Adrenaline and pain jerked Bronwyn out of a murky, formless dream - something about swimming. She was startled awake to realize she was being physically pulled out of her tent by the ankle. In the dim morning light, she could see a large, orange-furred, wolf-like creature. Her left foot was wholly engulfed inside of its jaw as it pulled. She lashed out with her right heel, trying to stomp it down on the creature's snout. Her kick connected, and it yelped out in pain, dropping her.

Bronwyn frantically grasped around the entrance to her tent, managing to grab hold of one of her gauntlets. She kept kicking at the wolf, keeping it from grabbing her again while pulling the gauntlet onto her right hand. Wasting no time, she pulled herself into a crouched position, favoring her gored and bloodied ankle, and lunged at the beast, bringing her fist up into its throat. The strike landed, and she could feel its windpipe crunch as the weighted gauntlet slammed into it. She saw a burst of movement in the corner of her eye and barely dodged as another one of the wolves lunged from the shadows. The world almost seemed to slow, and without thinking, she willed energy from her core into the pathway to the node in her fist. She launched it toward the side of the beast, and stone formed around her hand as it connected. The sickening sound of snapping bone erupted into the night as her hand sank into the creature, breaking bone and rupturing organs. It flew to the side with an unnatural flop and lay motionless. She knelt next to the first, asphyxiating wolf as it struggled to crawl away and slammed her stone-covered fist into its head, ending the suffering.

Standing there, breathing heavily, she saw a third beast slink off into the forest's edge. It disappeared quickly into the foliage, choosing to retreat rather than face the fate of its packmates. As Bronwyn waited to see if any more of the beasts would come from the forest, glowing motes of golden light coalesced on the bodies of the dead animals. They formed into a kind of mist and then suddenly shot forth in a stream of light into her chest before she could react. As the light streamed into her, she could feel her exhaustion and the throbbing pain of her ankle wounds fade away.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 3 base human. You have 5 attribute points to allocate.***

Bronwyn saw the System message and remembered from the orientation that defeated enemies would reward the victor with Energy. Still unsure if more of the creatures stalked her in the woods, she stood there, silent and waiting. Many minutes passed before she heard a shrill shriek from the north and then another further west. She quickly ducked into her tent and strapped on her other gauntlet. Not wanting to spend precious time putting on her armor, she sprinted toward the nearest scream, hoping she wouldn’t need it.

While she ran toward the conflict, Bronwyn contemplated how to spend her five attribute points. She decided just to spend them the same way she had before, three in strength and two in agility. After mentally allocating the points, Bronwyn thought she could feel herself running just a bit faster than she could’ve before, but she wondered if that was just in her head.

When she arrived at the first cluster of tents, the scene laid out in front of her was grisly. Five of the beasts had made their way into the camp and were tearing apart the corpses of a dozen dead colonists. She sprinted headlong into the fray; the first wolf’s back was to her, and with a roar, she leaped into the air and brought her gauntlet down on the back of its skull, caving it in with ease. The rest of the battle was a blur of motion, Bronwyn a terrible maelstrom. With each swing of her gauntlets, she unhinged jaws and shattered limbs, ribs, and spines. Twice, the wolves almost outflanked her, leaping at her back and side while she was dealing with an attack from the front. She used the stone shielding spell that she’d practiced in the orientation and stopped most of the wolves’ bites long enough for her to lash out with a gauntlet. After just a few seconds of furious combat, all five lay dead and mangled at her feet.

She quickly checked to see if any colonists in this camp had survived the attack. They hadn’t, or at least the ones that did, had already run away. She shoved back the growing realization that this was all her fault and sprinted into the dark; there were still screams from the west.

Golden motes of light flowed into her back as she was running, and she saw a System message:

***Congratulations! You’ve learned Unarmed Mastery - Basic.***

***Congratulations! You’ve learned Stone Warding - Basic.***

She’d have to figure out what all that meant when this crisis was over.

