***Then***

Maren sat on his father’s lap, kicking his heels against the man’s shins as they watched the setting sun turn the distant mountain bright red.

This was one of those rare moments when the busy man had even a moment to spare for his offspring, and Maren was a little bitter that it took the form of a lecture.

“You see that mountain, Maren?” The king asked.

“Of course I see it, father.”

“That is Chuldeva. You can see it from any part of our kingdom, In the ancient tongue it means, ‘pillar of our beliefs’. As long as Chuldeva stands, we will stand as a people. Do you know why?”

Maren couldn’t help feeling a little curious. This lesson was a little less dry than others so far, so he hadn’t nodded off, as was his custom when the lessons went on too long. Besides, he didn’t get much time with his father to himself.

“Why, father?”

“Because there’s a wish granter at the peak of the mountain.”

“Really?” Maren gasped, eyeing the white mountain soaked in red sunlight. Maybe if he wished at it hard enough, he could have a sister…or a friend.

“Yes, a huge dragon with crimson scales, so big that she can even be spotted roaming the mountainside with the naked eye on a clear day.”

Maren looked harder, leaning forward in his father’s lap.

The king chuckled and brought him back to rest against his chest. Maren didn’t struggle too much, enjoying the rare feeling of warmth.

“The dragon’s name is Hajiira, and she can feel the gaze of those of our people who look upon Chuldeva with troubled hearts. She grants those in need the strength to carry on. Looking upon Chuldeva cools the pain in a farmer’s back after a long day, Calms a merchant’s greed, and eases a weary king’s mind.”

“That sounds made up.” Maren said.

“It’s easing my mind right now, my son.”

“Not for me.”

“You’re not any of those three things yet, so you don’t need your wishes granted.”

Maren considered a moment, then spoke.

“This all seems highly suspicious,” he said, using one of his mentor’s favorite phrases when he got up to trouble. “It’s a wish granter, but it only makes people feel better by looking at it? Presumably in a relaxing situation when they take a moment to forget their troubles?”

Maren was a genius, but genius confers no inherent resistance to tickle torture. His father seized him by the ribs and in a moment of horror, he knew he’d overstepped his bounds.

After a few minutes of shrieking, his father spoke again.

“Maybe you’ll climb the mountain one day, and see if it’s true for yourself. Meet Hajiira.”

“Have you?” Maren asked, peering up at his father, whose chin hairs were beginning to go grey, his eyes sunken and tired. Maren felt as though his father had seen and done everything there was under the sun, even though he knew that couldn’t be the case.

“I haven’t had the time to make the pilgrimage, my father died while I was young, but I plan on sticking around a long time, so you can have a childhood.

“I’ll allow it.” Maren said, nestling back into his father’s lap and looking out at the pink glowing mountain. The Pillar of our beliefs… Maren imagined the strength to carry on with his boring lectures tomorrow without falling asleep was radiating from the mountain, suffusing him with a gentle energy.

***now***

Somewhere in the deep reaches of space, entire realities away, orbiting the outer edge of a solar system, a Stanley was peacefully minding it’s own business, photosynthesizing with the dim light from the sun and stars, latched onto a tiny asteroid about the size of a football field.

Suddenly, the Stanley withered in the blink of an eye, the space jellyfish turning as grey as the rock it was attached to as all its resources, including the poor creature’s life were devoted to casting a staggeringly powerful teleport that crossed dimensions.

An eyeblink later, and there was no asteroid, just a dead Stanley drifting through the lonely reaches of space. It was fine though, because it had thousands of siblings who entered hibernation as they began to drift away, searching for more asteroids to attach themselves to and continue their life cycle.

A reality away, the Fertility caught the meteor with chains of Force, calculated trajectory, then gave the massive asteroid a light toss toward the planet, converting it from an asteroid to a meteor.

***Garth***

There was a sudden flash of light that caught everyone’s attention, followed by the rumble of supersonic flight. In the distance, a flaming rock hurtled downward toward the largest mountain on the continent, chosen as a demonstration for its clear line of sight from every angle.

