My stomach lurches as gravity sputters and stalls out. Directions lose their meaning. There is no up, no down, only buzzing emptiness. The glowing runes blur into streaks, like falling stars, before winking out one after another and leaving behind only the void of darkness. For a moment, I feel weightless, falling and floating, until something yanks me toward a point of light in the distance. Every nerve in my body screams in protest.

I emerge into the fresh air, stumbling and disoriented. My head spins. I throw up the jerky I just ate behind the trunk of a towering pine tree.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I can see an identical stone arc to the one I left behind in the castle. The shimmering distortion beneath it bends and ripples. It explodes into a swirling kaleidoscope of colors that dissolve into the dense ambient air. I´m about to try to start running when I see the runes carved in the stones go completely dark, spent, empty. I may be safe for a while.

Another violent spurt of vomit gushes out of my mouth. It flies in a wide arc over the gnarling roots and needles that cover the ground before me. My legs shake as if made out of jelly. I can feel a stinging pain throbbing inside my chest. I feel like I just surfaced after spending too much time underwater. Every wheezing breath I take seems to want to burn my lungs. Why does the air feel so dense, so heavy? I try to right myself and get a hold of my spinning head, but my balance is all wonky. I feel like if I had one too many shots of the cheap moonshine they brew in the slums.

“Fuck.” I sit down again, holding my forehead with my hands until the violent retching stops and my stomach settles. Only a sour aftertaste in my throat remains.

My head has cleared up, but the sensation of weight pressing down on me remains. It feels almost electric, like the charged calm before the storm. It buzzes over my skin and makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

“What is this?” The air seems alive, crisp, sparkling. You can almost taste it on your tongue, sharp and penetrating, with a slight metallic aftertaste. “Where the fuck am I?”

It´s the mana density. It must be at least ten times higher here than in the city. Maybe even more. It hangs thick in the air, almost like it’s about to condense, saturating every breath. My lungs have stopped hurting now. I feel like I´m breathing for the first time. Everything I did before in my life must have been just the illusion of breathing. I can feel the mana suffusing me, washing through my whole body, tickling every cell, eroding the tiredness. Some of it gets gobbled up by the half-finished gathering spiral carved into my core, but most of it exits me again when I breathe out. I feel awake, alert, and utterly rested as if I had just woken up from a long sleep.

My heart is galloping in my chest, not out of fear but awe, spurred on by the sheer potency of the place. I look around over a sea of shimmering green trees and towering mountains. Everything is too bright, too sharp, too vivid. I can hear splashing water rushing over the stones somewhere below me, down in the valley. I feel like it’s almost drowning out my hearing, but it’s not. I can hear just fine, maybe even better than ever. Birds chirp and trill, so high up in the air they seem just colorful blobs fluttering between the branches. The ground beneath me hums faintly, resonating in my bones like the silent beat of a bass drum. I feel like I am in a different world. Somewhere where everything is more. The boundaries of reality are malleable here, waiting to be rewritten. Everything is possible.

“This is why all of them are so strong, isn´t it?” I mutter, catching my breath. “Fucking nobles!” I should be able to finish my mana-gathering spiral in just a few days here. I can finally increase my core to the copper-rank. I could become a real mage here in under a week, couldn´t I? Well, an apprentice.

Quit daydreaming, I can´t dally. I need some distance between me and my pursuers to shake them off. Once they manage to recharge the runes of that portal, they will swarm this place. I need to find another way back to the city before The Crow gets antsy.

“Shit!”

I´m nowhere close, am I? I may have seriously fucked up this time. With this mana density, this place can´t be anywhere close to my home city. I´ll never make it back in time.

Breathe, Kivi, breathe. I need to shake off my pursuers first before I can reassess. My eyes dart around over soft beds of moss, shimmering with dewdrops. Pierced by solitary brown needles. Fields of glowing fern give way to dense underbrush. Thorny shrubs and creeping ivy strangle the dark trunks of the trees that reach upwards like the fingers of a giant trying to catch the clouds. It will be hard to advance through here without leaving an obvious trail. Maybe I could try to cross the river after wading a while upstream. That should also throw off any dogs or other beasts that hunt by scent they may bring with them. Maybe I can scale the wall of the gorge on the other side.

The portal starts humming at my back. The first rune is recovering its glow, sympathetically linked through space with another rune somewhere far away. I start running down towards the river.

The icy water bites at my legs, sending shivers up my spine. The weight of my backpack is tensing my shoulders and neck, complicating my precarious balance over the slick, algae and moss-covered wobbling boulders that stick out from the riverbed. I need to be careful not to stumble and fall. The last thing I want is for the contents of my backpack to get wet. But the river is not playing nice. Each step upstream feels like a battle. The raging current swirling around my thighs pushes me in different directions. It wants to pull me under, to smash my body between the rocks with unrelenting force. Shimmering trout and salmons pass me by, jumping up the waterfalls like they don´t exist. Almost as if mocking my efforts. Smug in their superiority, even if I can´t hear their taunts because the roar of the water drowns out every other sound save for my thundering heartbeat. With each step forward, the weight of the water seems to increase, battering my aching muscles, but I can´t stop. I can´t afford to. Distant barks reach my ears whenever the wind changes direction. They are already here. I need to speed up.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

I get out of the water after another bend of the river, drenched from the waist down. I let myself fall onto a lichen-covered boulder to catch my breath for a second. Something hisses loudly behind me, and I whirl around, almost falling into the water because of the unexpected weight of my backpack. I come face to face with an enormous serpent baring her fangs at me. Lazily warming up her body, bathing in the sun on another boulder close over, but tensely coiled up and ready to strike if I dare to step closer.

