The sky only yields to those who climb.
Chapter 1:
Caleb hung in the open air.
It was one of the only times he truly felt alive.
A cool breeze blew across his sweat-slick skin. His arms strained with exertion, fingers digging into the bare rock, pressing hard enough to split. A trickle of blood slivered its way down his calf from a gash on his shin. Muscles and tendons screamed for release, but he forbade them.
He could not fall here. He would not fall here. Falling would spell the end.
Come on, he thought to himself, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed on the stone above. Just climb.
It was the most dangerous point of the route – completely new territory. And the worst part was he could only afford one crash pad, and he'd since climbed past the point he would land on it. Beneath Caleb was about twelve feet of air, and then a swarm of gnarled tree roots and small rocks. He'd only been able to mime his movements from down below, guess at the best way to the top of the rock. Now that he was dangling like a spider on the ceiling, it was a lot harder to remember what his plan had been.
But despite the looming threat of crashing into the earth and breaking his bones, Caleb couldn't wipe the smile off his face. Most people took pleasure in hanging out with friends and family, playing video games, or going out to parties, Caleb only took pleasure in one thing – Climbing.
It was only then, hanging on that razor-thin edge, that he felt life was worth living. That risk, the chance of falling, having everything distilled to a perfect point of success and failure. Everything else was bland in comparison, devoid of color.
Every single day after slaving away at his office job, sitting at a desk, he did the same thing. Hopped in his clunker of a car, changed into his climbing clothes that he had sitting in a beat-up duffel bag, and drove an hour out of the city to climb.
It would have been nice to have a friend with him out here. That way, they could move the crash pad when he was no longer above it, but then he'd have to talk to them. When he climbed, he didn't want any distractions. It was like he entered a meditative state where it was just him and the rock.
There were a few other people nearby. Fellow climbers that he'd seen around this area on a few separate occasions. He could hear them talking and laughing occasionally, and he didn't want anything to do with them. Once, when Caleb had gotten to a particular crag before them, they'd demanded he move and go somewhere else, claiming that that rock was theirs. Caleb didn't want to talk to anyone while climbing, and he certainly didn't want to fight anyone, so he'd just left and let them have the stupid rock. Those dicks weren't worth the trouble.
Almost there, he thought, preparing to maneuver his body to the next hold. He'd been trying to complete this route for two weeks now. Trying and failing.
He'd almost made it to this spot on the route once before. That had been two days ago now. When he'd fallen then, he'd barely avoided breaking his arm and had been wearing a wrist brace ever since. That wrist brace was currently lying next to his backpack on the ground. If he fell, he fell. If he broke his wrist, he broke his wrist. If he broke his leg and couldn't get back to his car… eh, hopefully that wouldn't happen. He couldn't afford the handicap of wearing the brace while climbing, and he didn't want to wait until it fully healed to start climbing again.
Was it the wisest decision? Not really. Did he care? Not at all.
His chalk bag dangled from a clip at his waist, swinging beneath his body. Caleb carefully released his right hand from the small grip it had on the jutting rock – just barely enough for the pads of two of his fingers to find purchase – and stuck it into the bag. The chalky white powder coated his fingers.
The seconds ticked by. Caleb breathed in, preparing himself to leap headfirst into the unknown. Birds tweeted, flitting from the tree branches, and annoying laughter carried on the wind from the asshole climbers nearby as he heard a car start up, but he paid them no heed. It might as well have been as though they didn't exist. Just him and the rock.
And then he swung, pushing off with his legs, tightening his grip with his left hand, stretching and reaching with his right. It was a split second of floating through the air. Then his right hand grabbed onto the rock, clenching around a tiny outcropping like a vise.
He'd done it! One move closer to the top. Now to repeat the process all over agai–
Initiating System…
Caleb blinked. He nearly let go of the rock. "What the…?"
Please refrain from moving to avoid any complications during Initiation…
Was he dehydrated? Hallucinating? The screen appeared to be floating directly on the rock face, just a few inches from his nose. He had the urge to touch it, but the warning and the fact that if he let go of the rock, he would fall kept him locked in place.
Then the world began to shake.
Initiating Terraforming…
It started light at first, just small rattles, like an eighteen-wheeler was driving nearby. But there shouldn't be any cars near him – let alone any eighteen-wheelers. He was out in the middle of nowhere. His car was parked about an hour to the east and he'd had to carry all of his stuff, crash pad included, on his back to get to this rock.
The shakes started growing more violent. He held on for dear life, desperately hoping that it would soon pass. Small bits of dust and rock fell from the rock around him, raining down to the ground. Trees shook, shedding their leaves. A clamorous crack split the air as a fissure raced its way up the rock face toward Caleb.
