The three companions headed out from the safe zone towards Keith’s truck. Thankfully the path was clear, and safe. It took them about fifteen minutes to reach the monster truck. But a peculiar green fuzz was growing on top of the hood. Confused the group climbed up the wheel to inspect it. It looked surprisingly like a blanket of moss. It gently swayed in the wind. Or that’s what it appeared to be doing, except there currently was no wind blowing.

Katie being more curious than the others reached out to wipe some of it away. It crumbled away at her touch. Turning into a brown colored dust, as it fell. My eyes widened at this in confusion. “Moss doesn't normally do that… right?” The other two glanced back, and forth not saying anything. “Well it’s strange but it doesn't look dangerous. Let’s jump in, and head out.” Erica got behind the wheel, with Katie stealing shotgun. I rolled my eyes getting into the back seat. Erica, and Katie shared a smirk. She than turned the key, there was a slight delay. But it fired up. We headed along the road, towards town. The funky moss blowing up along the windshield. After a minute, or so it had cleared off.

As we drove I stared out the window lost in thought. So much had changed in the last couple days. I had met, and talked to a goddess. A real life Goddess. Not just something in a book, that old men told you was true. Most of my life I had been classified as atheist. But that wasn’t really true. I was raised roman catholic. Even at a young age. I tended to ask too many questions that ended up with a standard ‘it’s a matter of faith’. I had always felt that was a cop-out response. If they didn’t know the answer they should have just said so. I remembered a moment in my youth. It was a defining moment of my life.

I had always been a hyper child, way to much energy, lack of attention span. Classic ADHD. Way before they had a classification for it. Well I remembered a time I was maybe four years old. I was sitting in church with my mom. I was bored silly. Glancing around at everything, except for what was in front of us.

So my mother trying to keep me still, and to pay attention to the sermon. Said something that might sound benign, but caused way more problems than intended. She told me. “When your looking forward the devil is being spanked, when your looking around God is being spanked.”

Now i’m sure the intention was to make me keep looking forward. I wouldn’t want to cause God to be spanked. But in my head I thought. “If God is almighty… who is spanking God? God is this huge figure, who is putting him over their knee...to spank him?" From that time forward I went out of my way to ask questions of the clergy. That they either couldn’t, or wouldn't answer.

I never hated anyone with religion. I just accepted that people had beliefs that I didn't. Most were accepting of this belief, but not all. I had to deal with more than a few zealots, in my time. People who could not take, ‘I don’t need to believe what you believe’. After the first few, I actively read as many passages as possible. So I could ask them questions they didn’t want to confront, about their own stated beliefs. Logic, and zealots don’t mesh.

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I tried other forms of religion. Wiccan was fun for a bit. But it was still looked down on, by pretty much everyone in authority. In some circles it was almost as bad as calling yourself a member of a satanic cult. So I just chose to say that I was spiritual, but not religious. It was safer, causing less drama.

Now I had met a higher power literally in the flesh. She had spoken to me in my mind. I had been granted powers by her. I could no longer be classed as an atheist anymore. But how was I supposed to spread the good word of my Goddess? Would I have to give masses? Would I need to speak in front of an audience? Hmm i’m going to have to discuss this with Mythra, when I returned to our safe zone. I didn’t want to let her down, but I was definitely not the proselytizing type.

The sheer craziness of the last two days, fighting real life monsters. Gaining levels, meeting races from legend. It was beyond fantastical. But driving towards town felt like just another day. The normalcy of it made me question myself. Was it all just a dream? Would I wake up in a few minutes? Would I go back to being just a normal person again?

The depressing feel of that thought caused me to literally shake my head. I attempted to dislodge the annoying thoughts. I couldn’t go down that rabbit hole. To much depended on us. We would go to town, gather up any people we found. We would bring them back. Everything would be all right. Spoiler alert… everything was not going to be alright.

The first clue that things were not going to be a normal day. No other traffic… Anywhere. No cars, planes, hitchhikers, nor deer. Just silence. We were no more than twenty minutes out from the towns edge. It was midmorning, there is normally always something on the road.

Thats when we saw the smoke. It was coming up over the trees in the direction of town. As we reached the first signs of civilization. Erica slowed coming to a dead stop, right at the first line of houses. Across the entire road was what looked like a makeshift barricade of vehicles.

The smoke was coming up from the center vehicles. They had been demolished. Opening a path between them. We couldn’t see much behind the smoke, but my stomach dropped. What could have done this? The strongest monsters we fought had been those orcs. They were barely able to hurt us. No way orcs did this.

I opened my door to slide out. Immediately both woman yelled at me in almost perfect unison. “What are you doing??” I looked back. “We have to figure out what happened. Can’t do that in here. The truck won’t make it between that gap. Regardless of the height, this isn’t a real monster truck. I don’t want to flip trying it out.” I dropped to the ground, slowly walking forward. Besides the flames licking up. There was almost no sound.

It was horror movie eerie. Any moment some masked horror, with a chainsaw would jump out. At least thats how it felt.

I mentally used my bubble spell, just in case. I slowly walked toward the opening, but off to the side away from the fire.

When I was close enough I looked beyond the top of the cars. It was strange, it took a few minutes for my brain to process what I was seeing. No bodies, no parts, but many splotches of red. Pools of it scattered around the open road behind the barricade.

It looked like someone had thrown gallon sized water balloons, filled with red paint all over the place. What caused me the most confusion was the lack of source. The smoke was hiding any smell. I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing, or not. I turned to my friends. "Park to the side over there, i’m not sure what we will find. But we can’t leave until we know more."