Morgan Mackenzie sat upon a magically raised earthen seat, happily chewing perfectly parboiled [Shardback Shellipede] and wishing she had some cocktail sauce from Earth.

 

“This tastes better than lobster, Lulu,” she said as she licked her fingers. “If I had hot butter we’d really be on a roll. Oh! Dinner rolls… Really miss those now.”

 

The previous evening’s rains had continued into night, and after cooking her assailant in a giant makeshift crab pot she had simply built a new and bigger stone house to camp in. [Terrakinesis] made moving the dirt itself almost trivial. The biggest difficulty now was in holding the shape of what she wanted in her head long enough for the Earth Mana to guide the material into place.

 

Within her range -- easily over a hundred feet by her rough estimation -- the effort of moving the dirt itself was almost negligible below a certain critical mass. Beyond that range things became much more difficult, the difference between lifting a weight close to her body or with her arm extended.

 

She could not rip up literal tons of earth and rocks and throw them about, but it came close. Morgan felt pretty confident that, if she were willing to risk another bout of debilitating illness, she could burn her Mana all at once with [Spell Surge] and cause a localized earthquake.

 

“Not that I want to shake the earth right now, but it’s cool that I can,” she mused out loud.

 

After finishing off several small strips of lobster-like flesh, she turned back to the corpse of the giant shellipede. One thing she definitely wanted to study were the Mana Crystals growing along the edges of its shell segments, its mandibles and the tips of its many legs. To her [Mana Sight] the night before, it definitely seemed as if the shield the monster had projected came from the crystals that grew out of it.

 

“Even if I can’t figure out that kind of shield right now, maybe I can activate it…”

 

It turned out her instincts were correct in this instance. Upon closer inspection, her enhanced vision revealed a pattern of odd swirls, repeating themselves throughout the edges of the crystals. The pattern was denser and finer along the ridges that circled the creature’s broad and armored head. It seemed to continue down along the edges of those fearsome mandibles as well.

 

After tracing the swirls with both finger and mind, Morgan let out a low, impressed whistle. “This thing looks like it was born to counter magical attacks, Lulu.”

 

The scrubby puffball was busy wurbling its way along the inside of one of the shellipede’s segmented armor sections. Its ministrations let the chitin’s natural iridescence shine through where the viscera had been obscuring it. Lulu purbled briefly in protest as its mistress pulled it away from its current task, but happily continued cleaning once she placed it on another segment.

 

Taking the shell in her hands, she inspected it more closely, now that the last traces of meat and greasy tissue had been exfoliated from its curved inner side. She could feel the faint lingering traces of the creature’s Mana within the crystalline structure, interwoven through the organic chitinous material. The magically reflective properties of the enchantment seemed to be projected outwards by the denser layers of crystal on the edges of the shell.

 

Carefully, and with an extremely light touch of Mana so as to not trigger some drastic or destructive effect, Morgan supplied a bit of magic to the runic patterns of the shell. The result was a brief manifestation of the same rippling shield just an inch or so offset from the surface of the shell section.

 

It was not one single piece either. Her own Mana was powering the portion of the shield closest to where her fingertips made contact with the curved shell,, and the barrier was reflected on the other side in overlapping parts like a snake’s scales.

 

“Ah,” she exhaled. “So it’s not one contiguous shield enchantment. It’s actually interlocking segments of armor like its shell, but for magic instead of normal attacks.”

 

Morgan raised the segment of shell ahead of her as she spoke, holding it in both hands. Her grip spasmed then, weakening, shell slipping from suddenly-nerveless fingers.  “Damn,” she cursed. “What hap--”

 

Realization struck like a bolt of lightning -- she had run afoul of her [Skyclad] nature! “Figures,” she muttered. It seemed inspecting the shell section was one thing, but trying to use it was another entirely. Turning back to the uneaten head of the beast, she looked down at the almost-solid crystal mandibles.

 

“There’s gotta be a way I can power this up without holding it.”

 

Dropping the segment of shell, she pulled the head upwards from the carcass by one hardened jaw-crystal. Its appearance lent itself most readily to the pincers of some large beetle; despite her misgivings, her [Primal Instinct] lay quiet.

 

The crystal was not as dense as the ones she had encountered before climbing the cliffs and encountering Moghren. It also did not pull at her Mana so hungrily. Instead, it hummed with anticipation, as if it were waiting for...something. This feeling was confirmed as she tried to push some of her own magic into the crystal. The other crystals had drained her Mana on their own, while the lighter-hued mandible simply allowed her to pour it into the glassy structure at her own pace.

