In the days that followed, I hunted the wilds around our settlement, searching for the beast whose blood would fuel my ritual.

  I’d finally embraced the added power from killing Palimpsest. I was level 36, and had spent all 4 of the [Bestow]s that I’d had free on [Strength]. [Surge of Might] could double the attribute in an instant, and so each point I acquired considerably raised the ceiling of my physical power, especially considering how frequently I could use [Surge of Might] on account of my absurdly high [Channel].

  Hassina and I had built new skills, and before I’d taken to the skies to search for my quarry, I’d looked upon my new attributes with satisfaction:

  ?—Your Attributes and Resources:

  364 [Aegis]

  320 [Agility]

  264 [Strength]

  274 [Channel]

  157 [Focus]

  337 [Source]

  110% [Primeval Resonance]

  3370/3370 Mana, 64% Primeval

  100/100 [Blood Pool]

  100/100 [Surge Pool]

  I had almost three times the [Strength] I’d had when Zirilla and I had fought the wyvern atop the Skytusk. Apart from my increased [Strength], all of them had increased when I’d reached level 35 and my [Bestow] had increased to 20. I’d also built another attribute-increasing skill with the core I’d gotten at level 35, one that granted me even more [Source] and [Channel]:

  The newest addition, and likely the last passive I’d be taking for some time yet:

  [Font of Storms 21]

  Components: [*Primeval 5] + [Air 4] + [Lightning 4] + [Mana 4] + [Surge 4]

  + 75 to [Channel] and [Source]

  + 44% [Air] and [Lightning] Efficiency. Efficiency refunds a portion of spent mana spent on skills.

  + 44% [Air] and [Lightning] Potency. Potency increases the effect strength of skills.

  It had been a costly skill to build, but not so much that it pained us. Luthiel’s tracking implements had helped us find two more colonies of the lightning bugs since we’d frozen the first. It took 60 [Lightning 1] keys to make a [Lightning 4], but out of the near-thousand we’d gotten in total, this wasn’t much of a cost: there were only a few elves who could use them at all, after all.

  I’d lorded over the skill since I’d gotten it. I could channel mana so quickly now that more efficiency was a crucial part of sustaining the truly incredible speeds that I could fly at. And with the bonuses that it granted to my lightning, the mantis-killing bolts that I’d thrown in the battle with Palimpsest would be commonplace.

  It had cost a million essence to build. Rank 4 skill keys were worth 250,000 essence and 60 rank 1 keys each. But we were about to spend more than two-thirds of a billion on my ritual, all told: setting ourselves back a few million to bolster the skills of the champion wasn’t as insane as it would have been when many of our fighters had unused skill cores.

  Pure skills like [Wild Bond] might be so broad in their use as to be class-defining, but when it came to building raw power in any domain, nothing beat the benefits of combining multiple aspects into a perfect skill.

  Though my newly-upgraded [Elemental Power] was performing a similar function:

  [Elemental Power 21]

  Components: [*Primeval 5] + [Elemental 4] + [Elemental 4] + [Elemental 4] + [Elemental 4]

  + 65% [Elemental] Attunement. Attunement reduces the [Focus] requirements of skills.

  + 65% [Elemental] Efficiency. Efficiency refunds a portion of spent mana spent on skills.

  + 65% [Elemental] Potency. Potency increases the effect strength of skills.

  Another million essence, but the strength that the added 7 ranks granted me couldn’t be underestimated. Once, I’d stricken fear into the hearts of archmages because I could channel so fast that I would strike their spells from the air with [Fray]-infused bolts of lightning.

  It would be a long time before I reclaimed the power I’d once held, but a cursory review of my skills before I left showed me that I was at least getting closer, step by step:

  ?—Your Skills:

  G: [Sable Grace 20]

  G: [Primeval Power 30]

  0: [Primeval Mana 14]

  2: [Kite’s Grace 14]

  4: [Air Magick 14]

  6: [Primeval Mana Hide 14]

  8: [Earthen Might 14]

  10: [Surge of Might 14]

  15: [Wild Bond 21]

  20: [Lightning Magick 14]

  25: [Elemental Power 21]

  30: [Surging Power 14]

  35: [Font of Storms 21]

  B1: [Aziriel’s Pale Furs]

  B2: [Aziriel’s Pale Fangs]

  B3: [Aziriel’s Girdle of Might]

  B4: [Shell Splinter of Wild Sight]

  I’d left my bow behind in favor of one of the new enchanted items the weavers had been producing en masse: a shard of Palimpsest’s shell that granted [Wild Sight 17]. We’d also ranked [Wild Bond] up to 21 with rank 4 skill keys. The two of them together would give me the power to search the ground below me for life even if I was flying above the treetops.

