Chapter 1

A small village on the northern edge of the Todashi Empire. The wind sweeps through the village as the villagers move about their tasks. It is still early morning, and it is planting season for the crops their Lord has ordered them to cultivate.

They are one of three villages that help supply the town of Wind Edge. The Lord of Wind Edge is the youngest son of the Baron of Northern Winds. So if the villagers do not meet the Lord's expectations, terrible things will happen. This is the way they have lived since their village was made.

As the wind moves through the village, there is one person in the village that it seems to wrap around and play with. That person is a young child, a boy that is carrying a large bucket filled with water.

"I can't play right now," he says, gritting his teeth as he carries the heavy bucket full of water out to his parent's in the field. He's six years old now, and he still hasn't reached the first stage of Foundation. While that isn't entirely unusual, it does mean the other villagers look down on him and his parents.

So he works twice as hard as any of the other children in the village. What he hasn't shared with anyone, is that he can see odd lights dancing around the village. Most of these are green in color, though there are a few red ones in the village smithy. And there are some brown ones that live in the fields.

"Mother," he calls out as he approaches his parents. They pause in their work as they see him hauling the bucket of water to them.

"Thank you son," his mother responds as his father walks over and scoops some water out of the bucket to splash on his face. Both of them are fairly quiet, as they return to work.

As he turns around to go back to the village, the green lights come rushing toward him, quickly surrounding him. They seem to almost make sounds with how insistent they are swirling around him. He glances at them, before looking back at his parents.

And that's when he sees the beasts.

"Dad! Mom! Look!" he shouts, pointing at the swarm of beasts approaching his parents and the rest of the villagers.

Both of his parents look towards where he's pointing, and he can see the color drain from their faces.

"Beast Tide! Beast Tide!" someone starts shouting.

His father quickly picks him up and they run back to their home in the village. His father had dug a cellar underneath the hut to help store some of the root vegetables they grew for themselves.

"Both of you hide in the cellar," he tells the boy and his mother. His mother quickly puts the boy in the cellar before closing the door behind him.

He hears her tell his father, "I'm not leaving."

"I know," his father says. And then there is a loud crash as some beast smashes through the hut.

*****

When the boy wakes up, it is dark outside. He knows this because he can see the sky through a hole in the floor above. The green lights rush down to him.

He knows his parents are gone. If anyone survived, they probably already left for the town to tell the Lord what happened. So he is on his own now.

"Can you help me," he says to the green lights.

One of them, larger than the others, floats up to him and seems to land on his hand. He feels a strange rushing sensation for a moment, before hearing a loud pop.

"Hi there," he hears a cheerful female voice say, "My names Breeze."

*****

Over the course of the next few days, the boy learns that Breeze is an elemental spirit. Elemental spirits are everywhere, but tend to congregate where the element they most relate with is. On the windy plains around the boys home, wind spirits are quite common.

She also explains that the rushing sensation was her binding herself to him. Most humans can't take a binding. They don't have the ability to convert natural energy to elemental energy that spirits can use. That's important because the binding requires it. The elemental can gather energy for the person, however the person has to feed that converted energy back to the elemental.

The boy nods, happily eating some fruit that she had directed him to. Of course, she didn't tell him that the fruit he was eating was considered a rare cultivation resource. Most of the people she had heard talk about it would have payed quite nicely for the fruit. But for the boy, the only thing it did was help his physique. Which, ironically, was exactly what it was supposed to do. However he didn't have the ability to cultivate like the others.

She knew these things because she was an Air Spirit. Air spirits like to move around, and she had been all over the Northern Plains. She hadn't gone further, because her elders had warned her that it could be dangerous. They wanted the spirits of the plains to be at least a hundred years old before they left.

"What's your name," she asks suddenly.

"Matthew," the boy replies. She looks at him while tilting her head.

"Well Matthew," she says, "Everything will be okay."

***** A few years later *****

Matthew walks crouched over through the tall grass of the Plain.

His bow is held low, with an arrow resting against the bowstring and along the top. He's been hunting the beast for three days. In the last village he visited, the adults had all been talking about the Windscream Boar. A low ranked beast to be sure, but still stronger than any of the villagers.They had already sent for the local Lord's men to come out to deal with the boar.

Of course, Matthew had no intention of dealing with them or the Lord's men. He had, with Breeze's help, stolen some food and a waterskin from that village. This was just him paying them back. And he was almost done.

Carefully, he pulled back on the bow as he lifted himself up just enough to see the boar over the grass. It was almost two meters tall, and to make matters worse for him, there was a reason it was known as a Windscream Boar. If he didn't kill it with the first strike, it would scream. That scream was loud enough to start with but it would also create a wind funnel that could easily kill him.

Even after four years, he still hadn't entered the foundation stage of cultivators. He felt resigned to never cultivating like them, and focused on his form of cultivating with Breeze.

"Breeze, Sharpen and Guide," he said quietly enough the Boar shouldn't hear him. He had no desire to try and face this thing with his spear. And he wasn't wealthy or anything, so he couldn't get a sword.

He feels the moment that Breeze uses the two magics they've learned over the last four years. Sharpen will make the sharp edges of his arrow even sharper, while Guide will make sure the arrow hits where he wants it to.

In this case, that would be the eye. He needs to land it straight through the eye and into the beasts brain for this to work. He takes a deep breath, and as he exhales, he fires.

It flies straight, and for a moment seems to shift upwards just a little bit. And then it strikes straight into the eye of the boar who was still unaware that someone was stalking it. It had just lifted it's head as it thought it had heard something. As the arrow flies into its eye and stabs back into it's brain, it does the only thing it knows how to do, and screams!

Matthew ducks down, laying flat on the ground as the wind funnel whips around the field they are in. It goes on for several seconds, before he can hear it loose strength. A moment more, and it stops and he feels the thump as the boar collapses.

Standing up and brushing himself off, he smiles as Breeze slams into him. As she is still only six inches tall, it doesn't exactly do much.

"That was scary!" she says, looking up at him and smiling.

"Yeah. But we did it," he says, looking over at the corpse. He walks over and proceeds to field dress the boar as best he can. He only wants some of the meat, as he'll dry them and make some jerky for him to eat as they move away from this area. He'd been growing tired of eating birds and fruit, so some pork would be a nice change.

"Impressive," he hears from behind him.