Bronwyn circled the glade for the third time, moving out just a bit further, trying to find Thun’s tracks. She’d picked up feyris tracks, a dozen pultii tracks, but not the ones she wanted. The night air was much chillier here than back in First Landing, and she wondered how far north the Queen had sent her. She could feel that the air was thinner and had to assume that the reason for the chilly air was an increase in elevation. Thinking about it, Bronwyn realized she didn’t have the first clue about where exactly on the planet First Landing was. Were they north of the equator? How far north? How long would she need to travel for temperatures to change significantly? The planet was massive; she knew that much, so she figured it would take a long journey to experience temperature extremes due to latitude changes. “So, we’re climbing.”

Having circled the glade four times now, Bronwyn still hadn’t found Thun’s tracks; she decided to climb one of the pine-like trees to see if she could spot any indication of what direction the Winter agent might have gone. The tree’s needles were green and deepened to blue toward their tips, but otherwise reminded her a lot of the giant pines she’d seen from the highway driving through Washington state. Bronwyn found she could climb a hell of a lot better than she ever had back on Earth. She jumped up, grabbed a low limb, and hoisted herself effortlessly up. Sticking close to the broad trunk, she reached, grabbed, pulled, and clambered her way up the tree. When she’d climbed for several minutes, she found the branches obscuring her view had grown thinner, and she could see out over the landscape from her perch.

With a cold wind blowing through her hair and causing the tree to sway gently, Bronwyn studied the landscape to the north. From this vantage, she could see a natural break in the treeline that a landslide might have caused; piles of gray stones tumbled down a slope that seemed gentle from her viewpoint but was probably steeper than it looked. More than that, though, she was able to see that several peaks rose in the distance beyond the forest and that a brown-gray trail or road ribboned its way up between two of them. “Aha!” She descended from the tree, far faster than was probably safe, but it seemed so easy that she couldn’t help dropping through the air from branch to branch, catching herself with her hands. “Goddamn, I could be a professional rock climber back home!” She laughed as she landed on the turf under the tree and brushed her hands off against each other. “Ugh, sap.”

She strode through the forest, scanning the ground as she went, moving purposefully toward the spot where she’d seen the break in the trees and the faint line of the road that led up through the pass. Thun hadn’t known she’d be coming to follow him, so surely he’d use the road to cross the mountains, right? She supposed he could have other enemies he was trying to avoid. She’d covered about a mile through the trees when she heard a grumbling rumble of a voice and saw trees shaking just ahead of her. Bronwyn froze and carefully started to make her way over behind one of the nearby trees. With a tremendous crack and a rustle of falling branches and leaves, a huge, misshapen man burst through the trees ahead of her.

Bronwyn stood like a deer in headlights, unsure if the creature had spotted her. It stood there, nostrils flaring in its giant, lumpy face. It had to be twelve feet tall, and, though it was humanoid in general shape, the naked, furry thing had as much in common with a bear or pig as it did a human. Patchy, black fur covered a lot of its form, with spots of lumpy pink skin poking out of it in random areas. Its “hands” were three-fingered and ended in thick black claws. Most disturbing was its face, though, pink and lumpy with long, yellow-brown tusks sprouting from its lower, distended jaw. Its red, beady eyes surveyed the area while its wide, dripping nostrils flared and huffed.

Something about the creature made her think of the Urghat, but comparing an Urghat to this thing would be like comparing a modern human to a neanderthal or sasquatch. The huge creature took another massive inhale and turned to look directly at the tree behind which Bronwyn was hiding. It opened its mouth and roared, saliva stringing out and flapping in its breath as the thunderous sound rolled through the forest. “Guess you found me,” Bronwyn said, stepping out from behind the tree. Apparently, small talk wasn’t in the monster’s repertoire because it immediately charged at her, raking a set of four-inch black claws down toward her neck and shoulder.

Bronwyn rolled to her left, easily dodging the big, arcing swipe. She cast her Solar Arms spell and noticed that her hands started to glow with a bright golden light. As she finished her roll and sprang to her feet, she darted behind the lumbering giant and, not able to reach anything much higher, punched a fist into the meaty area above its huge, stinking rump. Her fist, buzzing with Energy, sizzled as it impacted the creature’s flesh like a miniature wrecking ball, sending a shockwave rippling through the blubber hanging off its midriff. She gagged at the smell of feces that wafted off the burning, matted fur and had to jump back to avoid another swing of the claws as the monster whirled with an angry snarl to retaliate.

Bronwyn danced around the roaring, drooling, lumbering, stinking giant for an exhausting minute or two, running in for quick hits, then rolling away to avoid being pulverized. She dropped her Solar Arms spell whenever she was evading, trying to save her Energy and allow her natural recovery to keep her in the fight. The giant, while dense and slow, had incredible resilience, and though she’d smashed it a dozen times, scorching its fur and flesh and tenderizing its innards, it seemed to keep going on pure hatred or frenzied hunger. While she rolled away for the seventh or eighth time, Bronwyn began to appreciate the idea of carrying around something a bit more lethal than her fists; they’d worked great on creatures like Yeksa and Urghat, but this thing was another story.

