The day was clear and bright, a beautiful late summer day. There was a small inn and staging yard up the river bank. Here a ferry was stationed for the wagons of the few trade caravans that came this far out. The Colri lands were the far western edge of what the rest of the world considered “civilization.” Some thought the Colri uncultured savages cavorting with spirits; others knew better and respected the Colri and their ways. The folk of the Harvest Kingdom were familiar with the Colri and friendly with the tribes. A long-standing treaty kept the two nations on those terms. Not that the Colri wanted to invade their western neighbor's rolling hills. On the north side of the plains was a harsh and rocky ridgeline of mountains long settled by an old clan of reclusive dwarves. To the southeast was the Delta and the ocean beyond. The northeastern edge of the Colri plains was a mostly inhospitable wasteland and desert where few things lived. The Brown Wastes were a blemish on the lands and a reminder of what happens when great mages warred on one another. Stories of terrible monsters bound beneath the dry scrublands of the Brown Wastes were cautionary tales in many cultures.
Wali had decided to head into the Harvest Kingdom and find a secluded spot to try and tame the Storm Elemental in his spear, away from prying eyes and possibly damaging others. The way station on the river bank was two days away from the nearest town of note, according to the simple map he had copied from Longtooth’s wall. He stepped out onto the dirt path and took a deep breath. Freedom to roam and explore was now his. The Colri were his people now. But a lifetime of travel and learning before he came to this world spoke to him to expand his horizons. A fantastic world of new things awaited him.
He strolled down the dirt wagon rut. The antelope hide leathers he had been gifted were perfect for a Long Walk. Thin enough to be worn comfortably, thick enough to provide some protection, and reinforced in certain areas to almost be called armor. The natural pattern of the skin, a white, gray, and brown vertical striping, made him laugh a little. Somewhere between a zebra and a classic prisoner’s stripes, they were distinctly a Colri pattern. The antelope themselves moved in huge herds guided by the Herders of the tribes. They were fast-bounding creatures with two sets of horns; the first set curled like a ram, and the second was small sharp spikes no longer than a few centimeters set in a vertical line between the eyes. The antelope had the square pupils of a goat and similar intelligent belligerence. Their milk, meat, leather, and bones were everyday products in Colri life. A wide black leather belt held a few pouches, one for money, one for a few herbs from the satchel the herbalists gave him that was in the bottom of his main pack, and another held a few sling stones. The pouches were like small fanny packs making him feel like a particular dark comic hero and his utility belt. His two ivory knives were sheathed, one along his forearm, the other strapped to his calf. The hatchet was strapped to the side of his backpack with a length of the woven rope and a bedroll. The leather pack was heavy with food, clothing, and the bulk of his herbs and money. He walked barefoot, the soles of his feet having acquired the toughness of shoe leather. Gulli and Tag ranged about around him.
The spear was slung over a shoulder, and Wali could only smile. The wide world lay open before him.
“So now what?” Trickster asked in the back of his mind.
“Now we go see what we can see. Sixteen years in the village is plenty. What sort of trouble should we get into?” Wali asked.
“Trouble? Whatever do you mean?” Trickster asked, intrigued.
“Well, supposedly, this world has monsters and castles and stuff. Is there a princess to save? Some Demon Lord to defeat?” Wali answered with a question.
“Welll, you see…,” Trickster began. “Perhaps you should follow Longtooth’s suggestion and find this Marsai person.”
“That’s kind of a cagey answer from you,” Wali said.
“You know I cannot lie to you. But I also cannot tell you about the future events of this world. There have been a few hints in the past few days.”
“Wait, more than one person told me I was destined for great things. They also have said that the world would not raise up someone like me if there weren’t a reason.”
“Correct on both accounts.”
“So that means there will be some big problem for me to solve,” Wali said, wary and somewhat dismayed.
“Solve or not, destiny and fate and all that are but paths that we gods have entangled you mortals in. What you actually do about that destiny or fate or whatever is up to you. Ultimately, the gods want you to thank them and worship them. Without hardship, there is no faith or need for gods to be worshipped. Without worship, there is no power for the gods and no souls for them to collect. No souls, no worship, the gods die or lose their grasp on this reality, and other gods give them the boot.” Trickster explained. “The stronger the soul, the more value it has to a god. The only way to make souls stronger is to put them through hardship or encourage a lifetime of service. Somehow you had a lifetime of service in your past life, but no god claimed you.”
“I thought the gods were bullshit anyways; no magic in my old world anyways.”
“Close enough, you are a powerful and valuable lost soul who gets extremely lucky at reincarnation, and now we’re here. Where, if you are unlucky enough, you’ll get to meet a few gods.”
“Wait, aren’t you a god too?” Wali asked as he walked.
