Nic spent the night in the human camp, sleeping under the withered old tree. Even with his eyes closed, he could hear the joy in people’s voices as they shook of their brush with death, feel the warmth of the chatter around the fire. He slipped into a dream…

A dream of the city.

This time, he saw the despair. It was the city of his childhood but the people were gone. The streets were empty channels for the wind to howl down…

The windows were dark portals to empty rooms…

And with horror Nic saw that the people had become shadows on the walls, frozen there, silhouettes of ash. They tried to call out to him but their voices were silent…

Uneasy, he shook himself awake.

“Nicolas, are you okay?”

“Just a dream…” He mumbled, sitting back to meditate instead.

---

The next day, they held a vote on whether to stay or join Winterhome. It wasn’t even close. After encountering the Nightdoor Spider and spending days stuck in its larder, waiting to be picked off, they were eager for the two things Nic could offer- protection and guidance.

But Nic would be heading on his own path.

Some of the people in camp had seen the wandering ooze. It had passed through not long before he did, curiously prying through their belonging and failing to notice any of their attempts to communicate, talking to itself constantly. Nic was surprised to hear their descriptions of the beast- it apparently had legs now, and a mouth.

More evidence of its ability to rapidly evolve.

All the more reason he needed to catch the stupid thing before it got itself hurt.

As the people made their way towards Winterhome, Nic waved goodbye and turned deeper into the forest.

---

After nearly a full day of walking, the woods reached their end, the deep shadow of the trees lifting away as Nic emerged from the land of gnarled oaks and slender firs. He emerged into the light of a vast meadow, full of golden stalks of grass as tall as he was.

Just like that, the world had changed.

Within the forest the world was rich and lush. There were minor treasured plants sprouting from the mossy bones of the dead, and secret hollows where prey could hide from their predators. It was a thriving web of different lives, with birds and small limbed animals moving in the branches above, quick-limbed gatherers hunting through the undergrowth, and the strongest of the strong marking their territory.

The prairie meadow was nothing like that.

It was open space, and some instinct of Nic’s warned him to look up.

The shadows of massive hunting birds drifted above. Some were ‘merely’ the size of horses, while the largest were drifting fortresses whose wings eclipsed a full house in span.

The skies above were a battleground. And the beasts bound to the earth below? They were prey.

Nic shifted to all fours. His amphibian body was good at scuttling low across the ground, and he saw no reason to draw attention to himself as he moved through the tall, waving grass.

Most of the creatures he sensed around him were in the order of rabbits or lizards. Small, dexterous beings that could escape the notice of the predators above. In the open, defenseless expanse of the meadow, it was necessary to create your own hiding spots. The rabbits managed by using an earthshaping Shard to instantly burrow into the ground. The lizards had illusion Shards that made them break into multiple copies when they moved, sending mirage-doubles fleeing in all directions while the real one found sanctuary and used its chameleon skin to vanish from sight.

Nic kept his eyes open and extended his senses in a wide net, searching for something. He wasn’t sure what that ‘something’ was, but he knew the way the world worked, and that all life under the System struggled between growth and oblivion.

If this place was just a feeding ground for the flying predators, why would the prey remain? Why not vanish into the nearby forest?

There was something here. Some prize rich enough to draw them in.

It was only when the sun set that Nic began to sense it. There was an aroma in the air, a beautiful melancholy sense of power that reminded him of a song he’d heard when he was a child, and forgotten as he grew up…

It was more of a feeling than a scent. A thing woven from Essence.

Instantly, the rabbits emerged from their den and the lizards began to shift, their disguises vanishing. Every living thing in the meadow had taken notice.

And in a single moment, they began to run.

Rabbits fled past Nic in blurs of motion. Lizards scuttled along the ground. Beasts Nic hadn’t even noticed emerged from hiding and rushed towards the source of the scent…

In the middle of the prairie, a tree was blooming. It had looked like nothing more than a withered piece of wood, without a speck of green on its twisting white branches, but now runes of golden light burned into being where leaves should be.

The aroma was growing.

Nic was drifting in and out of a realm of memory. Flashes of his life in City Layer d23 slipped through his mind and tried to draw him in, feeling as if they were real again…

He remembered his days fighting alongside his brothers, Tawley and Markus and Kyto, all striving to join a Legion and be the brave young heroes of their generation. He remembered the golden froth on the beer, the satisfaction in his bones after a fight, the yelling and the laughter and the explosions of terrifying violence…

Deeper in his memory, he remembered being alone in the Winterhome orphanage. The hard, cold slab beds. The constant training with meager resources. The bullying of the older kids, driving him into the ground with their kicks. He remembered the first time he fought back, transforming into a whirlwind of teeth and clawing fingers, and the way a boy not much older than him had taken notice…

He’d lost that fight, but he’d gained his first friend…

And deeper than Nic realized his memories went, he caught a glimpse of… something…

There were silk sheets and there was distant music. The smell of flowers. He was being held, and he was very young.

