Chapter 213: Pressure 

The creature lurking below the lake of frozen ice was surprisingly resistant to lightning. Ram could see its long, serpentine body glowing faintly beneath his feet, the ice ripping slightly with the creature’s proximity to the surface. He had tried to fry the thing with his power, flooding the water with elemental lightning, but it hadn’t worked. Well, it hadn’t worked on his target, hundreds of small dead fish were now pressing up against the ice. 

The eel swam under him once again, as if trying to taunt him into jumping into the freezing water. Ram would do no such thing of course, the cold he could manage, the wet… less so. He had been living with two legs for almost as long as he could remember, and it was embarrassing that he didn’t know how to swim. Well, he hadn’t known back before then either, a life living in the mountains made the skill not exactly necessary. 

He cracked his neck, glaring down at the frozen lake. A heartbeat later a similar, but much loud crack shook the ice right below where he was standing. Ram kicked off, blasting skywards just as the eel smashed through the thick layer of ice, breaking through to the surface, jaws snapping at where he had just been standing with enough strength to crush stone. 

Ram laughed and threw a bolt of lightning at the beast, but the crackling energy simply entered its body, patches of skin running along its spine lighting up as if it were charging an attack- 

He jerked to the side as a blast of energy lanced up towards him, the beam parting the circling clouds overhead. Ram could smell the scent of burning air and the tingle of power as his hair stood on end. He watched, overjoyed to see what the beast would try next. It had been too long since he had fun, he wouldn’t end the fight until he had seen everything the creature could do. 

But instead of pursuing, the eel hissed and started sliding back under the ice. Perhaps it can’t fly. He thought, letting himself drop, disappointment weighing on his heart. Swimming was basically flying but worse, but he had hoped for more. Sure, the creature’s magic didn’t pose much of a threat to him, but it would burn away his rags so he still had reason to evade. 

Ram sighed and accelerated his fall with a brief effort of will, the air warping around him, streamlining his descent. The eel twisted its body as it saw him plummet down towards it in an attempt to escape, but it had exposed too much of itself when it had left the water, and now it was too slow to retreat. Ram’s booted foot slammed into the top of its head, and the ice in a fifty metre radius around his victim shattered from the force of the impact, bucking upwards and sending the corpses of small fish flying. 

But beasties of this thing's strength and size were not so easy to kill, even if Ram had given it the concussion of a lifetime, it would still be alive. Sure enough, the eel roared and tried to bite him, though its movements were sluggish compared to before. Oddly, when it opened its jaws wide he spotted what looked like a second set of teeth emerging from the back of its throat. 

Was there a smaller eel living inside it? That would be very strange, so he tried not to think about it. Ram caught the eel’s head with a hand and redirected its lunge upwards. The beast coiled, energy building up along its spine. Ram jumped and landed on a chunk of now free floating ice, he used a gust of wind to churn the water, making the platform carry him to the side and spoiling the creature's aim. 

It hissed again, and for over a minute it tried without success to catch him. The eel dove under water and attempted to whip its tail up into Ram’s icy raft, but he simply hopped onto another as the frozen platform was obliterated. Waves over a metre tall sloshed around, the water of the lake thoroughly disturbed by the battle. 

Unfortunately, as strong as the eel was, it was outmatched. But Ram would honour its strength by hauling its corpse back to Far-Rech and putting on a feast. Pulling back a fist, he drew howling wind towards his hand, cloaking it in a maelstrom of devastating power. Just as he was about to punch the eel out of the lake something pinged against his senses. He froze, his head snapping southward. 

A pressure was building, the tension of a coming storm. And it was coming from his home, where his family were living. Without a second thought, Ram kicked off, launching himself skyward with such speed that the air blasted away from him with a crack. He created a platform of cloudstuff as he reached the peak of his ascent, leaping from one to the other as he rapidly climbed from the valley he had been hunting in. 

The mountain range, the humans had named it after a kingdom that no longer existed, stretched out to either side of him, the very first light of day peaking over the distant horizon. For a moment he hung over the world, countless miles stretching out below him in all directions. He could see forests and rivers, plains and hills, even dark spots where human cities had once stood. And to the north, an endless expanse of untamed wilderness, where creatures roamed that made even him weary. 

Once, his world had been so small that he couldn’t even imagine what could exist outside of rocky cliffs and snow covered peaks. Now… Well, now he had to deal with the consequences of having expanded that world. Of changing from what he had once been. The pressure built, something was wrong. It wasn’t the rumbling of large scale conflict, but something must have happened.

Ram threw himself southwards, and the distant world beneath his feet turned into a blur. 

===

“Obviously the fires were started deliberately! Why else would they have only burnt down the newly built refugee homes!” A man yelled, his face red with fury. “What few belongings we had left, gone. Food, gone. At least fifteen people died!”

“You obviously don’t want us here!” A second screamed. “You want the land all to yourselves!”

“They want to monopolise the tree!” A third said, their words causing a muttered chorus of agreement. 

