108. The Realm Gathers

  “YEEEAAAHHH…!!”

  Despite the lopsided scoreline, Serac and Zacko reacted to their one goal like they’d won the Realmic championship. Sticks, elbows, and knees flew everywhere, but this time in celebration, as two outrealmer novices jumped, hugged, and pumped fists.

  It didn’t take long for the children—from both teams—to join in. At some point, it got to be too much pushing and shoving for a Rakshasa novice on skates to handle, and Serac suffered her second faceplant damage of the day, this time dragging down a whole mass of revelers with her.

  [31!]

  The damage was the same, but somehow, the pain was much more bearable. She poked her head out of the pile of bodies, grinning from ear to ear. The children’s laughter rang crisply amidst the wintry air.

  The Rakshasa would’ve been perfectly content to stay buried beneath a happiness pile, but rescue did come in the form of Lars Tomasen, who bent his towering frame to offer a hand. Serac took it without hesitation. Any ill will she’d held had, at least temporarily, been lifted aside by the simple joy of a game well-played.

  And it seemed the same could be said for the sturgeon, for the first thing he said as he pulled Serac to her feet was: “Good block. Can debate merits of your positioning, but it certainly did job. Not many in Realm can tank my brother’s slap-shot from point-blank range and live to tell tale. Your shooting, on other hand… Embarrassing. Never seen more scuffed goal in my life.”

  “Sore loser on top of being a hypocrite?” Serac teased, utterly ignoring the fact that her team was losing by double digits. “Scuffed or not, it’s still worth one point, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter how it gets over the line. A goal is a goal.”

  Even as she uncorked a truism, Serac wasn’t totally sure she believed it herself. It just felt like the thing to say at the minute. Yet, across from her, Lars’s impassive glare took on a kind of pensive warmth, until it melted altogether into the faintest of barely-a-smiles.

  “Might be onto something with that, Rakshasa,” he said in his gentle drawl. “Something for me and my brother to remember.”

  If only life were as simple as a handshake shared over a children’s game! As if by unspoken agreement, Yaksha and Rakshasa allowed the handshake and its accompanying sentiments to linger a while longer, as one barely-a-smile met an ear-to-ear grin.

  Unfortunately for both of them, the ‘while’ didn’t last long.

  “Lars? Hans?”

  The tone of it could be mistaken for a mother calling her unruly children to dinner, but in reality, it issued from a warmly-dressed tilapia man with a permanently flustered expression. Serac instantly recognized him as Erik, Palmr Jorgensen’s overworked personal assistant. The tilapia now hurried over—in cleats, not skates—to the group of Iskolle players, but stopped short of joining them in their field of play.

  “Did you forget the time? Or were you planning on skipping out on the reception altogether? Mr Jorgensen needs you both. Now!”

  Erik spoke with an entitled irritation that sat ill with Serac. Still riding high on adrenaline, she was just about to speak up in the twins’ defense when Lars let go of her hand. The sturgeon then handed off his stick to one of the children before gliding past the Iskolle group and towards his Jorgen & Sons colleague. On the other side of the pile, Hans did the same.

  The twins offered no verbal response to Erik’s reproach. No apology, no conciliation, but also, not even a hint of defiance.

  At the sight of this meek obedience, Serac again saw red. All of her grievances flooded back in an instant, and she reared up, ready to hurl more insults and accusations. But then another stick-tap on her back halted her runaway train in its tracks.

  “There’s a time and place, princess,” Zacko said, smiling, and just loud enough for the twins to hear. “You’ve had your say. Now, let’s give those boys some space to work things out for themselves.”

  Serac opened her mouth to argue, but then she was interrupted again as a loud cheer went up around her. The children had all turned towards the departing sturgeons, with their Iskolle sticks raised to the sky in salute, as they whooped and uttered words of gratitude and admiration.

  “Thanks for the tips, Mr Lars!”

