151, 1/2

Erick found out a lot about the Warlord Clans by watching them from the sky with Ophiel, sussing out various nomadic tribes here and there, and also watching what happened to the face stealers being interviewed beside Warlord Niyazo’s camp, by the soldiers of Songli.

Mostly, the face stealers revealed nothing. The only one who revealed anything was the raging man, who cared not for the idea that one shouldn’t scream and threaten one’s captors, who happened to be the law, with all the ways that one usually killed people, in defiance of the law. Songli did not take kindly to that sort of behavior. That guy was destined for the chopping block, for sure, but not before all that he had said was used against everyone else in his little Hunter gang.

Erick had seen enough of that to cement his desire to help Songli root out the Hunters up here. Perhaps he would eventually help these warlord clans to hunt Hunters, as well, but he didn’t know these people that much, and so, he wasn’t going to offer them the same offer he had given Songli.

At least not yet.

Which was why he had sent Ophiels far and wide; so he could find out more about these fur-wearing tribes.

In a style similar to the orcols of Glaquin, the Warlord Clans north of Songli were almost entirely nomadic. But what Erick had seen previously, with ‘villages’ of three to four hundred traveling along the grassland, was like seeing a bird on the wing and never realizing that birds built nests, and these Warlord Clans built lots, and lots, and lots of nests.

They traveled the grass, but they lived by the rivers. The smaller the river, the better. All one had to do was go 1200 kilometers north of Holorulo to begin to see the strong hand of civilization upon the land.

The development began north of the joining of the Wanzhi River and a similarly large river from the west. Other, smaller rivers joined to both of these large waterways, and with a small lightstep forward, away from the Wanzhi, Ophiel lost which secondary river had been the main one; it was like a branch ever branching. Lightstepping backward to the Wanzhi River, Ophiel proceeded north, along the main river again, but soon, even the Wanzhi River became one river of a thousand others, each of equal size and strength.

And everywhere Ophiel looked, those waterways had been manhandled by people, along their edges, turning riverbanks and floodplains into pools and fisheries and irrigation pathways, where gardens were either in use, and full of food, or had been left to fallow. Most of the tumbled land had been left to fallow, actually. Some places had overgrown rather spectacularly with old-growth purple tomato vines and large berry bushes and whole messes of other foodstuffs, all growing over each other. Erick called them ‘stations’ in his mind, for lack of a better term, until he heard a clansman in Niyazo’s village call them ‘riversides’.

Almost none of the riversides were occupied.

The few riversides that were occupied were well tended, where people opened floodgates to pull the river water down irrigation ditches, flooding the gardens temporarily, while other people pulled vegetables and fruits out of the ground like there was no tomorrow. It seemed that no one made these riversides their permanent homes, but they certainly diverted the rivers and streams however they wished. Some small streams had been so badly mangled that there was no connection to the larger rivers downstream, for there was no ‘downstream’ to be seen.

Erick understood why Eralis had been complaining about the lowered levels of the river. Some of the riversides were dry, and kilometers away from the river itself, for the river had been moved. Sometimes tributaries just ended, their final stretch of visible water ending in a deep pool, or piddling out into nothing, right there in the middle of nowhere. A few riversides were no longer near the rivers at all; they were just bushy growths out in the middle of grasslands.

Grasslands without any trees, too, which was another odd thing. All this water, and no trees.

Erick came across a clan burning down a copse of trees, giving him a reason for why there were no trees in this grassland, but not an answer ‘why?’. A few more times, Erick came across the same thing happening, but on smaller scales.

Eventually, he formed a hypothesis.

Monsters lived in the forests, so it was reasonable to assume that some culture, somewhere, had decided to burn down the forests all around them, and then they had to keep those forests burned, so they became wanderers who lived in yurts. Maybe.

Anyway. The water, and the reasons that it didn’t reach Eralis in the quantities that it usually did.

The Wanzhi River’s tributaries were absolutely everywhere, but even with a million people all mangling these tributaries however they wanted, it was still a surprise that something like ‘less water reaching Eralis’ was a thing that was possible to occur.

Which is not really what was happening, anyway.

