The world tree stirs and empires fall

- Ashkanian proverb

I caught my breath as I stood there on the ridge, watching the rapidly disappearing silhouettes of my erstwhile companions fade into the distance. I sighed and tried to collect myself. I'd just seen people die. Not in the abstract either but killed right in front of me. With melee weapons. What the fuck was going on?

Too much was happening far too quickly for me to process, so I searched for a goal. I'd been given a rough plan, but the longer I thought about it, the more rough and patchy it started to seem. I had a general direction, a couple of landmarks to orient myself by and a few cryptic and ominous warnings of a danger that was starting to feel more and more real as I considered things.

Not to mention that a journey of 'a few hundred miles or so' through wilderness was a big fucking ask for anyone, let alone somebody alone and unprepared. I'd never hunted my own food, or slept beneath the stars without anything to shield me from the elements. I was going to be spending weeks alone out here, and I was starting to feel the panic clawing at the edges of my mind.

I needed an immediate, short-term goal. Jorge had told me to get to the treeline as soon as I could, so that's what I would do. Once there I could think more heavily on this whole situation and come up with a proper plan.

It didn't take long to descend beneath the rocky ridge, and I let the technical mix of scrambling over slabs of stone and weaving between broken rocks take over my focus. Sure-Footed no doubt helped me, but the whole point was to immerse myself in the activity and escape from the clamouring thought-spiral that waited impatiently for me to address it, so I didn't try to test out the veracity of the Skill's 'without thought' claims.

I soon emerged onto a small plateau overlooking the grassy band that separated the forest below from the ridge above. Much like the earlier view, this too was beautiful.

Dramatic ridgelines flowed down before me to the edge of my sight, with forests nestled into the valleys and a few intrepid pines peppering the upper slopes above the tree line. Grassy meadows rose around these like a green tide reaching towards the sharp rocky ridges. Snow-capped peaks towered above, declaring their dominion over all below, and the setting sun blessed the land with a slight orange tinge.

I spent a few timeless moments admiring the view, using the serene landscape to settle my inner turmoil. Only once I felt a small measure of that same enduring calmness so embodied by the mountains around me did I turn away and look down at the switch backing path before me.

Nodding to myself, I stretched out my back, turning from side to side before bending into a forward fold. I had to admit, despite my predictions during my rather embarrassing stint as a flour bag impersonator, I couldn't find any obvious sign of injury. My mind felt sharp, my body loose and ready for anything.

Reality showed me the error of that statement in the following moment when a screech cut through the air, originating somewhere above. I jerked around and twinged something in my neck from the unexpected movement. There was a slight delay as I tried to process what my eyes were seeing but my disbelief quickly fell away to be replaced by sheer panic.

Several hundred meters above me a flailing body was streaking through the air. I caught an impression of great wings, of two creatures wheeling about one another aggressively, before they disappeared behind the peak.

The flailing body crashed into the ridge to my left and bounced against large boulders and grassy verges alike. Within seconds it had cartwheeled down the slope to rest where I had been not moments before in a cacophony of slapping meat and crunching bone.

I staggered to my feet, having dived aside at the last moment, and stared in shock at the corpse before me. It was some sort of Deer/Antelope/Goat creature that easily out massed me three times over. It was hard to tell given its state, but it looked like it would stand well above my head if it could get its legs beneath it.

That wouldn't be possible though – two of them were snapped clean off, and its entire side was a bloody mess of splintered bone and pulped meat where it's ribcage would have been. Its neck was twisted unnaturally, and red spittle flecked its mouth.

The creature then let out a snuffling groan, clearly not dead, and I leapt back on reflex. Large, white eyes rolled in its head before they settled on me, and I felt a desperate need communicated by that stare. It lowed in pain, and I winced at the sound.

Hesitation enthralled me for a moment as I looked back at the trail that led to the treeline, and safety from the terrors in the sky. Panicked braying brought me back around though, and I couldn't bury the twinge of sympathy I felt for the creature.

Its breath was short and irregular, but it could take an hour or more to bleed out here for all I knew. If I was in its position, what would I want?

Easy choice, that.

I cast about for a boulder. Heaving one up over my head, I staggered back over to the dying creature, wary of a wild kick from one of its still-functional legs. When I approached though, it simply shifted its neck slightly, moving one of its great spiral horns. I couldn't help but think it was giving me a better angle, knowing what I intended. Again, I wondered at the intelligence of this creature and whether I was anthropomorphising it too much.

We shared a moment then, this once majestic creature and I, and I hoped one day to be as composed in the face of death as this giant stag. It blinked once, and then I heaved, slamming the rock downwards on its skull.

You have killed a Mountain Oryx (level 23). Experience gained.

You have reached level 2. Attribute points available for allocation.

You have reached level 3. Attribute points available for allocation.

You have reached level 4. Attribute points available for allocation.

