II.

Though his mount twitched its dun ears, clearly agitated, Ash led it away from the ancient killing field, not by means of the well-trod road, but uphill through the sparse forest remaining between him and Core. He steered the young stag straight as an arrow toward the murmur of noise and energy which so annoyed the beast. Its antlers hadn’t yet grown to a third of their eventual size, and at times its youth made it fickle and unpredictable.

Much in the same way Ash had been acting recently. He wouldn’t put it beyond

Krachnis to have procured this particular mount as a lesson.

The latest portal stone’s hum faded as Ash plodded further away from the field, once a battleground in a forgotten war. Krachnis never told him what battles had been waged, only where to place the ashen stones. Nor did he explain what fell magic the entity had worked into the ground of the entire Radiance, preserving corpses that otherwise would have rotted away decades or even centuries ago. The more devout among the Radiance’s humans believed the preservation to be a holy thing.

They would learn otherwise soon enough.

As he crested the hill, he tottered for a moment between the dark energy behind and the steady drone ahead. He still hadn’t grown accustomed to his new body. After Breeze Tower, it had become necessary to alter his appearance. During a painful process Ash didn’t want to repeat, Krachnis had altered the very fabric of Ash’s being. Any simple illusions would have been dispelled by the hob’s games, so until Krachnis reversed the change, Ash was a menog through and through.

Krachnis had barely warned him that night, once Ash had ridden far enough away from Breeze Tower. When the transformation had begun, Ash screamed until darkness had taken him.

The morning after his transformation, he had awoken in clothes many sizes too large. A shëll had cleared her throat nearby, holding a new set of clothes, cut in the latest menog fashion. For once, the shëll had not bowed and scraped, though she did avert her eyes. When he stood, his perception had been skewed. Instead of towering over the shëll, he had still looked up at her.

Ash had understood his new circumstances at once. Strength he had taken for granted had fled him. A quick downward glance after he had undressed showed a stout but weak body. He had swept a hand across his jaw and found a short scraggly beard. He was young still, that much hadn’t changed. His arms and legs had seemed to bend at all the wrong places as he slipped baggy trousers over freckled legs and buttoned the tight garishly colored shirt favored by menogs.

Another lesson, no doubt. Or a simple punishment. Krachnis could have altered his appearance in more subtle ways or changed him into any other member of Severia’s races. He had chosen the smallest and weakest. As if the transformation hadn’t been an agonizing lesson unto itself.

From atop the hill, the land unrolled before Ash like a map. Farmland stretched as far as Ash could see, beset by a plague of kilkinteth. Gossamer wings thrummed in a swell of activity like a living machine. One group pulled vegetation from the loamy soil two or three plants at a time, all six legs performing an intricate dance. With their front pair of appendages snapping and clicking, the next group cut roots and leaves, plucked the occasional worm or beetle from a plant, then sorted the bits into baskets. The final group of hickory insects flew the baskets over the city walls, greeting kin who returned to the fields with empty containers.

Krachnis had prepared him for the marvels outside the Ashen Lands as best he could. He had described the world’s wonders with scorn and contempt. Ash’s spies inside the city had delivered dry reports. He had seen through the eyes of ravens, riding air currents from afar.

None of that had prepared him for the sight before him. It never did.

Watching the kilkinteth work was mesmerizing. He looked upon the world with the eyes of a child while Krachnis played the part of a scolding parent, berating his lack of focus.

It all started with that cursed game. I warn you, don’t stray from your purpose. This land was built on the blood of the elder races, on the bones of glorious beasts whose heads brushed the heavens.

Conquer and slaughter are not synonymous, Ash thought.

She seeks to divert you from your destiny.

Soon there will be enough death to sate even your bottomless appetite for destruction.

Yes. Soon.

The tone in his head was akin to growls from a deep pit where no sane creature could dwell. Krachnis had given him power, but Ash had suspicions about how much. He swung a toy weapon at the shadows of a gathering horde while Krachnis sharpened a sword in the next room.

III. Ash Entering Core

Ash heeled his mount down the hill and joined the steady stream of traffic entering the city gates. No one paid any heed to his presence. For the first time in his travels, humans were the minority. Every sentient race from throughout the Radiance seemed to be represented, their paces sure and strong. Ash could hardly guess at the reasons for their visits. Only the occasional wagon bore merchant marks or some other official emblem. Webfooted eyed the kilkinteth farmers with the hunger borne of a favorite snack held just out of reach. Most of the other races had already grown accustomed to the sight and paid the bugs no heed.

Like Ash, other menogs rode young dreshen while humans rode their much larger mothers. Only the wealthiest among the humans could afford a stag, none of which were present at the moment. Except among the wodenlang. Every third or fourth wodenlang rode dreshen. Though well behaved as they slowly trotted toward the city walls, the beasts had a wild look to them. Perhaps it was their nearly black fur. Or the stags’ thinner but more elaborate antlers, twisting into elaborate calligraphies. More than anything, it was a look in their eyes like they were always a breath away from streaking across the land and disappearing back into the trees from which they had come.