The scene on the western side of the meadow was much different than what she had encountered earlier. She saw an older man waving his hands placatingly toward a panicked crowd. “Calm yourselves, stop shouting! They’re gone, and there’s nothing we can do for them. Hells, we haven’t even got any weapons if we wanted to. We need to stay put, keep guard, and watch for more attacks!” There was a general murmuring and a few loud voices of dissent, but everyone seemed to defer to him, though Bronwyn didn’t recognize him at all.

Jogging up to the crowd, she studied the man; he looked like he was probably in his early sixties. He had a bald head and a closely cropped white beard, with a longer, slightly twirled mustache. Shoving her way through the crowd to get to him, she called out, “Sir, what’s your name and what happened here?”

He let out a long sigh and, before looking at her, spoke, “Girl, I haven’t got the time to explain to everyone…” It was then that his head turned, and he caught sight of her in the firelight. Bronwyn’s entire upper body was covered in blood and gore. “Hells bells!” he sputtered. “Is that your blood, girl, or have you been fighting these little fuckers?”

Bronwyn, looking down, attempted, unsuccessfully, to wipe some of the blood from herself. “Not mine, at least not most of it.” She shrugged and asked, “What happened here? Did the wolves attack here, also? Who can’t you save?”

Somewhere between being aghast and awe-struck, the old man quickly replied, “Well, not wolves, little grey men; they took some of ours. Kicking and screaming! Took ‘em alive, into the forest, to the west.”

“Fuck!” Bronwyn yelled. “This isn’t good.” She had no idea who or what the grey men might be, but she had to try and stop them. “Stay here,” she commanded. “Spread the word through the camp - all the colonists need to set a watch with torches on the perimeter. I’m going to get our people back.”

As she started running towards the forest, the old man called out from behind her, “What’s your name, girl?” She turned quickly, jogging backward for a moment.

“Name’s Bronwyn, but most people call me Blodwyn.”

She turned her back to the crowd and, before she disappeared into the forest, heard one of them ask incredulously, “Wait, does she mean THE Blodwyn? No way!” She chuckled to herself and smiled. She didn’t know how many years they’d been in cryo, but to her, it seemed like her last tournament was only a month ago. Hundreds of thousands of people had filled the virtual stands, chanting her name. It felt good to be recognized again.

She quickly picked up the abductors’ trail; she saw noticeable drag marks and splotches of blood. The prints were a strange story: some were about the size and shape of a human foot, the others much smaller, with thin, sharp claw marks. She painstakingly followed the footprints for what felt like hours, tagging trees with big, clear X marks whenever the path turned. She occasionally lost sight of the prints and had to backtrack to look for a trace of them. She was doing so for what felt like the tenth time when something started to happen: as she focused intently on the tracks, the prints’ outer edges began to glow with a faint red light. Bronwyn paused for a moment, puzzled, and suddenly some yellow motes coalesced on the trail that she’d been following, gathering up into a stream and flooding into her.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 4 base human. You have 5 attribute points to allocate. You’ve learned Tracking - Basic.***

“What the fuck?” She wasn’t complaining, but these levels were coming fast. Was the System still treating this like part of the ‘orientation?’ Strength and agility had been doing well for her so far, so she spent her points once again, three and two. She pulled up her status sheet to see how things were looking:

Status

Name:

Bronwyn Tallow, aka “Blodwyn”

Race:

Human - Base 1

Class:

—

Level:

4

Core:

Amber Class - Base 2 - Tri-Node, Earth Energy Attunement

Energy Affinity:

5.6, Earth - 6.6

Energy:

220/220

Strength:

22

Vitality:

11

Dexterity:

9

Agility:

17

Intelligence:

9

Will:

11

Points Available:

0

Titles & Feats:

First Colonist

Skills:

System Language Integration - Not Upgradeable, Unarmed Mastery - Basic, Stone Warding - Basic, Tracking - Basic

She spoke aloud, asking the System, “What is Unarmed Mastery?”

