Niko happily engorged himself on a hefty helping of his catch, much to the amusement of the Wyldwalkers and the blank stares that Thokk and Sasha leveled at him.

“How are you eating so much?” Sasha blinked, looking at Niko like the exotic creature that he proudly was, “Do you have a pattern dedicated to stuffing your face?”

Niko would have trilled out a response, were he not currently crunching through a just-cooked-enough femur. Instead, he finished half of it, much to Sasha’s growing confusion, and then finally said, “Something like that? It’s very useful.”

“I imagine.” Thokk rumbled with a marked amount of mirth, “Does that help you store more essence?” The beast then seemed to realize what he was asking, and interjected, “Ah, don’t answer if you would prefer it private.”

This time Niko did let out a slight lilting noise, “Nah, it’s fine. It’s not something I’m worried about people knowing about. But, yeah, it does help me store it, and break it down more.”

“That explains how you were able to keep fighting for as long as you did,” Sasha rasped a purr, “Perhaps I will try to create my own when I tier up. Do you have any suggestions?”

At that, Niko paused, making an audible humm as he considered the question. In reality, his ability to consume essence seemingly endlessly appeared to be a gift given by Alterra. ‘Or Venris, I guess. I’m not actually one-hundred percent certain on that.’

“Mmm… it’s a little difficult to explain it?” Niko answered, “I can think on it and try to come up with something? How do people usually share essence pattern insights?”

“Usually they don’t,” Sasha admitted, “Even among beasts, sharing especially powerful patterns is rare. It's usually a very important part of yourself, afterall.”

Niko nodded at that while gnawing on the other half of the femur he had. There were many reasons he could see not to share patterns with a group at large. Knowing what someone could do, or even the motivations and ideas behind how one pattern was created, might give others insight in how that individual might fight, and certainly in how to combat their strengths. Most of the time, it wouldn’t matter, but if someone were to make you their enemy, then the more information that was available about you, the more someone could attempt to counter your abilities.

At the very least, that’s what Niko would do. If he was going after someone, he’d try to stack as much in his favor as possible. Quite in fact, that was exactly what he would have to do, just to have an even playing field. Given what his deal with Alterra was, he couldn’t afford not to find any scrap of information he could.

Even so, that didn’t mean he was against helping out friends. “Well, still, I think I’ll try to figure out something. What is the best way to share insights, though?”

Sasha and Thokk both looked touched by the sentiment. The sabrecat began, “Thank you, Niko. I appreciate it.” She closed her eyes for a moment, collecting her thoughts before opening them and chuffing out, “Insight is a broad thing. It can be the concepts you had in mind when you were creating a pattern, or even a combination of what the pattern itself does, but generally it does best when you have an image in mind. For example, my stealth pattern is something that has been handed down through generations on my mother’s side of the family. I…” Sasha struggled with deciding to speak before steeling herself, “It is different for each of us. For me, I invoke an image, a concept, that I am not just quieter, but that I am without sound. Not that I am harder to see, but that there is no light that might see me. I am a shadow in absolute darkness, that is my Shadowstalker pattern. There is more to it, meanings within meanings, but they are a more personal thing, they won’t do you any good to know.”

When she finished, Niko saw the look of concern on Thokk’s face as he blatantly stared at his companion. Even without that clue, Niko knew that what Sasha had just told him was probably a guarded secret for her family. “Thank you for sharing with me, Sasha,” Niko spoke sincerely, “I’ll be sure to keep that to myself.”

“With my thanks, in turn,” Sasha chuffed, “It would not do my family any favors to have that information spread. But, I believe that you are trustworthy.”

Niko gave a quiet cluck of acknowledgement as he considered what he could feel from his gifts, and the way in which he was capable of seemingly endlessly taking in essence. It was a complex thing, when he really looked at it, even though its purpose and process seemed relatively straightforward when he hadn’t really considered its implications. Overall, Niko knew that it was granted as something grander, divine, yet on something so fundamentally a part of the world that Niko wouldn’t have had really known where to start with it. The contemplation sparked the inklings of inspiration, and as he pondered how the environment seemed to treat essence, he began to formulate a rough idea of how it might work.