The grommels pulling carts and wagons looked comical by comparison. Each of their six feet was split into halves of two toes. Instead of bending like other beasts’ feet, they remained rigid, plopping to the ground with each step, driven forward by short powerful legs. They were squat creatures with coarse shaggy coats like stacks of hay. Long flat tails dragged across the ground, stirring up dust, and their wide mouths always seemed to be smiling.

As wonderstruck as Ash was by the traffic waiting to enter Core, the city was beyond words. He had been prepared for the logistical difficulties of laying siege to and conquering the great city, but he had never stopped to think of its beauty.

The gargantuan tree at Core’s center had been visible for days. It was worshiped as a god by some. The first tree. Spire. All other plants were said to have grown from its seeds which had stopped falling when time was still young.

Druí said no bird could fly higher than Spire. It was a lie but one that helped the average citizen understand just how tall the tree was. Wodenlang children played on leaves as broad and sturdy as a ship’s deck. Citizens of Core charted the hour by looking to Spire’s shadow. Markings on the inner walls, the aptly named Time Walls, told the hour on sunny days as Spire’s shadow wound around the city and were even said to account for the sun’s varying position in the sky during each of the five seasons. When it rained, some parts of the city never felt a drop as it collected on Spire’s leaves and was then gathered by druí.

At night Spire shone with the lights from thousands of wisps which lived among its foliage. They supplied the city with spectacle, and when their lives ended, druí Light Bringers collected their crystallized corpses. By infusing them with magic, the wisps lived on, driving darkness from all the lands throughout the Radiance. Others became portal stones. Though all the wisps were capable of limited teleportation, one subspecies in particular could travel the greatest distances, and only the druí knew how to unlock that power from their crystals.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Branches forked away from Spire’s trunk like wooden rivers, creating the city’s air district. Spire’s six lowest branches connected to towers of varying heights, constructed of stone in imitation of the ancient tree. They represented the three natural needs--food, shelter, water--and the three civilized needs--commerce, law, spirit. Beyond the towers, limbs branched off creating a spiderweb of bridges and stone platforms which eventually connected to the city’s walls in six places.

Wodenlang and hobs populated the bulk of the air district, joined recently by the kilkinteth who had quickly covered the undersides of Spire’s branches with hives. Some of those who lived in the air district might never set foot on the lower districts during their entire lifetime, teleporting from branch to branch with portal stones. The air district had its own groves, markets, farms, and houses. For those with the coin to spare, there were taverns and boarding houses. The druí had one of their schools on a particularly large branch halfway up Spire, and young hob shapers made pilgrimages to learn from masters of the stone shaping arts who maintained the district. Even the webfooted had a temple in the high branches where they could better worship their goddess, the sun, her name impossible to pronounce by any but their own kind.

The ground level, hidden for now behind the city’s walls, was known as the ground district, more commonly referred to as the human district. Though they were welcome in any district, most humans preferred solid earth beneath their feet. Even though that ground was less solid than some might have liked. Below all the markets, temples, homes, slums, taverns, shops and hundred other kinds of buildings in the human district, below even Lake Trueheart which filled a southern slice of Core, burrowers lived and worked in the rock district.

Instead of one city, Core was essentially three. And Ash was determined to conquer it all.

Heralded across the land as the first city, Core had become the center of a spiral from which civilization had spun out across the lands. Its walls had never been breached by an invader, though few had gotten close enough to try.

Ages ago they were mud embankments, Krachnis thought, his voice oozing with disdain. Then crude palisades. She gave them the gift of fire, and it held the beasts at bay. The burrowers set hammer and chisel to stone. Hobs molded it. The races tamed magic. Wodenlang brought seeds from the great trees.

A marriage of tree and stone, Core’s walls had grown with its citizens, culture, art, and politics. Only within the last century had the trees reached their full height. Stone filled the spaces in front of and between the trees whose lowest branches created a canopy above the walls. With the harvest upon them, the hob-sized leaves boasted as many colors as the various races gathered in their shade. The leaves rarely fell no matter the season or strength of storms. Their colors changed in the autumn then curled up to sleep during the winter. When the occasional leaves did fall, farmers would drape them over their fields. The leaves would be absorbed back into the ground, securing a plentiful harvest next cycle.

Having reached their maturity, it was said no wind could shake those branches, nor could fire burn their bark. They housed nations of insects, climbing critters, birds, and wisps. Mirroring the foot traffic, a stream of birds passed overhead from all directions to deliver the notes tucked to their legs, words given wing. Inside the stone, borne on the backs of those great trees, the greatest army in the land lived and trained.

So much life, and Krachnis would have him extinguish it all. Like his feelings about the city itself, Ash had no words for the weight of so much death.

A familiar chill passed over Ash when he stepped on the bridge. An invisible wall of power cut off his magic and isolated Krachnis. It made him nervous, part of him not fully trusting his transformation would hold. He kept disappointing Krachnis, and he could easily imagine the entity transforming his body, subjecting him to that soul-wrenching pain, only to have it be undone by the hob’s magic. Exposed on Core’s doorstep, he would have a slim chance at escaping with his life.

