AIR 113-115

Chapter 113

Running was a weird term. It was more like bringing their getting ever closer to me at incomprehensible speed.

And considering they would blip out of my perception if they were headed to anything else but me since existence was relative. With each step, they appeared closer and closer to me. 

“Uh-oh,” I muttered. 

The woman was wild, her hand aged with nature and her soul filled with life. She was a druid, one with wild growth nature and the dragon was chasing her down. It was green and blossoming, with wings filled with infinite life and hunger, and scales green with nothing but desire. 

“Aid,” she communicated. 

She was a thirteenth-rank being, much like me and the dragon was thirteenth rank seventh step. It wasn’t trying to hide its exact cultivation. In fact, it was trying to show it. It was warning me. 

I was only at the first rank of the thirteenth step, the girl was at the fifth step of the thirteenth rank. She was the greater prey and he was a predator beyond both our powers. It was telling me to not help her or else I would become its prey. 

Time began to slow down, even though it wasn’t really here to begin with. 

I wanted to think, to ponder what Dane would do. I wanted to take the safest course of action I could and to avoid making any mistakes as I had earlier. 

And I almost did. I almost ran. 

Almost.

My hand weaved in preparation, each limb holding a bundle of concepts in place. 

The dragon came, and seeing me ready to fight it left the girl and went for me. 

Flames made of growing death consumed me. I felt like a plant overtaken by weeds. A crop is starved of sunlight. I felt the flames twisting around, trying to take all I was and make it a part of its own. 

That was how gods fought. Concepts, laws, and daos warring against one another. My dao was small. It was almost nothing compared to this being. 

But that was okay. I was an Array King after all, and we didn’t fight with our daos. 

I let the laws in my hand go.

Array Masters had no law or dao to tie themselves down to, so most found other avenues of self-defense. Some used weapons, others used prefabricated arrays.

I used something else. 

Arrays were applicable anywhere. Unlike enchantments, they relied on the fundamental forces of the soul to exist. To pull qi to your existence, to push it, and to hold it. 

Using these fundamental forces I would mix qi’s of different natures, using them, mixing them, and making them to create capable arrays. That required a vast but superficial understanding of laws. 

I didn’t know this dragon’s power like he knew it, but I knew enough. 

The attack faltered. A person’s being was a composite of who they are and this dragon was growth and greed, taking all it could from all it could find. 

So I gave it rot and decay. I gave it kindness and generosity.

And for that, it withered. 

It didn’t die. I wasn’t that strong, but my small handful of laws and daos opposed its own perfectly. It reeled in disgust. 

“You dare?” It shouted. 

It tried to attack again, this time funneling more of its essence into its flames. 

But then the druid moved and held. Vines sprang and held him down. Roots wrapped around his feet. 

The dragon turned towards the ground to blast away at its bindings.

Then I struck. 

Damage was complicated, as all things were with beings of this rank. But the amount of the damage, the nature of the damage, and the quality of the damage mattered. Amount was qi, nature was dao and law, and quality was rank. 

The center of a star wouldn’t even warm a god but a spark of a phoenix’s flame would burn them away. 

That was how the saying went anyway. 

I moved, shoving all the laws and daos that opposed him into my fist. Rot, death, darkness, age, fire, emptiness, starvation, everything. I took a thousand little things and balled them up into something that was his opposite. 

Then I put a little bit of peace in there for good measure and punched. 

The dragon roared in not agony but insult. It was annoying. I hadn’t stabbed so much as blasted him with pepper spray. While I was good at eating away attacks, offense was where I was lacking. 

He roared and cleared away my qi. 

I held on, ready to bring out the big guns. But then the girl struck, her hand holding a spear made of life and wood. The tip was a black stone that shone like obsidian in the night. 

The dragon roared and tried to bit down at her. 

I attacked again, this time shoving my attack deep into his wound and thus deeper into his being. Now it screamed. 

The girl pushed her spear further. 

This was the time. 

I pulled out an array and slapped it onto the dragon’s body. It was one made of rot and malice, death and destruction. It was like my attacks, but properly prepared and made to hurt. 

And more importantly, those attacks were the products of instantaneous thought. This was an attack I had made with days of power. 

And it screamed again.

The woman reached and pushed her spear deep into his heart, into his soul, into the very definition of what he was. 

