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"What do you mean 'The world is telling you'?" Mita heard Grud say in the background as she held her head in confusion.
To Grud's question. She did not know how it was possible to know she knew. In fact, she was asking herself that very same question, but no matter how many times she asked herself, she knew the answer to be… the language of the world?
As Mita was questioning herself more and more, one particular question resonated with her. 'Do I know what I know because I am born of the world's energy myself?'
She then looked at Grud and said, "Wait here for a moment, I am going to check something." She then transformed into a wisp, letting her clothes fall to the ground as she flew up through the roof and came back a few minutes later with one of the wisps that hung around the tribe.
Mita, in her wisp form, and the nameless wisp floated above the symbol drawn in the sand, and Grud watched them glow and bob in the air around the symbol. A minute later, wisp Mita left the nameless wisp to float around the fire symbol and float over to Grud before transforming into her corporal form.
"That wisp says the same thing. It, too, does not know how it knows the symbol means fire." Mita said while bouncing around excitedly. But even with all of Mita's jiggly bits bouncing around, Grud's thoughts were focused on what she said.
"Are you sure you did not accidentally exchange information with it while calling it here before looking?" Guud asked.
"I am positive. It does not communicate in language as we do, but we agree on one thing. The best way we were able to describe it was that it is the language of the world." Mita said.
"The language of the world…" Grud muttered as the implication of what Mita said sank in deeper. "If this is a language, and that one symbol means fire, that most likely means there are other symbols… There is more to the language. What about water, ground, wind, tree, and other symbols? If this one symbol can let me have fire magic, what of other symbols? How do we find the other symbols?"
Grud turned to Mita and said, "Call the harem here for an urgent meeting. We have much to discuss." Mita almost ran out naked if not for Grud reminding her to put her clothes back on.
Within the hour, the harem was assembled in the small stone shaman's hut, and Tavora was jostled awake from her slumber. She was somewhat cranky until she learnt of the subject of the gathering.
After Grud called the meeting to order, he passed the time to Mita to inform the rest of the harem what she and a few other wisps who stopped by thought the fire symbol was and that there were most likely many other symbols waiting to be discovered.
That was where Grud took over. "From what has been said so far, I am sure many of you can speculate that whoever discovers these symbols will have a huge advantage. That being said, like my promise to Tavora, we will be keeping this symbol within the family, and I would like to bring in all our children who are shamans to research this symbol and figure out if we can discover other symbols. To be more specific, only bring in our children, no outside spouses."
Saying this, some of Grud's wives voiced their objections to excluding their sons and daughters-in-law. Grud allowed a few seconds for his wives to share their concerns before he raised his hand to hush them. "I understand that many of you have gotten close to our children's spouses, but how confident are you that they will not tell their family outside the tribe about our discoveries? Understand that this knowledge is strength, and with the powers outside the Alliance being hostile to us, and perhaps those within, our family needs to be strong to survive, and this gives us a huge advantage."
Hearing Grud, most of his wives nodded, begrudgingly or not, while others stayed silent but acknowledged his leadership of the family. Seeing that there was no disagreement, Grud announced that the first step of the plan was to expand the stone hut underground to accommodate the rest of the family's shamans.
***
A month and many hired hands later, an underground basement was dug out for Tavora's shaman's hut, which was a few times bigger than the hut itself.
By then, those in Grud's family who were on a need-to-know basis understood what they had signed up for. In addition to fulfilling their essential duties, they would primarily take a step back from the public eye and spend most of their time at Grud's compound.
Regarding the lead on this research to uncover additional symbols, it fell to Tavora to take charge, which also resolved the question of how she would spend the rest of her time.
Seeing this as a continuation of her father's work, Tavora threw herself into the research with her new family, getting better acquainted with the extended family that she had barely gotten to know.
And with Grud dropping in from time to time to see how they were progressing, and to give her a quickie every now and then, Tavora felt like she had found her calling. Something she could do for the rest of her life.
