Hyperion Evergrowing

Over a thousand refugees lived on the western hill with double that in the valley below. At first it had been only a handful, a few families from an overrun village, then more from a town that had partially burnt down. Some big coastal city had been sacked, a casualty of the distant war rumbling to the south, and then the trickle of disheveled and weary humanity arriving at Far-Reach had turned into a flood.

Ram grumbled under his breath as he chewed a stalk of grain. The stuff could be processed into bread, but he preferred it raw, something likely caused by his less than human origins. The old goat turned man put a second stalk into his mouth, grinding it between his molars as he contemplated, for the third time that week, going on a massacre.

He wouldn’t do it, of course. Not after it was his decision to let the outsiders live on the outskirts of Far-Reach, but he couldn’t help himself from fantasising about blowing down the rickety wooden houses so he wouldn’t have to hear their occupants complaining about everything and anything constantly. Seriously, teach a human how to not get themselves killed and they’ll start whining about the weather or the economy or the fact that their friends and family had been killed in senseless violence.

“Damn annoying.” Ram muttered, swallowing the stalks of wheat.

“Uh, sir?”

“It’s annoying, don’t make me repeat myself, kid. Hate that.”

“I… I know.” The other man said, a snivelling cringing thing wrapped in a stained brown robe. “You were just silent for two hours, so I didn’t expect you to say anything.”

“You’ve been waiting for two hours?” Ram asked, surprised. “I thought you pissed off ages ago.”

“Patience is a virtue I have cultivated.” He said, dipping his head. “If I must wait a day or a week to help those in need, then by the grace of the gods, I will do so.”

“W-what?”

“Name?” He sighed. Honestly, some people couldn’t take a hint if it hit them between the eyes.

“S-sir, I’m Nazan, I told you that already. Twice.”

“I forgot.” Ram said, waving dismissively. “And it’s a terrible name, so I’m not going to remember. I’m going to call you ‘Priest’ from now on. Easier to remember.”

“I… I will bear that name with pride, honoured patriarch who knows infinite benevolence.”

Honoured patriarch who knows infinite whatevers, I like the sound of that. Ram thought, rubbing his chin. “Yes, yes. Priest, you may compliment me more.”

Wind picked up, rustling the rags Ram wore and making his mane of fluffy white hair billow behind him. He ran his fingers through the cloud-stuff he was sitting on, making electricity dance between each, darkening the platform slightly as power built.

“Priest, I do not like the look of that one.” He said, pointing down at one of the newly built homes.

Priest shuffled slightly closer to the edge of the cloud and squinted down at the scores of buildings dotting the hill. “I am not sure which one you are referring to.”

“That one.” Ram repeated, doing nothing to help the human with his deficient eyesight. “It is too tall.”

“I thought all the homes built on that hill were only a single story?”

“What do stories have to do with anything?”

The priest was silent for several moments. “Nothing, sorry venerable one. I see now, and completely agree.”

“Good.” Ram grunted, pulling another stalk of grain out of his pocket.

Priest shifted uncomfortably from side to side, wrapping his robes tightly around him as he shivered from the cold of being so high up. “Is… is the honourable sir willing to hear out my request yet.”

Ram didn’t reply for over a minute, then he nodded slightly. Priest jumped on the opportunity and started rambling about several things Ram couldn’t care less about. Something something supplies, something something tension, something sick.

“- so I propose an offer to allow those who are suffering from illness direct exposure to the tree, in exchange for services rendered.”

“Always the damn tree.” Ram grumbled. “Tree this, tree that. Please let us touch it, please let us take a stick or carve our names into the trunk. None of you deserve it. If the… man who planted it knew what you sickoes were doing to it he would…” He wasn’t sure what Leif would do. Whatever it was, it probably wouldn’t be to wipe out an entire town. Ram sighed, which the human took as an indicator to speak.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“It may be true that in the past some have shown… less than adequate respect towards the great tree.” Priest conceded. “But that doesn’t change the fact that proximity to it will change lives for the better. I hope that you did not accept these people into Far-Reach, only to leave them to suffer and die?”

Ram gave the human his most withering stare. To his credit, the man didn’t flinch, instead his expression firmed and his fists clenched. Ram snorted, then reached forward and flicked him in the forehead. Priest howled and rolled away, kicking up cloud-stuff as he did so, cursing several gods that Ram was only somewhat sure actually existed.

“Fine. I’ll mention it to my kids later, they’ll finalise things.”

“That… that is wonderful news.” Priest said, his expression brightening as he awkwardly stumbled to his feet.

“Yes.”

“T-thank you.”

“Indeed.”

“May… May I please go now?”

Ram frowned, turning to look down at the man. “Just leave.”

