"Young lady, you better get right-"

  But it was too late. I jumped. The balcony left my feet, my arms by my side, and I tipped into a long drop. I turned in the air, wind whistling past me, yanking at my hair and my clothes. And then I threw my arms out wide, fingers dancing through their spells. Capturing the essence of owl inside me, the lifting wings and the lightweight bones. Curving the air, buffeting up with strong winds to push back against gravity. I landed with a tuck-and-roll, and sprang right back up to my feet. Hertyce was shouting something.

  I shifted the owl's essence to hearing so i could make out her words. "-give me a heart attack and then you'll see! How'd the duke like to find you killed old Hertyce! And then you-" I went back to normal human hearing.

  As things stand, I can't fly. I can't generate that much wind, and i don't dare actually convert my body into some element. Not with my affinities so dangerously high, and my control so dangerously low. But if I tie a couple of spells together, I can slow my fall enough to tank a fall from the top of the bell tower. I at least have enough control over multiple spells to do that. So of course I do exactly that any time I can sneak away. Who wouldn't? It's awesome. Suddenly this video game doesn't have fall damage anymore!

  Channeling some essence into your body is safe and easy. Lighten my bones, sharpen my senses. I can't become transparent like glass, or make my skin nearly impervious with essence of steel. Not yet. Those spells are simple but difficult, if you take my meaning. I'll get there someday. Right now, I channel glass essence to help me meditate (or to self-reflect, get it?) or essence of steel for a decent but not superhuman boost to strength.

  Channeling. Just borrowing some properties. That's about pulling another essence into yourself. Harmless as swallowing a glass of water. Converting your body into another form, like an eagle, or glass, or a steel figure... that's dangerous. That's changing all of your essence into another essence at once, and trusting that the elements like you enough to give you back when you ask. Harmless as treading water far out at sea.

  Some sorcerers are never ready to do conversion. Most of those who do, should not. I am told that I am particularly at-risk. Because, you know, Untethered Essence. So, the top forms of sorcery might forever be denied me. Shapeshifting. Flying. So I make up for it by enjoying a little free-fall from time to time.

  I was dressed in my grubbiest. A plain brown dress that had belonged to one of my aunts when she was my age, patched and worn, stained in places. The perfect outfit for spring cleaning. Or, as it turned out, for sneaking away to a high place to practice solitaire trust falls. For the most part my mother prefers us all to stay out of the way of the house staff. They know what they're doing, they're organized, and they outnumber us greatly. Having a duchess decide to start washing dishes is just going to make extra work for everyone, it's best for us to stay in our lane.

  Harder for some than others. After all these years, I still am not used to having servants. It bugs me. It feels kinda bad. Not just guilt at exploiting other people just for being born in a different social class. But also because it feels like everyone around me assumes that I don't even know how to hold a broom or dry a plate. Like the whole institution is demeaning all of us, just in different ways.

  Arguably I do nothing to dispel allegations of irresponsible incompetence when I use my sorcery to blow all the dust out of the playroom, sluice high-speed water around the fixtures, throw all the dust and dirty water into the courtyard, and then run out to play for the rest of the day.

  But, I have done my chores, I did clean my assigned stations, and I was already given the day off from tutors, training, and other obligations. So as far as I'm concerned: this is a day off.

  I sprint hard. I'm still light, and the air propels me forward even faster. I'm in good shape, even with all the reading and schooling I have made plenty of time for physical training. I can hear at least one nurse trying to run after me, but I'm taking twenty-foot strides and practically flying away.

  Nothing wrong with a kid playing hooky, right? Sure, when I get back I will likely get a talking-to. And while I know that nobody is going to point out that my brother never runs away for an afternoon to ditch chores, I still feel like the comparison gets invited. Or, I'm just making up new ways to guilt-trip myself over something I'm going to do anyway. So, okay, maybe of the two Harigold children I'm sort of the bad seed, the more irreverent and irresponsible one. Less steady and dutiful. But to be fair I was always going to be that no matter what. I absolutely do not have the character to meet the standard that Nathan sets. He's too good. I can try, but I'm always going to be the one that slips first. I'm not the protagonist.

