Hours later, Zirilla and I rose through the air to skim the bottom of the darkening third mist layer, sharing a windsleeve and flying together faster than I ever had alone.
I took stock of my assets:
?—Your Skill and Bindings:
R: [Sable Grace 20]
C: [Primeval Power 30]
0: [Life Magick 9]
2: [Kite’s Grace 14]
4: [Air Magick 9]
6: [Primeval Mana Hide 14]
8: [Might 9]
10: [Surge of Might 9]
15: [Wild Bond 9]
20: [Lightning Magick 9]
25: [Elemental Power 9]
B: [Aziriel’s Smooth Shiny Rock of Earth Magick]
B: [Aziriel’s Temporary Wristwrap of Mana]
B: [Aziriel’s Second Temporary Wristwrap of Channeling]
B: [Aziriel’s Temporary Necklace of Animal Sight]
?—Your Attributes:
217 [Aegis]
254 [Agility]
102 [Strength]
126 [Channel]
62 [Focus]
195 [Source]
110% [Primeval Resonance]
1950/1950 Mana, 54% Primeval
100/100 [Life Pool]
100/100 [Surge Pool]
I hadn’t brought my bow. Instead I carried a stone that Fireesha had given another temporary enchantment, one that granted me [Earth Magick] to help when the creature began throwing rocks, both in sensing them coming and in changing their trajectories to help me dodge.
As planned, we’d upgraded my [Air Magick] and [Lightning Magick] with what keys we could spare. We’d also decided to upgrade my [Wild Bond], because those keys were less rare and the skill increased the range at which I could sense enemies.
So, Zirilla said, speaking in my [Wild Bond] while we soared toward the first mountain peak. An elementalist wyvern.
Somehow, I said. It has to be.
Certain aspects didn’t function well together, usually opposite pairs like [Arcane] and [Primeval], [Weave] and [Fray], or [Air] and [Earth]. Attempting to form a skill with them where one wasn’t a part of a hidden aspect would usually cause a failure, breaking the keys and refunding two fifths of their essence value as if the skill had been relinquished. Classes never came with these pairs, even if some classes like [Elementalist] could form both [Air] and [Earth] skills.
It felt like it had [Body] cores, I said. At one point, it dropped onto a mountainside and leapt away a moment later. For a creature that size to make that leap with [Elemental] skills….
It’s possible, said Zirilla. But only if it’s a very high level.
It would have to be, I said. Even with [*Surge] cores to make a [Surge of Might].
[Elemental] and [Surge] cores could come on an exceptional class together—Zirilla’s class was [Elemental], [Surge], and [Mana]. But even then, it would have to have a wide array of skills increasing physical attributes to move as fast as it had, even with the kind of [Bestow] that a creature carried at level 60 and a high [Primeval Resonance].
And [Elemental] keys and their subtypes, when combined with [Body] keys, increased one physical and one magical attribute. It helped to explain why the thing was so deadly in the air, but also still strong with its air magic.
So it’s got a half-dozen different fused varieties of [Air] and [Body] skills, I said. High attributes all around, then. But it shouldn’t know enough to really take advantage of the breadth of skills it can grab with [Elemental] keys.
No, said Zirilla. But bigger size means more air under its wings to move around, which means more mana flowing through its body than other wyverns—which in this environment means even more long-term exposure to primeval adaptations. Even if it’s not intelligent, it’ll be clever. And you only need to be so clever to figure out how to throw rocks.
You think it’ll have any kind of [Frost Magick]? I asked.
Zirilla seemed to think for a moment before answering. No, she said. Though it might’ve been better to ask the wildhearts while you had the chance. My guess is that everything else on the mountaintop that isn’t a wyvern has [Frost Magick] already, including any elementals that concentrate near the mists. Throwing things with [Frost Magick] is easier, but I doubt this wyvern cares overmuch about efficiency. That, and the skill can conjure frost while [Earth Magick] can’t conjure earth… even with the Verse assisting, it’ll be harder for a beast to comprehend the skill in the first place. All in all, there’s no advantage to it using frost—it would be weaker against the local creatures, and a creature that size can always just break rocks off the ground beneath it.