  And while my bow was certainly useful, it would do little against most behemoths—even if the arrows pierced armor and flesh, they’d do little more than a thorn-prick.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Beyond those, most of my skills were still ranked 14—three rank 3 keys and my rank 5 cores. Come the ritual, I’d be replacing quite a few of them with a temporary skillset made just to help me channel and shape the mana involved. After that, I’d have to rebuild everything. It was a considerable expenditure of essence and aspects, but insignificant given what we were trying to accomplish.

  I flew above the second layer, searching the world beneath it with my gaze.

  Or rather, the treetop layer. We’d been here long enough that names were coming up at the council meetings. Some of them were already being used by most of the people. The second layer of mists, the one that hung just above the crowns of the great trees, had seemingly fallen into being called the treetop layer by untaken consensus.

  The third layer was being called the frostmark layer. It didn’t perfectly match the elevation where the snowline began on the slopes of the mountains, and the snowline would fall as the seasons grew colder—for we’d determined they had been—but it was close enough.

  As for the first, fourth, and fifth layers, they had no names. The first might be called the surface layer, in time—though it still wasn’t clear that the ravines and swamps around us were at the level of the world’s other surface water. The rift lake that fed the small stream which we took our water from was high, high above the level of the water in the swamps: a single tectonic shift might break it open and flood the whole of the world around us.

  And then there was the settlement itself.

  Many names had been suggested for the place that we’d be calling home for at least a few decades to come. Aziriel’s Landing wasn’t one that I was fond of. For one, it wasn’t where I’d landed unless one counted the week after we’d arrived as part of our journey between worlds.

  For another… it just felt wrong. Had we come in the manner I’d intended, with Aranar still whole and Hashephel having given up a new mana heart, I might have felt differently. But my plan had been set in motion because of the Doom: a name that conferred so much personal glory felt inappropriate. I’d voiced disapproval of the name Tel Irovex for the same reason.

  Many names had been suggested which carried a memory of Aranar, and while I understood the sentiment behind them, I’d thrown my support in with a simpler name.

  Our own set of mountains was a distinct, separate shape: the rough shape of a crescent moon. Our settlement was at the center of its inner, east-facing curve. This, and the fact that our settlement was the first settlement on a new world, would have been enough to justify the name I liked best: Cradle.

  But it also seemed that the terrain itself was inclined to nurture us. Swamp and forest, dominated by the great trees and rich in essence, aspects, and resources, stretched away to our east in the mountain’s rainshadow. The mountains themselves were not only shelter, but provided their own rich ecosystem along their lower slopes, one where smaller forests, wyverns, and snowbound creatures thrived.

  Now I soared over the vast forest to the east. My gaze pierced through the psychic stealth of the tree-crabs that clung to the sides of the great trees, camouflaged as odd-shaped knots of bark in hopes of eating some of the colored songbirds that made their home in the branches.

  I saw farther, to the families of hunting spiders and other insects that lived in the great hollows beneath the trees themselves, dark chambers made by roots that rose out of the fetid water. I saw the rainbow wingfish and the surging snappers skimming, swimming, and lying in wait near the surface. Deeper still, I saw the six-legged amphibian hulks sleeping under a layer of mud and sediment at the bottom.

  When I focused hard enough, I sensed insects crawling beneath the bark and the fur of colonies of apehounds.

  I loosened my windsleeve, letting fingers of wind sift through the roots of my hair as a soft blanket of air slid across my skin. If only I could keep flying with no regard for how far I was from the colony… if I could rely on my knowledge and explore and hunt for days and days….

  But no. There would come a time when I searched this world for new creatures just to sate my curiosity, when I laid eyes upon fields, forests, and valleys that no elven eyes had ever seen, when I sought out a mighty beast to tame… but not yet.

  I wished that I could walk in the great forest below. Not hunt, not even explore. Just… walk. I’d let every passing bird, plant, and insect catch my eye. Let every strange scent lead me to its source, and let my mind wander to walks I’d taken on other worlds, and with better company than just myself….

