Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1) Read online

  The forest stretched as far as she could see even in the abnormally bright moonlight, at least in every direction she could see, considering she was far too frightened at the moment to try to climb around the main trunk of her new treetop home. In the distance to her left she could see a glimmer through a dip in the landscape that she thought might be a river of some sort, but she had no real way to gauge any semblance of accurate distance just by looking. Off to her right if she turned her head far enough she could just see the edge of the forest in the distance rise in elevation and give way to a stark and jagged mountain range. But the most amazing thing about the forest was, far and away, the trees.

  The trees in this forest made the giant redwoods and sequoias she had seen in the American northwest look like quaint little Christmas trees. The hilltop “her” tree grew out of formed a clearing almost a quarter of a mile across by her best estimate. It was, at the very least, a hundred and twenty feet or so from where she sat to the gnarled roots that had caught the giant eagle before her bathtub had ended its final moments of outrage. The slope then steeply dropped off for several hundred feet further before giving way to smaller trees at the edge of the forest, trees that only grew in size and majesty the farther away they were from the root-covered knoll upon which she was sitting.

  “There must be something different about either this tree or this hill, or both…” she spoke out loud. While her “level ups” had restored her health, and healed her ruptured eardrums and internal injuries, her voice still sounded muffled and far away due to the congealed blood that had built up before her miraculous recovery. After a partially successful attempt to clean her ears out with the careful application of her fingernails, Morgan simply sat for a few minutes to organize her thoughts.

  Morgan Mackenzie wasn’t stupid. Far from it, in fact. She was a below average college student who only took light class loads because she worked a full-time job. Her average to bordering-on-poor grades through high school and into college were a result of her apathy and lack of motivation, not from a lack of intelligence or capability. She simply wasn’t interested in more than just getting by, as long as getting by was reasonably achievable and left her plenty of free time for things she actually enjoyed. Like the company of a select few friends, her books, and looking at cute things on the internet, with the occasional interlude for sexy times with her now ex-boyfriend.

  That particular train of thought brought her bad mood crashing back with a vengeance, pulling her out of her reverie so she noticed the rough bark she was clinging to. Not to mention the increasingly itchy coating of ick she was currently wearing. Carefully, she adjusted herself to hold her more sensitive bits away from the scratchy bark she was clinging to like human shrink-wrap. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she refocused on the messages that had appeared in her vision. As soon as her attention came back to them, the last golden “level up” message returned to a startlingly vivid clarity. “What is ‘status menu’ ? she asked herself, jumping slightly as a silvery list of text and numbers replaced the previous level up message.

  Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie

  Level - 6

  Primary Class: [Locked]

  Secondary Class: [Locked]

  Health - 74/74

  Stamina - 24/24

  Mana - 36/36

  STR - 3

  AGI - 5

  CON - 4

  VIT - 4

  INT - 6

  Stat points available to distribute: 50

  Current Skills: None

  Basic Skills now available for purchase!

  Skill Points available: 50

  Titles, Mantles, and Aspects

  [Worldwalker (Title)] - You have travelled through the void between the many worlds! Every world is different, each with its own gifts and dangers. To help you survive strange new places, you gain a slight boost to health and an increased ability to learn new things! (+50 to Health, +50% increased gains to Skill Experience)

  [Naked Survivor (Aspect)] - You have defeated foes and increased your own power while [Naked] and [Unequipped]! For gaining five or more levels in this manner without the benefits of a [Class], you have gained this Aspect. Experience gained and points rewarded are doubled while you are [Naked] and [Unequipped]. This Aspect will modify some learned or available skills with appropriate bonuses to offset your incompatibility with equipped items. Equipping clothing or items of any type will disable this Aspect, rendering modified skills and benefits unavailable. Facing further challenges and reaching new milestones of personal growth while [Naked] and [Unequipped] will enhance this Aspect for even greater benefit.

  “Huh…” huffed Morgan as she took in the sudden influx of information, this time actually paying attention to the words somehow being projected into her eyes. Even though she had played games like Stardew Valley, Factorio, and Starbound more than anything else, the similarities to MMOs and RPGs was not lost on her. As she focused on her dismally low stats, she received, not another notification, but a vague sense of how they worked. Understanding how her stats worked didn’t intrinsically lend itself to helping her figure out how to get from her chilly treetop location to somewhere warmer and safer. Preferably a location with another bath and a change of clothes. A brisk, bone-chilling wind rustled her elevated perch and reminded her just how naked she was.

  “S-S-S-SHIT,” she stuttered. The muck she was splattered with was making the cool wind feel even colder, and the cold gave the rough bark she was pressed against an even more savage intensity. With her newly restored health from the leveling up, it didn’t hurt exactly, but it was just about as far from comfortable as she could get without actual pain. Her hair was matted with shampoo and baby bird guts, and beginning to dry, and the rest of her body had begun to itch like mad.