I barely noticed the ringing, or the messages streaming directly into my mind, as I looked up from the corpse to the peak behind which the titanic winged creatures had disappeared.

I had no notion of what could possibly be that size, what strength could allow it to remain airborne while carrying the stag in its claws like an eagle with a rabbit. Then again, after seeing the speed, stamina and strength of Vera, Jorge and Nathlan, and what little I'd seen of this system, I was beginning to get an idea.

What little I was starting to glean told me, in no uncertain terms, that there were things out there that were far above me in the food chain. I looked down in numb incomprehension at the gory mess before me – my own handiwork – and realised just how defenceless I truly was.

A shadow flitted across the ground nearby, and I jerked a look upwards, seeing something blot out the sun for a moment far above. There was no time for planning or strategizing, so I picked the rock up and once more slammed it down, cracking and splintering one of the Mountain Oryx's spiral horns and grabbing it before dashing off.

Brambles snagged against my legs as I tore down the trail, but I barely felt the pain. Before long, I was heaving for breath as I reached the tree line and dove behind the first large trunk I could find.

It had been a good mile or so that I had covered if I had to guess, and that was enough time and distance for my mind to parse the harrowing experience through which I had just lived. Not enough time to come to terms with it, sure, but enough to accept it had happened and focus on more immediate concerns.

Namely, that I was being stupid. If the creature that owned that frightening pair of wings was actually interested in me, I would have been plucked off the side of the mountain minutes ago in the middle of my mad dash. Clearly it had other things to concern itself with, like the second sky leviathan it was fighting perhaps.

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Which left me here, panting and sweating, small cuts all over my lower legs visible through my shredded trousers and the broken remains of a sharp, spiral horn clutched in one hand. I was also level 4. Jorge had been clear as day; survival depended on levelling, and it seemed that levelling relied on killing things.

What did that imply? If killing was the only way to gain experience, that did not bode well for my chances of survival. I didn't have confirmation yet that there weren't other ways to level up, but it was easy to take the first worrying explanation and spin out all sorts of horrible theories when in a crisis.

I made sure to engage in a few minutes of unsubstantiated panic-induced spiralling before finally bringing my mind back under control. After reasserting a measure of calm, I reviewed my status.

Status:

Ancestry: Human (unevolved)

Level: 4

Class: None

Titles: God-touched

Attribute allocation:

Strength: 7

Agility: 5

Endurance: 9

Perception: 9

Cognition: 8

Available attributes: 3

Skills:

Sure-footed: Level 1

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

With no frame of reference, I couldn't make a judgement on the current distribution of my attributes, but I was surprised at them, nonetheless. While I was making a big assumption that 10 was a peak human attribute, it seemed to be in line with Jorge's remark that 9 in endurance was high for level 1, and I did not recall myself being that physically impressive.

I'd always thought of myself as relatively fit, but I couldn't really justify why. The environment felt familiar, if larger in scale than I was used to, but the feeling of running through mountain vistas was… natural. I dipped into my past, with effort, and caught glimpses; running alone up gently rising singletrack as an adult, whooping for joy as I traversed ridgelines as a teenager, laughing as a child while chasing my sister through a pine forest.

Each moment contained within it a multitude of emotions and understandings, but as soon as I left it behind, that context fled with it. It was if I experienced each memory as a dream and the moment I woke from it, I could remember nothing of it.

Still, the feeling I was left with was that I had always been fit, but nowhere near my peak potential. Why the high attributes then? I tried to think back on my last memories before waking up today, and the system messages I had received. I struggled to pierce the veil of haze around those memories but eventually I caught flashes of experience.

Wind whips the sweat from my face as I plunge headlong down a ridgeline. The singletrack stretches before me as I skirt around grassy knolls and leap over rocks. My legs are burning, lactic acid building up, and my lungs are working like a bellows to draw in breath to flush that pain away. I'm smiling, nearly whooping for joy as I crest a false summit and the path dips below the ridgeline once more, wind cutting out and my ragged breath now filling my ears, but I don't stop. With each step I feel simultaneously like I can't take another and that I'll be able to keep going forever.

For just a brief moment the fog retreated, and I experienced once again with full clarity the joyous, indescribable feeling of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, sharpening my reactions and blunting the pain as I took part in my favourite activity. I was present in a way I could never quite manage in all other aspects of my life, feeling my mind being totally focused on reading the terrain in front of me and feeding commands down to my body to make minute adjustments in compensation.

What had that message said? Historic data missing….Collecting data from short term memory….Integration of average historic and mental state….permanence assigned. Funny how I could recall with such clarity something from an hour ago, but anything further back felt so indistinct.

Back to the point though, did that mean the totality of my being was broken down into a few attributes, and calculated based on a review of a few short minutes of my life during which I was filled with adrenaline and pushing myself as hard as I ever had before?

