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74.35% Scions of Gaea / Chapter 58: Burning Plains, Pt 1

Chapter 58: Burning Plains, Pt 1

The trees dwindle significantly the further west you travel. Even the shrubs and bushes become sparser and sparser as the days go by. Despite most of the foliage receding, the grass persists. And with the lack of competitors for sun and rain, the grass grows relatively tall. You can see the blades sway in the breeze, under the moon's light.

It's all beautiful and serene, at least from your point of view from the road.

Of course, the landscape changes as well. It becomes flatter and more even as you travel, and the beautiful rolling hills vanish alongside the diminishing foliage. The last vestiges of your old home are far behind you now, and there's no going back.

It isn't long until you find yourself in a vast valley that seems to stretch on for an eternity ahead of you. The highway itself becomes completely straight, and practically vanishes out into the dark of night. Although you're enhancing your vision through your powers, there's still only so far that you can see.

And from what you can tell, it's going to be a long time until you find any kind of shelter to sleep in.

If you don't find one soon, you're going to end up sleeping in the grass without protection from the sun. That is a scenario you would rather avoid. Without any manner of shade, this beautiful and serene plain will become a deathtrap once morning passes. Even if you're covered up by your poncho, the sheer heat radiating from the ground around you will surely cook you alive. 

Well, it might not quite be that bad, but you're not exactly willing to test out just how true your prediction could be. 

There are certainly still the occasional abandoned cars on the road, but none of those are a good option either. When you peer through some of their windows, you can just make out the sun-bleached and sun-worn interiors. Most plastic and leather surfaces have large cracks in them, and are visibly falling apart. Anything inside of them has become faded and worn, simply through direct sunlight and oppressive heat.

On the outside, the closer the paint is to the roof, the more faded it gets. Plus all the seals around the doors and windows have melted and rehardened time and time again. The rubber wheels themselves have molten over and fused the car to the asphalt to some degree.

It's clear that these have become little more than roadside ovens, and you'd rather avoid sleeping in them if at all possible.

You do your best to heighten your ESP, so that you can see and sense farther than ever before. And by using your Temperance, you're able to gain a powerful catlike night vision. This allows you to truly see much further out than ever before - perhaps half a dozen kilometers out.

Most of it is fuzzy and hard to make out, sure. But you can see, and you can scout.

And from what you can see, most of what's further out are overgrown farmlands. There are rows of overgrown crops in numerous spots, though various weeds and other plants have also taken residence on the extremely fertile soil around them. 

There seems to be an old tractor out in one of the fields, also likely rotting under the oppressive sun as well. 

More critically, you can just make out silos and a barn at the edge of your sight off to the southwest.

Might be better if we travel offroad from this point on, you transmit to Noir over the Network.

You mean crawl through that itchy grass? No thanks, Noir replies. I'd rather stay up on the road here so I can see where I'm going.

Is that so? Well check this out.

You focus your energies into a narrow Scan, and check for life all along the path from where you're standing all the way to the barn. You sense numerous animalistic thoughts and emotions rise up in the tall grass closest to you - and beyond. 

In fact, there's such a dense concentration of critters around the silos that you're certain they're all pillaging whatever's in them.

Noir gasps psionically as your Scan echoes through the Network. The sight of so much prey all over the place causes her little heart to skip a beat.

So yeah, we're gonna need some food, you continue. And water. And a place to sleep. Over there seems… robust with all those needs.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, I'm sold, Noir replies almost absentmindedly.

You sense some kind of switch flip inside of her the moment she goes into a stalking mode, then she leaps off into the grass and stalks the nearest critter to her. It only takes her a few seconds to get close enough to strike. 

But instead of physically attacking her prey, she instead flings a lethal Telekinetic claw at it, which slices off its head from the neck cleanly. Its life energies wink out a moment or two later.

Noir doesn't bother to stop to even inspect her kill before she bounds off further towards the farmstead. Clearly, she's excited by the prospect of so much death to deliver. As such, you decide to give her a little extra space and a little extra time to do her homicidal thing before you get off the road and head in after her.

You turn off the asphalt road, which immediately slopes down for a couple meters or so. At the bottom is a wide highway gutter designed to soak up heavy rains. The gutter itself is lined with gravel, presumably to help keep it from getting clogged up by debris.

You're able to leap over it easily onto the other side, where the grass grows right up to the edge of the gutter, and progressively gets thicker and taller towards the farmlands itself.

There's a rickety old wooden fence that marks the edge of the property, which you easily Telekinetically dismantle a portion of to make an entrance for yourself. Then once you pass, you use your Telekinesis to put that fence back in place, just the way it was before.

