Athena took another deep breath, and her stoic expression once again returned to her face causing me to frown. “You sure you’ll be fine?” I ask. Athena looks at me “...No” Athena says “But… I’ll still go regardless” she says

Damn moron

I go and hug Athena, “Please don’t…Please don’t hurt yourself after this” I say.

Athena looked at me with eyes that made me thoroughly uncomfortable,

Eyes that weren’t hers.

She looked me straight in the eyes “I’ll be fine” She says

Athena has another talent outside of her superhuman athleticism. Athena is an exceptional liar. In general, Athena is a very honest person, but she can fool anyone if she puts her mind to it. Even herself.

I can tell if Athena is lying 9 times out of 10 simply because I’ve known her all my life. The only times when I can’t tell if she’s lying is when she believes her own lies.

And right now, I can’t tell if she’s lying.

“Let's go” Athena takes the vanguard and walks towards the massacre. After that conversation with Athena, my skin was developing goosebumps, and it suddenly felt much- much colder. Something just felt wrong, very, very wrong.

I rub my shoulders at the unsettling feeling. Brandon comes up to me “Hey you okay?” he asks “Yeah” I reassure him. I feel like I'll regret this, but I already decided to trust Athena could handle this, probably.

I glance at Brandon’s expression, wait what if I just say that I can’t handle this? Couldn’t we just go back? I remember Athena’s determination when she came here.

Fuck she’d hate me if she figured out I said that just to keep her away from that scene. Wouldn’t she? Ugh, what the hell am I a father trying to cover his daughter’s eyes from a violent movie scene!? “I’m fine” I reassure Brandon one more time and follow behind Athena.

As we got closer to the corpse-littered battlefield, the stench of blood, rotting and burnt flesh, got much more pungent, I had to pinch my nose. Eventually, we passed by our first batch of corpses. They all had been brutalized in different ways and different degrees; some lost limbs- vaporized, some just had holes running through the middle of their bodies, and some even had gaping holes in parts of their heads. Some even were beaten to death- faces caved inwards, arms bending the wrong way things like that. Everyone who died during the massacre had died in various ways. However, the one universal commonality between all of them, was that I had seen all of them living out their life blissfully ignorant of what would befall them merely days prior.

As we continued walking I noticed that we weren’t the only ones here. There were loads of scavengers of all forms here- Likely jubilant at the amount of food the teleportation incident gave them.

As we walked We accidentally got too close to one of the vulture-looking birds that were eating it turned around and started aggressively cawing at us. The ends of its tail feathers grew outward as if it were a peacock and the tail, feathers burst into flames.

Me and Athena quickly got ready to run, but before anything could happen Brandon pulled out a seed from a pouch along his hip and flicked the seed towards the bird. The seed mid-air began to mutate into a long vine which immediately pierced the vulture before it could go airborn.

That whole scenario convinced me and Athena to move a little more carefully on a foreign planet.

As we walked looking for any sign of our family or friends, Athena stopped from time to time to look at a couple of corpses. It would make sense if Athena took things much harder than I did. I knew practically everyone in town, but Athena really knew everyone in town.

“We should split up,” Athena says, which made me question if she had also lost some brain matter during the massacre. “You know Ruthel could come here any moment right?” I ask frankly bewildered at the absurd proposal.

“I’ve got to agree it could be really bad if Ruthel comes by and you guys are too far away from me”

“Well there you go,” I say thinking that’ll have ended Athena’s Idea

“But we’re not getting anywhere staying together. Why don’t we just separate within a certain radius of Brandon so we can search more effectively.” Athena says

“I mean if it’s only within 100 yards it should be fine… but it’s risky, to say the least,” Brandon says

“Athena, can you not just be patient?” I ask frankly annoyed at how reckless Athena’s being

“No, I can’t”

“And why is that?” I ask increasingly irritated.

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“Some of the bodies I don’t recognize… they’ve been eaten beyond recognition,” Athena says.

Oh, so that's the reason. That… could actually be a problem.

“I don’t want us to take our time and not be able to recognize our own friends or family,” Athena says

“Hmm that's a good point” Brandon seemed stumped

“Brandon, are you sure it’ll be safe if we search within 100 yards of you?” I ask

“I can’t guarantee anything that's the problem,” Brandon says

“Athena I don’t think that it's a good idea it’s a big risk,” I say

“Gael cmon we’re already taking a risk by being here, if we’re going to be here we might as well accomplish our objective. We got no more time, we’ve already missed a few days to search.” Athena says

That is valid. I bite my lip.

“Okay, but how’ll we know if Ruthel is coming by?” I ask

“Don’t worry I’ll know” Brandon says confidently

“How?” I ask curiously

“Super-human things I guess” Brandon shrugs

“Wow,”

It really is that simple huh?

“Alright, I’ll go that way you go that way Gael” Athena points in two different directions.