  I'm the rival. Most of the time I try to ignore that.

  Today I have to make it work for me. I dash into the wooded thicket, an apple orchard that is also growing some climbing peas. It's a little denser and darker than most of the tree-stands in the area. A nice enough place for a child to get lost from time to time.

  I curved void, and leaped through the portal, then out the other side. The weather here was dryer but no less chilly. I was on a slope, the side of a hill with long grass that was still brittle with the winter's wrath, not yet realized it's springtime. I dashed up the hill, heading for high ground.

  I did a little hiking in my first life. Wilderness walks, nothing major. I didn't do any of the famous trails or multi-day treks. But I had some friends that were into it, and what the hell I'll go along. That was a lot of my first life. I didn't ever do much of any one thing. I'd try something, long enough to find out what I don't like about it, and move on.

  Mostly, I think I was kind of bland. I was witty enough to be the funniest person in this carpool. I was fit enough that nobody gave me a hard time about taking a doughnut from the box in the break room. No serious trauma. No important job. I wasn't even a gifted internet troll. My cell-phone company told me I was a valued customer but I'm not sure they really meant it.

  If I hadn't been hurled across worlds to take over this story, I'd have died without making much of an impression either. But I suppose there's probably a hundred people like me for every one person who really deserved to be a protagonist, right? That's why I refused to destroy him. Brings me to this world. This landscape.

  The hills of Kuryta, a major landmark. Easy to find. Easy to get lost in. Their oddly-shaped flanks would disorient you on the climb or descent, and the weather patterns often congregated thick fog in the valleys between- extremely thick fog. One could try to travel from one hill to the very next one, and get turned around in almost any direction. I mounted the apex, and looked around.

  There it was. The tree stood tall and slanted, bending one way and then the other, half the branches missing off one side. The only hill around with a single tall tree standing at the peak, had to be the one. And that tree was distinctive, easy to recognize, easy to find. If I could get there. It would take enormous amounts of luck, skill, preparation and equipment to cross those miles to that hill, and actually arrive there. Treacherous are the hills of Kuryta.

  I was skipping a major questline just by knowing where to look. The lost book, the counterfeiters, the mole-cultists, the whole debacle of Ligature Parliament... nope, I don't need the trail of clues, I already know what I'm looking for. And unlike any version of Nathan that I've ever guided through Kuryta, I don't have to take my chance in the fog just to advance from one hill to the next. I curve void, and step inside. For a second I'm trapped in a place without emptiness, where my own existence is everything, and then I open the next door.

  The tree is even more massive up close. A big around as a house. A sequoia redwood. Only four hundred years old, but grown much faster and taller than others of its kind. Thousands of years of growth in a fraction the time, leaching magic out of its roots.

  I stood at the base of it, and stared up. "Fuck," I said, a little awed. "It really didn't look this big in the game." Stepping close, I laid a hand on the bark. The moment seemed momentous, I needed to say something. It's just me and the tree, so that's who I speak to. "Hey. I'm sorry about what I'm about to do, but it's literally the only way. And if I don't do it, the mole-cultists will. So, one way or the other, you were never going to make it out of this game."

  And that's when I activated steel and oak, and crafted my axe.

  The first thwacks got me nowhere. The bark was hard, and it would take me half a day to chip my way halfway through it. I channeled in steel, and I made myself strong. Strong, and also resolute. I used steel to firm up the misgivings I had, steel to carve my doubts away. My muscles were hardened now, as was my will, and the swing of my axe embedded half the head into the old, neglected wood.

  When I had human muscles of a ten-year-old, the tree was imposing and impenetrable. Now, it just seems a little spongy, dry-rotted. Maybe both are true. I yank the axe back and forth, opening up a gash in the trunk as I rip the blade free. I swing again, and yank, and break out. And again.

