Sunlight speared down through the gaping maw of the sinkhole, illuminating the lush patch of forest below. Songbirds flittered around the rim, and their calls lit up the sky as surely as the morning sun.

  I looked over at Sadrianna as she plonked herself down against a rock. She closed her eyes, crossed her arms beneath her head, and began to sun herself on the large slab like a lizard. As if sensing my ire, she popped one eye open and squinted over at me as she spoke.

  “What? My job’s done. You’re here at the Lost Grove, safe and sound. I’ll wait right here until you’re done, but Jorge was very clear; you’re on your own down there.” She winked then, or blinked? I wasn’t quite sure what it counted as when she only had one eye open to begin with. “Best get to it, Lamb.”

  It wasn’t the best pep talk I’d ever been given, but she was right in one respect. There was no time like the present.

  I turned back to the sinkhole before me, stretching out my back that had begun to stiffen up from the long hike here. We were near the edge of the Titan’s Crown now, with the lakes around which the clans gathered nothing but specs in the distance, the morning sun reflecting off their calm surfaces making them seem like jewels glinting in a bed of green.

  I shrugged my shoulders, feeling the reassuring weight of my sleeveless leather vest settle against my back. My arms were bare except for a bracer of dark metal covering my right arm from wrist to elbow, and my boots were newly reinforced with steel plates affixed to the foot and shin. I was still under-armoured, but I had marginally more protection than before.

  I hefted my bronze shield in my left hand, and my right gripped the familiar grain of the haft of my spear. Both artifacts were settled within my soul-space as they were within my hands, and I felt my confidence return.

  The sinkhole was daunting to behold. At least a few hundred meters wide at the lip, it was shaped as an irregular circle, with the mouth being the narrowest part. It bulged down and out, resembling nothing so much as the shell of a sea urchin, and I shivered as I imagined what may be lurking within the shrouded darkness at the edges.

  In the centre of the sinkhole, illuminated by the glorious sun, was a small grove of ancient oak and yew trees perched on a small hill. The forest looked inviting, dappled light playing off the faces of a million leaves of green and gold. The songbirds flitted around ceaselessly, going about their small lives with abandon. Focusing on only the grove brought a measure of peace to my chest, but I couldn’t help my eyes from slipping from that beautiful sight to the darkness at the edges.

  But I had my weapons, and I had my skills. Sadrianna had battled wild creatures and the occasional monster on our trek to this ancient place, but none had been particularly high-levelled, and I suspected I could have handled them myself. Of course, she had taken on the role of guard so that I wouldn’t waste my strength before arriving here, but it still gave me hope that nothing in that hole in the earth would be too far beyond me.

  I spent half a bell walking around the lip of the sinkhole, examining it from every angle and trying to plot a path down. The first option was to sling a rope down, secured to a sturdy boulder at the top, and descend that way. Something about descending directly into that darkness, with no rock to place my feet against, filled me with a terror I couldn’t quite place, but even the tallest of the trees were too far below the edge of the sinkhole to safely jump across.

  I returned to Sadrianna, and luckily as a resourceful mountain-born clan warrior her storage device was filled with useful equipment. A long sturdy rope was soon in my possession, and I set about securing my abseil point. She wandered over to check my knots, but I had taken to Jorge’s survival lessons well, and she begrudgingly nodded before heading back to her sunbathing rock.

  I stood at the edge of the lip once more and took a final look around at the sinkhole below me. The moment stretched on for a while, something within me rebelling at the idea of falling into darkness alone and unprepared, but I eventually sighed heavily. When you’ve got a task to do…

  I fed the rope behind my shoulders and stepped backwards off the ledge into open air.

  I landed softly, a bed of moss cushioning my feet from the several meter drop. The rope was pooled on the floor nearby, but I wished to spend no more time than necessary in the cool darkness beneath the small hill.

  I couldn’t see the rocky edges of the enormous cavern, shrouded in shadow as they were, but I could taste the dampness in the air. I imagined the beads of rank water trickling down the stone, flowing over small holes through which centipedes and spiders would frolic and slither.

  I shivered, my imagination doing me no favours. I returned my shield to my hand from where I’d strapped it to my wrist, hefted my spear, and set off towards the light once more.

  It was a short climb up the steep hill, and I had to skirt around the edge of the hillock for a few dozen meters before I found a good place to scramble up. Spiky grass stabbed at my hands as I pulled myself up the uneven surface, but the occasional tree-root binding the earth together offered ample handholds.

  Upon cresting the small hillock, I was met with the true majesty of the Lost Grove. The hundred or so trees standing proudly in place seemed to shine in the sunlight. Their many leaves sparkled, water droplets flickering like diamonds as light lanced through them and split into a million piercing blades.

  I recognised oak and yew as I walked slowly between them, all ancient and thick-trunked. I felt as though I entered a new world of dappled green and gold, the light refracting as if I was underwater. Birdsong echoed strangely off the trunks around me, and I felt the worry in my chest ease, the dank edges of the cavern feeling further away somehow.

