She pulled the bowstring back, feeling the feathers against her cheek. Her arm strained to hold the single string. It wasn’t a compound bow, Kate Barton preferred old school bows. A single string, wooden frame. The one she was using had been her grandfathers. He’d made it himself, had used it for years before passing it down to her.

Skipped right over her dad, which had annoyed him. A lot of Kate’s relationship with her grandfather had annoyed her fathers. Just being born a girl had annoyed her father. He’d never come out and said it, but they all knew.

When the Connection hit, she’d been in the backyard practicing with the bow. She never used it hunting, afraid she’d break it in the woods. She owned one of those modern compound, with the shorter body, for hunting. When the Connected System Adapted her, changed everything around her, she had been afraid the bow had been lost. It had been in her hand, she’d held it tight during the earthquake.

It had disappeared.

A lot of the stuff in her yard had disappeared.

The tractor, her truck, some of the fencing around the old pastures. Even her phone. It wasn’t in her pocket. She ran for the house. They still had a landline as cell service was spotty in the valley their home was in. It was spotty in a lot of places in Montana.

Bursting through the door she ran for the phone hanging on the wall. Picking up the receiver, Kate hadn’t heard a dial tone. She still tried.

Nothing.

Eventually Kate realized she needed to find out what was going on. That meant traveling to find other people. Grabbing her bow, quiver, long bladed hunting knife and her camping gear, Kate set out through the woods.

It was quicker to reach the neighbors by going cross country instead of following the road. She had no car, why walk the longer distance? Through the woods it was a ten mile hike. Nothing that she couldn’t handle.

Somehow, even though she knew she hadn’t gotten lost, she had walked those trails dozens of times, the trip took much longer. It could have been the monsters she encountered.

Kate had no other word for them. Enlarged chipmunks, a giant fox, even giant ants. Somehow she managed to kill them all, with bow or knife and gained in Levels.

The neighbors, the McAllisters, had a hunting cabin in the woods. Kate had been excited to find it still there, able to sleep in shelter for the night. The morning found her fighting a humanoid creature called a Pudwiggie. She knew the stories of the creatures. There was indigenous blood in her family tree, her grandmother on her mother’s side. The real thing was scarier than the stories.

There were more of them in the woods. She was what she thought of as halfway to the neighbors when she hit Level 5 and got her Class.

And her grandfather’s bow.

It appeared in her hand. The same worn wood, the same string. Everything the same in looks but not in feel. Kate could feel the bow. It was part of her, fed off her Spirit, a word she didn’t really know except through those notifications she was now getting. A notification called it her Spirit Weapon. It would Level with her, grow in strength with her. It was a part of her.

She would never lose it. It would never break.

And it even had a name now.

Ancestor.

Her Class was everything she’d imagined. Spirit Huntress. It was a Rare Class, whatever that meant. All she knew was that it made her stronger. The things in the forest, including the giant Forest Bear, were threats but she could handle them now. Everything she did made her stronger.

When she got to the McAllisters, she found the entire family. Together, they journeyed to the nearest town. A long walk through the roads, choosing to go that way in hopes of finding more people. They did, and Kate ended up being what her Class called her.

The Huntress.

She didn’t spend much time with the others, always in the woods and plains around them. Hunting and killing. Protecting the people. Even when Jerald McAllister formed the Clan, hundreds joining them, she kept herself distant. She had a role to perform.

A role which found her in the woods, over a day from the Clanhold. She was alone, like most of her hunts. What she was after, what she had found, was a beast that had been terrifying the miners at the Clan’s nearby Resource Dungeon. A giant bear. It had been Identified as Ursia, the first named monster any of them had encountered. It looked like one of the Deep Forest Bruins that Kate had encountered many times over the last few weeks. Except it was much bigger and stronger.

Her Evaluate gave off the feeling of being stronger than her. Much stronger.

A good challenge.

Kate wasn’t a fool. She didn’t take risks. But this beast had to go. The Clan needed that mine to survive and grow. Ursia was a threat.

She stalked it for hours, learning some of its habits. She’d watched it fight off a couple of Pudwiggies and some large wolves. She hated attacking when it was wounded, but what choice did she have?

Sighting down the arrow, she willed Spirit into the shaft. The stone arrow head started to glow, filling with the power she was feeding it. It was an Ability from her Class, First Shot. She had managed to one-shot some powerful creatures with it.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

That wouldn’t happen with Ursia. Kate had a feeling she’d have to get in close to finish off the giant bear. But if she could take down a large percentage of Health from ranged, before engaging in melee, that would be for the best.

Taking a deep breath, moving the feathers off her cheek, Kate released her breath, releasing the string, letting the glowing arrow fly.

***

Drew ducked beneath the swing of the ghoul, feeling the kinetic energy flow into his Core. His baton smacked into the monster’s head, sending it reeling to the side. Channeling his Spirit into his leg, Drew kicked out. His boot slammed into the ghoul’s side, cracking ribs and caving in the rotting flesh. He grimaced as his foot pulled out, taking some of the flesh with it. Chunks dropped to the ground, smaller pieces flying as he shook the foot before stepping solidly back on the ground.

