In the lore of the Elves, custodianship of the three Great Wells was grao the three Elven kingdoms by divine providehe hand of Lunaré herself.

  To the Night Elves, she bequeathed the Well of Eternity, representing the eternal dream and the final repose of death. To the Sun Elves, she gifted the Well of Divinity and the domains of light and holy, a bridge to the gods. She charged the Wood Elves with custodianship of the Well of Souls, representing mortality, sentience, and the passage of time.

  Lunaré’s gifts elevated Elven culture from barbarism, ushering in the Age of Enlighte, and spawning the three legendary cities of Mi’ir Valdanis, the Night Elf City of Dreams; Aalion, the City of Light, and Ciradyl, which still stands today.– Excerpt from Legends of the First Age, the collected lectures of Val’korr, Trollish (transted).

  Aliandra

  Ali gazed out at the darkness and eerie silence of the suspended sed level of the ruined city. Without the duo respawn the monsters, not a sihing moved nor was there a single sound, and without her friends to talk to, she felt like an invader in a ghost town. The only visible light was the distant glow from the fractured mana denser oer ring, still leaking liquid light-affinity mana that cascaded off the edge of the floating stoy ring in a slow-motion waterfall, and the dim gloercoted up from the jungle far below, casting much of the ruined city into shadow.

  She summoned her Grimoire, which shone brilliantly in the darkness, and took the time to summon two Forest Guardians and three Poison Wyverns. She had promised Mato she would make better protectors but, after seeing the dark aed ruins, she was gd of their reassuring bulk.

  Alright. Those bats fly, she thought, recalling their battles through here with perfect crity. She pursed her lips and then paged through her Grimoire, choosing to summon two Bone Mages and two Fire Mages. I add some archers if this isn’t enough. The only issue would be carrying all her minions into what was likely to be an aerial battle.

  “What is your wish, A Mistress?” the first Kobold asked in a raspy voice. A thin curl of bck smoke spiraled up from between his gleamih.

  “We’re hunting bats,” she answered. Ranged magic would be essential.

  “Excellent,” the reptilian mage replied, rubbing his scaled hands together with a devious grin grag his face.

  But it was not just her minions that would be proteg her down here. She had taken a quick trip to town, and Lydia had outdone herself. While ’s mother had apologized for not being able to craft anythier than her self-repair entment, Ali was mostly in awe of the resistahe exquisitely crafted piece provided, and the taleailor had trimmed them with green and gold embroidery to match her hair and eyes.

  Tailored Cotton Clothing – level 45Resistance: 648Mana: Self-repair.Requirements: Intelligence 158Created by Lydia Avery.Body – Cloth

  So much better! Any Fireballs or Ice Bolts she might tank would be reduced in damage by thirty-two pert – not that she would be trying to tank any hostile spells if she could avoid them – but it was further reassuring that she roperly prepared to face the ruins alone. She, at least, po stand well in the back behind her barriers, but the bats she was hunting had a dangerous sonic attack – and being prepared was rule number four.

  Without ’s light magic, she would o rely on the glow of her floating barrier magic, her Luminous Slime, and the exceptional Darkvision of her Kobold mages to see. On a hunch, she extended her awareo one of her Poison Wyverns and the darkness vanished as her borrowed emerald-green draic eyes sed the remains of the a city.

  Perfect. If my eyes aren’t good enough, I’ll just use theirs. It cost a tiny trickle of mana to maintain the additional points of view, but her mana pool was rge enough by now to ee the cost of using the sight of a few minions.

  Slowly, she picked her way across the ruined city to one of the arched stone bridges leading to the ter suspended ring, not entering a single monster, living or undead. All that broke the silence was the leathery swishing of her Wyverns’ wings and the heavy thuds of the Forest Guardians’ footfalls on the a stone.

  Her path took her past the Armory once again. They had been uo carry most of the ons or armor out when they had first discovered it, so she decided to take the time for a sed peek at the loot, given as she now better appreciated how it might add to and even solidate her knowledge. Every chapter in her Grimoire recious and o be well-used. Leaving the enormous Guardians outside, she ehe dark building and gazed at the walls dispying their treasure with her borrowed Darkvision.

  No matter how many times she saw this, she knew she would be awed. Most of this is Eimuuran Steel. Her borrowed eyes roamed around the immensity of the armory, taking in the wealth of ons crafted by the a smiths of Dal’mohra. I probably afford to spend one more imprint, she decided. She o keep one for the bats.