  Still, this was a freedom I hadn’t known for some time. Flying above all as I surveyed the land below: searching, hunting. I needed something powerful. Something with enough blood….

  In the end, I hunted for six days.

  I would rise in the morning, attend the meeting of the high council, see to any business that was urgent, schedule any business that was not urgent for that night, then take to the skies. I never landed: occasionally I would communicate the location of some remarkable feature such as colony of lightning bugs or the [Weave]-granting insects.

  The territory that we could cover with those psychics who were close to our settlement was vast. We could have arranged a relay of telepaths to cover me as I searched farther, but there was no need: I was still within range when I found the tracks, if barely.

  I was above the great forest, far enough from the settlement that the water of the swamp had given way to dark, soft soil that was covered in glowing ferns. I sensed the broken boughs and flattened ferns beneath the treetop lair as I flew overhead, then dove to fly beneath two layers of mist and land in the shadow of the tree-roots and examine them.

  It didn’t take much skill to identify the creature that must have pushed its way through the forest not a day beforehand: a behemoth hydra is not a subtle creature. It had wound its way through the trees, gripping them with jaws and claws as its tail constantly wove through the air and pressed into the ground to keep its balance and control its momentum.

  I swept my gaze across the length of the track, eying the long strips of pink and green light where ferns had been beaten into the forest floor. The creature would be large and powerful enough for my purposes, I was sure.

  “Perfect,” I murmured. Hydras were voracious roamers: not only would it be stopping to eat frequently, making it easy to catch, but I’d be able to lead it straight to the settlement.

  Nearby, a massive spider crept out from beneath one of the great trees, moving toward me. I struck its mind with my [Wild Bond], sending a spike of hostile psychic energy that conveyed my perfect confidence and it scurried back into its burrow.

  Then I smiled and rose into the air to follow the trail. I conveyed to to the psychics back at the settlement that I'd be tracking the beast down.

  I found the hydra a few hours later.

  It was dead.

  Moreover, it had been killed it a curious manner. It lay amidst the great trees, signs of a struggle all around in the form of shredded bark and raw, fresh wood where its teeth had torn at the trees as it gripped them to maneuver itself. The ground around it had been beaten flat, plants, stones, and even a few of the thinnest tree-roots pressed into the soil.

  It had five heads, and all their throats were cut and had bled out onto the ground. Whatever had killed it had run it out of the [Life Pool] that it used to regenerate—an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, with a hydra.

  Then, most curious of all, it had left.

  It hadn’t stopped to eat the beast, lay eggs in its carcass, or harvest its scales and bony plates for a nest. After I’d scared some scavenging insects away with lightning, I discerned with my [Wild Bond] that it had been dead for perhaps half a day.

  Why pick a fight with a behemoth hydra, of all creatures, when it was unnecessary?

  “Because it's not unnecessary,” I whispered, staring at the corpse.

  Few wild creatures killed only for essence or aspects. It wasn’t a behavior that was often mutated by exposure to primeval mana, and when it did occur, the beasts that exhibited it often tended to throw entire ecologies out of balance and starve themselves by hunting indiscriminately, instead of when they were hungry.

  But there were exceptions. The dead hydra before me was female: if it laid eggs, it would need to supply them each with a great deal of essence and some skill keys before they could hatch: some mighty beasts, especially behemoths, needed to have skills and levels just to be able to move about.

  Female wyverns would become hyper-aggressive as mating season came on so as to gather the essence they would gift their mate with when they were nest-bound and he was doing the hunting for both of them.

  Had something killed this hydra to feed its power to its babies? Winter was coming on, but hydra eggs incubated for a full year before hatching.

  As far as I knew, nothing was a natural predator of hydras. A wild beast might kill a hydra in a desperate struggle for survival—but that struggle would be one that the hydra initiated. The most likely creature to have killed this hydra was another hydra, but the deep slashes through its necks told a different story.

  And no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find anything to indicate where the creature that had killed this hydra had gone.

  “Curious,” I muttered, rising into the air.

  Then, following a hunch, I began to fly back along the tracks I’d followed, searching for the creature’s nest.

  I couldn’t use the blood of the hydra for my ritual. But I could settle for the blood of whatever had killed it.