GRP Chapter 7

The quiet commotion, bless it, had already told the fortress he was back, and they came out to welcome his return.

"Anir? You were alive. I was beginning to think you'd died somewhere."

Samthyeon—visibly more haggard than a year ago—stared at Garthe. His eyes were just swimming with it—this man who won’t stay put in his own house, who goes traipsing off god knows where and makes my life impossible.

"Samthyeon? Good god, I almost didn't recognize you. Why have you aged so much?"

Samthyeon's face twisted violently. Hearing those words from someone with the same taut, polished skin as ever, not a single line to show for it—it landed hard. In fact Garthe had lived through something like twice as many years as Samthyeon, but the difference in their divine power had refused to let time pass equally between them.

Garthe let his gaze slide, unhurried, toward the fortress wall.

"And what happened to the wall?"

"Nothing serious. It seems the frost giants had a quarrel among themselves in Heimdrykze. An ice chunk that appears to have been a finger flew over and one piece landed on the wall, one in the street."

"Oh dear."

"Fifteen people did depart for the embrace of the gods…."

"How dreadful."

"The Bountiful Moss just missed it. It came through fine."

The one establishment in the fortress worth calling for its food had escaped harm. Garthe narrowed his eyes and smiled.

"Good."

The two of them exchanged brief pleasantries and moved on. Samthyeon led Garthe to the fortress cellar. Coming down the stairs, Garthe noticed ice crystals packed thick against the walls like a kind of shell. The temperature had been dropping with every step down….

From deep in the cellar below, a cold energy thrashed against its bounds.

"Didn't I tell you to stay and guard the house?"

"You didn't say that."

"Didn't I?"

Garthe let it go easily, and Samthyeon let out a short, sharp breath through his nose.

The cellar they arrived at was likewise covered on every surface with white ice crystals, packed dense. It looked like a cage made of ice.

Garthe's gaze moved to the iron bars.

Two white wolves snarled at him with their teeth bared. Each time the wolves lurched in their fury, thick collars covered in ancient script flashed. Tools for suppressing divine power, developed by the Thul'Mhoriae Alliance.

These were not ordinary wolves. That much was evident from the cellar's condition alone.

In size and shape they matched common wolves. But their coats shone silver, and their eyes were a vivid clear blue, like an unshadowed lake. Northern spirits.

Northern spirits took many forms—hares, foxes, wolves, yaks—but shared the same distinguishing traits: silver fur and blue eyes.

Lately, rumors had been spreading across the whole continent—eating a spirit’s heart would grant eternal life, or make a person’s divine power stronger. To be precise, the target was god and spirit hearts both, but the damage naturally fell more heavily on spirits, since spirits were not as strong as gods. For that reason, recently, spirits who had been living peacefully and well were being killed in incidents scattered across the land.

The Thul’Mhoriae Alliance had declared that it would treat these reverse-travelers who put blind faith in the rumor as a serious threat and punish anyone found doing so without delay.

"Samthyeon."

"No."

"Have you changed professions while I was away?"

"Your habit of not listening to people hasn't changed."

Samthyeon deflected the pointless accusation with the flatness of someone long past surprise and continued.

"There have been a few theft incidents inside the fortress recently."

Meat laid in for the whole winter, gone. Two or three of the most expensive bottles of wine, vanished. Dried herbs, gone without a trace. A large store of rare cordyceps, from the west, carried off. Similar complaints and reports had poured in all at once.

In a place where so many different kinds of people lived together, incidents like this weren't entirely unknown, but for them to happen simultaneously like this was unusual. The herbalist who'd lost the cordyceps in particular had shown up with eyes red from crying, announcing a firm intention to hire mercenaries and have the thief killed without question. The considerable sum she’d poured into that endeavor had not gone entirely to waste. She hadn't managed to kill anyone, but she'd obtained a lead.

They say “the longer the tail, the sooner the catch!”—and remarkably, the thief, as it happened, had one.

A faintly luminous tail, thick and full, visible in the dark of night. No one living in Olgidphaenn could fail to know what that signified. The thieves were northern spirits.

Once a being from Heimdrykze was involved, it was no longer a private matter. That was why Samthyeon, who held full authority delegated by Garthe, lord of Olgidphaenn and its fortress, had stepped in.

From the food they'd taken so far, their tastes were fairly refined. Samthyeon had prepared various provisions likely to appeal to the spirits' preferences in storerooms throughout the fortress. He hadn't needed to wait many days. That very same day, two spirits walked straight into the trap. One had a golden carp from the south in its mouth; the other had a medicinal herb said to revive even the dead.

