After Ortega leaves, I pull my armor on, slide the heavy gray work gloves over my hand, and adjust the buckles of the gauntlets over both. Once both of those were on, I slip on the hoodie, a new pair of loose-fitting jeans, and slide the belt through the loops, and fasten the kris to it; making sure the scabbard was hidden behind the cloth of the hoodie. After I was ready, I pour a full bowl of dog and cat food.

“Clio. Shadow. I’ll be back.”

The cat mewls, and curls around my leg, and Clio glances up from her curled-up position at the top of the bed. I pull the door open, and Shadow darts out, and with a few quick hops she wason the roof of the building in no time. I close the door and lock it behind me with the card key. I test the handle with a jiggle and limp my way to the elevator. Once in, I make sure I’m alone.

“Can you show me a map of this area?”

The Shard split and the stretching screen appeared in front of me. I click the street that the motel is on, and it zooms into it.

“Plainview Street: 0/25 doors closed. Close them all for your share of 25,000 dollars, 10 stat points, and 5 skill points.”

The area it covered included parking lots and rare houses. Plainview Street was mainly a thoroughfare that existed solely for the purpose of connecting two parts of the town. Most of it was empty fields. Or gated-off portions of the nearby highway. There had been a bowling alley along it at one point, but that had closed down recently. There was a door inside the building that once housed it. I wonder if I called the Corps if I’d be able to get in there. The closest was the one near the dumpster.

Once the elevator lets off, I limp toward the dumpster. Look over my shoulder. It was in full view of both the front office and the road that ripped by. It doesn’t take long for a lull in the traffic. It was an unusually quiet day. Perhaps due to the announcement by the President about the world essentially coming to an end within half a decade. I push open the door with a shove of my shoulder, and fall into the black space beyond.

I am accustomed to the spinning darkness now. I simply close my eyes and wait for the feeling of solid ground to find my feet again. I open my eyes, and I am on the edge of a large cobblestone road. It’s the size of a four-lane highway. From west to east far beyond the Fogwall. It cuts through rolling grasslands and the shattered remains of covered wagons. Arrows stick from the ground all around the road, and a heavy stench tinges the air. I nearly vomit from it and quickly cover my mouth and nose. The odor is so bad I could taste it. I glance up and down the cluttered highway through the dim light that bled through the ever-fog.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I turn around. The door I had stepped out of was the door of a large building; a bunkhouse, an inn, or a tavern, that had long since burned down. A new archway had been built there; made of fresher woods than the pale remains of whatever constructed the building.

What’s the goal here? I think and hold up my arm.

“Kill the Priest.”

I look around. The road goes on for about a tenth of a mile in either direction, and doesn’t extend past the other edge of the highway, nor does it extend very far behind the burnt-down building that the door was attached to. The priest had to be somewhere along the road.

Briefly, I consider the possibility of just setting all of the wreckage on fire, and letting that draw out the priest. The thought of losing anything that I could use, however, stills my hand. I pull off my hoodie, and wrap it around my nose and mouth and step away from the burnt-down inn.

I walk alongside the highway. In the turned-over wagons that I pass; brown mush rots in shattered barrels. Scorch marks mar the white stone road and the axles of the wagons are smashed as if heavy hammers had been taken to them. Decomposing bodies lay scattered among the mess; some in the familiar white tabards of the Jackalmen, rotting bodies of the Ratmen, and some of the bodies of the Catmen that I had seen proof of only in the bones littering the houses, and the locket.

Were the Catmen fleeing the city or going toward it? I look down the highway in either direction. The wagons were all heading in a single direction by the way their noses are turned, but from this far away I could not see even the faintest outlines of the massive walls in either direction that the highway spanned.

As I walk alongside the highway, something stirring within the wreckage catches my attention. I stop and make sure there’s nothing behind me as I ready myself for whatever it is. The sound of wood rattling against stone draws my attention a bit further away as if whatever it is was moving beneath the wreckage was moving away. Was it another one of those serpents? I glance around the ground for something that I could pick up to use as a shield in case it darted forward. Good as my luck had been recent, I didn’t think I would survive its burning venom. No matter how many times I healed myself.

No, instead I’ll initiate things, I think. I grab hold of the staff and beat it against the nearby body of a wagon.

Thunk thunk thunk. The wood-on-wood beating reverberates through the wreckage. The rustling stops, and I step away from the highway and watch. The rattling changes direction and intensifies as it heads toward me. I point the staff at the edge of the highway, and ready myself for whatever it was.