Sachihiro

I am a pilgrim walking to the hidden city of Tiba almost all the way to the center of Pangaea the supercontinent. 'Cause that's what Pangaea is I've concluded after studying some of the maps available at the Conclave library. Even at a casual glance you see only a few other continents that compete with her in size and continents like Sandoria are miniscule in comparison.

Joseph is by my side and we are accompanied by Ragnar and Silo for part of the journey on their way to where Master Zaraya apparently is. A place called Meme where the Sistys Compound can be found, where those places are I don't really know, nor did I know another compound actually existed but apparently this Sistys Compound is actually were the big wigs stay, not the Den as I had assumed.

We travel slowly using stealth more than anything else in order to try to avoid predators of all kind. The humanoids and even most of the underworld pack hunters are easier to avoid than the predicatory beasts indigenous to Gaia's surface and the lone underworld hunters.

Silo and Joseph are mundane so our pace is dictated by them but to be honest I'm enjoying the leisure of it and the chance to hone my stealth and sneaking skills again. I used to be a hunter growing up and have not had time to pursue that interest in a very long time. It's a shame I haven't had a chance to teach my children to hunt any thing larger than rabbits and hares but I hope that the Conclave continues where I have fallen short as a father.

It has certainly helped me along into becoming the man I currently am and I don't think I'm a bad sort. But there is diversity in me that is a product of my travels and the places I have stayed at and had time to grow at. To live amongst the Hito is to find purpose in the way of the sword and your life as a whole, to live amongst the tribes is to have freedom and live an unencumbered life. Something I only realised after spending those years in the Hidden Valleys with the Hito people.

To live amongst the Conclave is to find a place to belong even in the multitudes of people that are continuously filling it's ranks. I have been shaped by those three cultures and I find that having more than one cultural influence in my life has broaden my mind in a way exposure to one culture alone would not have been able to do.

Slavery is anathema to my people and even now after having sat down with my four mates and discussed what to do with Katya I am uncomfortable being the one to deal with her. Shea though has no such hangups and has assure us that she will take the girl under her care and help us understand how best to treat a slave as well.

I call her girl but Shea is sure that Katya is not less than 120 years of age judging from the taste of her blood. The spirit that is now a part of her apparently ensures that she stays alive and keeps healing even when put under the worst of torture. Though she has no offensive capabilities nor is she interested in any she is more resilient that any of us tier 1 Awakened in my household.

After finishing at the academy however long that takes Katya will be under Shea's direct care, who will make sure she visits the Brothel daily as I instructed. I cannot imagine what she must have been put through sexually or otherwise having a body that told no tales for 120 years. Apparently the girl is also an Awakened in her own right by virtue of age alone, but she doesn't feel like it at all.

Shea in conjunction with Master Forrester of the Conclave Spiritus will look into what fat Albert did to the girl. How she has bonded so symbiotically with the spirit, what type of spirit it is and how exactly the bond between us works. I've been taught at the Spirits by Master Forrester how to accept a bond with a summoned creature and as soon as I accepted the bond with Katya I became aware of other similar bonds at the edge of my perception.

The other people with summoned creatures that Albert had experimented with I'm guessing. But one feel much stronger than the others and 'tastes' different than the others and feels to be much further away.

Shea didn't mind footing the bill for the construction of my dream house and she didn't seem to even blink at the outrageous amount the project director finally predicted and construction was started the following day. With the Conclave paying for the project it would have had to be more modest and taken longer but there is a Merchant and Mercenary part of the Conclave where it makes money not just spends it. So the moment they get funding they get to work.

I am basically building a huge hole in the ground using warded stones that is deep enough that even if the hand of the gods comes down to smith me it won't reach deep enough. My home is to be like a traditional dungeon with rooms and passages that keep going to lower and lower levels and room enough to accommodate a minimum of a hundred people.

Yes I am building a palace deep underground that goes up and up until the actual house on the surface of the velt Ingwe's father gave me is only a modest two story wooden building. The best wood for the project I've already received in the form of seeds from Vevina apparently, and the trees have already been planted all over my land.

Vahe and Svensonsen have agreed to help raise them and accelerate their growth for the privilege of studying my 'inherited summoned creature' Katya. It was the first time I actively treated her as a possession and I felt shitty about it but I did it with the promise that they do their study as none invasively as possible with Mira and Kuyoki or Shea present.