“Well… here goes,” Niko clucked with no small amount of uncertainty, “I don’t know how useful this will be for you, but I can think of it as being a part of the world at large. Essence cycles through the land, the creatures in it, and eventually rejoins the world itself, before restarting. At least, so it seems to me,” Niko trilled, and tilted his head side-to-side in a so-so kind of gesture, “So far I haven’t been able to test it rigorously. Everytime you do something, you expend a slight amount of essence, and when you successfully hunt something down, a large portion of essence is released into the environment. Some of that energy seems to naturally sink into you, where another bulk of it escapes into the world, and another fairly equal portion seems to be still contained in the body itself. When most people eat that meat, or plant, whatever, they probably don’t get everything out of it, kind of a trophic levels kind of thing–” Niko paused, realizing they probably didn’t know what that might mean, and rephrased it–“You just don’t get everything out of the meals you eat, it’s just too hard to get it all. It’s probably more efficient than I give it credit for, but that’s besides the point. When I eat something, I’m not just eating it, I’m breaking it down, catching the essence.”

Niko knew he was probably rambling too much, but he couldn’t figure a better way to give background on how he saw things. He continued with, “The part where I store it is… complicated. I hold it within myself, in my soul. I don’t know if that’s normal to be–”

“You hold essence in your soul?” Thokk interrupted with a mixture of confusion and concern, “How does that… How do you know where your soul even is? How to get to it, I mean,” Thokk shifted on his limbs uncertainly, “I didn’t know that was even possible.”

For several seconds, Niko just sat and thought about that detail. “Well, for me, I just… follow where my essence body leads. All that energy moves around, and there’s just a… part that’s deeper? Like, goes somewhere else, but it's still right there.” Niko gave a frustrated cluck then, “It’s abstract as all peck, but you might be able to find it after a lot of meditating.”

“Meditating?” Sasha blinked and gave a low chitter of consideration, “I suppose that’s as good a place as any to start.”

“Ugh…” Thokk grunted, “I fear this may be a great deal of effort for me. Meditating is… difficult for me.”

“Only because you end up napping much of the time.” Sasha teased the giant, “It would do you some good, in any case.” She then turned her attention to Niko once more, “Thank you for sharing that, Niko. There are few beasts that spend much time in meditation. Did you learn from the humanoids, or were you self-taught?”

Niko and the beasts made small talk, partly in which Niko did his best to skirt around the exact details of what his fake pattern did. He hoped he wasn’t steering them wrong, but to him it seemed like it should work just fine if they could follow the logic he’d used. In the first place, few people ever succeeded in internalizing someone else's patterns without a great deal of similarities in mindset between the two. There were always parts that could be gleaned, but it would always be better to form patterns with one's own goals and inspirations, rather than borrowing too much from someone else.

Still, Sasha’s information about her Shadowstalker pattern gave Niko some ideas on how he might eventually improve his own patterns.

Before long, the impromptu meal was completed, and the remainders of the food were wrapped up in what Niko guessed was an oiled leather wrap of some variety. Even in spite of feeding Sasha and Thokk, there was plenty of the meat leftover after the fact. Perhaps amusingly, Sasha had seemed to enjoy the meal with no small amount of relish, and Niko guessed they might share a mutual dislike for badger-kind. Not a difficult thing, as the majority of them appeared to be ill tempered and violent.

With their bellies full, the group resumed their travels, the sun hanging high overhead, casting light down in shafts through the canopy. The trees became more sparse the nearer to the mountain they got, until Niko began to wonder if they were going to thin out completely.

It was then that Sasha spoke up, “We’re nearing the plateau. From here on out, you’ll be in our Clan’s territory. If something happens, though unlikely, please leave it to myself and Thokk to deal with.”

“Are you worried that we’ll make a mess?” Skye asked, and Niko knew her well enough now to know that she was asking the question innocuously, not defensively.

“No, nothing like that,” Sasha quickly reassured her, “It is the traditional responsibility of the hosting party to take care of issues en route. It reflects on the honor and strength of those protecting their guests.”

Niko gave a small chirp of understanding, “And since you’re representing your family, that’s a bigger deal than for most, right?”

Sasha gave an appreciating purr at that, “Indeed. Very much so. There would be no end to the gossip if it got around that my guests needed to help me get them to their destination safely.”

“How very scandalous,” Mithel remarked jokingly, before smiling, “That’s fine with me, we’ve had more than enough combat for some time.”

Before much longer, the trees dwindled to nearly nothing, and Niko was treated to his first unobscured view of the mountain slopes ahead of them.