  After touring the entire copse, I felt at peace once more. Wondering through the venerable trunks, I was overcome by a sense of calm. Time passed without notice, and it was with shock that I realised the warmth beating down against my head was of the afternoon sun rather than that of the morning.

  I felt closer to nature here though, as if I was absorbing some minute aspect of the wisdom that these trees had inherited over centuries, and I was loath to waste the opportunity. I turned my gaze inwards, sitting back against the bough of an ancient oak, and examined my soul-space.

  It had been a while since I had last viewed it in detail, and I was struck at how interconnected my skills had become. My core was full, constantly replenishing and overflowing with the mana that seeped from every inch of this primal place. Around it hovered my shroud of skills, dim and peaceful in their un-awakened state. 7 complex constellations, gently cocooned by a larger skill above – my path-bound aura skill.

  Whereas before they had been mostly independent of one another, with the occasional strand of starlight mana questing from one to the other, now my soul-space resembled a spiderweb. Each skill was still recognisable as its own, but dozens of strings of starlight connected it to others, forming a lattice of mana, constantly sharing and nourishing one another.

  I was reminded, perhaps because of the fecundity of the place where I currently dwelt, of a mycelial network linking and supporting a forest. A single organism of many parts.

  There were two skills that seemed notably out of place, however. Where the others were woven together by strings of starlight, these two hung alone, a few feeble strands linking them to the rest of the tapestry.

  Faultline was a relatively new arrival, and I couldn’t fault it for its aloofness given that fact. Even so, it hovered closer to Mountain-Born than I had expected, slightly out of alignment with the others, such was the growing bond between the two skills. They resonated with one another, and I could sense in their pairing a possible future coherence into a single skill, or perhaps just a thematic alignment that could pave the way for my true path.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  In any case, Faultline was not the problem. No, it was Wilderness Endurance Hunter that seemed to be the issue.

  It held strong links to half of my skills; Guerrilla Warfare, Mountain-Born, Heart of the Hills and Indomitable Prey. The skills I had gained early in the mountains while trying desperately to survive. The skills that had grown to be a part of me, had made me into somebody that could protect themselves from a harsh environment where weakness meant death.

  It had almost no connection to the other half of my skills. Skirmisher of Antiquity, Check-Step and Faultline were left to hang opposite with almost no linking strands of mana between them and Wilderness Endurance Hunter. I spent a while thinking on it, under that great oak, crowned in gold and green.

  My thoughts wandered as I examined what it was within the skill that made it incompatible and came to the conclusion that it was simply a matter of intent. The purpose of that skill was to help me survive in the wild. To be self-sufficient and self-reliant.

  The three other skills that hovered across from it were based around fighting. Faultline had some potential as a non-combat skill, but I had so far used it almost exclusively to gain advantage in battle. And to annoy my friends, but that wasn’t important at the moment.

  The more I thought about it, the more clear it became that of all my skills, Wilderness Endurance Hunter was the odd one out. It adapted me to life in the wilderness but conferred no advantage when it came to fighting. Each of my other skills did both. I could survive, and hunt, and forage, and climb and live and everything in between…and fight as well.

  The struggle to survive was intimately tied to the struggle to slay my foes, and Wilderness Endurance Hunter did not help me slay my foes.

  It was a depressing thought to be honest. I didn’t set out in this world to become a killer. I had wanted to survive first of all, and then when that was taken care of, I had wanted to explore. To travel freely and move with speed and confidence. The loss of that innocent dream was in some ways a sad thing, and I took the time to mourn in that grove lost to history.

  It was the way of things in this new world though. To progress, for somebody like me at least, was to struggle and fight. How many could I save with the power killing brought me? How much freedom could I acquire when laws no longer bound me?

  That wasn’t right. It was simultaneously more encompassing and less grand than that, no matter how contradictory it may have sounded. I wanted to be. To excel and improve and to see a thing and then do it. To become such that I could achieve a challenge previously beyond me.

  And to get there I would need to fight.

  It always came back to that in the end. Only one of my current skills wasn’t suited to that life and so I took the time to grieve. For the life I could have had were things different. For the person I could have become had circumstances not been as they were. That’s the thing about circumstances though; they are as they are.

  And then I began to prune. I was at the edge of level 40 now, and I knew that somewhere within the next 5 levels I could expect a new skill. It wasn’t guaranteed, but I had strong suspicions. The class on its own still felt incomplete, and only my non-class skills rounded it out. I’d given thought over the last week to what skill I would sacrifice if I needed to, and the reflection in this grove had helped cement my decision.

  So I marshalled my intent into metaphysical shears and began to prune away the links between my various skills and Wilderness Endurance Hunter. I cut mercilessly through the spiritual embodiment of my progress and wrenched the skill from my soul-space.

  Skill Wilderness Endurance Hunter has been removed.

  Open Skill Slot remaining.

  The System chimed its acknowledgement of the deed, although I did not need its confirmation. The empty hole in my soul-space was evidence enough. I still retained much of the knowledge of food preparation, stalking and foraging that I’d gained over the last half year, but there was a difference between knowing a thing, and doing it. That was what I had just lost.