“Sort of. While I am a deity class entity, I am also something classed as a mythic concept and a legendary class spiritual being. Most of that isn’t very meaningful in the end. What it means is that as long as there are stories of my escapades, then I will keep going. I do not require souls or worship to survive. But it does mean I need to have some escapades now and again to keep things fresh. No one like to watch reruns too many times.”
“Okay, that’s interesting. Are the other totem spirits similar?”
“Yes and no. They function off of a more direct partnership with people. They aren’t normally deities but can grow in power to elevate to godhood. Crocodilian is a fragment of a god common to many, many planes of existence. Your ancient Egyptians worshiped Sobek, for example; that is the same entity that your totem spirit Neferu is a part of. Most are legendary class spiritual beings that share a part of themselves in exchange for power. Sort of like a power generator, people put in the relatively unusable gasoline and get back electricity they can use. In exchange, the spirits get to experience and live with the people which they find fascinating, and they also get to live on in the legends of those people.” Trickster moved into his teaching mode.
“I think I get it now. So because the gods want my soul for food, they will make it harder for me to live my life and possibly kill me.” Wali said sardonically.
“Basically. They get your delicious soul if you choose to worship them or decide to bargain it away for power. In their deluded minds, the best way to do that is to make things hard for you and decide you need them to help you solve whatever is plaguing you.” Trickster replied.
“So what do you get out of all this?” Wali asked.
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“Heh, I get to be a part of your shenanigans as you work to thwart the gods, and that shit is going to be hilarious.” Trickster cackled with glee, causing Wali to chuckle too. “I mean holy crap, thrice gifted with Nine Fold Flower. NINE!” Trickster yelled in his head.
“You never explained that to me. What does that mean?” Wali asked again for the hundredth time.
“I still cannot explain it to you. There are rules I cannot break that fall into that realm. I can say that you already know sixty-six percent of it, two-thirds.”
Tag screeched a call and alerted Wali to something, interrupting the conversation. Gulli trotted back to Wali from down the road. The guttural voice of the Boar spirit came into his mind. “Wali, there is a dead thing in the road. Looks like a horse.”
Wali brought the spear to a ready position and called Neferu into his skin. His skin hardened as Neferu inhabited his flesh with a grumbling growl. He moved up the side of the hill and dropped the heavy pack to the side of the dirt path. Circulating mana through his Senses glyph, he caught the copper scent of blood and the sour smell of fear. He crept up to the crest of the hill, careful not to reveal himself. Looking down the grassy slope, he saw the carnage. A lone horse lay dead in a large pool of blood. From this vantage, he saw that the horse was saddled, but the saddle was empty. Saddlebags lay closed and strapped shut, so not a robbery. He saw a pair of buzzards in the distance moving this way. It was at least an hour old if the scent had carried to the carrion birds on the light breeze. Calling out Noodle and instructing the spirit to keep watch on him, he tried to connect his senses with Tag, who circled invisibly over the dead horse. He hadn’t tried this before and was suddenly disoriented. Pushing a slip of mana through his Senses glyph and then connecting that energy to his connection with Tag was simple, but he was not ready for the results.
“What doing?” Tag said in his mind, “We fall if you do wrong!” The spirit said indignantly. Wali’s senses reeled and stabilized as he reduced the mana flow into the connection. Tag sent an irritated screech but settled. “I bite you later.” Said the angry bird.
Wali saw through different eyes. The colors were off, but everything was clearer. Something had lain in ambush next to the road in a small knee-deep hole next to the road. It had leaped out of the hole and killed the horse almost instantly with a heavy bite to the neck. The gobbet of flesh missing from the horse’s neck was as large as Wali’s outstretched hand. The beast had scrabbled at the saddlebags and ran off. Either they were driven off by the rider or something else. Two sets of bloody prints led away from the scene toward a nearby copse of trees. Releasing the connection, Wali’s head swam for a moment as his senses reasserted themselves. He returned to his pack and lifted it to his shoulders, not wanting whatever had ambushed the horse to destroy the unattended backpack. He moved cautiously down to the bloody scene and turned to look carefully at the tracks. He saw human-sized footprints, though one dragged as if injured. The other was a four-toed clawed foot, a bird or reptilian creature on four legs. Neferu rumbled in his mind, “Monitor Lizard.” Wali agreed with the assessment. Fairly common in the plains, the giant lizards were dangerous hunters and carrion eaters. Their bite was filled with toxins and could be deadly. They would hunt by digging holes near animal trails, watering holes, and covering themselves with mud or dirt. They could leap out of the hole to a distance of five meters and be very accurate. If a prey animal survived the initial strike, it would pursue the bleeding soon-to-be corpse.
