Chapter 1: The Erdtree Dangle
The clearing was a stolen piece of quiet, a sunlit nook where the Erdtree’s gnarled branches parted like fingers. Golden light filtered down, dappling the damp moss and turning the air to honey. It was a place for whispered secrets and murmured incantations, for the soft rustle of pages and the softer hum of focused thought. Or, it was supposed to be.
Melina sat cross-legged on a flat stone, her one good eye closed, the other forever sealed.Her breathing was a measured tide. She was the picture of serene guidance, a gentle spirit adrift in meditation. At least, that’s what anyone looking would have seen.
Sorceress Sellen was holding court nearby, her voice a sharp needle stitching the peaceful silence to shreds. “The fundamental doctrine of glintstone sorcery,” she declared, her academic tone cutting through the birdsong, “is the comprehension of celestial intelligence. To reduce it to mere ‘spark-throwing’ is the mark of a dullard Tarnished, of which there are, sadly, a great many.”
Melina didn’t move, but a faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.Sellen’s pride was a towering, brittle thing. It was, Melina had decided, the most interesting geological feature in the Lands Between.
“Observe the precise somatic form,” Sellen commanded, lifting her own staff. Her robes, heavy and scholarly, rustled with self-importance.“The wrist must be supinated, not pronated. A fraction of error results in wasted energy, or worse, a cosmetic puff of light fit only for amusing simpletons.”
A group of passing Tarnished, their armor dented and spattered with dubious stains, paused to watch. One of them, a hulk with a beard like a briar patch, snorted.“Sounds fiddly. My sword doesn’t need supinating.”
Sellen’s head snapped toward him, her stern face hardening further. “Your sword,” she said, each word dipped in frost, “is a testament to the failure of evolution. Now, unless you wish to serve as a practical demonstration for a reversal of intestinal fortitude, you will cease interrupting.”
The Tarnished grumbled but shuffled on, throwing a crude gesture over his shoulder. Sellen turned back to her invisible, ideal student, a wrinkle of profound distaste on her brow. Her eyes fell on Melina, sitting there so perfectly, so peacefully.Judging her.She could feel it.
“Some,” Sellen said, loudly, her gaze fixed on Melina’s still form, “believe enlightenment comes from sitting in dirt and thinking very hard about nothing.A passive, pointless pursuit. True power is seized through knowledge. Through rigorous, disciplined study.”
Melina’s smile deepened by a millimeter.Oh, Sorceress.Your discipline is about to be tested.
Sellen drew a deep breath, ready to launch into a treatise on lucid versus crystalline glintstone. “The differentiation, therefore, between the schools of—”
It happened with a sudden, violent yank.
There was no flash of light, no gathering of power. Just a simple, brutal application of telekinetic force, focused with petty perfection. The mossy earth under Melina dropped away as she was hoisted unceremoniously into the air.Not by her arms, or her torso. A specific, searing tightness gathered at the apex of her legs, and the world pivoted around that single, humiliating point.
Her smallclothes, practical linen, had been spliced by an invisible hand, cinched upward with the efficiency of a siege engine. The fabric dug into her with intimate, shocking immediacy, hauling her skyward until her boots left the ground. She dangled, suspended from a low-hanging branch by the wedged linen, like some bizarre, blushing fruit.A gasp, sharp and entirely undignified, escaped her. Her braid swung like a pendulum beneath her.Her eye—the good one—snapped open, wide with shock.
The group of Tarnished hadn’t gone far.They turned. There was a beat of stunned silence, then the braying laughter began, coarse and rolling. “Looks like the guide’s found a new elevation!” one roared. “Meditating on the ceiling now, are ya?” another cackled.
Sellen lowered her staff, a look of pure, unadulterated academic satisfaction on her face.“A passive pursuit, you see, leaves one… exposed. Vulnerability is the sister of ignorance.”
Melina hung there, the coarse bark of the branch against her back, the laughter scraping at her ears, the fabric performing a frankly impossible anatomical dissection. Heat flooded her cheeks, a red wave of utter humiliation.She did not struggle.Kicking would only make it worse. She simply hung, absorbing the violation, the laughter, the smug, towering pride in Sellen’s eyes.The heat in her cheeks cooled, hardened into something else. The embarrassment didn’t evaporate; it crystallized, transformed into a cold, clear gem of intent deep in her gut. The laughter of the Tarnished faded into a dull buzz.Sellen gave a final, dismissive nod. “Consider it a lesson in applied gravity.” She turned, robes swishing, and began to stroll away toward the academy gates, her posture perfectly erect, her world perfectly re-ordered.
