009: A Cold Cruel World

Nothing in his life had prepared him for this, nothing at all. Because when you thought about it, this was the least kind of thing Divyat ever expected could happen to him. The nature spirits of Evergreen were thought to be nothing more than guardian beasts, emphasis on the beast. No one and definitely Divyat ever expected them to have an iota of intelligence to them, and even if intelligence could be attested to, speaking was a whole other ball game. He took one second too long staring at the Winter Stag not at all sure what to say or do.

"Finish it! Isn't this why you humans came here, destroyed the sect below the mountains and came up my lair, you came for my power did you not. Well it's unfortunate but a weakling like you has put me in such a state, now finish it! I can see terrible anger in your eyes, use that to guide your lust for power and strike the finishing blow!"

Divyat was confused, this conversation was not one he could run from, but he felt like there was some misunderstanding. "but-I-I don't want your power, I don't want anything." He said to himself, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Then the rage that struck me down, what was it for, aren't these your comrades I've struck down?" The stag asked, only for Divyat to get up to his feet and March right to the front of it, his eyes blazing and his fear all but forgotten.

"No! No! They took everything away from me! We just wanted to get away, we just wanted to live… and the emperor he… he came here… and then you killed my brother." Divyat said as he turned to look as Nivgyat's mutilated body, his stomach twisting into knots when he realized his was 70% responsible for the horrible state his brother's body was now in. He turned back to the winter stag, tears and expectations in his eyes, one way or the other he needed pity, remorse and understanding from someone, anyone at all.

"So?" those words shocked him, bringing him out of his stupor as he looked at the stag in confusion.

"Are you expecting me to apologize for killing an inconsequential and weak human, to me you are all the same. It doesn't matter if it's your sect that was destroyed or you are part of the people doing the destruction. I could care less whether I killed your brother, I have killed many brothers, many sisters, mothers, and even fathers. As far as I'm concerned the only good human is a dead human, you're vermin, worse than the rodents that infest my mountain. Your entire race, your brother and family included, deserves nothing better than death, especially if they have a weakling such as yourself for a protector. After all, you did nothing more than stand there while your brother was beaten to a pulp, and could do nothing as he was thrown into the air while I gored him like the trash that he is!"

"Arghhhhhh!"

The haze of wrath and anger settled down on his head once again as Divyat threw a foot straight to the one good eye of the Winter Stag. He let go of the bow in his hands and pounced onto the giant body of the nature spirit, his fists pounding down with all of the force he could muster. In his rage addled mind, he never noticed his blood mixing in with the winter stag's as his knuckles were split open, or even more so he never noticed the way the Stag's body seemed to give up it's most injured area for his hits to rain down upon. One particular hit sent his fist into the sliced open throat of the Winter stag, causing enough damage to completely severe the Life Vein, causing a rupture of energy as the winter stag took it's last breath.

"Boom!!!*

A wild explosion of snow and wind raised Divyat into the air and brought him smashing down to the ground, an audible crack heard as his spine was servered in two. Pain unlike any other assaulted his body as a blizzard of Qi was immediately formed with the Winter Stag at it's epicenter. Divyat could do nothing but watched paralyzed as the body of the stag floated into the air, snow once again covering the devastated landscape, with many things getting frozen in the process, even the bodies of everyone else around. Everything, except Divyat.

The body of the Winter stag began to break apart, turning into motes of lights before congregating into five bundles. It seemed to Divyat that the antlers of the Winter Stag had reformed into an exquisite Blue-White Bow, it's pristine white coat and fur had turned into a hooded coat, it's two massive fangs were now two nasty looking longswords, it's spine and the rest of it's collective bones reformed into a piece of armor, complete with bracers, and a helmet. It's hoofs became powdery light then reformed into a white boots with it's soles a blazing icy blue. They all shot forwards into Divyat's body, eliciting a wild scream from him that was drowned out by the blizzard.

But it was not over as Divyat noticed a root, made of sparkling crystals, the root had two branches colors of blue-green, and grey-blue. Divyat knew at a glance that this was the Winter Stag's spirit root, wind and water. The root's branches twisted in-between themselves to make up a third color of an icy blue, with golden sigils etched on it that gave off a severe amount of power. Even paralyzed, Divyat could not help but be amazed at what he was seeing, it was beyond exquisite, beautiful in every sense of the word. And then it burst; into hundreds of thousands of crystal shards that were then swept by the wind, straight into Divyat's nose, then his ears, his eyes, and then his mouth as he opened it to scream.

He could feel the crystals cutting his insides open as they traveled into his body, he felt the cold, he felt the wetness and he felt the games all at once as his body was ravaged from the inside out by primordial forces of nature and existence. The elements had more power in their singular forms than any one man is willing to admit, and right now Divyat was facing an onslaught from three of them. His body shook, his bones broke and got reforged as Qi ran roughshod through his body in a worse way than he had ever felt or experienced. At this moment Divyat was beset by fear as he worried for his life, and then thought was no longer coherent as the pain became too much for him to bear, and he just thought to himself.

'Am I going to die?'