CH824 Toltho’s Perspective
by“How many today?” Toltho asked, trying to keep the weariness from his face as he asked his kin.
“Forty-five so far but there’s still hunters out.”
An answer he was expecting, even if it still left him with a headache. Forty-five today, thirty-two the one prior, a high of sixty-seven before that with sightings and attacks working out to within that range consistently since their god had told them that the second wave had started, with the demons they once raised and corralled flooding the whole of the world along with their small part of it too.
They killed all they’d see. With what they’d learned, both of what those beasts truly were as well as their own relation to them, they could do nothing else but days of endless battle had them wearing thin. There was always more to find, always more to kill and now that they knew just how little their home was compared to the wider world, the implications of it were staggering considering just how many they’d see.
It was to the point that hunting felt almost wasteful. They tried to eat what they could but it left more meat than they needed to go around and while the flesh of those beasts made for a decent enough lure for hungry members of their own insatiable kind, disposing of all of the rest was burdensome in its own way.
But it has to be done. He thought with a tinge of exhaustion, sending up a small prayer to his god and looking forward to the next chance he’d get to speak with the cube for all the ways it would ease his mind.
For all the changes that had come with it when the dark truth of their existence had been revealed, Myriad had been the most blessed one, showing them the love and compassion that they never realized a god should have been giving from any of their old ones, those evil deities who had both created the demidemons as a whole for their own selfish desires and through that act, helped doom the world.
No, unlike them, Myriad was truly worthy of faith, giving generously and strengthening them all in the process with both his blessing and his skill granting them all a new way to experience the world and deepen their interactions with each other too. The treatment was incomparable and the greatest gift they could have hoped to receive, building the faith he received on trust and love instead of the fear that powered what they used to give.
But as his mind wandered to their revered deity, the one with him lingered, taking an apologetic tone.
“And there’s one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“The four were the ones to discover and take on the largest group we saw today of twenty. All lived but there were injuries again.”
A sigh finally couldn’t be kept from escaping his lips as Toltho shook his head. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll go talk to them.”
With a small nod, the other left, giving Toltho just a moment of peace to breathe before getting up. No matter how he felt about it, he was the acting leader of his people which left him with responsibilities to bear so leaving his home, he went out into the village to find a few of the bigger points of stress it housed.
Looking around as he did, he tried to take it in for what good it held. Their village wasn’t large by any stretch but it had changed completely in the last few years, with sturdy homes to live in now that they weren’t being moved constantly to escape the eyes of the world’s gods and a field where they farmed crops for themselves instead of just gathering, but more than any of that was the people within it.
In the past, the direction of their lives was simple. They lived for the sake of their gods, doing what they could to sustain themselves so that they might give all the faith they were able with every hour they had, only stopping to hunt and sleep, with the ones they’d worshiped feeling like they tolerated that fact more than they actually understood it. Now though, things were different. Despite the dangers of the world around them, children were at play and some adults were even joined in, with the sounds of music coming from others who practiced in their leisure.
The skills any one of them would hold had grown too, being shown that so many more existed than any of them had thought too which made different forms of training easier. With access to the cards, it was no longer a matter of fumbling in the dark to find which magics any of them were suited for and with books on topics they never had before, it was easy for their talents to blossom as they worked, making surviving just that little bit easier for everyone there.
Well, almost everyone. He told himself as he let himself into another building where the ones who’d decided to devote themselves to the healing arts were at work, treating the injured who’d returned after facing down the biggest crowd of the day by themselves. Those who’d once stood by his side as the leading figures of the villages, brought down by their gods and their faith with the orders they’d been given in the past. The other four who, like himself, had once acted as representatives of the forbidden gods who’d created their race.
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