Chapter Six: All of The Choices

Poppy stripped the fabric with her knife.

I tied the pieces around my calf. Blood soaked into the material and the bleeding slowed down. That didn’t stop the pain. The wound would fester without medicine.

Poppy placed the pieces of the map together.

I angled myself toward her, the grey diamond clutched between my fingers. It had become a versatile weapon for Lark, a killing machine. Nothing happened as I held the object. I slipped it into my pants pocket. It felt warm, even through the fabric.

“They should all fit together,” Poppy said, matching the fragments of parchment.

The little girl’s neck had blood on the side and her tan face was covered in specks of mud. I wet my finger and wiped the mud from her cheeks. She grinned. I flattened out the long wispy bits of her dark hair.

“You are like Cher,” she said.

I smirked. “Who’s that?”

“My older sister.”

My eyebrows went up before I could think twice. I hadn’t imagined Poppy as being part of a happy family. Her reactions to other people pointed to someone from a rough past.

“You must miss her,” I said.

“She left me.” Poppy became quiet for a while.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Poppy avoided my gaze, staring at the map instead.

It was the first thing she’d told me about the real world. I didn’t want to bring up difficult memories. Hell was hard enough on its own.

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“This place is Burn Town,” she said, pointing at the west coast. “We’re here.”

The continent split in two halves with a large bridge between the two pieces of land.

In the bottom left corner of the Continent, a sketched area of streets and burned down houses had the words ‘Burn Town’ written over the top. The town was outlined by a river labelled ‘The Dark’. There were several small bridges along this river.

‘Old Hell’ took up the North Part of the continent, but there were no details given as to what was inside this area.

To the east, what looked like an inferno had been labelled ‘Fiery fields’. It filled the gap between here and ‘Gun Town’.

Gun Town stretched from the north tip of the continent to the south. There were shops, taverns, recruitment areas, and a council building. It also looked like a tram travelled across the town, but the sketch made it difficult to be certain. A note had been attached to Gun Town --‘Safe area’.

That sounded like a good place to be. With everyone killing each other out here, it would guarantee at least a little down time for my wounds to heal.

Right after Gun Town, a Metropolis lined the east coast of the continent until the central bridge. The bridge connected Heaven’s side to Hell.

This Metropolis area occupied both sides of the bridge and had been labelled ‘All of The Angels’. There was no description as to what actually happened here. But my best guess, was that it either ended up being a war zone or a negotiation area connecting the two realms. Maybe both.

The remaining Heaven side of the continent had a big question mark over it, with the sketch of a castle to the furthest East. Either the people who mapped this never made it that far or there was just nothing there. I leaned toward the former.

“Gun Town could be good,” I said.

Lark had begged us to go to Old Hell. But going off of this map, there was no way to tell what waited for us there. If we didn’t get to safety soon, I’d have bigger problems.

He had also said that I looked like Heavens leader, a person named Adrell. Maybe he’d made a mistake or we just looked similar. It wasn’t hard to imagine. People in the real world looked alike sometimes. I didn’t want to risk another situation like that. The sooner we got off this road, the better.

Poppy frowned at my wound. “I’ll carry you.”

I chuckled. “You aren’t that strong. And, I’m fine to walk.”

“Sometimes I am.” She put her hands under my shoulders and lifted. But I didn’t budge.

“Really, I’ll be okay.”

Poppy pouted, flexing her hands.

“Don’t fuss over me. We’ve got to stay focused.” I stood up. Pain lanced through my calve. I squeezed an eye shut against the pain and hobbled forward, gritting my teeth.

Poppy slung the knapsack with the guns over her shoulder. I waited for her to catch up. She held the map in one hand and wrapped an arm around my waist with the other.

“Maybe we’ll find some bad guys,” she said.

“You can talk them out of their bad ways.”

Poppy smiled. “Definitely. I’ll kill them all.”