"Should I laugh?"

"It wasn’t a joke."

That's what Samthyeon said, but after catching the spirits, he had let a short, helpless laugh escape. The sheer absurdity of it. A pair of spirits worldly enough to know at a glance what had value….

"Anyway, I've been wondering what to do with them."

Samthyeon moved closer to the iron bars. One wolf threw itself against them, and the ancient script carved into the bars flashed and threw the wolf back. The wolf rolled, then bared its teeth again and let its throat vibrate.

"Their power is weak. They seem young."

Northern spirits were stronger than any spirits on the continent. If these had been fully grown, the collars would have been in pieces, and the iron bars wouldn't have survived either. In fact, they likely would never have been captured alive in the first place—they would have been killed on the spot.

"What do you think we should do?"

The master of Olgidphaenn had returned, so it was fitting that he make the decision. Garthe, arms folded, looked at the two insolent spirits—teeth gnawing away at the iron like something small and aggrieved, glaring at him with complete assurance. His gaze moved to the bowl crushed under a thick forepaw and the chunk of meat spread across the floor.

Spirits, like gods, were beings who could live without eating. There were occasional individuals among them who did eat, but that only occurred when the creature had degenerated away from what a spirit essentially was, across generations. Whether a being that couldn't construct its body out of divine power alone could properly be called a spirit at all—that was the first question.

Heimdrykze had preserved its primordial power unchanged since thousands of years past, and gods as ancient as common roadside stones could be found at every turn. Spirits born in that Heimdrykze were, like the gods of that place, complete beings. Complete: no defect. No deficiency, nothing to fill. Hungers and survival drives—those were the grimy concerns of lesser life forms.

Samthyeon knew this as well as anyone, but watching spirits carry off golden carp and reindeer meat and cordyceps worth more than gold and rare medicinal herbs had apparently brought on a kind of confusion. Hence the meat he'd put in for them.

Of course, they hadn't touched it. As if to prove they were spirits. It had been a week since they were caught, and by report they hadn't drunk even a mouthful of water. And yet here they were, carrying on like fish fresh off the hook, all flop and fury.

If the crime wasn't driven by need, perhaps it was spirit play. They simply wanted to watch humans be inconvenienced. On those terms, it almost made sense.

Garthe was still watching the spirits when he suddenly grimaced. A surge of pain had come without warning. He put his hand against the ice-covered stone wall. A thick vein stood up along his neck. Killing intent spread outward with his divine power, rough and uncontrolled. The spirits sprang back and flattened themselves into a shadowed corner, watching them with bright, wary eyes.

Garthe drew a slow deep breath, then let it out. One exchange of breath, and the killing intent and divine power settled to quiet. His white breath was all that came out of him then; he showed his teeth in a savage grin.

"Since it isn't urgent, shall we set this matter aside for now."

Samthyeon changed his approach from the moment he'd arrived with Garthe straight from the gate.

"You must be tired from the road. You should rest today."

A voice that performed calm rang in Garthe's ears like something distant. Garthe held the deep smile and moved on heavy feet.

A whistle cut the dawn air. The soldiers on river patrol heard it and came running with weapons drawn. The one who'd blown the wooden pipe was a young warrior who'd come out with his father. Keen eyes had picked out traces even in the dim light of early dawn.

The expressions of the soldiers who looked where the boy pointed went flat. Tracks crossing the river surface, uneffaced by the falling snow, pressed into the ice. Small as a child's, or a woman's. They weren't the footprints of some enormous monster, and yet the soldiers were wary, because the tracks began on the far side of the river—from the divine realm of Heimdrykze.

With bodies from the Great Disaster a hundred and thirty-five years ago still being found in Olgidphaenn, the meaning was larger than it looked. A messenger bird carrying a letter dyed with red pigment lifted into the air.

The strongest, most beautiful, most exalted, greatest ruler of Heimdrykze hath proclaimed: below there are nothing but worthless insects who would die at a single gesture of my hand. Feeble, utterly feeble—they cannot survive without parasitizing something. The only thing worth noting is their obscene capacity to multiply.

She had taken his every word as sacred revelation—law she was bound to follow without fail. Hold to the discipline long enough and you come to understand it. Mariaeks had come to understand what the words truly meant. Do not keep company with such worthless and filthy insects.

Mariaeks looked up at the tall fortress wall rising like a frost giant. In the great Absolute’s terms, this could be called something like a nest of insects.

Specifically: the place where humans lived.