But the transformation held, confirmed by a quick survey of his diminutive body. The hands on his mount’s reins were small and freckled. Pretending to yawn, he felt the coarse beard tickling his nose.

Composing himself, Ash climbed down from his mount, following the example of those ahead of him. The bridge lived and breathed, moving almost imperceptibly beneath his feet. Even divorced from magic, he could sense its lifeforce like swirls of water in a thousand miniature rivers. Large enough to fit some of the smaller towns he had passed through, the bridge was formed from the roots of the great trees, coaxed into a tight mass atop a sturdy stone bridge by wodenlang and druí magic. Water swept beneath the bridge, a few paces down, in a hob-carved moat. Even what should have been a defensive measure wasn’t free of the hobs’ typical artistic flair. The sides of the moat had been carved to resemble muddy embankments with tufts of grass, errant roots, and the occasional amphibian frozen as they climbed out of the water or as they prepared to jump in.

The shade of the great trees’ branches was so expansive the guards, tax collectors, censor takers and other officials worked by the light of wisp bundles and the occasional brazier. Groups of webfooted tended to flock to those, unused to the ofttimes chillier climates outside their marshes.

Hobs had their own light, miniature suns shining over their board games. Mountain and forest hobs were gathered in equal measure. Most of the latter lived in the deep forests with the wodenlang. They were shorter than their mountain cousins but still a head or two taller than other races. Thinner but solid with sinewy muscles. Their skin tones ranged from mossy green to rich brown.

To his surprise, all the hobs wore fashionable outfits. The forest hobs seemed to prefer warmer clothes, long jackets over buttoned shirts in natural hues. The mountain hobs wore a kind of robe with no sleeves. They concentrated beneath pavilions at the edges, an entire squadron of officials filtering those who wished to play.

Just for fun, Ash thought and shook his head, still not believing the whole affair, but also shaking away the urge to join them.

Though the lines were long, none seemed to mind, waiting anxiously, excitement brightening their features more than any light. Those merchants willing to gamble gathered to one side, hoping to mitigate the various fees required to sell their goods. The hobs would tax the merchants for bridge maintenance, and the menogs would again for various guild fees, but the right goods traded to the right people would yield a small fortune.

“Is it true not a single hob has lost?” a wodenlang boy called out to a passing hob.

“Grum,” the wizened hob made a sound of rocks grinding their way down his throat. “We don’t speak of such matters. The game is the game.”

“You think that sounds wise,” a human guard said and nudged the hob with an armor-clad elbow. “I keep telling you, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Or does it make much sense?” The hob cupped his chin, rubbing it with a deep look.

“No!” The guard threw up his arms, and they shared a laugh as if a similar routine had played out any number of times, always aimed at frustrating the guard.

“You haven’t heard of Raylin?” a burrower child made entirely of round lumps spoke to the wodenlang boy. His words seemed to have been trapped inside far too long and escaped like a child’s screaming foray into the first spring day. “Rumor says she beat every hob she could find! Shield Yel tracked her down. They say she’s been made Grand Shield of her own army!”

Raylin was only the first of new heroes for the Radiance. A wodenlang mother on a trip to market with her children had beaten a hob so soundly the elders now consulted her on defenses throughout their groves while she washed clothes in the river or prepared meals, refusing to accept an official position. An unusual hero, but nothing about Ash’s time in the Radiance had been what he expected.

Starting with the hob. Knock had to be considered another hero, warding Westerbrook against him. He doubted the hob would be content to wait out the coming conflict from safety, but what to do about him?

Then there was the druí Balancer Drusk. Rumors said he was active again after nearly a decade of silence. Errant lycanthropes were already falling to his blade. Krachnis said the Balancer teetered on the edge of allowing the entity into his mind. Meanwhile, every hint of civilization they passed was abuzz with news of the man’s great deeds, past and present.

Ash now had his own heroes. Those creatures who had not heeded Gailinn’s call had been easy to track down with Krachnis’ aid. Every race had undesirables, battered by life and fortune until they were nearly broken.

While he distrusted each and every one of them, felt covered by a layer of filth that would never wash away while in their presence, they were a disposable means to an end. Rugner had been the first to join back in Breeze Tower, and though he might have overreached by killing those women, he had proven his worth numerous times since then. Ash had confessed to pointing Moss in the werewolf's direction, but he had only smiled, muttering something about a “last grand chase.”

His army had passed from the Ashen Lands and would soon enter the Grinder. If they pushed hard, they could be through the deadly pass in a single day. Then every able-bodied creature from the Ashen Lands would wait for his signal to march upon the Radiance. He would finish his business here, find that cursed golem, and then his conquest would begin.

With an efficiency to almost rival the kilkinteth’s farming, the officials collected gate fees, recorded names, and set about a hundred more tasks until Ash reached the front of the line much sooner than he would have thought possible.

He held aloft the sigil his shëlls had acquired for him and tried to trust his disguise. Though he had planned for this eventuality, actually wearing another creature’s skin, seeing through its eyes, and speaking through its mouth wasn’t the simple matter of lying he had imagined it to be. With a sharp jerk on his mount's reins, he stepped forward.