Chapter 6: Our Birthplace

They crept as quickly as they could to the closet building of the ruins coming to a creeping walk around the corner to look further into the ruins. As Aeden peered around the corner all he saw was what they had already seen. Just carnage. Aeden to a deep breath and signaled for Erika to follow. They creeped along the walls of the building. Their heads constantly shifting back and forth scanning the area, and the surrounding buildings.

They continued their vigilant walk for several minutes as they explored deeper in the ruins. Eventually they reached what looked like to be a main road. It had buildings layered on either side of the road. It was hard to tell what type of buildings they were because many were broken and fallen to rubble leaving only the gray stone outer walls for many. However, there were a couple of buildings intact Aeden began to take a closer look at them.

They varied in sizes, but they stacked on top of each other reaching anywhere from six to eight storied tall. The buildings were layered getting smaller or spilling onto other buildings in the process. From a distance thought the higher the smaller they got. He assumed that these had been for the wealthy owners or patrons of these ruins. You could tell even though many had crumbled the ones that were still intact had immaculate engravings. At the ends in the open space of the roofs had either pagodas or a balcony covered in if had to guess clean marble. Many buildings had lots of pillars that were probably from the same marble. The pillars that were there decorated the outer frame of the buildings creating beautiful archways and small walks ways around the buildings. But most were reclaimed by the forest fractured and shattered. They had become overgrown with vegetation of vines, shrubs, and bushes. Aeden had seen trees as center pieces on the roof of some of the buildings now some of those trees had grown into the buildings themselves.

Aeden and Erika had mostly walked in silence from the beginning at the entrance of the main road. Even though Erika was getting worried because they saw no signs of anyone or anything for that matter, but she had to admit her curiosity was starting to rise. For a moment she forgot her purpose of finding her brother just to sate her curiosity.

“Who do you think built this place?” she asked dumfounded.

“I don’t know but they must be long gone by now. You can’t even find remains of the people from this civilization let alone anyone human.” As they had walked further into the ruins the blood trails had stopped and there were no body parts strewn around. This let Aeden relax a little, ‘maybe there out of the main territory of those creatures from before he thought to himself.’ As they walked through the buildings created dark alleyways that stretched a fair distance before the next street over. Thankfully so far nothing moved in those shadows and let out a mental sigh of relief.

“But this place is huge there has to be someone here, right?” she asked pleading a little.

“Whoever they were they either died out long ago, or they were evicted by the new residents of this place,” Aeden replied coldly. Erika gulped at Aeden's response reality slowly sinking in.

As they walked further in, they did notice some strange flowers growing in some of the buildings that they could see thanks to a few missing both roofs and pieces of wall. The flowers themselves were beautiful they were split into pairs of blues and oranges. Followed by purples and reds and they swore some of them glowed a little bit in the darkness of some of the buildings. They couldn’t tell maybe it had just been a trick of the light. If they weren't in potential life-threatening danger this place could have made an amazing park, if there were maintained roads and trails running through here.

As their exploration continued further Erika’s heart began to sink and Aeden was getting worried, they were starting to go in to deep. They hadn’t seen any type if life besides the surrounding vegetation. All the carnage had long stopped a ways back. There were no signs of survivors. Not even the beasts that had appeared in mass earlier was nowhere to be found. This put Aeden extremely on edge. He was hoping they ran into a small pack of goblins so they could quickly turn around and leave from the beginning. However, none were to be found, not even a single sound other than their own footfalls.

As the thirty-minute mark was approaching Aeden tapped Erika’s shoulder who had taken the lead after they entered the ruins. She quickly began to outpace Aeden mostly in part to his injuries and her drive to find any trace of really anyone at this point. She stopped and looked back at him. He signaled a three and zero, then back out towards the way they came in. She sighed, she really wanted to keep looking but she had made a promise after all. Plus, there wasn’t any evidence of anyone escaping those creatures from earlier. Just thirty minutes and she hadn’t found a trace of her brother at all she began to despair, and a few tears trickled down her face. Her quiet sobs began to reverberate between the buildings and over time here sobs turned into full crying, and he feared if they would turn to wailing. Now Aeden was starting to panic they had been lucky that nothing had found them so far, but this could definitely bring something here.

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He tried to calm her down, but it clearly wasn’t working. His parents had taught him better but now was not the time to a gentleman. He sent a quick slap on her cheek. She froze wide eye as her eyes slowly panned over to him. Aeden gripped her shoulders and shook her trying to focus on him. “You need to calm down. He probably wasn’t even transported in the first place.” Aeden lied. He didn’t know if this kid had been transported or not. If he had the only chance Erika had if he was taken with someone else out into the forest. Even though it was a shitty thing to do he had to get her to forget about her brother being here. The only other alternative was he was already dead. Eaten alive by whatever monstrosity lived in the buildings. He feared what she would do if that was the case.