***
In the close to half a century Grud had been alive, as their society got larger and more complex, the written language was forced to evolve along with it. Admittedly, most of the written language was adapted from the Newlands, but in a few short years, it was locally adapted on Grud's continent.
Even though the lexicon was simple and rough, it was sufficient for Grud to receive basic reports on different boards in his office, where his assistants would jot down updates. One of those updates, or more specifically, a chain of these updates had been keeping Grud's interest.
It was in regard to the Thunder Strider power block, if it could be called a power block anymore.
With the death of the Thunder Strider chieftain, Ba'Rak, the tribe fractured. His commanders, who previously had deals with smaller tribes, struck out on their own, effectively breaking into more than ten territories, each ruled by their own warlord vying for land, resources, and power.
But the civil war was not the only thing going on. Sensing the weakness of the former power block, the Frozen Fang and Rising Horn power blocks started moving into the former Thunder Strider territory to conquer what land they could, and the same could be said for the border tribes in the Alliance, trying to expand their holdings.
The only thing Grud was wary of was if the other two power blocks would try to start a war with the Alliance, thinking that they had weakened from the clash with the Thunder Striders, so he sent a message to the border chieftains to carful of being antaginised by tribes from the other two power blocks.
But that was all he could do. He may be a powerhouse within the Alliance, but that was it. He did not, nor did he want to, rule or manage tribes at the border, so the fate of how much they would profit from the land grab was up to them.
***
As the months went by, the fighting in the old Thunder Strider territory died down due to winter coming, and it was time for everyone to hunker down and solidify their hold of what they had gained, or what little they still held on to.
As for Grud and his family, there was much to be happy about. Firstly, they were far away from the fighting at the border, and he celebrated the births of his children and many more grandchildren. But there was another celebration that was a lot more private.
It was a celebration of a breakthrough in their research on his family, which they liked to call the "World Language" or "Mana Language" project. They were still arguing about the name at the moment, but that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that after months of figuratively smashing their heads against the wall, sometimes literally, trying to figure out how the symbols worked, they had finally found something to show for it.
While it may not be a huge step forward like discovering a new symbol, Grud and his family considered it a significant breakthrough when they managed to modify the fire symbol. The modification did not make the fire produced hotter or cover a larger area; that was mostly down to the will and mana of the caster. What they did manage to change was the color.
Instead of the reddish-orange glow of your average fire, the tweaked symbol produced an emerald-tinted flame.
The unfortunate side effect of this breakthrough was that many individuals attempting to discover new symbols for other aspects shifted their focus to studying the changes in the fire symbol, prompting Grud to intervene and ensure that the search for new symbols did not completely wane.
As for those trying to discover new symbols, now that winter had arrived, attempted to follow the example of how Tavora's father found the fire symbol, aiming to do the same in the freezing weather instead of in a burning hut.
They waited for a snowstorm to happen, and when it did, ten of Grud's shaman sons stepped out into the freezing wind and snow just outside Grud's home. Five of them took off their warm furs and stripped down to their undergarments before sitting down in the snow, while the other five stood by.
As the cold wind bit their skin, the five of Grud's sons who sat down started meditating, reaching out their mana like they would when they tried to make contact with a wisp, but instead, they left it out like feelers in the wind, exposed to the world like their body was exposed to the freezing environment.
It took a while for the five who were meditating to ignore the cold and get into the right headspace, but they eventually got there. After ten minutes, the other five on standby saw their brothers' skin become pale as the warmth receded into the core of their bodies to keep the major organs warm, and after another ten minutes, one of their heads slumped forward.
At that point, the brothers stood by, called off the experiment, and hauled their freezing brothers back inside the house before they could break from the trace.
After those who were meditating were warm and rested, they reported that they did not manage to see any symbols in their meditations. However, two of the five said that they felt something different from their usual meditation, but they could not rule out whether it was just their minds playing tricks on them because of the cold, and they were willing to try meditating in the cold again to confirm it.