“Are you ready, princess?” David asked the blonde woman who stepped out of the house.

 

She had filled out her figure, and no longer looked like a walking skeleton. Her thighs were now plump, and she had a toned stomach and backside, her arms were also toned, and her breasts could only be considered average, but they were very perky. The thing that David noticed most was her face; when he was with her she always presented this gentle smile, but he had also seen her when she was alone.

 

Her eyes always seemed to carry this strange intensity to them when she looked at him, and he didn’t quite understand it. Alone though she was like an ice sculpture, her eyes carried no emotion in them, and she had an expression that looked like a doll’s neutral expression. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it also wasn’t a straight line.

 

David shook his head as he looked at his left arm, it was now covered in black cloth bandages that formed a tight sleeve over his burned skin. In the week that they had been at the house, David had been forced to kill two more hounds that had wandered over and now his mace and machete both had active enchantments. The other weapon that had been heavily modified was the baton he had turned into a ballistic weapon.

 

David looked down at the heavily modified weapon, he had renamed it ‘Bunker-kun’ since it now resembled a miniature pile bunker. This is because David shortened the Baton and welded a railroad spike to the end of it. He had also given it a rune to activate and an enchantment on the spike to make it resist friction, this would allow it to penetrate much deeper.

 

This weapon was secured to the back of his forearm using two leather straps, he placed it over the arm that was wrapped in black bandages. Now that it had healed it was much stronger than his other arm, which was due to it consuming the mana that was in it to heal. This had acted as a type of tempering so it was already difficult to project mana outside of it, and he would only be able to use enchantmented or runed equipment with it.

 

“I’m ready, I have all of the cooking equipment we will need along the way.” She said.

 

David nodded as he also put his bag on his back, it was quite heavy, but it would get lighter the stronger he got. He was carrying tools, a tent, a bedroll, some medication, clothes, some food, and water. His machete was strapped sideways on his waist, and his mace hung at his side.

 

“Alright, let’s go.” David said.

 

The two were planning to avoid the city because monsters were coming from that direction. The hounds had all come from the city, which meant it had probably turned into a hunting ground for the monsters. David didn’t want to get caught up here when his parents were just a few days hike away.

 

“Alright, we are going around Castle Rock and Around Denver in the process, we are heading to a small town called Ward. My family lives outside of it, it is near Boulder where I went to college.” David explained as he drew a map on the ground.

 

Until they understood the situation it was best to just avoid any settlement, they weren’t sure how long they had been in the asylum or what the outside world was like. Lena had been forgotten in the laundry room when the power went out and the electronics stopped working. A week after she had been trapped there, the walking corpses had filled the halls and she wasn’t able to leave. 

 

The two went through a gate in the back of the fence, and they were greeted with Colorado’s blend of tall trees and large mountains. Looking all around, nothing was flat, and he could see bush all around him. Taking out a compass, he got his bearings and began to direct the duo through the forest.

 

“We need to be careful as long as we are around settled areas, monsters will see humans as an easy meal and an easy way to get magic stones. They can digest them easily, and use it to increase their power.” David explained as they hiked along. “It will probably be the espers who have it the best initially, then it will be the awakened if they get lucky with the memories they get.”

 

David didn’t think mixed bloods would appear for a while, a lot of them were like a siren’s call to the weak. Vampirism, lycanthropy, becoming a demon, becoming undead, there were countless ways to sell off your humanity if you were willing and David was hoping to thoroughly villainize this practice to everyone he knew. Mixed bloods weren’t humans anymore, it was always safer to group them with the monsters.

 

“How long until we get to your parents?” She asked.

 

David had decided to keep the woman around as she had saved his life when he was unconscious in the helicopter. She could have left him to die or even killed him, but she had taken care of him and tried to help him. David knew that she had a lot of issues, but he had made up his mind that he was going to try to help her.

 

His mother had been sex trafficked, she had been forced to work as a prostitute since she was a young child. His father had met her by chance when she was walking home in the rain from a therapy session, and that began his tireless efforts to woo his mother over. Six years later they got married in their late thirties and in their early forties, his mother became pregnant with David.

 

“We need to walk almost 200 miles, I plan to take two weeks to get there.” David said. “Monsters are attracted to sound, so using guns is a really bad idea out in the wilderness. In a fight, you want to end it as soon as possible, take everything useful, then light a fire and run.” 