Then she broke him into nothingness. 

Chapter 114

We both spent some time catching our breaths after that. Metaphysically of course. 

I rebuilt my qi reservers and she did the same. She had expended more qi in the battle than I had. 

“Thank you for your aid,” the wild woman stated after a few short breaths. 

“It was you who did most of the fighting,” I replied. 

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Your attacks, they were strange but they broke his nature. That last one made him entirely defenseless. So many little things countering him in so many ways. If it weren’t for that then I wouldn’t have been able to attack.”

“But you did get him, and so the credit goes to you.”

“Yes, I suppose,” She said with a curious look. “You are not native to these lands?”

It was phrased like a question but it was more of a statement. The Cosmic Forest was home to many but those that were native to it were shaped by it. It was almost impossible to live in this place and not have it influence you, or have you influence it. 

The Hills of Life were a good example of that. Aftol dug its roots deep in them and influenced it and the surrounding realms into blossoming places of power. 

In the grandest ways, the Cosmic Forest was the home of God-Imperium plants. Everything else in here was merely the grass and weeds between them. 

The woman put her spear away, sending it into a separate space she carried. 

Then she reached down and lifted what remained of the dragon. It was small now. Size didn’t exist out here, not in the same it existed in the physical realms. But the amount of qi something had, along with its nature and existence did produce something akin to weight. 

The dragon was, to me, huge. It had been something the size of a house. To her, it had been the size of a horse. She was at the fifth step of the thirteenth rank, which meant nothing and everything. 

Steps were measurements of qi, while rank was a qualitative leap in both nature and power. That was to say someone at the fifth step of the thirteenth rank wasn’t all that different from someone of the first, they had only more fuel. 

I had struck at the dragon’s attention and qi while she used her abilities to attack it. Running was an option, but it would lead to me doing this whole journey all over again and possibly facing this beast when I inevitably came back. 

“No. I am not. Though I had thought the Hills of Life to be safe in these areas?”

“It generally is,” she replied. “But beasts have been coming out more lately. The Queens of the Fey tends to stir them up at times when things get too settled.”

“Which one?”

“Titania, though the others aren’t any kinder.”

That was true. The Fey consisted of many groups, not just Titania or Oberon like the myths said but any being that ruled over the forest.

Fey was a complicated thing, but if there had to be a word for them it would be connections. They were like the forest, they were the prey, the predator, the king, and the beast. They were men and animals and insects and plants. Demons and angels, life and death. 

The Fey were the fey. The sirens and the fairies, all of it. 

They were the composite nature of every being there had ever been and thus they had many kings and queens. Some benevolent, some unseemingly cruel. It was said that they were their own thing, a thing removed from the rest of existence but made from it. 

They were known even on Earth. The Fey, Yokai, Spirits, Cryptids.

The myths differed but in all of them, there was one common string. Rules. They all had rules. Some hated iron, others required etiquette, and some needed to be named. 

And that was all due to their kings and queens, they made their courts and the fey followed their orders. 

The woman hung the dragon over her shoulders. It was smaller now. It had less qi and power, and its existence was diminished. That was partly due to the nature of this place. It ate at the dead, as all forests did. 

Whatever you killed, whatever you got, it got as well. But in return, it gave back.

And that was why I was here. 

A list of herbs was needed as bedding for my soul’s healing process. And the best place to find those said herbs was here in the Hills of Life. 

Trade was a common thing, even in places like this. And the druids native to this place were rich with alchemical herbs. They often traded with alchemists in this area. Deeper in you could find plants of the sixteenth rank, and gather enough of them and you could make potions worth unimaginable wealth. 

However one had to fight said plants first. After all, these plants were powerful, and while not necessarily sentient, they had protection measures. The druids here filled the role of both growing and harvesting most of the wild herb area. 

“What keeps them away normally? Surely this place is tempting to many beings?” I asked. 

“Yes, but only if you can handle the impact. That dragon was a fourteenth-rank being when it first got in here. After venturing too deep into the Hills, it lost both its nature and cultivation. It was originally a void dragon.”

Ah. It had been reshaped by the higher beings around it. The druids could call this place home because they were similar to it. Their dao aligned with the area and all its higher influences that walked through it. But that dragon’s original dao didn’t. It had been broken, similar to how I had almost been reshaped by both Wukong and the Tome. 

