The monotonous rhythm of the work slowly got to me as the days passed. The novelty of certain practices wore off quite fast. I was a runner. I was an archer. I was, in general terms, a warrior in the making.

  Those were good and all, but the in-betweens of those practices left me alone with my own thoughts.

  Which was torture.

  It was as though there was an old TV somewhere deep in my brain, stuck on the same channel that showed parts of my former life. Whenever I was left with my thoughts, I was forced to watch that damn thing.

  It wasn't all bad, honestly. There was that one time I broke both of my arms in a bicycle crash, which was cool since I was eight years old. In kindergarten, me and my then-best friend Max tried to set the whole place on fire by messing in the kitchen. Children should be kept away from ovens.

  I did some pretty crazy things back in my youth. Most importantly, however, I tried new things all the time.

  Now when I looked back at those times, I could see those were, in part, me trying to get attention. Perhaps I wanted to be seen. To be acknowledged. To be cared for. Another part was that I had this deep hunger for life. To live. To experience new things.

  This changed during high school. I was bullied, a lot. Then I bullied other people out of spite. I stopped trying new things. I lost my general interest in life. Slowly, I drew into my own shell to not deal with all the bullshit around me. In my room, away from people, there was nothing that could harm me.

  I remember I was furious at the start. Furious for being so miserable. It wasn't fair. Why did being happy demand such effort when being miserable was too easy? It was such a strange thing. The moment you stopped doing things, you'd be miserable. The moment you were left alone with your thoughts, you'd spiral into depression.

  You had to push on. Yes. That was a given. To become happy, or at least less miserable, you had to do things.

  Why?

  Why couldn't you just stop, take a breath and be… I don't know, happy?

  These were adult thoughts. I was nearly seven years old, so I thought my brain was slowly catching up with me. It began seeing the world in new ways. It made me scared. That was how I remembered my life after high school.

  There were no colors in an adult's life.

  I was growing up, and I was growing up fast. Mother was preparing me for a future I knew jack about. Hardships and danger. Chaos and pain. Why couldn't we just live like this?

  Did all people have to strive for something to continue living?

  I supposed that was true. Doing something gave you a purpose. Without a purpose you'd just wither like a discarded leaf. We didn't do that in our house. We were to be warriors of some grand path. And a warrior hardly rested when there was work to be about.

  …….

  Shooting arrows was a heavenly practice. The whoosh of the wind and the satisfying thud of an arrowhead biting into a thick bark, splinters flying, the butt of the arrow wobbling, fingers of my right hand stinging dully at the string. It was something else.

  After months of training, I could now proudly say that I could shoot anything that couldn't move. It wasn't much, I knew, but it meant I was ready to move on to moving targets, which I did for a while.

  Then one day Mother took me to the woods.

  I was ready to hunt.

  Sort of.

  "A hunter picks her game according to three core principles. Respect the nature. Be crafty in the hunt. And assess the urgency of the situation. The third one will always be your compass. You ought to consider your needs before making a decision."

  Mom trudged down across the forest, one hand clasped around the string of a much larger bow, leather boots crunching on piles of snow. She had a hood pulled up around her blond hair, masking her features. With her broad shoulders and the ease with which she breezed through the forest, she was what I would consider the perfect picture of a hunter in the woods.

  I wore a similar outfit. My hood was pulled over my blond hair, straps of my leather shirt fixed tightly into each other. The boots I wore kept my feet surrounded from all around, making them warm, but not overly much in the cold weather.

  The winter snow had bit into the forest with brutal efficiency. Piles of it were on our way, but they would melt right before Mother as she radiated a wavering air of heat off her body.

  That was one of the wonders of internal energy.

  "Look for the footprints," she said as we came to a stop around a giant pine tree, the snowy soil around its bark dappled with hoof marks the size of my head. She raised her eyes at me as I studied the marks. "How many?"

  "At least three. One of them is likely a calf," I muttered, having seen these exact prints before.

  They belonged to Pinedeer that lived in the valley beside our village. Fast animals, those were, and true to their name, they often munched on pines that fell from giant trees. Normally, you'd never get to see them this deep into the forest, but in winter, when food grew scarce, they had little other choice but to venture into riskier territories.

  I didn't know why they didn't migrate to warmer parts of the world. As far as I remembered, deer did that back on Earth. But for some reason, these animals were strictly homebound, meaning they lived their whole lives in the same region.

