The Burned Ones

by Erwin Rommel98

A German tank crew gets sent to Zootopia by one of the creators of the Earth. The reason: to retrieve something very dangerous in the wrong hands that was stolen from Earth by another god, and to bring it back. But they make a dramatic entrance, and our two favorite characters get put on the case.

10. Chapter 9

Chapter 10.

"Ulex, turn left at onto this road!" Oster called through the turret hatch.

Oster and the tank crew had left the old train tunnel earlier that afternoon. After having spent the entire morning with a couple of shovels and a pick ax clearing the pile of rock, mud, and trees out of their way. What a task that was.

Now, they were a couple of kilometers past the other side of the mountain they had started up a few days ago, searching for a better hiding spot. Oster wished that the guy who had appeared to them had told them where to go. Instead, he had left them hanging.

After he had disappeared Dittmer had gone a little further into the tunnel, trying to find where he had come from. Thank God he did because only a few hundred feet further in was a small room, probably a controller's room, with an old map tacked up on the wall. The room looked like it had been all set up to be used, but then had never actually been used. There were things that were still in cardboard delivery boxes, and there was this strange box with a screen wrapped in clear plastic sitting on a small desk.

The date in the map's key said that it was almost 40 years old. The map covered an area roughly 500 square kilometers, in the middle of which was a large town that none of them had ever heard of before Nuntius told them about it called Zootopia.

"What type of name is that anyway?" Rimsky had asked. "What is it, a zoo?"
"I bet it is." Dittmer had replied.

It was this map that Oster was now using to navigate to one of the six small towns that were arranged in a half circle around the city. The key said that all except one was were abandoned, so Oster had decided one of them would make a better hiding spot than the tunnel.

Thankfully the one that was still inhabited, called Bunny Burrow, was the farthest away at few hundred kilometers or so.

"Bunny Burrow? Gah, this place is weird." He thought.

He picked the closest one, called Coniston. It was only about 25 kilometers away from the big city. Close, but not so close that he felt he would be found by accident. Just before they left Oster scratched their destination with his pocket knife on a spent shell casing and left it in the middle of the tunnel, just in case Nuntius came back looking for them.

Ulex yanked the left track locking lever and the tank spun on its axes to face down the badly over grown road, leaving a large rut in the ground. If it wasn't for the map, Oster wouldn't have known to look for it. It had clearly not been used in a very long time.

"We shouldn't have to turn off this road at all. The map says it goes straight to our destination."

"Roger that," said Vaerst. Then he asked, "What are we going to do when we get there sir?"

"Find a spot to hide the tank. Duh. This time though, one with at least two entrance/exits."

Vaerst nodded, not that it mattered, Oster couldn't see him.

They drove in silence for the first couple of kilometers, listening to the squeal of the tracks and the gentle throb of the engine. They were still processing that they were probably not on earth anymore. Vaerst especially. He was the most emotional of them, as they had all discovered that morning when he had woken them all up because of a dream.

None of them wanted to admit it, but they were all scared. You could see it in their eyes. "What if we never find the gem? What if this Nuntius guy is full of crap? What if we're stuck here forever?" were just some of the questions running through their heads. But no one voiced them.

Vaerst, in particular, was having a hard time. He was the only one who still struggling with accepting his new body. The others had quickly gotten used to it, and Rimsky even liked it. He said it was "Like something from a real-life horror story."

Without meaning too, Nuntius had triggered a deep sense of loneliness amongst the crew, almost like a wet wool blanket. If what Nuntius had said about this place being another world were humans did not exist was true, and they believed it was, then that meant that they were alone. It was the same feeling that, unknown to them, the three crew of Apollo 13 would feel 28 years later back in their universe when they were on the opposite side of the moon and completely out of contact with the rest of humanity. Even Rimsky felt it. Hopefully, he would find the shell casing.

"How far away is this place?" Ulex asked through the mic, breaking the long silence.