It was the cows that were the problem. A million people, but millions of cows. Everywhere the people went, the cows followed, forging rivers, trampling grasses, creating desolation and breaking up riverbanks. Muddying the waters and the land. And when they passed, water evaporated.

Maybe.

There were just so many cows, everywhere. All over the place. Most individual clans seemed to like individual breeds, and stuck to that one. There were blond and shaggy cows. White and black cows. Black. White. Red. Blue cows, too; those were kinda pretty, with their large glinting horns. Fuzzy pink cows that gave pink milk. Orange cows with orange milk that made bright orange cheese. Most of them mostly gave white milk, though.

There were a few major ‘cities’ along the largest of the riverways, but while they were close to water sources, they were decidedly distant from the deeper waters. There were monsters in the waters, too, so that made sense.

Erick didn’t think of them as cities in the usual sense, though, for their main features were their large, empty parade grounds, dozens of kilometers across, where anyone could pull up their yurts and set down for a while. The cows had to stay outside though, except, of course, the cows that were part of the ‘show off your cows’ contest that Erick happened to spy as Ophiel was flying through. Very pretty red cow in that show, with her hair clipped into geometric designs.

The people themselves were of all types, but in most cases, they existed along the incani-demi-human axis. There were mostly incani clans, with large horns and deep colors to their skin tones, who camped right next to human Clans. Almost every tribe had demis in them. If the Quiet War was here, then it was truly quiet.

Erick didn’t see many books, or many high-technology objects, like high-class fabrics or metalwork or glasswork, but the people looked happy and healthy. Children played in the open, overseen by the whole clan. Warriors patrolled the outskirts, keeping eyes on the tall grasses and the deep waters. It was a pleasant enough place.

Moving right along.

Some mobile clans encountered river monsters in their riverside destinations, and either killed the offending lizards or fish or hippo-like beasts, or they avoided the fight, and moved to the next riverside down the way. Mostly, the clans stayed away from the untamed, larger rivers, where the larger monsters lay.

Erick spotted a juvenile rivergrieve in the deeper waters next to a freshly occupied riverside. The clan had yet to start farming; they had yet to open the floodgate to let water into the farm. The rivergrieve had seen them, somehow, and waited just beyond easy sight of the sluice, its eel-like body, ten meters long, undulated below the surface of the water, eyes trained forward on the easy targets. The eel would barely fit inside of the watergate, but it would fit, and it would head straight for the center of the riverside to tear into the people still preparing the land for a [Grow]ing. Or something.

Erick didn’t care what the monster was thinking; only that it was obviously plotting to hunt and eat people.

So Erick killed that half-ethereal monster with a [Luminous Beam], shining down from above like a line of oblivion, carving through the water, through the unaware monster. Erick got a notification of a kill, and while the people at the riverside were still getting to ‘high alert’ status because of the major magic going off right beside their clan, Erick had Ophiel grab the head of the rivergrieve and plop it on the riverbank, making sure Ophiel was seen doing so.

The warriors of that clan had been taken completely unaware; their unpreparedness showed in their wide eyes when Erick’s light came down, and then their wider eyes as they saw and recognized the head of the juvenile rivergrieve. One of the younger guys on duty fell on his ass, completely unprepared to defend his clan. That guy’s hastily conjured sword dropped from his grip, and rolled away.

Erick said, “According to the Kill Notification, it was a Juvenile Rivergrieve at about level 57.”

And then Ophiel took off, headed toward what would likely be the main starting location for much of the search for face stealers.

The main ‘city’ of the Warlord Clans was known as Ooloraptoor.

It reminded Erick of Treehome, but only the parts without all the permanent buildings. It was a parade ground larger than all the rest, maybe ten kilometers across, and situated next to a lake ten times the size of those parade grounds.

Directly next to the lake.

Which was odd. There were monsters in those waters.

This bore investigating. Obviously, something was going on here.

The lake was not the headwaters of the Wanzhi River, but the exit point for this lake was where the Wanzhi River actually started to look like the ten kilometer wide waterway that flowed beside the cities of Songli. The lake of Ooloraptoor, which was where the city got its name, was the dumping spot for a good thirty tributaries and two separate rivers. The lake itself was a hundred kilometers across, with depths and shallows and only a small portion of it tamed by the permanent residents of Ooloraptoor.