 

Most travelers went in carriages with large groups of armed guards, they created trains with armored wagons. Every night they would create a ring using the large metal wagons and create a small fortress out in the plains. That is what Edea had been reduced to after the Machine Lord went from city to city destroying everything.

 

What David had seen so far of the man had been his last thirty years where he stayed holed up in the Iron Citadel experimenting, and some period early where he had broken out of some seal. David did not have a complete set of the man’s memories, only a lot of the information the man had accumulated. It made David think the man must have lived for hundreds if not thousands of years.

 

“What are your parents like?” Lena asked.

 

David stepped around a large rock as he imagined his parents.

 

“My dad is very eccentric, he was in the military right out of high school, then he became a repairman. He was some kind of tank driver during the gulf war, he even had some medals for it.” David said as he remembered a bald man with a giant beard and beaming smile. “He modified the van he lived in to have working electricity and even a toilet. He would sometimes go off in that thing and camp out for days or weeks sometimes.”

 

“What about your mother?” She asked.

 

“She got really into spirituality after she had me, she felt like she was being given a second chance by some higher being. She cried until she wasn’t able to anymore when she first held me, my dad said that he was worried she would hurt me.” David told her the story. “Then she changed drastically, she got really into whole foods, she got into things like Wicca, yoga, and things like Buddhism.”

 

As he was walking through the woods with the blonde woman, he could see the image of the two people as if they were standing in front of him. His dad was shorter than his mother, and he always wore blue jeans, work boots, and a flannel, long-sleeved shirt. His mother had long white hair and pale blue eyes, she was also slightly tanned, she always had a loving smile on her face when she was standing next to his dad.

 

David was walking forward one foot in front of the other when suddenly he stopped, looking around he could see that in this large forest were some new obstructions. As they were walking he had been stepping over stones and moving around them, but now he was seeing something that caused him to pause. All around them in the forest he had noticed granite pillars that were appearing between the trees, some of them were broken.

 

“What’s wrong?” Lena asked him.

 

David’s pupils were constricting, as he suddenly felt a deep chill that seemed to run up his spine. These Granite pillars were only a little taller than a person, and if you held your arms out and spun it would only be a bit bigger. They also seemed to be placed in position as if they were meant to hold up a low ceiling that had disappeared over time.

 

Looking closely David could see these pillars placed around as if they were carefully positioned, then trees that seemed to grow around randomly. Looking at the ground he could also see something that caused him deep alarm, it was a rusty dark brown and black sand that billowed out over the ground. This dusty ground was covering the grass and dried leaves and branches as if it had fallen from the sky.

 

“David?” Lena called.

 

David began to walk through these large granite pillars, some he discovered had fallen over, and some had broken into pieces. None of these mattered as he moved in the direction of one, in particular, it was the one he was most familiar with. After several minutes and walking between several trees and large bushes, he came to an empty spot, one where the pillar had been destroyed.

 

They had only been walking outside of the city for a few hours when they discovered this place outside of the city. These pillars were identical to the ones that once sealed away the Machine Lord, and the one that held him was gone. It all perfectly matched David’s memory and he was easily able to find the pillar that the Machine Lord had destroyed.

 

“David!” Lena called.

 

David suddenly realized he couldn’t breathe, he hadn’t been able to for a while. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his inhaler and took a puff of it, and waited for it to work on his constricting throat. Lena walked forward and began to pat his back with a worried expression.

 

Why is a place that was on Edea here?! It is like it was just pasted into the scenery!

 

The only difference was the age of the pillars, they looked ancient, easily hundreds if not thousands of years old. David’s brain was spinning in circles as it tried to find some information from the Machine Lord’s mind to explain this. Suddenly David turned and did the math, if this place was in proportion to where the city had been then they should have passed the Angel of Death statue, but they didn’t.

 

There is no way that I would miss something that eerie! 

 

“Sorry, I am okay…” David said.

 

It was obvious David was lying, he was pale and sweating, he was also shaking as if he was cold.

 

“That’s good, I know you would never lie to me,” Lena said with a gentle smile. “I was really worried about you.”