"Ummm, about 30 kilometers from where we are." Said Oster looking at the map and the surroundings, "The road goes in a long curve following the mountain."

"We got a long-term plan for when we get there?" Dittmer asked?
"I guess try to find the gem." Replied Oster. "I'm thinking we hide the tank, then use this map and go around on foot. Much quieter than driving this around."
"But what if we get into trouble?"

"We'll think of something. I want to give Nuntius some time to find us once we get there, so we will have time to make plans. Don't worry."

Everyone acknowledged, then settled down for the slow trip to their new hideout.

---

Nuntius practically had to drag the goat to the porch of his home. He wasn't responding to anything he said, meaning the only way he could get him to do anything was by physically forcing him to.

It had only taken a second to teleport him back to Domus, the crafters home planet and town. There, Nuntius had left the undead goat, whose name he was pretty sure was Felix, roped to a stone pillar at his house before going out into the small village and gathering the nine other crafters for a meeting on the hill, whose name was Illud Conceptus, or The Origination Point. They often shortened it to just the Conceptus.

The hill were the crafters held their important meetings was ancient, more ancient than time itself even, and every time that Nuntius had to visit it he couldn't help but recall the stories that Primus had told them all. The hill was the place where the first crafter, Primus had simply appeared, fully grown on it's top. Back then, it was just the Illud Conceptus. The hill was very tall and flat at its top, like what one of the pyramids the Humans had built would look like if it had had the top fourth neatly chopped off. Primus had said that before he had created the planet that the hill was now a part of, that it's bottom was surrounded by clouds.

But not normal clouds, these clouds seemed to be alive, and there were two distinct types. The Lights and the Darks. These two would come and go, sometimes Primus would wake up and see nothing but the white clouds, as far out as the Shroud, the farthest Primus could see. Other times it would be mostly black clouds, with the white clouds regulated to just the base of the hill. No matter what happened, the white clouds were always there, but sometimes it seemed that the black clouds would disappear, only to return the next light cycle.

Primus had speculated to the other crafters - each of who would just appear on top of Illud Conceptus - that these clouds, who he had name the Causa, were what had created each of them. Now, once he had made the small planet that the hill was a part of, the clouds had gone away.

Primus was on his own for a long time. During this time, he created many other planets and systems using his ability to out into the vast nothingness past the Shroud. But Primus could not put any living thing on these planets. So they were left bare and rocky, with massive oceans and equally massive expanses of rock, for a long time.

Then one morning, as he had termed the ending of the darkness and the starting of the light, another thing like himself appeared on top of the hill. This thing was very similar to him, but they discovered that he could make something that Primus didn't even know he was missing: Wind. Atmospheres, gasses, and to top it off, light. Now, not the same type of light that Primus was used to. No, this light was very different. It was warm, and if you left something out in it too long it would get hot and difficult to handle without first letting it cool off.

At first, neither of them could find a practical application for any of this. They had no need of it on their small world, and none of the places Primus had created had anything living on them. But then one day another being showed up, whom they named Arator. This being gave that light and those atmospheres and winds a practical use. She made living things. Things that could harvest the heat and energy given off by the light that Tempesta had created, and use it to interact with those atmospheres, even going so far as to change them.

This was when Primus realized that he should give him and his group a name.

"We create things," he said one evening to the other two. "Therefore, I think we should be named accordingly. I hereby declare that we should be called The Crafters." From then on, that's what they were called.

Their numbers grew, as did the variety of their abilities. The 4th one of them, Vita, could create more sentient beings than could Arator. These beings could eat the things Arator had made. He also created things that could eat what he had created. These were eventually called animals, and the things they ate as plants.

Vita's beings were missing something though. They didn't know that they existed. They acted purely out of instincts. Instincts which Vita didn't even endow them with but instead came with them. They were not sentient.

Then came Misericors. Misericors was different. She was the only one who could create beings who were sentient. Beings who didn't simply act out of instinct but instead would think through things, reason about which decisions were best, things like that. However, like her, like all the Crafters, her creations were flawed. They were inherently bad. Maliciousness. They would sometimes turn against themselves and kill thousands of each other in large wars.

