You wake with a start and sit up in panic from your nightmare. Your breaths fall heavy and hard while sweat drips down your brow.

You alright? Noir asks Telepathically.

All you can manage to do is mutter and nod slowly, unable to fully process what you’ve just experienced in your dream. Not only because that Being and its powers far beyond your understanding, but your dream has been altered altogether.

For over three years it has been plaguing you, and not once has it changed. At least not without your direct intervention.

And now, suddenly, this.

I think I’m alright, you reply. Had a rough dream.

All your dreams are rough, Noir counters.

No, all my dreams are constant. This one… this one was different. It changed somehow. And that scares the shit out of me.

You’re probably just stressed out, or maybe all these psionic powers you’ve been learning are affecting your head more than you realize. Maybe all our heads.

You nod half-heartedly at Noir’s comment. It’s very possible that your powers have something to do with this change, and it might just be a manifestation of your fears. After all, mind-altering powers alter minds, right?

But somehow you think that isn’t what’s going on. A part of you knows that something, somewhere has altered your dream. No, your reality.

I wish I could explain it, you say after a few moments. Maybe I could project it into your head Telepathically or something… Just so you could see what happened in it.

Look, it’s just your dream in the end, right? Noir says. You’re still alright. More or less. Just try to look on the bright side of things. I mean, aren’t we on this road to do something about your dream in the first place? It changing means that what we’re doing is making a difference.

I guess you’re right…

If I’m not, well we can deal with it then.

After your harried sleep, you return to your westward travels as quickly as you can, hopping from farmstead to farmstead as you do. The land around you is still oppressively hot even after the Ifrit’s death, and much of the earth is still scorched black.

Thankfully the heat and burnt land ebbs away as you travel for the next couple of days, though things don’t get significantly better. Instead of seeing green grassland and fertile crops, you’re treated to dry, withered, yellowed vegetation all around you.

A Scan reveals very little life out there - certainly more than what’s behind you. But not so much more as to be called ‘bountiful’, not by a long shot.

Behind you is a charred hellscape while in front of you is a barren wasteland.

What’s that saying? Out of the pot and into the fire? This certainly seems a bit like that. Especially considering that the farmsteads and ranches become sparser as time goes on. It’s nearly a week after your incident with the Ifrit that they stop appearing altogether, and all your choices for shelter all but vanish.

So you end up wandering back to the road to follow it, hoping to find any kind of decent shelter along the way. There’s no point in traveling among the plains and grasslands as they can no longer offer you anywhere to stay.

In the darkness you see the silhouettes of some tall hills and plateaus in the distance ahead of you, which brings you some relief. They look rather gray and bleak from where you’re standing, though to be fair everything looks gray and bleak in the dead of night, with your enhanced night vision active.

Not that this thought daunts you very much. The very sight of the plateaus means you’re about a third of the way to your destination. Or at least, almost halfway. Past those plateaus are the other side of the plains you’re on, but beyond that are the mountains and canyons leading to the other side of the country.

It’s at that point when you would be close to halfway across the country.

But that would also conclude the easiest part of the journey. The plains are nice and flat, even despite the plateaus in the center. Which means having a fast walking pace isn’t a problem at all. Going up those plateaus? Or those mountains?

That’s going to be a slog that’ll take most of your time. Climbing the mountains especially could be really tough - there’s tons of winding uphill roads to contend with, many of which could be covered in ice. You hope that the overall increased heat of the world will stop snow and sleet from falling, which would only make your journey that much harder.

Still, that isn’t anything you have to worry about right now. You still have to get past these plateaus, and then the final stretch of plains beyond.

At the very least however, there will be plenty of shade and shelter from the sun while you’re traversing the canyons between the plateaus. Problem is that they’re still a number of days away. Though you hope that making it there won’t be a massive problem, a part of you is keen to take on the challenge.

After all, it’s through all kinds of challenges that you’ve become the person that you are now, and you’ve only become more capable by overcoming them.

It’s just as daylight peeks over the horizon from behind you that you see what appears to be a lone gasoline station in the distance. Seeing as it’s the only place to rest for as far as you can see, you and Noir pick up your pace to get there quicker.

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Even then it takes almost an hour for you to arrive, during which time the sun rises higher and higher, and along with it comes its oppressive heat. Noir dashes off to the side just as you step into its dusty, empty parking lot, no doubt wanting to scout out the place for herself.

Gonna take a quick look around, she tells you. Grab a meal before bedtime.

You’ve been sleeping on my backpack all night, you reply.

I meant your bedtime.

Enjoy the slaughter, I suppose.

You perform a quick and shallow Scan, even as she ducks into some dry brush. And although there’s some life out here, there’s not a whole lot. You can sense the presence of perhaps a dozen or so mice and rats and other scavengers here and there, enough to feed you both.

Large beads of sweat drip down your forehead even as you walk up to the gas station’s entrance. But when you tug on it, find that it’s locked. And although the large glass windows are heavily smudged with dirt and grime, they’re still mostly intact. It’s hard to peer through them, but you note that the shelves inside appear to still be filled with goods.

A wave of excitement washes over you, as though you’ve found some kind of treasure vault that’s been untouched over the centuries.