***Unarmed Mastery - Basic: You are learning the most efficient way to strike at your opponent. You know the basics of grappling and how to escape being held.***

“Pretty evident by the name, but how are you giving me a skill to do something I already knew how to do?” No answer came, but she hadn’t really expected one. She decided to check the other two before continuing:

***Stone Warding - Basic: You are learning how to bend stone and earth to defend yourself against attacks. Amber Class Core Enhancement: Your armoring spells have twice the duration and cost half the energy. Energy cost: 5 per second.***

***Tracking - Basic: Tracks that have not been concealed in any way glow faintly with the traces of your prey’s Energy***

***System Language Integration: All sentient beings in System controlled space are enhanced with the ability to communicate via a common dialect.***

Bronwyn focused more intently on the tracks laid out on her path. She noticed that when she selectively looked at the small-clawed tracks, a small text window appeared to the side of her vision that just said “Yeksa.” When she focused on the larger footprints, it changed to “Human.” She was on the right path, and these abductors were evidently another sentient race in the world. Perhaps she could try to reason with them with her System Language Integration. As she was traveling along the path, a System window popped up in front of her:

***Quest: Rescue the captured colonists from the Yeksa village. Reward: Energy-rich natural material. Penalty for failure: None.***

The System had mentioned quests in the orientation, but this was Bronwyn’s first. She accepted it without hesitation, considering it was what she had planned on accomplishing anyway. She hadn’t even thought of the captives being held inside of a village; in fact, she hadn't thought about what she might find at all. Whatever she encountered, though, it didn’t matter; people were in danger, people she was supposed to be protecting. These colonists didn’t even have a security detail. She was the security detail. She was supposed to have selected security personnel from among the general laborers after the colony was established. Of course, she hadn’t had time during the System “orientation,” and everyone had been busy, but she still felt like this was all her fault; if she hadn’t rushed through orientation and given the System an excuse to drop the barrier, maybe these people never would have been taken. She continued down the path.

It wasn’t too long before she heard the sounds of struggle from up ahead. She burst through the underbrush without any thought of stealth or self-preservation, surprising two of the Yeksa trying to get an unruly captive under control. The Yeksa had pale grey skin and spindly limbs, and both were wielding short wooden spears. Distracted by their captive, they hadn’t heard her run up behind them. Bronwyn slammed her gauntlet into the back of the first one's neck, shattering his vertebra. He slumped down instantly. The second barely had time to react; he attempted a hurried, inaccurate stab toward Bronwyn’s head that she easily ducked to avoid. She launched a lightning-fast right hook at him in retaliation, and the impact crunched in the left side of his head, dropping him to the ground with a thud.

The man on the ground had his feet tied and started to scramble away from her in fear before recognizing her face. In an uncharacteristically shaky voice, Arthur Ballard spoke, “Bronwyn, is that you? Dear God, you looked like a nightmare, crashing in here covered in blood.”

“Ballard!” Bronwyn leaned over to get her breath. “Here, let me take those ropes off of you.” She pulled a small knife off the belt of one of the Yeksa and began sawing away at the thick bindings. “Look, I know a lot is going on, and you probably have a million questions, but I don’t have many answers. All I know is that the System removed the barrier when I finished the tutorial, and evidently, there’s more than just us on this…”

“You did what?” Arthur shouted. “None of us were prepared for this! The barrier was the only thing keeping us safe! Hell, most of us have barely figured out how to cook, let alone defend ourselves! You didn’t even think to let anyone know it was gone?” He was furious, and rightfully so, in Bronwyn’s opinion.

“I know! Listen. I know. I was just trying to get ahead so I could protect the people here. I made a mistake, and I should’ve told everyone the barrier was down; I just didn’t think of it. I was so tired and…” She trailed off, realizing she was just making excuses. “This isn’t the world we envisioned, and there’s no Titan-9 here for me to pilot. Someone has to become strong and protect our people. I know I fucked up, but I’m going to make it right. I’m going to save the rest of the people that were taken. You have to get back to the colony and set up some sort of perimeter. Torches, knives, hell, sharpen some sticks and make spears. Just stay safe until I get back. Whatever you do, don’t go into the forest.”

Tiny motes of golden light streamed into Bronwyn from the Yeksa as she helped Arthur to his feet and handed him the two Yeksa spears. “Go. The way back is clear; it’s not a straight line, but I’ve marked the path with big X marks on the trees. Get back and make sure the rest of our people stay safe. I’ll be back soon.” He started to make a reply, but she was already tearing off into the forest.