The Godsfall Chronicles

Chapter 2: Juvenile Wastepickers

It's time for the wilderness pickers.

The cloudhawk woke up in a spasmodic pain in his belly, a familiar feeling that occupies most of the space of life and memory, which the waste-pickers call hungry, is said to have left to the creators an eternal spell!

I can't find any more food this time. I can't make it tonight.

As for tomorrow? Tomorrow is too much for the waste-pickers.

The eagle struggled to climb out of his hiding hole and felt a strong dizziness as his feet stepped back into the hot, barren earth. The ancient ruins surrounding it are fractured walls of different eras, as well as debris falling into other worlds, all of which once built brilliantly and are now worthless rubbish, buried and forgotten by the gravel of time in this wilderness.

The teenager's weakness and loneliness are so small in the dust of the sky, the wind blows turbulent dark hair to cover the childish face, several dirty pieces of cloth wrapped around the lean body, rough skin covered with old and new wounds, except for a pair of bright and clear eyes, he is no different from ordinary waste-pickers.

The cloud eagle was only fourteen or five years old.

The life of the waste-pickers is very simple: they hide from the heat and cold for almost twenty hours a day in the hole, except for a brief dawn break when they crawl out looking for food in the ruins. Day after day, year after year, life seems monotonous, but it is a great happiness to be a waste-picker, because repetition and monotony, once interrupted, mean extinction.

The cloudhawk couldn't help but think of the old man.

The old man is a different kind of waste-picker who has gone through a lot, not only knows old age writing, knows what the waste-pickers don't know, likes to tell stories, collects useless things, especially tools, drawings, and texts of old times. The only people who can share are cloud eagles, who are the only companions and friends of each other.

The sun rose as usual that day, and the old man didn't climb out as usual.

The old man's lucky, at least, because there's a cloud hawk burying him.

The cloud hawk can't imagine what it would be like to fall now, and this skeleton, although there is no more meat, the hungry red-eyed wastepicker never picks. The mad meat dealers will definitely unload him, smoke him, hang him on a rusty iron hook, enjoy some of it for themselves, and replace some moderately polluted drinking water.

This is the wilderness. You can eat anything to survive. You can do anything to survive.

Cloud eagles sometimes envy them, but the old man once said that if even the last of humanity were abandoned, there would really be no hope for mankind.

I'm starving!

I can't move!

The cloud eagle dragged weak bodies wandering among the ruins, like a straw swaying in the wind, could fall at any moment, the waste-pickers had already turned the ruins, how could it be easy to find some food to talk about?

Again, nothing?

Will this be the last time you see the sunset?

The cloud hawk could not sit down and look at the sky. The sun was as bloody as a desert. A hawk soared in the sky cloud. His eyes revealed a profound envy. When he named himself the cloud hawk, he hoped to be free as a hawk in the cloud... is it a luxury after all?

Not yet to the last minute.

You can't give up! You can't give up!

There was a tight and hurried pace coming!

The cloudhawk stood up like a frightened young beast, pulling out a sharp piece of iron and staring forward with vigilance. Hungry waste-pickers attack their kind every day in these turbulent and crazy years, and most children as weak as clouds are targeted.

Sure enough, with a rush of footsteps, the three dressed pickers rushed out wildly.

As the cloud eagle's face changed and hurried back two steps, he was so weak that he could blow down even a gust of wind, and the three waste-pickers attacked simultaneously, there was absolutely no chance of survival!

Wait a minute!

No, no, no!

The three men, despite their faces, did not kill, and none of the hunters had the momentum they deserved. Instead, they were filled with horrified, desperate prey.

This is not an attack.

This is a getaway!

The cloud eagle just had an unknown hunch. A large group of black shadows rushed out after the pickers. There were more than a dozen of them, roughly the size of a wild dog, red-eyed gorillas, and frightening.

The cloud hawk's blood clots and the brain blows apart, leaving only one soul-derived, instinct-derived thought:

Run!

Death threats have the potential to kill again!

These near-depleted bodies squeeze out a new force, and the eagle doesn't recognize it carefully, let alone want to identify it, just a little bit - it's a mutant beast, a ferocious mutant beast, a terrible predator.

Wastepickers in this desert, and even in this rubble, are only the lowest predators. How can they confront the horrible mutants?

There's one of the slowest women to fall first.

“Help me! ”

The monster bit him in the neck with his sharp teeth and tore his blood like a fountain.

Second, third, the shadow fought first and then came together, blinking all over the woman, the flesh was bitten and torn apart by a piece, abdominal intestines were dragged out together.

So bloody, so cruel, so horrible!

That brief but terrible scream was like a fateful shooting at three people. There are some mutant beasts that don't share food and continue to chase the rest of us. They're going too fast, but in three or two seconds, another waste-picker is hit.

“Ah!”

“No!”

Crush the bones, tear the flesh, the sound makes the eagle freeze!

When the eagle panicked into a corner and made him feel even more desperate, the rubble in front blocked the road, which was a dead end without access!

What should we do?

The third scream sounded terrible.

And the last waste-picker went down.

Three or two mutant beasts crossed the body of a wastepicker, like a black lightning bolt toward this helpless skinny teenager!

Danger!

The cloud eagle smells like a strong death breath. One more second of hesitation will be lost!

Turn around and die!

We have to spell!

He rushed into the ruins at all costs and into a deep, small slit.

The adults couldn't get into the place, and the lean body of the cloud eagle barely stuffed it in, and there was an instant whisper in his ear - a mutant beast came after him impatiently!