"Shit!" he yelled, whipping his head back and forth, trying to find the source of whatever was going on or a safe way down. An earthquake? But it couldn't be. He was in the middle of Texas – there were rarely ever any earthquakes here, especially not ones this powerful.
A nearby tree groaned and creaked, wood splintering and as it fell over. But it never hit the earth. A massive fissure opened up on the ground right beneath him, swallowing everything whole. The tree fell and disappeared down into its shadowy depths, plummeting until it vanished from sight.
Caleb's crash pad tumbled into the fissure, along with his backpack and wrist brace. Just minutes ago, falling meant a bit of pain and maybe a broken bone. Now… What could it mean besides certain death?
Spawning Dungeons…
The rock Caleb was hanging precariously on, clutching to like it were a buoy in the middle of a storming ocean, sheared away from the rest. It pitched back, and began to fall. He held on as the massive chunk of stone the size of his car plunged through the air, spinning like a bucking bull. It took every bit of strength he had to keep from being flung off.
Populating Dungeons with Soulless Monsters…
Everything was a whirlwind. All Caleb knew was that he was falling. Falling into the titanic fissure that had split the earth. Stone, dirt, and wood flashed past him in a nauseating smear of greys and browns. His head swam. Saliva gushed in his mouth as he forced himself to swallow the bile that had surged up his throat.
Populating Dungeons Complete.
Spawning Dungeons Complete.
Initialization Complete.
Planet Solar-AE109, otherwise known as "Earth" has been successfully Initialized into the Aethereum. Planetary Grade: E
The screens rippled into existence, locked in front of his view despite the turbulence. Like their location was based on where he was and where he was looking. He could see them clearly. They looked like the notification boxes that he'd seen when he played video games as a kid – though it had been nearly a decade since he'd last played. As soon as he finished reading them, the screens vanished, leaving him once again hurtling through the darkness.
A powerful purple glow appeared beneath him. Or was it above him? It was difficult to tell what with all the spinning. It shone like a violet sun, and it was growing closer.
The entire world became washed in purple light as Caleb fell toward the glow, still gripping to the boulder like his life depended on it. It very likely did.
A tickling sensation covered his body as he fell fully into that purple glow. It felt as though a thousand tin bugs were swarming over every inch of his skin. The glow became overwhelming. Even when Caleb closed his eyes, his sight was filled with it, shining through the thin skin of his eyelids. He wanted to scream but the wind stole the air from his mouth as soon as he opened it.
There was nothing he could do but hold on. So that's what he did.
Warning! The Dungeon you are about to enter is of a significantly higher grade than someone of your Aether Level can complete. It is highly recommended that you turn back.
Great advice. He'd just put the falling rock into reverse and back up.
Caleb's world was swallowed. The purple light dimmed, shifting to a cool white, and Caleb opened his eyes.
Welcome, Caleb Ward
You are entering a Dungeon: Mistveil Peaks
Grade: E
Completion Objectives:
Kill Thrymm, the Storm TitanKill the Storm Titan's Hands (0/3)
Completion Odds: 0.5%
You've got to be shitting me.
Things had somehow gone from bad to worse. Was everything else not enough already? He had to be thrown into something with less than one percent odds of completion? That was essentially zero.
It didn't seem possible, but the wind picked up, roaring past him like a chugging train. He was still falling. But now, instead of falling into the fissure, he was falling through the air as though he were skydiving, riding the massive rock as it hurtled through the sky.
He flew through puffy white clouds, feeling pearls of water wet his skin. He was headed toward a mountain range.
Great jagged teeth of ice covered stone stabbed up into the air like the jaws of some world-eating titan. Swirls of snow and fog wound around them, moving through the air on powerful gusts of wind. That was all he could see for miles. Just endless mountains, endless snow. A cool sun shone brightly in the grey sky, its light reflecting off the icy ground below like glittering diamonds. It would have been quite beautiful had he not been about to die.
If he'd descended into the earth, why was there a sun? Were the conspiracy theorists right? Was there an inner world of lizard people that lived beneath the earth's crust? But Caleb didn't have time to think about what any of this meant. At the speed he was going, he would be turned into a fine red mist on the mountain top. A wine stain on a clean white sheet.
The realization hit him all at once, followed quickly by an avalanche of panic. He was going to die. And there was nothing he could do about it.
In less than thirty seconds, he would hit the side of the mountain at terminal velocity. Maybe he could try and leap off the rock at the last second. Would that work? No, his best chance of survival was to hold on and hope that the rock took most of the impact and hit the side of the mountain, somewhere where it would only strike a glancing blow and Caleb could be knocked off into a pillow of powdery snow instead of being obliterated.
Ten more seconds. Caleb heaved in a deep breath that stung his lungs.
