Dragons of War - Rising Storm

Chapter 26 (1/2)

I raced out from the caverns behind me, and the wailing cries of terrified people. I raced from the despair, but it followed me in my heart.

How could we abandon the only safe haven all of us had ever known?

Memories flashed through my mind, of the few years of my young life I had spent in the world outside that oasis. Despite being taken into the colony at a young age, I still remembered that world well. It had been seared into my brain. The fear. The pain. The filth.

The land, so badly scorched and torn, it was a mystery to us what the Old World had once looked like. All that was left of it, were the dismantled skeletons of the garbage they had once called 'technology'. It was a nightmare out there, and I couldn't go back. I wouldn't.

The rocky slope below my feet slopped down into the small green forest that surrounded the entrance of the caverns, and the pond in the middle. My feet hadn't taken me down that path in months. I had only flown above it now. So why wasn't I flying?

My feet pounded against the earth as I charged along the path I had once taken every morning for so many years of my life. That had been my peace, at one point. I no longer had that peace.

I passed the trees, the bushes, the pond. My feet tore across the grassy landscape as it smoothed out into the desert that surrounded the colony's cavern walls. The cliffs behind me blocked out the expanse of sand to the East, but to the West, in front of me, the grass only thinned a bit before the sand turned to dirt and pale, stiff, plants sprung up around me.

My thoughts finally clear enough, I knew the only path Lewis would have taken would be towards the only living forest for hundreds of miles.

The land open around me, I finally slowed my pace to a stop, despite my mind still racing within me. I called within myself, to that feeling of power, to the form I felt more comfortable in than as a human, I screamed out in my mind for it to respond, to change me.

Nothing happened.

My head dropped to the ground for only a moment, my heart dropping with the tone of my thoughts, but I didn't allow myself to fall with them. I picked up my feet again and charged ahead. I would find Lewis, even if it had to be on foot.

It took almost a half an hour to run the entire way. From all the training I had been through, and my enhanced abilities, I got there in half the time a normal human would. Once I entered the forest, I thought for a moment, how exactly I would find him. But the question did not remain in my mind for long, and I just pushed on. The trees high above my head blocked out the light of the setting sun. Darkness came as the hours passed and with it the chilly air of the night. I searched for any sign of him, my feet endlessly stepping, my mind a constant voice, but no matter the trees I stepped around, the hills I climbed, the rocks I scaled... I found nothing.

Where would we go? How would we survive? The colony was huge. So many had heard of the safety found there that they came from all across the landscape, at one point. But that wasn't what made the Oasis what it was. It was the Dragon Warriors, and the hope they brought. What was the point if they were over now?

My eyes, they scanned the surroundings relentlessly but my feet, they never slowed. I didn't see anything, but they were following a trail and I knew it. The pills had begun to wear off already, and my mind grew hazy with every passing moment and depressing thought.

Would we even be able to leave? If the Cabal knew where our base was, then it wouldn't be long before they sent their armies to take it for themselves. If they did that, it wouldn't be just the colony that would be lost.

We would lose the war.

The Renegade was made up of many 'rebel' groups, scattered throughout the old world but among those groups, none matched up to the prowess and power of the Oasis. We were the largest, most organized of them all, and no matter how far we'd fallen, we were their idol. If we fell, they all would, the last hope, lost.

I lost track of the time I spent racing through those woods. My legs ached. The wounds on my arms and chest burned. My eyes were blurry, and my mind confused. I slowed my pace to a stop and took a moment to catch my breath. Trees surrounded me on all sides, the leaves and twigs below my feet like a carpet. I sucked in a deep breath and for once, my lungs felt refreshed. My mind spiraled and my heart cried out.

I had to find Lewis, no matter what.

My head drifted back and my eyes locked onto the darkness above me. But it wasn't dark there. I was used to the eternal night of the caverns. No matter the time of day, darkness was all you found within that place unless you brought a light of your own. But the sky above my head had a light I had almost forgotten about. The stars.

Thousands, millions, of tiny flickering lights, so crowded together, it was like a carpet of lights in the sky. It was a much darker night within those caverns, and with the light above my head, I was filled with a rare emotion. 

Wonder.