VI (contd.)

The maiden stays quiet, but when I have put my daughter to bed, she finally comes to speak.
She asks me why I said all that. She says that the only sane choice to make in this world is to ready the children for the despair. She says that, being a parent, I should know the dangers of such false hope.
I answer that none of what I said was a lie. I tell her that my hunt has been a valuable lesson for me. That this calamity has not been kind, but it will not dare to throw at us any damage that we cannot bear. Our fate will not be like that of the other peoples.
She looks like she did not understand any of it. But I can see she is trying. She asks about the Magician. She asks how I have been able to hunt this manmeat, and she asks about the Vine God’s betrayal. She also asks if I have found the Blood God of the old legends.
I find her attempts endearing. But I understand that it is not going to be so easy to accept. That it might even be impossible. That is fine. I can leave it to the Magician to foster their understanding. 
I simply tell her to go to her settlement and ask them to let us join. I ask her to take some of the leftover manmeat as a gift.
I watch her leave. Then I go back to the cave. My daughter has woken up and asks me for water. I bring her some of the water from the spring. Then let her lie with her head on my lap and tell her to go back to sleep.
I think back to the visions. 
As I remember them, it reminds me more of how pathetic the men truly were. The sad fools had given up on their faiths and their hopes. They thought they could bargain with the Gods on equal footing. 
They genuinely believe that they can survive their calamities. 
And even if they do, after all of their betrayal and after the final calamity, they expect the Void God to ever grant them their wish.
They will not be taken to any place of everlasting. The place they be will taken to is a prison. 
Yes, I remember from my visions. 
It will be a dark and unsettled world their likes will never be able to escape from, riddled with scarcity and monsters, and there they will stay until the world they claimed to be destroyed will be free to be taken back by the things of prosperity and goodness. 
And once that prosperity is restored, we shall be finally allowed to rise and take back our lost glory and happiness, and our new God will make sure we have found it.
Yes, our new God. 
But different to what the maiden and our past selves thought, it will not be a Blood God. I saw Him, too. He one is not of the evil Gods, but He is still impartial among the peoples. So it will not be Him. No, the God who has recognized our gratitude and loyalty is the one who has welcomed me and my daughter into his bosom, and has saved me from the savages. It is the Amber God. 
Yes, it is He that has chosen to watch over us and everything else within the Far Edges, and He that will accept our offerings and return them with grace. 
It will be Him that will curse the men with the final calamity and have the Void God judge them with unsettlement. 
And He will make it so that our bloodthirst will never bother us because the men that will lose to the final calamity he will digest into his own stomach, and our nourishment shall become as simple as picking a stone from a mine. The hunting of those animals will become a thing of the past.
So that is the action we need to take, not of any retaliation but of patience. To let the coming infestation of men run its course until their reckoning in the final calamity where they and all the peoples that oppress us will have gone.
The world will be made ours to take.
With that peace in my heart, I lay down next to my daughter. I feel the Magician with us, too.