‘Holy peck, that’s… a lot bigger than it looked like earlier. Is this even the same mountain?’ Niko couldn’t help but do a double take, feeling as though the mountain itself somehow appeared larger, the view of it grander than what it had appeared from so far away. Multiple plateaus, like wide ribs, formed the base of the sky-reaching mountain. A combination of granite, and a blue-green type of stone that Niko wasn’t familiar with broke through the soil like the exposed bones of the earth. Craggy pathways were clear even from so far down the mountain, but from the angle they stood at, Niko couldn’t see much more than the implication of the plateaus themselves, let alone what was upon them. What he could see, though, was the very crest of the mountain like a claw scraping the sky. It seemed to defy what he remembered of the very same mountain when he’d seen it from far away, and Niko was having significant difficulty resolving that memory with what he was seeing right then.

“It is the effect of aspected essence,” Sasha spoke aloud to the open awe the Wyldwalkers displayed. “When enough powerful beings gather for a long enough period of time while imposing their will on the essence around them, they begin to transform the essence of a place. Riizen is grander now than it has ever been,” Pride was evident in her voice as she stared up at the towering land.

“Wait, wait, that’s news to me. What’s this about essence transforming the mountain?” Niko stared in open shock at that bit of information. He was aware that essence was powerful, and it had been mentioned that it could carry some kind of imprint of who it had come from upon it, but nothing like this had ever been told to him.

“For especially powerful beings, such as my father, their ideals and goals can transform and warp the land. It takes a great deal of time to do so, even for someone of his power, but it is a lasting thing. This mountain did not always look like this. The land responded to his will, and changed. That is why each mountain is called after their ruler, because the mountain itself yields to their will.” Sasha explained before walking forwards, “I will lead from here. Follow only myself and Thokk until we instruct you otherwise, please.”

Niko numbly followed, shellshocked by the revelation that reality itself could be changed by individuals powerful enough. What that meant in practice, Niko wasn’t sure, but as he looked around at the other Wyldwalkers, he knew that the information wasn’t necessarily what one could call common knowledge. The others looked on at the terrain with a mixture of trepidation and admiration. Regrettably, he was no expert on geology, otherwise he might be able to see just how different the terrain was from what it should have been. He felt as though plateaus weren’t exactly common to come out of a mountain like this, but he also wasn’t entirely sure, and now that he was looking for oddities, they sprang up in his vision for consideration like grass stalks.

As they approached a seamless formation of stone that rose up in an archway over a wide path of rough stone, Niko decided that he was going to have to just adjust and not think about it, or else he’d never get anything done.

“Lady Sasha, and Warrior Thokk,” A voice rumbled like an avalanche seemingly from all around. Niko felt the tepid flare of a high tier beast, cold like an arctic wind and as heavy as piled snow, but lacking in animosity.

Sasha and Thokk each stepped into a bow, the former, shallow but sincere, and the latter a lower to the ground gesture full of respect. “Honored Guardian, I come with guests from the lowlands under my family’s protection, the Blue-Claw Clan.”

There was a long pause in the air, and Niko felt his feathers stiffen with tension. From the corner of his eye, he could see Sasha waiting, patiently, but also with a firm stance that Niko wasn’t sure was wariness or confidence.

A sound like a winter storm sighing reached Niko’s ears, “Does your mother know?”

Sasha’s ears flicked back and flat for a brief second like she’d been scolded, “Not as of yet. But I’m sure she’ll be aware of it any moment now.”

The Honored Guardian, as Sasha had stated, gave a light chuckle, “Well, it is not my business in any case. I will tell the frost-kin to ready for your arrival. Do you require escort?”

At that, Thokk spoke, “We do not, honored-kin.”

The attention of the being, though Niko couldn’t place exactly where it came from, centered upon Thokk like the eye of a snowstorm, “So be it.” A warmer tone–at least as warm as cold incarnate could be–came from the voice then, “You have done well, Thokk. The family is pleased with both of you, regardless of what anyone else feels.”

Niko saw Thokk almost light up with the recognition, and no small amount of pride. Even so, he could see the flick of Sasha’s tail at what Niko was certain was a veiled warning. ‘Regardless of what anyone else feels, hmm? This is going to get a little political, isn’t it?’ The thought was somewhat annoying, but at the same time Niko was interested in seeing how this might play out. Were beast-politics the same as humanoid-politics? Somehow, he imagined that mauling one another probably wasn’t what was going to happen, even if that would be considerably faster and to the point.

