Chapter 142: Interlude: Ram’s Retirement

Chapter 142: Interlude: Ram’s Retirement

Ram didn’t like cities. He didn’t like towns either, or villages for that matter. Sure, he’d spent much of his early, unintelligent life on the outskirts of northern settlements in between the times he roamed the rugged snow-capped mountains, but he had never grown to appreciate them. But watching one be built? Now that was interesting.

“Uhhh, revered ancestor, sir. Are you sure about this?”

“Absolutely. Have it done.”

“But... Revered ancestor, not to be rude but...”

Ram shot his descendant, a younger man perhaps in his late twenties with his best ‘I am disappointed in you’ look. He stared down at the man from his perch atop a sleeping yak, the beast having not yet realised he was there and was happily snoring away. The demikin shuffled from foot to foot, static occasionally arcing through his mane of white hair.

“Revered ancestor who is very wise. I humbly suggest that you reconsider the order to build a home in this location.”

“Why?”

“Because, honoured one, this is a vegetable field...”

“Yes, I can see that.” Ram said, raising a bushy eyebrow.

“So... if we built a home here, the elders in charge of agriculture would become upset.”

“Can you not move the field?”

“Umm, no? That would kill the crops. And we’ve already prepared the soil here for farming.”

Ram didn’t reply to that, he just gave his descendant the silent treatment. It always worked, always. The demikin, true to his genetics, just stared up at him in silence. Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty as the staring contest continued. The Yak woke up and started trotting over to where the rest of its herd were grazing. Ram didn’t move, letting the beast carry him away, never once breaking eye contact with his wide-eyed descendant.

He reached into his tattered robes and withdrew his never-ending bottle from his totally not a spatial item. He took a long, deep drink, then returned the bottle. Eventually Ram drifted far enough away that his descendant went back to work in his field. Ram grunted in amusement and elevated himself into the air with a brief effort of will. Then he kicked off nothing and shot towards the nearby stream.

The stream was a new addition to the slowly developing settlement, its existence courtesy of the slowly melting ice elemental corpses up in the north. The water was crisp and fresh, its path having been slowly ground into the land over the past few months as the stream followed the path of least resistance.

Ram knelt, scooping a handful of water and splashing his wrinkled face. Laughter came from further upstream, and the old goat glanced up to see a parade of children and animals stomping their way down the stream. They yelped and giggled in delight as they jumped in and out of the cool water, squealing as they splashed one another. Despite his best efforts to maintain a gruff expression, Ram smiled, how could he not?

He still found it surprising, even with all the time that had passed since his awakening. To see people, humans, who were related to him, not just by bonds of companionship but by blood. Intellectually he understood it, but instincts from a life he could barely remember still made him hesitate on occasion, his brain taking a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. A bunch of juvenile hogs, their bodies still bearing the stripes of youth spotted him and squealed in excitement.

They charged him through the shallow stream, splashing happily before clustering around his feet with high pitched squeals. “Well well, what do we have here?” Ram asked, loudly enough for the approaching children to hear and raising a bushy eyebrow. “It seems lunch has come to me! How lucky!”

“Grandpa no!” Came a cry from one of the children. “You can’t eat the little piggies! They’re so cute!”

“Really now?” Ram said, plucking one of the tiny hogs up out of the water and lifting its wiggling body up to his face. The hog, completely oblivious to its impending doom, grunted happily. The awakened beast’s grin became feral as he turned away from the now outraged kids, then he tucked the hog into his patchwork coat all the while making loud, fake chewing sounds. Ram looked over his shoulder, his cheeks bulging comically as his tiny descendants stared at him with wide, horrified eyes.

He snorted, and produced the hog like a magician performing a trick. The kids expressions shifted from traumatised to extremely amused in the span of a second. Ram laughed at the sight, and the laughter felt good.

===

The pale tree with crimson leaves glinted gold in the evening light. Ram slumped down beneath its canopy, watching as the demikin he called family gathered in the clearing they had created for communal events. The disconnected bluff had once been the place the clan had begun building their homes, but the walls had kept sprouting leaves and the roots spreading beneath them disturbed the foundations of the structures, both new and old.

Ram just stared at his descendant.

Olav stared back.

Over a minute passed.

“I’m not strong enough?”

“About thirty levels too low.” Ram confirmed.

“Damn.”

===

Ram watched from his position atop a slowly moving cloud as a procession of just over forty people slowly trudged across a grassy hill. The goat in human form squinted down at the strangers, the humans. They didn’t carry weapons, nor did they wear armour. If anything, they looked even more rugged than he did. And that was a carefully cultivated appearance, or so he told himself.

He had been offered a new coat as a gift from a family of hunters, but he had been too proud to accept. He definitely hadn’t been embarrassed at the display of affection, not at all. One of the humans in the rear of the group stumbled and fell, the bundle in their arms rolling down the slope for several metres. The whole procession stopped, several backtracking to assist the one who had fallen.

I don’t want to deal with this. Ram thought, static electricity crackling between his horns. I don’t want these people anywhere near my family.

His thoughts turned dark, his muscles tensed and his vision narrowed. But it was an old reaction, a tired reaction, and judging by the weakness of those below him, it was an unnecessary reaction. Ram’s sigh of defeat had enough force behind it to disperse the cloud he was standing on.

What is the world coming to? He groaned internally as he fell.

===

The new homes were built, the new people were welcomed, and life went on. There was something melancholy about the passage of time, Ram mused, of spending the long turbulent years alone, battling beast and monster in the frozen peaks of the northern mountains.

It was during the early hours of a night no different from the dozen that had come before it when the presence of the domain tree rippled, its aura pulsing across the land, expanding, growing.

It was a sudden, subtle yet overbearing change, one that couldn’t be brought about by anything other than a large increase in power. “So you did it.” Ram said, looking up at the shadowy canopy that loomed far above him. “Not too bad, kid.”

Under the night sky the crimson leaves twinkled as if reflecting gold. The two deer and the piles of hogs stirred in their sleep, some waking at the disturbance, others letting out contented sighs at the change. Two pairs of eyes blinked at him in confusion, the unspoken questions contained in their wide, animalistic gazes apparent.

“Don’t look at me, I wasn’t the one who passed through a bottleneck.” Ram grumbled.

Bam huffed at his non answer and stood, wandering off to go find food, Lani kept looking at him as if wanting Ram to expand on his statement.

“You’re the smart one, supposedly, figure it out.”

Lani looked up at the tree, and her eyes twinkled in understanding. Then she settled down and went back to sleep.

Ram leaned back, his expression distant. He could still sense the rumble of inevitable conflict coming from the south, a growing storm slowly building towards the moment it would inevitably break. The storm was wider now, broader in ways Ram wasn’t sure how to describe. He only hoped the monster that made this new life for his family possible would return before the maelstrom swallowed everything in its path. Or, maybe Leif would stumble into trouble that was completely unrelated.