The young, red light of morning, the light mist of the night settling down into dew on the sparse blue grasses, making the rugged slope that his little cave dwells upon annoyingly slippery to traverse. Something about the red spark that traces the sky of Gorom doesn’t sit right in his heart, as it wakes him every morning, it’s better than the strange dreams he has been having though. Rell was never one to need much time to wake up after, well, waking. A lot of the elders back at the camp share around a bitter, warm drink that they brew in the morning, to help his people more quickly awaken and ready for the work of the day, but he was never fond of it. He is much fonder of the small puddle of water in his little cave, underneath a stalactite at the back end of the dark, grey hole, to wash his face and hands of a morning. A good practice picked up from his youth, and one of the reasons he marked this place on his area map in his leather-bound leafpad, in case he ever needed to spend more than a night out here, he would have a small water source. He knew his pad had taken a bit of damage from last nights pursuit, hopefully his map is still whole.

I wonder how far that beast has wandered from here as I slept, if it hunts for me today, I’m close enough to make a dash for the wall.

Having washed himself and moving from the rear of the small crack in the slope, his next task is to check on his belongings, closer to the slowly brightening mouth that will soon lead him from safety. His bag, containing material to patch his travel clothing and some thread, another set of light boots, made to fold in so that they don’t take up space, a water canteen to stave off thirst on his journeys into the wilds, some wrapped sticks of charcoal to write and mark his leafpad with, and what he had come into the wilderness for in the first place, stones from the base of the mountain that spews fire in the distance. Elder Varen, his mentor, who had taught him to communicate with mana since his mother became unresponsive, had become worried about the death of the mountain and sent him out for samples. He was the oldest Half-Elf in Rodar, and probably the oldest being in Gorom, the giant continent that is all Rell has known since his birth.

The final checks he is to make are of the vials sitting upon the belt he pulls across his waist. One contains some of the blood of his mentor, to be used if Rell ever needs to find him quickly in an emergency, or if he finds himself lost in the wilds. One contains the ashes of Rotworms, small grubs whose saliva has wound cleaning properties, it is a good medium for healing magics and Rell has a good supply at his home. Another holds the ashes of a tree near Rodar, whose wood grows incredibly slowly and is very dense, it is good to use to communicate with the natural world around him and to reinforce himself, a magical armour. And lastly are two vials which contain shavings of iron, a weak metal, but all that he could afford, he uses it in small quantities to give more weight to his pure magic offensive spells. It is arguably easier without physical material to make a blade or a bullet with pure magic, and use it to strike an enemy, but they are less mana intensive and have greater substance when using a medium for the spell.

As Rell takes the final steps toward the opening of his little cubby, he reaches toward the ocean within his chest, disturbing the peaceful surface of the orb known as his core to tease out tendrils of mana through the channels in his arms. The crisp sensation of mana running through his body is one he is now familiar with, though it is still exhilarating none less. Drawing the force of the world into his fingertips, he traces a pattern over his left eye that he has spent countless hours practicing in his youth. It is a pattern of air and water, the sigils for the elements sitting in the centre of their ring, shaped to pierce, this ring sits above another shaped to form an image, and as the lines drawn of magic start to crispen he connects threads from the nerves at the back of his eye to each ring in this formation. This is one of the first formations that Rell had to learn if he wanted to leave the camp to be a hunter, the Elders would allow no one out of the walls that didn’t know how to pierce the air, to see further and more clearly.

As the formation set, and he could feel the pull on his mana lessen to a constant trickle, the light at the entrance to the cave became blinding. He quickly closed his left eye and poked his head out of the crack in the wall to observe his surroundings, the sights of the forest greeting him.

