The sky was already getting choked with clouds. The air was becoming thick. Rays of sunlight fought a losing battle to not be strangled into darkness as he sniffed the air. No good.
The scent of ozone before things got bad was usually obvious to him but all he could get right now was the metallic scent of spilled blood and the unique stench that came from rotting wurm guts. A detachment of knights and mages had fought a youngling one nearby and, credit to them, managed to slay it. Though the effort had awakened the much bigger mother, who proceeded to tear the already exhausted humans to shreds with the spines along her serpentine body. They had lain down their lives for essentially nothing and he failed to see the wisdom in continuing to have such patrols flail about uselessly in the wilderness like this.
He was a Demi-god, a child of the revered pantheon, with better attunement to anything divine than they, yet even he could not tell exactly where the miracle child of Luria was hidden. Did the humans plan to scour the land inch by inch? They would run out of fighters long before the goal was accomplished. No. There wasn't a plan.
They were a dying species groping about the darkness of a world determined to kill them, praying for that one light of salvation that their desperate fingers could grasp before the last of them took their final breath. He didn't care much one way or another about humanity's fate, he had little interaction with them for most of his life, but their was a certain painfulness to watching the sheer scale of their impotency. Like a deer run so ragged by wolves that once caught could not even muster the energy to fight for its life. Under the maws of monsters and claws of nature, all they could do was squirm as the light went dark.
He would miss the small children though. They reminded him of the cubs and pups he often helped care for. His nose raises in the air for another sniff. Still just copper and that putrid odor. The wind direction was carrying it right to him so he wouldn't be able to get an accurate reading until going a little further.
The die was cast on whether it was just an overcast day or a storm brewing to batter them later then. While he would survive, it would not be pleasant and would impede his progress. It was important he get to Tyranach, the capital, as soon as possible. Each day the moon child was not in his hands was another day the humans could find it and do who knows what. Sacrifice it, raise it as a tool only, try to create some line of new soldiers from it; their imagination was not limited.
That wasn't including the monsters, who could make everyone's efforts wasted by simply devouring the child. So even with no idea what he would do afterwards and with only the most vague of reasoning from his missing mother, it was best if the moon child came into his possession. But he needed one thing from the humans for that. Their expertise.
They had seers that had likely experienced their own vision and vast knowledge of the pantheon. With his higher physical ability and divine attunement, perhaps pooling their resources would give them an accurate location.
The young Demi-god huffs at the idea, dropping to all fours to cross a rougher hilly patch of the road. He was so different from them. Able to move like an animal that flowed with the terrain while they took on a slowed gait against even small inclines. Monsters that tore screams from their throats he could hunt to make his tools. He was completely independent from them, had always been, yet in his most critical hour he needed them.
"Mother, do you do this to me on purpose?" He wondered aloud. No answer. Of course not. Her voice had been silent since the first day she told him of the quest he was now on.
He had little memory of his mother, none at all of his father, but he loved both of them. There was a reason they were gone, he was sure of it. One day he wished to ask them. But until then he would be grateful they had put him where they had to give him the best life possible.
More creatures. A band of goblins looting the remains of a shelter split open by lightning. It appeared they were still nursing wounds from a previous battle though, the little humanoids rapidly waving broken blades to signal retreat and limping off on dragging legs. Hopefully there was more sturdy protection along the way if a storm came down.
He would have to keep going in any case. Supposedly this new child could bring ruin or elation, his mother was unfortunately also vague on whether that meant for him or the world at large, but finding it was highest priority.