  Axes, perhaps? she thought, weighing the options. Most of her Goblins could use axes – particurly the Storm Shamans and the Bugbears, although she seldom used the hulking Goblin warriors anymore. I’m pretty sure some of my Kobolds use axes too. The warriors certainly could, but maybe even some of her rogues might have the skill to use axes. Thuli will appreciate this, she decided a about destrug every axe in the Armory.

  Imprint: Axe pleted.

  She chose the Bck Bean imprint to repd waited for her Grimoire to rearras pages with the newly learned imprint. It took a little lohan she had anticipated, but the Armory tained an unbelievable variety of axes. She didn’t typically pay much attention to melee ons and had only sidered the ‘big’ two-handed axes and the ‘smaller’ one-handed varieties as the full extent of the categories. But she began to gze over after her Grimoire aowledged an endless list of throwing axes, greataxes, brys, hand axes, beaked axes, tomahawks, and halberds – these being the few she could actually name.

  They’re just sticks with a bde on the end, aren’t they? she thought, twisting her mouth wryly, but she studied the differences, resolving to ask Ryn for more information soon. The more she knew about these ons, the better she would bee when she deployed axe-wielding minions to battle.

  tinuing her slow procession across the ruins, she made her way to the outer ring, approag the area where they had fought the Wights. She eyed the scorch marks and skeleton bones, all that remained in the now-silent aed battlefield to mark the epic fight against the final boss. Her gaze flickered to the ter, but nothing remaio indicate the dungeon shrine had hovered there or call attention to the terror of c in the presence of the Blind Lich. She shivered at that memory, heless.

  After studying the deserted spot for a few moments, she allowed the remembered dread and terror to subside and turo her sed task – the denser. She stopped, a little out e, seeing the first signs of life in this deserted ruin. The Luminous Slimes still gregated in the puddles of liquid light-affinity mana leaked by the giant fractured pyramid of stone.

  Must not have been part of the dungeon, she thought. Somehow, they were attracted to the mana, or perhaps even spawned from it directly like the spawning pool below. If they had been dungeon monsters, they would have been released in a dungeon-break when the dungeon itself had beeroyed. She could find no remnants of the old domain, ahese creatures remained.

  “Go clear that denser,” she instructed, sending her ente of minions into battle. It was a short and messy fight, with many of the slimes bsted from the ring by the detonations of the Fireballs, Bone Spears, or otherwise stomped into sptters uhe Guardians’ feet. But she didn’t care about experienonster kills and as soon as the denser was clear, she approached, pausing at the threshold where the density of the liquid mana began to prickle painfully across the skin of her forearms.

  “Retrieve the magicite,” Ali said, waving her Luminous Slime forward. She studied it carefully as the shining blob happily squashed itself through the crevices after her treasure, but her Acolytes did not even bother healing it, firming her guess that the slime was nigh immuo the damage from the caustisity of the light-affinity mana.

  Not long after, her slime reemerged, carrying ks of shining crystals suspended in its semitransparent body. It didn’t take too long before her Grimoire reacted to her destru and she added a new resource for the crafters in Myrin’s Keep. Ali identified it quickly.

  Variant: Glowstone – Magicite (Light) – added to Imprint: Stone.

  “Ok, time to hunt,” she said, elig chirps of excitement from her Kobolds.

  She summoned a disk of golden magid collected her minions upon its smooth surfad levitated everything into the air, leaving only the immense Forest Guardians behind. They were far too heavy for her to lift at her current skill level.

  Using the eyes of her Wyverns and Kobolds, she searched the darkness of the cavern for her prey with a heart that beat eoo quickly for it to be solely caused by excitement.

  For several minutes, nothing happened, but as she he roof of the immense cavern – the underside of the city’s residential level – she finally caught sight of a dark shape dropping away from a crevid approag on silent wings. Her Wyverns immediately roared, intercepting the shape with streams of deadly green spray, but the creature flittered bad forth, dodging with uny agility.

  Giant Bat – level 24 (Sound)

  It darted between the Wyverns, suddenly rushing her and unleashing a high-pitched screech. Ali yelped, tossing up a barrier, but the air shimmered and she was hit by a palpable wave of sound. She stumbled and her vision bed.

  She came to, face down on her golden barrier magic, a jangling pain slowly fading as her Kobold healer filled her with holy magic. Ali groaned and sat up, clutg her head and urgently searg for the bat. Her eyes found it about teers off to the left, flying circles arouhree angry Wyverns.