  Rousing myself from my introspection, if only to avoid looking at that empty gap in my soul-space, I returned to a world of emerald and orange. The afternoon sun had given way to a soft evening glow, and the birds no longer sang, chattering quietly to one another instead.

  I had gotten distracted, waylaid by the wisdom the world left for me, scattered in one of its many hidden places. My real purpose had been revealed the day prior. I was here for a weapon.

  I once more began to walk, brushing past dangling leaves and occasionally running my hands along branches and boughs, looking for an appropriate target. As with everything else in this magical grove, I took my time searching for what I was looking for.

  I didn’t have a firm idea of the weapon I was seeking. I knew it to be a spear, that much was obvious given my class and training, but there were many kinds of spear, even before you factored in magic. My weapons-work with my companions had taught me that complexity could be found in everything, and weapons were no exception.

  Given that I was in a semi-magical grove of ancient trees, I could only assume that the most sensible component I could find here was that of a haft. I tried to keep an open mind, but I did find my eyes tracking each new branch, searching for imperfections among any likely candidates.

  A bell passed unsuccessfully, and the evening sun began to wane. I was taking more notice of time now, unwilling to stay in this primal place when darkness set. The birds had stopped their play, and now perched in their well-defended nests in the great trees.

  Shadows had begun to waver at the edges of the cavern, and I heard the occasional rustling and chittering from the edges of the cone of sunlight.

  Things were stirring beyond the light.

  I gave myself one last loop around the grove but found nothing that called to me. I considered felling a branch with the hatchet in my belt simply to have something to bring back, but thought better of it in the end. Jorge had been clear; inspiration was what I was looking for.

  In an almost sacred place like this, where the world stores wonder and power, it does not do to take without the earth’s blessing. Another confusing riddle from the old git.

  Still, I didn’t want to tempt fate. I could always return tomorrow for another look. Perhaps sleeping on it would shed some light on the correct approach? I had felt a slight fluctuation in the ambient mana suffusing this place as I circled but couldn’t get a good read of where those fluctuations originated from.

  I slithered down the steep embankment surrounding the elevated copse of trees and came to an abrupt halt. My heart sank.

  The rope was pooled on the floor, sliced into ribbons. My escape route was lost.

  I couldn’t see all the details through the steadily encroaching shadow brought about by night’s swift onset, but it looked very much like something had gnawed through the rope in several spots. It hung now at least 20 meters above me, well out of reach, even if I were to scale the side of the bulging cavern…which I definitely did not fancy given the scuttling that I could hear growing in frequency from beyond the edge of the light.

  I backed away, returning to the protective sunlight of the hill in the centre of the sinkhole. Something hissed at me from the shadows, and I flinched. I felt an increase in the mana density once again, but had no time to wonder why.

  Fuck!

  I didn’t like the insectile sounds I was hearing. Please don’t be centipedes, please don’t be centipedes. I repeated the litany of hope in my head as my back hit the damp earth of the embankment behind me.

  A patch of darkness, somehow more solid than the shadows around it, detached itself from the cavern wall and scuttled forwards. I heard the clicking of many hard points against stone and watched as a creature emerged from the darkness.

  A chimp of some kind, muscular and stout, stepped out of the ring of shadow and raised its head towards me. It walked on two bow legs, with long arms dragging across the floor to support its weight as it shuffled and hopped, its wide back bent and great shoulders pointing nearly to the floor.

  Its roughly man-sized body was covered in dark bristles, which stood out in sharp contrast to the gleaming white bone of its hands and feet. They must have been responsible for the clicking I had heard before it emerged. Funny how even after so much exposure to it, I couldn’t recognise the sound of bone against rock. A cheery thought, that.

  Its head was what captivated me though. An empty skull, large canines bared to the air, with an open nasal cavity and two empty pits where its eyes should be. Rather than darkness though, something red waved from within its eyes, and I strained to make out the details.

  It took a few swaying steps forward, strangely graceful in its unpredictable movement, no matter how unorthodox it appeared, and I raised my spear. It looked to be alone, but I wouldn’t bet tarrots on it being the only such creature in this sinkhole.

  No matter. It was a single creature, a mammalian base with a bipedal form. The leering skull was off-putting, but at least it wasn’t a giant bug, or gods forbid a swarm of some kind. It was a creature that needed killing, and I needed to kill something.

  I steeled myself for a fight, and the creature roared. This was no ground-shaking cacophony, but more of a wet coughing sound, like a drunk man hacking his guts up outside a tavern. Its red eyes danced in their empty sockets, and I frowned in confusion. It almost looked like something was moving within the white hollows…

  And then in a frantic burst of movement, two wriggling segmented bodies burst from the sockets, waving towards the sky with their many legs clacking together and two long ribbon-like antennae on each head waving from side to side.

  The creature stooped into a loping run, and the giant centipedes in its eye sockets oriented on me, snapping pincers my way with a distinctly malevolent sound.

  Fuck.