“No wonder it died so easily,” I replied. 

“Yes, it was a fresh being. Much more powerful than we had originally thought. I am Forn of the Growing Life Grove by the way.”

The problem with beings of this level was the perception. I had to only look at the woman to know her nature and her dao. And the same could be said for me. 

But names were a different thing. People could sense lies, or rather they could see them as concepts and I wasn’t proficient enough at deception to try something like that. I hadn’t given a name at the Divine Beast Emporium for the same reason. 

“It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Forn.”

“You don’t give your name?” She asked.  

“I have many enemies.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Much more than most.”

She squinted her eyes and gave me a curious look.

“You do seem like the overcautious type,” she said. “Well, I’ll have to call you something either way. Would you care if I gave you a name?”

“Not at all,” I replied. 

“Then you are Drean. It means careful in the fey tongue.”

I chuckled lightly. 

“Is that funny?” She asked. 

“Yes. I’ve recently suffered for not being careful,” I explained. “It’s strange to be named the quality I lacked so dearly.”

“Well then, hopefully, it sticks,” she said with a smile. “Now tell me, why are you here?”

She tied the dragon’s head with its tail, making its corpse choke on the scaly noose. Then she slung it around her shoulder, and it draped over her like a piece of cloth. 

“Soulsween,” I replied. “And a few other herbs. I require them.”

“Soulsween?” She asked. “As in the weed, soulsween?” 

“Yes.”

“My grove sells all herbs within this region. Come and we can get you the herbs there.”

“Ah, but souls when is everywhere, isn’t it-”

“You should not pick that variant. It’s not even good for grazing beasts. Come, come, I will give you real herbs, clean and good.”

Soulsween was a common plant in the Hills of Life. So much so that it was considered more of a weed than a herb, and its effects were considered useless for even mere immortals, much less gods like me.  

But that was because immortals had fully immortal souls. Soulsween was something light, able to heal both mortal and immortal souls. But because of that characteristic, it became something useless. 

It was like trying to glue something together. If you were trying to glue two pieces of wood together, you might need a strong adhesive, wood glue, or something stronger. But if you were trying to glue a piece of paper to a piece of wood, well then you’d need much weaker adhesive. Something that wouldn’t overwhelm the paper and soak through it. 

And that was my soul right now, a weak mortal soul and a strong godly soul. I would need to tighten the connection first and reinforce their bond like grafting a frail branch onto a tree.

And Soulsween was perfect for that. 

Then I grimaced. 

“What’s wrong?” Forn asked. 

“I think I dropped my book.”

Chapter 115

The Eternal Tome of Lynoria was not a person. 

It was a thing, the smartest thing in all of existence, and the most curious being to have ever been.

The knowledge it propagated was a bit of a mystery to other God-Imperiums. They didn’t understand why a being of their caliber would seek out information below the sixteenth rank, much less the immortal rank, or the mortal realms. It didn’t make sense to them.  

Mortals were everywhere. They lived, they breathed, they died. Their culture changed within an instant, and they all died before they could ever become worthy of remembrance. 

At best, God-Imperiums kept gardens, small universes flustered with civilizations. It was a bit of a pastime for some, playing god over trillions was an entertaining thing for them. Even the Tome had a few gardens of its own. 

It was an accepted form of entertainment for beings above the fifteenth rank. 

But that was all it should be, entertainment. They didn’t quite grasp any utility or power in the Tome’s actions. 

But the Tome didn’t need them to understand. It was the Tome, the Keeper of Eternal Truth.

It was the first book to have ever been written. The first words of the first language were inscribed on its pages. Its paper had been gotten from Tree, the first quill had been taken from the first Phoenix, the ink had been made from primordial qi and Man himself had inscribed its existence. 

And ever since then, the writing has not stopped. It remembered everything, from the first sunset to the first fight. It had witnessed it all. 

It was the memory of existence. 

And it contained things that only it knew. Names of mortals long forgotten, lands empty but ignored. It knew of suns that had never been seen, of people that had only lived a day. It didn’t know all of them, but it tried to remember as much as it could. 

To know as much as it could.