 

As her magic filled the crystal, the mandible began to glow with a familiar violet light. That’s my color of fire, she thought, then continued out loud. “I wonder if other people have different colors to their magic. Moghren gave off shadows, my fire is purple…”

 

Her [Crystal Affinity] did not give her the ability to shape the structure like her Earth skills did with dirt and stone, but she could sense the grain of the mineral formation, and the area under the greatest strain. Bracing one foot on the outside of the mandible, she pushed more of her Mana into the microscopic cracks at the base of the shard and pulled up while twisting it in her hands.

 

A glassy creaking followed by a sharp crackling sound heralded the crystal jawbone coming free and sent Morgan stumbling backwards, out of her new shelter. She stumbled a few steps before catching her balance, and gazed down at her prize.

 

Jagged teeth of pale pink and milky white crystal glimmered in the morning sun, the mandible easily two feet long and as wide as Morgan’s hand. The outer side of the curving piece was formed of smooth facets with irregular outlines, curving around to narrow into a serrated inner edge and a wickedly sharp tip.

 

She turned it from side to side in the light, looking closely at the cracks that had spread from the broken base up into the rest of the piece of crystal. Her [Crystal Affinity] allowed her to sense how the flaws had propagated through the mineral structure with a detail and certainty that would make any geologist or gemcutter jealous.

 

“I didn’t have [Earth Sculpt] the first time I molded dirt with magic either.”

 

Concentrating on the cracks running through the mandible, Morgan slowly poured her Mana into the crystal. “Still too fast,” she murmured to herself as a tinkling sound emanated from the glassy chunk when the flaws began to expand. Slowing down the flow of magic to the barest trickle she could control, she could feel the substance begin to warm up and shift in her hands. It vibrated with an uncomfortable buzzing, as if it were about to fly apart; a thrumming she could feel in her hands that increased whenever the magic flowed too fast or too slow.

 

With strange stuttering crackles, the flaws in the crystal began to mend. She could feel the stresses fading away in the undamaged parts of the jaw as the fractures closed back up along the grain of the material. And as the last of the shattered lines melded back together, she gained another skill.

 

You have learned the spell [Gem Sculpt]! Understanding the mineral structure of crystals has allowed you to guide their formation and alteration!

 

Morgan felt a sense of smug satisfaction when she read that notice; soon afterward, she felt the strain of manipulating the crystal ease somewhat. Now she could levitate it above her hands, although any distance over a few inches became increasingly more difficult. As with Earth magics, all that remained was practice and time to level the skill and the related affinity.

 

Turning back to the dropped shell segment, Morgan crouched and stabbed the mandible into the ground using her magic. Molding the soil around it to secure it in place was a casual afterthought with [Terrakinesis].

 

She spent almost a third of her Mana, pouring it into the crystal until it glowed with a bright pink light that cast glimmering shapes onto the ground and surrounding trees around her. Then she lay the shell segment against the upright mandible and stepped back in expectation.

 

Nothing happened.

 

“Well that was disappointing, Lulu,” she said to the puffball as it wurbled its way over to investigate the latest activities of its mistress. “But I shouldn’t be surprised it’s not that simple…”

 

The crystal held plenty of Mana to power the shell’s enchantment, it simply needed something more than proximity or touch to activate it. Reaching out with just her raw Mana to both items at the same time merely gave her a headache that left her sitting inside with her head between her knees for at least an hour while she recovered.

 

Getting back to her feet, she reached out to the Mana she had stored within the crystal. Her own supply had long since recovered, but the magical energy within the mandible still resonated with familiarity. It had not changed in any way. She could add more to it, and then pull it back to smoothly replenish what she was lacking. It was while she was playing with this new information that she realized that, as the crystal contained Mana that matched her own, it was possible to feel and manipulate it as though it were a sort of extension to her magical body..

 

With a new idea to test out, Morgan reached out to the shell segment with Mana. Not the Mana within her own body, however. She reached through the mandible, using the magical energy stored within it to activate the shield enchantment.

 

You have learned the Spell [Mana Link]! Link multiple enchantments or sources of Mana together, allowing for magic to flow between them!

 

“Booya!” exclaimed Morgan. “Now if I can test the shield, I can learn to copy it!”

 

The faint ripples of the shield hovered a few inches above the surface of the shell's ridges, its power linked to the crystal battery. The concentric patterns grown into the edges of the armored material pulsed gently, the overlapping hexagons just barely visible as disturbances in the air

 

Grinning, Morgan took two steps back and cast the weakest [Lightning Bolt] she could manage at the shield, staring intently with [Mana Sight]. The crackling bolt zipped out from her finger to hit the shield, causing it to flare up in corsuscating ripples as her spell was reflected back at a close angle. The returning pellet of lightning left the scent of ozone lingering in the air as it streaked past, scant feet from her head, eliciting a startled oath from the young sorceress.

 

The manifestation of the magic was only visible at full power for the briefest of moments at impact, and she spent over a dozen casts and a break to refill the mandible-turned-mana-battery before she felt she had learned enough to figure out how the shield worked.

