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Chapter Ninety Three: A Return To Civilization

  Chapter 92: A Return To Civilization

  Soren

  The air around Soren was cold enough that water would freeze and men would succumb to frostbite. Mortal men that was, obviously he was fine. Hovering about two miles above the ground he would have expected the air up here to be warmer, due to a closer proximity to the sun. This was not the case, much as with his homeland of the Final Peaks the air this high up was brutally cold.

  Once he had returned home Soren concluded he would ask one of the scientist types about that, maybe Gwenia. She would probably know the answer offhand. He recalled some sort of lecture about it from when he was younger, but as it had not been in any way connected to his own personal growth or the nature of divinity he hadn’t really paid attention.

  Below the blonde-haired god, The Thorn Aegis sprawled in all directions. It was a towering bramble of implausibly big vines that stretched hundreds of feet into the air, bearing equally monstrous thorns. The bramble stretched for almost a thousand miles east to west, and another hundred or so miles to the south.

  Soren had done some research about the enormous plant barrier that separated the northern countries from his more civilized Southlands before he had set forth on his year-long series of pilgrimages. The gigantic vines were not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but the creation of ancient Bloom wielders who had transformed whatever the previous land here had been into one of the world’s great defensive measures.

  Even he The Lord of Creeds had to admit some awe when looking down at the sprawling forest of vines. While the northern countries had mostly failed to impress the young god he understood they were fallen shadows of what they had been in ages past. Perhaps some grand threat had arisen in the north that needed to be contained. Soren thought it possible, but less likely than the thorns had simply been created in an era when the north still hadn’t been Chaos Locked.; A time when any land mass was a shifting mystery of possibilities and dangers. Maybe in its infancy, the north had been home to more organized and thus more dangerous monster armies.

  It certainly had to be for stopping armies Soren mused as he flew closer to the huge vines. Something like this wasn’t much of an obstacle for a single powerful entity, just as it was proving to be no obstacle at all for him. Yet if someone wanted to move a larger force through The Aegis they would find themselves in a nightmarish scenario.

  The Thorn Aegis might mark his return to the south and proper civilization but Soren still had a long way to go. The Final Peaks were deep to the south and he would need to traverse the entire length of the Cerren Empire which controlled a vast majority of the massive and inaccurately named Withered Lands.

  The Cerrens were smart enough that they hadn’t actively challenged The Final Peak Alliance in living memory and had stayed out of Soren’s ascendency. As far as the young god understood they saw the rebellion he and the other Creed children had sparked as an internal matter for The Alliance to handle. That had indeed been wise of them, and Soren had repaid the move by only harming their citizenry when absolutely necessary.

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  Granted he had increased the tribute demands The Alliance placed on their neighbor state by almost triple, but the Cerran rulership understood that they continued to exist as the royalty of their powerful nation because The Final Peaks allowed them to do so.

  Even if the Empire could feasibly defeat the superior forces of the alliance it would never come to that. Should the royal family of the Cerran Empire turn on The Alliance, or even refuse too many of Soren’s demands he and his highest priests and paladins would annihilate the emperor’s line and put someone more accommodating on the throne.

  Sadly the ‘nation’ of Dunes to the south of The Final Peaks could not be controlled so easily. Tucking his wings the god allowed himself to plummet into the vine forest much as he had on his trip to Medius Island. There was a key difference though, rather than allowing his fall to complete he unfurled the flaming artifact wings that his Dealer provided and resumed his flight a few hundred feet above the forest floor.

  Soaring on updrafts that he created for himself the god had little difficulty maneuvering between the huge thorns. He inspected the ecosystem of the Aegis as he did so. Soren had done something similar when he had first crossed the impossibly huge bramble on his journey north. The life that naturally sprang up in this place that had been created artificially fascinated him just as much as it had last time.

  Strange insects grown fat on the Resonance-rich vines could be spotted making nests at the base of thorns and burrowing into the vines themselves. Further down a strange offshoot of mountain goat that had somehow made its home here traversed the vines in herds moving almost vertically. Further down still were the vines that grew directly from the ground, creating both a thorn labyrinth and a rich hunting ground for the odd tribespeople who populated the Aegis.

  Soren could see two groups of them moving about in poorly equipped hunting parties, though he hadn’t yet made out what they were seeking. These savage folk clad in goat fur and enormous beetle hide were technically subjects of the Cerran Empire, though he very much doubted they saw it that way.

  He was proven right seconds later when the hunting party he was passing over loosed a rapid and surprisingly accurate volley of arrows up at him. Surprised but not actually in any danger Soren made no effort to dodge assuming if any did manage to hit him on the fly it wouldn’t matter.

  The god’s surprise only deepened when four arrows slammed into his chest. At his rank they were no danger to him, more of a minor irritant if anything.

  Soren frowned as he felt an alien and utterly incompatible Resonance begin to flow from the arrows into him. It left him with the impression of endless sheets of ice slowly consuming the world. Frost, the tribespeople had managed to make or get their hands on arrows that were heavily infused with Frost Resonance.

  That wasn’t a major concern either, Soren’s own body would simply overwhelm the invading shards of Resonance and force it back out of the holes in his chest before closing the wounds. If somehow they were more heavily Harmonized than he realized Soren had methods for dealing with Resonance sickness. It was the entire basis for how he had seized control of the Heaven Seeker’s Guild in the first place. Soren could convert any Resonance into Life Essence. This paltry maneuver with the ice arrows was a clever attempt but would prove inevitably fruitless.

  On his back, the wings of projected Flame Resonance flickered for a moment and then vanished entirely.

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