At the base of the largest mountain, across a field filled with huge, jagged stones and split down the middle by a massive gorge, there was a forest of great trees that stretched as far as I could see. The great trees were unique in that they were the first of their kind that I’d seen which weren’t growing out of the swampwater at the bottom of the many canyons that cut their way through the valleys between the peaks. Instead their roots grew out of dark, bare soil, strewn with a blanket of decaying fallen leaves and lit by glowing vines and ferns.

The rocky plain at the base of the mountain was populated by horned grazers that appeared like a cross between antelope and goats, albeit with longer legs than either. The gorge was its most interesting feature: a kilometer-long gash, only a few hundred meters wide at its widest, seemingly deeper than even the swamps had been and with none of the great trees that dominated them. I dove into it and broke the lower mist layer expecting to see water and instead only saw another, deeper layer of mist—the sixth, if counting downward, though I had been counting up from the mist above the waterline of the swamp, up to now.

I didn’t dive deeper than that, conscious as I was that the depths of the earth could hold potent elementals that I had neither the means to detect nor fight. Instead I ascended, then flew to the edge of the great forest and perched on one of the larger stones.

I had to look around at the field of jutting, jagged stones, dominated by the strange gorge, with suspicion. Had the event that had formed the gorge also left these stones dotting the landscape?

Nonetheless, I wanted to meet some of the creatures that lived in the forest. While it would have some familiar species, its dryer depths would foster different forms of life than the swamps. I wanted to trigger a primeval convergence and draw creatures out of the forest into this field—but at the same time, I didn’t want to draw too many predators off of the peak while I was battling whatever emerged. Wyverns were one thing, but adding any unmet, unknown forest-dwellers into the mix could complicate things more than I’d like.

I began to ascend along the slopes. I would trigger a convergence on the mountainside, then hopefully travel deep enough into the forest to trigger a second. Convergences here covered a smaller area than they had on Aranar. It was as if they only ever recruited a set amount of creatures, or power spread across creatures, and so in this place they needed smaller locales.

With that done, I’d have enough time to spend an hour playing my pipes in a high place, hopefully drawing the attention of an elemental who I could ask some questions.

I found a smaller peak that jutted out from the main mass of the mountain, cresting just below the third mist layer. I didn’t want to go any higher and attract the elementals in the mist while fighting, and so it was a good spot to start. After soaring over the cliffs and slopes for a few minutes, I found a wyvern’s nest, landing and killing its occupant with a lightning-bolt before resuming my patrol.

I found and killed another two wyverns, then spotted something unexpected shortly after I took to the air once more: another one of the frilled-neck lizards, this one perched over the bloody carcass of a snow cat and somewhat smaller than the two I’d met already.

I landed on the slopes above it, not bothering to try and hide my presence. The lizard reared up and flared its frills, and I looked at the carcass of the snow-cat it had been eating—it was badly burnt. It hissed a warning at me.

“How are you not food for wyverns?” I asked, tilting my head curiously and smiling. The only two of these creatures I’d met had been on peaks, not counting the acid-spitting distant relative I’d found in the caves before the flowerfall. I wanted to know where they came from, why they were so rare, and what they hunted other than the white cats.

The lizard didn’t conjure a shard of ice to throw at me like its relatives had. Instead, it charged, rearing up onto its back legs to sprint toward me with startling speed while its forelegs waved uselessly in the air.

Three surge-empowered arrows to the neck later and it was turning to run away from me, and a half-dozen more shots had brought it to the ground.

+ 5285 Essence, [Boon]

“No ice,” I said, standing over the corpse a moment later and examining the boon to find that it held no [Frost] skill keys. Did it even have the firebreath? It had to have something to keep these wyverns from simply scooping it up off the mountainside, even if they usually preferred to hunt birds.

In the distance, I could sense another wyvern coming toward me with my [Animal Sight]. A moment later and I felt another one, coming from the other direction: I had triggered a convergence just as I’d intended. Blasting things with lightning got it done a lot faster than arrows did.

I waited for the first one to dive, then struck it from the air with a lightning bolt. Then, confident that I had the mana regeneration to fight them all in the air, I took off and began to fly away from the second wyvern. When it was close enough, I unspooled a line of mana into the air behind me, then drew in my sail and rolled to strike that wyvern from the air, too.