For there were two permanent structures upon these parade grounds, where yurts and cows and people moved in and out every day.

The first permanent structure was a squat place of stone and water, built lakeside. It was the size of a rather large mansion, maybe four stories tall. Its most recognizable feature was that it was ugly. It looked like something a starting [Stone Mage] might have made, for it was lumpy in spots, and more than one doorway was crooked. The windows were all sorts of thick and thin and oddly shaped, looking like bent ovals, or squat, melted squares. If there was an architect for this place, then they were likely drunk throughout all parts of the design and construction.

There was a nice shade tree to the side of it, though, half overlooking the water. It was a perfectly normal tree, too. Normal sized. Normal everything. And it was one of the very few trees Erick had seen in these northern lands.

A few elderly people in cow skins and blankets tended a small fire between the building and the water’s edge, while young people plied the lake, pulling up fish with [Watershape]. Those fish were then sold by slightly less elderly people in front of their stone house. Ignoring the elderly for the moment, what struck Erick about the place was the shallowness of the lake, and the methodology to the fishing. The fishermen stood in thigh-deep waters that extended kilometers off shore, fishing the whole space that had been delineated by the second permanent structure of this land; a stone wall that carved off a hunk of the lake from the rest of the lake. Beyond that wall of stone, the lake was still shallow for a good kilometer more, before it turned deep, and crystal clear waters became dark blue. Even further out, abysses of black water lurked, and monsters surely roamed.

That wall in the water, which was more like a sieve that prevented the larger monsters from coming forth, had been the only wall Erick had seen north of Songli. People patrolled the top of that wall, too, watching the lake for signs of monsters.

It was then that Erick realized a fundamental difference between these clans and the civilians of Songli.

These people still warred with monsters, daily, and they didn’t shy away from that necessity. Erick bet not a single one of them was below level 40. If juvenile rivergrieves showed up with any regularity, then many of these people had Classes, too.

While the citizens of Songli hid in their homes, behind their border clans, these people fought, and while these people didn’t have much of the niceties of Songli, they had full control over their own lives.

In the ‘city’ of Ooloraptoor, people grilled fish on portable grills. They smoked meats. They butchered cows and made stews in giant pots. They laughed and joked with each other, and it seemed really nice. There were even people in white robes here and there; representatives from Songli. There were other people there, too, but Erick didn’t know the origins of the black-robed, or the other, various groups of odd people here and there. Orcols were rare, but present. Harpies, quite a few, actually, spread out here and there. Shifters with their animal masks. Goblins.

Oh.

A whole lot of goblins, actually. Whole entire yurt-fulls of goblins. Multiple tribes of goblins, eh? Neat.

Erick came back to himself.

He went and made dinner, as he kept eyes out everywhere.

When Jane came back from her daily duties with Star Song to eat a home-cooked meal, Erick filled her in on what had happened with the face stealer and of his choice to help Songli eradicate the Hunters of the area.

Either through execution, or Blessing, the Hunter problem in this part of the world would vanish soon enough.

“Might take weeks, though.” Erick said, “Defining the problem was easier than solving the problem.”

Jane listened, then declared, “This is good! Where can I join?”

Poi spoke up, “If this happens, I need a third to protect your father, and you’re it.”

“That’s what I’ll be doing, then.” And then Jane turned to Poi, asking, “So you’re okay with this? Silverite is okay with agents of Spur helping to bring justice to people on the other side of the globe? I mean— That’s not exactly what I mean.” She said, “I still haven’t heard any fallout about dad deciding to participate in the Chelation War. This seems like taking another step in a certain direction and I’m surprised we’re not getting pushback from… From someone in charge, somewhere. Silverite at the very least. Songli has been almost eerily accommodating, too.”

Erick furrowed his brow. He honestly hadn’t considered that Silverite would think he was doing a ‘bad thing’, or however Jane thought of current events. It was kinda odd that Songli wasn’t pushing back harder than they were, though; that much Erick could agree with. But then again, he was offering help; he wasn’t forcing his help on anyone.