But I left with the foundation of my 10 level deep house being dug at an astonishing pace by a team of 40 dwarves and 6 gnomes under the supervision of Master Kree the head architect for the project. I also enjoy the enthusiasm with which she looked forward to completing such a unique construct.

I feel good about adding Shea to the family and not just because I'm getting to use up all her money, no. There is a sort of balance now that wasn't there before as the personalities within our household complement each other better. I wasn't consciously aware that I was uncomfortable leaving Ridgris the only man with my women but the way Shea is handling Mira just has me feeling like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Intellectually I knew Shea was both a man and a woman but to me she has always been a woman first. I didn't expect her to be a man when dealing with Mira and a woman when dealing with me but it works. I think we would have fought had she tried dealing with me personally as a man at any point in the time we've spent together. But as a woman even if we disagree and she wins an argument I know I can just fuck her later, which strangely helps keep everyone happy.

Mira and Shea hadn't had sex yet while I was present but I know its going there at some point, so does everyone that sees them interact with each other around the house. Ingwe is the most conflicted about having a sister wife that's also a man and doesn't know how to deal with Shea hungrily looking at her breasts. I'm not sure how I feel about that either, Ingwe I feel very possessive about for some reason.

Nikita has been weaned but me being the pervert I am convinced Ingwe to keep producing milk and so the entire household has been unwittingly drinking all the fresh milk she produces. Kuyoki knows cause she has been milking her and Shea knows cause she can tell the difference but everyone else thinks the Academy is providing milk from some exotic magical beast.

I think the little ones know though and they just think it's where milk usually comes from. The dietary benefits speak for themselves though and the taste is divine, especially when the milk is chilled.

Everything is left in order within my house as I left, everything except Saya who I think may have a crush on Shea. Or at least Shea's male form, now that I was really confused about and tried to talk to her about but she wouldn't say a thing. I've never known Saya not to express how she feels about things but I told Kuyoki about my suspensions and left her to try dealing with it. I hope bringing Shea into my family wasn't a mistake.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

*

We skirt around a lot of areas as we travel because of their auras, or they are marked on the maps as being beastmen tribal territories or wild human tribal territories. It's best not to even step foot past their skull markers indicating how they usually treat their guests human or otherwise.

You'd think that a lot of the open space on Pangaea would be claimed by the many plorific humanoid races but I'm starting to get the impression that the wouldn't dare. We play the avoidance game so much that we eventually reach the impassable forest of Psithurism. Joseph has never traveled these parts of Pangaea either and just shrugs whenever we try to determine the best route cause the one marked out for us won't work.

It's either we try to cross through Psithurism, a forest territory so thick with trees that they make a wall that runs across almost a fifth of the continent according to the map. Which means going around it could take years, going through it will most likely only be a month's journey optimistically. But spending a month in a forest this old and this desnse is just tempting the fates.

The previously planned route has a big problem though. The giant fucken' serpent that has been sleeping under Lake Mtata keeping anyone with two brain cells to rub together from trying to claim the territory is gone. And with it's departure a tribe of centaurs has expanded their territory into what was previously a known safe path of travel.

Centaurs are the maniacs of the beastmen species and they don't like anyone, not even other centaurs. It doesn't help that they are 'fucken' part horse and needing vast territories to run openly and freely. There is just no way the four of us can sneak past them, outrun them or negotiate passage without an army or superior strength backing us.

The Den Compound then is either geniusly located at an ideal part of Pangaea for safety and isolation because the centaur tribe will not likely expand towards Iguria even if by some miracle their population numbers rise. Or it's isolated itself so much that a serious enough army could decimate it without the rest of the world being the wiser.

We decide to risk Psithurism because I think we are on a deadline and I think Ragnar wouldn't mind the challenge. Psithurism The windy Forest, also known as The Wall Of Trees.

*

The first most prevalent creatures here are the birds. There are bird nests in almost every tree on the part of the first we've used as our entry point and their songs fill the air with a cacophony of sound. The birds range in sizes types and colours but though the majority of them are small and flee as we disturbed the trees in our passage the vast majority just make more noise.

