"I won't forget how your lot took an extra coin from me." I cheekily passed off a remark. It took a moment but Glut laughed after realising it. His eyes were still swollen from last night but at least he had a tough smile on his face.
The more I stayed with him, the more apparent it had become that his wife and child being out there was the only thing dragging him out of bed every morning. I didn't have the right to take that away from him, even if it meant lying to him.
Maybe he would've had the strength to go past it. Perhaps I was trying to protect myself than protect him.
"Sooo, what are you going to do now?" Popa asked as she left the house with a basket in her hand.
"We're headed to meet the Lord. Perhaps kill him. It really depends on the situation."
"Bitch."
"Hu-"
Popa wound up and threw the basket at us like it was a kettlebell. "-You ungrateful little shits! Scram. Run away. Shooooo. If anyone asks you didn't come here! We don't know you!" She waved her hand as the rest of us laughed. "Turning this old frail lady into a traitor after all I did for them."
"Where do we go though?" Javes asked.
"Straight." She pointed at a place far away. "Until you run out of this iceland."
"Understood."
As we started to move, we heard a loud click of a tongue.
"Will you be fine? Do you need more food? More wood?" Before chasing us off she still showed concern.
"You don't have to worry, Lola. There is a reason why we're the strongest. You gave us plenty." I cracked my back and stretched. "Ready?"
"Ready." The other two replied.
"We will see you again someday." I turned around. "I hope you have your son to introduce then."
"Bye!"
And with that we started off our journey. With a walk, then a jog, and before long while Lithia carried Javes on her back, I ran. Knowing where to go and where the end was made the process a lot simpler.
Before meeting Lola, we were simply walking while saving energy. Slowly and being extremely wasteful of resources in the process. Not to mention, our movement wasn't linear. There were times where we walked back into our footprints despite putting down markers.
Knowing exactly where we were headed, took the element of doubt out. It was a just a simple sprint now.
Of course, I had to slow my pace down for the two of them.
We reached the end of the wasteland to found a world anew. The entirety of the snowfield was but the top of a gargantuan plateau.
The glaciers that had become more common the further in we went into the snow field, turned into waterfalls that hydrated the forests. What laid below was a lush jungle with beings of magnificent brightness and proportions scattered about. Houses built of wood. And Untouchables around every corner. This was their Mount Topaz.
From there onwards, our journey took us through many stages. We discovered so much.
From Jungles and ravines, to deserts and oases. Even in the least ideal locations for survival, these people prospered. We seldom found any sort of degeneracy of poverty. We seldom found people disillusioned by hatred. It felt like an incredibly inviting land to live in.
But just as with any other people they weren't all good. We had plenty of fights and defeated plenty of army officials who seemed to recognise us, but we still got along with the General public. We noticed that people reciprocated whatever emotions we treated them with. We helped them and they responded with kindness.
Unlike the intrinsic hatred we had towards the Untouchables, we were just simple humans to them. It almost felt like word of the war from outside had never reached past that wasteland.
We found that the people we grouped together as Untouchables, had cultures of their own and moving from place to place, their behaviours varied drastically. On one hand, you would have the people from the jungle who would welcome you with open arms and on another people in a larger city with a frown on their faces who wouldn't even greet you back.
One thing remained common, though. No matter where we went we felt like we didn't belong. It was not because of us being human or having to stay a hands width away from them for our motives. But because our motives to them might have seemed incredibly pointless.
"Why fight the Lord? He is great." The more we went around the more awesome his image became. The image of him we got from our lands was that he was an evil man trying to take revenge on all of humanity for just trying to survive in the face of scarcity.
Revenge for what exactly? We were never told, nor did we ever choose to question. Humans were the victim, we didn't need to know what to hate the perpetrators for.
"Us Daemons used to be dumb." A lady told us after putting her son to sleep. We were staying at her place for the night. The off-handed statement got Javes to try his hardest to hold in a smile. "You might laugh, but there's no better way to put it. We were divided into smaller communities trying our best to survive. But then the Lord was born. He set up systems everywhere facilitating communications between segregated groups. Then visited every group individually and fixed problems that affected them, such that the solution forced a collaboration with another group. The lord handled us like little kids having a fight— making us hold hands and apologise." She patted her son's head.
The way she spoke of him was similar to every other Daemon in this territory. With reverence. Compared to his image, my little cult of followers seemed inconsequential.
"Then he made roads, networks, and got resources from resource deficient areas to areas rich in them. Rocks and minerals from the desert made it here and the food and lumber made it there. He educated us and made us feel like we were more than just tribes living out our lives. I was taught how to teach and raise the generations to come. Slowly strength ceased to matter as much. As long as you could contribute to society you were needed. Doing all of that in a small fraction of a lifetime."
The animosity we were taught started to disappear but the quest still held its meaning. We were to stop the war, not to kill the Lord. From the way everything was going so far, chances were that we weren't even going to have to fight.
Though, even if our motives were pure, the fact that we wanted to sneak our way into this land's leader's palace still birthed hostility.
It wasn't very difficult for the enemies to find us. They came at us whenever we got too lax with covering up after ourselves. But even if they did come, they didn't come at us with the intent to kill.
As we went further inland the battles became easier. We figured out our preferred method of fighting.
And just like that within all the action, two years had passed.