His eyes wandered over familiar terrain, the near white skin of the trees around him contrasting against the light blue, long bladed grass that surrounds them. He had never understood how such vibrant looking life emerged from such dead looking grey soil and stone, the aptly named Everbright Tree was marvelous to look upon from his perch on this hill, a field of white trunks grasping the sky with their canopies of blue-grey leaves, barely leaving enough natural light for the shrubbery underneath to lift itself from the barren soil of Gorom. The Elders say that this is why the underneath of the leaves of the Everbright tree glow, a consideration for the struggle for life of their smaller companions, they shed a soft, colourless light onto the forest floor below, barely enough to illuminate the ground even after the spark falls to dark. It is a beautiful place at night, but the nocturnal creatures of the canopy come in the dark, to hunt the sleeping creatures resting in the cover below, after the fall of the light is a dangerous time to be outside the wall.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Rell slowly opens his left eye to let it adjust to the brightness of day, as his enhanced vision clears, the forest comes to life in a much more intimate way. The glow of the trees is now visible to him, and he can faintly see the veins of mana that produce them, and those that absorb the light on the bushes and grasses below. He watches a tiny feather no larger than a sowing needle fall from the canopy, nothing that thin has the right to fall as forcefully as this feather does, it is from a beast of the night, magically enhanced for strength and for density. His attention is taken from the feather, by the now visible vines that slowly make their way up the Everbright trees, to birth their fruits in the sunlight above. He can see the minuscule tendrils, thinner than the hairs on his head, reaching from the tip of the vine to latch onto the tree, paving the way for its own upward expansion. The small insects on the ground, warring over the tiny scraps of flesh and blood of the previous night’s victims, the victors dragging their spoils into the nests they burrow down from the centre of the blue tufts, that he can now see have serrated edges, and normally invisible openings, ready to catch the liquid life that any creature it might cut will leave on it.

But now is not the time to lose himself in the rhythm of the woods, if he means to make it back to Rodar today, he must watch for and avoid the beast which has followed him from the foothills surrounding the fire mountain. He knows those creatures can’t move properly in the densest parts of the woods, due to the bulk of their rock-like flesh, so he scans the areas where the terrain is more sloped, and the areas where the trees rule is less. Maybe the beast was injured fighting one of the terrifying, silent birds of the night, and has fled back to its mountainous home.

Finding no trace of the rugged hound of stone, he breaks the formation over his eye, and starts to draw energy out of his core again. This time he directs it into his hips, his knees, and his ankles. Strengthening the body is not a practice he excels in, but he has done enough training for it to be useful to him, and so he begins to layer his mana over the muscles in his legs as well. His does this reinforce his legs for the formation he is about to draw upon his feet, a pattern of earth and air, a ring of solidity, to reinforce the ground before his foot lands on it, another pattern of earth above that, a ring of repulsion, to push the earth away from himself as his foot strikes the ground.

Ready to leave, he takes a leap from the slope to the forest floor below. As Rell falls toward the ground, he feels a building force beneath his feet. Shit. His feet touch the ground. Before he has the chance to even regain his balance let alone take a proper step, the sigils on his leg flare to action, violently thrusting him a few meters to the side. Okay, they’re set a little bit off my centre of gravity, and they activate before I take a step. I can mess around with the formation and have that fixed within fifteen minutes, I think. His thoughts calm, despite being mid-flight after his landing sent him bounding again, off into the bushes. Before he strikes the ground again, he breaks his connection to the formation on his feet and accepts a hard landing, accompanied by a thud and the rustling of the surrounding greenery.

With a drive brought about by his nature to challenge himself, he pulls his leafpad from the pocket of his shorts, grimacing at the charred claw mark that sinks a third of the way into the small book. Pulling at the neck of his form fitting jerkin to ward away the heat, he takes his bag off his back to find his charcoal writing sticks, thinking of the ways he can improve upon his creation, if I can change the first ring to harden the earth upon contact instead of as it approaches, I can set the top rings activation to the completion of the hardening, and put an inert sigil around the repel circle to slow the activation a little…

Pulling at his shirt with one hand, The woods are never this hot, the trees normally keep the temperature pretty consistent, maybe I’m catching..

*crack*

Rell stilled, his heavily beating heart the only sound in the silence around him, the silence he thought he had brought upon the forest with the crashing of his failed launch. How could I be so stupid, the heat of the mountains around me, and this silence, in the forest? Realising now that the quiet around him is the sound a predator makes whilst stalking its prey, Rell quickly puts his book back into his bag, fixes it onto his back, and starts to move quickly and quietly through the undergrowth, keeping his head low and his body coiled. The lack of sound around him and visibility keeps his heart wound tight, he is so close to home, I can make it if I’m quiet. The disturbance of the brush to his right startles him and Rell uncoils his legs into a leap forward. The hulking form of a four-legged collection of small boulders in the shape of a broad hound, breaks through the area he was standing in only a few moments before. The monstrous beast collides with a white-skinned tree the width of two men, nearly uprooting it as Rell awkwardly tumbles back onto his feet into a dead sprint, regretting instantly the glance thrown over his shoulder, locking his eyes onto the basalt claws of the beasts feet, shimmering like a mirage from the heat they radiate as they dig into the ground to prepare to chase down the prey that has eluded them.