Anna was a bit lost about what to do. While her life before hadn’t been easy, she at least felt like there was a direction to go in. Now she wasn’t sure anymore. She could clearly recall that day Norman left her.
***
She watched with tears in her eyes as Norman vanished into the deadly fog. She couldn’t quite believe he had abandoned her. Her brother had to drag her away kicking and screaming. Eventually, they left Grothlosburg when Toby learned about a teleporter that connected to New York. Her brother was adamant that they go despite Anna’s not wanting to.
Back then she still believed Norman would return. How naïve she had been.
Toby wanted to connect with the FBI office in New York to continue his work as a field agent. That turned out to be a joke. The FBI people that had stuck around were no longer working toward rebuilding the great United States as her brother always called it. They had given up and were now working toward their own agenda.
They had tried recruiting Toby, but her brother was stubborn and refused to give up on his ideals.
Even back then, her brother was a delusional idealist. And he had only gotten worse as his failures back in Colorado and Grothlosburg started to eat away at him. It took Anna years to realize that fact though.
Her brother had been good at planning, but when shit went sideways in unpredictable ways, he simply couldn’t cope. Her brother did eventually get some of his old self back by joining one of the local enforcement agencies that had cropped up in New York. They were the remnants of the police precincts and still tried to help with what little power they now held.
New York had seen a whole lot of fighting over the years since the collapse. With different elements having taken control of their portions of the city. Those groups eventually formed an uneasy peace. This all happened long before Anna and Toby had arrived in the city.
The police weren’t able to stop this from happening, not with classers and mages joining those groups. These quasi-military and criminal organizations all had the same firepower and classers that the police force had, sometimes even more. Plus nobody wanted to ignite another battle and go through more fighting. It turns out even the criminals got tired of endless bloodshed eventually.
The funny thing is that New York was safer now than it had been even before the apocalypse. It was hard at first, not having anyone but her brother to talk to. But she made do for a bit. Once her brother started working more, the lack of social interaction left her feeling trapped and alone.
Not wanting to relive a repeat of Colorado, Anna eventually managed to leverage her abilities to help deal with her loneliness. She made friends, and then allies.
Some of those supposed friends and allies eventually betrayed her. She shouldn’t have been surprised. It was her school all over again. They tried telling her it wasn’t personal. She laughed in their faces, she took it pretty personally when they tried to kill her. She didn’t kill them though, that would have been too good for them. Instead, those former friends and allies ended up as the first permanent members of her entourage. She couldn’t trust any of them anymore. With all of them bound to her magic, there was no chance of them betraying her a second time.
After that, she ruthlessly fought off attempts to take what she had built. But Anna was tenacious. She fought back, eventually carving out a territory of her own with ruthless proficiency. This earned her the grudging respect of the crime families that she had stolen the territory from in the first place. But that respect was short-lived.
Her actions had tipped the balance of power in New York. The area she claimed was worth a considerable amount of money since it had the only connection to Grothlosburg and the other connected cities.
The criminal syndicates couldn’t allow that to stand so they formed an alliance and descended on her, sparking off a months-long bloody fight throughout New York.
By then Toby had been dead for nearly five years, his death just another unsolved crime in a city full of corruption. But she hadn’t wasted his life by mourning. No, Toby’s death had been the catalyst that sparked her desire to carve out a chunk of the criminals' territory. She had hoped to get answers once she claimed the area he had died in. But nobody knew anything about her brother's death, other than his mutilated corpse was found in broad daylight on a sidewalk.
Alone and on the losing end of the fighting, she abandoned what she built. But not before she made the groups that had allied against her regret their decisions.
Unlike thralls, her skills didn’t strip away who people were. Her skill turned them into devoted fanatics. Once her spell took hold, the person would be willing to die for her and do anything she asked of them. But they would still be themselves. She mainly used it on those that tried to harm her, but before leaving New York, she managed to track down the wives and kids of three of the families arrayed against her.
