The Hermit.

To Be Alone Is To See.

Choices Define Us.

The Path Begins.

As papers shuffled and chairs scooted across carpeted floors, Elowen stepped away from the second-largest conference room in her building with a sense of deep, tired resignation. Co-workers filed by her, murmuring greetings at best, and most often with downcast heads and shuffling feet as they retreated into their cubicles, escaping the chastisement that had constituted the last hour and a half.

"Elle! The boss is in a nasty mood, but all things considered, I think that went well." The voice was as greasy as the man himself. Carl Stantz was a blocky man, from his nose, chest, all the way to his fingernails he cut too short. Taller than her by at least a foot, he exuded a sense of ruddy enthusiasm about anything that he did, whether it deserved it or not. It was one of the reasons Elowen believed he'd advanced so far. "He's just a good guy," people would say.

And yet, as he stepped close, his hands just barely brushing against her elbow, Elowen couldn't help but feel her skin crawl.

"Step away from me, Carl."

"Whoa, you've been real feisty today." Carl lifted his hand that had been a little too close and rubbed his lantern jaw. “You know, you’d get along with management better if you learned to play nice.”

“I am nice.”

Carl hummed. “Sometimes. I think I know the boss’ deal though. If you wanna come to my office, I can explain—”

Elowen favored Carl with a withering stare before she turned and headed down the hall.

"Hey, I’m just trying to help!”

Elowen didn't bother to respond. In the past, she'd put up with Carl. Everyone in the office did, mostly because they didn't want to get on the wrong side of management. Carl, for all his smarmy faults, was the golden child of the company. But she knew what went on in his office, especially with junior associates.

People whispered in their cubicles, either making calls or gossiping about her, but Elowen didn’t bother to eavesdrop. Carl was a piece of garbage, and she didn’t have time for anyone’s nonsense.

Clearly her Path had deposited her into the past, but it was a day Elowen did not recall in the slightest. The only thing that gave her a slight time frame was her office—it wasn’t in the normal spot. She'd been so busy with meetings since her arrival that she hadn't had a chance to scope it out, but now she came across the door with her name picked out in gold and sighed. The room was small and only had a single small window; nothing like the corner office she’d earned only days before being summoned to the Continent.

Reaching her office, however, felt like reaching the walls of a fortress. She closed the door behind her and the murmurs vanished. The lock clicked and she drew the shades to keep the floor from peeking in, and for the first time in hours Elowen breathed a sigh of relief.

"What am I even doing here?" She circled around to her desk, immediately rifling through the papers sitting atop it, as if they would offer some sort of clue as to what she should do or where she should go. They gave her nothing. They were numbers and spreadsheets, memos from corporate, and a to-do list.

"Buy milk, buy cheese, buy a cat?" Elowen hesitated over that one. She never managed to do the last—which was for the best, she supposed. In the end, she only left her houseplants to wither on the vine.

She discarded the note, and as it dropped she couldn’t help the curl of her lip. Elowen held up her hands and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. They weren’t the thick, powerful Theran limbs she’d grown accustomed too. Her Human arms were pink, weak, and a bit too pudgy. On the Continent, when she made a fist her forearms would bulge with muscle beneath her tawny fur—now they jiggled.

"Ugh." It wasn't the fat that disgusted her—she'd always been very positive about her body. Instead it was the loss of capability. Once again, Elowen tried to access her status screen. Her vision flashed with static and nothing appeared.

Hmm.

She seized a metal award that sat on her desk. It was shaped like a rocket and was etched with the name of her company, meant to signify her rising success. Once upon a time, another Elowen had been so proud of it.

She grasped it in both hands and applied pressure—and immediately snapped it in half.

“Oh! That was really easy.” She dropped the award. “I guess I still have access to my stats.”

Her Core space was still there too. The Library flowed through her, lighting up with the arrays of her Skills. She’d spent a lot of time in her meetings exploring that part of herself and surreptitiously pushing pens and papers across the meeting desks with her telekinetic Skills.

The biggest problem was that her Mana reserves were not what they were. Even small expressions of her magic had depleted her Mana considerably—-she had probably half of what she had since she’d arrived and it wasn’t replenishing.

She sniffed. The air tasted stale. Empty. Different than the last time she'd been there. Or perhaps it was simply her Perception alerting her to new intricacies of the world she thought she knew.