  “So…either I’m dead and this is hell; I’m dreaming; or, according to this ‘Worldwalker’ title, I’m in another world. This shit sucks too much to be a dream. Dropped in bird shit is definitely a kind of hell, but giant trees and a creepy forest are pointing toward another world. I hope. Or think. I might just be going insane…”

  A small part of Morgan’s mind realized her words were too quick and her breathing far too rapid, and she struggled within her own mind to hold the oncoming panic attack at bay. Taking a deep breath, and with no other ideas for what else to do, she looked back at her stats once again. With her conscious attention on just her stats, the image zoomed in on that section, and the rest fell out of her vision. Focusing her attention on her available stat points, without understanding how she knew she could do so, she willed a single point into her strength stat. She felt more than saw her STR increase from three to four, followed by a quick but noticeable twitching of her entire body. She repeated that several more times in a row, and as her STR hit eleven, her entire body cramped so intensely that she nearly passed out. She’d hugged her tree limb so hard that she’d driven the rough edges of the bark into her skin all along the insides of her legs, arms, and her bare breasts, while her hands had clenched so tightly her fingers were pressed completely through the bark and into the outer wood of the tree.

  “OW! OW! OW! SHIT! DAMN!” she panted in a strained cadence as she forced her hands to let go and, with extreme care, readjusted her grip. She tenderly eased herself back up to lean against the trunk of the tree, wincing as the bark pulled loose from her skin. As fresh blood welled up from dozens of tiny cuts and tears, a new message appeared in darker silver text in front of her displayed stats.

  Status Afflicted: [Minor Bleeding]!

  Feeling insulted by the rather obvious message, she couldn’t help but blurt out, “I know I’m bleeding here, god-dam—” Her jaw snapped shut in surprise as she saw her health tick down by three points. What had silenced her wasn’t seeing the numbers, but the feeling that passed through her mind and body as it happened. It was an unpleasant mixture of a moment of faint weakness, flavored with hints of nervous fear. As she focused her attention more closely on her health numbers, sh
e was overcome with a sense of ominous dread. The silvery text gave her no answers, but she suddenly knew with every fiber of her being that allowing her health to drop to zero was a very bad thing .

  She was suddenly afraid, more than she’d been when she was falling, even more afraid than when the eagle had screamed and hurt her so badly. Because now she knew, without knowing how, that zero health points was THE END. As this realization struck her, Morgan felt another pulse of weakness and saw her health drop three more points. She felt it, without being able to explain it even to herself. Her instincts told her that the stat labeled “CON”, her constitution, affected her health, so she quickly dumped five of her remaining sixty-eight points into it.

  Increasing her CON did indeed increase her health pool, but to her horror and dismay, it increased the maximum while doing nothing for her steadily dropping current health. Her maximum health grew by thirty points, to a total of a hundred and four, and the increase was followed, not by muscle cramps as she’d experienced when she’d increased her strength, but instead by a wave of nausea and lightheadedness. Another pulse marked another three health points lost, dropping her to sixty-five. The pulses seemed to hit every tenth or so heartbeat, and Morgan knew she wouldn’t have very long, a minute at most, if the bleeding didn’t stop soon.

  “Let’s try vitality instead,” she hoarsely groaned, still dizzy and nauseated by the fact that her health was almost halfway gone. Before she could lose another chunk of health, she looked at her stats. With an all or nothing thought, she added ten points to her VIT stat, leaving her with only thirty-three points. Not that Morgan had time to consider points of any sort as she felt her heart stop. And then she felt a THUMP! in her chest that radiated outward like an electrical jolt. Barely managing to keep her balance in the tree, she saw her Stamina had jumped to eighty-four—but more importantly, the next dreaded pulse from the bleeding only cost her two points of health. She held her breath for a few heartbeats, but the next pulse never arrived. Then her health ticked back up a single point, and she released the air she’d held in her lungs, gasping for more, and nearly hyperventilating in relief. She’d been given no message, but somehow she simply knew she was no longer afflicted with the bleeding status. Her maximum Stamina had increased, and now her current Stamina had begun to regenerate slightly faster than her health.

  “Oh, thank god!” she sobbed. Morgan’s entire evening had been a frantic rollercoaster ride of emotional ups and downs, even some side to sides and stops and starts, and she didn’t even understand herself how she was managing to hold it together as well as she was. After nearly a full minute of simply leaning against the tree trunk, she realized that the bark of the tree wasn’t digging into her skin as painfully as before. Consciously thinking about it brought the knowledge into her mind; her CON stat affected not only her total health, but her general toughness and resilience as well. She saw her current health march up another tick. It wasn’t coming back very fast, but it was coming back. Slow was better than nothing, after all. With new determination, she once again looked at the stats section of her status screen:

  Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie

  Level - 6

  Primary Class: [Locked]

  Secondary Class: [Locked]

  Health - 67/104

  Stamina - 28/84

  Mana - 36/36

  STR - 11

  AGI - 5

  CON - 9

  VIT - 14

  INT - 6

  Stat points available to distribute: 33

  Current Skills: None

  Basic Skills now available for purchase!

  Skill Points available: 50

  Note to self: DO NOT dump points into stats all at once! Morgan mentally scolded herself with a weary sigh. She realized the obvious correlation between her sudden seizure and spending stat points to more than double her strength. The sudden shock and energy from vitality made a sort of sense, but she had no idea why constitution made her feel sick by increasing her health pool. Such considerations soon dropped from her immediate priority list as yet another sensation quite rudely intruded upon her already quite miserable state of existence.

