The ruins of Pelum were brimming with renewed activity. A human's presence had not only brought magic but a fervor like no other onto hunters and crafters alike.
But I had seen enough.
The sphere between my hands distorted one last time before vanishing for good. I let the crackling remnants dissipate, then got up. All around me the frozen cave had turned back to dry rock. Mad writings etched all around and up to my feet.
This place was exhausted. While the human toyed with the realm, I would find a new spot and resume my study.
"Calisle."
The wyvern answered me almost immediately: "So much time spent and your lamb hasn't given us even a tremor. Why bother? If it hasn't happened until now, it won't happen until the very end. Let us rest until then."
He wasn't wrong.
Our best odds of observing the human's tie to their haven, that uncanny spell, was either early on when abundant mana magnified everything, or at its trail once the human became desperate.
Of course, there were other options. Like dissecting him or letting the skeletal wyvern take him over. But that beast was wise enough to not mention them.
I had walked out of the tunnels and to the peak. Dawn stretched out, in time and space, unable to keep up with the human aura afar. To think the ripples of his might washed all the way here was always a bit humbling.
And there was the beast, clinging to the mountain side, his skull at my height.
He created his own sphere in which I hopped and let him put it in his maw. This to him was agony, but like me, and for so long, he had probably never even once cared about pain.
We slid midway through into anti-magic, on the other side of the realm where he could flow more easily. Just as the magical sphere burned him, anti-magic was wrecking me. But this was by far the fastest way to travel that was left.
Given the human's decisions, I knew where to go next.
The last of him was at Pelum where he had just vanquished a horde, only to find out they were nothing but a ragtag of survivors that, themselves, had fled there after losing the trial of the horde. In other words, becoming the hunted for being too weak.
So they had crossed the desert to Pelum, and so the human wanted to travel back to that place.
While we traveled, he was busy getting the monsters of the Shards, now joined by his newfound friends, to build a few crafts for that voyage.
They used the bones of the ancients beasts for keels and and beams, and the algae as planks. At the stone piers a half-dozen such boats were taking shapes when I had last looked.
He would waste two to three days on this meaningless task.
Leaving him with sixteen or so to live.
When we emerged, it was dusk. A magical dusk that also stretched, refusing to pass to night.
The magical sphere broke and I jumped off on the stone ruins of a park. The wyvern had emerged at a canal, climbed its wall and let me go near the first floors of a pyramid.
This was Chalt. If the human was looking for a horde, I expected him to sail here. Three tall towers would welcome him and offer ample amounts of creatures to slay for his righteous spirit. Burning piles of beasts in the distance were testament of that fact.
"How pitiful the realm has become." The wyvern lamented, its sole wing before its skull. "The wildest beasts, reduced to mere cavemen. They think themselves savage while catering to the human ways. No less broken than the others."
"You say that, having transported a man-made golem."
He looked at me with his empty orbits.
"And you, the finest assassin, are aiding a lowly wyvern to take down your old masters. I wish you could let down the mask, so that not even words would be needed for us to enjoy the moment."
For as lofty the thoughts, I had more important preoccupations.
He rose up, let magic break his body apart and disappeared in a cloud of dust that eroded the canal's side into a devoured slope. I had already turned away to use earthworks and search for a new place to hide.
The tall towers of Chalt were deserted, but felt too exposed and, once the human came ashore, risked brimming with life again. I turned to the underground instead.
There, deep in crumbled tunnels of old, away from the hordes and even the scavengers, I found a small room where I sat. There was nowhere near enough mana to work but the human would come soon enough. For now, I would only spy on him some more.
He was... in the middle of the desert.
No boat in sight, he and his monster companions formed only a file that was marching blind in the sands.
Okay, time magic.
Back to Pelum where the boats were being built, a new movement had left most of them unfinished. The reason was simple: the horde didn't want to leave anymore.
Having been accepted in the Shards, among peaceful beasts they had sworn their ways away, killing and magic alike, and grown fur on their backs.
So when it came time to depart, only two boats were needed, hardly full, out of the near dozen they had planned. But the human, never deterred, still insisted to go and what few wanted to follow had embarked with him.
First among them was his lizard companion who had by now learned to fend for himself. Then came the few from the horde.
"What about you?" The teenage human had asked a hare.
The horned beast had been tempted, but declined. Per his words, he saw no path in a man's shadow and had taken to his role as sheriff among the Shards. He secretly hoped for harder times, when magic would run out and he would fend for his life.
"Watch out, Piaf!" The teenager mocked. "We might start to appreciate each other!"
"Perish the thought."