I filled my sail again and took stock of the various wyverns that I could now sense coming toward me with my [Animal Sight], then carefully chose my trajectory so that I could keep them tailing me and pick them off one by one.

I almost sensed it too late.

Despite my [Animal Sight] and [Wild Bond], and despite my well-honed psychic senses, the creature that came from above nearly took me by surprise. I barely felt it before it emerged from the mist overhead, diving just behind my position so that the bulk of its shadow didn’t fall over me right away.

I sensed it just before it left the mists: the largest wyvern I had ever seen, easily ten times the size of any I’d fought on these peaks.

A behemoth.

It was diving fast, much faster than it could recover from. I called up a sudden surge of air to launch myself forward and up, certain that once it was past me it wouldn’t be able to give chase.

A great shadow fell across me as the wyvern spread its broad wings, which were so large that without the aide of magic they might have buckled and broken under the sudden wall of air that they gathered. Instead, it beat them downward, sending out a concussive wave of wind along with a low sound of thunder. It wasn’t enough to stop the creature’s fall, but I had to draw my windsleeve tight to keep the wave of resulting air from knocking me out of the sky and deafening me.

At the same time, I pulled in my sail and dove for an outcrop rock that rose below me, intending to land only briefly and launch myself further into the air with a surge-fueled leap.

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As I made for the ledge, I watched the behemoth plummet toward the peaks with my gaze. Beating its wings once against the momentum of its fall had been an incredible feat for a creature its size, but it still hadn’t been enough to stop it from crashing into the slopes below—just enough to drastically slow it.

The wyvern struck the stony slopes, and the whole mountain seemed to tremble beneath me as the air filled with the earsplitting sound of shattering stone. But to my amazement, it didn’t slump there, bowed under the force of its own weight, but rather crouched inside the billowing cloud of dust and sprang back into the air with an impossibly mighty leap.

I struck the stone outcrop ahead of me and did the same, focusing hard to use as much of my [Surge Pool] as I could to bound into the air, then gathering my windsleeve and filling my sail.

I was still in a primeval convergence, and there were two more wyverns diving for me, so I launched myself forward rather than straight upward, fearful that they could adjust their trajectories with their [Air Magick] and knock me from the sky.

I had expected that the behemoth, which was far too close behind me for comfort, wouldn’t be able to outpace me if I simply filled my sail and ran. But to my shock, the wyvern spread its wings, filled them with wind using its [Air Magick], and began to gain on me.

But how? I had to wonder this as the creature closed the distance between us. A high level and a strong [Behemoth] skill might explain it’s having the [Strength] to leap from the mountainside and the lightness to fly at all, but wyverns were physically-oriented. It shouldn’t have had the massive mana pool it needed to manage all this air magic.

The slope of the mountain had dropped away below us, and I dove into the open air, hoping to pull it into a dive after me and then rapidly ascend. It couldn’t burn mana like this forever, and even if it could, I doubted that it could ascend as fast as I did. I just needed to be sure that I had outpaced the overhead wyverns, needed to know for a certainty that I could ascend safely….

The behemoth dove after me, releasing the gathered air beneath its wings to cut toward me on an intercept course.

Then it surprised me again, drawing a massive quantity of air beneath its wings, sucking me backward in the sudden wind-tide and yanking at my sail, threatening to disorient me and send me spinning—which in current circumstances would surely mean a fall.

I exerted my [Air Magic], steadying myself inside a firm bubble of air and pushing forward to escape its pull, tugging my skysail nearer so that I could quickly dive away from it, knowing as I did that with that much air under its wings, it would struggle to shed altitude and give chase.

But then I heard a sound like thunder as it flapped its wings with enormous force, sending the air it had gathered and compressed beneath them forward in a powerful wave. Again I held fast to my windsleeve, letting the wave of concussive force be absorbed by the outside of my pocket of held air, but the wyvern was so close that I was still battered by the force of the gale.

I tilted in the air, righted myself, then surged forward again. But I’d lost too much velocity recovering, and the wyvern had almost completely overtaken me, the shadow of its body darkening the sky overhead.

It drew closer, and I tried to surge forward to escape it, but it had enveloped my own, smaller claim within its more massive one, and I was stuck within a small bubble of air that was itself being held back by the gale-force winds of the wyvern.

