[Be Gone] Ch 13 – Oh, Them Humans

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Perhaps most scandalously, the newly arriving humans had no problems reproducing with any of the native races, a fact which had shocked all of them.

            Moreover, they were totally egalitarian about status and family and rank, not caring a whit for where one’s family came from. If you wanted to join them and fight, they’d take in a peasant farmer as happily as a samurai from a noble family.

            Their attitude had spread among the lower classes, and a fairly large number of other species had flocked to the lands of the humans thereafter, looking to better themselves and their standings as they could not in the rigid societies they came from.

            The House of the Tiger took them all, and encouraged their growth. The hybrid children of the humans were like separate races of their own, but had inherited the ability to use their human parents’ strange and formidable magic, and tap into the heritage of their other parent.

            If they were willing to fight, they could become members of the Clan in truth. If they didn’t, their children might still rise up to do so... but if their children didn’t, they could lose the rank as well. It didn’t pass down!

            Everything on your own merits, not that of your ancestors! You inherited nothing but what your parents physically gave you...

            Needless to say, those stalwart defenders of the current order, the elves, found all sorts of reasons for why this was a bad thing, and regularly got it in their heads to ride into the Valley of the Tigers and set everything to right.

            I had plenty of reason to think it was strange Taicho Uverhua knew a LOT of stories about humiliated stuck-up elves, but the introduction of the Mithran Duels of Honor set off alarm bells, and assured me that I wasn’t here by accident, either.

            A standard duel in the Jade Empire was an iaijitsu duel: one draw, one strike. Rarer was a kenjitsu duel, as it was considered less elegant and more time-consuming, and a battle of build, luck, and physical ability, not skill.

            I.e., other duels didn’t favor the elves.

            The Mitharn Duels of Honor had all types of acceptable non-violent duels, and even if being the victor meant the loser died, that was a decision made outside of the duel, not from the duel itself.

            An iaijitsu duel was known as a Duel of Vipers under the Mitharn Code, the name given it because it was fast and societal poison. A kenjitsu, or swordplay duel, was a Duel of the Great Cats, because it was real, and dangerous as well. It was Lions when done in armor, Tigers when done without. If it was knives being used, it was Panthers...

            But there were plenty of other duels, some dipping into courtly arts. The unarmed duels of the Bear; the archery duels of the Falcon; the spear duels of the Scorpion; the lancing duels of the Rhino... and the athletic duels that turned all of them into competitions instead of duels, where you only died if third parties killed you after you lost, removing death from the equation of the contest itself.

            The jumping contest of Frogs was always a favorite, as was the sprinting contest of the Cheetah, or the marathons of the Wolf.

            Challenging someone to a duel and then finding yourself in a life-or-death cooking Duel of the Panda was a fine way to humiliate many a proud elf, but the raucous insult contest of the Duel of the Monkey was what really got to them. Even the poison-tongued Serpent elves were better with subtle lies than blatant all-out insults screamed at one another, but the korobokru loved the idea immensely, and formal insult contests for grievances had become common among them, generally devolving into major drinking contests afterwards.

            Drinking contests were duels, too. Duels of the Hog could potentially be lethal just from over-imbibing, after all...

            The honorless barbarians’ ways of not offering themselves up to Viper Duels increased their poor reputation in the refined courts of the Empire, while increasing their popularity at the lower levels, and didn’t hurt relations with the non-elves at all. The other races had started jumping on the bandwagon and using the Mitharn Duels themselves whenever challenged by elven fast-draw masters.

            If the elves didn’t like it, they could just decline the duel, forcing them to swallow their honor or act dishonorably. Incidentally, this had cut down on a lot of the deaths from dueling, as the elves had problems winning all the weird alternate duels they would have had to accept, and so the number of challenges over feigned insults had dropped accordingly.

            That, of course, was the real purpose of the Mitharn Duels: finding another way than killing to resolve differences, and yet still have it be a competition.

            I had definite suspicions, but I stuck to the course the korobokru taicho indicated was best for now.

-------

            Renewal passed us by, and I ticked over Purity/4 as I hummed the Salute to Aru under my breath. I felt no resonance with Him, but it was habit, and Taicho Uverhua gave me another curious glance as the first wan rays of light struggled through the murk of the sky above.

            “You Greet the Morning, like the Elders of the Tiger,” she observed. “Perhaps you come from the same place?” she wondered aloud.

            “Is that so?” I kept my voice bland. “Do you know the names of their Elders?”

            She nodded eagerly. “The Great Tiger is called The Ironskull among his own people. I believe his given name is... Kolbald?”

            I didn’t bother trying to hide my recognition. “Korbald the Ironskull is here? Well, well, well...”

            Surely just a coincidence I was here, yeppers...

            I wanted to immediately Send off a message to him, but held off for the moment. “Any others?”

            “The Wind Tiger, Tlead. The Mother Tigress, Bea. The Black Tiger, Blonze. The Howling Tiger, Lapman,” she ticked off quickly, messing up the r’s in the foreign names.

            The senior members of the Ironskulls were here on this world, and likely a significant chunk of the people who’d ‘died’ at the Archmage’s Fall so many years ago...

            I sighed, wondering what to say to and do for those people.