With that, the two boats had left the Shards and crossed into the dead land. Soon enough nothing had remained around them but a flat horizon.
For the monsters around him, this was the strangest experience. All around them the sand reflected the sunlight and sandfishes emerged on occasion. For the human this all felt normal, so he spent that time just meditating.
Then, a sandstorm had caught them.
A... sandstorm?
I let go of the time spell for a moment. How could there be a sandstorm in the dry desert?! That, to my knowledge, had never happened. A ritual? A trap? But when I brought it back, there was no trace but that of a natural phenomenon.
So, baffingly, the boats had fallen victim to a sandstorm. One had simply been lost into it and disappeared. The other had eventually capsized and the survivors held behind its hull until the storm had passed.
After that, a confident human had revived their hopes and pushed the group to keep going.
Without any bearing nor direction they had followed his lead and endured the drought. Except there was no drought. The human alone was a whole moving city of magic, yet they acted as if in strife, suffering through it all.
Time magic waned. Here they were now. Through the human's amber pendant I could see their sudden joy as the landscape broke and specks of the three towers of Chalt emerged afar.
"We made it!" An orc rejoiced.
"Is this really the towers?" Another monster was shocked. "It must be a mirage!"
"Only one way to find out!"
And the human had them press the pace. They would still spend most of the night until reaching the ruins but that hardly mattered to them.
This conjunction of events, night and a lack of boats combined, had them approach undetected. The creatures of Chalt, of course, could feel the influx of mana that was already reshaping the ruins. But they could not tell the direction.
Beasts that could detect and track mana were long extinct.
As for the group, there were thirteen of them in total, with the human and his hunched lizard. They had come back to a land of a thousand predators.
Dozens of bonfires burned on the ground, producing small lights that fought with the hundreds of stars above. Their smoke as well, struggling to rise, was filled with burning embers.
"Nzinga," the hunched lizard asked, "what do we do now? This is the stench of death, those monsters won't want to talk."
"Simple!" He rubbed his fist. "We punch them until they do!"
As they approached even the teenager could hear the screams and the chants of creatures drunk on black blood. It was only getting him more excited.
They had reached a ramp that had once probably been a road and from there climbed stairs to some gardens.
The creeping roots of orvals greeted them there. Ravenous plants sought to trap them but were still deprived themselves against an organized group. They made short work of that threat, scouted the surroundings and made camp.
Which was to say they sat there among the crumbled statues and altars.
But before they got comfortable, and as the human was about to start his meditation, drums played all over the ruins.
They weren't found, no, but the ruins had its own event. The horde needed to hunt even itself to keep going. So as the morning approached they were rising from their pits and lairs to raid once again. An entire city awoke.
Near the garden was a passageway, old drain gate from which groups of orcs emerged, covered in scars and body paint. Their weapons bore iron blades, iron heads and spikes.
They looked enraged, willing to kill each other but guided by the drums to move further.
Rather than sweep the gardens, those boarish monsters followed the stone drain to join more of their kin along with greyhounds and copperheads whose chains forced them to obey.
"The whole horde is moving!" A felog panicked. "This will be a day of massacre!"
"Well, no time like the present!"
The human got up, detached his cheetah cape and dropped the mask. He even removed the mane, stretched his neck and arms.
I finally noticed them. Under the loosely held jerkin he wore, and stretching past, his chest bore two circles tattooed on one side, with patterns stretching from them like stems, running to his neck and shoulders and equally toward his belly.
Was that this human's system? It looked more like the training paints the humans of old used for their growth, alongside spirit animals.
"Eh, Copain!" He called his lizard friend. "Watch over the group for me! It may take some time, I have a whole army to introduce myself to!"
They watched him get out of the crumbled debris and pillars, walk up toward the drain where the orcs saw him approach. They stopped and roared, and roars answered them around.
"Hey pals! I'm Nzinga! Nzinga the kitten-buster! I don't suppose you guys care about saving the realm!"
They bellowed in response. The beasts were slamming their chests, chomping at the bit, hungry for a signal to attack.
"Alright, I'll make you!"
The signal came. The beasts charged, only to be met by one jab that hit two of them and sent them rolling on the stone.
Far from deterred, they threw themselves at him. Once more the human met them without bothering to move, punching them as they came and watching them falter.
And watching them struggle to get back up.
The boars would rip their own arm to shake off the stun and get up. Soon the blades were skimming him too close for comfort.
At that moment his entire reading of the fight flipped. He dodged, jumped to the side and then lunged to pierce a beast's chest in one strike. And with his arm covered with black blood he snatched his foe's sword to turn it on the furious horde.
It was on.