The portal closed behind us, leaving a view of almost endless unkempt grass; except for one point in the distance, what looked like an urban sprawl. With no other good direction to go in, we headed for town.
The city was sparsely populated, and the few people on the streets turned away from us on sight. Grime and nature had already begun to reclaim large parts of the town. We spotted a building that looked something like a capital building.
We wandered around inside until someone yelled at us.
“Who are you! What business do you have here!” We turned to see a woman rushing towards us. Her suit was tattered in places, and her hair seemed slicked down with grime; however she walked with authority as she came to a stop. “Foreigners? You're not from our world are you? No I haven't heard of anyone recovering yet.”
“We're... Donare sent us.”
“Nice try, but you will have to do better than a child's story, now where did you come from?” I hesitated, trying to think of how to best deal with this. Metudo spoke up.
“You're not going to believe us unless we give you proof. So I'm going to make this really quick. Pahhur, light that table on fire.”
“Can do!” She said and with a flick of her wrist a burst of fire hit the table which lit amazingly quickly. The woman was now cowering away as Metudo bore in on her.
“We are the Gods of old, we've been restored to our former strength and are here to request supplies again in exchange for protection.” She was slowly recovering from her shock and standing again.
“Forgive me for doubting, it's been a long time since I saw someone use magic.” Metudo leaned in on me.
“She still doesn't believe we are who we say we are.”
“I would love to cut a deal if possible, unfortunately our civilization has been in decline for the last two generations.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The planet entered an ice age. The only way our little part of the world survived is because we were on the equator. There's enough sun to keep us warm enough; some food still grows, but barely enough to sustain a large population. Pretty much all that's left here is probably the last bits of grass on the planet, and a handful of old codgers that refuse to leave. So you see, we have nothing to offer you, and I'm sure you'll only find worse conditions if you look elsewhere on this planet.” With that she waved us out of the building, the three of us clustered together.
“Well this is a lost cause.” Metudo muttered.
“Yeah, these people aren't going to make it much longer.” Pah said.
“Can we help them somehow?” I asked, Metudo thought for a moment.
“I don't see how, if the planet hit an ice age, it's just part of the natural cycle. Without knowing how this planet works or where to go to solve the problem anything we did do would probably just make matters worse.” Metudo said.
“Maybe if we could get Tech to make an analysis.” Pah said. “We might be able to help them. I mean, with our powers, something like this can't be completely out of reach, right?”
“Unfortunately, it might be Pah.” Metudo said. “On Earth the North Atlantic Current was pretty much the determiner as to when the planet froze. Here we can't tell if they even have an ocean. It could take years to run a survey.”
“But what if we hit the problem at the source?” I asked. “If we got Zephos here, he might be able to convert the carbon dioxide into something else. The planet would still take a few years to recover, but at least we wouldn't be dooming these people.”
“I guess that might work.” Metudo said. “Let's get in touch with Tech and run the plan past him.”
I pulled the small device Tech had given me out of my pocket and headed back towards the building.
“Excuse me!” I called in; and soon the woman was poking her head out. “We might be able to help.” I quickly explained the plan to her. We set up the device in the center of the capital building and soon a new hole was opened to the base.
“Well that didn't take very long.” Tech said, poking his head through. “Literally, I just sent you lot off. Any faster and the portal wouldn't have closed.” He stepped through. “So I'm assuming we can rely on your support?” He said turning to the woman who had identified herself as Tasha.
“Uh Tech, these people are suffering an ice age right now.” I said.
“So you guys need to get back here then?”
“Tech, we're going to help them.” He considered for a moment.
“Neko, we can't afford the amount of time that would take.”
“We could use Zephos to clean up the atmosphere. It wouldn't be an immediate solution, but it would speed up the process.” He thought, then sighed.
“Alright, I'll go get him. But you guys better hope the other team has better luck getting supplies than you guys. Soon we'll be eating the rocks.”
A few minutes later Zephos was set up in some sort of contraption and sent up. Tech said all Zephos had to do was power the device and take it up. It would be able to do the rest from there.
Tasha was very grateful, and Tech had Lark produce some seeds to hand over to the people here. She said as soon as they had a surplus they would start sending supplies to us; and so we left.
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