  "They look muddled. I think they were being chased," I commented.

  It was hard to pick apart the prints from each other, but a broken branch dangling high on the tree gave it away. There were similar branches hanging from the trees we'd come across, which was a tell-tale sign of a Snow Wasset on the hunt.

  "What do you do?" Mother asked. "Which one do you hunt?"

  She did that whenever she thought I was ready for something. She gave me the choice. She wanted me to take the initiative.

  As I was taught many times, I first assessed my situation.

  In this particular scenario, we were Knights separated from our troops, who then got lost in foreign territory. In that imaginary fight that forced us into this forest, we'd had to leave most of our weapons and our carts behind. The little food we had with us had lasted for only three days before we found ourselves in desperate need of resources.

  Water, we could boil from the snow.

  Warmth, we could—or Mother could—get from our internal energy.

  Food, on the other hand, was something we had to work for.

  "I will stalk the Wasset," I said after much thought. Mother kept her silence and gave me a single nod.

  With that, she fell back as I took to the front. From now on, this was my hunt. She would act as my shadow. I knew I would be safe in case things went wrong, but this wasn't about my safety. This was about my training.

  Damn it. I was not even seven years old.

  What the hell am I doing?

  My heart pumped in my chest. It was with a growing unease, mixed into excitement, that I picked my way across the forest. I followed the broken branches like a dutiful student. Wassets never left marks on the ground. They could climb trees like those leopards I'd seen in a documentary.

  They hunted from the top where the deer wouldn't expect.

  I followed the broken branches on the way as we dug deeper into the forest. Wind whipped from the north in occasional blasts, sending me stumbling more than a few times. It was hard to find a good home to fit your feet in from all the snow blanketing the ground, but I had to do better.

  A hunter stumbling from mere wind… What would he do when faced with a true predator?

  Our marching brought us to a scarcely populated part of the forest where pine trees gave way to an enormous walnut tree. It had claimed a larger piece from the area, stretching its branches all around in open space, steering away the other trees as if it had a bone to pick with them.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Strange. All the walnut trees had succumbed to winter, but this one seemed specially durable. It was grand as trees could be, but that wasn't the point.

  Hidden in its branches was one insidious creature.

  It had a snowy-white coat. On the ground, it might be barely visible, but the branches gave it away. This didn't help the poor little deer feeding just below the giant tree, however. They looked peaceful as they crushed fist-sized walnuts with their jaws.

  I was a bulky, muscled six-year-old soon to be seven. I was not even half the size of those Pinedeer. They were giants I couldn't hope to take with a clumsy shot. I had one chance to bring them down, if that was even possible. An arrow through the neck.

  But again, what were the core principles of a hunt?

  Respect nature. Be crafty in the hunt. And assess the urgency of the situation.

  The urgency of the situation was clear. We were supposed to be hungry. The same went for that Snow Wasset. It was hungry, too, and it was the perfect place to make a move.

  Which meant I had to be crafty in this hunt.

  I found myself a bush to cover my smell, positioning myself in a way that would allow me a clear arrow shot. I had perfect vision of the deer, and the Snow Wasset to the right, hidden in the walnut tree.

  So, I waited.

  I was taking a risk. I was, in the literal sense, gambling on that Snow Wasset's predator skills. But in this situation, I had no choice. If I made a move to the deer and failed, there was no way I could catch up to them after that. Worse, with the deer having fled, the Wasset could turn its attention to me, a six-year-old who was like the perfect snack for it.

  On the other hand, I could lose the hunt if the Wasset made a move and failed, which would be a bummer, but still leave me with my own life.

  Be crafty, right?

  I hoped those documentaries I watched back on Earth would prove to be true right in this instant.

  Something crunched on the walnut tree. The Pinedeer perked their big ears up, most of them frozen with half-crushed walnuts in their jaws. All except one sensed something was wrong. The little calf, however, was still busy relishing the taste of fresh walnuts in winter. The adults searched around for a second, but there was nobody there. No real danger.

  Where did the sound come from, then?

  A shadow lunged from high above. It was a streak of white too fast for my eyes to track. Before I could gasp at its speed, the Pinedeer took off out of pure instinct. They bolted like lightning out of a bottle, scattering senselessly about the forest.

  The little calf was too late on the notice.

