Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

“They did. Saw two more of those Dolls, and a few of the Marionettes. Get this: the scarecrows popped up with magic-defying fists on their arms, a stronger version of that Null Aluminum you were pointing out. Crumbled to less than dust when they died, but somehow they congealed it out of nowhere,” Princess Kristie reported.

I considered the magical mechanics of that. There’s no way the System could have been created with the ability to manifest anti-magic, that just made no sense at all. It had to be introduced by an outside force, bringing in an outside energy.

“Does your Null get a sense of the Virindi from the Marionettes? Because that’s what I’m feeling, although I’d have to examine a real one to be absolutely sure.”

“The feel about them is alien, yes. The scarecrows are not just generic Constructs, although I don’t know what is animating them, as we’ve seen only Summons. The energies...” Her face scrunched up thoughtfully. “I don’t know, I don’t have a good feel for it. However, it was an actively hostile anti-magic effect around the clubs of its arms, not a passive inertness, so it was... like an actively powered-up effect versus what I recall of nihilor.”

“So... a further energized form of that Null Aluminum?” I considered that. “Raw materials are raw materials, Kris. I don’t see the virindi mining an anti-magical material.”

She jumped on past that to its conclusion. “You think the lugians we saw supplied the raw material to the Virindi, and they improved upon its usage?”

“I think it is a possibility. Also, the tumeroks in that camp? They had arrowheads tipped with the stuff.”

“Ahhhh... trading between the lugians and the tumeroks. Interesting...” Kris nodded, working out the implications of that. “We’ve got a trio of tribes that, if not in a formal governing alliance, are at least not hostile to their neighbors, with the lugians and tumeroks actively carrying on trade. We don’t know enough of their history, or we’d probably be able to pick up on armor and weapon techniques blending into one another.”

“From what I heard while listening to them, the tumerok culture revolves a lot around traditional hunting and gathering, but there’s a very, very strong militaristic culture which has imposed itself on top of and around the older, more spiritual stuff. They are aware of the fighting of the burun and could hear the war drums, but it’s not their concern unless it spills over into their lands.

“Also, the camp they are in used to belong to the mosswarts as the southern end of their settlements. They chased them away after the burun moved in and the place started to overflow, threatening their camps. Their terms for the mosswarts were pretty derisive as a whole, but wary when talking about their elders, naturally.” I shook my head once. “Their description of the lugians amounts to ‘gray mountain people’. The burun were ‘fanged toads’, while the mosswarts are ‘green squealers’.”

“No doubt mutually eating one another in the past, or something,” Kris smirked at the terms. “We don’t know how many there are of any of these, of course, especially if they have other living areas. A few thousand or something is not a major population of anything.”

I had to agree. One major fight and they could be wiped out completely. Whoever brought the Isparian humans in was cheating by basically adding constant reinforcements to the conflicts, no idea if the same was happening to the others.

But this was tribal politics, not civilized politics. The dynamics were extremely different, as the whole population hadn’t branched out and specialized, like what happened in larger populations. A whole population living close to the land in a hunting and foraging style made for good soldier material, but the mindset was VERY different from those who worked farms and dwelled in cities specializing in trades.

Tribals tended to have multiple skill sets, as they needed to be able to take over for one another, and there weren’t enough people to allow them to do only one job and make a living at it. Those were developments for larger numbers we weren’t seeing here.

“You good at tribal politics?” I had to ask her, and she gave me a considerate eyebrow.

“Surprisingly, yeah. We’re pretty good at understanding people and where they come from with their beliefs, Alignments and all. Families, Tribes, and Clans are still huge in most of the cultures we deal with, and that’s before you account for subspecies like Aluvians and Sho, or branch out into non-humans. Hags walk outside society at the best of times, so its not hard to deal with different mindsets. What kind of Colors were they?”

“They start out Brown to Green, but the stronger they were, the more they slanted Blue and Red.”

She considered that. “Active, powerful racism,” she nodded slowly. “We are the People, and everyone else is not-People, basically little more than intelligent animals, and may be killed and abused as desired.”

“That’s my take, too. They’ve earned and learned a warrior’s respect for the burun and the lugians. My guess is they learned it the hard way against the humans here, too, but the constant flow of immigrants started pressing into whatever lands they deemed theirs, and hostilities erupted rather quickly.”

“They aren’t natives of these lands, either.” I glanced over at her words. “I can smell it on them. They might have been born here, but they didn’t evolve here. It’s... partly how their biology is adapting to the ecology, although that’s pretty weird, too.”

“Like something reached in and tweaked them.” It was the magical sense I got about them.

“Yeah. The tumeroks, banderling, drudges, and mosswarts all have scent markers that are, eh, affiliated with one another? Reacting the same way to the ecology here, adapting to a place not made for them. The lugians aren’t natives, either. The monugas, oddly enough, DO smell like natives, much like the reedsharks and ‘dillos do.”

“Huh. The super-powerful rats?” I had to ask. The pesky blighters were nasty, and we certainly didn’t have fire-breathers back on Ispar, although they did grow to the size of cats and dogs. Primary food of the ursuins, actually.

