There was a breath's silence as the naga processed what they just saw.
Then Sessyphon let out a shriek so high it sent cracks through the nearby ice.
He clutched his head, doubling over, and promptly began rolling about. Zane observed the fellow, curious.
Spirit weapons weren't really supposed to break. They were made of the stuff of the soul, bonded to it. They were meant to be as strong as the maximum treasure grade you could wield. For that True God, he guessed peak Heaven-grade. Maybe half-step Primordial.
Zane was pretty sure the Barbarian Sage hadn't done anything all that much. He hadn't even used essence.
He'd just snapped it.
Zane considered this, blinking.
"Right!" said the Barbarian Sage brightly. "Anything else?"
"You—" croaked one of the naga. The tip of his spear wavered as he spoke. "You don't have a suppressor!"
"Nope," said the Sage.
"Empyrean…?!" gasped another.
The other naga started slowly backing away—getting their spears out of arm's length. By the looks on their faces, he gathered Empyrean was pretty rare, even around these parts.
"Who are you?" wailed Sessyphon.
The Barbarian Sage scratched his chin. "Say—there still a big ol' dent in the Everfrost Glacier?"
Nods all around.
"That was me," he said cheerfully.
The naga's eyes went wide as ostrich eggs.
"…Barbarian Sage?!"
"That's me!"
The Sage gave Zane a jostle. "What do you know, eh, lad? Folks here do remember me!"
A dozen peak Minor Gods dropped to their knees, one by one, trembling as they went.
"This one—this one has made a t-terrible mistake!" cried one, a burly fellow who'd been leering it up moments earlier. "This one meant no harm—this one was only following orders—"
"That's alright," chuckled the Sage. "No harm done."
The naga looked at each other slowly, like they couldn't believe their luck. Sessyphon, meanwhile, was still howling on the ground—they looked just about ready to abandon the guy.
"We'll just be on our way, senior Barbarian," said one—an older half-step True God with a grizzly beard. He seemed more composed than the rest.
"What about that tribute?" said the Sage.
The old naga swallowed. "Of course—for a former King of the Wilds, such as yourself—there's no need for such a little thing."
Sessyphon's head snapped up. "But uncle," he wailed. "Father said I could take anything I wanted—it's meant to be my toll zone!"
"I know what your Father said!" snapped the old naga. "Get up, boy! Come over here before you get us in more trouble. When he hears of this, you'll be the one answering for it!"
Sessyphon stared at him, gaping, like he'd been slapped. He seemed so shocked he obeyed.
They all started to shuffle off. Then the Sage scratched his head and coughed.
The whole procession froze at once—Sessyphon almost stumbled over, which was rather hard when you had no legs.
"Hmm," said the Barbarian Sage, frowning. "Actually, I change my mind. Not alright."
They all stiffened.
"You lot just threatened me and my boy, didn't you? Now—I tend not to mind the little things. Heaven knows I do it all the time! But it wouldn't set a good example if I let you walk off like that, would it?"
Sessyphon turned slowly. His face was slowly flushing from white to red—it was almost like a visual cue of his confidence filling back up.
"My father!" he spluttered. "My father—if he hears of this—he's an Empyrean too! He won't stand for this—"
"Thorus, you said his name was? That does ring a bell…" The Sage brightened. "That's right! I was wondering why that spear looked so familiar. Like father like son, eh?"
"So you know him!" There was a flush of hope in Sessyphon's face.
"Do I know him? We go way back!"
"R-really?"
"Why, I had a run-in with him right after he made Empyrean! He thought now he was a big boy, he could try laying claim to one of the four 'Beast King' titles. Beast King of the Plains of the Ancients! He challenged me to a duel—back then those were my stomping grounds, you see.
The Sage chuckled; he looked wistful. "That was a good one."
The naga glanced at each other again.
Zane saw Sessyphon swallow and visibly work up the bravery to ask—"…What happened?"
The Barbarian Sage blinked. "You never wondered why your old man's spear looks a little bent down the middle?"
Sessyphon's mouth slowly dropped open. His lips moved for a bit, trembling. Then he closed it.
"Better hope he does a better job fixing yours up, eh?" guffawed the Sage.
The fellow looked like he didn't know whether to faint or cry.
"I—"
He dropped to his belly and smacked his head against the ice. "Please—spare this one's little life—this one meant no offense—"
"Now, now, no need for that. I've got better things to do than stomping whelps." He gave the fellow a once-over. "All that gold and armor, though—that I could use! You've got that off folks passing by, eh?"
The naga all nodded quickly.
"We can make better use of it, I think."
Soon the naga were competing to see who could throw off their treasures the fastest. Soon they made a nice gleaming pile. Lots of gold and silver and bronze, most carved with lovely patterns—dragons and lightning and such.