  “Where did the mages go?” she asked, notig that two of her Kobolds were missing. But she already khe answer before her Acolyte spoke.

  “They fell, A Mistress.”

  Stupid. Stupid! she berated herself. She had fought these bats before, and she knew of their abilities. I o be more careful. She hunted entirely alone, and a single mistake could spell her end – there would be nobody to e and rescue her if she passed out and got attacked or fell. Her experieh her friends, and maybe even her solo dungeon delve into Naia’s dungeon had obviously lulled her into a false sense of security.

  Suddenly, the bat screeched and dropped, and her notification chime sounded.

  Your minions have defeated Giant Bat – level 24 (Sound)

  Fubsp;She watched in chagrin as the corpse rapidly fell from sight, vanishing into the darkness below. I hat. There was no way she was fighting her way through that jungle below by herself to recover the corpse.

  When she finally found a sed Giant Bat, she engaged first with her Wyverns, but this time she instructed them to lure it downward towards the ringed city ruins below. She maintained a barrier betwee and herself as a precaution against its stun. The darting, wheeling aerial melee wove intricate patterns in the air as the Wyverns slowly desded. As soon as Ali judged them to be low enough above the ruins that she wouldn’t o catch the corpse she reacted.

  “Drop,” she said. The Poison Wyvern wheeling above the bat folded its wings and reached with its talons, falling five meters in an instant and tag the bat in the air. Screeches of pain and roars of triumph greeted the spray of blood as the talons found their target. And as soon as the bat’s mobility was stripped away, the Wyverns doused it in green spray.

  That’s much better.

  “Ok, now you shoot it too,” she told the mages beside her.

  “Yes, mistress.” The air bristled with spears of bone and sizzled with bolts of fire. Ali even unched a couple of barrier shards. She missed Are Bolt for this kind of fight, but she had gotten quite profit with maniputing shards of her barrier magic, so she still wielded a useful amount of personal destructive power.

  The fight was short and vicious, and the outnumbered bat died in the air, dropping the short distao nd on a building below. Ali desded and destructed the corpse.

  I did it! She hadn’t had much opportunity to hunt by herself and she reveled in the sense of achievement. Especially after her first attempt had been a clear failure.

  Ok, now I need a whole lot more of them.

  ***

  Ali viewed the summarized notifications representing a whole day of hunting giant bats in the darkness.

  So disappointing.

  You have defeated Giant Bat – level 20-30 (Sound) x7.

  Empowered Summoner has reached level 24.Barrier has reached level 36.

  Only seven. She had hunted for hours, extending her quest deep into the afternoon. Her fighting had bee signifitly more reliable as she became more familiar with aerial bat using her Wyverns, however, for the st two hours, her search had proved fruitless. She had eventually given up when she deduced that there probably were no more bats in the cave for her to hunt auro the library, soling herself with her books while she waited. Typically, she needed about twelve to fifteen monsters before she learned a new imprint, and without the duo respawn them, she wasn’t at all certain she could find more to plete it.

  “Hi, Ali, I’m back!” Mato shouted, his cheerful voice eg in the library as he stepped off the nding. His eyes g the two Forest Guardians oher side of her coud flicked upward to the three Wyverns roosting in the branches of the giant tree. “You listened.”

  “Of course,” Ali answered him with a smile. “I trust you, and your advice was smart.”

  “Thank you, Ali.” There was an uncharacteristic seriousness in her friend’s voice as he answered.

  “Are you ok, Mato?”

  “I’m just worried about my friends,” he answered soberly, dropping himself heavily onto the couch.

  “I’m sure they’re both ok,” Ali said. Malika had bee rec and in good hands. But nobody had anything from , and she shared Mato’s .

  “Anyway, I brought you a present,” he grinned, his mood flipping back to his more typical cheerful self, and he dumped a pile of dead bats on the floor, retrieved from his ring’s ste entment.

  “You sure know how to cheer a girl up,” Ali ughed. “I was all depressed because I could only find seven of them down here.” She hadn’t expected him to be so thh or quick with her request, but he had gone above and beyond – the pile looked to have about twenty Cave Bats with levels ranging from five to fifteen.

  Hopping happily to her feet, Ali began to destruct the grim pile.

  Imprint: Bat pleted.

  “Yay!” she excimed, “I got it!”