“With respect, I would die from the fall. It’s why I didn’t leave back when you were ignoring me.”

The goat leaned over the side of the cloud, making Priest flinch forward as if to grab him. “Did you forget I can fly?” He asked.

“Maybe…” The human mumbled sheepishly.

Ram chuckled, a low, rumbling sound, and the cloud below his feet rumbled with him. Priest’s eyes widened, then he began to laugh as well, though his sounded at least two octaves higher and slightly manic.

“Even if I couldn’t. The fall would not harm me. It would take-” He cut off, head snapping towards the east. Ram’s perception accelerated as he pushed outwards with a field of nearly invisible energy, the air warping, churning, spinning away from him to reveal whatever it passed over and relay information back to him directly.

A form shimmered some twenty metres off to the side, and a form was revealed hovering in mid air, dark tassels from her tight fitting robes rippling in the wind. It was a human woman with dark hair and piercing green eyes that were as sharp as the halo of serrated daggers that hung over her head. She stepped against the air to push herself away as a whip of lightning cracked into the place she had just been.

“Try it, human.” Ram growled, waving a hand in Priest’s direction as lightning crackled between his horns. A hole opened up beneath the man’s feet, and he fell screaming out of the sky. His fall would be buffeted at the last moment. Probably.

The woman tilted her head to the side, her slowly spinning halo of blades orienting themselves to point down at his heart. She circled him, form occasionally flickering and reappearing. He didn’t recognise her, though that was perhaps less of an indicator of her being a stranger to him than it should be, most humans looked the same after all. But Ram liked to think that he would have noticed if somebody this powerful had been living under his nose.

Though now that he considered it, he hadn’t noticed her until she had gotten within striking distance, her slightly hostile presence brushing up against the edge of his aura. Twenty metres was nothing, the gap between them could be closed within a blink. But neither moved, tension building. “What is this, beast? Answer me true, I am a gold ranked adventurer of the Twin-Heart guild.” She finally said, her whisper quiet words carried to his ears.

Ram raised an eyebrow. He had never heard of this supposed guild, but that wasn’t surprising with how limited his exposure to human society had been. “It’s a cloud. It may not look like it, but it's actually made of water.” It had been a world shattering revelation when he had finally figured that one out. It had been cold too.

The human drew her lips into a line and narrowed her eyes. “Not what I meant.”

Ram stared at her, and she stared back. For over a minute they locked gazes, two predators sizing each other up. Finally, cautiously, Ram opened his mouth again. “You mean the houses?”

She nodded stiffly.

The old goat shrugged. “I am not human. You would know more about them than I.”

“Why are they here?” She snapped.

“Because people like you built them. I’m just a goat, lady.” Ram replied, growing confused. The human, for her part, looked equally lost for words.

She let out an annoyed sounding chirp, then her halo of daggers pointed upwards. “Why is there a settlement here? I thought this was past the imperial cordon?”

“Didn’t that fall apart?” Ram asked after a few moments to recall exactly what that meant, scratching the side of his neck now that the possibility of a fight was largely fading. “Because of the war?”

“War?”

“Yes, the one you humans are fighting.”

She just blinked once, half turning to look south. “Oh. Oh no. So these are refugees?”

“Yes. Be grateful that I part with such valuable information so easily.” Ram grumbled. Before he had finished speaking she was gone, a dark streak carving down towards the ground. A heartbeat after the human had landed, she was gone, her form blurring.

Ram clicked his tongue. He had been looking forward to the fight. It wasn’t every day you encountered a human above level one hundred. He wondered who she was, then decided that now that she had gone it didn’t matter. The goat pulled a bottle of booze from his pocket and took a swig. Every day was different down here, he regretted spending so much time alone on that mountain.

He let himself drop, noticing a crowd of humans surrounding a man who had fallen face first into a field of barely sprouting somethings. They parted as he landed beside the figure, his worn boots sinking over an inch into the worked soil. Ram reached down and grabbed Priest by the back of his collar, then hauled him up to sling him over his shoulder. He kicked off with a blast of wind, heading straight for Leif’s now quite large tree. He would need to leave the human under its canopy for a few days to heal all the broken bones.

The group of kids seated cross legged next to the wide trunk watched with wide eyes as he dumped Priest’s unconscious and bleeding body to the ground. He waved at the class, some were his descendants, most weren’t, and one was a prim looking deer. “Keep this one safe for me would you.” He told them, then blasted off before the old woman with iridescent grey hair could yell at him for interrupting her lesson.

He was bored, and the near fight from earlier had awoken instincts that he usually kept buried. Time to go kill something. Preferably something that could fight back. He should check to see if those ice elementals were reconstituting.