“Do you think so? That he wasn’t transported here?” She croaked out a response between sobs.

“Yeah, I doubt he was transported here it doesn’t make sense to bring kids here to try and survive.” He lied again. When they were transported here, he had seen many kids there scared or dumfounded. It was a sobering thought to Aeden, but he really hoped Erika hadn’t noticed due to the craziness of their escape. Thankfully it seemed she didn’t.

“Your right he’s probably safe at home.” She said convincing herself it to be true. Aeden felt a small sense of relief wash over. Aeden knew people will convince themselves for something to be true if they want it to be. He could pay for it in hell later, but they needed to get out of these ruins that had spent enough time here. The place was way to massive to explore anyway it seemed to stretch on for a long time.

Just as they began to turn to walk, they heard a loud crashing sound. They immediately stopped in their tracks and looked back in the direction they were originally headed. They didn’t see anything but the ground shook as the sound got louder, closer to where they were. They held their breaths, as a behemoth of a creature probably twice the size of a full-grown elephant appeared around the corner of one of the buildings. Its face was triangular which led into a snout. It was covered in scales that almost seemed more like armor than just an outer layer. It had two large horns that curved down its face and then past its mouth. In the mouth were two rows of razor-sharp teeth. It was large and fat. That stood on four large tree trunk like legs. It had a long tail that was barbed on the end. The first thing that popped into Aeden’s head said fantasy dinosaur the other thought was death incarnate.

It stopped and began to sniff the air, then its head slowly began to move in their direction. Erika stood there frozen; she began to hyperventilate as she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. No animal could be that big. She almost screamed as a hand covered her mouth as she was quickly dragged into a small, roofed building. Aeden had grabbed her, and they both scooted as far into the building as they could. They both tried to stifle their breathing as the creature came marching in their direction. When it was almost outside their building, they stopped breathing entirely in a vain hope it wouldn’t detect them. They could hear it sniffing the air again. It stood in front of their building for a few moments too long for their liking, then it slowly continued its march up the street. In the direction they were supposed to be leaving.

Once the creature had gone far enough, they both couldn’t hear it anymore they both gasped for air. Not realizing they had been holding their breath the entire time. They were both shaking. Erika was the first to speak.

“What was that?!”

“I have no idea.” Aeden responded barely comprehending what they had just seen.

They continued to sit there for several minutes trying to recenter themselves. Eventually Erika tried to move but Aeden was still holding her in place after dragging her into the small, ruined building. “You can let go now” she said flatly. “Sorry.” Aeden said slightly embarrassed he had been holding onto her so tightly. They both picked themselves up with a newfound sense of urgency installed in them. They were now faced with a new dilemma of how they had to get out of there alive.

“How are we supposed to get out of here? That thing is blocking the way we came!” Erika exclaimed.

“Well since we can’t get out that way, we'll just have to exit from another area. We just need to pick a direction and go. This place is surrounded by the forest. I don’t think it matters where we exit now. Plus, we should do it as fast as possible.” Aeden said.

They both nodded in agreement. They decided they would exit and go the direction the beast had just come from and ran straight ahead. They could see some of the forest trees in that direction. With a tense few seconds of them hyping themselves up for the marathon sprint. They both bolted, Erika ran out much faster than Aeden was expecting. It almost seemed she was running at Olympic runner speed. Aeden was having a much harder time, the pain in his leg demanding him to stop, but he pushed through with gritted teeth. Stopping now could mean a death sentence. Not a scratch but a death sentence. As they ran, they began to make a lot of noise between their footfalls and panting. Out of the corner of their eyes some shadows began to move in some of the buildings, but neither stopped to look.

Aeden saw some small figures begin to emerge in some buildings they were passing by. He picked up the pace as much as his wounded leg would allow him. Erika was far ahead of him by now leaving him behind. He struggled as a lot of energy was being used up and wasted due to his injury.

They started to zig zag through alleys trying to stay in a diagonal fashion leading to what seemed to be the closets exit from the ruins. Erika didn’t notice she was quickly outpacing Aeden getting further and further ahead. Aeden struggled with all his might not to lose sight of her. Eventually they came to another main street that led to crumbling wall with a giant opening in it. After the long sprint Erika had made it to the forest edge panting trying to catch her breath. She turned saying “at least we made it out of there!” with a small victorious smile. However, it quickly faded as she realized Aeden wasn’t behind her. She could barely make out his figure a far distance behind her. There were other things surrounding him. “Oh shit!”