"This mountain range is known as 'The Spine of the World Wyrm'." Walter explained as the group made their way up the last two percent of the human side of the mountain range that marked the northern border of the Kingdom of Altia. "Technically the Altian Mountain Range is also a part of it. As is the Tre'betton Mountain Range a few hundred miles south of that."

"You know a lot about mountains." Lenna commented.

Walter smirked. "Not just about the mountains." He replied. "I know a little about a lot, and a lot about a little. In the end, it makes me look smarter to those that know a lot about a little but not much about a lot."

Lenna hummed in agreement as Isaac was looking around with furrowed brows. He hadn't seen Gypsy leave and she was nowhere to be found. He had no idea how a fox with shoulders as high as his hips could vanish so completely the moment someone stopped watching her.

"Some say that the mountains were formed from a dragon demigod dying during the first ever dragon surge." Walter went on. "If that were true, then the dragon must've been a quartz dragon. There are plenty of other metals found mixed in with the quartz deposits, but it is at least sixty percent crystal across the entire 'true' mountain range. Or it was, anyway. Altia looks to have been mined out a few thousand years ago."

"Some say?" Isaac asked with only the minimal bit of his attention that he was giving Walter's world trivia facts.

"I think that they are left over from when Gia first curled in on herself and turned into a ball. They are collision points for her segments." Walter explained. He looked like he wanted to add more but stopped himself with a frown that spoke of him not believing that Isaac or Lenna would even understand what he was about to say.

"Do you think Gia was actually humanoid in shape?" Lenna questioned.

Walter shook his head. "No. She's definitely a lion headed, turtle shelled, bear clawed, snake tailed, feathered and furred creature." He told her.

"What?" Lenna and Isaac both asked at once. His description of Gia was so crazy and out of the blue that it even managed to yank Isaac's focus from trying to find Gypsy back onto Walter himself.

"She's a Tarasque, or the original Tarasque I guess. I'm about eighty five percent sure that they are her children." Walter explained. "That is why they are practically immune to everything and seem to come from nowhere. Either that or they are her antibodies working to excise the infestation of creatures that have made their homes on her skin."

"What makes you think that?" Isaac questioned. He had been caught, hook, line, and sinker. Like it or not, he was going down the rabbit trail that Walter had revealed to them.

"There are these things called white blood cells inside of a person." Walter began.

"Yes." Isaac replied, which got a pleasantly surprised look from Walter.

"Monsters in the 'Stone Skinned Reptile Adjacent' category, like a basilisk, land shark, or Tarasque, all come from somewhere but no one is exactly sure where." Walter continued. "The leading theory is that there is some 'Mother Monster' that gives birth or creates them incredibly deep underground. I believe that Gia is the one creating them subconsciously in direct proportion to how much damage the mortals are causing to her. Different kinds of SSRA's are spawned in different locations that are more easily traversed or patrolled by that specific kind. If a few land sharks or gargoyles are unconsciously dispatched to handle a specific area where the mortals have been hammering Gia's surface, and they all die, then it might be time for a larger and more unstoppable solution, a tiny clone of Gia herself, a Tarasque."

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"Okay, as crazy as all of that is, does it even relate to the original question?" Lenna wondered. Isaac had already taken 'Tarasque Gia' as fact and moved on.

"Yes and no. It's just some context." Walter told her. "The real reason I think that Gia looks like that is because it encompasses a bit of every kind of terrestrial or airborne creature that is not an insect. I believe that insects and aquatic creatures would've pulled their traits from Manna."

"So what do you think the being that is all of non-physicality looks like?" Lenna further questioned.

Walter shrugged. "Probably see-through, chitin scales over smooth uncomfortably stretchy skin, cartilage skeleton invertebrate, back tentacles, a dozen segmented limbs, with fins that at first glance seem like they do nothing but totally allow him to move omnidirectionally with just a thought and flexing of power. Oh and eyes so hard they clink like glass if you hit them with anything. All of him would almost have to be slightly see-through because of incorporeal creatures and the see-through ones in the deep ocean." He went on without missing a beat. He looked over Isaac's confused but contemplative state and Lenna shaking her head in either disbelief or in an attempt to process the insanity that just came out of his mouth. "Okay, enough getting your minds blown, we're about to crest the mountain range." He cut back into their internal thoughts.

