39. Festivalgoers (Patreon)

A/N: I've been a day late these last two uploads--sorry about that. I've been swamped in midterms, to my chagrin... it's been a very hectic week. But things should be back to normal now!

In the Outskirts of the Western Desert, it never rained. The only source of water came from the Sinkholes, and they were spaced too far apart. The land stretched on for miles, all sheer black dunes and sheer white bones, nary a cactus in sight. It was for this same reason that most every Sinkhole was dominated by Spirit Beasts; the ones humans had managed to convert to Oases, located in the center of the Western Desert, were all in a certain radius of each other—a league, a safety net of their own kind. But out here, Beasts reigned.

The Outskirts were more scarcely populated than the rest of the Desert. Only two dozen lesser Tribes called this zone home. All of them steered clear of the Outskirts’ major beasts, eking out timid lives in the shadows of bigger Beasts.

All except one Clan. The only major tribe among them.

From the harshest of environments came the toughest of people. The Narong Clan held a strong claim as the Desert’s most brutal. One would know a clan member by sight: their skin shone like metals, slicked with light and hard to the touch. They treated their skin like metals too; the martial art they cultivated tempered them with other resilient substances, sharpening bone with bone.

On the morning before they set out for the Festival, two hundred youngsters were arrayed in a field of flat sand. It had been the Narong’s for centuries; major clans typically only migrated once or twice a year, and only to set locations. This one was an ancestral ground. It was studded with tall bones which jutted like tree-trunks out of the sands: they were arrayed in man-made formation, spaced evenly apart, one to a man.

At the front of the formation of men and bone was a severe-looking, bearded Elder. Every ten seconds he barked out a phrase.

The warriors kicked out in sync. Two hundred voices yelled out; two hundred shins collided full-force with pillars of bone, cracking sharply. They pulled back as one, ready for another set, not a scratch on them. The majority of them were in the upper echelons of Origin. The few at the front ranged into Vigor. Each of them seemed carved of livid stone: not a shred of fat adorned their bodies.

One man at the front stood apart from the rest. He was not the tallest, nor the most muscled, but he had an aura about him unlike everyone else: so sharp that just looking at him might cut you. Every inch of him was tempered to a fine shine; his elbows and knees were polished like knives, honed down to sharp points. Others took whetstones to knives. He used them to polish off every ordinary curve.

When the Narong had been assaulted by their own Ugoc Shaman, he’d been the one to cut him out of the sky.

Young Master Narong, pride of the Narong Tribe, looked out at the rest of his warriors and nodded.

“Narong!” He cried out, voice low and clear. “We march for the Festival tonight!”

He was answered by a thunderous round of cheers and clashing limbs.

***

There was only one place in all of the Izod Desert where it snowed. High, high up on a sandstone formation called the Izod Plateau, stretching hundreds of miles across. The climb up to its lofty heights was treacherous. To live there was even more so; it was the site of one large Sinkhole, and none else. The fighting among Spirit Beasts often devolved to pure chaos.

Up here, the temperature dropped far past freezing in the winters. Like with the Narong, men that lived here were molded by their climes—made strong by them. The major tribe which ruled these parts were the Yalta. None else dared brave these heights.

On one tall cliff at the Far East of the Plateau stood three men laden in heavy furs and scaled boots; each was an upper echelon of the Yalta tribe. With severe expressions they watched the snowy plains below, where a man did battle with an adult Wyrm.

The Wyrm towered four men tall and was flush with the vigor of its namesake realm. It bore its massive body upon its foe, mounds of muscle bulging, straining against its flesh. Such a squeeze would’ve reduced the most powerful of Origin Realm fighters to meat paste; even Vigor combatants risked death.

But a closer inspection would’ve revealed that this wasn’t a crushing at all. The Wyrm squeezed with all its tons upon tons of muscle, to no avail. It met a total resistance. This was a wrestling match—and it was held to a stalemate.

Then, slowly, its coils were pried back. Stretched away. A sphere of pulsing qi made its presence known at the center of the squeeze, shoving back with equal fury.

At the center of it was a man, but the term was almost inaccurate. He seemed like a creature of a different species; eight feet of sheer well-corded muscle, qi blazing along each inch of limb. A fearsome bloodline gushed through his veins. He wore his impressive set of muscles like a suit of armor; he set his body against the Wyrm’s, going strength-for-strength. He was winning.

The Wyrm recoiled as it felt itself overcome. Its eyes were wide with shock; likely it’d never been overpowered once in its long, violent life. Failure brought with it a fresh sense of fear. It gave a shuddering cry.

