“Body is Endurance. It is resilience and recovery but to push it is to Endure. Long marches, cold meals, venoms, poisons and more. Ir-karlak’s path is suffering. There are no shortcuts, no clever workarounds, no toughing through it. Only sweat and blood. You bleed now, to live later. Survival is the only option, for understand: your Body only quits when you do. It takes formidable Will to push your Body so! And if you were lacking, you would not be in my class! So push! Break yourselves against the trials and be reforged in the fires of joint suffering. I swear by Karlak’s Pain, by the time we’re done you’ll know the limits of your own Endurance and reach past them!”    

Common lesson delivered from the Enlightened Book of Suffering by Priests and Monks of Ir-karlak. 

***

It was still sometimes odd, waking up in a strange place, on the floor. This moment of disorientation, where he wasn’t sure if he was in his bed at home, the academy, or in his tent in the field. Frank wasn’t much of a morning person, but the Academy did teach him to get up as soon as he woke up. Military institutions were like that. That it was another world hardly seemed to matter, for morning drill.   

He left the tavern, noting the other sleepers. Some were local drunks, but three of the pilgrims that arrived with him were among them as well. The outhouse was at least better than the woods, less windy. Snow did well enough for washing his hands and face. The cold woke him right up.

Yawning, Frank looked back at the tavern. Deciding against ordering breakfast, he went back inside and pulled out some travel bread. Cheap, hardy, and filling, its one problem was that it was hard as a rock dry. He’d seen wells around the place in passing, so Frank didn’t feel like he was stealing when he poured himself some water from the pitcher on the counter.

The wooden cupboards on the wall were all closed, and had keyholes. He could hear someone moving around in the back, and others shuffling upstairs. 

Deli got up from her spot near the fireplace, probably woken by his stomping around. “Still dark out?” She asked, pulling out her own travel bread. She had better rations. Hers had mushrooms.

“Yup.”

It made Frank crave some mushroom soup to go along the bread, but the fire was still out. It would take a while to get it going, and he didn’t want to linger when the Tree was right there.

She looked around the room, where most of the sleepers were still dead to the world. It wasn’t a lengthy meal. “We going?”

Frank thought about.

He didn’t mind the company. He could get the morning carving done after. “Might as well.”

Deli was off her seat in a flash, and pulled him up as well. It still felt just a bit off, how strong women were here. As big and tall as men, all of them. He figured that with the Aura of Life taking a lot of the pressure off of child and mother mortality rates, and with how Abilities and titles were inherited to a point, a stronger wife meant a stronger child. Natural and cultural selection in action.

It was a well-worn thought for Frank.   

Stats were stats. With different environmental pressures, different evolutionary pressure was exerted on members of populations. So much of the world was filled with women that were just as strong, aggressive, and likely to be capable fighters as men. Which took a while to get used to in training. Less for him than for the women that had arrived with him. In the first week, one of them was hitting her toes on everything. She’d grown almost two decimetres after the transformation.   

The height differential made Frank wonder about all the differences. Like monsters. Which environmental nishes were filled and created by a species of monster? Like the Gorgodar. What did they eat, hunt? How did the terror its eyes caused figure into its environmental impact and hunting preferences, population patterns?

A finger flicked his nose. “Dead.” Deli told him with a smile.

It was a childish game, but obligingly he checked his surroundings. They had left the tavern, so he was outside, even if they were still inside the town. “Point.” He sighed. It was a game for children in the Confederation, but the point it made wasn’t. Outside isn’t safe. Be aware, be on guard.

Reaffirming his hold on his staff, Frank lengthened his strides, Deli keeping pace, their joined hands swinging between them. The gesture had nothing to do with romance for her. It probably had everything to do with white out snowstorms, and staying together. Frank reminded himself of that as Deli ohhed and ahhed at the shops. The snowmaiden was a pretty woman, no older than nineteen.

Looking at her happy face fed his resolve. He’d get himself healed. Figure out this whole magic thing. Get good enough to live off it.

Finally start a family. In a world that wouldn’t hate and kill his kids just for existing and for the mistakes of their parents and grandparents.

“You look saddened, Frank.” Deli noticed.

He pat her hand, which was a bit awkward while holding the staff. “Just longing to be free of this.” He told her, waving at his face.

Deli didn’t stare. She had, in the beginning. Now she avoided looking at his face, or talking about it.

She kept her eyes on the tree. “I hope it blooms for you Frank.”