            “I imagine you want to send back word of your own mission,” I said, changing the subject. “Do you have a means to do so?”

            “Master Aelryinth!” The Tongues spell translated my name to some equivalent for them, and back the same way, although I was puzzling through the structure of it via akashic links, and should be fully proficient with their native tongue in a little more time myself as a Polyglot. I looked back at the spellcaster with the group who’d spoken, riding with a couple of protective warriors who definitely outmassed him. “I am Okopik, a Windcaller of the Asperaii Clan! I can send a Spirit of the Wind ahead to warn my fellows, but the presence of the demons has agitated them, and they are ignoring my calls!” he said woefully.

            “Really? Pick one out.” 

            He paused for a moment, staring at me, and then focused, turning his attention skywards, eyes darting back and forth at things normal people couldn’t see. “That one?!” he pointed out.

            Primus flared with dominating power, and settled on the chosen Air Elemental, which was shooting about erratically... but wasn’t full of Sin.

            In the face of Primus’ power, it obediently knuckled under and came down to us.

            “Do exactly what this man asks of you,” I ordered it calmly, waving at the wide-eyed spellcaster. A Shugenja? Sure. A Spirit-talking Class somewhere between a Wizard and a Priest.

            The Wind Elemental bounced over to him obediently, waiting with the attitude of a minion obeying a lord.

            Elemental Command is one of the very best types of Rings, after all. Primus was all four of the Primary Types, working on the other Elements slowly, and thus a King among Rings.

            While astonished, the Shugenja still managed to talk and deal with the Elemental successfully, treating it as an honorable Wind Spirit and charging it with the task of dealing a report and message to his superiors. 

            I watched it depart with supernatural speed on the winds. It would probably arrive there in mere minutes, and if they needed an alarm about the incoming fighting, they would certainly have it.

--------

            It had been a few hours since we’d seen the last of any invaders, and they were all heading south of us at that time. There were some random things we wandered across, mostly undead soldiers stumbling this way and that, which we put down permanently with vivus.

            Yes, we left a big long white trail behind us. Yes, we had quite an entourage in the sky at one point, but as our path and that of the army diverged, more and more demons were pulled away and went winging off to the south, until only a ragged assortment of things that looked like crows with tentacles for heads were lazing around above us.

            One Chained Shardray later, they all popped, and the skies were clear. That was pretty impressive to the korobokru, as the demons were a couple hundred yards up in the air, well beyond any arrow range.

            So there was no escort left as we came across a certain boundary, and I had Feature glide to a stop.

            The korobokru realized it, too. An oppression and weight in the air, suddenly gone. The sky began to lighten somewhat more. A sense of wrongness that was absent, the air cleaner and more natural.

            Sin no longer spreading so easily...

            “You can feel the end of the Shadowlands?” The Shugenja seemed impressed as he hopped off the Disks with everyone else, stretching his legs after hours of riding.

            “Secondary effects...” I looked up and down, and then panned my Detects right and left. “You call all that the Shadowlands?” I repeated for clarification.

            “Yes, of course. The Taint of Darkness infects everything there...” the Shugenja replied slowly.

            “It’s Sin, not Darkness. Darkness is a completely different energy. Sin naturally has the ability to Corrupt and Taint. I felt the limit of the planar disruption that is tied to that land mass.” And it was freaking huge, easily spanning the area of a nation. “Not very stable. I assume as scouts that you can verify that the landscape and regions change where they are?”

            The riders looked at one another. “That is true, Master Aelryinth. Many do not wish to believe such reports...”

            “Totally natural in areas with planar flux. Not much different than shaking up a bunch of colored beads in a box and opening it to find that they’ve moved around. The forces involved are just a lot bigger than most can perceive or want to believe exists.”

            I’d seen a World-Eater. Not believing that level of power existed just wasn’t possible for me at this point.

            “The end of the effect shows how strong the connection is. You should have markers out there measuring the start of the demarcation so you can determine if it is growing stronger or weaker.” They obviously hadn’t pushed it back at all that they were aware of, and simply hadn’t had the means to counter it...

            “Master Aelryinth, why is the ground behind your holy flames white?” the Shugenja asked with, ah, burning interest.

            They didn’t have vivus here? Was that really Korbald, if that was true? Or was something going on?

            “I have a separate question. Is this point further back from where you remember?”

            The scouts paused, and looked around, especially at the long, even line on the horizon, below the mountains behind them.

            “Maybe?” Taicho Uverhua said, squinting. “A klik if so, no more.” The other scouts murmured together, and nodded in agreement.

            “Vivic fire...” I murmured, and Feature nodded above me, having turned back to look at our trail as well as he hovered there above the ground. “That is vivic fire, which is the mortal realm’s equivalent of Taint, shadowfire, demonfire, hellfire, chaosflame, doomfire, chillfire, and other such extraplanar energies.

            “Just like those energies, it feeds on energies and powers not native to its home realm and converts them to energies of the mortal realm. It is the Taint of the mortal realm, and rightfully feared by all unnatural creatures who test our world.

            “It seems you do not know how to wield vivic fire, or else this blot on the Land would have been burned away centuries ago.”

            The Shugenja looked astounded. “There is such a wondrous thing?” he exclaimed in shock.

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