Yet, over time, the sentient beings of different planets learned to cope with their inherent badness. They set up laws and regulations and organized themselves into one of two types of organization.

The first category was for those who set up lots of different nations, or countries, with their own sets of laws and cultures. These nations would usually coexist peacefully with each other. However, there were always some nations who spurned that peace and who wanted to take over their neighbors.

The second category was for those sentient beings who organized themselves into a few massive cities that relied on each other for resources. Zootopia, Nuntius knew, mostly fell into this latter category even though it still wasn't quite all the way there yet.

Back to the Crafters. Nuntius was the 6th being to appear on the hill. He had very little powers of creation. Yes, he could make small objects and fill up coffee cups, but he was not a true Crafter. His role took longer to figure out then did the others, but it was finally learned when it was discovered that he could transform himself into whatever sentient being that Misericors had created, and that he could teleport without the use of specially created and extremely difficult to learn magic which left behind much larger and easier to follow trails in the gel. Therefore, they assigned him the role of liaison between them and the sentient beings of the other planets.

Nuntius was also a detective of sorts. The others relied on his greater sense of awareness of his surroundings to help find someone or something that needed finding.

For a while that was it. The six of them existed seemingly to make new worlds, so that is what they did. Worlds would come and go, some would die out because of old age. Others would die because they weren't made properly. And Nuntius would be sent to all of them at one point or another to check up on them.

Then one day another being appeared on the hill. As Primus called it, it was the day that the black clouds were finally able to get a being of their own. At first, they all thought he was like them, good. But that was quickly learned to not be the case. During his short stay Fallax, as he would become known, became such a troublemaker that he was banished to a world that had no life on it other than plants. It had no life specifically so that he could not cause them grief. But this did not stop Fallax.
It was quickly learned that Fallax had the ability to teleport as well without using magic when he appeared a few days later back on the hill. He was quickly apprehended and bound in such a way to a pole that even with his ability, he could not escape. Then a meeting of the other five was called.

There it was decided they could not keep him from visiting the worlds they created. It was simply to monumental of a task. However, they could keep him from coming back to theirs. By creating a cloaking spell so powerful that the only way you would ever find the world was by physically running into it, Primus and the others hid Domus so that Fallax would not be able to teleport back to it once they had caught him and erased its location from his memory.

It worked. But that still left him to the other planets and protecting them was the job of the 8th being to show up on the hill. Bellator. Bellator was given the task of keeping Fallax away from important places on all the worlds. To do that, he needed an army, but not a normal, mortal, army. Bellator created his own. These beings that he created were incapable of feeling most emotions, and they were always armed to the teeth, be it by physical weapon or by spell knowledge, they were pretty good at doing their job. For the most part, anyway.

Bellator was the peacekeeper of the Crafters. He was the one that they called on whenever they needed a dispute settled amongst themselves, or whenever something catastrophic was going to happen on one the worlds. They would send him to try to stop it with force. But Bellator needed someone to balance him out. Someone who could stop things through negotiation. And so Pacisci appeared.

Pacisci could not create any living things whatsoever, so she was used more sparingly then one might think, so as not to wear her out. Pacisci had the ability to calm most anyone down and could help two parties work out the best solution to their problems. Of the times that she was sent in to calm something down, 95% were successfully worked out peacefully. The other 5% needed Bellator to come in, which usually meant one species or country wasn't going to make it.

Last but not least of the beings to appear was Messor, the reaper. Messor was very quiet, and hardly ever interacted with the others. Instead, he stayed on his own in a small stone house as far away from the hill as he could get. He always wore a dark hooded tunic that completely hid his face and that reached down to his ankles, with sleeves that went down to his wrists. His hands and feet were wrinkly and pale and everywhere he went he was followed by a draft of cold air.

