And (N)one Shall Remain

“Have you all made up your mind on this matter?” Esperanza asked the gathered youths before her. Nine pairs of eyes filled with resolve looked back at her, all of them making it clear that their answer to the question would be the same as the last few times she asked it. They were resolved on their path and she wouldn’t be able to budge the decision they had made.

 

By that point, it had been a month since the group’s arrival in Agur-Bas. The younger children had found new homes and families willing to accept them as their own, and as far as Esperanza could tell, the acceptance was a genuine one, rather than a facade put up for her to see. Even Eda-Zil found a place an occupation for herself, as the temple insisted that she join them, as one of the first ones to have met with the Messenger of the Deities of Yore. 

 

While she still needed a wheelchair to get around – even with the help of the best healer in town it would take weeks if not months for her to recover the use of her legs – she already looked far more cheerful and optimistic compared to how she was during the last leg of their trip. Having something to do and no longer feeling like a useless burden did wonders to her mental state, as had the promise of eventual recovery.

 

As for Esperanza herself, she planned to go out to temper herself. 

 

She realized that above all else, if one wished to survive in this world, power was needed. Without power, she could forget about helping Oldies, even surviving alone would be difficult. It was still a world where the strong devour the weak, after all, and the system just further reinforced that. She had thought that she should return to the jungle to fight and strengthen herself, and only leave once she was strong enough to be able to do something more than merely survive in front of the difficulties ahead of her.

 

What she had not expected – she knew that the young progenies had claimed that they would follow her, but had not expected their devotion to be that intense – was how the progenies demanded to be allowed to follow her. It was not just the eight progenies either, but also Iryl, the one older child who had forcibly matured and survived the trip to Agur-Bas, who asked to be allowed to join them, even if only as a pack mule.

 

Esperanza naturally tried to dissuade them from following her into such a grueling path. She had originally hoped to be strong enough to do the heavy lifting, while the progenies would help her on the side without risking themselves, but they made it very clear to her that they wished for no such thing. They wished to fight alongside her, not cower behind their backs.

 

The experiences those young children had within the past month, from the invasion and destruction of their home village and the deaths of most everyone they knew and cared for, to the difficult trek through the jungle where they had to cower behind the protection of others, until the day they reached the second tier and were forced into physical maturity ahead of their time, had changed them.

 

They have no desire to cower behind someone’s back once more, now that they had power that they could call their own, power that was gifted by the Deities of Yore, yet belonged to them. They wished to be the ones up front, the ones fighting for the weak who need to be protected. They refused to be pampered and kept safe anymore.

 

“We will never cower behind someone’s back ever again,” said Val-Kas’j firmly, speaking for all the progenies as the others nodded in affirmation at his words. “What good is this power of ours, granted by the very Deities of Yore, if we were to skulk and hide our existence like frightened rats all the time. No, Exalted One, please, give us this chance to grow stronger and fight by your side.”

 

“What repercussions that might result in, are ours to bear. This is the choice we had made,” he added before he prostrated himself deeply before her, followed by the other progenies and Iryl. All of them looked like they would remain in that pose until Esperanza agreed with their request, and she had little doubt of their resolve, not this time.

 

“Fine, fine. You’ve all made your decision and I will respect it,” said Esperanza with a sigh as she finally accepted the decision the children had made. “You all must know that there will be great hardship ahead of us. Our targets are none other than the new gods, so there likely won’t be any room for negotiation either. If we should fall midway, there would likely be nothing but gruesome deaths awaiting us all.”

 

“We are well aware of that Exalted One, and had made our decision in mind,” replied Tiesya. She and Val-Kas’j most often took turns to represent the progenies as a whole, perhaps because they were the oldest two amongst the children before the forced maturity. All the others still viewed them as reliably older siblings to the present moment.

 

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Esperanza said exasperatedly as she shook her head. “Since you’re all so determined, then we should ask around to see if someone in Agur-Bas could provide us with better equipment. The things you made out of the beasts we slew are pretty good, but none of us are exactly skilled at weaponmaking, so there will likely be others who can make them better.”

 

“A fair observation, Exalted One,” admitted Val-Kas’j. “Why had you not done that prior to this, though?”

 

“Because I don’t really need weapons or armor to fight one way or another,” replied Esperanza with a smirk as she shifted her left arm into a tentacular limb that ended in a crescent blade formed out of bone and back to a normal humanoid arm once more within moments. “On the other hand, all of you could benefit from better equipment. Armor, weapons, the likes. We should also pack up rations if we plan to take extended trips to the forest.”

