Chapter 1013. Ceres, The Savior

---Unclaimed Mountains, Emerald City---

In the dim corner of a pub not far from the lively main roads of the city, sat and told a story. It was a popular one that came with the last groups of people, who all had the same thing to report. It gave hope to the people, stuck in the dreary, heated mountains.

As glamorous as Emerald City seemed, the lives of the people were dark and seldom with hope. Without many electronics, they hungered for entertainment. They gambled, they drank, and they listened to stories. The tales of people who survived in these lawless mountains.

This story was particularly like, as it gave hope to the little man. It was the story of Ceres, the Savior. There were many versions of witnesses that were saved themselves, but all of them went something like this.

“Out in the mountains are places all of you know and fear,” the old man began his tale.

“The camps of the bandits, the slave hunters. Those who wander the mountains to capture wanderers and merchants for their dark business. To keep the inhumane machine that is driving these mountains well-fed.

Ever since people set out to find their fortune in the No Man’s Land, they have also been there hunting for us,” the old man explained.

The listeners nodded. This was the common intro of the stories of Ceres. Next, the old man would tell them, how the people held there, without any hope for freedom, would be saved by a great lightning bird that would swoop from the sky and punish the villains.

Then Ceres and his mount Blotches, a weird creature with a long neck, would free the captured people, returning the freedom that was taken from them. It was a heartwarming story. Although they knew it was all just a children’s story, they indulged in the childishness, as the alcohol blurred the harsh reality.

However, this time, the storyteller diverged from the usual route.

“Those are the places you know, but there are places even worse, and you better pray to never even get close to them. Places that hold the creatures that are known in the south as the Hashing Birds. Atrocities, unholy combinations of technology and magic. Giant owls that swoop from the skies and whisk away any naïve wanderers.

Anyone unfortunate enough to end up in their claws, they bring back to their nest, if you may call it like that. Cold and dark places, where people are held like livestock in damp darkness. The only fate waiting for them, being torture and experiments.”

...

It was as the stories told.

After killing the Hashing Bird in Morranto, Ceres had become their target, although Mike may not have believed it. His relatively calm journey was all thanks to the Parrot of Doom. The elemental was on a journey, chasing and hunting down the Hashin birds and their homes.

Over the course, he also often came across bandit camps in the mountains, one of the hunting spots for the Hashing Birds. He had killed the bandits and freed the people mostly to take the bread out of their mouths.

At that point, it did not know what happened to the people, but it knew that the sole purpose of these birds was collecting living beings. Ceres had been hunting for a while, before he came across the first “nest”, as the storyteller called it.

Ceres wouldn’t know that these places were high-tech laboratories that had been built across the Unclaimed mountains at an unknown point in time, but the elemental found about the effects its lightning had on them and their occupants.

As the bird followed the trail of the hashing Birds for petty vengeance, it accidentally created the tale of the great savior, simply by disregarding the survivors.

In the meantime, Ceres had traveled far to the west, all the way to the border storm, but signs of Hashing Birds had suddenly vanished. There were also no more “nests”, at least none it could see.

~Maybe it is time to turn around and return, Blotches. I doubt he is worried, but Seth probably questions where I’ve been so long without notice. ~

The bird mused over this problem, as his trusty steed slowly turned around to walk back the way they came. Ceres had been unable to call home because his communication orb was accidentally destroyed during a fight.

The golem had no inventory, so he either had to carry it, or leave it to Blotches to carry. At one point he was fighting a swarm of 7 Hashing birds and two of them attacked the Questing beast. Although it was in no danger, the orb was lost.

Disgruntled, they decided to return, but on the way back, they suddenly heard a wupwup-sound in the air, that cut through the storm.