“You too Deli. You too.”

***

The town was under the branches of the tree, but it was still a bit of a trek to the wall around its base. Up close, it looked less a wall, and more a circle of massive roots. With a break in it where they’d fitted a door, one guarded by two large men with axes on their belts. Not steel axes, but wooden ones, and covered in Runes.

Frank and Deli were not the first ones there, as the Empire Lord’s party was still milling around, waiting. “It looks like they’d made camp here. Slept in the clearing next to the wall.”

But all of that was secondary to what Frank could see in the distance as the sun rose. There was a wall of white clouds over half the sky. Ripples, waves of it rolled in from the other side of the tree, and struck the branches high above. Because of the clouds, only this half of the treetop was visible. The rest swallowed by an endless ocean of fog, mist. That’s all clouds really were, when they got close to the ground.

Looking further, beyond the Tree, the while wave of white was like the tip of a very wide white triangle, or fat ellipse, resting on the trunk of the tree. It was hard to judge from here.

Frank would have kept his distance, and waited his turn, but Deli pulled him right in, past the camp and the line. Right up to the guards.

They frowned at him and his faded green robes marking him as from the Empire, but smiled at her as she led the way.

“Good day good sirs! What a fine day to witness the might of the Gods!”

“Fine indeed, maiden! We’ve had pilgrims doing the witnessing all night long! Some of em didn’t like it as much as the rest, but that’s nobility for you!”

Deli giggled as she stopped near them, forming a small circle between the four of them.      

“Good sirs, may I introduce Frank No Deed, of the Empire. Pilgrim true! Might be, he’ll get a Name of note after this visit!” She laughed, clapping him on the back. The force of the blow staggered Frank, with his lowly two Strength.

He could see one of the guards wanted to say something unkind, but held his peace at her introduction. “True pilgrim, are you?” He asked instead, watching his green robes with distaste.

“That’s the hope.” Frank answered, jumping into his role as a traveller. One did not boast of their own deeds, after all.

“And this good woman is Deli the snowmaiden, Surefoot. I’ve seen her dance on snow and run across ice!” he talked her up, returning the solid pat on the back. She hardly moved. Just one point of difference, and already it told. But so it was. In this world, every point mattered.

“Truly?” The other man asked, his eyes alight with interest.

Deli puffed up her chest. “Fetch me a pool and I’ll prove it.”

The ice dance was a popular base exercise for the Confederation. While mental Attributes were very much intimate matters, physical ones were no great secret. Short of being actually good at deception, just watching someone for a while would tell you much about them. Not the exact numbers, but approximate stuff.

Beyond that, there were trials and feats, for the first four points of each of the physical Attributes. Ice dancing was the trial and Surefoot a name for Agility four. Back in the Empire, a four in anything would make you a citizen, and a three eligible for citizenship. Those without were peasants and labourers. The Empire forbade slavery, but its lower classes could get close to it.

Frank shook such thoughts off. He had escaped. He didn’t need to worry about the Empire today, except for those present in the tents.

“Well, it’s an honour Surefoot. This rock next to me,” one of the guards started, only to get punched in the side and laugh it off. “This prickly rock is Bensvan Boulderdash.”  

The man who was not impressed with the Empire lifted his hand, curling his biceps. Even covered by the furs, that was quite the physique.

“Really?” Deli asked, stars in her eyes.

“Sure enough maiden. Lifted a boulder as wide around as me, and ran with it, full length of a hall.” Proudly he told them: “Strength five, and glad of it. I’d always be up to show you some tricks in private maiden.” He grinned.

Deli flushed and demurred. “Not here for that, though it’s a tempting offer. But I’m not looking for stats for my first, or you’d be in the running.”

He frowned. “You’re not one of them that coos over poets, are you?”

Deli choked, breaking out into loud guffaws. “No, no, I’m not a cloud head. I’m just looking for someone that will have me for me, not my grace.”

“Character seeker?” The frown was reduced, but not gone.

The other man interrupted him. “She’s young. We’ve all been there. Love and loss, remember when it was all new? Or maybe the gods smile on her, and she doesn’t learn the second. Don’t you start calling up a storm on her dream now.”

Boulderdash stepped back in surrender. “I’m not, I’m not. You nag me like my wife!” He waved at the other guard. “This one is Ril Tireless. The man never stops, and you’d best learn to heed him, or he’ll hound you till you do!”

