A human rejected all the pleasures the realm had to offer. Not even the food, not even his bed. He had sit on the ground to meditate in the loud, stubborn way only he knew of.
In truth, he was struggling. The ship he rode had the most enticing luxuries known to monsters. To miss on the meat, to hold back the scents created its own kind of hunger.
Yet he had persisted.
His friend had gone from confused to panicked to frustrated to confused again. The hunched lizard wondered if that human longed for a whip.
"I brought you meatballs!" He showed the saucy, steamy balls in his scaly hands. "How can you not be hungry?"
"You have them..." His friend groaned, then resumed humming.
That tore into the greyhound's mind. He was to sleep in the human's bed, eat his food, bathe in his stead and could not help himself. His maw made short work of the meat.
It was too good to say no.
Then, as soon as he was finished, the beast winced. His friend was still sitting and suffering by himself.
"Is it because I failed to ascend?"
"It's not about that!" The human broke off to yell. "This whole place pisses me off! A real man doesn't need comfort! He is born wild and dies with pride! A real man carves his own path!"
"I want to kill too, you know..."
"What? No! That's not! You don't need to kill to be a man! You just need to trust your instinct!"
Which, to a monster, meant to hunt and feed. But that was not the only lie.
Behind it all he was mad at himself. Mad to have let himself partake in the Parao's feast, mad to still want to join in, mad to feel dumb to reject it all now. A part of him knew better than to question others' customs.
Only a part. The rest of him was ablaze, ready to go to war with the realm.
They had sailed through the immensity. By the morning word had gone through that the ship would anchor at the Shards. Few even knew what that was but for passengers traveling a dead land, an island of life was exciting.
The youngest probably dreamt even of a rampage.
So then the landscape changed and calls echoed through the corridors and passageways. It would be on their port, to the ship's left, an hour away or less. Monsters of all shapes rushed out, on the deck and on the rigging to see that land.
For them, even just hills were a marvel. But the ruins of Pelum looked nothing such: a graveyard of ragged ridges and rocky ribs white as chalk that cut through the stone and sand of the desert.
What had been algae hundreds of meters tall now lay calcified amid those shapes and covered themselves with tiny red and black gems.
What they called the Shards was a monsters' lair at the edge of Pelum, dens made of sand and bones on elevated platforms. For most that pocket of life hardly differed from the rest, but they had stone paths stretching to the desert for the Parao to moor at.
Monsters worked to fold the massive sand sails. All three keels slowly lost speed. The massive waves of sand calmed down to nothing.
In the cabin, the human finally agreed to get up.
His friend helped him dress, put on the cheetah fur on his shoulders and the heavy mane up his ears. That all still felt ridiculous to him but the rocky lizard praised his regal looks.
They came out just in time to see the Parao stop. From the deck the port hull partly hid that land beyond. Humanoid beasts massed at the bulwark and ignored the misshapen monsters that crawled on the ropes and masts.
The priestess herself, the bird monster in her garnments, had come out on top of the stern's castle.
"We are the Parao!" She called.
Her voice carried far, all the way to the monsters that equally massed out of their lairs and on the bone ridges. Those ones bore fur on their backs, even for those for whom it was not natural.
"By word of Kaele, we prevail by ascension. As the drought devours monsters, humans prevailed over it! Humanity is the answer! We seek human bodies for our hearts and cast away the pain of our frail past! Join us! Or let us join you!"
Nobody answered that short speech. The passengers were already busy bringing forth planks long enough to reach the port keel and from there, to turn the cranes and attach lifts.
But the human had more than enough magic in him to tell what was going on on the other side. He saw past and heard the monsters, in that bone lair, waver and mutter among themselves.
A felog in particular was pressing the menilis at his side.
The batracian tried to stay calm: "You have to talk, it has to be you."
"That's Nadjal!" The menilis was panicking. The cat creature almost lost her temper. "She tried to kill me at least three times! You talk!"
"Chipie, you are our chieftain! Things are already bad enough as they are, make an effort."
"Then I resign!"
"Not this time you don't."
Nothing could proceed before the Shards answered the Parao's call. Or it could proceed in the way monsters knew best. So there was really no choice but for the stretched cat-rat to talk.
She hopped forth and tried to speak as loudly as the spell would allow.
"We are the Shards! By word of Kaele, we prevail through peace! Sort of." She added silently before resuming. "Killing makes us weak, so we don't kill! Magic makes us want to kill, so we reject magic! Those are the laws that let us defy the hunger! Join us! Or let us join you!"
With this both sides were ready. Those who wanted to disembark could; those who wanted to board were free to.
Monsters started to walk on the stone piers, toward the Parao. What were a few now turned to dozens that almost crowded the narrow platforms. Back on the ship, no one moved, safe for the human who had already crossed to the port hull.
He looked down a second, looked away and then, after a moment to breathe, jumped on the lift.
