Night hadn’t quite fallen when we began our trek back to town. The skies were completely overcast, a thick layer of clouds blocking the harmful rays of the sun, giving me enough confidence to make the move.

Silva, Lia and I were accompanied by the five people who had come over from the Gym and two people from the farm. Mark, the guy who had greeted me when I entered the farm first, and a woman roughly my age were coming along to get a better idea of the people who were interested in moving into their community, or at least in the general area. To me, and likely to Mrs Wu as well, it was obvious that staying in the city wasn’t a viable option, not with the threat of disease spreading from the countless decaying bodies and the gradual collapse of weakened buildings. Each new earthquake shook a few more buildings down, and there was no way to tell whether the few we had thus far, two big ones and a few smaller shakes, were the only ones.

Where I had begun worrying, was whether or not the other shoe would drop soon. The strange scent blowing in from the old slaughterhouse told me of unquiet dead and horrors that walked day and night. Unless there was a necromancer who had somehow managed to far outstrip me in the power department, which I seriously doubted, I hypothesised that the undead had been created by a wild magic phenomenon. If that happened again, which I thought more probable than not, I could easily see all the creatures, people, animals, maybe even Shattered, that had been killed in the city rise again, only now with far less social conditioning.

If that came to pass, keeping the survivors alive would become incredibly difficult, unless the spellcasters trained by me managed to pull off a minor miracle. Without the Gods to lend their aid, something I wanted to avoid if at all possible. The people would have to do anything themselves and especially the warding necessary to avoid mass-rises of undead would be a challenge. Maybe a combination of Nature and Death Magic could accomplish such a feat, but I wasn’t sure. Research was necessary, but time was limited. Without a teacher, it would be nearly impossible and I couldn’t teach what I didn’t know.

For now, we could still see quite far and for the first time, I could actually see how many beasts there were on the stretch of grassy fields between the city and the farm. It was difficult to make out species, the difference between a cow and a horse, when standing about a kilometre away from it, wasn’t that great, large, four-legged shapes that occasionally put their head down to eat. Similarly, I had no idea if the medium-sized shapes were goats, pigs, sheep or even dogs, they were simply too far away and concealed by some shrubs, but just seeing that they existed, that much I could accomplish.

Luckily, it looked like we were far enough from them all to make us not worth the effort to run down, or too far away to be considered any sort of threat. The consideration made me wonder, would these beasts in the future act more like herbivores or carnivores? For herbivores, to attack was the immediate response to anything that might become a threat, or that spooked them or even just looked at them funny if they couldn’t tell for certain. For a carnivore, whether to attack was always the question, was it worth the energy to hunt the prey down, unless the animal, or its young, were threatened. It was that, somewhat amusing, difference that made herbivores generally far more dangerous than carnivores, simply that the herbivores often attacked and asked questions never.

If the cows here had decided to follow one of their closer, still wild-living relatives, the black water buffalo, I knew I didn’t want to catch the cattle's attention, or the only thing I’d be able to do was conjure fog and run. ‘Cause, if a bull weighing in at over a ton decided that you were a threat to its way of life, you wanted to be far, far away, or it might send you to heaven, physically, before burying what is left after it, and about a thousand of its herd, tapdanced on your body.

“Ms Samantha, how are we going to do this?” Cheng Hu, who had sorted the two from the farm into the formation his group used, asked me quietly. We had been quietly moving for about half an hour, and luckily nothing had happened so far. The seven of them had moved in a loose formation, with Cheng Hu in the middle, alongside the two from the farm, while his four teammates formed a cross around them.

“What is it you are asking? We’ll just keep moving, and I’ll keep teaching my newly acquired ward,” I tried to understand his problem, only to remember that crucial little detail I had forgotten. Humans had relatively shitty night vision and with the thick cloud cover, the night would be completely dark. Dark enough to hinder even me, limiting my visual range to maybe thirty metres, beyond that, I’d be limited to vague shapes and silhouettes.

“Oh, the darkness,” I frowned, trying to play off my lapse, “We’ll be sticking to the road, do you see enough to follow it? We can warn you if there’s any trouble ahead but I’d prefer to keep things dark, concealment is a greater boon to us than it is a hindrance,” I explained, making him look like he had just bitten on a particularly bitter lemon.

“We can try,” he hedged, looking from me, to Lia and over to his group, possibly considering if his idea was really that great. “Please, warn us before we land in a ditch somewhere?” he asked, forming his group into a line in the dying light.

Silva, Lia and I let the seven of them move ahead, while we quietly kept pace behind them. The last bit of light was fading fast, the clouds making sure that no light was getting anywhere near us, and it showed. As it got progressively darker, their pace slowed down, while they tried to get used to it. They didn’t quite stumble around, they were smart enough to move in a line, keeping a loose connection to the person ahead, while the one in the lead was using a staff as an aid to keep from wandering into the ditch. A procession of blind ducklings and from the smirk on Lia’s face, the night vision she had inherited from me was up to snuff.

But that just meant I could use the time to start training her if I made sure our ducklings didn’t get into trouble.

“Silva, go ahead and take the lead. You can tear any threat apart, I’ve got your back,” I quietly ordered my hound, amused at the looks of disbelief I was getting from Lia, and even Cheng Hu looked over his shoulder to stare in the direction he must have heard my voice from, a grimace of disbelief on his face. What they didn’t know was that Silva was likely more intelligent than some of them, the lack of shared language and opposable thumbs made them underestimate her.

As if to prove me right, Silva let out a quiet huff before trotting up front, smartly moving ahead of the guy who used to be in the lead, close enough that her tail, stretched out as far as possible, acted as a guiding leash, only that the one taken for a walk was the human, not the dog.

That performance was enough to make Lia break down in helpless laughter and even I couldn’t help but join in. Shaking my head, I managed to catch my breath, before focusing back on Lia. I had quietly instructed her on the art of stealth, passing on the lessons Mrs Wu had given me months ago and expanding on them using what I had learned on Mundus. There sure, I had mainly used my magic since the change happened, but that didn’t mean the ability to move around unnoticed was useless, especially because Lia wouldn’t have Astral Power to throw around.

Sadly, things couldn’t progress smoothly. It was a quiet growl from Silva that caught my attention and focusing my senses up ahead, I noticed a few shapes in the distance, blocking the road. I could only guess that there were some cattle standing on the road, possibly sleeping, but I wasn’t sure.

“Stop, give me a moment to scout ahead. If you hear screaming, jump into the ditch and keep your head down. Maybe you’ll survive,” I told them, before focusing on Lia.

“You’ll keep some distance, I’ve got my cloak to hide me, you just have about an hour of verbal instruction. Don’t do anything stupid,” I warned her, hoping that there wasn’t enough teenager in her to make her do succumb to teenage stupidity.

Creeping forward, I noticed with relief that Lia stepped up next to Sliva, waiting together with my hound. Hopefully, Silva could keep any idiotic ideas from becoming reality.