Selene stared on as the tall human left with his entourage. She couldn’t understand what had just transpired. The man had spoken the tongue… but he was not Aegeus descendant. That was nonsense. He did seem a bit weak compared to what she would expect, not quite strong enough to ‘control the sky’, but he had subdued the one the humans called ‘Sunset White’. That was a feat of great notability. Assuming he did it alone.
He could be masking his true strength as well. He had not been shaken at all during their confrontation. Even in face of nine of their near best, with the three hostages at her feet, he had stood firm. His voice was not that of a reckless fool. Rather it was… tired, as if the weight of time had settled upon his back. She didn’t understand it, but the least she knew was that the man was seasoned enough to be aware of their prowess. Yet he had been both calm and confident. Confident enough to throw down a weapon he could have held.
King of the Earth, Sea, and Sky… who but Aegeus could claim such? What is going on?
Her mind had already been a storm. The winds had only picked up.
“Arch Selene.”
Her vice snapped her out of her thought, “Yes?”
“Are we truly leaving? He claims to not be of Aegeus, but what if it is a test?”
A few others voiced their agreement with the sentiment. The scripture often spoke of trials, of adversities set before them where triumph would bring treasure abound. They owed much of their success as a colony to meeting and overcoming these challenges. Maybe this was another moment.
Selene didn’t believe so, it didn't feel right, but she was unsure, “If it is not, then we waste precious time here. We’ve already spent one night away, the longer our absence stretches the less we know about how the others are moving.”
“But if it is…”
It seemed few shared her caution. She understood their excitement, but they had not ‘masterminded’ the Nyx’s downfall. As much as her own curiosity bubbled, and hope budded along with it, Selene could not just jump at every shadow. There was no room for another mistake.
“What could the test be? That we harass him? Fight him in combat? The scripture says he will come to us not the other way around. Even if that is him, it would mean that the time has not yet arrived.”
“Maybe that is exactly the test. To shift the time forward?”
That would…
Another one of her scouts spoke, “It can not be a coincidence that Aegeus’ blessing protects us in our time of need and in the very same night this man appears—”
“And attacks Menos!”
“—Yes! And attack the Menos. Arch Selene, forgive my rudeness, but we can not ignore this.”
She had not put those details together. That would indeed be a massive coincidence. She could see some pieces coming together, but…
The scout that spoke last was the same one that had tailed the man. Selene turned toward her, “You said he was carried away after collapsing over there. ‘Manic’ and ‘out of control’ were the words you used. Does that sound like one born of Aegeus?”
“I… I do—”
Her vice cut in again, “That could be why it's not yet time! We all witnessed how he blackened the jungle. Maybe his power is too great for him to contain? If we are the colony to aid him, we would be favored!”
His enthusiasm rubbed off on all of them. Even Selene felt tinges of excitement as the prospect steadily became more viable, but where the rest could only see their savior she saw catastrophic failure. Too much was at stake right now.
Selene turned back to the now closed wooden gate. Many thoughts bounced back and forth, plaguing her with doubts once more. Her mission had not changed though, ‘find salvation’. They had sought it through mutual devastation, but there could be another path. Dangerous as this was, she couldn’t simply stride away from this ‘opportunity’.
“I will stay.” Both relief and anticipation swept through everyone, “Along with Caleb.” That dampened emotions a bit, but she didn’t mind it. She couldn’t overstretch them for what may be a mirage. He was the most skeptical of the group outside of herself so he would be who stayed with her.
“You five.” She gestured to the five strongest in their group of thirteen, her vice included, “Go to the Menos. Assess the damage and their reaction. Once you have a picture, one of you return to me and two deliver the information to Cleon. The final two will stay for surveillance. The rest of you, return home. Only return if the situation becomes dire.”
Some—many of them did not like the order, but they followed it all the same. Ruinous as her’s have been, a Blessed’s words could not be denied without overwhelming reason. Quickly, the rest of their party retrieved their supplies and set off on their missions. Selene was left alone with Caleb.
“What do you think?”
She could tell Caleb not only shared in her skepticism, but was even more concerned than she was, “The report of what he did above the Menos, and the way the other humans ran to their boats, and the confidence the lizard-ones had in him… if he is of Aegeus then I truly believe we are saved.”
