"Well, he's not really my 'Son'-son. He's a Dragon whose Egg I hatched, and then I raised him like a son before he transcended and became a god." Benjamin explained, "But it seems like I really did raise him well. He's a God of Law and Righteousness, so..." The old man pointed out, before he lightly raised his brows, while Tony just stayed silent to properly comprehend everything.
"Actually, this doesn't make sense..." Benjamin muttered, and Tony slowly nodded his head, "Yeah, it doesn't..."
"No, not 'this' here... You see, there were five Golems over there, the 'Great Golems' that I created, apparently using the souls of five friends of mine that died... And that seemed to have happened 100 Thousand years in the past... So how could it be that I treated those five so unfairly, while I treated Trygan like my son?" He muttered quietly, and Tony lightly scratched his cheek in response, "In what way did you treat them unfairly?" He asked his father, and the old man just quietly sighed.
"Well, it seems like they all lived in different towns or villages, and after I 'resurrected' them as Golems, I didn't allow them to ever go back there... And I think I might have generally just treated them like they're not people? That's what it sounded like, at least." Benjamin explained, and Tony looked at his father with a slight frown. "I mean, didn't you just want to protect them?" He suggested, and the old man just raised his brows in surprise.
"Protect? What do you mean?" He asked, so Tony lightly crossed his arms in response. "Okay, so... First of all, it seems like even you don't know the whole story. Maybe there was just some other side to it that the five of them didn't know about, that you didn't want them to know? I mean, back then, Greg tried to contact us once, right? A couple of months before I actually joined him." Tony pointed out, and Benjamin just slowly nodded his head, prompting his son to continue.
"We didn't know what kind of business he was in... And when he especially approached me because I was the youngest, you literally forbid me from ever going anywhere near where he wanted me to meet him. You pulled me into your car once and even had to deal with the police after that... And the reason you did that and didn't just let me go was that you knew it would ruin my life... Then I finally got away once, and just a year afterward I had more drugs in me than CVS, got my girlfriend pregnant, and was facing a Lifetime Jail sentence because the gang tried framing me for a murder..." Tony explained, "When you went over there, you already went through this all with me... So maybe you were especially protective? That's what you're like, after all..."
Slowly, Benjamin nodded his head in response, "Maybe... But I can't know that yet. Maybe I really was just a really weird, horrible person? And when, or if, I remember my life then, what if I turn into that person again?"
"Dad, seriously, don't worry. You're not the kind of person that can be cracked by time... No matter how insanely long it was." Tony said reassuredly, so Benjamin just smiled back at his son and then held his arm out to pull him into a hug, although Tony quickly stopped him and pointed at the blood-soaked towel he was holding.
"Let's take care of that first, alright?" He suggested, so Benjamin slightly chuckled and nodded his head. "Let's do that." The old man replied, and then slowly pulled the towel away from his hand, looking down at the wound he had forgotten about.
The deep cut that would have usually made him swear nonstop for the next century, that simply felt numb to him now.
---
"Good morning, everyone." Eisen said with a smile on his face as he quickly stood up and stretched his body, looking at the others who were either currently in the process of waking up, or already wide awake.
"Morning." Sky said, belonging to the latter category, and his sister smiled brightly at the old man as well, "Good morning!" She exclaimed, Eisen's mood slightly lifted already, and the old man quickly got to work preparing this morning's simple breakfast, and roughly an hour later, the group packed everything up and then continued on their way.
Just a little while after they started moving, Sky walked up next to Eisen to ask him a question. "So... What kind of shortcut is it that we're going for?" The boy asked, and the old man just smiled and quickly handed him one of the lenses that let him see Eisen's visualization, before the old man himself quickly activated his elemental transformation in his eyes together with the special sight-transfer enchantment placed on them in this state, and then quickly formed a rough map of the area, before marking the regular route in red.
"So, that's where we usually would have gone, right?" Eisen pointed out, and Sky slowly nodded his head. "Mhm, and we're on the flat plateaus to the left here, right?" Sky asked, so Eisen immediately smirked and nodded, "Exactly. You gave me the map in the first place, so it makes sense you would know." The old man laughed, and then marked a new route in green from where they were now. "And that's the shortcut we're taking." Eisen explained, and Sky just looked at him with a wry smile.