It was simple from there to get them to do what she asked. Very few people had the mental fortitude to completely reject her power when she truly pushed. She would never speak to another soul about what she had those people do, but it was no less than those criminal bastards deserved.
After that, she fled New York and ended up back in Grothlosburg to avoid the inevitable bloodshed her actions would cause. She hoped the entire city burned to the ground after they failed her and her brother. But Anna wasn’t satisfied with just that. With her ire piqued and being back in Grothlosburg, it brought up bad memories she had not wanted to revisit. She figured if she was going to get revenge on one group that wronged her, she might as well go after everyone that did, starting with Norman. But her timing was not ideal. The quakes had started.
For months the quakes shook the planet, shifting landmasses around and likely toppling less secure structures. The gron had no such issue with their buildings. It was strange experiencing the collapse from this side. When the collapse happened to Earth, it was over in a moment. There were no tremors or any damage. It was just one second they were on Earth and the next they weren’t.
It was months before she figured out what the quakes were all about. No thanks to the Gron. The bastards had no interest in the quakes, even when she asked with her powers, the few she asked weren’t able to tell her anything.
Having her target of retribution so casually stolen from her, along with the gron’s attitude, sent her into a bit of a rage. The Compliance Office eventually apprehended her. She was sentenced to a year in the gron penal system for her crimes.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Being in prison gave her time to reflect. Her anger had finally gotten her in over her head. That had been a hard lesson to learn but it helped her finally reign in the violent and out-of-control tendencies that she had let run her life for the last half-decade. Once she was released, she sought out new allies and a way to get at her prize. She hadn’t given up on making those that crossed her pay, she had only learned a bit of patience.
The first man she encountered was a man who claimed he could locate anyone. He was able to tell her where Norman was, but the price he asked for was unacceptable. Like most men, the filthy bastard only wanted to use her body. That man became the first in her new entourage and quickly divulged what he knew to her. From there she moved around to different states using the gron teleporters. While the man had been able to tell her where Norman was hiding, he was not able to tell her how to get there.
That was fine, she knew the zone next to Grothlosburg would have to adjoin the zone Norman had fled into. She would start there, and work her way out if he wasn’t there anymore.
During her incarceration, someone had built magical portals that connected New York to Florida, Texas, Colorado, and Tennessee. They were rough ways to travel and temperamental, but they worked.
She couldn’t remain in New York for long though. Even though the fighting had died down again it wasn’t safe for her. If any of the surviving groups learned she was around, they would stop at nothing to end her life. So she took the first portal out of New York and tried to find other people that could help her get to Norman. The seer was a monumental help in locating these people. But each and every one of them saw her as something they could use or control. They didn’t know who she was, or what she was capable of. She made them regret crossing her as she added them to her entourage.
After years of fruitless searches, she finally located a man who could get her past that damnable jungle and that wall of death that was keeping her from finally getting payback on Norman.
The man was the captain of what he referred to as a flying ship. He grossly oversold his floating barge. But the man’s unique talent of creating temporary lighter-than-air balloons – of all things – made the trip possible. The ghetto hot air balloon worked but there were a few issues.
There was no way to steer the balloon once it was in the air and she was skeptical that the craft wouldn’t drop from the sky once it was up there. But Anna had contingencies for both of those situations. Her contingency was a wind mage that had unwillingly joined her entourage after he thought it was a good idea to pinch her ass as she was walking by while she was in Tennessee.
With all her issues solved, the entire group took off from Grothlosburg. The trip over the jungle and death fog was uneventful. Despite the ease at which they traveled, she still didn’t trust the captain.
To test him, she made herself seem lonely and vulnerable to see how the man would react. The man took the bait, trying to tell her how he could fix all her problems if she would just let him.
As if she would fall for that lame excuse to get into her pants more than once. Instead of risking his possible betrayal, she added him to her growing following right before they landed outside the city where her seer said Norman would be.