You then wade through the tall grass which comes up to about your knees. Though it isn't tough to walk through, you can feel each blade hold you back ever so slightly. It's an odd sensation to be able to tell just how much you're slowed down in the grass, even if it's a miniscule amount. You've never been so attuned to your physical self in the past, at least before the end of the world.

Instead of focusing on what's on the ground however, you glance up at the night sky. Particularly at the stars embedded within it. Although they're still alien to you, you've at least begun to notice the patterns in them, and can now navigate with them to some degree.

And perhaps just as importantly, you can also tell the time using them. It's not quite exact, of course. But you're certain that dawn is about two or three hours away. That should be plenty of time for you to get to the farmstead. Even if you take a relatively slow pace, you'll still get there by the time daylight begins to break. 

Not that you're going to take a slow pace - you never know what you'll find over there, and you'd rather have enough time to deal with it before the heat makes such a task impossible.

You check on Noir quickly through the Network only to find that she's already a quarter of the way there. And she has incurred no less than a half dozen kills in the meantime. It's certainly impressive in a violent sort of way.

It takes you about an hour and a half to get close to the first building - one of the two silos. The trip itself is rather uneventful, with most of whatever nearby critters having long since run away. Clearly none want to be slaughtered like their dead compatriots and flee for their lives.

Or at least, that's how you like to think of it.

Noir has since stopped her wanton killing and is circling the whole farmstead. Both of you can sense the numerous critters all around you, perhaps in the hundreds. There are numerous other predators at the outskirts as well, wolves and crags and wildcats. They nip and snack at what they can without disturbing everything else here.

You suppose there's a kind of wisdom in that - no sense in disturbing the whole and interrupting a rich source of food. Which means you're the fool for trampling your way in right to the center, interrupting everything, barging into their pantry, disturbing the peace.

You quickly crouch down into a stealthy position, so as not to alarm any creatures and send them running. At the same time, you minimize your presence psionically as though you're on the hunt. But instead of going after any one critter, you sneak your way around, giving the silos a clear berth.

At their bases are countless rats, mice, and other rodents. Dozens and dozens of them swarm around the opened doors at the bottom of the silos, through which whatever grains inside have spilled out. 

You don't really want to disturb their meal, or become the target of their next, so you give yourself a bit more space and head towards the nearby barn. There's certainly far less critters there, perhaps only a dozen or so at one of the upper corners inside.

The outside is incredibly worn - like with the cars its paint has worn away from the sheer power of the sun. You can still see the remnants of the paint around the edges and close to the ground - it used to be a forest green color. Not only that, but the wood closer to the top has completely grayed out, dried up, and has warped as a result. 

But at least it's still standing solidly.

There are a couple of old, disused farm vehicles parked out front. One is a caddy-like thing with a small truck bed behind it. It's like a golf cart and a pickup truck had a kid… You've never seen anything like it before and are amused at the design.

The vehicle next to it is a 4x4 quad that's half covered in old, dry mud. Like everything else, its paint has been sun-stripped, its seals have melted and fused into the metal, and its leather surfaces are cracked and dry.

Its key is in the ignition, and of course it doesn't turn over. Not just because its battery is dead, but because the ignition itself doesn't budge when you try to turn the key. It has literally rusted over, no doubt a result from the constant rains it has been exposed to.

You note that both their gas caps have been opened up. Whatever they had in there has no doubt been siphoned out a long time ago.

The barn itself is wide open - its large barn doors on one side have been opened up all the way, with one of the doors ripped off its hinges. It lays in the dirt in front of its entrance. You step through the side door, which is also swung out all the way, and peer inside.

A musty and acrid smell assaults your nose - that of old and new excrement and urine. The musk is heavy in the air, and you find yourself ducking back out to avoid getting dizzied.

Clearly, most of the animals have made this barn their communal toilet. Which, honestly, good for them. There's a kind of poetic justice in that, at least for the animals. 

Even better for whatever critters are living on the upper story of the barn. Either they're brave enough to tolerate that smell, or they absolutely love it. No matter what, they're certainly secure up there. Nothing is going to go in there to predate them, that's for sure. 

You leave whatever critters that are in the barn alone, and instead head towards the next closest building - the actual farmhouse. The design is typical country-style, with a porch out front. There's even a rocking chair there, though it's looking incredibly worse for wear. You're sure that it'll collapse if anyone tries to sit on it.

Although you try to peer through the windows into what seems to be the living room, the glass is too smudged and dusty to see completely through.

The front door itself is splayed wide open, with its top half ripped out from its hinges. The frame itself is warped and splintered down close to where the door is still attached from the bottom hinge, which makes the whole thing pretty much useless.

You pay it little mind as you step through, into the darkness of the old farm home.

~ Author's Note ~

Hello everyone!

This chapter marks the beginning of Act 2, when the main character's journey really starts to get going. I hope you all enjoy!