Selene didn’t fully agree with that. The surrounding information pointed toward a being of overwhelming power, but unless he hid his prowess she did not sense it in him. His ahjer was no greater than that of the archon of the Dynamai. In fact, a couple of the strongest archons bested him in that regard. Ahjer was far from everything, but skills and specialties could only overcome so much of a gap.
She let Caleb continue though, “For that same reason, if he is not of Aegeus… I fear for who he is and what brought him here.”
Selene purred. Despite it all, she did too.
----------------------------------------
Dalric was back in his back room, doing basic stretches. He’d given Ryku an overview of his conversation with Selene, cutting out the Aegeus portion, but it did not seem to provide any calming effects. He only partially understood, the gaps in his knowledge were too wide, but Ryku felt like the black panthers would take his actions as an insult and return them with force and therefore they had to immediately begin preparations for a siege. Adlartok, or rather Adlar as he’d been instructed to address him, was the one to talk him down from that.
That only did so much however. Ryku was still set on buffing up their security and Dalric couldn’t really say how excessive or not-excessive the measures were so he had decided to leave him to it. He would begin the grueling process of restarting his training while he waited for him to finish.
With limited ahjer, he started with the very basics, the body. No matter how this second life went, he would still predominantly operate as a melee fighter. To do so at the best of his abilities, he needed to fully grasp control and understanding of his frame.
Step one to that was building a mind-muscle connection to everything. In simpler terms, stretching.
Stolen novel; please report.
He finished with the basics and got serious, pushing his body to its limits. The movements he practiced were extra awkward with human proportions, but he knew it would only take time and diligence to properly adjust them to his current body. He'd largely created the forms himself anyway.
Thirty minutes went by as his muscles, and sometimes bones, screamed in agony. He had to take a quick break halfway through, his body almost hated the stretching more than the sixteen hours of metabolic suicide. That was just a symptom of being out of shape though. The stretches themselves would do wonders for his body and mind when he eventually got reaccustomed to them. For now though, they just hurt. A lot. If someone was listening to him, they'd likely believe he was castrating himself with the type of groans that escaped his lips.
That someone would be Ryku.
He gingerly knocked on the door, “Is… that you, Dalric?”
“Ye—yes.” The puddle of sweat spread across the floor found a friend in Dalric’s sweaty back. As they got acquainted with one another, he took some deep breaths.
Ryku did not enter, “Are you… in control?”
Ahh. Fair enough.
He summoned what little strength he had and rose back to his feet before trudging over to the door and swinging it open, “I am me. Come in.”
Ryku leapt back the instant he opened the door, but he quickly regained his composure. Soon, after Dalric had cleaned himself and acquired a drink, they both sat in chairs while feeling varying degrees of discomfort.
Dalric started, “So?”
“... May I ask why you must be naked?”
“I am covered.”
Ryku’s eyes did not stray below Dalric’s, “While that is true in an exact sense. A towel is not quite clothing.”
Dalric rolled his eyes, “And how many articles of clothing have you seen in my size? Everything I wear is patchwork. This is more comfortable.”
“We had several robes stitched for you?”
“And I can feel every stitch. But fine, since it bothers you so there are pants on the other side of the bed, toss them to me.”
Ryku stood immediately, “No undergarments?”
“Just pass me the pants.”
Humans.
Soon, Dalric’s nakedness was ‘solved’ and the two of them could get to the actual important matters that they had to discuss. The colonies.
“So. ‘Reigning beasts’. Tell me everything you know.”
“It is embarrassingly little. We are accurately aware of thirteen distinct groups, fourteen now including the panthers. We speculated there were more in the past, there is evidence that leans towards there being more than twenty groups at one point, but in the present we only saw evidence of thirteen.”
“And who ‘we’ in this situation?”
“Paragons. Though various sections of the curriculums at the schools I attended covered anywhere from five to eight of the groups and during my brief stint as a part of Taiyo’s Adventurer’s Association I learned about two more, but all knowledge I gained prior to joining the Paragons has been superseded by information I’ve gathered since.”
“I see.” Dalric figured that would be the case, “And do you know how they acquired their information?”
