Book 6. Chapter 14: The cure to hatred
Cathida was going to be a problem.
The crusader hadn’t appreciated our newest recruit to the group and she had opinions. For the past half hour since we’d recruited Yrob into our crew, I’d realized Cathida had to be talked to. Machines have always been the great enemy, so at the start her seething hatred of anything metal was fine. And then we met Wrath and it became complicated. I hadn’t stepped in to mediate, because Wrath was… well, Wrath. Insults pinged off her forehead like bullets would.
Yrob? Abraxas? And possibly the other Chosen and regular civilians we’ll find? That’s going to be a problem.
We’d been running through the underground in direction to Yrob’s budding town, which wasn’t too far off the map. Still a distance, but not impossible. We hadn’t yet deviated from the map Abraxas had left behind for us, but we’d be dealing with that soon enough. Which meant two problems.
Abraxas was going to be upset we were taking the scenic route to visit new neighbors. And Cathida was already upset we were throwing a welcoming party with sugar and sweets in the first place. Possibly literally, if Yrob actually had an oven over there to bake.
Despite Cathida being a cranky old crone who’s only joy in life was to see me sweat and suffer, she still felt like family of kinds after all this time. The grandma I never got.
I did actually have a grandma, except she had been a Winterscar through and through - only obsessed with status. She doesn’t count as family. None of them had a heart to even be close to.
Yrob, Tamery, Wrath… they were all part of my crew. And so was Cathida and Journey. If I wanted peace, I’d need to deal with the ghost haunting my armor once and for all. And get it all squared away.
I’d been thinking about how to convince a long dead crusader while the group advanced through the caverns. Pretty soon we vaulted over the last rock and off a small cliff leading into another section of abandoned city. Still hot on Abraxas’s map, this entire area was completely empty of basically everything. Machines had better places to be. So too did just about every living thing possible. There was no sounds here except for our footsteps, and dust puffed out with each step we took. Felt like we were running through a mausoleum.