So on second thought, it was perfectly reasonable for Songli to be as accommodating as they had been.

Poi said, “Spur has fought the Shades for 850 years. Silverite has been the Mayor for 550. If there’s one thing she doesn’t mind, it’s the enactment of justice against people who deserve it. That’s what Adventurers do. Believe me; if she had a problem with your father doing whatever it was he was doing, she would tell him.” He said to Erick, “If anyone had problems, we’d hear about them.”

“What about the Blessing stuff?” Jane asked Poi, “Weren’t you against that?”

Poi turned back to Jane, and was conflicted, with his mouth in a scrunch and his eye ridges narrowed.

Teressa was not conflicted. She said, “That Crystal Star was created by your father and Koyabez. Why wouldn’t Silverite want to enact justice in a way her god assisted with? Same thing as the Black Star. Gotta topple tyrants; gotta execute killers. And now, with the help of Koyabez and your father, there’s the option to make Hunters see the light. I’m all for it. Maybe then those guys can get into a good afterlife.”

“Oh yeah! That reminds me.” Jane asked, “Did anything happen to Raidu, yet? I heard that… something—” She dropped her voice, concerned, “Okay. Something happened. What was it.”

Erick had gone wide-eyed, to stare at the fish and rice he had made for dinner. Poi had a similar expression.

Teressa’s voice was low. “Something terrifying.”

“Too dramatic!” Jane declared, verging on anger. She asked, “Dad.”

Erick started with, “A lot more happened besides the face stealers. First, there was the trip to the paddy house, which…”

Erick didn’t spend much time talking about the paddy house. By the end of the recount of the day, after Erick had explained about how Raidu was ripped asunder by the simple combination of a diamond-cut hat upon a spherical grand rad, Jane’s eyes were wide, too, and dinner was over. He hadn’t even brought up Raidu’s speech, but that was his next thing; he wanted to ask everyone what they thought about that.

Jane’s anger faded pretty fast as Erick spoke of what had happened, and nothing seemed to jump out at her. When he was done, Jane scrunched her eyebrows together. “That doesn’t seem that bad. But why do you use the same term for sundering and ‘The Sundering’?”

Erick paused.

Teressa whispered, “It was bad.”

Jane said, “I am willing to accept that it was bad. But why the same term?”

Poi said, “I don’t know. They’re both awful events?”

“Bout as worse as you can get!” Teressa said, “Ya know; on an extreme macro scale and a micro scale.”

“It’s times like these when I miss the internet.” Jane asked Poi, “You sure you don’t know?”

Poi said, “Ask an open-ended question, get an open-ended answer. The simple answer is ‘I don’t know’.”

Erick guessed, “Maybe the term ‘sundering’ comes from the creation of the new out of the old. I told you the story of Xoat, right? Well, Xoat was sundered into the base materials of the First Cosmology. Today, Raidu was sundered into mana, which is practically the same thing. If we were in the Old Cosmology —Cosmology numbers Zeroth through Third— then the sundering of Raidu would have created reality. Now, in this Fourth Cosmology, the New Cosmology, a sundering just creates mana, which overlays upon this reality of particles and physics.”

“I could buy that.” Jane said, “But then why was ‘the Sundering’ that happened 1450 years ago called a ‘Sundering’?”

“For the same reason.” Erick said, “In all the uses of the word, ‘sundering’ is both a creative and destructive event. Maybe that’s the true etymology of the term. Maybe, the Sundering of 1437 years ago was just a creative event that didn’t create a whole lot.”

Jane said, “Ah. Okay. I get it now. I was thinking it was a conspiracy, or something.”

“Maybe it is.” Erick moved on. “Anyway: How’s this for a conspiracy theory? Raidu was ranting about every single god being a Dark God, and that the true age of Veird is 8500, not 1450. He especially didn’t like being sundered because it would make him ‘food for the gods’, who ‘farm us like cattle for our mana’.”

Teressa breathed out heavily, and looked away, while Poi tried to ignore Erick.

That part of Raidu’s rant had hit them pretty hard, Erick guessed. It hit him hard, too, but he needed to talk about it. He couldn’t let something like that fester.

Jane’s reaction was more clinical than Teressa’s or Poi’s. Jane narrowed her eyes, thinking.