The smell of mutant beasts is clear and smelly, and it's close by!

The cloudhawk drilled to the end of the slit and could no longer move forward, and the monster howled, which was a precursor to the attack.

Qianjunyi happened at a critical juncture.

He resolutely turned around with sharp iron pieces in his grip, when the black figure just snapped at him and a brutal light appeared in the eyes of the orangutan, his sharp teeth as sharp as razors, trying to bring the delicious Four Cities Piece of Prey in front of him.

The eagle roared like a beast, and sharp iron pieces just stuck in the monster's eyes.

The monster screamed sharply and fiercely, hitting the eagle, leaving several blood marks on his sharp paws, the eagle pressed its head, and the space in the rubble was narrow, and it could not move.

“Die! Die!”

The cloud hawk is worse than the mutant beast, waving the iron sheet wildly over his head and neck for a dozen stabs, a lot of bloody stinking blood sprayed everywhere, his face, his hands, his clothes, all filled.

The two monsters turned around outside but couldn't get in, heard the same kind of screaming, and immediately turned around and left. The cloud hawk was semi-paralyzed in a narrow space, gasping with a large mouth, and the brain was hypoxic for a while, and now even a twitching pinkie became a luxury.

When the madness is over, these fatigues and weaknesses return, presumably because they have just been ignored, and they are now aggressive to double back.

For the first time, we measured the organism in front of us.

It's got dark oil, bright fur, long, sharp claws, scary eyes, kind of like a mutated giant rat, but whatever it is, it's a dozen pounds of meat.

Food!

Cloud eagles get excited again, slicing the monster's tough skin with iron chips, tearing up some fat pieces of meat into their mouths, sour rot, stinking, rough... this is already delicious for wilderness people.

Eagles live on ants, beetles, grass roots, and haven't tasted meat in a long time. When the esophagus slips into the stomach, the warmth spreads throughout the body, and the cramps and pain in the stomach diminish, replacing a feeling that is difficult to describe in words!

He kept eating his dry stomach and getting it back up.

Finally stop eating and be happy.

Mutant beasts out there have gone far, and the eagles are ready to drag their own prey back to the ground hole, and these dozens of kilos of meat are enough for many days.

When the eagle had just dragged its prey out, a heavy, beastly voice came.

“Put the meat down! ”

Four or five adult waste-pickers blocked in front of each other, for the first one very strong, with a scar on his face, full of fierce anger.

These people may have heard this movement a long time ago, so they lurked around and waited, hoping to pick up a few bones, and eventually ran into the child carrying the prey.

Beautiful animal meat, makes them all red eyes.

Scar shouted, "Put the meat down! ”

The cloud hawk's silent expression was wild and dangerous, and both sides were like wild beasts confronting each other in the wilderness. In fact, in this era, the boundaries between man and beast were already blurred.

Put it down?

For my life, you want me to put it down?

The cloudhawk didn't say a word of crap, like a thoroughly angry young beast, punched one of them in the face with a punch at all costs.

No suspense.

After all, a cloud hawk is half a child. How can it outnumber several adults? The result of this resistance was a rotating beating and watching the life-threatening prey be taken away.

…………

The night is coming.

Juvenile wounds have returned to the dungeon, and he has no complaints or anger about the hunter-pickers, who, as a child growing up in the camp, have long seen the nature of the wilderness.

There is no principle in the wilderness, power is the only rule!

The strong have more food, slaves, women, the weak are destined to be enslaved, trampled, plundered, this is the wilderness. This world, this era, this place, has never made sense. Weakness is a sin in itself!

The moonlight poured into the hole, a blanket was hard to resist the cold, he was frozen and curled, and his body aches prevented him from falling asleep peacefully.

The eagle sat on the opposite side, picking up an iron box and blowing thick dust, like a treasure in his hand, carefully removing some flowers and greens from it.

He stared directly at these things with his demented eyes. It was a picture the old man had collected so hard before his life. It was evidence of old times. Time erosion over the years has become a bit obscure.

Every time you see them, that little heart hidden in your chest is touched.

Every time you see them, they're all a little relieved of pain, hunger, sickness.

Every time you see them, however desperate and dark, you can always see a glimmer of light flashing.

Distant old times!

What kind of fantasy world are you?

At that time, the people were clean and handsome. At that time, the city was prosperous and wealthy. There were no dangerous and terrible mutants, no ferocious mutants, and no waste-pickers in the wilderness who struggled to survive.

Is it really over?

Is there still such a place in the world?

The cloud hawk had dark eyes and a flame burning - he was so eager to walk through the camp and the wilderness!

The idea was like a steel imprint firmly branded deep in the soul, born from a very young age, and the old man used to ask him, "Why? The camp is dangerous, the ruins are dangerous, the wilderness is even more dangerous, it is a certain way to die!

“Who brought me into this world! ”

“Since the world chooses me, I have the right to take a good look at it! ”

“One day, I will look for the same place in heaven, if I can see it, if I can kiss the land, even if I die instantly, no regrets! ”

The old man was silent.

From now on, bring the child with you, divide his food, and teach him to read. These years of struggling on the brink of life and death, instead of disappearing, the idea is getting stronger and stronger!

The old man said that some people are born free eagles, even when they grow up in chicken nests, and there is a day to soar their wings... is there a real chance?

Even the rubble is now unstoppable, not to mention the wilderness, which is infinite and dangerous.

The old man used to hang his ”life” in his mouth, saying that everyone had their own destiny.

Is this my destiny? I don't believe it!

The eagle fell asleep with the iron box resting on its head.