"I take it there is a nice view?" Isaac wondered why Walter would specifically mention it just as Walter stopped his horse and dismounted.

"Yes. But that's not why we've stopped." Walter replied. "Don't fall, get ready for combat, we are jumping worlds, figuratively, just in case you were wondering."

Isaac relaxed his hold on his mana but made sure that it was all shadows as it started to seep through his skin. With his mana already out in the open, it would be easier for him to react to incoming threats considering his current injury. Lenna drew her sword and her stance switched from a casual stroll to one that spoke of lethality at a moment's notice. She was ready to cleave anything in half if it so much as jumped out at them.

"Why did you say jumping worlds?" Isaac wondered as he watched Walter take off his overcoat and drape it across his saddle.

"Humans have a flawed understanding of elven nature." Walter began, much the same way that he had when he revealed his take on Gia and Manna. Isaac had questions regarding Manna but those could wait, for now. Walter pulled out a tiny scabbard that also seemed to double as suspenders as he immediately started fastening them as such. "There is a reason that high elves and wood elves are separated."

"Why?" Isaac questioned as he continued to scan the area around them with his eyes and extra senses.

Walter finished putting on his suspenders with a small scabbard nestled partly under his left armpit and partly across his left breast. Oddly enough, all of the mud from his altercation with Kylus had vanished entirely from all of his clothes. "Wood elves try to keep nature as it should be and keep unnatural things separated. High elves try to play Gia and shape the world into an unnatural self-aggrandizing illusion of nature. They selectively breed prey animals so they spawn more often and more at a time and also run faster to make them more fun to hunt. They infect trees with animation rituals that span hundreds of miles. They grow nontoxic versions of poisonous plants to use as decorations and make poisonous versions of normal looking ones to use against their foes. Nature is just a tool for them to be created, recreated, and bent to their whim." He explained as he pulled out a belt scabbard and equipped it. The odd thing about the new scabbard was that it was actually just a metal pipe with a small knob towards the top. After that, he put his overcoat back on and went digging in his saddlebags for something else. The three foot long pipe-scabbard made it absolutely certain that the saddlebags were much larger on the inside or bottomless.

"That sounds like how some humans want to be." Isaac commented as he watched Walter with growing curiosity at the strange equipment he was putting on. Something had felt vaguely familiar about the suspender scabbard, specifically the oddly bent handle of whatever inside of it.

"Humans lack the centuries of patience it takes in order to do it properly." Walter explained and pulled something out of his saddlebags that instantly gave Isaac a headache. It was similar to a thin crossbow stock but instead of the arm, loading tray, and string, there were two black iron pipes extending for just over two feet. There was also a strange loop just behind the trigger which Walter pushed forwards and it almost completely detached from the rest of the strange weapon with a clink. As that happened, part of the back of the top-most pipe moved backwards an inch or so. He pulled the loop back into place with a clunk and the top pipe went back to how it had been. He hopped back into his saddle with the strange weapon in one hand and then he flipped it around so the stock was pointing forwards and the trigger was facing up as he slid it into a sheath that was hidden in plain sight under the right side of his saddle just under his thigh.

Isaac staggered clutching his head with both hands as his brain tried to connect what he was seeing to something that didn't exist. "Isaac?" Lenna asked worriedly. She hadn't seen him so affected by a headache in a long time it showed no signs of letting up.

Walter looked back over his shoulder and saw Isaac crumpling under what looked like a mental attack. The thing was, he didn't feel any spells activate. There was always the possibility that Isaac's shadows were hiding whatever was assaulting him, so Walter immediately hopped back off of Copper and ran the ten foot gap between them. "What happened?' Walter questioned. "Is it an attack? I need you to answer me. Isaac!" Walter snapped in an attempt to get something, anything, out of Isaac before he succumbed to whatever had his brain in a death grip.

"You." Isaac gasped out. "What, are, those?" He questioned with unfocused eyes as he dropped to one knee under the most imagined pain that he had ever felt. Headaches were mostly just a person's brain imagining pain in order to bring conscious attention to something. The thing was, Isaac knew what was wrong but had no idea if it even could be fixed. His brain was missing knowledge that should've been there and it was trying to make a connection to something that should've existed but didn't. His last hope before his brain just forcefully closed the lid on his consciousness was to try and fill in the space where that memory should've been with something new that fit.

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