None of them knew how he dealt with the souls of the dead, and no one asked. Messor was gone for long periods of time, only coming back when called for a meeting, or for the rare visit to his secluded house and conduct business of his own.

Thus were the Crafters, the beings that Nuntius gathered together on top of the Conceptus at the small amphitheater to discuss what was going to be done about the goat and what information he might contain.

"Why have you called us together dear Nuntius?" Primus asked once they had all taken their seats, leaving Nuntius standing on the small stage holding the goat by a rope. "And why do you have that creature with you?"
"It is this creature I wish to talk about." Said Nuntius in his normal voice. One would think he would have to speak loudly to be heard, but Illud Conceptus had a unique property to it that allowed anyone standing in the spot where the small stage had been built to speak in his or her normal voice and still be heard by anyone else on top of the hill, even if they were not close by.

"This goat has been resurrected by the gem." He said.

Misericors let out a small gasp, and a most of the others looked uncomfortable. All looked over at the dark figure of Messor sitting on his own on the other side of the half-circle of seats. He seemed not to notice. Only Bellator seemed to not be bothered by the presence of a dead one amongst them, after all, he sent many sentients to Messor, so he was used to death.

"Why did you bring him here?" Vita asked. "Did you want to make us uncomfortable?"

"Yes Vita, I went to all this trouble just to make you uncomfortable." Then he yelled "NO!"

The other crafters didn't take him all that seriously. After all, he didn't really have any special powers, except the teleportation. But even that was only marginally better than the magical form of it. That's why he spent as much time as possible out amongst the worlds.

Vita looked affronted and was about to say something when Primus said calmly: "So why did you bring him Nuntius?"

"There is a great chance he knows where Fallax has gone."

"How do you know that?" Pacisci asked.

Nuntius then went about explaining how he and three of the creatures on the planet that the gem had been sent to happened to stumble upon the place where Fallax had been hiding at first and how they had found the goat standing in the corner of the room.

He didn't tell them that he had lost track of the tank crew from Earth. No need to worry them more. Especially since they didn't even know that Messor had done that little favor for him. Speaking of that favor, he would have to speak to Messor about the second figure that the Zootopian had described. He didn't look to forward to that.

"I was thinking," he continued, "That it is possible he could have overheard Fallax and the other thing talking about where they were going to go when they left the prison."
"Then why don't you just ask him?" Tempesta asked.

Tempesta was the only other one beside Primus who treated Nuntius like another Crafter, and Nuntius knew that he wasn't asking just to annoy him. Nuntius never really understood why the others treated him like that. They didn't treat Bellator and Pacisci like that, and he could do more than they could! Messor was treated indifferently. No one really wanted to interact with him and he seemed perfectly fine with it.

"Because, he does not answer to anyone except the one who raised him, or who the one who raised him gave him permission to listen too. If that makes sense."
Tempesta nodded. He still looked a little confused though.

"So, I was wanting Misericors to see if she could get rid of that effect. She is, after all, the one who created the gem."

"Why didn't you just ask me in private then? Instead of calling everyone to the mount for a meeting." asked Misericors. Several others voiced their agreement with her.

"Because I know how you are Misericors. You are flaky." Misericors looked like someone had just killed her favorite pet. "You don't always try your best at things, even when they are important. The gem being one of those. If you had taken your time with it, then you would have worked out this flaw, along with a few others, and we wouldn't be having this meeting." He could hear several of the other Crafters agreeing with him. Even Primus nodded.
Nuntius's confidence grew a little, and he straightened himself up a bit before continuing. "I want everyone here to hear what I have to say to Misericors." Then he turned back to her and said, "I want you to try your hardest to figure out a way to let this goat answer our questions."

"I…" she began but was cut off by Primus who said;

"Nuntius is right Misericors, you do have a tendency to only do things half-way, and when you do complete things, they are usually not done right. I want you to do this thing that he has asked."

"But that might not be possible!" Misericors said, anger mixed with dismay and resignation in her voice.