"Err... you know that there's a ravine there?" He asked, and Eisen nodded his head with a smile. "I do, yeah. But the gap in the spot we're going is just roughly, what, 100 Meters wide? I can jump that with my wings."
"Yeah but we can't-"
"Sky, you're a half-pixie, you weigh maybe half of what a human with your proportions would. I can carry you and Bree very, very easily. And I can jump that distance more than just once." The old man laughed, and Sky ended up simply slowing down in response to what Eisen just said.
"Do we... HAVE To do that?" He asked, and with a sigh, Eisen shook his head. "Well, there's three possibilities. One, we do it this way. Two, we go back and have to live with a full day's walk more than if we keep going here. Three, you find a story about something that can fly us to where we're going safely." Eisen pointed out, and Sky slightly looked down at his grimoire with a sigh.
"Fine..." The Fey-Kin boy sighed, and Eisen just slightly smirked and laughed, before he looked ahead of them, already seeing the slight peak that he would be jumping off of in the distance, as wel as the mountain beyond that peak that the path was continuing on.
And once they got up there, Eisen swiftly packed Aulu and Cabarum both back into their spatial storage-boxes, and then he quickly increased his size as much as he could and activated his demonic transformation. "Alright, who's coming first?" The old man asked as he was mentally planning out how he should properly do this to land safely, and everyone beside Sky immediately raised their hands. Well, except Kirisho, but she was inside of the necklace that Eisen had, hopefully temporarily, handed off to Bree, so she would just end up tagging along.
"Hmm, then I'll take the kids first, and then you guys, alright?" Eisen suggested as he looked at the two Fey-Kin siblings, and although Bree seemed slightly disappointed, Sky nodded his head both in nervosity and relief.
"Then come on, you three." Eisen said with a smile as he leaned downward and scooped the three of them up in his arms, and then started flapping his wings up and down to get the momentum going already. And while it didn't actually lift his body up, he still felt basically weightless right now, and then quickly started running toward the edge of the peak and jumped toward the other side of the ravine, continuosly trying to properly glide over there, before suddenly flipping his wings to stand vertical to stop his forward movement, and then dropped the last meter or so down to the ground, where he quickly set the three children down.
"Alright, now be good and wait here for me, yeah?" Eisen asked of them, and they just quickly nodded their heads in response, before Eisen smiled at them and quickly jumped back toward where Sky, Bree and Kirisho were waiting for him. Quickly, he ran his arm through the straps of the backpack to have it safely on him, and then held his other arm downward toward the siblings to tell them to sit down on it, which they swiftly did.
"Are you... Are you sure that this is really a good idea?" Sky asked, and Eisen just slightly laughed, "Of course it is, don't worry." Eisen said reassuredly, before he started running again and then quickly jumped away from the Peak, once more gliding to the other side of the ravine where the three monster children were already waiting.
And while Sky pressed his fingers inbetween the gaps of Eisen's rock-like skin while he was jumping, Bree seemed to actually really enjoy this somehow, and just excitedly looked up at the old man once he set the two of them down.
"That was so cool! I want wings like you as well!" She exclaimed, and Eisen raised his brows in response, "Hmm, you're a half-pixie... So maybe you can get them if you rank your pixie racial skill up some more?" The old man suggested, and Sky looked back at them after pressing his body against the wall with a terrified expression.
"Oh please no... I really did not enjoy that..." The Fey-Kin boy sighed, "Why couldn't there just be a bridge there?!" He asked annoyedly, so Eisen just slightly laughed and placed his hand on top of the boy's head with a smile.
"There's literal hordes of monsters on the other side there... Bridges would be a bit too dangerous, wouldn't they?" Eisen suggested, and Sky just slightly sighed as he nodded his head in response. "I guess? Let's just... Keep going now, alright? The Dragoness surely lives in a pretty flat area, right? I mean, her body is surely large, so..." Sky muttered hopefully, and Eisen just smirked at the boy reassuredly.
"Stop worrying this much, everything is going to be fine. Let's just keep going, and we'll find her soon enough. No need to try and figure anything out before we even get there. And you won't fall either, we're all here and can make sure of that." Eisen said, finally deactivating his transformations as he handed Bree her backpack back.
With a slight sigh, Sky just nodded his head in response, "Let's hope so..."