Finally losing some of her caution to frustration, Bronwyn worked her way around behind the creature again and sprinted forward, grabbing fistfuls of scraggly, louse-ridden fur and pulling herself up onto its boulder-like shoulders. Her balance was precarious, but she channeled Energy into her Solar Arms spell and clapped both her hands as hard as she could against the outside of the giant’s bulbous mishappen ears. Her glowing, buzzing palms connected with a tremendous crack, and Bronwyn thought she could sense the Energy from one hand stretching out to mingle with the Energy from the other. The giant grunted and wobbled, then toppled forward in slow motion to fall, face-first, with a thunderous rumble, almost like a tree coming down. Bronwyn rode down with it, balancing on her knees and then rolling off onto the forest floor.

She wasn’t sure if the creature had just been stunned or if she’d given it enough brain damage to kill it, so Bronwyn rushed over to the beast and began to pummel its big, lumpy head, using her Solar Arms spell to send spikes of solar damage into the same spot repeatedly. After several punches, with the creature’s flesh sizzling and the bone beneath growing fractured and mushy, large golden motes began to coalesce around its fallen form and surged into Bronwyn.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 16 Summer Banneret. You have gained 28 attribute points to distribute.***

“Wow, holy shit!” She hadn’t expected to earn that many points per level with her new class, nor did she think this one creature would be enough to level her. She supposed she might have been nearing level 16 already from the fights during the Urghat invasion and the creatures she’d killed in the swarm during her trial. Still, she was excited to have so much freedom—twenty-eight points to distribute however she wanted. Before messing around with her attributes, she stood very still and listened, wondering if her battle with the forest giant monstrosity had brought any company. If anything, it seemed like it had had the opposite effect; it was silent. The birds, insects, and small animals must have fled the battle.

Bronwyn took one last look at the fallen, filthy giant and then jogged off through the trees, looking for a good spot to lay low for a few minutes. She stopped by a trio of tall trees with some fallen branches near their trunks. Pulling the branches together, she made a little blind for herself and sat down on the mulchy ground to contemplate her attributes. The Queen had indicated that intelligence was essential if she wanted to use her spells more. She hadn’t touched that attribute since coming to this world, so she began by adding ten points to it. That done, she looked at her Energy stats:

Energy Affinity:

5.6, Solar - 7.6

Energy:

337/488

She’d gained over a hundred maximum Energy from the intelligence bump. She could now comfortably cast Solar Shell twice and Wrath of Summer once. She contemplated for a few minutes and pulled up her attributes again:

Strength:

72

Vitality:

39

Dexterity:

19

Agility:

44

Intelligence:

19

Will:

26

She wondered if she should increase her intelligence, even more, considering how much ten points had helped. Thinking about it, she began to wonder what else she was missing with the attribute system. She’d neglected dexterity in comparison to her other physical attributes as well. Was that short-sighted? She had eighteen points left, so she decided to put nine into dexterity and nine into intelligence. Feeling the surge of well-being and energy that came with so many attribute points at once, she pulled up her Energy stats again:

Energy Affinity:

5.6, Solar - 7.6

Energy:

358/626

“Woah.” She’d basically doubled her Energy with one level. Bronwyn was happy that she’d made such gains. Still, she was also frustrated with herself—she’d started out in this world treating herself like a character in a VR game, min-maxing her strength and agility, assuming it was all she’d need to keep fighting above her weight class. The forest giant she’d just fought was a good indicator that simple martial skills wouldn’t be enough to make it to the heavyweights in this world; she’d need to keep honing her abilities, and Energy was a huge factor in that regard. She barked a short laugh as a funny thought struck her, “Am I thinking more clearly because I just jacked up my intelligence?”

Bronwyn took a few minutes to eat a quick meal. She hadn’t touched the Queen’s rations yet; she still had plenty of sandwich material that she’d packed in First Landing. After wolfing down a sandwich of rye bread spread with butter and piled high with smoked ham, she stood up and decided to pick up the pace. She wanted to see how fast she could move through this forest without making a racket. “Time to put my blessing of the herd to work,” she said, giving each of her thighs a good stretch by pulling her ankles up behind her butt, one at a time. Then, she took off through the trees, scanning the ground for tracks.

As she raced through the forest, leaping over undergrowth and dashing between trees, Bronwyn laughed with the pleasure of it. She loved the wind rushing through her hair and over her ears, she relished the challenge of having to leap obstacles, and she enjoyed the mental stimulation of noting and categorizing all the tracks she crossed. So far, the only dangerous seeming animal she found tracks for were those of the “Forest Ogre” that she supposed belonged to the ugly monster she’d just slain. In seemingly no time at all, Bronwyn broke free of the forest and continued to run along its edge, leaping over the loose rocky scree that had once, in her opinion, been a landslide. When she rounded a rocky spar that jutted out from the mountainside she was slowly making her way around, she caught sight of an overgrown dirt road about a half-mile downslope. She figured if she maintained her course at her current elevation, the road, which wound its way upward, would cross her path in about a mile or two.

Bronwyn kept a steady pace, slowing down a little now that she was out of the trees and making sure she didn’t surprise any more dangerous monsters. She didn’t encounter anything of note before she descended a slight, rocky slope and came upon a bend of the old, ill-maintained roadway. When she started walking along the packed dirt, she scanned for tracks, noting lots of holbyis and other animals, several Urghat, and one Cadwalli. “Gotcha,” she said, zeroing in on the Cadwalli tracks. She could see they continued up the road, and Bronwyn took a moment to take in the lay of the land. Stretching ahead of her and gradually moving into switch-backs, the old road climbed the side of a steep craggy mountain and disappeared from her view around the shoulder of the rocky peak. She didn’t see anything large moving around, though birds and small animals scurrying in the roadside scrub were all around her. Stretching and cracking her neck, she started the climb—time to find her quarry.