Rat looked at him, his eyes narrowed. "And what do you suggest, Alb? You've spent your life serving the logic of the cold. Why should we trust you now?"
Jax stood up, his joints popping like dry twigs. He needed allies, but Magalan was a fractured mirror, each shard reflecting a different kind of madness. The Berserkers in the lush forests of Edan clung to their mana and their laws, suspicious of any technology that wasn't wrapped in wood and vine. The Morkons, hiding in the dark, damp tunnels of the Grotto, worshipped pain and stagnation, convinced that the world’s end was a divine gift. And the Outlaws, the scavengers of the wastes, cared for nothing but the next fix of Stim or the next pile of scrap. ELEX.II.v1.03.GOG.part3.rar
"They're getting closer, Jax," Rat said, his voice a low growl. "Our mana can only do so much against their machines." Rat looked at him, his eyes narrowed
Jax lived in a world where the sky had long ago turned the color of a bruised plum. Magalan was a graveyard of civilizations, a place where the ruins of the Old World—skyscrapers like jagged teeth and rusted cars swallowed by vines—served as the playground for the desperate. For Jax, the struggle wasn't just against the mutants that prowled the wastes or the Skyands who sought to rewrite the world’s DNA. It was a struggle for his own soul, a battle between the cold logic of the Albs he had once led and the messy, visceral humanity he had fought so hard to reclaim. Why should we trust you now
Jax found the Berserker leader, a man named Rat, standing on a wooden platform overlooking the valley. Rat was a man who looked like he had been carved out of old oak—gnarled, tough, and deeply rooted in his beliefs.
He started his journey toward the Berserker stronghold of Goliet. The path was treacherous, winding through the ruins of an old highway where the asphalt had buckled and cracked. He moved with the silent grace of a predator, his eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of movement. He passed a group of scavengers picking through the carcass of a fallen aircraft, their faces hidden behind gas masks. They didn't see him, or if they did, they knew better than to challenge a man with the cold, dead eyes of an Alb.
The air in the Tavar desert was thick with the smell of sulfur and ancient dust. Jax sat by a low-burning fire, his fingers tracing the edge of his rusted lead pipe. Beside him, his son, Dex, slept fitfully, his small chest rising and falling in the rhythmic cadence of the innocent. Jax watched him, a knot of fear tightening in his throat. He had spent years trying to build a future for Dex, a world where the boy wouldn't have to scavenge for scraps of Elex or run from the screech of a raptor. But the world was indifferent to his hopes.