As soon as Brianna was free from the woods she started running again. The dog skin definitely slowed her down more than before but she expected that much. She stumbled more than ran to begin with and at one point was completely thrown off balance by a mixture of the weight and the legs and tail of the dog that her own feet goth tangled with from where they were hanging behind her. At first it was just mildly annoying when they legs swung and kicked her but when she completely lost her balance she knew she to do something about it. Brianna took a moment to risk taking the coat off so she could wrap the tail around the legs to keep them all out of her way as best as she could. After that it became easier to run without tripping but the weight was still a serious issue and she weaved back and forth for a good few minutes before finally finding at least some of her balance. She supposed she should at least be thankful this particular dogs skin wasn't actually bigger than her otherwise it would have dragged along the ground and gotten caught on everything she ran over.
While running the long way across the land, Brianna allowed herself to think back to what had just happened with Jennifer back in the woods. Part of her wished Jennifer had come with her because it was growing increasingly boring to be running all on her own with no company at all. Brianna liked to talk to people, she missed talking to friends, especially since talking helped her nerves a lot. She remembered talking to Dekka while they were prisoners of Drake, and she remembered talking to Jack while they were kind of sort of dating, and she especially remembered talking to Edilio and Sam about tactics and fights just before something big was about to happen. Brianna really missed talking to people...
But then again, most part of her were kind of glad Jennifer didn't come to tag along with her. If she did then Brianna couldn't run like she used too back in the FAYZ. She would have to purposely walk slowly just so whoever was with her could keep up. Going slowly would drive Brianna crazy more than being unable to talk!
Although the coat slowed her down a lot, she still managed to push herself much faster than any other human could move. It was a good feeling to keep pushing even if he legs were beginning to ache and her feet constantly felt like she was popping blisters one after another. It made her feel like she was doing something to fight back by making herself stronger and faster with every painful step she took. One thing Brianna was determined to do was fight back against whatever force had brought her here and mostly stripped her of her powers.
The next few minutes/hours/days passed slowly and tediously. It was still impossible for her to keep track of how long exactly was passing by. If she hadn't had a purpose of running to an exact spot, then Brianna would have lost her mind a long time ago trying to understand how long she had just been standing around. It was just so crazy boring here!
But she did have a goal and with that in mind it helped her to push on, pausing only to rest and keep moving again once her body had mostly healed, or at least stopped hurting as much. Each time she rested she sat down hard and checked over her feet and her legs, which ached constantly along her lower legs and around her knee caps. Her thighs were red and chapped and definitely sore to the touch as if she had been lying in the sun all day. The worst part was the soles of her feet that were taking the most of the pressure from the hard rough ground under her. Her heels and balls definitely had blisters, her toes were cut and everything else was either so blue or red so that they stood out against the rest of her pale skin, even in the gray atmosphere. She hated the sight of it and did her best to rub spit along the worst parts as if that might help but otherwise couldn't do much more. At the most she wished she at least had another lake or pond to soak her feet in whenever she took a break but sadly there was no such luck and after a while she knew she had to get started running again.
She didn't see any dogs while running, none of them came chasing her again and she wondered if it was just luck or if she really hadn't any need to worry any more with the dog coat covering her scent. It had to do with smell. The dogs had sniffed her closely before, trying to decide whether or not she was human or dog and the dog's blood and coat had mingled with hers, overpower her just enough for them to decide she was dog and leave her alone.
That was more than Brianna could have possibly hoped for in her wildest dreams.
When she reached the destination she had been aiming for, no one could have been more surprised than Brianna to discover it was a street... A city... A town.
It was just so strange. Why would a place like this have a town? Towns had to be built, built by people. Brianna highly doubted that the children from the FAYZ all came together and built this town during the time they had been here. The beach and woods were all natural but this really had to have been done by someone but who? How? Why? Brianna's head was hurting from so many unanswered questions.
All the buildings looked like something had gone through the town and taken a sledge hammer to each of the walls with the pure intention of leaving at least one hole in every side. They were all grey and covered in a thin dust of sand and cobwebs with pieces of brick lying in the road that all had the slightest orange tint, no windows or doors just large holes in each of the buildings where they might have once been. The buildings might have all looked the same if they were still all together but instead they stood out by the different damages that had been inflicted on them and something about them reminded Brianna of the kind of buildings that were from a much older time than the one she had been born in. She couldn't name the date in time but she was sure she had seen a few pictures in an old history book.
As Brianna made her way in between the many buildings on the streets she tried to take in as much as she could. At one point she paused and looked around the area just to see everything slowly and hold the picture in her mind. She moved slowly in a circle before she saw the building that it looked like it had the least amount of damage inflicted upon it and might be safer than the others. That would be the best building to scope through, or maybe just the best building to climb onto the roof and get a better lay of the land and see if there really were any other people here.
Walking carefully so as not to hurt herself on all the rubble lying in her way, Brianna headed for the building's large entrance that had to hold a set of double doors at one point before they were blown off.
The inside was somehow cold. In this whole place Brianna had never felt cold or warm and now in this room she actually felt a shiver run over her skin in the dark shade of the building. Brianna paused, putting her arms around her body and pressing her lips together. She felt a sudden nervousness that made her weary of going any further into the building but her curiosity was getting the better of her and she began to walk without thinking. She knew Dekka and Sam would scold her for this, they did that often, but she hadn't changed then and she wasn't going to change now.
"Hello?" Brianna called out but her voice came across quiet and her throat dry. She suddenly had the feeling like she wasn't alone any more.
There was no answer, of course. She had to be alone. Otherwise she would have noticed someone when she came in, after all there wasn't really much room to hide in this empty building unless you were the size of a cat.