I frowned, somehow still not satisfied with her answer. If it does start throwing ice, we should lead it down to warmer ground. Deprive it of the surrounding snow.
Sure, she said. It’s only a few kilometers of elevation, yeah? But I doubt it’ll throw ice. Fire and lightning are totally out of the question, too. Water’s not, though—it’s probably using [Water of Life] to regenerate the organic matter it makes that nasty breath from. Say, your elemental friend said we could fly over the mountaintops, yeah?
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Yes.
Let’s, then. Thinner air and I don’t mind the cold.
I rose, and Zirilla came with me, her movements almost exactly mirroring my own. We’d flown so much together that it was trivially easy for me to send her the right impressions across the [Wild Bond], showing her how I’d move before I did. We shared a tight windsleeve, maneuvered together, and were faster for it.
Above the third mist layer, the fourth had already deepened to a dark red. I’d been awake for almost twenty hours, spending the day harvesting essence and keys while Zirilla leveled up in the swamp, but it barely felt that way. Flying into deadly combat with a behemoth did a lot for wakefulness.
As we variously followed the line of the mist and the contours of the mountains, we discussed strategy, mostly going over things that we both already knew.
Realistically, the only way that we would kill the behemoth would be by preventing it from healing with a well-prepared curse like the one I’d used on Palefang.
Of course, a single lightning bolt to its head could kill it, if we could throw one strong enough. But while our lightning was powerful, blasting its head to pieces wasn’t something we could rely on—more likely, we’d have to cook its brain in its skull.
Stoppering its mana replenishment was also desirable, but both its overall size and its total [Aegis] were hindrances when it came to cursing it: casting a spell to afflict it with both curses, as I’d done to Palefang, would likely take more than four or five times as much mana as it had with the cat—well over ten thousand.
Unfortunately, circles didn’t scale with our attributes. Even with my high [Source], focusing so much mana into a single spell was likely beyond our reach no matter how much time we had to prepare.
I’d had ample time to prepare with circles against Palefang. With the wyvern, it might take a little more on-the-fly maneuvering. If we tried to draw our circles at a distance and lure the beast to them, we’d run the risk of attracting other wyverns—wyverns that we couldn’t kill without starting another primeval convergence and attracting even more.
And so we had to fight the beast at its nest. I would distract it, and Zirilla would put together our spell—which would stopper its healing, not its mana replenishment, and hopefully be strong enough to do even that much.
We wove between the mist layers, our flight path following the contours of the mountains as we came ever closer to the mightiest peak.
It’s beautiful, Zirilla said as the mountain began to loom out of the haze and we were rising toward the fourth mist layer.
I haven’t seen its heights up close yet, I said, suddenly anticipating not just the wyvern, but the view.
We didn’t have to discuss the matter to agree that our search would start with the most obvious place, the peak. There was a good chance that it was too high even for a wyvern with the appropriate skills, that feeding on other creatures necessitated it go lower, but it was still a good place to start.
The snow-glazed slopes of the mountain grew steeper as they approached the fourth mist layer, until we were following an almost vertical cliff. A wyvern spotted us, swooping down out of the mists to go for Zirilla, but I scared it away with a blast of lightning, careful not to kill it lest I build toward the triggering of a convergence.
We rose into the mists, both of us watching for elementals—and I found something more interesting almost immediately.
Break for the summit and get started, I said quickly. Go left.
I could sense it in the mists—whether it had come because it sensed Zirilla, I couldn’t say, but now it glided down toward us, stifling the noise of its wings with [Air Magick] while hiding itself with the mist.
Zirilla sped off to my left, and I pushed harder against my skysail, moving straight for the wyvern and intending to keep it away from her.
The behemoth gained speed, but I knew it better, now: I knew that it flew and fought like it had an inexhaustible supply of mana because between all its air skills and its mana absorption, it essentially did.
I knew that there was no way I could fight it in the air, not when maneuvering around and away from it would be costly enough to keep from throwing any lightning. And even with my higher-ranked [Air Magick] I was still not sure I could outrun the beast.
