The world in front of him blurred and twisted in on itself as Selt stood at the boundary to the Distorted Fields. A place where one could take a single step and walk a mile, where the laws of space warped and all manners of dangerous essence beasts lurked within. One misguided footfall in this plane could send even a clan Attuned heading for their grave.

For Selt it had become his sanctuary. A place where Veneer and his cronies wouldn’t harass him and the loathsome gaze of his fellow clan members couldn’t follow. With the failing of his melding several seasons back, his future in the clan had already come to an end. Without a spirit to guide him, to allow him to absorb essence from the vital aspects of the world around him, his growth would forever stagnate.

While the others his age were being built as pillars that one would day support the clan he was a thief stealing their stones. A drain on the clan’s resources without any means of paying it back. At least that was how the others saw him.

Selt unshouldered his bow causing the quiver filled with arrows strapped across his back to rattle. During the melding, the clan’s guiding spirit had told him his fate had yet to be decided, if he could prove himself an asset to the clan then his cursed destiny might just change.

With a deep breath he stepped across the threshold. Despite having traversed from this exact entrance a hundred times before, the effect of the space madara was no less unnerving.

The grass out to his sides twisted and curved upwards from the grey energy, enclosing him in a tunnel of green as the source for this particular binding sensed his presence. From experience he knew that no matter how far he traveled down this expanse he would never reach its end. Like a snake biting its own tail, space had looped in on itself, trapping the unwary into a never-ending cycle.

The only way to break free of such an environment was with a spiritual technique strong enough to overwhelm the intent keeping the madara together, or by finding a gap.

The first time Selt had stumbled in here, it had taken him almost two days to get out. Two days of fruitless wandering before he had stumbled across a natural forming weakness in the cyclical loop, a place where the energy was held together so thinly it was almost non-existent.

He withdrew an arrow from his quiver and drove it into the ground, placing a marker from where he had entered in case he lost his positioning. As long as he entered at the same place the distance to the exit was always the same, which was fortunate since it was almost indiscernible from the rest of the binding.

With his position marked he began counting out his steps, ensuring each one was spaced an equal distance apart. After the count reached seventy-two he stopped to scour the wall on his right, looking for a small section in the barrier that was only slightly more opaque than the rest.

Even after all his practice finding the exit on his first try was exceedingly rare, he had learned through trial and error that it was quicker to retreat to his marker and start over if he didn’t end up directly next to it. So it came almost as a surprise when after a few moments of searching he found what he was looking for.

With a quick thanks to the Spirit of Fortune, he dropped to his knees getting to eye-level with the swirling grey section of energy, recognizing the weak-spot by its slightly lighter hue. Normally one would want to avoid getting near such a concentrated amount of wild madara, based on it’s aspect and whatever catalyst layered it with intent, the madara could produce a wide variety of unknown and oftentimes dangerous effects. If Selt hadn’t already known that this particular binding was rather harmless it would’ve been a foolish risk.

As it was, he had searched the binding for its source, hoping fortune would allow him to find the artifact serving as its catalyst. Recovering such a treasure would go a long way in proving his worth to the clan.

But it seemed the Spirit of Fate held other intentions. No matter how many times he looked the result was always the same. Such failures were becoming a common theme in his life as of late.

Selt shook such despondent thoughts from his mind, focusing on the task at hand. Today would be different, it had to be.

He pressed his palms against the wall of bound space-madara, the contact having the disorienting effect of stretching out his hands in the same manner as it had the grass. You will break. He thought, determination giving strength to his own intent as he began to push against the binding with both his mind and body. You will break.

There was no obvious effect or strain on the bound madara as it continued to resist his efforts. The artifact holding this binding together was powerful, trying to break its intent was like trying to wash away a mountain with a pail of water. But he wasn’t trying to break the whole binding, only erode a small piece of it.

Selt dug his feet in the ground, pushing with his legs as well as his arms as he continued to whittle away at the stubborn barrier. It took several minutes of absolute focus and strain before his efforts finally bore fruit.

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With a soft pop the bound madara gave way, ripping apart like torn cloth as his body toppled through the newly created opening with the sudden lack of resistance.

He tumbled onto the open ground, rolling over and crushing tall stalks of yellow grass as he tried to quickly arrest his momentum. As soon as he got his fall under control he rose to his feet, swiftly nocking and drawing his bow in one smooth motion as he cautiously surveyed his surroundings.

His labored breathing hung like clouds of white in the crisp morning air as he struggled to recoup from the physical and mental effort of breaking through the binding. The plains of the Distorted Fields rose and fell around him in a sea of golden hills while aspects of space dotted the environment like jagged black tears in reality.