  She selected the potato imprint chapter and repced it with the bats.

  With risiement, she created a level-five Cave Bat and a level-twenty-five Giant Bat. Slipping her awareness into the smaller creature’s mind, she looked around.

  “It has pretty det vision,” she said.

  “That’s good,” Mato answered, leaning forward to take a look at her small monster fpping about in the air before them.

  A chorus of buzzing noises filled Ali’s ears, ing from the general viity of the Elder Tree, and it took her a few moments to realize the bat was hearing the normally inaudible wings of the moths and other is that had flown in from the jutracted to the density of the tree’s mana before she had blocked off the doorway with her barrier. She focused her attention and found that she could even hear Mato’s heartbeat from all the way over at the railing. “Its hearing is extraordinary,” she said. It was almost as sensitive as the slime’s senses, but definitely in the more familiar mode of hearing instead of the slimes’ far more alien touch-vibration sense.

  She switched to the Giant Bat, finding that its vision and hearing were quite a bit more acute, precise to a signifitly rger distance. She instructed it to use its echolocation, and she heard a high-pitched series of clicks and screeches, only audible to her because she was using the bat’s ears. Instantly, everything lit up. She was hearing, but the spatial resolution of the sense was more like vision, seen as rapidly strobing snapshots timed to the clicks, but with vastly more resolution and rahan her own eyes. She could literally hear shapes aures and the accurate spatial position of everything in the room, down to the tiny buzzing moth wings and other is flying about.

  “Ok, this is amazing…”

  With a little more experimentation, she learhat, in addition to the enhanced perception, the stun attack was also uo the Giant Bat. The Cave Bats relied on biting, using sharp cws at the joints of their wings to g and scratch.

  “Mato, these bats are awesome!” she gushed at him. “I see sounds and hear shapes with my ears. Well, I’m probably just experieng what the bat hears interpreted by its brain, but still. Actually, I wonder how it really works? I must do some research!”

  “Gd you like it,” he chuckled.

  She suddenly realized she must sound like aed child with a oy and blushed a little in embarrassment.

  Mato just smiled at her. “Here, take a break. Let’s have dinner,” he said, hopping to his feet and beginning to unload his pans from ste as the two of them began to share the details of their respective days.

  thahe healer and followed Lyeneru out of the doorway and into the light of the early afternoon.

  “What do you thi–” Lyeneru said, but gasped and stumbled, nistering a word she said. He gawked like a try bumpkin on his first trip to the city, but he couldn’t help it. He stared in stupefa at the inprehensible scale of the wonderous vista that ed his sehe iable sequence of the mu of stepping through that wooden door.

  He found himself upon a branch dizzyingly high above the ground. It was so broad that several wagons could pass by side-by-side without anyone ever w about falling. All about him, vast Elder Ciradyl trees towered majestically overhead, so tall they boggled the mind aed the senses, with branches spreading wide enough they might cradle the ey of Myrin’s Keep within the grasp of just a siree.

  There were hundreds of them. As far as his eyes could see.

  “…uuuh…” he managed, but he barely noticed Lyeneru’s chuckle.

  Wood Elves dressed in every shade of the forest swarmed about with dignified but bustling energy as they went about their business upon the giant boughs, or across gently swaying rope-and-vine bridges and walkways that spahe spaces betweerees, appearing as industrious ants in an enormous hive.

  But it was a city grown, not made, with the dwellings cultivated from natural outgrowths of the tree branches, or hanging structures fashioned from vines or epiphytits on a scale that dwarfed any city he had ever imagined, let alone seen. Darting through the mesh of interced branches in the opy, Elves with flight skills flew side by side with the endless flocks of birds that seemed to make the city their home.

  “It’s something else, isn’t it?” Lyeneru said from beside him, her words finally breaking through his daze.

  “Uh… yes… errr… how?” he stammered, trying to locate his voice after he’d picked his jaw up from the floor, dusted it off and rammed it firmly bato pce.

  “The human cities use earth mages and stone crafters to build their walls and houses, but the Wood Elves are often blessed with nature or pnt magic. This,” she gestured to the vista, “is the result of that.”

  had known about Ciradyl, of course – the Wood Elf capital, a legendary city that dated back to the Age of Enlighte, named for the Elder Trees upon whose bra led. But nothing he had ever read or even imagined could hold a dle to this.

