The Godsfall Chronicles

Book 5, Chapter 33 - Rapid Changes

By the time Cloudhawk returned to Greenland City, several days had pa.s.sed .

Strong undercurrents were raging throughout the southern wilds, but on the surface things looked calm . Frost’s forces and the Khan’s agents were slowly spreading out, inching closer to inevitable conflict . At this point, however, both maintained constraint . No one wanted to make the first move .

In the middle was Greenland, who staunchly refused to take a side .

Whether Frost’s men or the Khans, each sized up the other . It was like they were crawling over thin ice and the slightest provocation could cause the ground to open up beneath them . The oppressive conflict on the horizon was enough to keep them busy, so for the time being there was no sense in goading a neutral power . After all, Greenland’s strength was not insignificant . Besides the old drunk and Autumn, the Polaris family’s several hundred Elysian-trained soldiers were a force to reckoned with .

“h.e.l.lo, Governor!”

“Welcome back, boss!”

“Governor Cloudhawk! Good to see you . ”

As he made his way through the streets various citizens hailed him . They recognized and appreciated Cloudhawk’s power and what he’d done for the city . It was hard to deny that Greenland City had come into an incredible golden age once Cloudhawk took the reins . The benefits everyone enjoyed were as plain as the nose on their faces .

Cloudhawk surveyed his city, at the newly constructed residential towers that had cropped up through the city like mushrooms . Lane upon lane, neighborhood after neighborhood, all very orderly and expansive .

By now one in four Greenland citizens was living in one of the new buildings . Scores more were in the process of being completed .

Soon every citizen of Greenland would be able to leave their rundown, dirty, bug-infested shacks behind . Everyone would have the right to live somewhere new and clean, somewhere safe with food and electricity . At last – after so many long years – wastelanders would have an opportunity to establish a family and build their own society . In this place where materials were becoming abundant, the cruelty of a dog-eat-dog world was giving way to order .

Beneath Cloudhawk’s feet was a stone walkway, simple and easy to construct . It had become typical for the routes through the city . Those gra.s.s-strewn lanes were cleared, along with the rat holes and insect-ridden piles of detritus .

As he surveyed it all Cloudhawk watched a group of guards pa.s.s by leading a robotic dog . Above him he heard the roar of a plane’s propeller and saw a squad of eight planes swoop by a few dozen meters overhead . Those were aerial sentries that not only patrolled the area but could also be dispatched where they were needed through radio contact .

One of the things they put the most effort into was public security . Out in the wastes, protection of one’s settlement was always one of the most difficult problems to solve .

It was in the nature of wastelanders to be fierce and unruly, but those sorts would find it difficult to cause them any heartache . Cloudhawk had imposed strict rules to combat just such a thing . Anyone who dared to cause trouble in the city was severely punished . Paired with the healthy fear the people felt for the city’s Elysian martial artists, trouble was a quickly diminis.h.i.+ng occurrence . The city’s atmosphere was improving day by day .

Cloudhawk continued his tour, eventually coming upon a market . To maintain the city’s security and environment they’d established several designated trading areas . These markets and bazaars where were people could trade their game or goods for other materials they needed .

Lately the market had seen an influx of various sorts of machinery . It was a tangible representation of Greenland’s closer ties with Sandspire .

Food and water were always the scarcest resources in the wasteland . Once Greenland started providing them with whatever they needed, Sandspire was more than willing to pay in technology or other goods . Part of this trade included ancient communication equipment, tele-mechanisms and aerial vehicles .

Sandspire’s history spanned decades . It was rife with conflict and chaos, but there had been steady progress . It was at least stable enough for its industrial capabilities to flourish, as well as talented engineers and scientists to spur it forward . These were commodities no other city in the wastes could muster, at least not any time soon .

Some examples were robots and ancient computers . Back in their time these were tremendously useful bits of tech, so complicated that no other city had the talent to piece them back together . Sandspire stood alone as the only area with the smarts and resources .

But those were just the finished products . h.e.l.lflower was far more interested in their scientific minds . So, as part of their agreement, she picked out her favorites and relocated them to Greenland where they worked in her labs .

This led to a curious incident . h.e.l.lflower, in her attempts to squeeze more out of Sandspire and with Cloudhawk’s permission, affixed a price to the various soldiers they’d captured during the attack on Greenland City . Any one of them was available for purchase by Sandspire .

When news of this proposal reached the industrial settlement they immediately agreed . After all, these were citizens of Sandspire that were conscripted to try and take Greenland when Cloudhawk’s reign had just begun . Since the city was sorely in need of soldiers and was rife with technology, they accepted their ransom .