Five more seconds. Caleb's eyes were as dry as the desert, frozen open as bits of ice and snow battered against his skin.
Three. For some reason, he found himself smiling. In the moment right before his death, he felt truly alive.
Two.
Something moved down on the mountainside, directly beneath him, directly in the path he was hurtling down. Caleb barely got more than a split second glance at it before his view was obstructed by the stone he was riding. It looked like some sort of–
Like a meteor, the boulder crunched into the side of the mountain. Caleb's face crunched into the boulder. There was an eruption of snow, ice, and stone, a deafening explosion.
Everything went dark.
***
Caleb woke up with a hearty groan. The first he noticed was that he was somehow alive. The second thing he noticed was that every fiber of his being hurt like hell.
"Shit." The words came out muffled, like his nose was clogged. Caleb brought his hand to his face and gingerly touched his nose. Even the faintest of brushes sent lances of pain through him like lightning. His nose was shattered, bloodied and broken in multiple places. The rest of his body wasn't in much better shape.
Snow swirled through the air, drifting between him and the grey sky above. The peak of the mountain he'd landed on reached up toward the sky. His breath fogged in the air and, in the corner of his vision, he could see the top edge of the rock he'd ridden, resting where it had crashed a few dozen feet away.
Caleb rolled himself onto his side, wincing and gritting his teeth in pain as he did. Thankfully, he had landed on a pile of soft snow. That must be the only reason I'm alive right now. Pure luck. Though, I doubt I'll be alive for that much longer. If nothing else, the cold will get me.
The threatening screen he'd seen before loomed heavy in his mind. Less than a single percent chance of completion. Less than a single percent chance of survival.
Was he dreaming? That couldn't be possible. Dreams didn't hurt this much. This was real.
With unsteady arms, Caleb pushed himself into a seated position. He glanced toward the rock and froze.
Beneath his ride, lying flat on its massive back, was a giant with smooth grey skin. Its chest had been caved in, the boulder laying heavily on its broken ribs… somehow, it was still alive. Labored breaths rumbled out from it. Blood dripped from the corner of its mouth, poured from its broken chest and pooled on the ground around it. A black stone and metal wreathed hammer lay on the ground beside it, the size of a car and probably twice as heavy.
Caleb stared, a shiver of both awe and unease crawling up his spine.
And then he noticed something else. He wasn't on the side of some wild, uncharted mountain. Beneath a crust of ice on the ground were stone tiles. He'd crash-landed in the middle of a wide plaza. Massive pillars rose up around like trees, or the remains of an ancient Greek ruin. A massive, carved plaza on the side of a mountain.
And on it… right under the rock he had ridden on… was the only other creature in sight.
Bolvun, Second Hand of Thrymm the Storm Titan
Aether Level 25
Caleb could barely breathe. The air caught in his throat. This was one of his objectives. One of the Storm Titan's hands. That meant it had to die. He had to kill it.
The giant was severely wounded, but still breathing, still potentially more than capable of squashing him like a bug if he got too close. And yet… something in him stirred. A flicker of the same thrill he felt climbing.
This was bigger and deadlier than any cliff face he'd ever clung to. And it called to him.
Caleb limped his way across the icy plaza, toward the giant. Bolvun's massive eyes tracked him as the giant was unable to do anything else. Caleb's heart hammered, a grin spreading over his face.
He stopped a few meters away, just out of reach of the giant's arms should it suddenly decide to take a swipe at him.
"Alright," he muttered. "I feel a bit weird about killing you, seeing as you can't fight back. But you're basically already dead anyway and it sounds like I have to if I want to complete whatever-the-hell this is and get out of here."
One of the messages from before flashed back into this mind.
Populating Dungeons with Soulless Monsters…
I guess I shouldn't feel weird about killing you, then.
His fingers itched, a surge of excitement running through his pain-wracked body. It was that same anticipation that he chased while climbing. There was nothing else that felt like it. Nothing else that made him feel alive like it.
The wind whipped through the plaza, stirring the snow around them. Bolvun breathed, heavy and labored. He wasn't long for this world anyway. Caleb's jaw tightened. This was it.
He picked up a piece of rubble from the ground and walked toward the giant's head, keeping a close eye on its arms. Bolvun did nothing but watch.
Caleb raised the rock in both hands and smashed it down onto the giant's head.
Bolvun, Second Hand of Thrymm the Storm Titan, has been slain
Kill the Storm Titan's Hands (1/3)
A surge of powerful energy and light rushed from Bolvun's corpse and into Caleb's body. The feeling was inundating. It flowed like a river made of stars, exiting the giant's mouth and overwhelming Caleb with warmth wherever it touched.
Level Up!
You have been Bound to an Inheritance Title: Skyward Will