Damn. She couldn't draw any more Mana from the atmosphere because it wasn’t there.

On Earth, there was no system. On Earth, there was no harmony. And on Earth, there was no Mana.

That’s gonna be tricky if I need to do anything strenuous. She supposed she would have to lean into her physical capabilities from now on. She glanced down at the snapped award. She supposed she would make do with that.

Skills and stats.

Elowen sat down in her office chair and it creaked alarmingly beneath her, and closed her eyes. She focused on Perception and Manasight.

The Skill hummed to life, books reshuffling through the Library at her center. Manasight poured through her, eating into her Mana, but it was only a trickle. Shed developed this Skill well, and it was quite efficient, especially paired with a high Perception.

Her senses spread outward through her office in a wave. Immediately it brought back to her a song that flitted pleasantly across her senses, like a concerto made only for her. But it was dull and empty, as if it were being played in a room that sucked up every ounce of sound so that no echoes bounced or reverberated, and the very instruments themselves sounded tinny and false.

in the center of it all, however, was a distortion. She altered her senses, realigning the trajectory of the Skill.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Hmm. It’s down below. She stood, stepped to the window and, sure enough, Elowen saw people running. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Whipping open her door, she interrupted Carl just as he lifted his hand to knock. "Oh, I was just coming to see you.” He gave her a long slow smile. “You know, the boss said he was interested in getting you into upper management, and they asked my opinion. I figured we could chat about it."

"I don't have time for you, Carl." Elowen pushed by him, and Carl gave a surprised grunt.

“Hey!” Carl grabbed her arm and Elowen didn't bother to shake it off. She simply moved forward, and Carl was yanked off his feet with a yelp. "Stop! I’m talking to you!”

Carl flailed at her and his squared hand snagged onto the lanyard around her neck. The old Elowen would have panicked and hyperventilated, but she did nothing of the sort. She seized his wrist, smoothly pivoted, and brought her knee up with a tiny fraction of her Strength.

Something burst, and Carl’s face went white as words tried to flee from his clenched throat. All that escaped was a high pitched keening.

“Fuck off, Carl.”

She stomped off.

There were no more interruptions as Elowen made her way to the elevator, but applause followed her down the hall. Everyone was watching her and quite a few “woo”s and cheers joined in. No one, it seemed, liked Carl.

“You been working out, Elle?” Tina asked as she passed.

“Um, yes, a bit.”

“Seems like more than a bit to me.” Tina laughed and sat back in her cubicle.

Elowen may have become different since entering the Continent, but it hadn’t altered her so fundamentally: she hated being a spectacle. Dozens of eyes were on her now as she waited for the elevator, each of them judging and gossiping.

Fuck this.

She turned to the stairs, pushed open the door, and took the stairs at speed. Her pace increased to a loping jog that skipped two to four steps at a time, until her comfortable flats were slapping against the landing with every jump, half a floor leapt down at a time.

A wild smile stretched across Elowen's face. A giddy joy that she hadn't ever felt before in her Human body. She was fast, strong, and she was barely breaking a sweat.

She made it down to the lobby in record time, bursting through the heavy door with a bullish intensity that sent it bouncing off the wall. People in suits and pencil skirts stared at her in shock and she ducked her head. She slipped out into the cool marble hall there, her security badge flapping against her chest as she hustled past the gawking suits waiting for the elevators and headed toward the front doors. They were fronted by an enormous glass wall, framed by brushed steel, and security had joined a crowd of people that craned their necks to peer at the running mob.

Elowen passed by them all. “Get away from the windows. It’s dangerous.”

No one listened, until she snapped her fingers. The sound echoed like a gunshot, and a few security guards put their hands to the tasers at their belts. “Get back,” she repeated, no louder but twice as forcefully. “Now.”

People pulled away, more scared of her than whatever was going on outside. Elowen tried not to care. They’re just memories. This isn’t real.

The glass front of the building emptied out into a concrete plaza. People were rushing by in handfuls, all of them running to the left, away from some sort of disturbance that now felt even stronger in her senses. It was strange but she could recognize it as Mana now, which was odd enough in this circumstance on Earth, but its wildness was unnerving.

It's unstable, just like that Echo of Noctis. A chill ran through her. Was this part of the Path? Or was the Echo influencing things?