With their ransom in hand h.e.l.lflower was appeased . She ordered the release of their prisoners . And that was the end of it, at least for a few days . However what happened next surprised not only h.e.l.lflower, but Cloudhawk as well .

The soldiers they sent to Sandspire were back a few days later .

Not only did they return, but they also brought their families crying for a chance to live in Greenland City . They were even willing to return to living in the prisons, because being a Greenland prisoner of war was better than being a soldier for any other wasteland city .

Every day was hard labor but at least they wouldn’t starve . None of their duties included dangerous fighting, either . It was a far stretch from being force to live hand to mouth anywhere else .

But most importantly they could also see Greenland was getting better by the day . They could feel how much safer it was living here .

In their basic nature, all wastelanders were the same as anyone else . It wasn’t like they were born with a desire to kill and sow chaos . Most of the time circ.u.mstances forced them into it . Who among them wouldn’t jump at the chance of a paradise they didn’t have to kill their way in to? Before now none of them would have thought such a place could even exist out here, but Cloudhawk and his men proved to them it was possible . More and more of them were convinced that Greenland City was the south’s promised land .

These folks were all average people . None of them could see the trouble brewing on the horizon . What they believed was what they saw in front of their faces . In reality, it was probably a blessing .

Cloudhawk pa.s.sed by a fenced area and the sight of it brought a smile to his lips . The sign hung on its doors red ‘Greenland Inst.i.tute’ . The gates were flanked by a pair of guards .

“Governor, what brings you here?”

“I had a little free time so I decided to go for a stroll . My feet brought me here so I thought I’d drop in . ”

No resistance was offered, of course . Cloudhawk was their boss . With his hands folded behind his back Cloudhawk strode inside the school . Where once it’d been a primitive collection of tents, it was now a fully functional facility complete with dormitories, teaching buildings and training fields .

Greenland Inst.i.tute now had over a thousand students enrolled .

When he entered Cloudhawk was greeted with the sight of over a hundred students of different ages, running drills with an Elysian soldier . They were all dripping with sweat from the effort . He noted that their trainers had systemized the training even further than before in order to capitalize on their students’ full potential .

He kept going . Through a cla.s.sroom window he heard a scientist instructing a group about the chemical structure of different items . That group was being grouped to be Seekers .  

Cloudhawk felt thrilled as he watched the vibrant scenes pa.s.s him by . He didn’t stop to interrupt anything, however, and made his way directly to the heart of the campus . That was where Claudia taught her future demonhunters .

Last time he checked, there were sixty children enrolled in the program . When he arrived they were all gathered for meditation training .

Claudia was standing to one side, watching their progress . When she saw Cloudhawk arrive her face turned in a slight scowl, but it pa.s.sed quickly . She walked over to him . “Your instructions, Governor?”

Cloudhawk grinned . “You’re the Headmistress, what am I supposed to instruct you in? How’s everything going here? Smoothly I imagine . ”

Claudia’s face eased . “Wastelander children can handle a lot more than their Elysian counterparts . I’m confident they will all grow to be respectable demonhunters . There are a couple with real talent, chief among them your little apprentice . ”

“Excellent, good news . ”

“Actually there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you . ”

“Yeah? What’s that . ”

“Why did you want to open this school? You know as well as I do that most of the time training demonhunters takes a lot of time and resources . It will be years before you can use them toward any end . You put a lot into this but I don’t see you getting anything in return . ”

“If I didn’t chance upon an understanding of this power, I would still be a lowly scavenger . ” Cloudhawk offered an honest response . “All of the change in my life can happen to anyone else, I’m sure of it . Everyone has tremendous potential, I just wanted to make sure they have the best opportunities to draw it out . What I hope will happen through this school is that the world’s prejudice against wastelanders might change . ”

“And you think you can do this alone . ”

“Yeah, I do . I mean, I’m small potatoes and I don’t have the power to change the world on my own, but what I can do is plant a seed in this barren ground . Who can say what that seed will grow into after a few years? Maybe an entire forest? I can’t use a forest for myself and frankly I don’t care . So long as I can see the saplings, that’s plenty reward . ”

After her question Claudia was quiet for a long time . She remembered the first time she met Cloudhawk . At the time she was like any other Elysian, who sneered at wastelanders and looked at them like animals . She took the order to kill Cloudhawk without question . He was a filthy beast like the rest of them, so putting him down didn’t mean anything . How much her views had changed after spending so much time among them!

Humans were humans, wherever they came from . They were defined by what side of a wall they were born on .

Claudia wasn’t familiar with Cloudhawk’s unique perspectives and experiences, but she liked her time here in the Inst.i.tute . She’d come to call it home .

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