Melina watched her go.The dangerous glint in her single eye was no longer a trick of the light. With a slow, deliberate movement, she reached behind her, grasping the branch. She did not try to unpick the linen; that would be an admission of defeat. Instead, she tightened her grip and, with a smooth, powerful flex of her arms, tore the fabric free with a dry rrrip.She dropped, landing softly on the moss. She straightened her tunic, smoothed her braid.The torn linen was discarded, a forgotten flag of surrender.
The Tarnished, seeing the fun was over, wandered off, still chuckling.
Melina stood perfectly still in the dappled light. She wasn’t thinking about meditation, or guidance, or the fundamental doctrines of glintstone sorcery.She was thinking about hydrostatics. About the precise water pressure of the central fountain in the academy courtyard, where Sellen held her most esteemed lectures. She was thinking about the cut of a sorceress’s robes, and how, if one were to apply a modified gravitational pull—not a yank, but a sudden, sustained lift—at the precise moment the sorceress was bending over a treatise on lunar physics… the resulting force would be directed upward, through the robe’s skirts. Water, seeking the path of least resistance, would follow that channel with enthusiastic, drenching solidarity.A true scholar learned from every experience. Sellen had taught her the importance of precision, of targeting.And of humiliation.Melina’s eye closed again. This time, she wasn’t meditating on peace.She was meditating on logistics. And the sound of impending, sodden laughter.
The plan required no incantations, no gathering of runes. It required only timing, a fundamental understanding of leverage, and the silent, unseen application of a principle most Tarnished understood instinctively: gravity is a bully, and water is its accomplice.
Melina watched from a shadowed archway as the academy’s central courtyard began to fill. The fountain gurgled, a steady, soothing noise that masked quieter sounds. Sellen stood near its marble rim, a cluster of aspiring sorcerers arrayed before her like nervous seedlings. The sun was high, painting the scene in clear, judgmental light.
“—and thus, the cold cosmos confirms its logic,” Sellen was saying, tapping a complicated star chart with her staff. “The moon’s absence of warmth is not a deficiency, but a purity. A rejection of the Erdtree’s vulgar, golden vitality.”
She leaned over the parchment, her finger tracing a celestial path. It was the perfect angle. Her back was to the fountain, her robes—those heavy, dignified robes—flowing down toward the damp cobbles.
Now.
Melina didn’t whisper a word. She simply willed it. A thread of unseen force, finer than spider-silk and ten times as strong, slipped from her focused mind. It did not grab or yank. It slithered beneath the hem of Sellen’s robes, a spectral current seeking purchase. It found it, flattening against the small of her back before applying a sudden, vertical lift.
The effect was instantaneous, and far more spectacular than a simple wedgie.
Sellen’s scholarly lecture cut off with a wet, choking gasp as the back of her robes were hoisted upward by an invisible hand. The fabric formed a perfect, taut channel from her heels to her shoulders. For one horrific second, she was a bizarre, human-shaped sail.
Then the hydrostatics took over.
The fountain water, ever obedient, found the new path of least resistance. A gallon of chilled, algae-tinged water raced up the created funnel with the enthusiastic force of a diverted creek. It wasn’t a splash. It was a targeted deluge, a geyser in reverse.
The sound was a grotesque SHLOOP.
Sellen jerked upright, stiff as a board, her eyes wide with a confusion so profound it bordered on theological crisis. The water settled inside her robes with a heavy, sloshing finality. It filled the space, ballooning the fabric out around her middle before cascading down her legs in a sudden, embarrassing torrent, soaking her stockings and pooling instantly around her boots.
A stunned silence gripped the courtyard. A student dropped his glintstone.
Then, a snort. It came from a Tarnished leaning against a pillar, sharpening a dagger. “Looks like the cosmos confirmed a different logic,” he drawled. “The logic of a soaked ass.”
The laughter that followed wasn’t the crude braying from the forest. This was the laughter of intellectuals witnessing the absolute collapse of dignity. It was sniggering, muffled behind hands, then bursting forth in uncontrollable giggles. Someone wheezed.
Sellen stood in the middle of the puddle, water dripping from her sleeves. Her hair, usually so severe, was plastered with a single, limp strand to her cheek. The star chart on the fountain rim was a sodden, ruined mess. She turned slowly, the sloshing audible, her face a mask of utter, cataclysmic fury. She searched the laughing faces, the archways, the very air for a culprit.
Her gaze swept past Melina’s shadow. It saw nothing. Just empty, quiet shade.
“WHO—?” she began, her voice a strangled shriek, but it broke into a cough as a trickle of fountain water escaped her collar.
Melina let the archway’s darkness embrace her fully. The cold gem of intent in her gut warmed, just a degree, melting into something like quiet contentment. She listened to the beautiful, chaotic symphony: Sellen’s sputtering outrage, the fading giggles of the students, the cheerful, indifferent burble of the fountain.
It was a good lesson, really. In applied hydrodynamics. And the importance of watching where one leans.