“Please.” Kala said, exhaustion leaking into her words even as she tried to project strength. She was too old for this, far, far too old. “Please, we don’t know the culprit, nor their motives. But to suggest that we would invite you to stay, help you build homes, new lives, then attack you during the night… It’s preposterous.”

“We barely survived the journey here.” A harried looking woman said, a young boy of maybe four or five clutching her skirts. “We struggled through turbulence, but now the crops we were growing are all dead, and what little we had stored are ashes. People are going to starve!”

“Not if we get closer to the tree! We all know it heals you, makes you need less food.” Another said.

“And there’s food up on the bluff. We’ve all seen the animals they keep.”

Kala pinched the bridge of her nose. The crowd of angry refugees before her slowly growing as more and more people arrived at the steps of the bluff. They had invited the injured and sick to stay as close to the tree as they could manage while the last of the fires were put out, but that had only invited trouble. 

Kala had known that eventually, the gradually building tension between the two largely separate parts of Far-Reach would reach a boiling point. She had seen it before, the divide between demikin and humans without bloodlines was a constant no matter where in the world she went. Perhaps she had been a fool to stop running, to have thought she had found a place where things could be different, at least for a time. 

The mob before her was angry, fearful and exhausted, but she couldn’t blame them. More than once in her life Kala had been in similar situations, her meager healing abilities allowing her to scrape by in lands so distant most had never heard of them. They just needed time, food wouldn’t be a problem once more people started working the fields, crops would grow at a rate that would allow them to support the rapidly expanding population. 

But the building strife wasn’t completely natural. Provocateurs had caused minor drama in the past, but with Ram’s presence nobody had been bold enough to actually act on their short sighted emotions. But as the hours passed and the guardian didn’t show, their restraint was slipping.

Where is that idiot goat? Kala fumed, raising her hands and speaking to placate the crowd. They weren’t listening to her, their anger growing, and that was agitating the group of armed demikin standing just behind her. Nobody had been stupid enough to start a fight, but if Ram didn’t show up soon someone would try something. People were people after all, it didn’t matter what they looked like, nor the contents of their blood.

The more she thought about the events of the night, the more sure she was that it had to have been a deliberate attack. Whoever had done this had timed their move perfectly. The fires had started in the dead of night, during the first time in months that Ram had left Far-Reach. This was no coincidence, intuition from a long life was telling her that. 

The sky had turned a dark blue as night reached its conclusion, but the coming day didn’t bring Kala joy. There was a good chance once people got a clear look at the scale of the destruction their anger would only build. Something iridescent caught her eye, and Kala turned slightly to see her oldest grandson pushing his way through the crowd. He was all smiles and apologies as he went, and most stepped aside, not realising his demikin lineage. 

“Grandmother.” Samil said, nodding at the handful of white haired men and women behind her. “I need to tell you something. It’s urgent, I’m afraid.”

Kala groaned. “What did Han do?”

“What? Oh, no, it’s not about him. Sorry, I should have clarified. We spotted a group of armed people approaching the outskirts of town while we were cleaning up. They’ve stopped about a kilometre away and look to be setting up camp on one of the nearby hills.”

“Are they hostile?” Kala asked, her eyebrows rising. 

“Not that we’ve seen. They’re flying a banner with an owl. They number around thirty, or so I estimated from what I saw. I think it's a mercenary band, or maybe an adventurers guild. I ran here as soon as we spotted them, so I don’t know if the situation has escalated.”

Well, there’s a prime suspect for the arson. She thought, feeling another wave of exhaustion wash over her. Normally she could use a healing skill to alleviate stress, but she had tapped most of her power stopping the spread of the fire. The older Kala got, the longer it seemed for the strain of skill overuse to fade. One of many reasons she didn’t relish becoming elderly. 

A few more people arrived, refugees not demikin, and from their shouted explanations they seemed to corroborate her grandson’s story. An armed group had arrived, and with them came the possibility of change. The attitude of the group seemed to shift, and Kala could tell why. Without Ram, these newcomers were likely the strongest force in Far-Reach. The old goat’s descendants were hardy folk, but in a straight fight against an experienced force they would struggle. 

“It sounds like the Wings of Night guild.” A younger man with a split lip and a slight lisp said. “I met several of their members a year or so ago when one of their adventuring parties was completing bounty missions near my village.”

“Are they pro empire, or republic?” Someone asked, and the conversation devolved into everyone shouting their own ideas or questions. 

“Whoever they are, we need to avoid conflict at all costs.” Kala said to Samil, her tone low. “We can’t afford a fight, especially not after this. And that’s even if Ram were here. Violence will destroy what sense of community we have built between our peoples.”

“Yeah, I know. Damn, this is a mess.” Samil said, his expression serious. In that moment he reminded her of his mother, and Kala’s heart ached. 

In the distance thunder rumbled, then a bolt of lightning struck down onto the hill now covered in burnt down homes. Everyone turned as one to look in the direction of the flash of light. 

Gods. Why didn’t he come here first? Is that man an idiot? Kala thought. She grabbed Samil by the collar, but her grandson was already moving. Maybe if they could reach Ram in time they would be able to stop whatever disaster was about to occur.