Even when God-Imperiums fought and erased concepts from the whole of existence, it still remembered. Even if an ant were to die in battle, it still remembered.

That was its nature, to know. 

It knew the Earth from where a stray soul had wandered. It knew of laws that almost everyone had forgotten. It knew the names of victors, villains, kings, and peasants. 

And these things the Tome would never forget because to forget would be the greatest crime of all. 

“Why the stealth?” The lady asked.

“It is necessary,” the Tome replied. “All exercises of my power are being watched and searched for.”

“By that rotten thing? You know he could never come here. The Fey wouldn’t allow it.”

“I fear that Yog-Sothoth is the least of my concerns, Titania.”

The Fey queen looked at the Tome with interest.

“Allow me to intrude upon your realm,” it asked. 

She looked at him and pondered for a moment. 

“Oh very well,” she answered. 

And the Tome came to be in all of its power. It couldn’t just protrude into someone else’s domain. It could, in a minor form, be carried through it. But there were many rules within the Pact of Life, and many more formalities outside of it. 

If it had just reached out to her, many would have known and felt the power connecting between the realms. And if it had just invaded, even for a mere message, that would have been tantamount to declaring war. 

So it worked in the old ways, it used the ways of emissaries and messengers. Though the one he used didn’t know that yet. 

Bill had contained a piece of him. A piece cut off from the rest, much like the bit of Wukong that stuck to the boy. It was one of the perks of working under a God-Imperium. You gained some of their protection, like the aversion to divination. 

But even then there were limits. He had barely looked at the boy and yet the child had almost crumbled. That had been intentional. Bill could do with more intelligence.

Nonetheless, it proved the limits of a mortal or rather a Godling’s mind. However, the two didn’t seem any different from the Tome’s perspective. 

Bill had been a good messenger. He was no one and Wukong had already covered for his mistakes. 

He was a well-known Array-Master. His reputation made him known even among the fifteenth ranks of existence. But when he had died and been remade, he had been fundamentally changed. 

And that change made him into a whole new person. Someone not known by any sect or group in existence, a thirteenth rank that had popped out of nowhere. Not only his qi, but his soul had changed as well. It shouldn’t have worked, it was like reinforcing steel with tree sap but Dane had done enough damage to his own soul to make it work. 

It was absolutely fantastic and something the Tome had only seen in demonic experiments. 

But aside from it curiosity, Bill was a nobody, and it needed that nobody to get here, someone not accosted with Lynoria or Wukong. And while it did followers in nearly every major realm and almost every minor one, most were being watched and they were being watched more carefully now more than ever. 

“Don’t stain my realm with your presence for too long now, book. What is it you have to say?”

“War is upon us, Titania.”

The Queen of the Fey looked at him. It was uncomfortable in here, each one of them so close to the other. Infinite space and infinite time wouldn’t be enough to contain even a fraction of one of them much less a reflection of their being. 

Titania relented and expanded the place. The Tome was still in her realms but she allowed it space to breathe. 

“Explain.”

And so it did, and the Fey Queen listened. 

“Is this a prediction or truth Tome?” 

“It is truth. Wukong knows that at least Tiamat works with Tai Jey. She threatened him when he pushed against Tai Jey’s domain.”

“And the children? What use would Tai Jey have of them?” 

“He seeks to create more God-Imperium. You know the troubles of such a thing.”

The Fey Queen frowned. 

To create was an easy thing, but to create a God-Imperium, something separate from yourself was a task even she would struggle with. The problem wasn’t power, but rather nature. Technically you could create another God-Imperium, but in truth, it would just be a piece of you dressed up in disguise. 

Making something not of your own nature was possible, but to create something entirely separate from you that was at the seventeenth rank? That was an impossible task.

After all, if anything limited God-Imperiums it was their nature. 

That was why Tai Jey had risked so much to make these children. They would be of opposing nature, both beast and tamer, and whatever path they chose, they would be born of these two powerful beings. But they would still be separate from them,

“This is hardly war, just the beginning steps of one. I’ve seen more attempts at a new Eternal War than I care to remember. This is common Tome. People plot, people try, and when the Guardians find out about it, they fail. What makes this any different?”

She was right. Many did try their hand at an Eternal War, but this was different. 

“Think of those involved. Beast, Tiamat, Tai Jey-”

“That boy couldn’t wield a sword unless a dragon held it for him,” She cut in. 