Wali sent Gulli along the trail to track the monitor by scent with Tag circling above. He moved in the direction of the tracks before dropping his pack again. The paths lead almost arrow straight toward the trees. While the giant lizards could leap horizontally quite far, climbing a tree was often the best way to escape the predator. Wali proceeded carefully. The Monitor was a menace, and one operating on the main road this close to the way station needed to be stopped. Let alone a possible rescue of the rider if they had survived. If they hadn’t, then word should be passed along to their family. Wali followed Gulli along the trail. The person was apparently injured and had fled to the trees. Footprints of the monitor had led through patched of bloody dirt and now tracked that blood down the path. As they approached, Tag screeched in Wali’s mind. Tag had found the Monitor.
Gulli snorted and pranced nervously. Wali could see that a person was not three meters off the ground in an old oak tree at the very edge of the copse. They were shivering despite the warm day, and blood was dripping from a wound in their calf muscle. They hugged the tree facing away from Wali. Below him, scratching at the side of the tree, trying fruitlessly to climb it, was the giant lizard. The main body was the size of a mastiff, and the thick tail was half again as long as the body. The tail was almost as dangerous as the bite, able to break a leg with a surprisingly fast sweep. Its legs were relatively short and had long thick claws more suited for digging than fighting but were still dangerous.
Readying himself, Wali called Gulli into his body, releasing Neferu. He circulated mana through his heart glyph and took a deep breath preparing the spear for a charge. He took a step forward as the monitor scraped the side of the tree. Gulli’s power flowed into his legs, and he surged forward, stabbing the razor-sharp glass spearhead into the back of the beast just behind the front legs. The crossbar stopped the spear from going through the beast, and Wali ripped the head of the spear sideways as he leaped away.
The Monitor fell from the tree, blood gushing and bubbling from its chest. Blood frothed from its mouth as it spun to face Wali, who backed away quickly. Monitors were bloody-minded and stubborn, and this was no exception. It was dead and didn’t know it yet. Wali had to stay alive long enough for the message to reach the lizard’s brain. Tag called from a tree nearby, and Wali dove to the side as the lizard leaped for him. Wali felt a claw strike his shin, knocking him into a rolling landing. He pushed himself up and slid around the tree away from the Monitor as it recovered from its leap. Wali jumped up and caught a branch, pulling himself up and into the branches. He could hear the gurgling hiss of the Monitor. The lizard ran forward, lumbering forward to crash into the side of the tree. The tree shook a bit but was too deeply rooted to be moved by this beast. Wali looked down and saw that he had dropped his spear in his haste to escape the charging lizard. The monitor tried to scrabble up the tree as it had with the horse’s rider, but Wali just waited. After another minute, the frothy heavy breathing took on a deep gurgle, and the Monitor slumped to the ground. Wali waited for the breathing to stop.
Climbing down from the tree, Wali retrieved his spear first. He poked the lizard hard with the tip, but there was no response. It was dead. Not waiting any longer, Wali moved over to the rider in its tree. He saw the man now, for it was another young man like himself. This one stockier and thickly built. His hair was brown and in a badly cut bowl around his head. His face was pale, and he was sweating heavily. His nose had been broken and poorly set sometime in the past. Blood trickled slowly from a bite in the man’s left calf. Wali called up to him. “Hey! It’s okay to come down!”
The man shivered against the tree, white knuckles holding on for dear life. Realizing that he might be delirious from shock, blood loss, and infection Wali clambered up the old oak tree. The man was feverish to the touch and not responsive. Wali dropped to the ground and ran to his pack. He sprinted back and took the loop of rope up to the man. Tieing a circle under the man’s arms and tossing the other over a higher branch before wrapping it around the tree, Wali set up a simple belay. Taking up the slack and standing behind the man, Wali said, “Sorry friend, I’m trying to save your life.” Then Wali struck him in the back of the head. He went limp and began to slide from the tree. Wali let him down to the ground carefully. Once on the ground, Wali went to work.
Positioning the man on his side, he cut a slit up the guy’s pant leg to expose the wound. The Herbalists were the medics of the village and had taught him well. He washed off the wound with clean water from his waterskin. He then took his clay cup and ground a fistful of particular herbs into it with a splash of water. Using a finger, he pushed the red and green paste into the wound. Wrapping the wound tightly with a rolled bandage, he was able to stop the bleeding. Then he placed the man against the oak tree and put a blanket over him. He was heavy, like dragging a large stone. His breathing slowed from the short, fast breaths and evened into a more regulated pace. Still drenched in sweat and pale under the tanned skin, the man was at least out of immediate danger. Wali knew he would be here for a bit. He gathered some fallen branches, lopping them into manageable lengths with his hatchet. He started a small fire. He washed out his cup and made some broth for the man. A strip of jerky was shredded into Wali’s small cookpot with a pair of dried leaves. As Wali waited, he watched a trio of buzzards circle down and start squabbling over the dead horse. He dared not leave the man alone right now. He might be out of immediate danger, but until he was awake or help happened by on the cart track, Wali couldn’t leave him to his fate.