Chapter 14

“Hello traveller. I need to ask you something, but I have to ask you to not overreact.” she greeted me. What a strange greeting. “Hello. And ask away.” I reply. “What are you?” she asked in a whispering voice. An even stranger question followed a strange greeting, but I guess she can feel the extent of my soul and is confused if not even scared by it. “That depends what you question.” I reply with an equally strange answer, “If you want to know my profession, I am a scout from a far away group of survivors, here to check if something remains of our past government.”

“No that is not the answer I seek, I am not interested in your attire or your profession, I am more interested by that mighty thing that fills you. It is the first time I feel something that strong from a person.” she says now almost inaudible, while checking if somebody was eavesdropping. “Would you please follow me?” she asks, ”It isn't save to talk here.”

Asking myself what could possibly scare her in such a peaceful place I agree to come with her. The brown haired women with her petite frame leads me away from the plaza towards a building that looks like it suffered from a fire, only the upper floors of the building were damaged. The surroundings told me that only few people came here. My guide ceaselessly checks for followers and uses a few trees for cover.

In the building there are roughly a hundred humans, I hope they don't plan to ambush me. We enter the building. “Aaah I see you brought the stranger Lily.” an old woman greets us, “What a radiant light you are o traveller.” Inspecting her closer she appears to be blind, her pupils are milky. “Why are you hiding?” I ask.

“Because we see, what we see and others don't. They foolishly belief that we gained this sense by robbing from others by causing this apocalypse, they think of us as demons, that are deformed by their deeds in body and mind, they are blinded by believe, rage and their lack of the sense they hunt down.” She replies.

“How bad is it.” I ask. “Let me just say they burn books and leave the rest to your imagination.” she said, unwilling to speak of the horrors. For those that don't know it, there is a saying that who burns books, also burns people. It is like the witch hunt. “All that only because you have stronger souls.” I murmur more to myself than to anyone specific.

“So you think it is the soul we feel? We think it is the life force.” she says, “It fills this world and is connected with everything.” “Trust me those are souls and what you feel in the air does not belong there, those are the remains of the souls of the dead, they should have returned as souls, but they flooded this world as mist, washing away those that weren't strong enough.” I say with confidence.

“How do you know? How can you be so certain?” she asks, her voice sounding like a sinner which is given salvation. I guess the propaganda did leave their marks on them, if everyone around you accuses you to be a demon, one will start to think that they might be right. “Because I could feel it when it happened, I could feel souls before the soulstorm came and I witnessed the grinding of souls in the depths of death.” I answer. “I believe you, I wish, hope and choose to believe you. We aren't the damned, the accursed, the demons.” She says loudly, tears flowing from her eyes.

“You travelled this world, you came from a faraway place, I beg you please lead us away from here. We have everything ready to leave, we always prepared to flee, all we lacked is direction and courage. Please lead us.” she begs, soon others follow. I am not willing to damn them, it will be an arduous travel. The price I will have to pay is the loss of any diplomatic connection to this big group of people. But I am willing to pay it, if it saves my kin from the flames. And I think that they would think of my people as demons anyway.

“Get ready, I will disable one gate we will leave as soon as possible.” I say. The approaching night hopefully will give us cover. When everyone is ready I storm the nearest gate and open it, the guards were easily disabled. We didn't even cover two hundred when an alarm rang in the distance.

Soon I could hear motor-noises, they send armed vehicles to kill us. I fall back to stop them. Ignoring my lone figure they open fire. I stop their bullets and soon they are the ones swarmed by bullets. The vehicles fail fast under their own fire. We lost nobody to the ambush, but we quickly flee the scene and the city.

But we can't continue this harsh track indefinitely, well at least my new followers can't. I lead them towards an abandoned farm I passed before, there they rest. In the meantime I search the area for something I found on my way in the city, a herd of cows. It didn't take long till I found them. Connecting my soul with the matriarch of the herd, they soon follow me. That only works on herbivores or former pets.

