Chapter 475: The Beginning of the End
A group was gathered in space. A dozen white-dressed people, each more brooding than the last. Wreckage surrounded them. Parts of what used to be an Elder-level starship. The distant stars felt cold, and the universe was suddenly much less inviting.
“This is useless,” a man said. “The Hand will find and kill us. We’re just delaying the inevitable.”
“You need to believe, Borg,” a woman replied. “The Old Gods will arrive. The Arch Priestess depends on us. We cannot give up.”
The man named Borg raised his head. “I don’t want to give up! I believe in the Old Gods like all of us, and I hate the cruel Immortals with every fiber of my being, but this is just hopeless. We are sheep to the slaughter. We just barely managed to teleport away this time—the Hand will find us again, and they’ll kill more of us. We’ll die few by few until we’re all gone, and for what? A hope that will never bear fruit? A doomed war? Even if the cause is noble, dying in vain is not.”
“But the Arch Priestess—”
“I don’t give a shit about the Arch Priestess. She’s lying to us, Katie! Can’t you see this war is a lost cause? She has us holding the front lines, but the Hand of God is so much fucking stronger. They’ve got double the people. Stick it in your goddamn head, we cannot win! We have already lost!”
“The Old Gods will arrive,” an older man said. “The tide will turn. We must stay strong.”
“How can I stay strong, Father? How much longer do we have to wait? I feel scared and alone, and I fear we will all die in the darkness between the stars like we never existed. I… I cannot do this anymore.” He paused, all his energy leaving him. “I want to go home.”
The older man frowned but did not speak. A heavy silence spread between the gathered cultivators. It was hard to fight a losing war. Hard to watch your friends die beside you, one by one, as you persisted for an ideal that might or might not come to be.