  “I’ll get you next time, Mr Hans, just you watch!”

  “Come back any time!”

  For a moment or two—long enough for Serac to judge them ever more harshly—the twins showed no reaction. But then, right before he stepped off the field of play, Lars looked over his shoulder and gave a shy sort of half-wave, before turning his back for good. The gesture was brief, and the wave was barely a wave, but the children lapped it up, with their cheers swelling in volume and enthusiasm.

  “Heh.” A half-sigh-half-snort escaped Serac then, and she found that the anger had already deserted her.

  She grudgingly accepted that Zacko was right. She still believed every word of her earlier diatribe, but far be it for her to come between the children and their heroes. Hypocrites they might be, but it was clear that the Tomasens had left something of themselves in Rotgard that endured to this day. Serac only hoped that there would be more chapters to that story…

  “Miss Serac? Mr Zacko?” A second mom came calling now, in the form of Petter the mackerel. “Hate to interrupt, but I think it’s time for us to get going, too. The King is about to make his entrance!”

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  By the time Team Serac doffed their Iskolle gear and made their way back to the main beach, the once modest crowd had grown in both size and activity. For it’d since absorbed arrivals from Stamgard, consisting mostly of well-dressed and well-fed Yakshas in their little family-sized tents.

  Here, Serac finally saw the extent of resources and organization that went into this one event.

  A massive ‘parking pen’ had been set aside to house the Stammers’ individual ‘rides’, complete with mountains of duckweed for the turtles to munch on, as well as warmed Nether-kelp mats for them to fend off the cold and stay hydrated. And of course, the vendors would never miss their chance to make some acorns off the cold, [Hungry] souls who’d gathered from all over the Realm. They’d wasted no time to get started, with their much larger and more colorful tents now dominating the winter landscape.

  It went without saying that the largest and noisiest of the tents belonged to one Palmr Jorgensen. Today, the catfish boss had deigned to put his wealth and corpulence on display for all to see, sitting outside his tent on a raised platform.

  A table had already been set out, complete with enough food and drinks to feed a Rotgardian town, but oddly enough, Palmr hadn’t touched any of it. Serac could see that the table was large enough to seat at least several other souls, and she had an inkling as to the names on the reservation list. Despite the bile that rose to her throat at the sight of Palmr, Serac could take a small bit of satisfaction at his visible demeanor; out of the comforts of his treehouse, the catfish man looked a little shrunken, as he eyed the crowd with a sour expression and shivered into his bundle of blankets.

  Something that could only sour Serac’s own mood was the sight of the Tomasen twins, their heads and shoulders prominently visible above the sea of other Yakshas as they flanked either side of Palmr’s platform. Serac forced herself to exercise patience and mindfulness. It wasn’t her fight to pick—at least not now and not here.

  “I take it things between the neighbors aren’t quite hunky-dory, eh?”

  At Zacko’s off-hand comment, Serac redirected her attention to the ‘peripheries’ of the Stamgardian contingent. She saw right away what her partner referred to, for even here upon the frozen Netherpool, there was a clear ‘divide’ that marked out where Stamgard ended and Rotgard began.

  At least a few dozen soldiers of the Kronheer—the King’s ‘regular army’ made up of Anchored souls—‘patrolled’ a strip of ice where no civilians dared drill holes nor set up shop. To a one, they dressed in padded camouflage jackets and rested gloved hands upon the slings of their standard-issue harpoon guns.

  On the other side of this demarcation gathered the Rotters who’d been here since the wee hours of the morning. None of them made direct eye contact with the soldiers, but the tension in the air was palpable.

  “Harpoons at an ice-fishing event,” Serac reflected wryly. “I suppose that in itself isn’t out of place… depending on where they’re aimed. Does the Realmhunt always have this much of a military presence?”

  The question had been directed at Petter, whose eyes shifted anxiously before he gave a reply: “No, Miss. At least never in such numbers. Oh, I really hope this doesn’t end badly!”