Thinking of a council table or congress of humans getting up from the table and beating the snot out of eachother did bring a smile to Niko’s face, though.

“Thank you, Honored Guardian.” Sasha answered with a grateful nod. Seemingly done with the conversation, the cold front lifted, and Niko realized belatedly that a light touch of hoarfrost now covered the stone. Before his eyes, it melted away into nothing, not even leaving a slight dampness in its place.

“Who the heck was that?” Mithel swallowed hard, “I could actually understand all of what he said, is that normal?”

“I did, too,” Ronald spoke, somewhat subdued, “I’m guessing that’s at least a tier five beast.”

“Indeed,” Thokk spoke, a clear tone of reverence to his voice, “That is my Uncle, Gorm. He is one of the most powerful beasts on this mountain. He is valiant and just, you would do well to befriend him.”

“And that would be done… how?” Dachna rubbed his arms against the cold, “I don’t get the feeling that he’s up for much conversation with us.”

Thokk rumbled a chuckle, “He brings cold weather, but do not mistake that for a cold shoulder.” The beast uncharacteristically joked, “But that is beside the fact that you would have known without a doubt if he disliked you.”

Niko nodded at that, thinking back to the sheer cold he felt being held at bay. He had no doubt that they were nowhere near equipped to deal with something like that. If Gorm didn’t like them, Niko figured he’d be a birdsicle right then.

“Come, we have much ground to cover,” Sasha began walking up the wide stone steps as comfortably as though it were her own home, “My Mother will most certainly be sending a receiving party regardless of my asking for one or not. Do not be alarmed if you hear others approaching.”

Skye gave a slight humm of acknowledgement, as did Niko. The stone passage they rose upwards through almost looked fully natural, but the relative uniformity of it all belied the intent behind the construction. The sun overhead cast light down into the hallway amid the stone, and as they climbed Niko couldn’t help but glance up at the sheer walls that towered dozens of meters overhead. If anyone were to try to force their way through here, Niko guessed that they would be attacked relentlessly from overhead. That, and the fact that Thokk could manipulate earth told Niko that this channel was likely a deadly trap for invaders.

“How many plateaus are there?” Ronald asked suddenly, “And are they divided in any kind of way?”

“Five,” Sasha answered unhesitantly, “The first that we are about to come to is generally used as a hunting ground. The lesser families that are too small or weak to hold territory in the higher plateaus manage the land and beasts, ensuring that resources are preserved. It’s generally just called The Hunting Grounds.”

“The second is The Orchard, where much of our fruit and edible vegetation is grown. Most of the families holdings are here, but competition isn’t especially fierce. The third is The Crystal Forest, and is hotly contested among the middle and higher families. The fourth, Thokk’s home, is called Frostholme, and is honorarily held by the Albedo Clan. Then, the most powerful families hold territory in the fifth plateau, the Towers, that holds Riizen City at its center.” Sasha then added, “Well, technically there are six, but the sixth is The Ruler’s Seat, and is not generally counted amongst the rest.”

“Why is that?” Skye asked, “Does no one ever go up there?”

Sasha shook her head, “Only my father is there regularly. Some of the other Patriarchs and Matriarchs will do so from time to time to speak with him when allowed, but it is a private place, and also dangerous for others to stay.”

Before Niko realized it, they crested the top of the path and beheld what the first plateau had to offer. The Phorus gave a low trill, “That’s a lot of grasslands. Pretty rich essence, too. Is there anything worth hunting up here?”

Sasha only smiled, her long, pick-axe teeth gleaming in the light, “There is much here worth hunting. Perhaps later, though. I smell some of my kin coming to meet us.”

Niko’s head snapped up then, and he peered through the tall grass with his Aether sight. He found them shortly thereafter, though if it hadn’t been for Sasha’s warning, he didn’t believe he’d have noticed them in time. To his eyes, they were indistinct, little more than vapors of essence amidst a sea of essence. Only the color and density was different, and once more, Niko made a mental note to ask Sasha to help him train his eyes to be able to pick that out better in the future.

“Do we need to do anything?” Ronald asked uncertainly, “Any cultural taboos that we might run across?”

Thokk rumbled, “Nothing of concern. Simply do not openly insult them, and anything else will be forgiven.”

Niko and the others assented to that, and Niko watched the prowling group of what looked to be tier two and three beasts with a slight amount of trepidation. At the same time, though, Niko was excited to see what they were like…