 

After refilling the crystal once again, she took a few more steps back, and moved a pace to her left. This time the bolt came straight back at her, and even with the new knowledge she did not manage to get the shield formed in time to block. Her own [Lightning Bolt] struck her right in the mid-riff, doubling her over and blistering the skin just above her navel.

 

After taking a moment to heal, she tried again. This time she held the makeshift shield spell ready around her left hand as she cast the bolt with her right. She took several more jolts from her own reflected spells before she managed to nail down the timing, but her perseverance was rewarded on the eighth attempt.

 

You have learned the spell [Spell Parry]! Deflect or redirect incoming magical effects!

 

“Yes!” Morgan twirled in place and pumped her fist in the air as Lulu wurbled in frustration, trying to clean the soot and burned skin left over from its mistress’ repeated healing after each bolt. “Now I have somethin’ to work with!”

 

Without an anchoring substance to form a defensive enchantment, her own manifestation of the spell was only as coherent as her focus. A central hexagon of Mana, Lightning, Fire, and Air Elements mixed together, formed the center of the shield, and more hexagons spiraled out from the center in slightly overlapping layers. Each layer required more of her Mana and mental effort to maintain, and as the strain on her mind increased the edges of the polygonal shapes began to ripple and deteriorate.

 

One single hexagonal shield section seemed extremely strong, but only covered an area about the size of her palm. “So if I add more plate sections around it, the shield gets bigger, but weaker…”

 

She added one ring of shields around the center. Then a second, and then a third; she kept adding layers until the shield threatened to collapse under its own weight.

 

“Seven seems to be my sweet spot…”

 

She walked back over to the boiled remains of the shellipede and broke for lunch, practicing with [Spell Parry]. The shield was definitely not something she could use for constant heavy blocking, and the name was appropriate. It formed most solidly right in the first moments of its creation, and every second it existed drained more and more of her Mana.

 

“So, I can parry spell attacks now, Lulu.” she told her ruffled companion. “But I also wanna figure out a permanent defensive enchantment I can set up, like that thing’s shield.” She tore a handful of meat off the shellipede corpse after reheating it with a touch of fire magic.

 

“That can wait til tonight though; we need to get moving,” she said around mouthfuls as she chewed vigorously, eager to pad her calories in case of emergencies.

 

Remembering something she had seen during her class selection dream, Morgan plucked several large leaves from a low-hanging branch. They were broad and reminiscent of oak leaves, and she was careful to merely hold them as she was wary of triggering her equipment rejection.

 

Placing the leaves on the ground, she tore several smaller chunks of the meat from the monster, and placed them on the leaves. She had no string, but wrapping millimeter-thin threads of earth around the leaves to hold her food was a simple matter with [Terrakinesis]. Picking up the three parcels, she placed them in her spatial storage rune. She wrapped up three more, and only two would fit for a total of five.

 

Thinking she could rearrange them and possibly fit the last one, Morgan emptied the spatial pocket. When the last leaf-wrapped chunk of meat reappeared, [Runic Belt] gained a level and she was hit with the corresponding notification. On the front of her left hip she felt a warm tingle as a new storage rune appeared opposite the first.

 

“Well that’s handy,” she said while rearranging her leaf-wrapped pack lunches. She returned to the crystalline mandible she had been using as a mana-battery. While she had a feeling it would not fit into her storage as it was now shaped, that didn’t mean it had to stay in its current form.

 

Pulling the faceted jawbone up from the ground, she used [Gem Sculpt] to slowly condense its form. That kind of practice did not even slow her down as she resumed her westward trek just as the sun peaked overhead through the forest canopy. With Lulu purbling happily on her shoulder once again, she set her pace with an easy loping jog while keeping the shifting lump of crystal hovering above one hand or the other as she traveled.

 

Morgan was learning the forest now, more out of sheer necessity than by any genuine desire. It was no longer the terrifyingly impossible visage of doom she had once seen it as, but that certainly did not mean it was safe. She relied heavily on her [Primal Instinct] to guide her feet around areas that felt more dangerous than others: shadows that darkened the ground more noticeably than others, depressions in the mossy floor that carried the impression of hungry mouths, and formations of stones or upraised hillocks that seemed eager to pull her down. With the aid of her instincts, she avoided these pitfalls with an almost prescient ease, padding through the forest in near silence. Occasionally, she would [Fade Presence] in response to a silent warning, slinking around more organic threats that might otherwise seek to end her.