"Wow, what a fascinating place." Brianna snorted sarcastically. She could just imagine how much Astrid would love this place. It was boring and old, everything the blonde genius loved.
She sighed and pushed through the main room anyway just in case there was something she was missing. It was as big as an assembly hall back in her old school with sand and dirt all along the floor and no sign that there ever was anything else there. If there had been any furniture then whoever had bitten chunks from the wall had taken the chairs and tables with them. The walls looked ready to collapse like they, too, were made from dry sand and the ceiling looked very much like it had been put together with met mud, right down to the roots sticking out. She briefly wondered if she would find trees in the floor above and the idea was slightly amusing. Even though the building looked very weak, it never cross Brianna's mind that it might be dangerous. After all, wouldn't it have collapsed by now if it was?
"Ew..." Brianna mumbled, staring at some of the roots that had twisted around one another and still had clumps of mud clinging to them. "That looks so weird. I wonder..." She paused and shook her head. "Great, this is the start isn't it? This is the start of crazy when I begin talking to myself." She sighed. "I've been alone for too long. Maybe I should have stuck with Jennifer after all. Or at least find someone else to..."
A cough.
And it didn't belong to Brianna.
She froze and looked up, the sound of the cough came from somewhere above her, it was loud and clear and sounded like a high pitched man's cough.
Brianna hesitated, listening but no more sounds came. She strained to listen for any sound of breathing but if there was someone up there then they were breathing very quietly. Either way she was now almost a hundred percent sure that there was someone else here and hopefully they weren't as crazy as Jennifer had become. It really would be nice to have some more company around even if only for a short while before she started running again.
After a moment of checking the area around her once more as if something was going to appear when her back was turned, Brianna moved over to the stone staircase in the far right hand corner of the room. It was the exact same shade as the walls, covering in dust and sand with the occasional pebble or clump that had gotten in the way and scattered over each and every step.
Brianna looked up where there was a wide hole in the ceiling where the top of the stairs led to. This space seemed like it had been made to be a hole rather than being broken and torn out like the rest of the holes in the wall. As she moved closer she squinted up at the hole but all she could see was more stone walls and darkness from the angle she was standing. The stairs were right against the wall and she wondered if there was even going to be room to get up there... Well there was only one way to find out.
Brianna shook off any nerves and put her foot on the first bottom step. Slowly she pushed up and began to climb up the steps, going one at a time and keeping her eyes on the open space that was growing larger the closer she came to it. The ground felt soft under her feet, almost crumbly like it was going to break down right under her but somehow it held and she felt the sand slipping in between her toes in a familiar and almost comfortable way from when she used to go to the beach as a child. The biggest problem was when she stood on a pebble but even then she just brushed it to the side and listened as it made a tacking sound against the stones steps bellow. Other than that she become very aware of how much more her legs were beginning to ache as she climbed the steps. How long before her body toughened up? Would it ever?
No. Focus. There was somewhere there and Brianna had to find out who. She could think about everything else when she had solved one mystery at a time. And maybe this person would be able to help her understand the things that were happening to her and around her.
It didn't take her long before she reached the top, there were many twelve steps in total, and her head began to stick up through the gap in the ceiling. She stopped when she was eye level and slowly turned around, taking it all in and careful not to fall back down the steps again.
The room was almost identical to the one downstairs from the stones walls to the sandy floors and the many holes as if someone had bitten out chunks and left pieces of debris lying around by the corners and the walls. The only difference was that it was somehow darker than downstairs and the ceiling was just like the walls without any dirt or roots hanging down from it. There were no sign of trees or anything that could be attached to the roots hanging bellow and that just brought more questions to Brianna's mind.
At first glance it seemed empty, but when Brianna took another step and was shoulder length with the upper floor, she noticed the figure of a man in one of the corners, sitting on a large broken piece of bolder in the darkest part of the room. The person was hunched over in the dark and it was impossible to tell if Brianna knew who he was and if he was sane but she certainly hoped so, on both of those.
Brianna swallowed hard again to wet her dry throat and prepared herself before she climbed up the last few steps. As expected there was no room to go straight ahead and instead she had to turn and climb awkwardly up onto the second floor to the right, but it wasn't much more than another step. She turned and hesitated once again, unsure of why she had such a bad feeling about this. She ignored her nerves, sure it was nothing, and instead put her mind to wondering how to announce her presence without causing this man any shock that might cause him to attack her.
In the end she figured it was best to just get it over with. "Hey."
The boy's breath came in sharply and then there was silence again as the boy stayed frozen with his back to her. Then he slowly brought his arms around into view and Brianna felt her blood run cold before he stood and turned to face her.
He was much taller than Brianna, at least fifteen or sixteen years old and quite skinny like he was starving just enough to show his ribs but still remaining upright and strong. He was dressed in a white shirt that had the sleeves torn off and was missing many buttons along the middle, revealing a pale flat chest with a pair of lose blue jeans with tears along the knees and, as always, bare pale feet. He had a long face and frighteningly wide icy blue eyes that seemed unnaturally crazy with long wild blonde hair that fell down over the top of his eyes and down behind his shoulders, sticking up at all ends. There was a grin that seemed to show every one of his teeth and just added to the frightening insanity in his eyes. Both his clothes and his skin was stained with blood, some still shining and looking extremely wet against his clothing but even the blood, that clearly wasn't his, was not the most frightening thing about him. The most frightening thing was not one, but two whip arms that stretched out to either side, moving and twitching like snakes, blood red with even darker red veins pulsing through to the sharp tips.
The man stepped forward into the light. Even before this Brianna could see who he was but somehow it was worse when he stepped forward. Brianna took a frightened breath in as she came face to face with the one and only Drake Merwin.
Next Chapter: Orsay & Orc