"We will find out soon enough." Said Primus calmly. Then he directed his next question to Nuntius.
"Do you have a time frame you need this completed in?"
Nuntius hesitated. He didn't want to rush Misericors anymore than he had too, but he had promised Nick and Judy that he would meet them in 24 hours, one of which had already gone by.

"Yes," he finally said. "I need it done in 23 hours."
Misericors harrumphed, but Primus said, "That is a reasonable request. Do you think that you could have this done in that time Misericors?"
Misericors didn't answer right away, but finally she said: "Yes, I believe it is possible."
"Wonderful." Primus said. "Nuntius, you have her word. It will be done within the specified time."

Nuntius let out a breath that he didn't know he had been holding.

"Thank you, Primus."
"Don't thank me Nuntius. Thank Misericors. She is the one who will be doing most of the work."
"My apologies." Nuntius said to Primus, then turned to Misericors and said "Thank you for doing this for me. Yet, I can't help but feel though that all this could have been avoided if you only thought things through all that time ago."
"How dare you!" Misericors said standing up.

"SIT DOWN!" Primus boomed, startling all of them. "This is not the time for petty squabbles." He looked hard at Nuntius and Misericors.
Misericors sat back down looking like she was about to cry.

"Sorry, Primus. I did go to far."
"Yes, you did. Next time, keep that sort of thing for when we are not discussing business."

Nuntius nodded. Misericors seemed not to hear, but Nuntius knew she had.

"I will be back here in 22 hours, to see her results." He said to Primus more than Misericors, who still looked a little ashen.

"We will be expecting you." Said Primus standing up.
Everyone else stood up also and began shuffling off to their respective dwellings. Messor had already disappeared, and Nuntius feared that he had left the planet. But no, he was behind the theater, walking back to his little stone house.

"Messor!" Nuntius called as he ran to catch him, causing a couple of others to look at him like he was going crazy. Messor stopped and turned around. Nuntius shuddered. The darkness coming from under the hood always made him feel uncomfortable.

"Messor!" he said again when he reached him, stopping a couple feet away. "I have a question for you."
Messor stood quietly, but Nuntius could tell by his now more erect posture that he was interested in what Nuntius had to ask. He didn't get questions all that often.

"Who was the other being with Fallax in the prison?"

"What do I get in return for telling you?" Messor asked in a voice that was as soft as silk and as cold as the Arctic. A voice that seemed to emanate from deep within the hood.

"Umm," Nuntius had not been expecting this. "What would you like?" He asked.

"The goat." Messor said immediately.

"The goat. Umm, I think I could arrange that."

"Are you sure Nuntius?" Messor asked. Nuntius did not like hearing his name like that. It gave him a weird sense of dread.

"Yes." He replied, even though he wasn't actually sure.

Messor regarded Nuntius for a few seconds before saying; "I trust you, Nuntius. The other being was from Earth. Like the ones you asked me to relocate."

"So, it's dead?" He asked.

"Yes, he was dead."
"Who asked you to relocate him? Fallax?"
"Yes, Fallax."

Nuntius could feel Messor's desire to be on his own. One could feel it by the drop in temperature around him. He shivered.

"Well, uh," Nuntius cleared his throat. "I should be going now. Thank you for that information."

Messor didn't say anything, and Nuntius turned around and hurriedly went back to the amphitheater, which had been cleared of everyone except Primus and Misericors, who was holding the rope that was tied around the goat.

"Misericors would like to tell you something about unlocking the goat." Said, Primus, when Nuntius had gotten back. He gestured at Misericors to begin.

"I have determined that the reversal of the effects of his "locking" as we will put it, can only be temporary."
"How have you determined this so quickly?" Nuntius asked.

"I just know. The spells I put into the gem when I created it were designed to be irreversible. Luckily, we have come a long way since then and I know of a way to reverse them, but not permanently. "

"OK, so why are you telling me this?"

"Because we will need to be able to get a hold of you very quickly." Primus said before Misericors could.

"Seriously? That's what you needed to tell me? That's why we have the beacon."