You could easily break the door open, or shatter the glass to get in. But that seems like an excessive thing to do - it’s just a gas station. Plus it would feel disrespectful - if this place hasn’t been pillaged in the years since the apocalypse, you had better treat it properly.

Instead you walk around back to fully inspect the building - perhaps you’ll find another way in.

And back there, you find a skeletonized corpse right next to a large tin trash can. Whoever died here has long since expired, perhaps since the apocalypse started. Since the corpse is outside, it has been picked clean of absolutely everything - even whatever tufts of hair that would still be around have been taken. Perhaps for nests or burrows or something.

Near the trash can is an open back door which has been slightly propped open by a rubber doorstop. Though that doorstop has melted to some degree and fused itself into the door and part of the concrete beneath. You’re certain it would take a great deal of effort to budge it.

You don’t quite head in yet, as parked behind the gas station is an old car - no doubt the dead person’s vehicle.

Like many others you’ve passed along the road, this one has sun-bleached paint, cracked and peeling interiors, and melted rubber seals and tires. Its windows are all rolled down however, allowing you to peer inside with ease.

Everything is coated in a layer of thick dust, including a crumpled backpack in the front seat. You grab it, dust it off, and open it, but find nothing of interest inside. There’s a half-filled notebook, a trashy romance paperback novel whose pages are faded and brown, a bunch of electronic device cables, and a cheap folding knife.

You toss it all back in, dust off your hands, then step into the back of the gas station.

It’s rather musty here, despite the door being open. And the smell is rather stale. On top of it all, it’s already pretty hot, perhaps owing to the fact that there’s no wind flowing in here.

Glancing all around the small back room, you can see numerous robust plastic shelves on the walls, each stacked full with boxes. There are stacks of delivery boxes piled up on the floor near you as well, though when you open one up, you find it pretty much empty.

Or rather, they’ve been emptied - it looks as though rats and mice have gnawed their way through the cardboard and munched at whatever food was stored inside. And they did this some time ago - there aren’t even scraps of food left, only half-eaten wrappers and animal droppings are inside.

When you look at the other cardboard boxes, you find that they’ve all met similar fates - anything edible in them has been chewed into and eaten then subsequently excreted out.

In the corner of the back room is a kind of open office - there’s a desk with an old computer on it, a rickety old wooden chair, and a single filing cabinet. The whole setup looks positively ancient, and also wholly uninteresting.

You decide not to spend much more time in here and open up the door to the shop front, which holds staler, somewhat cooler air.

The first thing you do is head for the front door, unlock it, and swing it open. This allows some measure of wind to blow through the place, cooling it down a bit further. As the whole place becomes a little less stale and a little more airy, you doff your kit and slide your things behind the counter.

They ought to be safe and cool back there while you massage your shoulders and look over the rest of the shop. Not that it’s very large - perhaps about ten or twelve square meters in total? There are only a handful of shelves, each one still stocked from years ago.

And because it seems to actually be properly protected from the outside, none of the animal scavengers have been able to get in. Which means all this stuff is all yours for the taking.

Your eyes and your fingers dance and run and leap across the shelves, over all the packages of cookies and chips and candies. There’s so much here that you grab a variety of them and place them on the counter - for later study.

You also look through the coolers and find a great deal of drink bottles still in them. There are also things like bottles of alcohol, juice, soda, dairy in there. But of course most are absolutely filled with mold and mildew. In fact one of the coolers looks like it has been completely taken over with black mold, and you shiver at the thought of opening it. Not only that, but you perform a deep Scan on it just to make sure that it hasn’t achieved consciousness.

Thankfully, it hasn’t.

What scares you equally as much are the drinks that haven’t been turned into a mold colony - especially some of the purported “fruit juices”. If they’ve been able to last years without succumbing to some kind of biological takeover, then they aren’t something you would want to put inside you. Who knows what it would do to your body once inside it.

Thankfully one of the coolers is filled with water bottles, though most are partially evaporated despite being unopened. Their bottles have also crumpled inwards to some degree, no doubt because of the change in air pressure.

You pop one open and drink it down, even giving it a bit of a swish in your mouth so you can taste it better. It definitely feels a bit stale somehow. But it works and you’re not about to throw away water. So you grab as many of the larger bottles as you can and place them on the counter as well.

An idea suddenly strikes you, and you head over to the ‘travel’ section of the store. It’s just another of the shelves, but instead of snacks or food there are all sorts of things here. Folding maps and motor oil and cleaning rags and toothbrushes and charging cables such. Basically, stuff that people traveling by car could use.

Among them are travel sized toothpastes, soaps, and shampoos. Excited by your find, you grab the metal baskets that they’re all in, and put them on the counter as well. For later. Not just for your own use, of course, but for selling, too.

Once you’re done, you look over your spoils with glee - this has been quite a find. Lots of stuff for you to barter with and trade.

You celebrate by opening up one of the ChoccoBars and chowing down on it with abandon. It’s been a while since you’ve had one, and enjoying it now imparts a nostalgic kind of joy that you rarely feel these days.

As you do so, you watch as the sun bakes the world around you.