Fuck! There are predators here. I should have thought of that. What else is out there? Wolfs? Bears? Mountain-lions? There could be even mana beasts in this ambient mana density. I may be in well over my head. I step back slowly, without stopping to break my stare contest with the reptile. Is it venomous? It must be with those fangs. Slowly, the serpent lowers its head onto its coiled body, judging the distance between us as far enough for its safety. I take another step back. It doesn´t stop looking at me even so.

The walls of the gorge are almost vertical, slick, and humid down here by the water. But it isn´t that hard to start scaling them because the water seems to have carved channels, cracks, and holes into the iron-red surface of the rock. The rubber-soled boots I borrowed for our heist help a lot. Maybe I can keep them if I never find my way back. Maybe I shouldn´t go back. The Crow will be furious with me for being late, for letting myself get distracted by avarice. I should have known better and stayed on top of those two idiots. But what else can I do? I´ve never been far away from the city. I don´t know anybody anywhere. Do the gangs elsewhere operate the same way? Probably, I don´t know. I´ve always dreamed of having my own space in which to be left alone. To be unbothered by the fuss and chatter and the chaos and continuous problems of the other children of the street with which I grew up. But right now, the never-before-known solitude weighs heavily on me. Threatening to smash me into the ground if I don´t get a grip on myself. I´m all alone out here. I only can rely on myself. There is no one else to play distraction, giving me a chance to be lost in the crowd or dark alleys. There is no known city, with its winding streets and secret routes. Holes in crumbled buildings and stinking sewers that all of us know in and out. No. There is only the unknown wilderness, exciting but also terrifyingly alien.

A flake I was holding onto breaks apart. I hang there and watch how it plunges into the roiling waters. Stop thinking so much and climb, Kivi. Breathe and climb. I can hear more barks in the distance, echoing around the bends in the gorge from somewhere downstream. I look up and climb with renewed vigor, chimneying through a deep cleft barely wide enough for my body and backpack to pass through. I crawl deep in the shadows until I haul myself onto a ledge halfway up the canyon. It is a lateral highway hidden from beneath by a false peak. I can observe a pack of dogs down there, coming around a bend, barking, howling, and whining while wading, slipping, and dragging themselves up the stream. A sudden lightning bolt illuminates the shadows. Fuck! Was that a pre-charged talisman, or are those mages? Why are there mages after me? I remain in my hiding spot until they rush past another bend and continue with renewed haste.

Some mountain goats observe me from above, almost running all over the cliff. They come close from time to time. Watching me with deep golden-brown eyes before darting away when I´m about to reach them. Something strange is happening. The rocks I hold onto seem to gnarl and shift under my fingers, slowly smoothing into a polished, mirrorlike, holdless surface. What is happening? Are the goats doing this? The watching eyes seem to glow with hidden lights. It´s almost like they are smiling, smug that I have fallen into their trap. Yearning to throw me out of their territory, eager to watch me fall onto the sharp rocks and the roiling waters.

But they won´t succeed if I can outpace them. Their manipulation is slow going. It´s almost like the rock resists them, stubborn in its ageless, unmoving stillness. It wants to hold onto its shape until it finally concedes with a soft groan before going back to sleep. And the stupid goats don´t seem to understand that if they start manipulating the stones just a few feet above my fingers each time, I can be well past that before it snaps into its new shape. It´s now a race onward without a way back, a challenge to see who can outpace who, girl or beast. My heart drums wildly in my chest in fear and excitement. A smile escapes my lips. I´m your worst opponent. They don´t call me Spider-Girl as a joke. It may even benefit me in the long run. There is no way those mages will be able to follow me up the same way. Well, probably, who knows what kind of magic they control? At least there is no easy way for them to get the dogs up here.

I finally have reached the top. After walking over a grass and small shrub-covered plateau, I am looking down into another valley. There are more valleys, canyons, and mountain chains in whatever direction I look at, covered in a dense sea of dark green trees, slowly swaying in the wind with a ripple-like motion. A storm is brewing in the distance, slowly advancing towards us. I have no idea which direction I need to go to get back to my city, well, to get back to any kind of civilization. I can see the portal far away to the southwest. People are crawling all around it like little ants. For now, I need more distance. It doesn´t matter much in which direction. Are they all here for me? What the fuck did The Crow make me steal?

I munch on some jerky to recover my energy. I take the brass compass out. Will I be left alone if I leave it behind for them to find? Maybe, but that would mean I won´t be able to show my face back home for some time. The Crow won´t tolerate failure from one of his elite after causing such a ruckus. Attention is bad for the business. If I got results, it wouldn´t matter. But attention without results… I can´t go back empty-handed. I would risk him revoking his protection. The slums are full of opportunists, from horny teenage gang members roaming around in groups searching for trouble and entertainment to organ dealers or pimps looking for fresh meat for their brothels. When I was just a scrawny child, before The Crow took me in and started to train me, it wasn´t much of a problem. But now it may well be. The slums are no place for a solitary young woman. But where else could I go?

Munching on the hard and salty meat, I shake the compass and watch how the needle spins until it stops quivering and points somewhere to the east. What could it be pointing at? Probably some kind of treasure or The Crow wouldn´t be interested. It may point somewhere close to our city or at least somewhere in the Solaria kingdom. It would make little sense else. Or does it? Should I try to follow it? Better than any other idea I don´t have.

The sky is getting darker and darker. For now, I need a place to hide for the night. Ideally, I need to get there before the storm rolls in. I watch around. To the north, the cliffs are a brighter red in color, filled with big dark holes and tunnels. Maybe I can find a cave.