  Part of me is tempted to try using curve wood to open the tree rather than kill it. But the tree is far too massive; for me to curve that much would require me to immerse my affinity deeply, and risk losing myself. There's a reason that curving an element is the third spell, only shapeshifting is more dangerous. Instead, I hack at the trunk.

  My cuts are rude and imperfect. I'm not making surgical cuts here, this is just bludgeoning with a sharp instrument. The wood is ripped open as much as it is chopped. I can borrow strength from the essence of steel, but I'm no woodcutter and I don't have the innate skills, or trained skills. I go make a long cut, and then I back up and take a different angle. upward from below, and I'm able to brute-force a wedge out of the wood. Then, I move to the far side to cut counter to the wedge.

  The groan sounds like an earthquake. A snap like the breaking of a storm. A sheet of bark the size of my body falls past me. The wood near me grows pale, and a small spray of splinters bursts away from a knot. The roots in the ground ripple like a living thing, the torque of the tree's movements are transferred down into the ground. Very clearly, this has stopped being a safe place to stand.

  I teleport to another hill, and I watch the massive, ancient tree fall. it has weathered so many storms. wars, monsters, dynasties. But today I killed it. Because it had something I need.

  Five hundred years ago, a dangerous seer was buried here, far from civilization so that his secrets would rot before anyone ever found the grave. The seer had a seed in his pocket, and when the earth claimed him the seed sprouted. The tree grew, entwined with his body. And it lifted free of the earth, and it layered bark around itself, and the roots drove down and the leaves speared up, and the seer's grave was clad in wood now. And the wood grew fast and strong, soaking up all the magic in his bones, and his scrolls, and his clothes.

  Only one part of his magic remained.

  The tree was too tall and too heavy to tip over. The inertia was wrong, the top could not fall fast enough to keep up with the base of the trunk. It tipped and started to crash, but instead of tilting onto its side, the bole of the historic tree was dragged across the ground, breaking up into chunks and shards as it went. The weight driving down was unstoppable, and at this angle it was sheared away, crumbling like overbaked cookies. I watched it. I could hear it all around me, the sound of it reflected down from the sky like thunder. I could feel the collapse, through the soles of my shoes.

  The fall did not end gracefully. It just seemed to exhaust itself, as if following gravity to its destruction just became too much effort after a while. Centuries of life just spent themselves groaning through the fall, and something precious and irreplaceable was gone from the world.

  First time I'd ever killed anything.

  Services at the church had taught me the local equivalent of last rites. I stepped through the void to stand at my victim's side, and I gave respect and obeisance and commended this soul to a paradise of peace, free from people like me.

  It would take me days to sort through all of this to find what I was looking for. But instead, I cast my spell, to curve gold. I raised my hand, and a ring lifted clear of the rubble. I brought it to me, and slipped it onto my finger.

  [ Signet of the Seer ][ By taking this ring off and looking through, you can create a viewpoint that you may cast your sense to later. ]

  This was huge for me. Almost all of the really important magical items in Harigold Glitter were on the warrior track, but a handful were part of the larger world. And of those, most were crap. This one was left in, partly because it's such a huge help for players on difficult settings, and partly because the dev team invested so much into making it work at all. Almost a quarter of the voiced lines and animation can only be accessed using this item.

  The ring was a band, with no jewel or setting. One side of it was surrounded by a corona of tiny staring eyes, glaring all in the same direction. On the opposite side, a blank space with stylized eyelashes that bent back, and joined to the eyes on the opposite side. If you held one side up to your eye, it would form a gold border with eyelashes. If you turned the ring around, your eye was surrounded by a dozen tiny glaring eyes as well.

  One side to set the invisible security camera, one side to look through it.

  Only a few mana left. I started teleporting back home. I was exhausted in many ways.