Artificial 7: Genesis Requiem

Chapter 18: Future Children

(Artwork is done by AI. It's Elias Gustafsson.)

Male Terra's POV:

Selena motions with her arm to get going,
so Alexander and Himiko take charge, climbing the construction upward and on steel beams connected to the side of a mountain.
We all aggressively climbed upward, and shortly afterward,
I could hear the clashing of swords.
I looked down,
and surely enough,
Seth and Selena were going at it.
We reach flat land,
and there were these holes in the sides of the mountain that shot out piping hot steam here and there,
then stop.

To our left was a thin trail of rocks we could climb and risk falling from at least 40 ft or we could go right,
climb on a bunch of rocks and drop down onto a metal rusted bridge on the other side.
Himiko and Alexander went right,
so we did, too.
We helped each other out as we climbed because not everyone was a good rock climber.

Himiko is just casually climbing with no resistance in the world,
Alexander,
and is giving a helpful hand from behind,
pushing on Reed and Jeffrey's butt to get them to move.
Azura is absolutely livid as she's still rants and raves about giving Selena and Seth her trust and Seth throwing it back.

Azura also spouted how she knew something like this would happen,
and she didn't want to believe it.
Poor Kenneth, Elain,
and Ven had to listen to her.
Maddie, Arthur,
and Elizabeth was helping Kenneth as he's still missing his left arm,
so he had to climb with one hand.
We all land on the other side,
sprint into a tunnel into the mountain that spirals up and out the other side, run right by the holes in the mountain that shot out boiling hot steam and some of us had to parkour over or underneath it,
and by some of us,
I mean me and Ven.

The path keeps spiraling up and up as we run across one spot that had a rusted rail to keep people from falling and finally at the tipity top,
the passage ends with us standing on giant metal crates with what looks like three dragon claw emblems.
Himiko and Kenneth crouched down and made everyone get a running start, one at a time and threw them to the higher giant metal crate,
leaving me,
Ven, and Azura.

Ven just defies all logic and runs up the side of it with no problems,
and Azura was even pissed at the idea that she'd accept help from the Mexico Branch and called them every single insult a Christian woman could and used out dated terms from the Bible.
I told Azura she could either go up with me or we'd leave her here.
This caused a short outburst of anger as she didn't think we'd just abandon a pregnant woman.

So I fired a shadow thread and put my hand around her as we both propped up our feet on the side,
and I pulled us both up.
Once at the top,
she banshee screamed about ending the baby because she refused to carry Seth's child,
and she manifests her sword,
causing the team to pin her down.

"Kenneth, Elain, Arthur, and Elizabeth. You're on Azura Aqua duty. You are to use any and ALL means to prevent her from killing the baby!"
Himiko commands in a far more firm voice than Selena.
The four stay there,
holding down Azura,
and the rest of us enter the actual inside of the mountain and see the different sleeping spots for the Dragon Animal Skins,
and mid to the other side of the room was all the Dragon Animal Skins.
They looked pissed and immediately went to swarm us with their claws out!

We all braced ourselves for a fight,
and we heard a loud booming voice from the other side.
The younger dragons back off,
and they all form a single file line from the room on the other side and create a pathway for an elder half dragon person.

"Are all these young humans so imposing that it takes all of you to take them down? I say not, little ones!"
He says little ones,
but they are all clearly teenagers to adults,
and they are all taller than grandpa coming down here.
We all walk towards the Dragons,
and we try to talk things out as equals.