Erick waited.

Jane said, “Nope. Don’t believe it.” She added, “Maybe, if you want to take everything we’ve seen in the worst possible light, then that might be true, but I’ve been to the churches and the places of worship and all of the other areas dedicated to the gods. The gods help people. They’ve got some pretty strict rules on how they help, so they might appear to be Dark Gods sucking the mana out of people, but I came into this rather skeptical. I’ve expected to see something Evil in some dark corner of this world, especially when it came to the gods, and I haven’t.” She added, “I mean. Except in Ar’Kendrithyst. And wherever there are monsters. Or bad people. Or— I’ve never seen a shitty god, though.” She frowned. “Except the Crown of Heaven is divine and so is the Demon King, and they interfere rather a lot. And I guess Sininindi is kinda… Not great, from what I’ve heard. People pray to her to weather the storms and the sea but it’s more of a ‘please don’t hurt me’ sort of prayer. Her portfolio used to include the mana ocean between planes, too. She’s probably the most neutral goddess on Veird, except for Rozeta.” She paused, then said, “Rozeta gives magic to evil people, just as much as she gives magic to good people, but I think Rozeta gets a pass, because she’s in an adversarial relationship with Melemizargo.”

Jane was hedging her words.

Erick saw it.

Poi saw it, too.

Teressa saw something else, though.

“I’d believe Aloethag was a Dark God.” Teressa said, “Now that one is definitely using the Rage of the Orcols to fuel her own power. Barely anyone cares about her, but she’s still a major god, and only because she’s sucking up our power for her own uses.”

Jane agreed, “Can’t forget the former goddess of the elves. Considering what I read about Aloeth, she’s a lot better than she used to be back when the elves were alive and in charge of a good quarter of the Old Cosmology. Or maybe the stories of the elves were exaggerated?”

Teressa almost glowered, but she pulled back that emotion, hard, then simply said, “The elves were bad. For all this New Cosmology is fucked sometimes, the Old Cosmology was worse. You think the Quiet War is bad, with demons and angels? The Elven Wars were worse. I heard all the stories. Most of the time, it was coalitions of races from dwarf to orc to fae and more, all against single elven houses. Single houses! Houses more like nations, with populations that spanned multiple worlds, of course. They used blood magic, everywhere.” Teressa said, “Aloeth granted her people protection from blood magic, which was one of the reasons why elves did so much of that… But back then— Well. I heard stories. Back before the Sundering, the elves had spells that killed whole family lines. [Familial Annihilation] was the big one. Propagating death, spreading throughout the universe to strike at every single blood relation from a target. The story varies, but that was their most terrifying magic, and all of it was empowered by Aloeth.” Teressa said, “Shit like that is why we don’t trust her, and you shouldn’t either.”

Erick hadn’t heard that sort of story, but he didn’t doubt Teressa. If any of the gods seemed ‘dark’, aside from the obvious one of Melemizargo, then Aloethag and Sininindi fit the bill more than most of them. Erick knew a little bit about the first, and while he had contact with both of them, the ‘trial for his life’ from a year ago, back when he met Sininindi for the first time, was a lot more personal to him than Teressa’s problems with Aloethag.

And then later, when he got Yggdrasil, and Sininindi got Yggdrasil’s clone —because Erick was trying to offer an olive branch of peace! Otherwise, he would have told her to fuck off with her Quest— it was revealed to him that Sininindi was going to try and kill him before Yggdrasil matured into a true World Tree in a hundred years.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

But that didn’t really matter. Not right now. It probably would matter, though, if this conversation kept going down this path. The gods were always listening for their own names, and they seemed to pop up with some frequency whenever Erick started invoking their names, therefore it was time to stop this conversation before some stupid Quest popped up, or something.

Maybe he should have left this part of Raidu’s words to fester and die in the dark.

Erick said, “Let’s not talk about this anymore. Let’s talk about dessert, instead.” He got up, saying, “I made chocolate chip cookies! I’ll get them, and then you can tell me about your day, Jane.”

Jane smiled.

Teressa got up from the table, saying, “Then I’ve got reading to do; I’m going to try to learn aura control.”

