snowy peak, and past it I saw what I’d been hoping for: not just in a farther, larger mountain, but in the vague form of an even more massive mountain rising up beyond that one. It was barely visible through the haze, but it was unbelievably large, its faded shape piercing the fourth mist layer. It was the mountain I’d seen earlier.

Even the mountain before me was much larger than the others I’d visited. The section of it that rose above the third mist layer was almost as large as the entirety of the mountain nearest the colony.

As I drew closer, I saw a sight that I recognized in the form of a relatively small outcrop of ice near its summit.

“Another one?” I wondered aloud. But there was always a chance that the frost lizard I’d fought had simply taken its lair from one of the stronger frost cats.

Still, I unclipped my bow from where it lay across my back. The last time I’d fought one of these lizards, it had been too fast, too dangerous. Its [Frost] and [Fire] skills meant that it would have limited healing or physical attributes, and its frost walls cost more mana to conjure than my single arrows.

And if the cave simply had a big frost cat in it: well, I could handle those, too.

I flew down in front of the cave, sensing the creature inside through its attempts at stealth using [Wild Bond]. It was, in fact, another frilled-neck lizard. I had landed far from the cave-mouth, almost two hundred meters, and I intended to fight at range.

It emerged a moment later, its bright red, steamy fins flared out over a body that was coated in glittering ice. I brought my bow up and surged [Strength] to shoot it with a fast-moving conjured missile that was wreathed in a windsleeve. Air missiles were good for flying because of all the interference from wind, but really they were good for everything: they added more range to the already stupendous range of a strength-enhanced matchbow, and practiced wielders could use the skill to curve their shots.

The lizard conjured a hunk of ice and tossed it at my arrow, intercepting it—but the arrow’s windsleeve pushed the ice to one side, just barely causing it to skim past while diverting the arrow’s path. The arrow stuck the lizard in the shoulder at an angle, instead of striking its face.

I took flight in a burst of powdered snow, avoiding the creature’s missiles while I launched my own back at it. It launched its volley of ice-javelins along with its more powerful exploding artillery, but these were easy to avoid at such a great distance: by the time the thicker shards of exploding ice reached me, they’d shed enough velocity that they were easy to bat away with wind.

I curved my arrows, making each one of them take a different path toward the lizard, gravity and wind combining to give them unpredictable arcs. The lizard charged at me across the slope, but I flew around it in a wide circle, loosing multiple arrows each second and occasionally throwing in one that had been enhanced by my [Surge of Might].

It deflected most of them, even creating a few walls of ice to keep the missiles at bay. But these blocked its line of sight to me, and I could hide myself from its gaze with [Wild Bond] while curving my shots around its barricade. Arrows buried their way into its flesh, one every few seconds, sometimes more.

After a few minutes, I’d struck it with more than fifty arrows and it had run out of mana. It tried to limp back to its cave, but didn’t make it before it collapsed: I flew over it and surged [Strength] to aim a careful shot through its skull, finishing it.

+ 47,210 Essence, 2 [Boon]

“Much better,” I said, smiling at my bounty and taking off toward the slopes.

With luck, I could trigger another convergence. But even if I couldn’t, I was sure to find more of the omnipresent wyverns while I scouted the territory.

By my guess, I had hours before they expected me back at the colony.

I would not be returning empty handed.