“We.” Ryku corrected, “And we have very skilled reconnaissance units.”
Yet you never spotted the panthers.
Dalric would give them some leeway on account of their ability to disappear, but never spotting any of the panthers was one thing, never spotting their village was an entirely different matter. He couldn’t see how that could be explained by anything other than ineptitude. Unless the panthers had discovered how to make their buildings disappear too.
“We don’t know how they operate, but we do know they each have a ‘capital’, so to speak, and it functions much like a typical village would. They have agriculture, industry, trade, education, even music and art. Aside from their beastly makeup, they live much the same as we humans do. Oh, the fourteen we are aware of are the—”
Dalric cut him off, “We can skip forward a bit.” The info he shared was good to know, or more accurately good to confirm, but it wasn’t what Dalric was truly looking for at the moment. He had said everything though, so that blame fell on him.
“You spoke of a war. How much do you know about it?”
“Ah. Not a great deal, but more than I know about the beasts themselves. I’m not sure when it started, but it ended a little more than a century ago. From what was publicly announced, it began because an angel had been assaulted while living as an adventurer. Whitesails sought retribution, raised their troops, and marched into the beast’s land. It was allegedly the Aithos that had been behind the assault and though I can’t share exactly what we believe on the matter, I can say it is almost certain that the claim was fabricated.”
Dalric assumed the true aim was likely something to do with land acquisition. From their earlier talks, he knew that Whitesails and Taiyo occupied around a third of the island combined. Pushing to expand the borders made sense. Also from those earlier talks, he knew the new ‘angels’ were few in number and practically royals. The idea that one would just venture around the jungle as an adventurer seemed a rather poor lie to begin with.
He was moderately interested in what kind of creatures the ‘Aithos’ were, but they had already crossed that stream.
“How did it end?”
“Whitesails stopped advancing past their borders, I suppose. The beast never stepped on Salian land, they simply repelled them.”
That explains why they can control the narrative so easily… and also what the answer to this is going to be.
“Do you know what their army makeup was?”
Surprisingly, Ryku did not shake his head, “I can’t speak for actual ranks, but from soldier testimony the various beats intermingled into what we assume were evenly distributed groups. Unfortunately, the only beasts directly referenced were the Dynamai, the Iphios, the Aithos, and a kind of lizard and lemur that we have yet to determine the names of. All five being excellent close range combatants, they were the ones on the front line.”
Hm.
It would seem they'd have to go back to go through the different colonies, but for now Dalric wanted to continue along this path, “Do you know numbers? How many were in a ‘group’, how many groups were there?”
Unfortunately, this time Ryku did shake his head, “I can tell you that we estimate their total army size was fifteen thousand, but in truth that number is complete guesswork.”
Dalric struggled to accept that, “At these sort of numbers, there are far too many skilled ahjerists for me to believe none could get an accurate picture of the force they battled against. How did Whitesails keep all of their mouths sealed?”
“Well, the answer is clear to me now, but after the war there was a notable absence of support-trained ahjerists in general and especially those with long range detection spells. I have a sense that the panthers may have had a.. paw in that.”
Dalric slowly nodded, that did make a bit of sense. There still should have been some that slipped through the cracks and reported back, but alas. He would work with what Ryku could share.
Fifteen thousand.
Dalric never got a full breakdown of the Menos population, but from what he gathered they had maybe four hundred tigers. He could round up to five hundred. Assuming all twenty-four colonies at the time had the same, that was only twelve thousand… Even if he doubled the number to a thousand and therefore twenty-four thousand, that would mean over six-tenths of their population were warriors. True, they were all natural predators, but that was a very different thing. You did not go to war with simple hunters.
The Menos were weaker and smaller than their peers. They simply had to be. That or the war had devastated them.
Dalric wasn’t sure which was worse for him. Both meant that he had drastically underestimated the colonies. They weren’t a slow progressing problem that would likely never truly blossom on to the world stage, they were over a century ago already stronger than a kingdom. At his peak, Dalric was as well, but how long would it take for him to get back there? Would his growth outpace theirs? What even was their growth pace?
Just as he began shifting his attention away from Aegeus, he was reeled back. The Dance may yet have foretold of the rise of the new Wyld and their God.