  “e, let’s go visit the guild a you signed up,” Lyeneru said, tugging his arm a little to get him going. She led the way along the vast bough to a swinging walkway made from wooden sts suspended by grown vihat flowered prettily.

  breathed and slowly began to notice his immediate surroundings.

  Most of the people of Ciradyl were the brown- reen-skinned Wood Elves, most dressed for the forest in ranger leathers or robes of shimmering green, but every now and theiced a fairer, silver-haired Sun Elf, or one of the dark northern Night Elves with their purple-bck c – just like Lyeneru. But it was not her that was attrag attention.

  “Am I that unusual?” he asked, after yet another Elf gnced away the momeiced them staring.

  “Half-humans are rare here,” Lyeneru said. “The city is pretty progressive, but the other races are more on. Even humans are more on to find here. Most people will be polite, but it would be a lie to say you won’t receive some arrogance or animosity for not being a pure Elf.”

  Same as in the human cities, then. lowered his gaze and assumed his normal, unassuming posture, much of his excitement and joy at seeing the fabled city with its magical trees fading.

  “, may I offer some personal advice?” Lyeneru asked, making him almost stumble in surprise.

  “Um, sure?” he said, not quite knowing what to expect.

  “Wear your heritage as a badge of pride. Those who would misjudge you by your appearance will do sardless of how you carry yourself. You have much to be proud of. fiden your abilities and friends will do you a lot mood in the long run.”

  “Uh…” he said, shifting unfortably.

  His disbelief must have shown on his face because she tinued. “I’m serious. You took on a Death Knight almost five times your level by yourself and sted forty-five seds. You have every right to be proud.”

  “You mean I ran away from it like a scared rabbit for forty-five seds?” he said. He gnced down at his bare foot. He had also lost his leg to that monster’s deadly ice magid cowered in the face of its oppressive fear. If Lyeneru hadn’t beeo save him, he would have been crushed like a bug.

  “Rabbits don’t shoot back,” she calmly retorted. “Without your distra, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity taih and the battle would have ended in a stalemate like it has every time before. You tributed to ridding the world of a terrible monster.”

  That’s… true. Despite his dismissal of her pliment, Lyeneru’s praise cheered him up, and he lifted his head as he tio follow her. One evil monster was sin today. Even if my tribution was tiny, it was important. “It’s hard to look fident with only one boot, though,” he offered, wriggling his toes.

  “The guild has an equipment shop,” Lyeneru said, chug at his disfort.

  As he followed across a wooden walkway suspended between two of the giant trees, his eyes were suddenly drawn to a vast pilr of shifting blue light emergiween two distant trunks. Far below, led between the giant roots, y a pool of crystal-clear blue water, deeper than even his eyes could perceive, ringed by rune-inscribed stone. Within the n of light, thousands of white or blue wisps flitted, s, dang, swooping, and vanishing, only to reappear somewhere else within the soothing otherworldly illumination.

  He was startled out of his wonder by the sound of his chime.

  Explorer has reached level 26.

  “The Well of Souls,” Lyeneru identified it for him. He had beeirely unaware of stopping to stare at the sight.

  “It’s beautiful.” It surprised him a little that his Explorer skill had not reacted to the ey of the vast new city of Ciradyl, but leveled just from seeing the Well of Souls.

  “It’s an artifact from a previous age, cared for by the Temple of Lunaré. It was said to be one of three Great Wells for which each of the Elven kingdoms served as custodians. The Well of Eternity was said to be within the fabled Night Elf city of Mi’ir Valdanis. The Sun Elf City of Light, Aalion, was built around the Well of Divinity. But greed for its pohat spawhe Neancer Wars and shattered the ti. Aalion is no more, and Mi’ir Valdanis was lost to the mists of time.

  “How did the Wood Elves make it?”

  Lyeneru chuckled, “They didn’t make it. Its ins are lost in myth and legend. Some schors believe it dates back to the Age of Gods and Demons. Some agree with the Troll Seekers, believing that it was created by the aroll Sages and that it was the magic of the wells that caused the Elves to spawn from the race of Trolls. Most Elves despise the idea that they desded from the Trolls, obviously. What we do know is that the magic of the well is the reason for these giant trees and that Ciradyl was founded here to protect the Well. And iurn, the Well of Souls protects Ciradyl.”

  “That’s incredible,” breathed. That the well predated the oldest Elven city still ience simply blew his mind. No wonder Explorer reacted.

  timewalk