  Sharp teeth tore into its neck without giving it a chance to run. Even as a calf, the Pinedeer was nearly bigger than the Wasset, so it would take quite a while for the hunter to kill its prey. It dragged the Pinedeer with its jaws closed around its neck under the tree's shadows and sat there waiting, blood streaming down from its snowy coat.

  I pulled my bow up. I took three deep breaths and held the last one in. The sheer amount of repetition I'd gone through in practice turned my fingers into steel. They didn't tremble as I raised the arrow and aimed at the crown of the Wasset's head.

  Then without waiting, I released the string. The arrow whizzed past from the bush and into the opening, tearing a straight way across toward the Wasset's head before a sudden gush of wind kicked it from the side. It banked, but not hard enough to steer it away from the target.

  With a wet squelch, it found its way into the Wasset's left ear.

  A pained growl escaped from the animal. It jerked back in full panic, staring around itself, trying to find the source of the danger. But I'd already sat promptly back to the bush, hiding myself from its eyes. It searched for a long second, but there was nobody there. No real danger.

  Where did the arrow come from, then?

  I watched from behind the barbed bush as the Wasset gave one longing glance at the now-dead Pinedeer calf. The decision was a tough one. Draw back and leave the hunt to a thief? A much-needed meal it had worked so hard for? Or stay and hope whatever it was, it wouldn't strike twice?

  In the end, it dragged itself reluctantly from the tree, stumbling toward another part of the forest with the arrow still stuck in its ear. It likely wouldn't survive the wound, not when there were other opportunistic creatures around, but it had to take that gamble.

  Which netted me one fresh Pinedeer calf.

  I called that a hunt well gamed.

  …..

  That night, we dined on the calf I'd hunted with my wits. I got a pat on my head as a reward, and that was all I needed.

  The taste was just right. It seemed as if the effort added an extra spice on top of the meat. I swirled the soft cuts in my mouth, the wooden fire from the fireplace warm on my back.

  "You took a gamble," Mother said after she wiped her mouth and leaned back into her chair. "It paid off. You will find that true in certain cases in the future. Choice will not always be clear. Your efforts will not always get results. Luck, my little Leo, is something you play with on a constant basis. You hope to twist it round so that it favors you, but never base your entire belief on it. It's a fickle thing."

  I kept my silence just long enough to indicate I got the lesson right. Then, patting my belly, I steered the conversation away into different threads.

  "They don't have beasts in this forest," I said, which was an obvious observation. "They don't practice internal energy in this village, either. They look… normal, don't they?"

  "Explain normal."

  "I—I mean—" I cleared my throat. "Things are peaceful here. Unlike me, none of the other kids seem too eager to become, I don't know, Knights? They act like this is all they have, but you've said we were in the age of chaos. You talk about wars and conflict all the time."

  "I do that?" Mother seemed horrified.

  "You do? I thought that you did that on purpose," I said, a little shocked myself.

  "I guess I really do…" Mother sighed out a long breath. "I was hoping to keep you away from those until you're old enough, but you've grown into a clever, curious devil, haven't you?"

  I puffed my cheeks and nodded sheepishly.

  "Alright. That's it. The history of the worlds is a long one, anyway. We might as well start right now."

  "Right now?"

  It was my turn to get horrified.

  Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to learn more about this place, but I already had my hands full with training, hunting, and rune stuff. I wasn't sure if I could take another one. I was afraid my little body would give up on me if I tried to do that!

  Mother didn't seem to care. She was in a state of deep contemplation. I knew that because she had her eyes closed and hands clasped in front of her face. She was preparing herself.

  I sucked in a deep breath.

  "This particular planar system has three thousand major worlds," she said after a beat. Didn't look me in the eye. If she did that, she would've seen the look on my face and stopped. "The number of little worlds… I guess it was somewhere around a hundred thousand, give or take."

  I stared dumbly at my mother as she kept her eyes closed. Then I looked at my little palms. I knew there were other worlds from all the talk in the house, but three thousand major worlds? A hundred thousand little worlds?

  Wasn't that a bit too much?

  "We're in one of those minor worlds right now. Nothing important. When you're old enough, we will visit some of the different worlds. Big worlds. That's where you'll see the true talent. Of those, the first one will be…."

  And so on she kept at it, and soon I lost all the appetite I had for the meat I'd hunted with my own sweat and tears.

  …..