A face loomed over him, covered by shadows where he’d forgotten the features.

Nic bit down on his tongue.

The iron taste of blood burst into his mouth and he gasped, breaking free of the illusion. His whole body felt empty and hollow, as if the distant scent of the trees was igniting his cells with a ravenous hunger.

It reminded him of the Demonsmoke Peach, which lured creatures to their deaths.

And indeed…

The meadow had become a killing ground.

The predators above were swooping down, their bodies becoming black blurs as their claws snatched up shrieking animals. For a moment they were visible as they lost momentum, beating their wings to return to the air, prey struggling in their grip. Then they were gone again…

But for every beast that died, two more broke past.

They reached the base of the tree and vanished. There was some kind of veil there, disguising or maybe transporting anyone who moved through it. Around the tree was a zone of safety, and something within was so precious, so rare, that the animals didn’t hesitate to rush towards it at the risk of their own lives.

Nic felt his own hunger growing. The sudden illusion he’d fallen into didn’t seem to be a trap so much as a side-effect. The sense he got from the aura in the air wasn’t bloody or sinister. It was sweet, melancholy, and deep as an ocean.

But if the creatures who entered really were whisked away to somewhere else, he had no clue if they’d come back or not.

He wished he had old man Norman’s instincts.

All around him, the rush for the trees was growing in tempo. The sky was a storm of wings, blood, screams, flashing talons…

Nic grimaced. It was reckless, but, he’d survived so far by following his gut. If all these creatures would give their lives for whatever was beyond, he’d have to see it for himself before he could be satisfied.

The blossoming runes were beginning to lose their light. The weakest ones fell from the trees and dissolved into embers of gold on the wind.

Nic pushed his cultivation into his legs and took off. The wind whistled around him as he rushed for the nearest tree, the grass around him bending low under the force his movement exerted. Already the last of the runes was fading, fading…

A shadow descended over him.

A huge, red-tailed bird was shooting down from the heavens. Nic scowled and flung his throwing knife, striking it down. He kept running. The beast hit the ground beside him in a tangle of wings.

But there were more.

A blue eagle with trailing plumes of gold emerging from its tail and above each eye. A firebird, made of molten red-gold ribbons of flame.

One by one, the heavens rained down on Nic. Their talons went for his eyes, for his neck, for any weak spot not protected by his armor. He was too tempting of a target, and his progress was slowed to nothing as he wove between them, fighting with the greatsword’s wind-form. It was agile and quick enough to keep him defended as the predator’s poured down, claws flashing at his skin.

Nic let out a roar as he pulled strength from the Sun God’s plates. His skin turned to gold, and with a vengeful sweep of his blade he broke free. Their claws reflected off his skin and he ran full-tilt to fling himself through at the last moment, as the final ember of the final rune burned out.

For a moment all he could see was light.

---

Nic stumbled out into an amber-washed battlefield. It was the same meadow he had left, but the air itself had changed, charged with powerful Essence that made moving difficult, like he was under the weight of the ocean depths. His body immediately began to react, electricity dancing on the edges of his skin.

But he wasn’t alone.

Of course there were dozens of small animals here, the ones that had made it through the grueling death run.

But…

There were human warriors, too. Elegant and dangerous cultivators. Unmoving, perfect, still.

They had been frozen in the middle of a great battle. Their swords were paused mid-swing, their auras blazing with a strange and terrible beauty. Serpents of flame extended from one cultivator’s arm, wrapped around his wrist and extending from his fingers like a nine-headed whip. His opponent was a broad, powerful warrior who looked like he was quite literally chiseled from a block of granite, and his stone fingers made a single open-palmed strike.

Nic squinted. There was a faint outline in the air between them. The stone cultivator’s palm print, but expanded to massive size. It was so subtle that in the heat of combat, it would be impossible to see coming.

The flame-wielding man had been inches away from destruction. Maybe a single heartbeat had been left to him.

Then the world had stopped.

Throughout the field, the same scene was repeated. Each combatant was dressed in ancient robes and glittering jewelry that sparked with power. Each sword was a thing of beauty that would have taken a lifetime of craftsmanship to forge.

Every technique would have been a treasure worth dying for.

Nic stared in wonder.

It was a scene out of the storybooks he’d read as a child. These were the cultivators he’d dreamed of joining someday. Noble, powerful…

And conveniently frozen in time so that he didn’t have to meet them and realize they were power-hungry bastards.

All around him, the beasts meditated. There was no conflict here. When Nic experimentally tried to throw a punch, mimicking the stone man’s stance, he found himself restricted. The more force he pushed into the blow the slower his limb moved, until he was forced to stop or be completely frozen.

Like they were.

Nic understood. This was a place of learning.