Though he didn't know where this savage had come from, Du Yi had no intention of simply sending him back.
He still hadn't gotten the information he was after. He still didn't know where this place was, didn't know what age it was, and had even less idea what this world was like.
And this savage who'd nearly died of food poisoning plainly did know these things. The man wore animal hides, true, but they were finely stitched; the little bone knife at his waist had clearly been carved with care; and on top of that, weak as he was, his every gesture showed a basic courtesy. This was, without question, a civilized person.
Civilization meant records, which meant history, which meant some understanding of the world.
But to get the information he wanted, Du Yi first had to learn these people's language.
Not that Du Yi meant to learn it for nothing, of course—he'd provide meals, and provide them in full. After all, if you want the horse to run fast, you've got to feed the horse plenty of fodder. He would give fair payment, but he hoped this savage would do the work in earnest, too.
Plainly, though, this savage's powers of comprehension had a bit of a problem.
Once Du Yi had returned to his lair, the savage—set down on the ground—began kowtowing without pause, muttering away in a stream of gibberish, heaven only knew about what.
This left Du Yi rather displeased. He'd brought the man back to kowtow at him?
At first, Du Yi still thought to talk him out of it. Owing to the language barrier, Du Yi once more brought out food: mammoth marrow he'd roasted with care, kept simmering low by the bonfire all this while. Even with no seasoning added at all, it ranked among Du Yi's top three favorite foods.
A pity, though—this time the language of food wasn't quite so effective.
Faced with the great bone giving off its tempting fragrance, the savage only kowtowed harder.
This left Du Yi no choice but to fall back on another, more universal language.
That was, body language.
First, while the savage was kowtowing, he'd whack the man with his tail; then he'd prop the savage upright, shake his head, press the savage back down into the kowtowing posture, and whack him with his tail again...... and so on, round and round.
The savage finally grasped his meaning—at the very least, he stopped kowtowing without end.
But even that didn't reach the standard Du Yi was after. What he wanted was to learn this savage's language—yet how to make the savage understand his meaning was a fresh puzzle all its own.
"Maybe I could start with objects?"
Thinking this, Du Yi fetched over a piece of bison meat and set it down before the savage.
But to his great regret, the savage—dismally slow on the uptake—still didn't catch his meaning, and even began treating the slab of beef with great reverence.
This left Du Yi no choice but to once again take up the humble tool of body language.
After a few whacks of the tail, the savage finally stopped kowtowing at the beef.
This time, the savage's choice was to go straight to cutting up the beef to take and roast.
Seeing that the savage's comprehension was wretched to such a degree, Du Yi finally lost a bit of his patience. So after another round of whacking, Du Yi simply pointed his tail-tip at the beef, and then pointed it at the savage.
"Ssss—"
Du Yi grew so vexed he even flicked out his tongue.
This time, the savage before him seemed to grasp something at last.
And then the savage flicked out his tongue too.
"Ssss—"
It was a rather odd way of making a sound, yet it was identical to the one Du Yi had made.
......
After a moment of silence, Du Yi gave his own head a smack.
He had meant to learn this savage's language.
The result was that this savage had understood it as: learn his language.
***
For Lightbringer, this was an experience unlike any in his life.
To live through a brush with death was rare enough; to be carried by the Snake God into the deep mountains was something he had never once imagined. But what astonished him still more was the Snake God's present conduct.
The Snake God was teaching him the language of a god.
Though he had misunderstood several times, once he'd calmed down Lightbringer recovered the keen wits a chieftain ought to have. He felt he had grasped the Snake God's meaning, and realized, too, that this was indeed a most necessary thing.
To understand the Snake God's language was to be able to commune with the Snake God—otherwise, by what means could he ever speak with this Snake God at all?
So over the time that followed, he devoted himself in earnest to learning the Snake God's language: learning how the other made each sound, even how to flick out the tongue.
As the Nineteenth chieftain of the Ignivas family, Lightbringer had always been a quick study.
After day and night had turned a mere thirty times, he could already manage a little of the most basic communication.
Just like now.
"Ssss?"
Mimicking the snake's manner of sound, Lightbringer pointed to the great mammoth bone off to one side.
"Ssss, ssss?"
"Ssss."
The enormous snake replied.
So Lightbringer hoisted the great bone onto his shoulder and set it up by the larger bonfire. And when he turned back around, he saw the giant snake nodding at him.
This was the most basic of exchanges: a moment ago he'd asked whether they would eat this tonight, and whether it was to be the marrow or the beef, and the Snake God's answer had been to roast the bone first, since there were other plans for the evening.
He had always learned things fast—whether the ancestral magic, or how to be a chieftain, or now this language that came from a god.
To understand the language of a god was to serve a god all the better.
Yes—to serve a god. The Lightbringer of this moment was no longer the man brimming with hatred from before. Now he sincerely wished to do as the Eighteenth chieftain had charged him, and seek the God's forgiveness—on the one hand because of the source of the family's magic, which had been stolen from the God's great power.
And on the other, because of his own earlier attempt to poison the God to death.
Whenever he thought of how he'd been fool enough to try to poison a Snake God by tainting its food, Lightbringer felt he must have been out of his mind at the time.
So, once he'd gradually learned the Snake God's language, the first thing Lightbringer did was lay out his thoughts: the source of the family's magic, and his own rash act before.
Yet to Lightbringer's surprise, in the face of all he confessed, the Snake God only shook its head.
"Ssss."
A short syllable—but it meant utter indifference. The Snake God hadn't taken the faults and sins that loomed so large in his eyes the least bit to heart.
"—Ssss?"
A drawn-out tail of sound—it meant the Snake God was very interested in their magic.
This rather puzzled Lightbringer. The power of magic, after all, was something the forebears had stolen from the Snake God in the first place; surely the Snake God knew it inside and out. How could it be curious about such things?
"Ssss."
At the last, the Snake God added one more line.
And it was this one line that left Lightbringer unable to come back to himself for a long while.
Because that final line from the Snake God plainly denied the existence of gods.
He couldn't believe what he had just heard.
The great Snake God had said, with its own mouth, that it was no god at all.