Ril laughed at the introduction. “I’m not that bad. You’re angry cuz you got your muscles hurt since the maiden isn’t all over them.”

Boulderdash snorted and shook his head in disgust. But he didn’t deny it.  

“Well, now that we’re all known to each other, how does this whole thing work?” Deli asked. “I’m assuming if I jump the wall, you two will be after me.”

The two guards looked at one another and started chuckling. “We’d warn you not to, but no, maiden, we’d not go after you. The tree guards itself, and its visitors. You try that, and you’ll end up like the horse.”

Frank couldn’t help but ask: ”What horse?”

The guards looked at each other, before moving aside and pulling the wooden gate open. “That horse.” one of them pointed.

It was a familiar steed. Laying still on the grass, unmoving. Frank couldn’t tell from here, but he did not think it was breathing.

More, with the door open, he could see the grasses and roots. And he could see the a snowstorm raging in fits and spurts through them. In the distance, at the trunk, there was a wall of the storm, stretching out perpendicularly from them, to the left and right, until it hit the wall of roots. The entire enclosure was perhaps a kilometre across to the trunk, covered in roots and fresh grass, mixed with snow banks.

As they watched, bits of the winter storm broke away from the wall of wind, flowing over and through the roots, striking them with unnatural force. The roots bent, and groaned, freezing in places, and so did the grass. In many places small gusts broke away and brought new frost, while everywhere else, old ones were melting. The roots and grass were just as green and alive as they broke from the frost, as they had been before being frozen.                

It was like a surreal nature documentary, happening in sped up video. Except Frank was looking at it with his own eyes.

“That can’t be safe.” He muttered to himself. Not quiet enough it seemed, as Boulderdash responded with a shrug:

“It’s safe enough. Just stay on the pilgrim’s path.”

Frank followed his gesture. A small root curved its way among the rest, just wide enough for two people to walk across it. It stayed mostly low, in lees and valleys. It would be a longer walk then a straight line, but with how the other roots hugged it, he could see what they meant. He’d still have to be careful between cover, but it was manageable. Even in his reduced state.

At least the parts he could see form here. They closed the door again.

“That horse looked familiar.” Deli mused.

“Aye, the Lord decided he’d ride in, the fool. Beyond is the realm of the Gods. It’s no place for animals. It threw him off and made a run for it. Didn’t get far.”

Frank frowned. If an Empire nobleman was lost in there, his followers might make a mess out here.

“Did he survive?”

He got another frown for it. “Oh, he was fine enough. We heard him cussing up a storm from way out here. He got his business done and left. We’ve been dealing with the rest of them for most of the night.”

***

They spent a few minutes chatting with the guards, before backing away and finding a place to sit and wait. A few logs were set up as benches, and they took one. No doubt, the other pilgrims would trickle in, in time. Deli hummed a wordless tune, looking up into the branches far above, while Frank got out his carving tools.

“Might as well, while I wait.”

With each visitor needing to walk there and back, it would be a while. Rule was, only one person at a time. Sometimes, when the tree bloomed, the storm would get stronger and swallow the whole inner circle. It had happened for the Dunerider last night, or so the men claimed. Frank was kind of disappointed he’d missed it. It was supposed to be quite a show.

Still, Godly trees that defended themselves. The two weren’t guards, not really. They collected payment for the Cult, and worked as clean up, carrying corpses that angered the God, or tried to harm the Tree.

“Elsewise” one of them had said, ”the whole garden would be full of them. There’s always some critter, monster, or fool, who thinks they can steal some blessed wood, or harvest the grass. Maybe sap? Who knows what gets in their fool heads? But there’s always someone or something willing to chance it.”

“If not for us, you’d be walking through a frozen graveyard in there.”  

“What a world.”       

***

They waited a few hours for the line to get to them. Frank let Deli go ahead of him. The order wasn’t supposed to matter. He’d finished up his morning carving and moved on to staff exercises. It was a good morn.

“A productive morning.” He reminded himself, in his native German.

While he’d been gifted with the Trade Tongue during the transition, and picked up Red Sun speech of the Empire, Eversnow was a work in progress. He was glad near everyone spoke Trade, and it was polite to speak Trade with outsiders.

It was one of the oddities about the system. Language wasn’t in it, at least not as a skill to speak or write in. Most people simply could. Only some needed to learn to write. Most he’d spoken to just woke up one day knowing their letters. Frank was betting it was one of the mental stats doing the work. Logic was the likely suspect, though he could see some arguments for Instinct and Presence.     