The forest floor is thick with bird scat that we sink up to our ankles in every single step we take, doing our very best to endure the grating sounds of different species of birds competing for the same limited sound waves. The trees here are not very tall and these birds are practically just above our heads driving us crazy with shit and noise the likes of which I've never even imagined.

The trudge forward through the shit as best we can with inhumane patience for we chose this path for a reason. The birds here hardly have any serious predictors that prey on them because of all the noise that they make. The bigger birds, snakes, foxes and the like only visit here for a meal and leave as quickly as possible not even eating their kill in the vicinity. And the plan is to use the cover of this part of the forest known as Dire to get as far as possible into The Wall.

We walk for hours with saintly patience, occasionally slipping on the huge pile of scat at our feed and having the occasional smelly drops on our bodies from above. But for every mistep there is a tree to lean on, for every slip there is a tree to balance with. There are trees almost on top of each other, some of which have gaps too narrow for a person to walk between. Other trees fused together by the stems becoming conjoined but with different root systems somehow.

My hair is a mess of the shit and I just know it's going to be a pain to wash out. Our noses are now numb and almost completely oblivious to the acrid stench of the place, it makes one wonder whether or not birds have noses.

‎ *

‎ The daylight hours are difficult and very stressful but no one wants to be the first to complain so we all drudge through it in silence. It makes perfect sense why no one takes this route if ever they have a choice and why this bloody place is called a wall.

We barely cover 200km in the entirety of the 50 hours of day and dawn but we have hope that as night falls the diurnal birds will give us peace as the nocturnal ones come out to lead their night lives. We stop as night falls and reconsolidate while letting Joseph and Silo rest while standing. We don't stop long though and its no time at all that we are back trudging through shit instead of just standing in it.

The forest slowly gets quieter and quieter as some birds stay active longer than others but the night is fairly sedate in comparison to the day. I'm hesitant to use my water to wash my hair out but the stickiness and greasy bird shit in my hair is getting to me, I don't really admit this even to myself much but I love my hair.

We don't rest long though as we soon discovered there are snakes in alarming numbers, slugs, faecesists, bigger carnivorous birds that dare to even challenge us before Ragnar starts conveying his aura and we also find out where the underworld bottom feeders went instead of challenging humanoids. There are a lot of creatures that feed on these birds and though most are insignificant in being a challenge to us they represent a potentially grave miscalculation on our part.

And it isn't long before the creatures that feed on the creatures that feed on the birds are at the periphery of our awareness. Their curiosity peaked but Ragnar's aura still more than they can handle, its the magical beast pack hunters that we worry about though. But thankfully nothing of the sort challenges us that first night filled with blissfully normal insect noises, owls, the twisting of the trees and the hunts going on.

The night is relatively peaceful and we get to travel without the need to grate our teeth for hours on end. We also cover more ground for some reason, which I'm grateful for. But as the night fades with dawn taking it's place the birds wake up as well and for the first time since walking in here I notice how beautiful the bird colours are.

They come in many forms and unique appearances as though they clothed themselves to show off as they rose this morning. The fee that sing in the early hours of dawn have beautiful songs that are a pleasing melody I wish I could bottle. The orchestra of of nature reaches a climaxes sometime in the middle of dawn then the cacophony is back causing us to grate our teeth and endure.

It's on the fourth day of this that Joseph goes insane and unleashes a wave of spirit force spluttering trees and destroying one outright in his attempt to kill a bird that's just shit on him as he looked up.

I giggle at his outburst but it also gives us a quick moment of respite where there is just quiet. We do seem to draw some unwanted attention though as the predictors get more powerful that very same night.

We eventually have to fight off a pack of wood dawgs and a beltor bird in who's territory we pass through. The two unAwakaned get tired of all the traveling we let them sleep on trees while Ragnar and I kept watch in turns.

It is 16 days later under a cloudy dark sky with the promise of heavy rain that something truly unexpected happens. A clearly magical Silver Bow owl flies out of the trees as we are about to enter a clearing and hoots at us loudly.

Silo looks at the beautiful creature for a moment, then looks at us then back at the owl as it looks at him and the two just stare at each other. A moment later the thing flies headlong into his open arms as their aura's blaze and their spirits connect a moment later.

I've never seen nor heard or read about this phenomena but somehow I know. Silo has just opened a familial bond and gained a familial animal. The fastest of all the silent flying owns of the night, the silver bow.