The city wasn’t at all what she expected. Instead of some thriving out-of-the-way village, she was met by broken walls, overgrown vegetation, and an almost complete lack of people. But the seer said this is where she would find him or where he would return to shortly. The man wasn’t very good with the timing of his predictions she had learned. So she entered the city with her men fully armed and ready for anything. That was when they encountered the undead. She now knew this was the right place and ordered her men to round up Norman’s little projects while she waited for him.
It took almost a week, but one of her men finally spotted a large group approaching the city. She ordered her men to arm themselves, and if she died to kill whatever they could before they fell.
She was ready to deal with anything he could do to her. She had thought her heart was hardened from years of being on her own and being betrayed time and time again. Yet as soon as the man entered the room, her heart skipped a beat and the stupid love-struck teenage self, she had long ago repressed, surfaced.
Anna immediately recognized that this was not the same laid-back lackadaisical Norman she remembered from her youth. There was a presence and drive about the man that made her stomach knot up uncomfortably. When his eyes finally landed on her, they were like icy daggers driven into her spine. She managed to remain still under his piercing gaze, but it had been a close thing. Only her burning rage to see him submit to her kept her from wilting like a virgin maiden under his scrutiny.
There was a brief exchange of words, a few threats, and a bit of silliness from Norman that showed he still had a bit of his old self somewhere inside this new cold exterior. The thought tried to melt her cold dead heart but she resisted the impulse. She was finally here, finally able to fulfill a desire she had had for nearly three years, she would not abandon that for some man.
As she coiled her power around Norman, there was an explosion. She had been so dumbstruck by the unexpected event that she could only stare in horror as the man she had loved and still continued to pine over died in front of her. It was too much for her to take and she simply screamed until she passed out.
Only he didn’t die. She wanted to be furious with the man for making her think he died, but her heart was still too raw with the knowledge that she still loved him for her to even admonish him over his actions. It was only made worse by his cold uncaring glare.
Anna wasn’t the bright-eyed ignorant teen she used to be. She had had plenty of relationships over the years and she could tell when there was no longer any love or affection left between people. It was the same gaze Norman was giving her now and it made her want to crawl into a hole and cry.
***
After their reunion, Norman bound Anna with an oath. She had heard about blood oaths. But it was the first time she had experienced it firsthand. It didn’t matter if Norman bound her or not. There wasn’t a single person inside this city that her magic would be effective on and she had nowhere to go. Not that she could bring herself to harm Norman even if she wanted to now that her feelings for the man had abruptly resurfaced.
Norman completely ignored Anna after that initial encounter, leaving her to wander about aimlessly until the gron man named Grobert found her. He only had harsh words for her.
“Norman may be fine with leaving you to do just the bare minimum, but I am not. If you won’t work, you can leave. I don’t care what you do but do something, if I see you slacking off, I will have the guards toss you out of the city on your ass.” With those words, the short but menacing man walked off.
Anna didn’t want to be thrown out of the city so she started helping to clean up the streets. She wondered again at what had caused all the destruction in this town, but nobody would speak to her. And why would they? She had locked them up for a week and she was an outcast simply due to the fact she was the only living breathing person inside the town. Even the people she hadn’t kept locked up gave her dirty angry looks.
It took Anna a while to get used to all the walking dead. She kept flinching as they walked past, thinking they were going to tear her apart and eat her brains or some other such nonsense. Especially the ones called death knights. She had seen Norman’s bone armor before, but the dark grey, almost black full-body armor those guys wore sent chills down her spine.
She knew the fear was having her brains eaten was completely irrational. Her brother had been undead, and he never showed any signs of wanting to devour the flesh of the living. But that was her brother, these were people she didn’t even know. And there were not just humans present, but gron, jorik, and even a few other species she didn’t recognize. How could she trust any of them?
As the days turned into weeks though, her fear of being attacked slowly subsided. It just wasn’t possible to stay afraid of things that never even gave a hint of wanting to harm you. But even if her fear slowly drained away, she still wasn’t accepted as a member of the community. As for Norman, she hadn’t seen him since their last conversation in the bedroom. She was honestly not sure if the man would ever speak with her again.