That could explain the surprisingly high allocation, I supposed, and also neatly explained how I wasn't in as much pain as the raw, bleeding cuts in my shins would suggest.

Either way, I still had 3 free attributes to allocate. I needed shelter and safety, and I had one hell of a journey ahead of me if I wanted to survive.

Endurance was the easy choice for now. As soon as the decision had been made, almost before conscious prompting, my status changed.

Attribute allocation:

Strength: 7

Agility: 5

Endurance: 12

Perception: 9

Cognition: 8

Available attributes: 0

I was not prepared for the rush I felt. A million subtle changes occurred within a single moment, each so slight that I would have missed them on their own, but when combined, I experienced a wave of refreshment that had me feeling like a new man. A very sweaty, bleeding, and frightened man it had to be said, but new all the same.

My breathing instantly became easier, as if I was recovering from a simple jog as opposed to the all-out sprint I had just experienced, and the ache in my legs faded from a demand to a polite enquiry.

Thoughts of the euphoric feeling were scattered from my mind a moment later by a snapping twig behind me. It had me whirling around, broken horn clutched in my hand like a baton. I saw nothing out of the ordinary and briefly wondered what I had been planning to do with the pathetically light horn if I had seen something dangerous; good luck battering a wolf to death with a stick, after all.

Although now that I was looking closely, my spur of the moment decision might not have been entirely foolish. The horn did seem like it might serve as a weapon in a pinch. Roughly four feet long and mostly straight, it twirled around on itself in a staircase pattern before tapering to a jagged, sharp point where the horn had been cracked off the head of that poor stag.

I had never seen a horn of its like in my life, so far as I could recall anyway… which now that I thought about it, wasn't actually saying much. I'd also never heard of a massive eagle looking bird-thing large enough to lift several hundred kilograms of mammal easily, either.

Shit, this really was a new world, wasn't it?

Dwelling on the point was useless though. Either everything I was seeing was real, in which case I'd been transported to some new magical world, or I'd lost my mind. I couldn't just stand around examining all of my actions for fear I was swinging a stick at some random hiker out for a stroll in the real world while trapped in convincing delusions though.

If I had lost my mind, I couldn't exactly think my way around it. There was no 'me' to outsmart myself with. I was my mind, and if my mind was completely divorced from reality, then anything I thought was just as likely to be wrong too. Like a twisted mirror of Descartes, I was thinking about thinking and still had no idea who I was.

Just as before, I pushed away the existential dread and searched for a goal. I'd made it to the treeline, now I needed shelter for the night.

I did a quick check of my legs again, and saw the shallow lacerations mostly clotted. Not surprising but a welcome sight, none the less. I was hardly sheeting blood down my legs to begin with but the more blood staying inside my body, the better.

I took off at a light jog down the narrow track towards the bottom of the valley. At least I wasn't particularly tired, and if my new endurance attribute was to be believed, I should be able to continue at this pace for many miles.

I looked to the sky, seeing the marigold glow give way to a burnished gold, while the shadows of the nearby trees lengthened and stretched. I did not want to be wondering this path alone at night, considering the giant creatures in the sky. If there was one thing that I knew for certain, it was that there would be other monsters out there.

It didn't take long to find a downed tree that looked suitable to rest in. It had been uprooted by some massive force – probably another titanic creature, knowing my luck – and lay cushioned in the lower canopy by the arms of its fellows. It was steep enough to be difficult to climb, but not quite vertical enough for me to worry about falling out of.

It would have to do.

For now, I clambered over the upturned roots, reasoning that whatever had rushed through this area with such power as to uproot the very trees themselves, wouldn't have stuck around afterwards and might even have scared away anything in the area. A feeble hope for an equally feeble human.

Finding a confluence of three separate large branches just below the canopy, forming a backrest with enough support to prevent me from toppling to the ground if I shifted in my sleep, I stowed my possessions next to me.

Luckily there was space, but unluckily, that was because I had no possessions other than a broken horn, a small knife, and an even smaller pebble. My clothes consisted of a pair of thick, rough-spun socks, hardy leather boots, a pair of loose cloth trousers, now with added slices in the shins, and a rough shirt and thick woollen cloak. For perhaps the 50th time that hour, I resisted the urge to lament about how I was for sure, definitely, 100% going to die, and instead rested my back against the surprisingly comfortable branches, my gaze on the 10 or so meters of trunk before me leading to the forest floor.

Sleep beckoned. It was futile to resist, the cocktail of confusion, fear, excitement and adrenaline that had so lit up my body and mind had also scoured it of further energy. I was exhausted, despite having only been in this new world for no more than a few hours. It felt as if I'd experienced more than a month's worth of emotions in that short time.

With sleep wrapping its obscuring hands around my mind, I wondered if there was something more significant about that last thought than I realised, but then my consciousness faded, and I awoke to a new dawn.

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