“I don’t think they are native here, but they’ve been mutated by the manafield, and their reproductive ability is why so many predators can survive here. Summons aside, there are a LOT of predatory creatures here, and the rats are a big food source for them.”

“Yeah, the tumeroks had a rack of smoked ones hanging for people to grab and munch on as they walked by, casual as could be. Never got into rodent myself, although I understand it’s a staple food in some places.” Shamira was much more into goat and sheep and chicken, standard for the Gharu’n.

“There are a lot of rat recipes in Aluvia, but there’s big requirements on size, type, and what they’ve been fed.” Kris was ready to wax poetic on the subject, caught my expression, and just grinned. Really, it was no different from eating rabbit or squirrel, when it came down to it... although rabbit tasted better, in most cases. Larger rats also hunted rabbits, too, but rats seemed to be preferred by ursuins above all other munchies. “I’ve just been trying to find some that don’t look like they’ve eaten elemental magic and gone all blargh. Braised giant russet rat in an elderberry wine sauce is pretty damn good.”

It probably was, as Ranthas had high standards for food. Most Sustained people did. If you didn’t have to eat much, when you ate, you wanted it to be good food, and you could afford to spend time and money on only good food. Being Sustained made gourmets out of most everyone.

“You’ve been munching raw rats on your individual hunts?” I guessed.

“Eh, Quaver Firephases and I sear ‘em, although they taste good raw to us, too. Hags and all, you know?” She was completely unapologetic about it.

I waved it off. “Familiar with it. Aelryinth’s memories say you’re not a fan of seafood, either.”

She wrinkled her nose. “No, most of the stuff coming out of the sea isn’t to our taste, much to the dismay of the Roulean chefs. Not into much pasta or breads, either. We can tolerate it, but the smell of fresh bread in the morning is no more enticing to us than sniffing your lawn is to you.”

I had to laugh, as technically they were the same thing, in the end. What was wheat, but another strain of grass? “Yes, yes, proud meat-eater and tubers that you are, although I absolutely know you go for salted, buttered nuts and mushrooms like starving peasants.”

Her violet eyes lit right up, and she promptly licked her lips long and slow. “Oh, don’t tempt me. Missing the snacks of the Imperial Palace right now big time!”

“Especially the poisonous ones.”

“Especially the poisonous ones!” Her pale violet eyes grew even brighter. “Our head chefs had to have Poison Use Ranks, and be experts in toxicology! They could brew up some deadly shit that tasted like absolute godsdamned heaven!”

“Sama did love her fugu... poison intact,” I recalled.

Kris smacked her lips now, visibly drooling at the memory. “That stuff is like an aphrodisiac! Mom would order a plate of it whenever she and dad were feeling moody, and the mood kind of went away fast!” she chortled. “I had to be real careful on who was around if I tried any...”

“So, you’re wondering if those remorans or niffis or nefanes have poison glands,” I nodded in confirmation, and she just inhaled expectantly.

“The nautiloids do, I can smell it on ‘em. But the big ‘nuga we saw tore it out of them and tossed it in the water, rotter that he was.”

“Huh.” I sat up, looked around. “What do you suppose keeps that thing away from these areas?”

“Massed magic and artillery, of course. It’s a huge target. Mass an army and inundate it with magic, it’ll go away. It has to know killing Summons is useless, and it may or may not be bright enough to realize there are real ones among all the Summons, or be able to pick them out. It didn’t strike me as incredibly bright. None of them do.”

Given the crude nature of their attire and weaponry, that wasn’t a surprise. Except for heft, both were several tiers below the tumeroks and their preference for working with woods and hides, and definitely below the lugians, although they could have used the heavy lugian weapons quite easily, all things being equal.

“Well, it’s definitely a type of Jotun, if it is able to be that size and still walk. Reduced appetite for the size would go right along with it.” So, get a good big meal, eat away, then smoke it and snack on it for a few weeks.

Alternatively, wander around and grab an auroch or two for a munchie. It was all one.

“So, head downstream, do a lap and survey of what used to be Shoushi and is probably a tumerok fort now, and keep going?” Kris asked rhetorically, obviously going to do just that.

“I admit I’m ready to see what kind of fortifications these tumeroks put into place, if they did... or if the lugians did it for them. We’ll soon see, I guess.”

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The first Sho buildings started a couple miles outside the town itself, characterized by the start of some shallow wharves the tumeroks who had taken over the buildings were making use of with shallow, drawn rafts holding baskets for depositing fish from cast nets and the like. The town itself was only visible from there because of magical fires burning on top of the pagoda at the center of the place, seen when I gained enough altitude through the light forest that had come surging gamely back in the past few years after humans had abandoned the farms here. Rice and grain fields had overgrown all about, and the tumeroks didn’t appear to have much interest in maintaining them, although it looked like they were harvesting at least some of it.

The tumeroks had actually kept many of the buildings intact, being of the Sho style and made of carved wood, although they’d swapped a lot of the ornamentation out and added their own. It had created a strangely domineering hybrid style, as if their art was slowly consuming the older building beneath.