 

Threats were not the only things that stood out, though. She could hear various animal calls in the distance; the coos of some large type of bird conveying thoughts of supper, and the odd clump of brush or thicker section of boughs in the canopy seemed like good nesting places for wild critters should she need to flush something out. Small bushes or green plants stood out with faint outlines that seemed to indicate they’d be at least somewhat edible, even if she didn’t think they would be particularly tasty. She even snagged a few of the familiar berries as she went past, a welcome treat of sweetness to contrast the greasy-rich calorie lump that was her usual fare from consuming defeated foes.

 

So it was that, as Morgan travelled, she kept her eyes and ears open for danger and for useful or tasty things. All the while, she absentmindedly worked the crystal mandible from the shellipede. First she smoothed back the serrated inner edge, pulling the ridged sawtooth formations back into the main jawbone trunk while straightening the overall shape.

 

Crystal did not flow as fast as Earth did by any measure, but she felt like it almost wanted to be a straighter, purer and simpler crystalline pattern. With each repaired imperfection, as the crystal returned to its natural form, the amount of Mana the crystal could hold increased.

 

Her footsteps devoured miles and hours, and by the time the sun had slunk down towards the distant horizon, she had worked what had once been a mandible down into a rough crystal spar. It was now a six-sided column, or roughly so, with rougher ends and formations of smaller crystals at the base and the former claw-like tip. Now less than two feet long, it was as wide as her calf muscle. It held nearly twice as much Mana as when she started, the uniform interior allowing for a much greater density as she packed her magical energy into it. The day’s efforts had yielded two more levels for [Gem Sculpt] and even one for [Crystal Affinity].

 

Feeling proud of herself, she placed the crystal into her second storage rune and felt her connection to the Mana within it simply vanish. “Looks like I can’t use it as an internal Mana Battery, Lulu,” she said as she petted her poofy friend. The scrubby gave a sleepy wurble, seemingly lulled to sleep by Morgan’s rhythmic jogging through the late evening.

 

She had no need to slow her pace yet -- [Mana Sight] helped to compensate for the fading light and lengthening shadow --  but there was no need to risk night predators, either. So she reduced her speed to a brisk walk, keeping her eye out for water and a good place to build another stone-house campsite.

 

Within another mile, and just after dusk had given way to actual night with the twin moons rising in the distant east, she had found a small stream and a nearby copse of smaller trees. After a drink, she set about finding a good place to fortify for the night.

 

The stream cut its way through several hills and trees, and she followed it to a small gap between two raised sections of earth. A natural deadfall of tumbled rocks made an uneven path alongside the water, leading into a small gully that opened up into a larger depression.

 

As Morgan hopped down from the last flattened section of rock, she realized her mistake. [Primal Instinct] screamed in her mind, panic building to a fever pitch -- but it pointed at no specific danger, no incoming threat to run away from. The shadowy depression had seemed like a good place to build herself a shelter, and now she knew it was anything but.

 

The small ravine only looked small from the outside. Now that she was within its walls she could clearly see that it was far larger. Trees had become twisted, looming overhead, vines and leaves forming natural walls lending to a maze-like pattern. Not exactly eager to deal with the danger as her senses continued to impress the feeling of menace upon her -- that of this entire ravine seeking her life --  she turned to exit this place via the same rock-fall.

 

And it was gone, all that remained was a tumbled section of boulders and loose scree that did not look as if she or anything else could have traversed its treacherous terrain. Panic rose yet higher, but she stood her ground, drawing on her [Terrakinesis] and trying to shift the stone to secure a safe path to climb out.

 

“Shit.”

 

The earth around her refused her Mana. As she tried to push it into and underneath the stone and rubble, tried to lift and move it, something pushed back, as if another will had infused the area with its own Mana that kept hers out. All she could manage was to shift a few pebbles and levitate a few handfuls of loose dirt.

 

Her instincts finally pointing to something behind her, Morgan turned around, primed to unleash flame and lightning and ice. The trees muffled the rustling sound at first, and then suddenly an oversized deer-like creature burst through one of the vine-laced walls just inside the maze, eyes rolling in sheer terror. It looked around wildly before trying to stumble away. But instead of forward, its trembling legs carried it sideways while it wheezed and snorted in confusion. As it fetched up against a short tree with large blooms on low-hanging branches, one of the flowers suddenly snapped down and closed around the top half of the deer.

 

The flower heaved back, a sickeningly wet crunch accompanying a violent shudder, the deer's exposed legs seeming to leap up for the briefest of moments before going still. The bloom pulled away from the once-living creature, leaving the legs standing in place, surrounded by a pile of viscera and bloodied, tattered fur. The scent of the animal's blood and organs permeated the air, and it was all Morgan could do to not lose what she had eaten as her instincts redoubled their harpy-like shrieking.

 

The various calls, the rustling of the underbrush, and the pulse of life from the very forest itself spread around her, circling her, promising her end.

 

“Shit,” she gasped again, wide eyes turning to her puffy companion, who was now wide awake. “I think we’re in a dungeon.”