“Hah…Simply beautiful,” I sighed, as I took a sip of a tea brewed from a potent spirit herb and watched Nine-Clover and its denizens greet yet another day.

In that large world of warriors and cultivators below, people were waking. They were remembering old grudges. They were remembering old debts. They were thinking about their futures, and a million other things that even a higher-being like myself would be hard-pressed to fathom. They were living their lives and marching towards an uncertain future with all their might. Living lives that were bright enough to dazzle the immortal eyes that watched them, more than a few of them even managing to quietly create legacies that would last long after they themselves were gone.

Jack was right, as she so often was when it came to the parts of our shared life that weren't entirely bound by concrete facts and numbers. There was nothing wrong with being nostalgic so long as one was self-aware about the fact, the glow that made those earlier days seem so great was largely based on partially forgotten details, and the simple fact that you don’t actually have to live in those days anymore. Thus there was nothing wrong with keeping one of my countless clones here in Nine-Clover quietly indulging in my bygone past, until the Empty-Society’s influence, and time, turned Nine-Clover into something that no longer resembled the old Shattered World.

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Elsewhere, a young orc was running for his life. Hot red blood ran in rivulets around his fingers. Staining the cotton shirt he wore, as he fled. His dark-green eyes darted about looking for any sign of his pursuers. He sighs in relief seeing no sign of anyone on his tail, and instantly regrets it, as the pain in his chest comes back in spades. His wound soaking the hastily done bandage job, he’d done in a new coat of red. Logic, and the teachings of his father, tell him to keep moving. Just because his would-be killers have lost sight of him, doesn’t mean that they can’t find him again. Thus the young orc quickly resumes moving.

The Orc’s name was Johan Bladetusk. The Bladetusks were one of the three most influential families in the Fangspear Tribe of Fangspear Valley. Johan considered himself part of the enlightened new generation. A modern orc. He didn’t believe what the old-timers said about the humans and beast-folk being some kind of corrupting influence. Yet, an hour ago, unbelievable as it was, his own tribesmen, had formed conspired with their enemies in Nightclaw Hills, and some dubious fellows from Gearfist city which lay towards the east, to try and kill him.

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That wasn’t how Fangspear folk operated. His people weren’t stupid people but they didn’t pussy foot around with complicated plans. If the people of Fangspear tribe wanted to kill you, they told to your face, and then they either got to it, or they’d arrange a time when you and they wouldn’t be busy dealing with beast tides, and the harvest season so the two sides to “hash things out”. Thus Johan could only suspect that some of the tricky folk from Gearfist, or the Nightclaw Hills were turning his tribesmen’s heads around.

A thing that Johan would definitely do his best to get to the bottom of if he managed to get out of this situation alive. Alas, right now, that seemed like a very big “if”. Johan wasn’t what most people would think of when they envisioned an orc. Especially, when it came to the mighty Fangspear Orcs. He wasn’t very big. He was a petite 5’8 and slight of build. Shorter than many of the orc females in the tribe. His light green-brown skin bruised easily like some of the softer jungle fruits. Instead of thick muscle, his limbs were mostly sinew and skin. His hands were large, yet their fingers were long and delicate. Despite being over thirty years of age, his round face still had an annoying amount of neoteny to it. Instead of looking like his imposing warrior father, he’d taken after his half-goblin mother instead.

Which is probably why his lunk-head tribesmen, and the snakes across the valley, and to the east, thought he’d be the easiest of his father’s children to take hostage, or kill. Johan, sought to prove. He just needed to find his way out of this deep dark jungle, in the forbidden part of the Evergreen Continent’s northern jungle. He just needed to somehow survive and make it back to his tribe.

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I was heading over to one of my lakes to do a little fishing, and found something strange. There was a corpse lying at the foot of the woods near the lake. An orc corpse. One of the Soul-Ripper Lungfish had crawled onto the land and was halfway to the corpse. Likely intending to eat it, because this particular breed had evolved a taste for fresh corpses, due to their ancestors being commonly found in the river styx and various other afterlife rivers.

I gave the fish a thwack on the head and sent it back into the water, because it’s not like I don’t feed these brats. Then I revived the body, because its soul and spirit were still there, and there wasn’t too much brain damage for me to repair, so I figured it’d be fine, to just heal whoever this was, and send them on their way. Instead of letting them die up on my moon.