  “Are you surprised?” Zacko added his sardonic commentary. “You’d have to be an insane optimist to think one dinner party could wash out half a decade or more of bad blood. If anything, now that the Rotters are slowly getting back on their feet, they can start to direct their energy to things other than just survival. With that in mind, I’d expect border relations to get worse before they get better.”

  Serac sighed inwardly. Yes, she could admit to being a little over-optimistic that the unclogging of the Roots might’ve solved all of Pretjord’s problems overnight. Time to call back the pragmatist in her to face reality. Although… she still allowed herself to hope that these might just be growing pains on the road to recovery.

  Whatever might be the Rotters’ and Stammers’ feelings toward one another, at present, they all waited for the same thing. And as the sun rose to its highest point just above the Crown’s canopies, the gathered Realm welcomed their Immortal King into their midst.

  It started as a distant—not quite a rumbling—but a squelching sound. With only a handful of reference points to pull from, Serac’s mind immediately went to Renate, she of the pink tree-frog frame and sticky webbed feet. But for a thing to be making this sound while far away enough to be out of view… just how giant must its webbed feet be?

  Serac got her answer soon enough. The treeline just above the Netherpool broke, along with an eruption of powdery snow. Then the creature in question revealed itself, poking out first its enormous head then its entire glistening body, as the squelches grew louder and ever more frenetic.

  It was a giant salamander, resplendent in its markings of gold and royal-blue, and large enough to span several roots as well as the rivers in between. Upon its broad, amphibian head sat a ‘laurel’ fashioned from whole trees and their preserved leaves, evergreen despite the season. Serac took special note of the salamander’s eyes, which were wide-set, round, and adorably small compared to its head and body. Then, as a gawking Rakshasa focused on this impossible creature’s eyes, she soon became aware of its Pathsighted label:

  [ZEALOUS Steed: GULLOYNE—the Fjordstrider]

  And what would be a Steed without its rider—or, in this case, a whole platoon of riders? King Tyr and Queen Loha served as the vanguard, snugly nestled within the salamander’s laurel. Upon Gulloyne’s ridged back sat a host of uniformed Yakshas in all sizes and typings, with many of their silhouettes broken up by an assortment of tools and weapons.

  That must be the Kronvakt I’ve heard so much about, Serac stopped gawking for long enough to muse. They better be worth the hype… or at least not be assholes like some of the other Yakshas I’ve met here.

  Then, it was right back to gawking. Because Serac’s eyes quickly found the next object of her intense fascination. Because one Yaksha among the Kronvakt stood out, not only for his solitary position upon the nape of Gulloyne’s neck (and therefore spearheading the rest of his regiment), but also for the fact that he wasn’t a Yaksha at all—at least not the kind Serac knew about.

  The man was tall and muscular, but more in the mold of a Zacarias Borges-Juventus rather than a Lars Tomasen. Despite his considerable stature, his weapon loomed larger still: a bejeweled fishing spear with barbed ends. Even amidst a group of powerful Wayfarers, he displayed a confidence and regal bearing that was instantly noticeable. And despite the frigid climate (and again, very different from the rest of his armor-clad comrades), he was completely naked from the waist up, which only made it easier for a gawking Rakshasa to discern his ‘unique’ features.

  His skin was coarse and of a strange hue somewhere between cinnabar and sun-faded vermilion. A prominent birth mark incorporated the left side of his chest and much of the adjoining arm, characterized by scales of polished basalt. And upon his forehead, framed by a windswept mane of shoulder-length ash-gray hair, grew a pair of onyx horns.

  [Designation: RATHOR TYRSEN]

  [Wayfarer Race: YAKSHA-RAKSHASA (mixed)]

  [Karmic Level: 70]

  [Liminal Karma: 25,720 ?]

  [ZEALOUS Instrument: FURNACE]

  [Auxiliary: GUNGNIR]

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