While he was running out of blanks, and needed to ask about a fresh stream to go looking for more, three of the runes had come out alright. They wouldn’t last long, a couple of weeks, maybe two months, but as long as he was upfront about it, they’d sell.

Stones that kept you warm were in high demand among travellers and hunters in these parts.

Deli emerged from the gates radiant. She all but ran towards them and hugged the other female pilgrim. Her voice high and excited, she shouted: “I got it, I got it! Ir-karlak smiled on me!”

Frank joined the round of congratulations.

“Think it, Cherna. Two passes of the Pale Gate, and I won’t have to worry about birth anymore.” Deli said, almost crying in relief.

It was an open secret among them that Deli got tired easily. She was stronger than him, but everyone else in their party had at least Body two. They could all keep going longer. If they were going uphill, by time they stopped for the night to rest, she’d be stumbling around, half dead to the world.  

He looked around in some confusion, and found the other men sharing his surprise. Frank kept his peace, but one of them asked: “Doesn’t Health…?” trailing off.

Cherna, still hugging Deli, smacked him on his chest, then his arms as he tried to defend himself.

“Male fool. There’s only so much it can help, with Body one. You need two to be truly safe.” She told them, scowling.

Letting go and wiping away a few tears, Deli admitted. “It’s a shame to be born with only one. My mom and dad, they loved me so. Always kept me safe, warm. Taught me everything they know. All the other boys and girls got hurt, but I didn’t. I never did. But they all got to Body two too, and I didn’t.” She said, looking at the ground.

Cherna lifted her chin. “Well now, that’s in the past. Or will be soon enough.”

“Yes.” Deli answered, spirits rising.

Patting her on the back, Frank heard the caretakers call his number. He left them to it. They called out well wishes to him. The Empire party was still packing up, but it looked like they’d be gone by the time he came out. All the better for him. Some had given him looks, but none approached him, not while Deli and the other pilgrims were around.

In the Empire, strangers weren’t as safe as they were in the Confederation. The world was harsh and cruel enough around these parts, without rivalries and feuds generations in the making, thieves and plots. It bread a kind of people that were honest to a fault, and open about it. Distrusting of outsiders exactly because how much they depended on and needed to rely on each other to keep the hearths warm and the monsters out.  

It was a different world. One where killers were welcome, because there were plenty of things out there to kill, that would prey on man and woman if someone didn’t go out and deal with them.

The Empire might have tamed their lands, but they filled them with dangers of their own. He preferred these ones. At least they were honest about who they were.

As the doors closed behind him to the advice of “Stay on the path!” Frank forced himself to focus on the present. He had no desire to end up like the horse.

***

The trip was a bit nerve wracking. Long stretches of safety, with short jaunts in the open that made him hyper alert every time. Watchful for any snow or a gust coming out around the bend. While they were not predictable, since the winds carried snow in them, they were quite visible. As long as he paid attention, ran the gaps, and watched where he was going not to trip on the roots, it was fine.

More unnerving then the short stretches of danger was watching between the roots as the various winds battered them. Thing was, the roots were not walls. There were cracks and gaps between them, empty spaces that should have allowed the wind to pass through with ease.

They didn’t.

Thinking on it, he was growing sure that the Tree had its own Health, and that its reach extended beyond the roots themselves, covering most of the path in a field of protection.

Otherwise, the winds would have gotten to every pilgrim on this road. It made him wonder if the unnaturally cold storm was temporary, or some kind of permanent, regular fixture. An endless trial the Tree endured as some kind of symbol of its role as the font of Perseverance.

No matter his musings, the trunk was close now, and it looked too big to be real, from the foot of it. Peeking above and through the roots, he couldn’t tell how wide it was. It was at least as big as a building. He didn’t have an eye for judging distance and sizes, but it hadn’t seemed that thick from afar. This was like standing before a stadium. How high up were those branches?

As he got close, at the foot of the tree, the roots formed a small enclosure, almost like a university lecture hall. Tiered steps filled with benches led downwards to a pool of still water. Trickling into it was melt water from the trunk, in multiple small streams. The water was crystal clear, the bottom spotless, polished wood, from the same roots. As he got closer, Frank could hear it trickling away, somewhere beneath him.

“What now?”

No one had told him what he was supposed to do here.

He checked the wording of his quest. written in his notebook, one of the few items he’d splurged on.