“Alright” I nod

“I’ll just wait here I guess,” Brandon says as he sits on the floor next to a corpse

I walk around the carnage, trying to avoid stepping on any corpse or detached ligaments. It was pretty gross. I noticed the way people died, they all had hole marks on their bodies, obviously from the laser muskets those soldiers had. However, I also noticed that there were sections where there were no corpses, along the large trenches of scorched earth that Catelyn left; no corpse remained. What if, mom and dad, or Catie and Liam were in those trenches?

Could we be just looking for our family and friends in vain? Is not finding them amongst the rotting corpses just some form of cruel hope?

I shake my head. It doesn’t matter this is the only place we could start, might as well look around.

I continue looking around, and note that Athena had not made a single noise since coming to the heart of the massacre. She had simply been roaming looking for any semblance of a close family member or friend. As I continue scanning through the bodies I notice a pair of broken black glasses on the floor. I pick them up and examine the glasses. The glasses had the initials GH on the side of them in a unique cursive writing.

Wait is this? I remember Mr. Hart proudly talking about his designer glasses when we were eating at Catie’s house. I glance around looking amongst the piles of corpses around me. Fuck what was he wearing when I saw him last?

I try to think back to when I was last at Liam’s place and talking to Mr. Hart and remember he was wearing a blue suit and black pants. I continued looking until I saw a hand hanging out from under a few corpses that seemed to be wearing a blue suit right next to me.

Oh,

I shake off the jitters and grab the hand from under the bodies “EW EW EW” I squeal as I struggle to drag the body out. “Do you need help?” Brandon offers which I quickly nod to “Yeah can you help get those bodies off him?” I ask walking back and wiping my hands against my pants.

Brandon grabs the bodies and gently puts them to the side, revealing what was indeed Catie and Liam’s dad. He had two gaping holes on both sides of his torso. His organs were falling out rotting and damaged. The only thing keeping the top half and bottom half of the body together was a thin piece of meat. He had certainly seen better days.

“Do you know him?” Brandon asks

“Yeah, yeah I do” I breathe sharply primarily because of the indifference I felt knowing Mr. Hart’s corpse was in front of me right in front of me staring at the empty sky with lifeless eyes. Rather than, it actually being there right in front of me.

I guess it might make sense since although I am very familiar with the Hart family, I don’t know Mr. Hart all that well. Mr. Hart works a lot, whenever me and Athena would visit Mr. Hart would typically be at work. Even if he was there he’d typically be too tired to deal with the excitable personalities of hormonal teenagers, so he typically just left us to our own devices.

“Athena come here!” I call Athena over “Did you find something!?” Athena asks devoid of emotion “Yeah!” I respond. Athena walks over avoiding stepping on any bodies and sees the disfiguration of the state of Mr. Hart’s corpse.

“Oh,” she says as if she spilled orange juice.

What the fuck do you mean oh!? Is she really fine being here!? “Hey, are you okay?” I ask genuinely worried for Athena “I’ll be fine.” she says again. What are you, a broken record? YOU KEEP SAYING YOU’RE FINE, BUT YOU'RE CLEARLY NOT!? I internally scream, “Are you fine to keep looking around?” I ask, to which Athena nods.

We continued looking around the area finding not much other than dead people we once knew, until Athena called me over on a rock plate that had fallen off of Giga-Catlyn. “Gael! come here!” Athena screams at me with an overwhelming and strange mix of relief, excitement, and fear in her voice. I rush over to her nearly tripping over various corpses along my sprint. When I got to her she was crying, while holding a piece of paper in her hands. Her eyes had come back to life making me feel relieved as well. “LOOK-LOOK” she shoves the paper in my face. The paper had an ultrarealistic graphite drawing of a thriving, highly technological city within a crater, and on the back was writing in a fancy font.

We’re doing fine. Currently, we’re in the capital of Birnin, where we’re being taken care of by vampires. Mom was captured, and we don’t know where Dad is. I don’t know where you are, nor what you’re doing, but stay safe.

At the bottom, It was signed by CH and LH. “IT’S CATIE GAEL, IT’S CATIE SHE AND LIAM ARE ALIVE” Athena goes to hug me tightly while bawling in the process “I’M SO GLAD THEY’RE ALIVE” Athena continues to sob.

I had also been glad that they were alive, it had felt as if a weight had been released from my shoulders, but this caused me much more confusion than it did relief because just moments ago I was indifferent to Mr. Hart’s death. Am I a psychopath or not? I keep finding myself asking myself that question. I mean, I probably am. I just witnessed an entire massacre and the death of a friend’s family member, but I'm practically unfazed. You don’t really get more psychotic than that.

Oh well, that doesn’t matter, I'm just glad they're okay. I just have to take solace in Catie and Liam’s safety. I hug Athena back “Yeah I’m glad they’re okay as well,” I say breathing a lot easier.