“Just like with Narusil,” I noted and began looking through the bands of my sigil trying to decipher which of my matrons was with child.
“Forgive me, but… am I understanding correctly that within the roughly two weeks you have been here, you have managed to impregnate TWO matrons?” Opheira queried.
“Yes…” The line that had been thickened was a chain of suns and stars, each bound by a light ray to the next. The light was stronger now, and the stars and suns were more pronounced and dynamic. “Heilantu… Heilantu is carrying my second child.”
It was surreal to me. I knew it was true, but it didn’t feel real, and I doubted it would feel real until I held the child in my arms. I still could hardly believe Narusil was pregnant, and now Heilantu was as well. It was also crazy to me that they both would know about their baby daddy knocking the other up and celebrating that fact.
“Impressive…” noted Opheira, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.
There was a buzz of energy among the excited matrons. I could tell the three remaining virgins were anxious to lose that title, but there was work to be done that wasn’t between their legs that would have to come first.
There were seven major hives of the kanegs, and from what I understood, their territories were large enough that covered the entirety of the plains. Any smaller hives that tried to pop up would be immediately detected and exterminated by the current hives, or so they had explained. I still wasn’t even clear on what a kaneg was. From the sounds of it, it was some sort of enormous insect. They spent most of their time digging through the earth, moving enough earth that it aerated the land, hence they couldn’t just be exterminated entirely, and they served the role of the apex predator on the plains. Unfortunately, where more apex predators would rein in their reproduction to match the supply of food, kanegs would supply their queen with as much food as they could and she would continue to lay eggs until they all were on the verge of starvation, then she would eat as many members of her hive as possible, store a load of sperm from a drone, and move on to the next fertile nesting ground before repeating the process.
During our discussion the previous day, Ohpeira and a few of the other wild elves had given their input on IF I could kill the creatures and destroy enough of the hives, which ones should be destroyed, and which ones should simply be culled until their population was in the acceptable ranges.
I couldn’t tell if it was just solid reasoning or an attempt at gaining an advantage in the politics of the Hratha, but the nearest hive was determined to be best eliminated.
“It’ll take you two days to reach there on foot,” Opheira informed us. “If you are to succeed, you’ll need to do better. Can you ride?”
Now, I wasn’t much of a horseman, but I’d ridden a few times. It wasn’t too bad. I thought I might be okay, and explained my brief experiences with horses to the elder. To my horror, her response was, “What’s a horse?”
And that was how I found out that if horses existed here in Elendel, they weren’t anywhere near these plains and the mounted warriors had never even heard of them.
“If you don’t ride horses… what do you ride?” I asked.
Moments later, I walked into the ‘stables’ of the Vorith, as I learned this Hratha was named. And let me just say, Irsivir the giant wolf was the most normal thing here. It seemed the Vorith rode primarily one of three creatures into battle. Their warriors, like Brahim, would ride enormous creatures somewhere between a Komodo dragon and an actual dragon, called a grass drake. Their scouts rode enormous felines called friror, reminding me most of a leopard, but these black-furred cats were bigger even than pictures I’d seen of ligers, which were the size of horses. The final mounts were reserved for the mages and priests, and they were enormous white and gold birds of prey, like an eagle, called hiersver, but standing on the ground it had to look down to look me in the eye.
I quickly learned a lot about each of these types of creatures on Elendel.
While the drakes were considered draconic, they were not technically ‘dragons’. There were five broad categories of dragons. The first category, which claimed the title ‘dragons’, I was informed, was highly intelligent, winged, and four-legged creatures with a tail that had a level of verging on being prehensile, and some of them were prehensile with their tails. All these types of dragons had the ability to breathe out some kind of dangerous substance, be it flame, ice, acid, or some other kind of danger, like lightning. The next type of draconic creatures were the other highly intelligent dragons, known as the amphithere, they had long serpentine bodies with no limbs except for two or four wings, depending on the species, which they used to fly. Amphithere and dragons both used magic, and many types, but not all, of the amphithere could use breath attacks like a dragon. Wyverns were the next type of dragon-like creatures and were the next most intelligent, but the gap in intelligence was huge. Wyverns had two or four sets of wings and two legs, and the majority of species of wyverns had poisonous barbs or stingers on their tails. Wyverns and Drakes were the only types smart enough to be domesticated while not being so smart as to be impossible to domesticate. Drakes were what a draconic creature was called if it had four legs and no wings, and was the biggest category of draconic creatures. And finally, we had wyrms, ranging from the smallest to the largest, and while some could claim basic intelligence, the vast majority were too stupid to even be domesticated, being slaves to their vast hunger. Wyrms were draconic creatures with no limbs or any kind, arms, legs, or wings, and while some could utilize magical means to fly, most were landbound.