She stepped out into the crowd with a purpose, weaving between the running people as she took in the cloud of dust that rolled low against the concrete business park. There were still dozens of people there, surrounding a crumbling statue that adorned the large fountain at its center. It was shaped like a human as viewed through the lens of a brutalist nightmare, blocky and severe. It held in its hand a barbed scepter built like a block of granite, and a head that jutted from a thick neck and a slab of a chest, all connected to the legs that sprang from stretched rectangular blocks that were generously described as buildings.

It was moving.

Analyze!

Name: Heart Of The City

Type: Manawarped Construct

Lore: ????E))0$9

The statue was supposed to represent the human heart of the city. Now its eyes gleamed a bloody red and a wave of malice overcame Elowen’s Spirit. The thing’s body twisted its stone foundations out of the earth and, with a groaning crunch, dropped its naked foot upon the pavement. Crowds fled in their business attire, tripping over each other as they scattered, some of them entirely too slow. The construct stabbed its staff down into the ground and a wave of glitching static spread in a dozen foot radius—in its wake, the people were simply gone.

It drew back, another screaming man collapsed beneath the fountain’s rubble, and lifted the staff up. The end fizzled with that same glitching static as it brought it down.

“Order Departs.”

The staff halted, its entire length wreathed in purple-gold Mana. The construct snapped its head up and found Elowen standing less than twenty feet away, hand outstretched. With her other hand, she repeated the Skill and the rubble was hurled into the distance. The man stared at it, eyes wide and lip shaking.

“Run.”

He did. The construct tried to follow, but Elowen flared her Skill. The purple-gold hit it harder, brightening against its hand and arm now before it shoved the creature back.

"Thank God.” Elowen flexed her thin hands and smiled. "I thought the purpose of this Path would never show up."

She reached forward, her spells answering to her call as the Heart of the City stomped its way toward her, ignoring all the rest. It shoved its hand skyward and the earth bucked, throwing Elowen to the side as a granite hand burst from the ground. It wrapped itself around Elowen's legs before she was hurled aloft. Elowen kicked it open, her sensible flats exploding beneath the pressure of her Strength, leaving her barefoot and her slacks shredded, but free.

“Chaos Beckons.”

She leapt forward, flying through the sky on a curtain of mana as she was pulled toward the unstable monstrosity. It lumbered backward, surprised by her movement, before thrusting the barbed end of its staff toward Elowen's chest. Her eyes gleamed, reading the moment before it arrived and twisted aside, the spear missing her by scant inches as she latched onto it and gave a mighty pull. The statue's hand shattered, its fingers crumbling apart as the staff was yanked from its grip.

With a grunt, she swung the length of it around—directly into the creature's roaring head.

The top half of its skull shattered, leaking more of that unstable Mana. It immediately deformed its body, the stone bulging and billowing. Solids moved like liquids and then gases, filling like water balloons with sudden, queasy power.

“Order Departs!”

Elowen hurled the creature straight up into the sky, holding it there as she was forced to the earth by its immense counterforce. The ground cratered under her weight, her hands shaking as the creature tried to escape. Aside from the incredible Mana drain, its unstable power spread like a stain across the air, eroding the very essence of the Memory she stood within. Static spread from it, cutting in sharp lines toward the office buildings surrounding them but she cut off her Skill. It fell, smashing into the fountain’s remains in a wet crash.

It tried to stand, but Elowen was above it now. Mid-leap she let her Skill sing through her.

“Order Departs!”

It slammed into the earth, concrete shattering as she was held aloft by the counterforce. The construct lifted its shaking arms but she doubled down. Skill after Skill sang through her, Mana pouring out of her palms in savage waves, until the thing’s stone body was compressed beneath purple-gold light.

With a great popping crash it shattered, sundered into dust.

You Have Killed The Heart Of The City!

XP Earned!

“That’s…ominous.” Elowen looked around. The business park had cleared out of almost everyone, and the clouds of dust slowly drifting across the area should have blocked the view of nosy office workers. That was for the best. She hadn’t a clue how to explain what just happened if someone asked. Far worse, however, was the distinct lack of doorways made of light.

Her way out was missing.

"Damn it. If that wasn't the point of this, then why am I here?" she muttered.

"I'd say it's because you're unlucky, lady.”

A man stepped from the dust clouds. He wore black pants, a camo jacket, and a black ski mask. Five more men just like him appeared from the dust as the wind scoured the business park, swirling around their heavy satchels and the semi-automatic rifles lifted to point at her.