Check out my other work: linktr.ee/CeritusOrbis


Chapter 59: Burning Plains, Pt 2

The floorboards creak and squeak as you step into the dark, abandoned farmhouse. Besides your footsteps, the entire place is eerily silent. All your ESP can catch are mice skittering into the corners and disappearing into the crevices.

Everything looks completely gray to you, not just because of your cat-like night vision, but because everything around you has worn down considerably. The paint on the ceiling is dry, cracked, and chipped in many spots. Flakes of it break off and fall down, even as you continue down the main hallway. Old wallpaper curls down from the walls, as their glue dries and hardens and loses their stickiness. 

Anything made of wood - furniture, floor, baseboards, doors - all have dried and withered considerably. They've lost whatever luster they once owned, and are little more than dull brown slabs at this point in time. Beyond the overall decay, there's a layer of dust on everything that further obfuscates their color.

All this makes you feel as though you're walking through an old black and white film. It's beautiful, but eerie.

The more you walk through the house, you see more and more signs of people having been here. There are numerous shoe and boot tracks throughout the dusty floor which shows a considerable amount of traffic going in and out over the years.

And judging by how some portions of the hallway walls have been gouged and scratched, at least some of the people going through here were heavily geared. Or they were carrying out large, unwieldy objects such as furniture and whatnot.

When you glance into the numerous rooms as you pass by them, you see even more evidence of looting and scavenging. Any drawers or shelves or chests or boxes or cabinets have been thoroughly picked through, with all kinds of household detritus scattered on the floor as a result. 

The sitting room has been especially picked through. Most of the chairs inside have been flipped over, or onto their sides. The coffee table has been tossed to the side carelessly, and the carpet underneath it has been lifted up and folded over.

Looks like someone had taken an axe to the wooden floor and chopped down into it - they've done a significant amount of damage to the floor. But when you peek down into the hole, there's about a 10 cm gap between the floor and the concrete beneath. 

There's a spot in the concrete between thick beams - it has been scratched and damaged somewhat by that same wood axe, it seems. You can only guess that someone wanted to get beneath the floorboards, possibly in search of something valuable, but only to find nothing.

You step into a small office library opposite the sitting room simply because you're incredibly curious about it. Of course, the desk in the middle has been picked clean and many of the books have been pulled off the shelves themselves. They're littered all over the place carelessly - clearly whoever went through them was looking for something other than books. A safe with valuables, perhaps.

You can't help but pick up one of the myriad books off the floor and flip through its pages for a few seconds. Looks like it's some kind of adventure fiction featuring teen boys. It's pretty uninteresting to you, but you respectfully stow it away on one of the shelves rather than simply dropping it back down on the ground.

Although you step back out to continue your exploration, you make a mental note to come back down and rifle through the books later. You might find something you could use in there.

There's a door set into the middle of the hall which seems to lead down into the cellar. Though you're intrigued, you keep following the hallway until it opens up into a kitchen area.

Like most of the rest of the house, the kitchen has been upturned and picked through with absolute diligence. Every single container from drawers to bread boxes have been opened up and emptied. The pantry in the corner has been thoroughly cleaned out, with only empty cans and bottles and food packaging strewn about on the floor inside.

The fridge has been emptied of everything except some moldy mass growing in one of the vegetable bins. You decide to leave it alone, like many others before you have.

Beyond just the food in the pantry, much of the utensils and kitchen tools have been taken - forks, knives, spoons, and so on. Even regular cooking utensils such as spatulas and mixing bowls are just straight up gone. The only thing that most looters have left here are the larger appliances such as stand mixers and pressure cookers.

And those have been mostly opened up and picked apart for their internal mechanisms. The stand mixer in particular has been opened up all the way, with all its guts showing. As far as you can tell, someone took it apart just to get to the motor inside. Well, at least as far as you can tell. It's not like you're an expert in anything mechanical.

Once you realize there's nothing here for you to pick through, you head up the stairs to the bedrooms. The floorboards creak ominously as you ascend, as though the old wood under your feet are complaining about being used after so many years of disuse.

The top floor is surprisingly carpeted, though it's long since matted down. All manner of muddy and dirty footprints go back and forth through the rooms, revealing nothing has been spared from scrutiny. You hope there's something you can find here that many others have overlooked.

But it's fine if you don't - you're really mostly here so you can rest away from the sun.

There's four doors splitting off from the hallway - two of them are smaller bedrooms of about equal size. They're decorated for both a boy and a girl, both of whom seem to be about the same age. Their rooms are an absolute mess as they too have been picked through and picked clean. Their closets have been raided, and their desks have been cleaned out.

Clearly whoever has gone through here hasn't found much use in their things, and left most of it in here. At least, as far as you can tell. All manner of clothes, books, magazines, pens, pencils, papers, and so on are scattered all over the floor. Even their walls are still decorated with band or movie posters, school pennants, photographs, and more. It seems none of that has been taken down or stolen.