I hissed, then pushed my mana into the air before me as if to construct a lightning bolt—only instead of making a bolt, I simply used my mana to create a channel of claim that bored through the claim of the great wyvern. With a blast of air that consumed almost all my remaining mana, I catapulted myself forward and out of the reach of its talons.

?—Mana 281 / 1940, 45% Primeval

I heard the sound of thunder behind me once again, but I didn’t try to resist the oncoming buffeting wind: instead I pulled my sail tight, spun in the air, then released it just as the wave of wind struck me, surging my [Aegis] to keep my eardrums from bursting.

My sail caught and I was thrown backward, using my [Air Magick] to keep myself swept up in the wave of air for as long as I could, throwing myself far away from the wyvern before pulling away in a dive that angled me toward the ground.

The wyvern dove after me, but it was too big: I could fall much faster with the wind behind me. A surge of relief filled me as I saw that the distance between us was growing as I plummeted toward the rocky slopes beneath us.

Then the wyvern managed to surprise me again. I sensed the oncoming rocks not as rocks, but by the negative impression that they left in the air around them as they whistled through the air toward me. I threw my windsleeve backward to try and divert their course, but it wasn’t enough: two heavy stones impacted me a moment later, one in the small of my back and the other along my shoulder, sending explosions of pain through my body as I went spinning through the air, my skysail alternating between filling with air and being pressed flat against my back, my trajectory staggered and careening.

?— Mana 121/1940, 51% Primeval

I might have had the mana to right myself and fill my sail again, but I’d have had to slow myself enough to be caught by the oncoming wyvern. Instead I took the fall, bringing my hands up to protect my head while I focused hard on spending as much [Surge Pool] as I could on [Aegis] and struck the jagged rocks of the slope beneath me.

More jarring than the impact against a steep mountain-slope was the thought that struck my mind as I rolled: that this behemoth wyvern had just shot me down using earthen projectiles that it had probably stored in its mouth, likely ripping them from the mountainside when it had landed there. It knocked me from the air tactically, using a series of well-played maneuvers. There was a feral artistry to its excellent use of air magic—and a rather serious question raised by the fact that it had been able to throw stones at all.

I stumbled to my feet, then leapt forward as the wyvern came crashing down overtop of of me, flaring its wings and sending out another wave of air that struck me just after I’d landed, throwing me forward and sending me tumbling down the slopes once again.

I tried to right myself, pushing off the ground with one arm and then pushing myself back down to the slope with a burst of air magic….

The wyvern leapt forward on all fours, shaking the earth as it landed just behind me and causing me to stumble, almost losing my footing. It snapped at me with its jaws and I leapt backward and to one side, its maw just barely missing me as flecks of poisonous spit splashed across my face and body.

Its tail came for me a moment later, coming down in an overhead stroke, and I rolled out of the way, then leapt further down the mountain as the tail-tip shattered the stones where I’d been standing.

The wyvern launched the stones kicked up by its tail a moment later, sending each through the air with enough force to crack my skull or at least send crashing down to the earth, but I dodged them with a few well-placed bounds, my instincts well-honed when it came to sensing trajectories and avoiding missiles.

Then I was sprinting full-tilt down the mountain, my pace slowed by the fact that I had to fall another ten meters every time I needed to take a step. It didn’t matter—the wyvern chased me, but it couldn’t match my speed on the ground, not when I combined flight with the power in my legs. Even when it filled its wings and tried to lunge for me, I surged my [Strength], leapt into the air, and pushed myself out of its reach, then pushed myself back to the ground to keep sprinting.

I didn’t dare stop to fight it. Even if I’d had all my mana, and even if I wasn’t in the middle of a primeval convergence, I’d have to leave for the simple reason that this thing’s acidic breath could likely eat through my already torn skysail in seconds, leaving me both without my main way of maneuvering in battle against it and without half my means of retreat.

I ran down the side of the mountain for almost a minute with the behemoth chasing me, occasionally having to adjust my course to avoid the other wyverns or a landbound predator. Eventually I ran through the cover of a small copse of trees, then out into the more level cover of the plain.

There, with my wind at my back and my legs thundering against the ground, I finally overtook the flying behemoth, speeding away from it and out of the shadow of the massive peak.

I’d have to come back later.