  Hunger. She felt a growing hollowness in her belly, reminiscent of visits to doctor clinics for tests where she hadn’t been allowed to eat the day before. Not quite to the point of pain, but with a low growl her empty stomach announced that it didn’t intend to be ignored. Realizing she wouldn’t be allowed to stay in her tree for much longer, she went back to her stats with the intent of figuring out if any of them might somehow provide a way for her to safely make the perilous descent.

  Tentatively she put a point into AGI and waited. With only a slight shiver affecting her body, it was hardly an effort to keep her balance in the tree this time. She repeated this process every thirty or so heartbeats until her agility stat was equal to her strength. As she’d increased the attribute much more slowly this time, she almost didn’t notice the effect. It took her several moments of introspection to realize she no longer felt dizzy when she glanced toward the ground, and balancing herself on her craggy perch was much easier to do. Her body simply knew how to stay centered on the branch without her conscious mind having to concentrate on it, and keeping her tender parts away from the sharper outcroppings of the rough bark was so easy it was barely an afterthought. “Oh, now THAT’S a definite improvement!” she quipped out loud. With her mood slightly improved, albeit with her hunger even more noticeable, she moved on to the last of her attributes.

  Morgan’s intuition correctly pointed toward the INT statistic being related to the mind as the others had the body. Thusly forewarned by previous experience, she braced herself for a headache or worse as she added a point to the intellect attribute. There was no headache, but she felt her mind become a little less muddled. Another two points and she felt somewhat lightheaded, but it quickly passed after a few deep breaths. With her mind becoming sharper each step of the way, she gradually increased her INT to match her VIT, leaving her with twenty points.

  While more than doubling her initial intellect as a stat brought no epiphany or revelation, she did find herself getting more solid impressions of what the different stats did whenever she focused on that part of the translucent text floating in front of her eyes. She also found that it didn’t so much impede her vision as she simply saw both the floating words and the forest vista before her at the same time. With that particular paradox threatening to give her a headache, she switched to putting points into her constitution. More health can never be a bad thing, she thought to herself as she remembered how close she’d come to dying several times merely in the first five minutes of appearing in this strange and frightening world.

  Each increase to her CON was followed by another mild but noticeable wave of what she could only describe as a full body nausea that didn’t play nice with her growing hunger. It finally dawned on Morgan that her body was literally changing itself with every point she spent increasing her attributes. She found the fact less disturbing than the realization that she didn’t find it disturbing. With her total health now increased, and not all that keen to experience any more unpleasant waves of sickness, she incrementally spent the rest of her points on her VIT.

  While she was happy to see her total maximum health increase, she realized it was truly only as useful to her as her ability to recover it. Each point she spent on VIT was accompanied by a corresponding rush and feeling of energy, and her maximum Stamina grew accordingly. She felt more than saw her current health, Stamina, and Mana pools begin to tick upward much faster. As her remaining distributable stat points dropped to zero, she checked her main status once again as hunger gnawed sharply at her gut.

  Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie

  Level - 6

  Primary Class: [Locked]

  Secondary Class: [Locked]

  Health - 73/140

  Stamina - 41/168

  Mana - 41/84

  STR - 11

  AGI - 11

>   CON - 15

  VIT - 28

  INT - 14

  Stat points available to distribute: 0

  Current Skills: None

  Basic Skills now available for purchase!

  Skill Points available: 50

  With her increased vitality bringing a noticeable increase to her regen, Morgan focused her attention on her available skill points in the hope that something there might possibly lead to finding her way down from the tree and toward something safer. Hopefully with food, her increasingly insistent innards reminded her with another gurgling growl. “Skills!” she said out loud, and as expected, another menu overlay appeared.

  Skill Acquisition Menu

  Skill points may be spent to gain new techniques and traits to enhance your capabilities. Skills that are available for purchase will vary depending on your level and your previous accomplishments. Due to your previous methods and circumstances for reaching your levels and milestones, several Basic skills have been modified and are now available. Choose carefully, as some skills are incompatible with each other or certain classes and may lead to future restrictions on available skill and class selection. Other skills may provide bonuses in tandem or even unlock new and unique skills and classes in the future.

  Available Skills:

  [Naked Instinct (Passive)] - [5 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Survival Instincts] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. While naked, you are bare before the dangers of the world and need every edge you can get to help you survive! This skill improves all your senses in order to help you detect impending danger. The [Naked] version of this skill will also help you detect possible beneficial situations! May receive bonus improvements from other [Naked] skills.

  [Naked Resilience (Passive)] - [5 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Survival], the skill [Natural Resilience] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. That which does not kill you makes you stronger! This skill improves your chances of gaining resistances to any negative status effect or damage type you are exposed to. Repeated or continuous exposure increases resistances over time. The [Naked] version of this skill improves your chances of gaining new resistances and improves the rate at which learned resistances increase! May receive bonuses from other [Naked] skills.