And you probably won't find anything in either of these two rooms as well so you head towards the other two rooms.

One turns out to be a bathroom, which someone has rudely used after the apocalypse happened. Without running water, the toilet has become… something rather more unmentionable. So you shut its door and ignore the whole bathroom altogether.

Then you pass through the open double doors into the master bedroom, which is also in massive disarray. The mattress has been lifted up off the bed and is leaning against one of the walls. The bed frame itself has been broken slightly and opened up, as though someone was trying to get something underneath it.

The walk-in closet and adjoining bathroom have been picked relatively clean as well, though their floors are littered with old clothes and towels and what have you. Most things with deep pockets have been taken off their hangars and have had their pockets visibly turned inside-out.

Whoever was in here was absolutely desperate to find anything of value. Though you suppose you're here doing the exact same thing, so you can't exactly judge anyone's actions.

Stepping back out, you see a massively long chest of drawers facing the foot of the bed. All its drawers have been pulled open, with most of their contents strewn about the place. You grab one arbitrarily and pull it out all the way. 

For some reason, you're reminded of your Old Coin and how you found it - by poking and prodding in a place few expect. At first you think that perhaps there's something underneath the drawer, so you tip whatever few contents it has to the floor so you can get a look.

Sadly, there's nothing under there. But as you line up the drawer to put it back, you note that the drawer beneath it has a much thicker backplate - perhaps about 8 cm. A quick glance at all the other drawers reveal that their backplates are only about one cm thick at the most.

So you pull that one out and set it atop the chest of drawers itself. You tinker with it for only a few moments before you realize that it's obviously a false back and open it up with relative ease.

The top plate literally slides away to the side, allowing you to dig into the hidden compartment at the back of the drawer. Inside are a couple stacks of cash, which is totally useless to you.

There's also a relatively well-maintained pistol which is loaded with a full magazine. There are two other magazines in the hidden stash, as well as a full box of ammunition. You stow all those away in your backpack in the hopes of trading them off at some point in the future.

Finally, there's a small keyring in the corner with only two keys attached to it. One is clearly an official postal service mailbox key while the other appears to be an unmarked, nondescript high security key. The second key doesn't have teeth like normal keys you've seen, but have odd grooves and divots on the inside instead. Some modern car keys look a bit like this, though this one is far more complex than those by a wide margin.

Seeing that makes you realize that perhaps this house does have a few secrets to uncover, something that all other prior scavengers have missed.

Since you're pretty much done up here, you head back downstairs to the hallway and come to the door down towards the cellar. A deep anxiety washes over you as you open up the door itself, or rather as you peer into the pitch darkness below. 

Even your amped up night vision has trouble making out anything down there. From where you're standing, it's basically a murky and inky soup past the first few steps.

Although a Scan shows nothing down there except mice, you're still absolutely nervous to go down there. You do your best to shake off your fear - you've beaten Stone Crags and an Insane Chimera and a Shadow Sweeper. There's nothing down there that could possibly be as dangerous as them.

You take slow, trepidatious steps down even as you convince yourself that what you're feeling is a normal human thing. Everyone is kind of afraid of the dark unknown, and it goes against your very nature to willingly wade into it. Even if you know that there's nothing there even remotely terrifying.

You push your ESP to its limits just so you can better sense what's down here, and only by doing so can you tell what's around you. Although your vision is a blurry mess, you can see with much more certainty. Or at least, you can see the edges and outlines of things.

Your hearing has also ramped up significantly, and can hear your own footsteps bounce off nearby surfaces. 

And it seems most of the basement has been cleared up a bit. Or rather, everything has been pushed to the sides. Numerous shelves have been literally dragged over to the walls carelessly - some are partially leaning over and against each other. Whatever was on them has been tossed over into numerous piles closeby.

Most tellingly, a number of workbenches and tables have been turned on their sides, then faced towards the far wall. When you study the tables, you note that they've been reinforced with sheets of scrap metal which have been pock-marked and punctured by bullets.

When you turn to study the wall that the tables are facing, you realize that there's actually some kind of thick heavy door in the middle there. All manner of hammers and picks are strewn about the door, many of them broken and bent.

The door itself seems to be marred by some damage; you have to feel around it to be sure. But it looks like someone - or a lot of someones - truly wanted in. Of course, they never even got close. As far as you can tell, all they could manage to do was make superficial dents on the door's surface.

Your fingers slide over the door lightly, at first around the edges to scour for damage, then closer towards the center along both sides. You eventually find a handle around waist-high, though it hardly budges. And of course, you also find a lock under a sliding metal panel just above it.

When you insert the key you found upstairs, you find that it not only glides in smoothly, but it turns readily too.


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