Reincarnated into a Snow Griffin-Chapter 166

It is odd to see the place I was born like this, after so many years, and even stranger it was to not be even allowed back in and have to sneak around and look at the distance to only gather information and not to make a blizzard cover the skies just yet, a cautious act that as I adult I comprehend, but as the injured kid who wanted to rescue his mother as quickly as possible it was hard to keep an even mind and heart.

Instead I am here, flying with no one else than my father by my side of all people who carried on his back one of the original cultivators, while I myself carried my lover and son of the Demon Lord who wanted to invade the main land on my back.

If anyone told me this is how I would come back here I would not have believed it.

And as much as I wanted to be as fast as possible and, to my surprise, my father is as anxious as I am too despite what he said about trusting in my mother’s strength, I know that we should not speed things up, we had to do it right on the first try for there would not be a second chance.

I haven’t prepared for so long, studied and trained for so long, only to mess things up in the end, so we actually fly back and forth for a few days at different angles and times of the day, trying to find all those people that lived here from my memories among the remains of a much less livid city, a tension in the air that makes everyone look over their shoulders and behind half closed windows.

The commerce is gone, the easy life gone, people only lowering their heads and trying to survive, that is what power hungry people can do to a place and in such a short time too.

Things change when we find a slave camp on one of the barren floating islands on the outskirts, barely flying together with the flock with a rusty single chain holding it together and pulling it along in the air.

We are quick to find out that the Lion did not take no as an answer, and ruled the stolen islands with an iron paw, a comment out of place leading to blood and tears, and the once most remoted and desolated islands are now filled with people and smoke, so of course it did not take much time for us to realize something was off about the place.

We watch from above the clouds, our eyesight easily picking up shapes and movement down below, and even the rattling of shackles can be heard so far up for just how many there were in one place, winged people from all over with not only balls of weight locked on their ankles but chains warping around their chests and wings and locking them in place so tight they could not escape nor try to fly away.

To lose the power to move freely and take the skies... such peaceful well mannered people did not deserve such destiny.

They were coming and going, and after our careful watch for a few days we see some patterns, first they mostly stayed hidden inside the caves, and the reason why this island was isolated in the first place is there was only hard rock in them, difficult to open a path and to make nests inside, not much use when all the others had much better living environments and shade.

So that raises the question of what they are doing down there? Were they simply put aside here to rot? Then why all this coming and going, why all these watchful griffin guards around, and how come they got into the hard rock in the first place?

It does not take much time to discover, especially since the guards seem more mindful of the slaves than any outside threat that may fall over them, being inside the natural fortress of the flying High Lands for long enough to disregard proper vigilance.

First we see them going in and coming out only late at night covered in dust and rocks, carrying pickaxes and harmers, clearly mining the hard rock, but for what we take longer to figure it out, finding out only when a winged boy trips a crate open and as he gets beaten up we see over the mud, clear as day, what the contents of the crate were.

Weapons.

Lots of weapons.

Newly and fresh, sharp and made of metal, they seem crude and without detail or care but as deadly anyway, even more so when metal weapons are a hard expensive get for the common folk, usually the weapon of adventurers and guards.

Or soldiers.

I frown with the image, wondering if all the boxes we have seen so far had the same contents, and dreaded what they were up to to have so many weapons in the making, though I have a good guess already.

But I see an opportunity there as well, or rather, our group back at the base sees it while discussing the information we gathered, the idea coming in the day I saw someone familiar among the crowd, a Alar, a winged man, much skinner and frail than before, the same one that helped mother raise me on the very first days, cleaning and feeding in the kinder garden, one of the caretakers of the nesting place of the griffins, Aaron was his name.

"We lack people to launch a direct attack." We discuss the situation at the table. "We may have the main power to overcome it, but are not sure if they have anyone who can tilt the odds there as well."

We may have stronger people at our side, but we are not certain they don’t have it either, so we are to assume we have no advantage at all, is the conclusion we bitterly get after planning for so long.

"But we do have an army, waiting for us to free them right there. We can cut them free and done, our number increase."

"They are overworked and underfed for who knows how long, they won’t be fit for any battle."

"That, my friend, I disagree, give a enslaved man a chance for his freedom and he will fight with his life. I say we do it."

As they discuss between themselves I start thinking, fingers crossed in front of me and eyes resting on the table as I say with a glint in my golden eyes:

"I know how we will do it."