Erick smiled as he came back into the room, offering cookies, saying, “Let me know if anything Kaffi specifically said helped you.”

“Will do, Boss.” Teressa grabbed a cookie then went to the empty front room.

Poi grabbed a cookie and headed to the library, across the hallway, saying, “I’ve got communications to sort through.”

Erick turned back to Jane, “Have you talked to Riri lately?”

Jane said, “We talked. Not today. Yesterday, and barely for a minute. She’s taken hold of a dozen different Clan businesses, trying to keep them from collapsing while taking advantage of the collapse of other businesses.” Jane picked up a cookie, saying, “I did manage to finally Remake [Fabricate], though.”

Erick smiled. “Good!

“Other than that, I’ve been hunting monsters. There’s this larger form of mist stone glutton that’s been bothering some of the border clans west of Eralis, and…”

Erick listened, happy to hear of easy successes due to hard work and skill.

– – – –

As the morning sun lifted in the east, sending warm glows through the fog that swirled across Holorulo, Erick stood on the open third floor of his temporary house, overseeing it all, like the captain on a tall ship, casting his gaze across an ocean of mist. With a cup of coffee in his hands, and wrapped up in warm robes to keep out the chill in the air, Erick decided that mornings in Holorulo were nice.

As he drained the last drop of his coffee and the sun began to disperse the fog, and after Poi joined him, Erick stood up and went to the edge of his pagoda. He had made a few spells yesterday, but it was time to make a few more. The first was the easiest.

Six Ophiel hovered in the air around him, each of them forming the point of a hexagon with Erick as the center. Erick hummed an Unmoving tune, going from Stone to Water to all the rest, and ending at Shadow, handing off pieces of the disorganized puzzle to each of his Ophiel as they, in turn, took up the tune and made it their own. A harmony emerged; a lullaby. A simple tune, of a father lulling a playful child to rest.

Erick relaxed, feeling disparate fluctuations relax with him.

He cast.

Half a kilometer out, a shimmer of white flickered then flashed through the sky, expanding out to eclipse Erick’s position at the edge of his house. There was no brightness showing the area of effect, as there were with the original six spells. There was simply… Rest.

Erick took a step back, and was outside of the effect. His Ophiel had a bit harder time, since they held themselves up with light, and now that light didn’t want to move, except to let gravity take hold. As all six of them gradually floated downward, to come to rest atop the ground like tired birds, all six of them chirped in confused, odd chirps, that were none of their usual sounds. They chirped through [Airshape], after all; there was no way for their usual sounds to happen when they were under the effect of Erick’s new spell. But they did manage to roll themselves out of the space, their many wings tumbling over each other as they flopped and plopped out of the effect, to come to rest at Erick’s feet, where they promptly spoke in unsure guitars as they once again took to the air.

Erick smiled to see Ophiel’s tiny antics.

A blue box appeared.

Erick read the box, and said, “Good.”

And then he started testing the space with various Mana Altered spells.

The combined version seemed to work even better than the individual versions, but [Lodestar] still enabled Elemental Light spells to function inside the space. Domains were still king of magic, apparently.

Setting that thought aside, and dismissing [Prismatic Lullaby], Erick had a good idea for his [Draining Elemental] spell. His new idea went with the notion that all magic was a harmony away from being extracted from the manasphere. So why not make a spell that simply extracted mana from whoever was exposed to it, and then harmonized that mana into the working of a new spell, and then use that harmonized mana to cast that new spell.

There were many parts of this new idea that were obvious failure points.

Failure point one: using environmental mana to do anything at all. Or rather, using the mana stolen from others to make specific magics.

After having yesterday to think, Erick recalled Mage Hunters, and how they could Drain Mana from targets and then use that Mana themselves. He almost kicked himself for forgetting about this fact. Kiri had told him about that so long ago, back when they had been ambushed in the Crystal Forest by Hunters, and they were low on Mana. She had said that Mage Hunters could take Mana from another, and use it themselves, while Fonts could use their own Mana to restore the Mana of others.

So there was obviously some way to take the mana of others and use it for oneself.

Erick just had to figure it out, and put that working into a [Conjure Force Elemental].