 

“Maybe big sister Belug-ur’ani could help us with that, Exalted One?” asked Tiesya as she raised her hand to give a suggestion. “She’s one of the heads of the town guard here, so she should be familiar with any weapon and armor smiths around, given that they also need those for their own use, no?”

 

“Smart,” commented Esperanza in praise. “It’s already pretty late today, we’ll look for her and ask about it in the morning.”

 

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“Certainly, Exalted One, it would be our honor to be of aid!” said Belug-ur’ani excitedly when Esperanza and the progenies went to look for her the next morning and asked if there were any good smiths in Agur-Bas. “Actually, the best smiths that work with materials from creatures like these wouldn’t be here, but in the villages nearby. Would you mind if we sent the material over to them?”

 

Esperanza thought for a bit before she realized why. It made sense for smiths – or their equivalent – who lived their lives underwater to be more familiar with working on materials like chitin and shells since those would be common in the sea, whereas those who lived on land would rely on fire to harness metals instead. It was simply a matter of expediency and diversification.

 

Since Agur-Bas didn’t exactly have much in terms of metal sources, the few blacksmiths in town were not that well versed in making weapons or armor, and indeed, the guards of the town like Belug-ur’ani mostly wore equipment that looked like they were formed from shells of insects and sea creatures or bones for the most part. 

 

The Progenies had been using makeshift weapons they made by attaching parts of monsters that were naturally formed weapons into handles to make them usable for the most part, so it was a good fit for what the local underwater smiths were used to, since the arachnoid limbs they made use as weapons were primarily formed of chitinous exoskeleton.

 

They entrusted their equipment, which Ani helped them send over to the nearby villages along with a list of what sort of weapons they preferred to use. The local weapon crafters worked fast, and within a week already sent the results of their work back to Agur-Bas. What they created made the Progenies smile as they inspected the reworked weapons.

 

No longer were they makeshift weapons made from tying up arachnoid limbs to wooden poles. Instead they were properly made weapons designed for intuitive use, fashioned to match the preferences of the youths. Along with the weapons also came suits of armor that seemed to have been made from the shells of large crabs and clams cleverly fitted together that were sized just right for them.

 

Belug-ur’ani had not just helped them get the weapons and armor sorted, but also directed and introduced them to a couple vendors who usually arranged for the sort of rations the town guards took with them when they went out on longer expeditions – something the guards do regularly to keep their members leveled and prepared to face threats – out in the wilds.

 

Naturally, the priests and priestesses at the temple were not so enthused with the idea of Esperanza and the Progenies leaving, but they quickly acquiesced, other than insisting that they be allowed to send some people from the town to help fight the good fight. For believers of the Deities of Yore like most of the townspeople in Agur-Bas, being allowed to join in what basically amounted to a crusade against the new gods was nothing less than a great honor, after all.

 

Esperanza eventually managed to talk them down so that only volunteers should be allowed to follow them, and not so many people as she did not want to compromise the town’s safety. She did plan to keep her first forays closer so she could return to the town when it was convenient, after all. It wouldn’t do for her to have deprived the town of their very best and cause something untoward to happen to them instead.

 

Eventually, they settled on a single squad of ten guards, all of whom volunteered and were on the middle to late end of their third tiers, some of the best of the city. Leading them was none other than Belug-ur’ani herself, who assured Esperanza that her leaving the town wouldn’t affect its defenses too much. She was the highest leveled combat-classed fourth tier in town, sure, but there were another half dozen of those, so they should be able to hold the fort just fine without her.

 

As such, Esperanza found herself leading a group of twenty out from Agur-Bas two months after they reached the town, their destination back towards the west, to the forest full of wild creatures that would only see them as walking prey. Their intent was to make a couple quick forays first, to build some teamwork between the children that had followed Esperanza from Navef and the guards from Agur-Bas.

 

When that was done, the children had expressed a desire to clear a particular dungeon deep in the forest, the same dungeon they passed the outside regions of, where they lost some of their number to the creatures that populated it. They wished to clear it partly as a token of payback for those they lost, and partly to grind themselves in adversity.

 

The world they lived in was a place where the strong devoured the weak, so they had resolved to become strong, to make the best use of the power they had been gifted, and to never again cower behind another’s back. If the world required them to be strong to survive the journey ahead of them, then they would become strong, all in order to satisfy that most primal of desires. The will to survive.