"Wonderful!" The Sage picked up a D-rank heaven-grade helm, intricately made—it looked like something a Greek god might wear, complete with little wings on the sides. He squinted at it, shrugged, then handed it to Zane, who chomped it down in four big bites.
It tasted like chocolate.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔸𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕒 𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕟'𝕤 𝔹𝕠𝕕𝕪, 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕞 𝕍𝕀 -> 𝕍𝕀𝕀
For a second the naga didn't seem to know whether to be afraid of him or the Sage.
"Right!" said the Barbarian Sage. "Many thanks."
They went on their merry way.
Zane and the Sage kept on bounding.
"That lad's father," said the Sage. "Thorus. Now he was a brash one. But he was a creature of the Wilderness, forged by it. There was a man you could respect!"
He made a grunting noise. "His son, though—that lad's lived his whole life in the Outskirts, surrounded by henchmen. I can tell it with a glance. Never set foot in the Wilderness proper. There's just no iron to him. He got to that level, I'll bet, on eight parts talent, two parts his father's treasures."
The Sage shook his head. "You harm your lad when you coddle him! You make him weak in here—the most important weapon a warrior's got!"
The Sage tapped his temple.
"And when you're weak there, how'll you be strong anywhere else? Makes no sense."
Zane nodded.
The Sage gave his head a ruffle.
As it happened, that was how he was certain Zane would turn out just fine.
Another half-day, and they were nearly through. They caught their first glimpse early the next morning.
"There she is!" roared the Sage.
The Wilderness was stretched out before them—a vast twinkling asteroid field. Seen from a great distance, it was a flat disk stretching the length of several galaxies. Like the Outskirts, it seemed made of millions of chunks, some massive, some slightly less massive—though these chunks came in different styles.
Some stretches of it were clusters of gold, the colors of sandstone and desert; he saw puffs of sandstorms raging overtop. In others, the chunks were loamy and rich with dirt, and yellowing grasses went up to the hip. In stretches, it rose high, gray stony asteroids stacking one atop the other, peaking to snowy heights, making the impressions of mountains. A broken-up world, arranged as though on some invisible record player.
It was all ablaze in the celestial plane. Burning with so much essence every speck of dirt could be a treasure. It was astounding to see it for the first time; it just blasted Zane in the face. He blinked; it felt like coming out of a dark movie theater and seeing sunlight again.
All that rotated slowly around a single celestial object.
In the middle of it all, where a star would be, was an enormous chunk of ice. But mere ice couldn't come close to describing it.
"The Everfrost Glacier," said the Barbarian Sage, and Zane heard in the old fellow's voice a rare reverence.
It looked like an iceberg the size of a star—and it glowed like a star too. Gorgeous strange patterns glistened across its surface; it was all flat planes and strange angles carving this colossus of craggy geometries.
It was quite clear, too—you could nearly see through to the other side.
And it was shedding all the time. He saw little chunks breaking off the edges, little comets scattering into the asteroid belt. Studding all over—now that he squinted, he could make out the little ice chunks dotting the landscapes.
"Those are the icefalls," said the Sage, arms crossed. "How the rest of the place gets all its water. How all them rivers are made—it's all melted icefall! Everything round here's moving. The land, the beasts… not even the rivers stay still! Once they're done melting, it's onto the next. Here you've always got to be on your toes, lad."
Then Zane noticed the dent in the glacier—a pretty big crater, chipping off a corner. He gave the Barbarian Sage a curious look. The old fellow looked a bit embarrassed.
"It was during the Beast King match," he explained. "Got a little overeager. The Suneater Lion Chief, this fellow named Ra—picked him up and threw him right in. See those little white curves?"
Zane nodded.
"Those are his claw-marks!" chuckled the Sage. "Still here, after all these years…"
As the Sage looked around he had a strange look on his face; he sniffed. "Hells, this brings back some damned good memories… The stories I could tell you, lad—of the Jade Mountains, or Thunderstruck Valley, or that ol' Desert of the Risen Dead… bah! All in good time."
It wasn't just the land that was moving—not just the rivers. Everywhere Zane looked, fireworks of essence showered over the lands.
The stretch right before them—just a few hundred miles off—looked to be some kind of golden savanna. Hip-height grass the color of bronze, crystal-clear winding rivers, fed from the odd icefall. Watering holes of unknowable depth dotted the scene.
The most distinctive feature were the trees. Thin yet tall as redwoods, with branches that fanned out in little fuzzy platforms of sparse airy leaves. The leaves were the color of blood, and dripped that color slowly onto the grounds, staining the grasses.
"The Bloodsoaked Lowlands!" said the Sage, nodding. "Means we're not long from the Plains now. That's the neighbor territory. See those trees? They don't take water—just animal blood. Drink it all in, take all the essence and nutrients, and the leaves weep out the refuse. Lucky bastards—there's always plenty of spilled blood to go around!"
It was true. Everywhere Zane looked, he saw gods at war.