When it came to big cats, on Earth, Lions and Tigers were the biggest natural cats. Friror made them look like house pets, and I was quickly informed that Friror wasn’t even the largest of the big cats of Elendel. Nor was it considered strange to the elves that the friror fur changed shades as the light in the room reacted with their fur.
“It helps them blend as they travel through shadows.” Our Wild Elf guide explained as she scratched the giant murder kitten under its chin.
“Travel through the shadows? Oh, so they like to remain unseen?” I scrambled, this was a lot of information and it was kinda overwhelming.
“No, do your cats not leap through the channel of shadows, entering one shadow and leaving another?” The guide asked.
I blinked, “What?”
Tavorwen smiled. “They teleport, using the plane of shadows as a path for quick and relatively easy travel. I understand they carry their riders with them.”
“Of course!” The guide confirmed. “Once a friror has claimed you, they are difficult to train not to constantly follow you. They would never leave their rider behind.”
Last, were the birds, the hiersver.
“They are the most intelligent of our partners.” The guide explained. “Treat a hiersver as a pet or tool and it’ll drop you flat on your back if it leaves the ground at all.”
With some trepidation, I followed their example and pet the great bird I was led to. The feathers were soft and smooth but were as hot as a hand warmer.
“Is it okay being that hot?” I worried.
“Oh yes, hiersver are distant relatives of the phoenix, and while not constantly cloaked in flames, they are linked to the plane of fire, just as the phoenixes are. The heat they produce keeps them, as well as anyone riding them, warm no matter how high in the frozen sky they rise.” The guide assured me.
“Some of the other Hratha have other creatures they ride, but these are the partnerships we have cultivated,” Opheira stated. “I would ask which you would take for a partner, but given that you want to leave today, we’ll have to settle for which partner will accept you.”
The Wild Elves had me hand the majority of my weapons to my matrons and began presenting me to the now curious creatures.
While the eagle-like hiersver allowed me to pet them, after the fifth one continued to stare at me, the guide led me over to the feline friror. The big cats were clearly curious, and once it was clear that they were allowed to investigate, a dozen of the large cats seemed to materialize around me in the darkness, sniffing at me.
“That is more promising.” The guide stated. “If a friror will take you, that may be best. Drakes are less selective when it comes to their rider… but your matrons said you mostly fight at a distance. Yes? Well, Drakes prefer to be close to their prey.”
I have to admit, my butthole was clenched pretty tight as these probably thousand-pound coiled springs of feline death sniffed at my hands and body. Several wandered off, only to be replaced by new gigantic cats.
“How many of these are there?” I gasped as what must have been the thirtieth cat materialized in the shadows.
“Well, we had three hundred friror riders at our peak before the Massacre.” The guide noted. “Most frirors will retreat when their rider is slain, so most of them survived the battle. They are short-lived, however, only living around two hundred years, but we’ve managed to keep their population up so that if we adopted the remains of another hratha, we’d have partners for them, so there are just over two hundred of them.
It was then that I noticed the first of the… kittens?… sniffing my shins. The miniature frirors were the size of a medium dog but had the proportions of a young cat, and once one of these baby frirors sniffed me and retreated the rest seemed okay to come investigate.
As I was staring down at the babies at my feet, something large pressed into my back, nearly knocking me over.
“Jauna has claimed you!” My guide celebrated.
I turned and realized the great cat was rubbing its head on my back, like a cat scratching its chin on your leg. Surprisingly, once the friror started rubbing on me like that, the rest of the cats seemed to lose interest and began to disperse.
“What just happened?” I gasped.
“Jauna has marked you with her scent.” The guide explained. “Unless another friror wishes to fight her for you, she has claimed you.”
“Marked me with… is there a way to get the scent off?” I asked.
“Well, if Jauna decides she doesn’t like you, she’ll remove it herself.” The Wild Elf informed me.
“And how does she do that?” I sighed.
“The friror’s urine will remove the scent.”