I return with the herd to the refugees and together we arrange some transportations. We will be on track for at least two months, our provisions won't be enough for that, but I think we can get more on the way.

The journey isn't really eventful, there were only a few close calls and injuries when we stopped at cities to salvage for food. In the middle of June we finally arrived at their new and my old home.

Jeff's POV while Oliver's journey:

We moved towards a nearby village, since the city wasn't really well fitted for our purposes. The past month was filled with never ending field work, luckily we got some reinforcements, almost tripling our forces. Those guys one day just arrived at our settlement, claiming they come from the big city down in the valley. We welcomed them warmly, they were a bit strange though. It is easy to work with them and overall they are normal people, but they got a strange belief.

They worship a fallen angel that came to heal their wounded and brought them justice. At first I was worried that they were a strange form of Satanists. When I listened to their stories I found them a bit strange and thought that they might all be bat shit crazy. But one day a guy named Steve came with a group of people to trade with us, from him we learned their story. It was Oliver all along, the one's that came here are those that worship Oliver and learned that we are his home. I just chuckle at that, knowing that he won't be pleased by it. But I will not tell them to leave, they are good workers. Shall Oliver deal with this problems.

The new arrivals were rather confused by our morning ritual, which includes strengthening our souls. Our collective absorption of soulmist causes quite the turbulences. They are strong enough to startle even the untrained souls, which we learned the first day after our new additions arrived. Steve too was surprised by the training everyone of our old group absolves everyday. We finally began to get some benefits from this, not like Oliver though, we found our own ways. Some learned to infuse tools with their soul, allowing them to harden and repair them, we also discovered that wounds inflicted with those weapons disturb the soul.

Against the soulless that is surprisingly effective. They get stunned by it, their soul is weak and easily shaken, and it inhibits their regeneration. The soulless were now easy prey for us. Sadly it doesn't work with range weapons, we need to hold them to infuse them.

Others like Ellie excel in manipulating big amounts of energy, they can't use it to do precise movements, but they are really good at ploughing fields. We had to stop the newcomers from praying every time they see them in action. The newcomers soon joined our trainings group.

Steve was also interested in learning how to use his soul, but since it takes a long time we arranged for one of our trained people to accompany him and teach his people. We also traded some of our food for a salvaged solar cell and some tools to use it. We finally got running water again, even a small water heater is in operation. We could finally take a warm shower.

The days, weeks even months pass without any problems, only some surprises, some of the women are pregnant. I begin to start a family.....

Oliver's return:

Finally we arrive at the military base, I came here to ask for the current location of the settlement I call home. The guards there welcome me and tell me all I need to know, since I want to return as soon as possible I don't stay long, but I notice that their souls grew stronger. It seems that my teachings spread while I was gone. I too taught my new companions how to train and use their souls, some of them are really good in this. But sadly nobody was able to learn my technique of healing and regeneration, some could only learn a smaller regeneration boost, nothing really useful.

While I travelled with them I learned a lot of things about every person in the group, soon they too will become my home.

Then finally came the day of my return, first we saw the fields. They are huge! How did they plough this much land? Water isn't a problem her though, since we are on the wet side of the mountain, meaning that the clouds rain on this side to rise higher and pass the mountains.

Then finally I see my people. It is a joyous return. A festival is quickly organized and soon there are chatting and eating people everywhere. I am swarmed by the children and some adults as well, they want to hear stories from my journey and I enjoy telling them some, sparring them the unpleasant parts of course.

Later that day I talk with the older people about what we should do about the fanatics in the capital. We come to the conclusion that we won't and can't do much against them, but we will stay hidden from them and save as many as possible. There is another thing that worries us, the absurd growing speed of the plants. They don't pose a problem directly, but they will sooner or later cover everything, even the abandoned cities.

We are finally enough people to survive and rebuild this world and soon we return to a normal live. People die of old age and children are born, humans hate, love, work and rest. The time flies, years pass...

AN: The first arc ends with this, but don't worry it was merely to set up the world and create our main character.