 

David suddenly felt another sense of alarm at Lena’s strange reaction, it was like she couldn’t see the state he was in. He had answered without thinking about it, but he hadn’t expected her to answer like that. Looking over at her, he could see the same look on her face that she had whenever they ate meals or when she cooked for him. 

 

Her facial expressions were really limited, and while she would ask questions to get more information, she didn’t seem to react like a normal woman would. One of the reasons he wanted to go to his parents was he hoped his mother would be able to help Lena. Both of them were survivors of terrible experiences and David wasn’t sure just how much damage the Wight had done to her psyche.

 

Taking a few deep breaths, he looked around at the various granite pillars. What worried him was that some of them were broken in ways similar to how the Machine Lord’s had been when he escaped. He remembered clearly that these were used originally to store prisoners that the Tullens family had sealed away, people like the Machine Lord.

 

This shouldn’t be possible, there is no instance of something like this happening in the information I received from the Machine Lord.

 

Suddenly a thought occurred to him that sent a chill down his spine, he was starting to question if he was an awakened or some kind of experiment that the Machine Lord had conducted before his death. Then he started to question if the Machine Lord was dead, he realized he needed to stop these chaotic thoughts or he would never be able to leave this place. Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, he cleared his thoughts with a few shakes of his head.

 

“We are not going to find any answers here, we need to keep going.” David said.

 

The two of them continued to walk between the forest and the pillars, David kept his machete in hand since this was a good place to get ambushed. The more he walked around and through the pillars the more certain he was that this was the monument from Edea. Occasionally he could find writing on the pillars that had worn, it was epitaphs for the ones who had been sealed.

 

Is this where the mana came from? Did it somehow come from Edea? 

 

David had been questioning where the mana that infected Earth came from, now it looked like Edea itself was appearing on the planet. This only left David with more questions though, it also made him feel a deep dread. He thought about all of the dreams he had experienced since his accident, and then he compared it to what he knew of awakened. 

 

The coma was the only strange part, but I did experience 30 years in one go…

 

He was just having dreams, he wasn’t experiencing anything else that was different from a normal awakened. This thought brought him some comfort as he made his way through the last of the pillars. The two began to make their way through the forest and towards a large dried-out river bed, they would be following it for nearly 30 miles. 

 

-

 

David was exhausted, they had walked almost 32 miles in a single day, this was after having killed 2 monsters on the way. David looked up and saw that the sun had just set, they were camping inside of a clearing inside a ring of trees. Yawning deeply, he finished setting up a temporary camping formation that consisted of a set of enchantments.

 

The first one obscured the area from vision, smell, and sound, it was the most common set in Edea for travelers. It could even be bought sewn into cloaks that could be set on the ground and activated with a pair of magical stones. David was surprised that there were so few of them in the forest, but so many in the city.

 

The entire day he had been thinking about the ruins of the monument that they had walked through, he wasn’t sure what became of it after the Machine Lord left it. For the first time, he wished that he had all of the man’s memories, even though he knew they would be filled with filth. He was interrupted by the sounds of humming and looked over to see Lena walking over to him with a plate of food.

 

“Thank you.” He said, taking it with a plastic fork and beginning to eat.

 

“Do you think we can meet your parents in a week if we can keep up the current pace?” Lena asked him with a smile.

 

“I don’t think we should try to go so fast, we should try to maintain some energy.” David said.

 

David noticed a look of disappointment that flashed through her eyes briefly before it faded away.

 

Wait, is she trying to hurry on purpose?!

 

He suddenly realized that she had been rushing him along the entire time. Looking over he saw that she was just smiling at him like usual, she seemed extremely interested in his childhood. She wanted to know about all of the things he did and liked, even the games he played.

 

David had answered her, he didn’t try to ask her any questions about herself as she would often lock up. He knew almost nothing about her, he didn’t even know why she was in a military hospital in the first place. His first thought was her family, but her name sounded like it came from Russia or somewhere in that area. 

“Do you like it?” She asked.

 

David had finished a bite of the seasoned meat she had made from a monster rabbit they had killed. 

 

“It’s quite good, you seasoned it well. You need to process monster meat carefully or humans have a lot of problems digesting it.” David told her, taking another bite.

 

“That’s wonderful, I will make you a lot more tasty food in the future.” She said with a smile.