“Seek the roof of the world on Ir-karlak’s path. Walk it clad in naught but the robes of a pilgrim, and stray not from his path in the walking. Only then, will the White Tree bloom for thee. Or if lesser miracles thou seekst, but touch the bark and know his benevolence.”

“Roof of the world?”

Frank looked up. Slowly, his eyes came down the tree, and he found the start of what looked like a spiral walkway. Open to the air on one side. Tree and its bark on the other.

“Touch the bark to know his benevolence? What If I don’t want to?” He asked, glaring at the tree. He marched on over, expecting to need to balance on the lip of the walkway or risk being blown off.

***

It wasn’t so bad. While the way was open with no guardrails, there was a good meter, meter and a half of clearance as the root wound around the tree. Plenty of space, and the grip was good.

It was a bit unnerving as he got higher, having to climb in places, but apart from having to stay watchful not to stray near the bark or the edge, it wasn’t much of a trial. The endless steps and waist or chest high climbs were a bigger problem, and more in tune with the nature of the God, trying to exhaust him.  

When he reached the landing, he was covered in sweat.

“It’s no wonder so many took a while. Even if they gave up half-way, this goes on.”

Frank had worried about the winds, but the whole trip went back and forth over this side of the tree. What surprised him most was that he hadn’t seen anyone else make the trip from below. Looking back, he could see them waiting outside with no problems. But even waving to them, no one responded.

Something was weird here.

He snorted. “Really Frank? Something is up with the God Tree? You think?”

Laughing at himself, he turned back to the platform. It kept going, now shielded, like a tunnel. And it went into the edge of the storm. He knew it was the edge, because things got colder as he drew near. Painfully cold, even in his robes. The tunnel ended suddenly, in a howling white snowstorm, rolling past the entrance, as if there was a wall there. Instead, the entrance was loosely crisscrossed with roots, as they held the freezing storm at bay.

That was all.

Frank looked at the wall of wind, with an inkling of what was expected. Touch the bark to be disqualified, and receive a lesser miracle. Seek the Roof of the World.

He glared at the storm. “Of course a God would demand an act of faith.”

He checked his condition again.       

Part of him wanted to clutch a heat stone in his fist. But that might not be in the spirit of the act. And Frank did not want to piss off a Tree, or a God, capable of holding back a storm big enough to cover the sky.

He stepped up, right to the barrier, and he could feel his nose growing numb, his eyes squinting to stop the pain starting in them. The longer he hesitated, the worse it would get, so he forced himself, taking shallow, painful breaths, to thrust his arm between the roots and into the storm.   

The sudden cold burned, almost as bad as the fire had. He tried to yank his hand back, but found it trapped in the roots. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t pull away!   

The world rang. Frank was frozen. Everything was. He could see each motionless snowflake. The pain was still there, but it was frozen as well. Like he could feel the pain and it was irrelevant at the same time. A moment of agony stretched out into seconds and lesser for it. It was like time itself was frozen, but he could still think.

He’d seen this before. In the moment he’d grasped the fire.

The roots before him sprouted stalks that grew into flowers and bloomed.

The Worldvoice spoke. To him, it was a mixed choir following a male opera singer.

“Thee Enduring Mortal, Ye have walked over ice and snow, upon Mountain, through hidden Vale. With naught but the robes of the Pilgrim, from beyond the borders of Eversnow, ye have reached the Eternal Tree. Faith in thy heart, thou hast touched the storm raging from the Roof of the World. Ir-karlak is pleased by your Devotion, and offers you a Boon, Pilgrim.”

There was a moment of silence. Frank was unsure what to expect, but growing excitement and vindication warred within.

He was still reading the options when the Worldvoice spoke again. 

“Thou are touched by the Light Celestial, and have glimpsed Divinity. Your shackles are broken, Hero.”

He blinked.

“Are there unlocks for this, conditions?” Frank wondered, heart still, but feeling like it should be racing. 

“Thou are an unmatched fool, mortal, Cursed by your own foolishness.”   

 

There was another, longer pause, while Frank tried to come to grips with all the options.

“Child of Fire, touching frost,
Heavenly fool, wandering lost.
Blind Outsider, invited in,
in Frostfire, cleanse yourself of Sin.”

 That… looked like something special. Like it might become a second source, if he could figure out how to channel it properly. The main problem was… he was an outsider.

“Wouldn’t this frostfire burn me too?”

***