I cut toward it as fast as I could, making an upward diagonal that mirrored its own trajectory. Soon it appeared before me as a dark shadow in the reddened mists, and as soon as I saw it shift its weight in the air and flare its wings to lash out with a blast of wind, I threw everything I had into quickly ascending.
It flapped its wings, sending forth the wave of air I had expected, but I had already thrown myself up and out of the path of the worst of it, and I barely had to slow my ascent to tighten my windsleeve enough that I was unhindered by the blast.
The behemoth spread its wings to their full extent and began to quickly ascend, its massive windsleeve funneling the air around it so as to cut much of the wind resistance. With my higher ranked [Air Magick], we were almost evenly matched—except it was still just a small amount faster than I was.
Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter—if Zirilla and I retreated, we’d be able to outpace it by flying together. But I didn’t intend to retreat.
I broke the mist layer with the wyvern still far enough below me that I was out of its claim. I saw the summit of the mountain for the first time, but only as a set of cliffs that rose for hundreds of meters above me.
I kept my gaze on the behemoth as we rose together and it grew closer by the moment, but it became clear that it wouldn’t catch me be the time I reached the summit, and very soon I was approaching the cliff’s edge.
I angled myself to the left, finding Zirilla’s position through the [Wild Bond] and then rising past the line of the cliffs at a point that brought me close to her, but not too close, before I crested the edge of the cliffs.
The surface of the summit looked as if a titanic hand had cut away the top of a great stone pillar, then left it to be weathered by the elements and time. The angled plateau had been mostly cleared of its snow by the motions of the wyvern and its beating wings. What remained had been packed into rough patches of ice that filled pits and crevices.
Zirilla had taken a patch of ground on the higher side of the mountain, and I landed almost a hundred meters down from her and began to extend a line of mana toward where the wyvern was so that when its shadow rose over the mountainside I struck it immediately with a small lightning bolt.
The behemoth raised its wings, shedding some of its gathered air to land on the frozen slope ahead of me with an earthshaking crash. Then it brought its wings forward, buffeting me with a concussive blast of focused air that tore at the scant patches of snow on the ground to raise up billowing gusts of glittering ice.
The wave struck me, and I didn’t try to resist it with my windsleeve, instead protecting my face and ears and allowing the blast to knock me back into the air, then using my magic to push myself back to the ground.
The wyvern let out a furious shriek, and I roared back at it. Its [Air Magick] might have been excellent at putting me off-kilter when mid-flight, but on the ground, it was a feeble attack against my [Aegis] and general strength.
The wyvern came toward me, closing the distance between us quickly by clawing its way forward across the slope, its winged forelimbs making craters where they landed as its tail swayed behind it, keeping its balance.
A little closer, please, Zirilla said.
I surged my [Strength] to leap back as the behemoth approached, keeping myself well out of its reach. It hissed, reared up, and beat its wings again, sending another, much larger wave of focused air my way.
I leapt back, then shattered a small, cylinder-shaped section of stone beneath me, tore the shards out with my magic, and plunged my arm into it to hold myself in place as the wind washed over me. Again I had relinquished most of my windsleeve, protecting only my eyes and ears to save mana.
But while I did this, the behemoth took its opportunity to charge forward, spreading its wings, filling them with a blanket of air, then soaring up the snow-covered peak to land just in front of me, its winged forelimbs kicking up flurries of snow as stones cracked beneath its weight and sent debris tumbling down the mountainside.
Distract? Zirilla asked.
I gave a wordless assent as the wyvern reared up its head to strike. Then, as its jaws came snapping toward me, I filled my skysail and threw myself back, leaving a line of mana that I quickly ignited into a fast bolt of lightning.
The behemoth flinched, but the blast of lightning was so weak that it wouldn’t even have killed its smaller kin—instead it had been my distraction. A split-second after I threw my bolt, I felt Zirilla’s thin line of mana spider through the air beside me, then ignite with blue-white light, creating a bolt of off-color lighting that sent a ripple of fading energy across the wyvern’s body.
Got it, she said a moment later.
She’d hit it with our curse.
The behemoth let out a short, confused cry, backing away from me. It looked between me and Zirilla—and then it charged at Zirilla.