The only movement in the area came from the silent drifting of spirits as they floated around these aspects, soaking in the space-madara that seeped through the cracks. It would be a millennia before these fractured souls regained enough awareness to be capable of melding but Selt’s heart still ached at the sight of them.

He let his bow slacken but kept the arrow nocked just in case. The weapon would do little more than annoy most of the essence beasts that roamed these plains, so his best chance at survival remained in his ability to go unnoticed, still it never hurt to be cautious.

Grey space-madara from several of the nearby aspects began to swirl and converge around the hole he had made in the binding, moving like tendrils of smoke as the powerful intent from the catalyst already worked to patch the damage.

Escaping the entrapment had deposited him several miles away from where he had first entered. It was the quickest and safest way he had discovered to approach the region’s epicenter. Allowing him to circumnavigate many of the more dangerous bindings and beast territories along the way.

Selt crept low among the tall yellow stalks, carefully making his way to the territory that held his goal.

The yellow sea around him blurred and warped as he went, rising and falling like waves on the ocean. The closer he drew to the epicenter the more dense the number of aspects that dotted the landscape became. They hovered in the sky like open wounds and stretched across the ground like impossibly deep chasms.

For once his lack of spiritual power worked in his favor as it made his presence all but invisible to the keen senses of any essence beasts in the area. There was a point when in order to avoid one of the more sinister bindings he had mapped from one of his prior expeditions, he was forced to creep by a herd of wild Nox. Their massive hairy forms were grazing peacefully in the tall twisting fields as they worked to slowly strip the land bare.

One of the unfortunate herbivores had the misstep to wander into the very same binding he had attempted to avoid. A grey cube of madara formed around the beast boxing it in. The creature rammed its massive tusks into the wall trying to pierce through the madara as it began to close in around it.

Its thrashing quickly took on a panicked undertone as the space around it continued to shrink. Selt was forced to avert his eyes as the sight became too grotesque for even his hardened stomach. Worse than the beast’s heart-wrenching cries and snap of bone was the silence that followed. When he glanced back, the massive creature had been rendered into no more than a pile of decaying mush, a warning for the other inhabitants of these deadly plains at least until the next rainfall. It was a grizzly reminder of what could so easily become of his own fate if all didn’t go according to plan today.

As he watched a small orb of flowing grey light slipped free of the beast’s body, zipping erratically in the air. It might take decades for that newly born spirit to shrug off the imprint such a death would leave on its fledgling consciousness and centuries more before it would regain enough sense of self to be anything more than just a wandering fragment.

He moved a bit more cautiously after that incident, the idea of stepping into a binding he hadn’t previously mapped out whittling away at his nerves. Selt almost let out a cry of relief when the first scraggly tree made its appearance. More than providing a slight respite from heaven’s blistering heat, it was the first sign that he was nearing the region’s center.

With the trees came the ruins. Small pillars of sunbaked stone half standing amongst craters of dirt and the malformed landscape spoke of an age-old battle that had long since desecrated these lands. The clash between those ancient forces had torn apart the very fabric of space and time littering the plains with scars still lingering to this day.

Many of the bindings in this region were formed from the artifacts left behind by the battle’s fallen warriors. The powerful intent stored within their weapons and armor had slowly strayed over the years, influenced by the abundance of space-madara until they had practically become aspects themselves.

Finally after what felt like days of stress-filled walking but was probably no more than a few hours, he reached the only building still standing in all of the Distorted Fields, an ancient temple that radiated such a heavy amount of spiritual pressure that it made his soul quake from a half-mile away. Of course, the building itself wasn’t what was exuberating such a terrifying amount of power, that aura belonged to the structure’s sole inhabitant, the Tyrant.

The Tyrant was the unspoken leader of the Distorted Fields, an essence beast so powerful that even the clan elders would pale at the mere mention of its name. All clans paid tribute to the Tyrant for it was by its grace that they were allowed to enter the treasure-filled plains.

It was rumored that one clan even offered up their own members as sacrifices to the king for fear of not providing a worthy enough gift. The various bones that littered the steps leading up to the temple’s mouth made Selt think that such sayings were more than just rumors.

The Tyrant of course was not his goal. Despite the renown he would earn from clans all over the region for slaying such a beast, there were much easier ways to commit suicide.

Selt hunkered low in the tall grass and began to approach the temple’s base. It was well known that the Tyrant spent most of its time resting and he prayed to Fortune that it was doing so now. Without a spirit he would be no different than the air itself to the beast’s senses, giving him the perfect opportunity to try what none of his clansmen would consider in their wildest dreams, to steal from the king.