The ghoul fell, a huge hole in its side. Drew stepped forward, swinging the machete in his left hand. He cut into the neck, slicing deep and killing the monster. Looking around, he saw the rest of the party had finished off their targets.

“Everyone good?”

He got some nods and grunts in reply. Seemed no one had gotten hurt in the attack.

That was good. It wasn’t the same for their other fights. The wargs and frogs had been the hardest things they’d faced so far. Having Lochlan Brady’s notes really helped. There were some changes, but not many.

The Challenge Dungeon was tough, even knowing what they’d be facing. It was living up to its name, but Drew didn’t think it was as life threatening as it must have been for the Bradys. He had more respect for Loch, Harper and Piper now. Especially Harper and Piper. How had the three, all just starting out and Harper not even Classed at the start, had managed to survive?

Even with the risk, the Dungeon was worth doing. They were gaining a lot of Spirit Experience and even some gear. Drew’s baton had been upgraded.

The new one wasn’t collapsible like the old, but stronger in every way. He’d found it with a sheath that strapped to his leg. A foot and a half long, it was a half inch thick for most of the length and widening at the top, and made of a strange material he’d never heard of. Stonewood.

Stonewood Truncheon

Attack +2%

Critical Hit Chance +10%

Upon Critical Hit, Stonewood Truncheon will activate Bonebreak, shattering the bone it struck and causing numbness throughout the body.

Drew had seen the Bonebreak Ability during the first fight after getting the baton. It was officially called a truncheon, but he liked baton better. He’d struck a warg in the side, hearing the shoulder bone not just crack but shatter. Not only did the leg hang limp but the numbness spread through the warg’s body, the other legs not supporting its weight. It fell to the ground, leaving it open to a follow up attack. The baton had caved in the monster’s skull.

Drew just wished it had more than a 10% chance.

Not everyone in the party had gotten gear yet. There had been a leather chest piece that Drew had wanted but he’d passed it off to make sure everyone was getting something. It didn’t make sense to equip just one person, not when everyone needed to upgrade.

He walked over to the stairwell leading down. It was designed to look like a cave, the small island filled with the monstrous ghouls. If he remembered the notes right, there’d be a giant skeleton in the next room.

Not just a large skeleton but the literal skeleton of a giant.

Lochlan had told him about the giant he’d encountered. Drew didn’t have a hard time picturing what they would look like. He’d fought ogres. He’d seen and run away from giants, not something he was proud of and was looking forward to a rematch. But skeletal giants?. There was the possibility of anything existing.

Everything was on the table in the Connected System. There were some myths that he hoped wouldn’t appear, but after seeing a Headless Horseman without the horse fighting Loch, there wasn’t much that he’d let surprise him anymore.

He’d met and talked with an elf.

One straight out of the fantasy books. Drew hadn’t been a big reader. He’d read some through the years, and some fantasy even though the political thrillers were his typical go-to. When he’d been stationed, there hadn’t always been choices, so he’d take what was available. He’d seen the movies, especially the Jackson trilogies. He knew what fantasy story elves looked like and it was Elora Seedspear.

She was everything the stories got right and more. Beautiful, exotic, graceful. Every move she made was pure grace. No wasted movements, everything with purpose. He’d found it hard not to stare. Luckily he wasn’t the only one. Everyone, male and female, tended to stare.

It was rude. Drew knew that, sure that the others did too. They just couldn’t help it.

Elora was stories made flesh.

She also answered the question: ‘are we alone out there’.

The elf was an alien.

From another planet.

Magic, which is what Spirit was, Drew found it easier to just think of it like that, instead of science. But Tirna was still another planet. Wasn’t there some quote about magic just being science that had no explanation yet?

Even though they fought monsters straight from stories like ogres, or mutated animals like wolves or ticks, and they could perform magical attacks; it was really Elora’s presence that had driven home the truth of their new world to Drew. He’d accepted that things were different. But seeing Elora just showed how different it truly was.

An elf.

And she was beautiful.

He knew he was infatuated with her. He just wasn’t sure if it was the exoticness of her, or Elora herself. Maybe a combination of both. They’d talked at night and back at the Clanhold. Not extensively or deep, but enough for him to start to get an idea of what kind of person she was.

Driven, that was for sure. Motivated. Loyal. Dedicated. Elora was intense. The kind of intense that drove people away, made her appear cold and aloof.

He thought there was more to her. What was beneath that shell?

He understood why the shell was there. She was the definition of a stranger in a strange land. And it was voluntary. She had chosen to take the risk, to be the only elf, to stand out amongst everyone else. It had to be rough.

Because of the differences in culture, and her shell, Drew didn’t know how she really felt about anything. There were cracks starting to form, he thought at least, but maybe they weren’t there. How was he to know? Everything about her was alien.

Drew found it funny that aliens turned out to be straight out of fantasy. He wondered what Star Wars or Star Trek nerds would be thinking?

“Here we go,” Drew said, motioning to the rest of his party. “Let’s go kill a giant.”

The giant was already dead, just a skeleton, but Drew didn’t think it mattered to his people. It didn’t to him. Giants had slaughtered all those people back at the Strafford camp. They couldn’t bring those people back and killing this giant wouldn’t mean anything, but to the party it was a small bit of revenge.