"Aren't you coming?!" He called his friend.
The rocky lizard, hunched and standing, was at a loss. But because the human was on the lift, he followed, leaped in turn on the wooden platform.
"There you go! That's our leap to freedom!"
"It's a mistake, we should turn back."
The monsters handling the cranes had waited long enough. With no one else joining, they lowered the lifts. Two would leave the Parao, more than forty now pressed to join.
Someone landed on the lift with them. The human turned and saw that horned rabbit, human-like, stand up and brush himself up.
He still wore the fine attires and carried nothing on him.
"Master Piaf!" The rocky lizard exclaimed.
That forced the teenage human to acknowedge his presence: "What's up, man? I thought you liked the suffering!"
"Mh. I suppose I needed some fresh air!" And the hare stretched. "Besides, there was nothing left for me to achieve in this lair."
"Oh? And what are you aiming for now?"
"What else but kill? But I guess I could give this whole peace thing a try. How annoying! My youth is wasted chasing dreams."
"Well me and my pal are going to save the world!"
What sounded like a sad joke made the monster's eyes grow wide. He stood there, speechless for a few seconds. Then his ear twitched, then he started to laugh.
"That's too rich! Ah, human, I must really look like a toddler to you." He was holding his face, still laughing. "You are right. I am aiming too low! Alright, I accept. Let's see which one of us succeeds first!"
The human whistled. By now the platform was more than halfway through.
"Okay, you've got guts, I'll give you that! Sure, I'm in, we'll see which one of us is the real deal!"
He had pronounced those words in such a way that it was hard to tell if he intended to punch the hare in the face less or more. They both shared a fire in their eyes that fueled each other.
But the lift was almost all the way down. The monster didn't wait, jumped off and dropped among the waiting crowd. By the time the lift had stopped, he had sprinted almost all the way out of the pier.
Then the crowd of monsters walked in. They hated being so pressed. Their instinct flared. The human let them pass, then walked away, his lizard friend by his side.
Before him the Shards was regaining life. His presence showered the area in magic. The rocky white formations absorbed it and turned back to actual bones. The stone under his feet smoothened and dampened. Before his eyes, calcified algae started to bend up.
He could not tell if that was normal or not and so, as was his habit, ignored it all.
The city of Pelum had been less a city than a meeting spot for humans used to living inside flying beasts. Whales, eels, catfishes - no, not the monster kind - would circle this sky to feed while settlements admired the sight from their transparent bellies.
The humans left, their fishes remained until the weight of the realm caught up.
Fighting had broken up all over the Shards.
The human could not tell why beasts lashed out on each other, exchanged some strikes before breaking off and dashing away. They hardly needed to talk it out and so he could not hear any rumor.
"Looks lively around here!" He concluded.
"There is nothing here for us." His companion lamented. "We should return to the ship!"
"Are you kidding? The place smells like a rotten warehouse! It's my kind of place!"
Groups of monsters were gathering around him, following his moves with the gazes of predators. He feigned not to see them even as their number grew and his path got more tenuous.
The one to block him was the stretched cat that had spoken earlier.
Now from up close he could make her out and above all notice how her forelegs and flanks lay bare, covered in so many scars that no fur was left.
"You should leave!" She bravely told him.
"And who's gonna make me? You?"
"We reject magic and you are full of it! You are breaking the peace of the Shards, so leave!"
There was quite the spectacle of a small monster facing that tall black human. He scratched his short coily hair, felt the mane, remembered and put his cheetah mask on before crouching to face her up close.
"I'm Nzinga! Nzinga the kitten-defiler! I don't mind leaving if you answer a few questions first."
"Well I'm Chipie, I'm the chieftain here, kitten-defiler."
"Cool! So, Chipie, isn't your place already falling apart? Between the fights and exodus, I would say I'm the least of your problems!"
She shook her head.
"You are the biggest of my problems! All that mana, it's getting to my head, I feel like I could..." She licked her maw. "But then you'll be gone and we'll be starving again! So you need to go before I lose my mind!"
Behind his cheetah mask, the human sighed.
"Next question! What are the other problems?"
"Well we are about to get all killed by a horde."
"Got it! What else?"
"The list is too long and that's really all that matters right now."
"Seems like you forgot about the most important!" And he got back up to talk to the whole crowd. "Your world is dying from a mana drain! And I intend to fix it!"
All the monsters around were taken aback, shocked or in disbelief. But this was a human! The most powerful being there ever was! So they could almost believe his insanity.
The menilis, however, had started to giggle.
"You really believe it!" She laughed it off. "No one cares about the realm. Only one did, and he is long gone now."
Her amusement turned into sorrow.
"You know what, you can stay." And all the beasts around her gasped in confusion. "So says the chieftain! And you will have to keep our bloodlust in check in exchange."
So Chipie hadn't given up even after everything that had happened.