“Anybody here familiar with the duck and cover technique?” Garth asked as the flaming rock tore through the upper atmosphere without even blinking. Just me then? Nice.”

Garth put a shield of force up between them and the soon-to-be shrapnel. There would definitely be fallout from his actions, but at this point, he’d rather kill a bunch of woodland creatures and cause serious property damage than pretend to be someone’s slave.

The hundreds of miles-distant mountain exploded in a flash of light, followed by a spray of melted stone like a rock thrown into a pond. In the distance, a wave of energy flattened the enormous trees in an expanding circle around the mountain, travelling their direction at the speed of sound. Garth just wished he’d been able to get an areal view of it.

“Neat.” Garth said the instant before the shockwave hit.

A blast of wind and broken branches the size of semi-trucks battered against the force shield, causing some concern for his apprentice’s well-being.

Caitlyn and Alicia seemed to be enjoying themselves, though, so it was probably fine. Caitlyn even had the presence of mind to make her own layer of defences, though the point was probably moot.

“~”

“What!?” Garth saw Caitlyn’s lips move, but couldn’t make out what she was saying over the rumbling that seemed to consume the world.

“~!”

“We’re fine!” Garth shouted, giving her a thumbs up. “This is nowhere near enough to cause global extinction!” Hopefully that’s what she was asking. Eh, if it was important, she’ll ask me later.

Then the earthquake hit. Garth wasn’t particularly familiar with earthquakes, being a city slicker most of his childhood and running away to the Midwest, so when the ground bucked out from under him, he was totally unprepared.

The ground dropped out from under him, and as he was falling downward, it surged back up, jamming his knees violently into his hips, buckling his legs and dropping him to the ground. Garth felt like the entire world had become one enormous bucking bronco, and he was the idiot who’d put the five-dollar bill in the machine in an attempt to impress his friends.

Everyone else was in the same boat. No one had managed to stay standing through the first violent kick, and were now flattened by the sheer fury of the earth. The asshat’s palanquin was on the ground dropped by the four bearers, who had each fallen one way or another.

Garth tried to stand up twice as the ground continued to shudder, each time the violent churning of the earth itself knocking him back down. From his unique vantage point on the ground, he saw the massive city wall ripple, deciding whether or not it wanted to collapse on them.

The third time, Garth had enough presence of mind to fly, simply lifting himself off the ground into the dusty air. Caitlyn noticed his separation from the ground and joined him, starting a trend where everyone capable of flight simply waited out the earthquake in the relative safety of the air.

Relatively safe now that the initial shockwave had gone past them, that was.

The clique of fliers was relatively exclusive. It was Garth, Al, Cait, Mr. Too Big For His Britches, and half a dozen others whose flying skill betrayed a tier somewhere between Caitlyn and Alicia.

It was irritating to note that the cause of this event had slightly better control over his mana than Garth did, only leaking a tiny amount of mana into the environment as he floated in the air, staring at the mountain. The guy must be considered pretty talented for his tier.

“What do you guys think that was, a seven or an eight on the Richter scale?”

Garth glanced over at the wall, which was still standing.

“Probably a seven.”

A few of the other wizard glanced at him, uncomprehending, but the prince simply stared toward the mountain, despite a cloud of dust obscuring their vision.

It was at this moment that stones began to rain back down from where they’d been jettisoned into the atmosphere, dropping stones everywhere from the size of golf-balls to one about as big as a Buick, which crashed through the city wall, leaving a gaping hole through the stone before digging a massive trough through the cobbled streets.

I hope nobody got killed by that little show, Garth thought as he shielded the crowd from the deadly rain, summoning a dome of force above them, his dome supported by – strangely enough – the princeling’s creation.

The stone rain continued for a good five minutes, reaching a peak about two minutes in, then slowly coming to a stop as the last bits of stone bounced off the shield.

At the tail end of the rain, there was a wet squelch above them that drew Garth’s gaze upward, where a giant red object tumbled down the side of the dome. Garth tried to figure out what it was exactly, but couldn’t quite make it out until it came to rest on the ground, resting atop the pile of stone runoff from the dome.

