The vault doors were loud and caused the ground to shake a bit as they opened for the first time in a while. Turg did not like the noise, he covered his ears and tensed up until the doors stopped moving. Jim had made Turg carry the bag as it was his way of making Turg more helpful and he didn't feel like carrying it anyways. He would rather have the weapons, he was carrying the hunting rifle on his back and the smaller weapons inside his coat. Jim stepped outside of the vault, which used to have its doors inside a house, and immediately noticed that nearly everything was gone. He remembered there being more houses and for sure remembered there being one where he stood, all that remained was charred support beams covered in snow. It was the middle of the night with a few lights in the distance, snow covered the landscape, and the cold breeze wasn't making anything better. Eventually Turg went up to beside Jim and the vault doors closed behind him, startling him a little.
"You leave for one year and they change everything, now the place is unrecognizable." Jim told Turg in attempt to lighten the mood a little, but Turg didn't appear to be in the mood. He had his hands to his chest again and was visibly shivering. Jim then tried to cast his flame spell to light up the area but he could only produce a tiny flame that would get immediately put out by the breeze. Turg stood back with wide eyes and exclaimed "Hot thing! Turg no like!"
Jim gave him a confused look and asked "You mean 'fire'?"
"Is it gone?" Turg then asked Jim, who sighed and pulled out his phone to use as a flashlight instead and replied "Yes, it is gone."
Turg then came back closer to Jim and followed him closely when he started wandering away from the vault. Turg then ran ahead across what remained of the street and Jim ran after him, Turg was quite fast and Jim couldn't catch up to him until he stopped.
"You're really fast, you know that right?" Jim told Turg once he caught up to him. Turg remained silent however and stared at what used to be a house now reduced to a large pile of charred rubble with a layer of snow on top. He then started wandering around on top of it while looking around on the ground as if he was looking for something, Jim decided to help by shining the light over where he was looking.
"They were here." Turg said with a very worried expression. Jim then asked him "Who was here?"
Turg didn't answer, instead he quickly crossed to the other side and froze. Jim followed but took his time as he didn't want to slip and get stuck. Once he made it across he saw what Turg was looking at. Several urns all placed in one spot, Jim assumed that Turg knew them. Jim wanted to say something, but he didn't know what to say as usually he was the reason why urns appeared. Then a ghost appeared from one of them, a woman who was glowing bright red and did not look happy to see the two. She had a very similar facial structure to Turg but her eyes were smaller than his. Jim turned off the flashlight function and backed off slightly while Turg remained still.
"What makes you think you can show your face here again?" The woman aggressively asked Turg who was tensing up again. Then another ghost of a woman appeared who was also like Turg and was glowing red. She didn't look happy to see Turg either. Jim didn't want to intervene yet, he wanted to see how it played out with just Turg and the ghosts of who he assumed was Turg's family.
"Yeah, I thought we banished you for what you've done, now you're back and alive somehow." The other woman told Turg. Turg responded with "But Turg tried."
"Yeah, you definitely tried to save us from the fire, but no you just died immediately because you were too stupid to move." The woman explained to Turg while the other woman added "And now we are all dead because of your incompetence."
"Turg tried but Turg could not." Turg was trying to defend himself but he was struggling to verbally express it.
"Quit speaking like that! I thought we worked on that, geez no wonder why your mother didn't bother naming you, you're such an idiot!" The other woman angrily exclaimed at Turg. Jim decided he had enough of just watching and decided to get involved.
"Hey! Give him a break, if you two relied on him to rescue you from a fire then maybe you're the real idiots here." Jim told the ghosts as he stood beside Turg again. Turg immediately hid behind Jim and grabbed onto one of his arms.
"Who are you to question our intelligence?" The woman asked Jim while the other asked "Also, who are you?"
"That doesn't matter, I just want to know why you're so hostile to Turg." Jim responded as the woman told Jim "You've clearly met him and you seem to like him enough to be defending him right now. Don't get too attached, he is incapable of love and really only useful for pleasure honestly."
"I'm impressed you have tolerated him for so long." The other woman then said. Jim was getting very pissed off with the ghosts, if they weren't ghosts he would have killed them by now.
"How do you know that? Is it because his way of expressing it is different by chance? Your ableism is really showing." Jim aggressively asked the ghosts. They didn't respond, instead the woman told Jim "My point is, don't expect him to be your hero or to save the world."
Jim wanted to say something in response to that but before he could the woman said again "Now leave, take Turg with you, we don't want to see his face around here again."
Jim laughed and responded "Well that's gonna be difficult considering you two look like him."
Both of them glared at Jim and the other woman shouted "GET OUT! NOW!"
Turg then ran away from the ghosts while still holding onto Jim, forcing him to come along too. Jim flipped them off before vanishing into the dark once again. When Turg finally stopped running Jim turned his phone's flashlight back on and noticed that it was starting to snow again. Turg was still holding onto Jim's arm, he didn't seem to want to let go.
"We best find some shelter before we really get snowed on." Jim suggested to Turg, who only nodded in response. Jim located the nearest structure that had not collapsed and headed towards it where they would spend the rest of the night.
YOU ARE READING
The New World
Fanfiction"Welcome to the new world you've created, one with no authority and death is the only thing that is certain." It had been over a year since doomsday when Jim finally left the vault with his new friend, Turg. The world had changed, everything was d...