“Yes but think of it Titania. A dragon did hold it for him, one of Beast’s grandchildren. And even Beast bred with him. He is the Tamer, why would any creature of Beast’s bloodline subject themselves to his favors unless they received something of equal value?”

This time the Fey Queen frowned. 

“Beast wants War,” she whispered. 

“She always has, since the first moments of existence. Now I ask you, what would make both Beast and Tiamat move for this man? It cannot be just the two of them.”

“Yes. I suppose it can’t be just them. But what other proof do you have? It implies a union of some sort but what makes you think it’s war?”

“What else does Beast desire?”

“Nothing, but she does as she pleases. She has to logic to her action and if Tai Jey entertained her enough then he could have gotten what he wanted.”

This was true. 

“Wukong spoke to Tai Jey and all but confirmed his believes.”

“That monkey sees war in a puddle. Of the past ten thousand fights held within the Sea of Death, one thousand involved him. And regardless, even if this is war, what would we have to do with it anyway? The Fey have not fought in any of the Eternal Wars aside from the first. We do not take sides.”

“Of course,” The Tome answered. “And I ask it stays that way.”

Titania’s eyes widened and suddenly the Tome found her pushing back against his presence. He found the space almost rejecting him, trying to push him out. But it was too late, he was here and to put any more force on him would to be noticed by the other God-Imperiums of the forest. 

“You dare?” She whispered. 

What the Tome had said, what it had implied was that one of the Fey might have taken a side in this conflict and that was an insult. 

The Fey were the heart of the forest, the connection between all things, both the Yin and the Yang, the prey and the predator, chaos and order, innocence and lust. They were all those things and because of that, they took no sides unless someone directly attacked them. 

They fought, killed, and bled of course, but to imply a side would make them too much of one thing and too little of another, and to the Fair Folk, that was a disfigurement of the highest order. 

The Fey had no concept of evil but if they did then it would be this. A never-ending summer, an eternal winter, death without life or even life without death, to them this was the evil of the world. It was why they talked to mortals as much as they talked to God-Imperiums. 

All things changed and the fey cherished this so. 

To be fey was to be connected to all things of the world, and to choose a side would mean cutting off one of those connections. 

“I merely ask you to make sure your fellows do this. If there were any I trusted more I would have gone to them instead.”

“They would not betray themselves so easily!” The Queen stated.

“It is an Eternal War, Titania. I ask you to do nothing but pay attention to your peers and look out for your best interests.”

“Because you believe one of them to betray me?”

“Because to be a Fey is to change. And if one of you gets dragged into one side then so may the others. Your kind avoids war but there are connections there for them to tend to if they seek it. I wonder if the Courts of the Kind King wouldn’t want to fight for the Heavens someday, or if the court of Goblin Emperor wouldn’t seek out a pact with the Hells? What of the Hunter’s Court?”

“Do not assume to know them better than I,” Titania responded. 

“I do not. I just question how well you know them at all.”

She glared at the Tome. It was a glare that could burn infinity and strike down civilizations, but to the Tome it was just an annoyed glance.

“I hope you have a reason for this insult.”

“The Fruits, has anyone bought one recently,” The Tome asked. “And if so, do you know what for?”

“The fruits?”

“From the Tree of Life? I know the Druids there harvest and sell it among the Fey first before they offer it to anyone else. Who has bought it recently? And for what reason?”

“That is no business of mine.”

“There are very few things that can help a God-Imperium heal Titania, and Tai Jey did not escape from the encounter with Beast unscathed. He would search for many things to regain his power before anyone on his side would make the first move. You should ponder these things. The Hunter's Court bought many of the fruits this time. Do you know why? Do you presume to know them that well, even after such a long separation?”

“So this is why you’ve come to me? To insult me? Should I let the others of my court know this? Or shall I tell all the Fey that they might declare Lynoria a scourge and empty our forest of your people?”

“It has been done before,” the Tome replied. “And it might be done again. But words once spoken are heard. I know you have doubts Titania, I hope you can quell them, for the both of us.”

She did not throw the Tome out of her realm, but rather let it disappear in the same way it had gotten in. Good, that much told the Tome she would take his words seriously, even if she was insulted by him.