It was the giant disembodied head of some kind of red-scaled lizard, that Garth could have labeled dragon-esque, although it seemed to have a mane.

The head was somewhat worse for wear, with snapped off horns and missing an eye. The remaining eye stared accusingly at the prince for the sin of making Garth Daniels upset.

At least that’s how Garth saw it.

“Hajiira …” The prince said quietly.

It was at this moment that a gust of wind blew away the dust and revealed the mountain – or rather the lack of one. The mountain’s peaks had been obliterated, replacing it with a gigantic crater that extended out to the slopes of the mountain itself.

The prince let out a shuddering gasp as tears began to stream down his cheeks.

What’s the big deal, it’s just a mountain. I could make mountains all day long. Note to self: Make a propaganda mountain of the prince in a humiliating position. Maybe just his face with a boot on it, maybe at the center of the new lake.

“I give you Garth Lake.” Garth said, motioning to the crater. “No need to thank me.”

“You did this?” he asked, and Garth imagined a wooden creak as the man shifted his gaze to Garth. Man, he looks pissed.

“Would you like another demonstration?” Garth asked, pointing at the city. It was totally a bluff, since Garth didn’t have a penchant for blowing up cities to prove a point, but the silk-clad shinta didn’t need to know that.

Better to let the man think he meant business.

The fires of anger sputtered and died as the prince glanced over his shoulder at the severely damaged city wall, and the pristine, un-cratered palace beyond it.

“What do you want?” the Shinta asked, his voice cold and even.

Garth blinked. He hadn’t really had anything in mind other than shock and awe, overlooking the list of demands that typically went along with holding an entire nation hostage.

One..hundred..Billion dollars!

***

“I’ve never had a palanquin ride before,” Garth said idly as he rummaged through the little box on the side of Maren’s seat, finding some nice fruits and a bottle of some fine liquor. Garth tried the fruit and found them to be something like a lychee, a fruit with a unique texture and pleasant, but not overpowering taste.

He ate a couple and stored the seeds away for later. You can never have too many good fruits.

“I find that surprising,” Alicia said from the ground beside him. There was only so much room on the platform and he didn’t want to overburden the orcs. “You seem like the type who might enjoy it.”

“Eh, the novelty is wearing off fast,” he said, taking a sip of Prince Maren’s wine. “Flying is way better.”

“So tell me,” Garth said, turning his attention to Maren, who was walking on the other side of the palanquin. “The pilgrimage for the Hildaven flower, Give me the details.”

Maren was somehow under the impression that Garth was a fifth tier or higher master visiting with his apprentices, and Garth wasn’t going to disabuse him of that notion any time soon.

Garth’s heart suddenly froze as a thought occurred to him. “Please tell me they didn’t only grow on the snow-capped peaks of the mount…whatever it was.”

“Chuldeva. It means ‘the pillar of our beliefs’.” Maren said, giving him the thousand yard stare.

“Meant. It meant that. Now it’s a cautionary tale about the prince who acted like a cunt to the wrong guy.” Garth grinned down at him. “You’re gonna go down in history. Also you didn’t answer my question.”

“The Hildaven flower blooms every seven years in midsummer, when the twin suns are equidistant. It grows in the noxious marsh of K’than, that stretches from one side of the continent to the other. During this time, the monster population explodes, washing against the city walls like waves against a stone cliff, before eventually settling back down when the twin suns retreat.”

Garth looked up in the sky and saw the two suns, about thirty-five degrees apart, bearing down on them with relentless heat.

“During this time, it becomes a desperate fight for survival even one step outside the city walls, requiring the vast majority of our manpower to stay here and protect the citizens, while hopefuls who wish to discover the flower and ascend to the next tier form small, elite groups and venture out to find the flower in bloom, facing death at every turn.”

“That sounds exciting. And how many people do you expect will be partaking in this particular pilgrimage?”

“From the city alone, Thousands, but most of them will never make it back, and those that do are unlikely to have found what they were looking for.”

“Hmm…swamp, huh? That doesn’t sound too bad.”