Higgins Hila hated Earth.

It was hot when it should have been cold, cold when it should have been hot, and wholly unsettled. A great place for a budding Claybinder to ply her trade and gain levels, but that came at the price of civilization. She’d been reduced to living in a tent, for goodness’ sake. A tent! If her friends back home could see her now, they would never let her hear the end of it.

Of course, she wasn’t sure she’d ever see any of them again. Not after being sent to a backwater where people could barely survive, much less appreciate her brilliance.

It was all her father’s fault, too. He was the one who’d trained her in claybinding. He was the one who’d pushed her into the class. And ultimately, he was the one who’d banished her to Earth.

Oh, sure – he justified it all by saying that it was for her own good, that the class offered true power in a world where everyone else followed the same paths. And he was right. She’d learned that early after her arrival on Earth. If only it hadn’t been so messy, she might’ve even appreciated it.

As things stood, she hated that she had to muck around in the mud. She hated that her Bind Clay spell required a living creature to provide her creations with vitality. And most of all, she hated the form of her golems.

In the beginning, she’d taken some small pleasure in their brutish, grotesque look. Back then, she’d thought it would be useful, that it would send any natives running away. But to her horror, the locals actually fought against her creations, even managing to slay a few of them and send her away in retreat.

She’d lost three of her guards in the process. Good gnomes, all. Strong and handsome, if a bit on the stupid side. The two she had left were even dumber and stronger, good for only three things. Violence, heavy lifting, and helping her relieve the stress that came with her unenviable circumstances.

They knew better than to refuse her commands.

So, she’d retreated, and she had spent nearly a year camping out in the wilderness as she rebuilt her golem army – stronger, faster, and overall better than ever before. Doing so had gained her levels, and she had progressed even more when she sent them out into the local wilderness to slaughter everything in their path.

It was almost like being a Tactician, but without the ridiculous drawbacks of such an archetype. As a Sorcerer, at least she could still hold her own in a one-on-one battle.

Not that she wanted to end up in that sort of a situation. That was what her golems were for. And Pik and Tik. Those weren’t their real names, of course – but she thought the new monikers fit her guards much better than whatever nonsense they’d once called themselves.

Seeing them staring dumbly at the recently risen golem, she wondered if she might have called them something much more derogatory.

Sighing, she studied her latest creation. It was bigger than the others. Better formed – almost like a natural creature. That hadn’t always been the case. Her first attempts had been nearly featureless, and there were even a few in the camp that looked like half-carved sculptures.

Which, in a way, they were. Back when they were created, she lacked the ethera to truly complete the process. Even now, a hundred levels, a specialization, and a class evolution later, and she was only starting to see the true scope of her most important spell.

That was the advantage of the Clayshaper class and its evolution, the Claybinder. Its output was dependent on available ethera, which meant that it would never truly peak.

Or that was what her father had promised when he’d convinced her to follow in his footsteps. Of course, he’d never really leveled much. Classes like hers weren’t outright outlawed, but they were very much frowned upon. And for a man like him – one of wealth and consequence – just revealing their class would have derailed their entire family’s standing.

He would never risk that.

However, when he’d gotten word that a new world had been touched by the World Tree, he’d convinced Hila to abandon her life of luxury to take advantage of the lawless frontier. With any luck, she would end up ruling the ridiculous backwater and eventually reconnect with her family as a hero.

Things hadn’t quite gone that way, though. Sure, she’d leveled plenty. More than she ever could have back home. And she couldn’t imagine using any other class. However, the locals had proven much more stubborn than she’d expected. She had destroyed a couple of villages over the years, and she’d picked off more groups of so-called adventurers than she could count. But in the end, her dreams of conquest over the planet had proven to be just that – unrealized dreams.

But Hila kept telling herself that if she just gained enough levels, and her golems grew powerful enough, she could build an army that would sweep across the world, felling any competition that stood before her.

That was why she’d been so excited when she’d discovered the herd of ridiculous bovines.

Well, Pik had found them, but that was basically the same thing.

And she saw them for what they were – just bags of experience waiting to be taken. She’d immediately started working on her army, building hundreds of golems from the local river mud and some varmints that lived in the area. The little things were difficult to catch, but Tik had a talent for it. What’s more, despite their small size, the creatures had some levels under their belt, making them ideal fuel for her spell.

Because the Claybinder class was different from most other golemancers. Hila’s creations were motivated by more than just ethera. They ran off vitality as well. At higher levels – like when she reached Demi-God status – her minions would be considered living things in their own right.

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In truth, the class had as much in common with necromancers as it did golemancers, but Hila didn’t much care about the source of power. She wasn’t afflicted with the prejudices of her people. Power was power. It didn’t matter where it came from.

And with her combination of attunements – one of which was death – she was a perfect candidate for the Claybinder class.

She’d sent her golems after the bovine herd, and for a while, everything had gone well. A few had been destroyed, but the losses were manageable – especially as she felt the influx of experience that came with success.

But then, only an hour or so ago, everything had gone wrong. At first, she’d thought that her golems had picked a fight with the huge bulls. With their sweeping horns coated in ethera, those creatures were deadly. However, it only took a few minutes, during which her entire force had been slaughtered, before fear began to take hold.

She’d been furiously working ever since, constructing golems left and right as quickly as her minions could provide appropriate materials.

Hila was beginning to run low on ethera, though. Soon, she wouldn’t have enough to cast the spell. Looking around, she hoped that her current horde would be enough if whatever had destroyed her other golems tracked her camp down.

“Enough,” she said, gesturing to Pik and Tik. “Attend me in the tent.”