The beacon was sort of like a radio. They could send voice messages over it at the speed of light. That might seem fast, but the distance between worlds negated that. The nearest world took at least an hour for the message to get there, and Zootopia was six times farther than that.
"The beacon is to slow." Said Misericors. "It needs to be instant. Especially since I am not sure how long the effects will last. All I know is that it will take 9 or so hours to get the potions ready, and then another hour or so to apply them."

She reached into a small leather bag she always carried and pulled out two pink stones.

"These are something I have been working on for a while now, I've just never had a need to use them until now."

"What are they?" Nuntius asked skeptically. How could two small pink stones be used for anything?

"Hold out your hand." She said. Nuntius did as he was told, and Misericors placed one of the stones in his hand. It was cold and smooth, like marble.

"This will heat up and glow whenever I want you to come back. I'm not sure how it works, but I have had it tested on different worlds and I know that it is instant. Absolutely no delay."
"Does it work both ways?" Nuntius asked.

"Yes, but I don't see why you would need to summon me."
"I was just… curious."

"Well, this is yours to keep now. So maybe you will need it one day. Who knows."
Nuntius looked at the stone in his hand and rubbed is fingers over it absentmindedly. Despite all appearances, he like Misericors. Of course, no one knew that, not even her. He was hoping that maybe this stone would open up new possibilities, not that he knew how it could.

"Ok." He said. Then he put the stone in his pocket. "Well, I need to head back over there. I have something I need to do." He was referring to finding the tank crew, but they didn't know that. Damn he wished he had told them were to go.

"Make sure to be on the lookout for when the stone glows Nuntius." Said Primus. "Don't get to distracted with what you are doing."
"I won't, Primus." Nuntius replied.

"See you in 10 hours." Misericors said. Then she gave Nuntius a little wink.

Nuntius almost choked on his spit. "See you too." He managed.

Misericors then turned and walked back to her home, and Primus went back to a small grove of trees where he liked to go when he wanted to think about things, leaving Nuntius standing alone next to the amphitheater.

He decided that the next thing he should do was go back to the tunnel where he had first met the tank crew. Maybe, just maybe, they would still be there. If not, then they had hopefully left a note or something as to where they were going. If they even knew where they were going.

He didn't know Zootopia all that well. It was one of those worlds that none of them visited very often because nothing ever happened there. They were a mostly peaceful species, or more like group of species. They didn't need the Crafters to intervene in a war that threatened their existence, or in some natural disaster that could wipe them out. Even the planet was peaceful.

Except this one time. It wasn't all that long ago actually, and it eventually sorted itself out. But for a little while there the Crafters were thinking that they might have to intervene to help keep things the way they were. Thankfully however, two mammals were able to catch on to what was happening and stop it just before it got out of hand and no intervention was required.

Nuntius closed his eyes and was about to go to the tunnel when a wave of fatigue washed over him. He hadn't slept in a couple of days, and now that he was back on (HOME WORLD) it caught up with him. He opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Something he set to whatever time it was on the planet he was working on. It said that it was 11 o'clock back on Zootopia. He could take a few hour nap and still be able to get over there in time. Plus, it would mean less waiting while Misericors did her stuff.

He sighed and walked back to his humble abode. He had modeled it after something that the ancient Greeks had built back on earth. It was a much scaled down version of something they called the Parthenon. Except, He hadn't put the pillars going all the way around. Instead, he had just put them in the front to hold up the porch roof.

The inside was sparsely furnished. Nuntius was always traveling, so he never got around to filling it with furniture. However, it did have a very comfortable bed which he laid down on, not bothering to take off his clothes. He set a mental timer to go off in seven hours then promptly fell asleep.

Seven hours later a splitting headache woke him. He sat up and moaned. Then slowly got off the bed and walked over a mirror hanging above a stone wash basin and splashed himself with water making the headache went away. The headache was the alarm. It only went away when he splashed himself with water, which assured he was actually out of the bed. It was very effective. The sun, or whatever it was that made the day/night cycle on their home planet function was just beginning to rise.

