A Changed World - Book II | The Awakening of Darkness

Chapter 7: The Wanderer

John and his group arrived at the ruined remains of Perseverance within a few hours of leaving the cabin, each of them stunned by the sheer destruction of what was once their home. 

"Everything's gone..." Ren quietly mumbled to herself as tears brimmed in her eyes. 

John cradled little Aya closely, who by now was awake and examining the destruction with confusion in her big eyes. 

"Let's just... get looking for survivors. We leave in an hour." John ordered, after having found the sight of his destroyed home to be too much for him and his daughter. But amongst all of the destruction, something caught the attention of the man.

Where the Perseverance gate used to be, the front, or more accurately what was left of his black truck could be made out underneath all of the rubble. The sight made him sigh with sadness as he stepped closer, and pressed the palm of his hand on the hood of his old truck.

"You did good girl." He whispered, giving his old, trusty truck a proper farewell before he turned around and noticed that everyone was already hard at work with their search. 

Aura, Ren and Mia were putting their excellent sense of smell to good use, but any scent they caught onto only led them to more dead bodies, over and over again. It was becoming less and less likely that they would find a single other survivor. 

"John, some of these people were killed recently. If we just got here sooner, maybe..." Bill started off after finding dozens of corpses a few feet away from the destruction, with bullet holes as their cause of death which were still bleeding fresh blood. 

John glanced over at Bill, and sighed sadly. "We wouldn't have made it on time. And if we did, there's nothing we could've done. We can't take on the whole F.E.O army by ourselves." He said calmly. 

"No, you couldn't. None of you would stand a chance." Said a quiet, unmotivated Liilith, who stood close to Bill with her head down, and her hands still tied behind her back. "Even after the Downfall, F.E.O's army is thousands strong. And that isn't even their strongest force." 

"The hell do you mean by that?" Ren asked, then glared at the former F.E.O commander with her teeth bared angrily. 

Lilith was silent for a moment, and slowly raised her head up to look at the group. "They're the ones who created the blood magic, thousands of years ago. I doubt either of you have heard of blood magic though." 

"We have." Mia snapped, and stepped closer to Lilith with a scowl on her face. "We've lost people to blood magic... some psycho found a blood sword and killed some of our people, including a damn ki-"

"Mia!" John said deeply, his glare alone immediately shutting the white wolf up. "We don't talk about it... especially not in front of Aya." he reminded with authority. 

Mia looked down, noticing that Aya was wide awake and tilting her head with curiosity to what the white wolf was about to say. "Right... I'm sorry John, I just... got angry." She admitted quietly, and shamefully. 

John sighed, shaking his head. "It's alright, now let's get back on track." He replied, taking a quick glance around. "We've been looking for survivors for about an hour now and we don't have much daylight left... we have to get moving." he said regretfully. 

"He's right y'all. The longer we stay out here, the more likely we're gonna run into trouble. Trouble we ain't prepared for." Bill agreed, his hands loosely on his hips. "There's a town down that way, I say we spend the night there." 

Everyone nodded their heads with agreement to Bill's suggestion. As much as they all wanted to stay and search for survivors, they were all in consensus that it wasn't safe to do so.