Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story, Kirill Klevanski [great reads .TXT] 📗

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“How many Words do you know, worm?” Hu-Chin thundered.

“A thousand,” Ash replied, bowing his head. Today, if it even were today, the dragon taught Ash very little, preferring conversation to study. Although, if we were to be completely honest, all the talk was usually about humiliating the humans and praising the dragons in general and Hu-Chin in particular. Usually, while praising himself, he didn’t forget to talk bad about his cousins.

The great dragon turned out to be extremely narcissistic. The Gods had clearly deprived him of modesty, bestowing upon him insolence, rudeness, ego, and many other vices. As is usually was the case, there were far more vices in the heavenly basket from which the Gods distributed their bounty than there were virtues.

“Even a baby knows more Words than you do!” The dragon roared, involuntarily exhaling jets of azure fire. “Not to mention the nobles and me!”

“I admire you immensely, all-knowing one.” Ash’s forehead touched the floor of the cave once again.

From these endless bows, the skin on his forehead was worn out, and turned into an unpleasant red spot. To hide the shameful mark, he created a bandana from a stone, with which he tied up the regrown hair.

“Can you speak to the rain, worm?” the dragon asked, resting his gigantic head on his coiled body.

“Yes, I can.” The mage smiled to himself.

“The Fae king can speak to the torrents.” Hu-Chin grinned. That grin would’ve turned a man’s hair gray and made him stutter for life. “I can talk to every drop.”

“I’m amazed by your knowledge, wise one,” Ash said, his forehead aching again and his skin prickling.

“Do you know how to tame the Forest?”

“I do.”

“You do not know anything! I can tame every leaf and every blade of grass, but even that is not true knowledge!”

Ash paused, not believing what he was hearing. For the first time in his memory, the dragon spoke of himself as not the most knowledgeable and most powerful sage, but as someone who still didn’t know all the secrets of the universe.

“Did you know, worm, that I was once the patron saint of Girtai, the blessed land lit by the moons of the Seven Heavens?”

“I didn’t,” Ash replied, even though he did know. “But now that I do, I respect you even more, the most powerful of them all!”

“Once upon a time,” Hu-Chin continued, “these people were great. When the human kingdoms were still young in the west, there were already cities full of pagodas, and walls as thick as some of the mountain ranges. Sages wrote books upon books on philosophy, artists could capture the movement of wind in their pictures, and mages could subdue spirits and demons. But all of that is now gone. Like a poorly built tower, it collapsed under its own weight.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ash said during the pause that followed. He truly was sorry for the fate that befell the Girtai.

For a while, the cave was silent, save for the howling of the omnipresent wind. What was its original name? No one could tell, for it was more fickle than the temper of a scorned woman. One moment it had one name, the other, a completely different one. Its name couldn’t be caught or found. All you could do was listen to it and try to understand it. It wasn’t like the fire’s name, which had burned itself into Ash’s soul. No, he couldn’t understand those who danced with the wind. To him, even this small fragment of the pearl seemed incomprehensible.

“The time has come to teach you the most difficult lesson,” Hu-Chin said calmly, barely sounding like himself. “Listen and never forget. These events took place back when people called anyone who had a club stronger than their own a king. Back when the Girtai celebrated New Years by letting thousands of petals cover their capital, then called the Mysterious City. At the same time, in the Seventh Heaven, where the Kingdom of the Gods lies, there was a Cherry Feast. All the demigods, the fae, and many mortal sages were called there. I, too, was present. But even in my most majestic form, I occupied but a tile of the palace. That was how majestic the Jade Emperor’s abode is.”

Ash didn’t risk exhaling too loudly, lest he risked breaking the orderly narrative of a time that wasn’t mentioned even in the oldest of books of the Thirteen Kingdoms.

“Lovely nymphs, whose beauty would enslave anyone’s heart, offered me Cherry Nectar. The lesser goddesses, differing from the dryads only in their intelligence, delighted the ear with melodies so exquisite that if you listened to one, you would shed tears and forever wince when any other bard plucked at their lute’s strings. The meanings of their songs were so deep that you would have spent your whole life trying to decipher a single message hidden in them. Ah, those were the times...” The dragon paused. The sun was rising in the east, caressing the azure with golden rays, making the sky turn red, like the cheeks of a young man who had snatched a kiss from his love. The air gradually became warmer, embracing them like the arms of a loving mother. The wind had died down and was playing with their hair like a maiden with that of her lover, resting in her lap. If there was anything beautiful about this cave, it was the view of the dawn.

“Then the God of my people came to me. The sage Liao-Fen. He was not even close to the Jasper Emperor, did not even hold a heavenly position and did not have connections in the magistrate, but wherever he stepped, everyone offered him gifts and bowed, touching the floor with their foreheads. His eyes shined like Myristal, and his smile was brighter than