Nuntius stood on his porch and watched it for a little while. He sighed. He wished he could stay here all day, but there was work that needed doing. Specifically finding the tank crew before they got into to any more trouble. Which meant going back to the tunnel.

Nuntius closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The air around him gave a whooshing sound, then all went quiet, leaving nothing except a weird pressure on his head. Then the whooshing sound came back, and the pressure went away, allowing him to open his eyes to the darkness of the cool damp tunnel.

It only took him a couple seconds to realize the tank was gone, even though it was pitch black. It would have been difficult to miss. He sighed. He figured they would have left by now. But where had they gone? He lit up his hand, like the time when he first met with the tank crew and was just about to sit on a small boulder that had fallen from the roughhewn ceiling when a glint of gold on the ground caught his eye.

It came from closer to the entrance and was in the middle of the rusty tracks. His spirits soared. Maybe they had left him something! Now he wouldn't have to go looking for them. That was not something he was looking forward too.

Nuntius walked over to the object laying on its side on the ground. It was pretty big, about the length of a baseball bat, and made of bronze. One end was skinnier than the other. Nuntius was pretty sure he knew what this was. It was a shell casing or something like that. He was pretty sure that it usually had something stuck in the skinny end.

Not that it mattered. All that mattered was the letters etched into its side. A message.

"Gone to Coniston." was all it said.

"Coniston." Nuntius thought, shuffling the casing around in his hands. "If they know where it is, then it shouldn't be too hard to find."

He walked to the entrance of the tunnel and stopped. The light coming through the trees left weird shadows on the ground. Hidden birds sang their songs from the surrounding trees. It was all very peaceful. Amazing how things could feel so normal, even though something was working hard change what that normal was. Something he couldn't let happen.

"Welp!" he said out loud to the birds and trees. "Where is Coniston?"

Nothing answered. Of course. So he thought for a second.

"I got it!" he said snapping his fingers. He knew where to get a map.

Seconds later he was standing in the parking lot of the gas station where they met with that small fox back in his wolf form and wearing the suit and hat. A neon sign in the station door declared they were open. Inside smelled like stale cigarettes and beer, with something else Nuntius couldn't quite pen down. The proprietor was sitting on a stool behind a counter piled high with lottery ticket dispensers and a glass show case that held a bunch of colorfully decorated glass pipes.

The tinkling of a bell on the door had alerted the mammal on the stool. An older llama who looked like he would have been quite the partier back in his day.

"Hey man. What can I do for you?" he said standing up.

"I need a map."

"A map? Of what?" the llama asked.

"To a place called Coniston." Said Nuntius.

The llama regarded him like he was a little off his rocker.

"Coniston's been mostly abandoned for something like 50 or so years now man. Why do you need to go there?"
Nuntius didn't let this surprise show. Especially since the more thought he gave it the more it made perfect sense for the tank crew to go to an abandoned city. Easy to hide in.

"I was wanting to make a documentary about it."
"About Coniston?" the llama said.

"Yes."
"And you don't know where it is."
"Correct."
"Why don't you just use your phone?"

This line of questioning was not something Nuntius had planned for, and he didn't have any good answers for it. So he said;

"Do you have a flippin map on how to get there or not?" he leaned on the counter and said in his most threatening voice. "Because if you don't, you would have been wasting my time. And I don't like it when people waste my time.
"Hey now man." The llama said backing away from the counter. "I was just wondering. Curious."
"You know what they said about curiousness don't you?"
"No what?"
"It killed the cat."

The llama looked at Nuntius like he was crazy. Then he shuffled around behind the counter and pulled out a large folded up road map and laid it on the counter.

"I've had these in inventory for a long time now. They're the last ones that were made with the old towns on them. Back when there were still a few diehards living in them. Ain't no one still use them anymore. They use their phones."

