Chapter 14

                                    

                                          

I  woke up the next morning to the sounds of my friends eating a breakfast  of eggs, water and some beef fried in dough. I was surprised. I did not  know they would have anything other than fish. Unless these foods came  from another village. I rinsed out my mouth with a cleanser pack and  water that I had stored in my knapsack, where my machine normally lay  dormant and I began to eat with my friends. The meal was filling but  lacked any flavor. Luckily, we still had some of the dry seasoning  Maverick had given us when we had met at my house. They were three  separate bottles. A red one, green one and black one. We were told to  only use the black one on seafood and soups and the red one was only if  you desired to eat your food spicy. I tried the green which accentuated  the flavor of the meal I was eating. It was perfect - I was able to  thoroughly enjoy the fullness of the flavors in each bite. 
Once we were  all finished with our meal, we began to pack up our things and headed  out. The little boy and his two grandparents stood outside the barn,  waiting for us with some extra provisions that we took and placed in our  own knapsacks. I looked away from the village and down the hill towards  a wharf by the ocean. There was a small village there close to what  looked like a city; newly built. Strange, I thought. There was smoke  coming up from a large distance away. A large ship seemed to be coming  towards the wharf and by my calculations it would be there much later in  the day. It was going at a terribly slow pace. I had not seen boats  coming from that direction at any point in time, so I wondered what the  purpose of it was. No matter. We needed to find these children and  specifically the grandparents' daughter. We set out towards the wharf  and it turned out to be a short journey. Once we neared the destination,  4536 also showed up. Supposedly he was able to find me specifically  because of my own DNA signature. 
He had a moose-skin sack with him that  carried some shoes that helped us walk on the snow instead of in it. It  distributed our weight evenly so that we did not sink waist deep, which  made the journey much easier and faster for us. The tricky part was  pulling us out of the snow and onto the topmost layer so that we could  put the shoes on while 4536 used his flight capabilities to keep our  bodies hovering over the snow. It did not seem like he struggled much as  he lifted us which was to our benefit. I just wish he would have  brought these snow shoes earlier. By the time we got into the small  fishing city, the people seemed to be getting up and heading to work.  Most of them were fishermen and women. I noticed a few people in  business attire, but they were most likely Pariah that had created  businesses out of the humans' misfortune. That is how I felt anyway. I  knew them as the Behemoths Oscuros. My father did not know much about  them. Neither did the village as they were never around or rarely seen  only for a moment. But most people considered them a myth. It was  interesting that there were so many of them and only today.  
"Who are they?" I overheard a child say to their mother.
"Stay away from them, Cherise. Stay away from the heart men!" the mother responded.
"Heart men?" I whispered.
"Hey you! Are you four officials? Where are your Behemoth Jackets?" A man walked up to us, demanding answers.
"We are only students. We just came here on our way back to our school to buy some fish." I replied.
"Why do you want to know, human?" Shaki asked.
"Ha. Sorry. Thought you were here for something else. I will leave you alone then," He replied nervously and ducked away. 
"What was that about?" Maverick asked.
"Not sure, Maverick. But I have a bad feeling about this," Carlos replied.
"The Behemoths," Shaki growled.