With that, she wheeled around and marched toward her home. It had been a gift from her father, and without it, she might’ve gone insane. Roughing it in the wilderness was one thing, but doing so without the comforts provided by that miraculous tent? It was unthinkable.

She stepped inside, and immediately, she felt like she was back home. Of course, she was – technically – home. She had lived in the tent for years by that point. But it felt like her home world. The ethera was the same. The temperature was controlled. And most importantly, it was comfortable, with cloth dividers separating various rooms within the space.

The tent itself was a treasure. Much larger inside than it appeared from without, the backwoods locals would have considered it a palace. Back home, it was barely an adequate temporary home.

She pushed her hood back, then tossed her staff against the billowing, purple wall. Sighing, she flopped down on one of the cushions. Extending her foot, she pushed her slipper off with the other, then waggled her toes. Clearing her throat, she nodded at Pik.

Dutifully, the dullard approached with wide eyes, then started massaging her sore foot. Creating a hundred minions was difficult work, and she deserved a little pampering.

As Pik worked, Tik approached with a crystal glass of muddled wine, which she took without acknowledging the idiot. Leaning back on the cushion, she let out another contented sigh.

It wasn’t as comfortable a life as she might have enjoyed back home, but it was still acceptable. Barely.

Such thoughts occupied her mind right up until she felt her minions fall dormant. None of them had even moved. She could feel that they hadn’t been dismembered – not like the ones around the herd – so for a while, she was confused as to what exactly was happening.

Idly, she noticed Pik slap his neck.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “A bug bit me.”

Hila’s eyes widened in panic, and she started to cast a spell. A second later, a bubble of dense ethera bloomed around her. It was just in time, too, because the interior of the tent was soon swarming with thousands of glittering gnats. They descended upon Pik and Tik. The two used whatever abilities they could muster, but they fell after only a few moments.

Both were dead before they hit the ground.

Meanwhile, Hila huddled in place, clutching her knees to her chest as the gnats covered her ethereal bubble. Outside, her entire horde – hundreds of golems, some of whom were freshly created and, thus, the most powerful she could conjure – fell. One after another, they simply lost cohesion, falling apart into piles of white mud.

Or that was what she assumed based on previous experiences and what she felt through her spell. She could see nothing past the blanket of gnats covering her shield.

After a few minutes, the insects thinned. At first, Hila assumed they were just flying away, but when she focused on one in particular, she saw it disintegrate into a tiny mote of ethera. That, in turn, dissolved into the air.

That was when the panic truly set in.

It was one thing to find oneself in the middle of a swarm of powerful insects. Terrifying as being targeted by such a swarm was, natural creatures would eventually move on. That was the nature of swarms like that. But if it had been summoned…

She held her arms to her chest, closing her eyes as she rocked back and forth. Only when she heard a voice did she dare open her eyes.

“Nice place,” came an oddly pleasant voice. Hila gazed at the owner – a human wearing raggedy armor and carrying a scythe of all things. One of his arms was bare, revealing a strip of emerald scales that wrapped around his bicep and disappeared beneath his chest armor.

But it was his eyes that terrified her.

They were caught somewhere between human and reptilian, and Hila was worldly enough to know precisely what that meant.

It was no human before her, but a dragon.

Suddenly, the ease with which her minions had been destroyed made more sense.

“Great lord!” she exclaimed, prostrating herself. “I regret that I have no gift fit to commemorate your arrival!”

“Gift?”

“Ah…yes…yes! I believe I have something that might –”

“I want nothing from you. You made the golems.”

Hila blinked in confusion, then came to her senses. “I did! They are quite useful, too. If you give me but a few weeks, I can –”

“Once, I killed four men because they slaughtered a guardian,” the dragon-man said. “I didn’t hesitate. I told myself that I wouldn’t have done it if they had said the right thing, if they’d had a good reason. But it was never true. I was just angry, and I wanted to lash out, to use my power to defend something I believed in. Do you think that is a bad thing? Do you believe that makes me evil?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. If we lack principles, then we are no better than beasts.”

“We are beasts, all of us. That’s what I’ve begun to realize. We’re intelligent. We consider things like morality and justice, but at the end of the day, we’re just animals. And the strongest drive of any animal is to defend its place in the world. Its territory. Don’t you agree?” he asked, leaning casually on that wicked scythe.

Hila had no idea what he was talking about. She certainly wasn’t an animal. The very idea was ludicrous. However, she had no desire to argue with a dragon who’d just proven he could slaughter hundreds with ease. So, she nodded and said, “I do. We’re all just animals defending our territories.”

He let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you agree. This might’ve been a little awkward if you didn’t.”

Then, without warning, he swung his scythe. It moved so quickly that she could see nothing but a second’s worth of a blur. Then, her ethereal shield shattered, exposing her.

She started to conjure a spell – after all, she was a Sorcerer by archetype, and she had access to a few attack spells – but after only a moment, she felt her muscles lock up.

A bloated sensation bloomed within her, growing more intense with each passing second – until she felt as if she was about to burst. “What did you do?” she spat, horrified as a mist of yellow spores and flecks of blood erupted from her mouth. “What did you do?!”

“Defended my territory.”

“But…but you were not…you were not…here…”

“I’m a Druid. All of nature is my territory.”

Before she could respond to the absurdity of that claim – after all, Druids were glorified gardeners who stuck to their isolated groves – she felt something erupt from her back. She collapsed, her body growing blessedly numb as other…things sprouted from within her. The last thought she had before she succumbed was that she should have stayed on her home world where things made sense.