"Does it show me how to get to Coniston?"
"Yeup."
"How much?" Nuntius said.

"Nothin. It's free. It ain't worth the time it takes to ring it up on the register."

Nuntius nodded and picked up the thick folded map. It was definitely old. The paper was crinkly and stiff as a board and it had that smell of old ink. It was not how he wanted to get to Coniston, but since he had never seen a place inside Coniston, or a picture of it, he couldn't use his teleportation. Only Primus could go somewhere without ever having seen it.

"Thanks." He said and walked for the door.

"No problem." Said the llama. "Hey, you aren't from around here are you?"

Nuntius paused just as he was opening the door.

"No."
"Where you from then?" the llama asked.

Nuntius thought for a second.

"Everywhere." He said, then walked out before the llama could respond.

He checked his watch. It was still early morning. Plenty of time left before the meeting, and it had only been about an hour and a half since he had gotten the stones. Nuntius walked to the side of the station building to where he was out of sight of anyone going into the front door and began to unfold the map.

It took him a couple of minutes to find Coniston and the very large map of Zootopia and the surrounding area. Turned out, Coniston wasn't all that far away. Only about 25 kilometers or so. Now how was he going to get there quickly?
He folded the map up so he could think. The only thing he could think of was jogging. Or going back into town and stealing a car. That wasn't his style though. Or maybe he could go back to town to hire a taxi.

"Nah." He thought. He didn't want anyone else asking why he was going out there. Jogging it was then.

Nuntius was a good jogger. He could go for very long distances without pausing, so he wasn't worried about it. A suit though was not the thing you run in, so he created a new set of running clothes and ditched the suit and hat. He could make another one later.

It took him about two hours to get to Coniston. Coniston was a small town, and it was surrounded by dark forest, giving it an eerie feeling. The heavily overgrown road Nuntius took to enter the town opened up onto a not quite so overgrown main street surrounded on both sides by brick buildings.

Trees were growing up through the road, and some of the buildings looked like they were about to split in the middle and slide into the street. Street lamps stood forlornly over the sidewalks that no one walked on anymore, waiting for the day when someone would come back and turn the back on.

But there were signs of someone having been there recently. At the other end of main street another road led off into the thick forest. Leading from that road to a road that went between two buildings was a set of tracks. But not just any tracks. These were clearly made by the tank. The impressions made by its track links were clear, even in the churned up old asphalt.

"This was a lot easier than I thought it would be." Nuntius thought.

He picked his way through the undergrowth to the road the tracks went down. A fallen signpost said this was once Haltiwanger street. The tracks went straight down Haltiwanger, which ended at a T intersection with another street. Here the tracks continued straight. Right into an old warehouse with a large hanger style sliding door.

Nuntius laughed. This was turning out to be way to easy. He started walking down the street, towards the warehouse when a voice called out;
"HALT!"

Nuntius froze. He heard a shuffling coming from a small dead-end alley to his right.

"It's me. Nuntius!" he called out.

"Who?" the voice said again, though this time with a little less nervousness.

"Nuntius! Are you with the tank crew?"

More shuffling, then two figures walked out from the darkened alley.

"Holy wiener schnitzel are we glad to see you." The one on the right said as he put away his pistol.

Ok folks here is chapter 10. I am sorry for the delay in getting this one out.

Golly, this one took a while to write. I hate having to get timing and everything right. I think that it was one of the hardest aspects of writing, making sure that all the times and things line up in the different chapters. If you find any discrepancies with the timing, let me know, and I will try to fix it.

Otherwise, what did you think of this chapter? I said I was going to focus on the tank crew more, but then I got the idea to come from Nuntius's POV for a change. Coming up with names for everyone is hard to, but it's actually kind of fun.

As always, I would love to hear from you readers, and if you have any ideas or suggestions or simple just observations I would love to hear them.

I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading.

Signing off,

Erwin.

PS. Me and a fellow fanficitoner are doing a collab entitled "The Eschaton". Its on his account, under SpookorSpectre.