The men on the cliff nodded in satisfaction.

“Good enough?” grunted one.

“It’ll do,” said another.

The third—the tallest and most decorated of them all—gave a curt nod. An undercurrent of knotted power emanated from him, suppressing every aura around him. The other two inclined their heads in clear deference.

They leapt as one from their posts, blasting off into the skies. Their bodies made wide parabolas in the air; after several seconds they landed feet from the spectacle in a flash of snow.

“It’s time, Young Master,” intoned one.

The man’s eyes snapped open. His eyes locked on the speaker even as he held back the Wyrm with his bare hands, wreathed in pure-white qi. It seemed to take not even the slightest effort. “So soon?”

The leader stepped up. “Training is done. We leave for the Festival at dawn. Stop playing with your food and finish it,” he snapped.

The Young Master nodded his massive head once. It took three full seconds for the meaty slab of a neck to bend down, then bend back up all the way.

Then he leapt out of the bind in one fluid motion. The Wyrm’s eyes tracked him as he went, bloodshot; he somersaulted to a standing pose. Every movement was shocking: despite his massive stature he seemed to control his body down to the muscle fibers. There was not so much as a wasted twitch in the motion. A body that big should not have been able to move like that. It seemed an affront to physics.

The Wyrm, meanwhile, darted its eyes between the three men and the Young Master. Slowly it was coming to the realization that—despite its longstanding stature as a ruler of the Desert—in present company it was outmatched. It now assumed the posture of a caged animal, spring-loaded, hunched in, quivering with pent-up manic energy.

Then the Young Master sprung forth into a diving tackle, qi roaring to his fingertips.

He finished off the beast with vicious efficiency. Speed. Timing. Accuracy. He was an automaton of combat; for the next minute the Wyrm was lifted, thrown, tossed, pulverized—almost like it wasn’t a high-Tier beast with a full-fledged late Vigor base to boot. It was more a dissection than a beatdown. There was something clinical about the way it happened: like a doctor pinning down a patient by unstoppable force, then carving out its innards with prejudice.

The Young Master soon stepped over, leaving a steaming corpse in the snow, and bowed. His face betrayed not a hint of satisfaction.

The leader said only one thing.

“Are you ready?”

The Young Master nodded once more. “I will do you proud, father,” he rumbled.

“Remember what you are,” said the leader. His eyes were intense blue orbs. “I have not trained you to be the best of the Tribe. I’ve not trained you to be the best of even the Tribes. You are the best of all youths in all of Izod!”

The Young Master nodded curtly. The same motion, head up, head down.

“Soon, you shall have a chance to prove it.”

***

In another corner of the Izod Desert, a small tribe of stragglers—misfits thrown out by their own tribes or Oases—formed their own ragtag bunch of fifty. Their Chief was a swashbuckling lad of seventeen. But his youth was no measure of his wisdom. Underneath a carefree temperament lay a pragmatist. There were certain measures misfits needed, he knew—certain risks that people like him had to take to keep up with big-name clans. Among them were drinking raw Beasts’ blood or cycling self-destructive Techniques. He’d even gotten his hands on an art of a darker, more sinister variety; this art he’d happened upon by sheer chance. It was the one thing which kept his Tribe alive in this cruel desert. It drew power from forbidden sources in other Realms…

On his forehead he’d gained a new mark: a golden infinity.

Weeks ago he’d intercepted a courier. It was then that he heard of a marvelous Festival, a gathering of all tribes, and something juicier besides.

At this Festival, it was rumored, the participants of a grand Tournament would be decided. A Tournament joint-hosted by all the Oases, a Tournament the likes the Desert had never seen.

It was a chance the Chief could never pass up. He, too, ambled his way over to the Festival, his heart full of hope, joy, and other such flammable emotions.

***

This was the case all across the desert. Tribes of all sizes and bents headed to one gathering point as though falling down a gravity well. A merchant tribe traveling from Oasis to Oasis, selling goods; a tribe whose forte was archery, snipers of the desert; a tribe of warrior-women which selected only the most fit men as mates; a hundred tribes of warrior men thirsting for glory and treasure; and many, many more all converged on one point.

It was the Midsummer Festival, the most momentous occasion of the year for all the Desert’s tribes even in ordinary years. It was a place for trade, and merriment, and joy, true, but also a place of demonstration. Valor. Martial prowess. A place where names were made famous and untold prizes were won.

This year, its stakes would prove higher than ever.