Failure to Absolve
I'm not the first wielder of my gun. The Gun. It saw many hands before coming to me. I never knew the first or even the second. To my knowledge, she is the third, my master, Amina. She found me barely alive and scrawny.
Amina was a real woman. Not the type you see in big cities. I mean a real woman. She carried herself with all the strength of nobility and had the power to back up any claim she had against her. If things got heated, she had always had the final word with that gun.
You see, she was the third wielder of the gun to my knowledge. It was given to her when her master, some guy I can't remember the name of, fell in combat. She didn't take the gun then, that came way later. Funniest story she told me was how she got it, but that's for another time.
So, she found me. Took me in and raised me as her own. Now back then, Huntresses and Huntsmen weren't really popular. The big schools hadn't coined the phrase and us normal folks didn't like the idea of people running around with powers and weapons they couldn't deal with. And Grimm and Bandits weren't the only thing people had to fear either.
Huntsmen were the real problem.
Anyone who didn't know how to use their Semblance or Aura were usually just food for the Grimm. If you could figure out how to use it, well, you could take down a small village with practical ease. And if you had good weapons and armor, you might be able to hit a good sized one and make off with whatever goods you wanted.
People had a right to fear these schools. Bandits were bad enough, but throwing Huntsmen into the mix was just insane. No one wanted to deal with that. That was why a lot of "Tyrants" started popping up all over Remnant for a short time.
When things got too bad and villages began to have real issues because of them, small people rose up to challenge them. A lot of them paid the price for it. There was this one guy, Oolong, a real piece of work, who got training, graduated at the top of his class with his team, then returned home to rule over his village with an iron fist. No one could beat him. The people lived in fear 'till she showed up.
Amina strolled into town looking for a place to stay. Didn't want any trouble.
I was ten years old at the time. My parents had fought against Oolong, lost their lives and left me too early. But when I saw her, she reminded me of my mother. Back before that bastard came back with his "Gift" as he called it.
Oolong didn't much like her. He walked up to her and demanded respect. I can still remember how she tilted her head to the side, her emerald eyes so full of confusion at the tone and demands he made.
Maybe she had heard rumors about him. Took the job from some survivors that had escaped. Or maybe she saw how afraid of him we were. I don't really know. But what I do know, is that when he made demands of her, she didn't listen to him. Pissed him off like no one's business.
If he killed her, we knew that we'd suffer for her actions.
She didn't speak. Didn't even say a word after his demands were made clear. Amina raised a hand to the sky, her porcelain face twisted into a horrible scowl, judging him for his deplorable actions to us.
It's hard to put into words what I saw. I'm still not sure what it was I witnessed to this day.
The sky opened up and the heavens came down upon him with such force that he disappeared before our eyes where he stood. What remained was charred earth, say for two footprints, acting like some sort of testament to his previous existence.
Despite what you may think, we didn't rejoice. We were terrified of her. One Tyrant was bad enough. The only thing strong enough to kill one was another one or some lucky fool who got them with their pants down.
I was scared. Scared so badly that I never noticed she was standing before me until she knelt down to my level, hand outstretched, and a warm smile on her face.
She gave me food. Nursed me back to health. Stayed in the village for about two weeks before she said she had to go. I didn't want her to leave. None of us did. She made us feel safe. Safer then we ever had felt.
Amina came up to me before she left, her eyes were always so bright, but not this time. She asked me if I wanted a chance at a better life. I didn't understand the look she was giving me. Even writing it now, I still don't know what it was she was thinking.
But, I took it. I didn't have anything else to live for. Not like the rest of the people. They had families. I didn't.
I never got a chance to go back. Three years after I left, I got wind that my former home was gone. Grimm attack. Nasty business.
Amina trained me on how to use a gun. Not her gun. She made me one. Had a smith make it for me. It was the nicest thing I had ever owned at that point. She made me believe that I could do anything.
We traveled for years together. So long that, at times, I thought I had been with her my whole life. They were the best years of my life. There was adventure. Glory. Fame. Fortune. All the things a child believes in when they think of the outside world. But that lens started to crack. It didn't take long before those adventures of glory and fame turned to hardship and torture. I walked away from so many villages, sometimes not having the strength to save a single soul. It was crushing.
I can still hear the voice of a little girl crying out for help as she was dragged away by some ungodly horror. I never saw it. I saw her bright silver eyes though. She was pleading for help. And I was too slow. We both were.
Traveling with her opened my eyes to the real world. I vowed to be something so great that no one could challenge me. I would become a symbol. I would become so powerful that no evil would escape my sight or my reach. I would slay all that challenged me and those I protected.
Wishful thinking. Childish dreams and delusions of grandeur. That's what that was. Just childish dreams.
We never worked with others much. I can only ever remember a few. Grimm Reaper was scary. Nice lady, but that wasn't her name. Never got the real one. She always used that moniker of hers. Said someone just coined it one day and she let it stick. Marcus Black was a real hot head, but he was near my age and stuck around for a few gigs before finding some woman.
Amina never told me her Semblance. She told me mine. Said it was the reason she took me from there.
I've never been one to turn tail and run. Everyone has something they're afraid of. Big things. Small things.
I'm dragging it out. I know. But, this was hard for me. Still hard for me.
My Semblance is a curse. It's not a good one. It gives Hope to people. Let that sink in. Hope. A good thing. Great thing, even. Makes people believe they can do anything. Sounds great, right? Ask that pretty girl down the street to a dance. Believe you understand that math question and answer it in front of your class. Yeah?! Sounds great, right?
Well it ain't.
It makes you believe you can achieve anything. Do anything. Do you think some run of the mill average joe with no training can really stop a Beowolf with his bare hands? Hell no. But it makes you believe you can. See the problem? See the curse, now?
When she told me what it was, I thought it was a good thing. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense why it was so terrible.
I gave my village hope for tomorrow. Hope that they were strong enough to stop Oolong by themselves. Their blood was on my hands, and I never knew it till then. And leaving them… I killed them. They had spent ten years around me. Sure, my Semblance wasn't active then. Don't know really when it started. For all I know, it came on when I started traveling with her. But I think that's wishful thinking.
See, I gave them hope, and when I left, they had forgotten how to have it and make it. So they simply stopped living. Made them easy targets for the Grimm.
Sure, maybe I am innocent. Maybe it never activated 'till I left with her. But I doubt it. I'd rather be wrong then right. I live with that guilt. I killed my people. Maybe even my parents.
Nickel, what I'm trying to say, is that I'm not the man you think I am. You see me as some kind of proud warrior. Someone who stands tall in the face of all evils. A tall man made taller when facing the evils of the world. But that's the thing. I'm just a man. I'm not some immortal being.
Neither was she. I thought she was, 'till she wasn't.
I got her killed. I believe that. My arrogance, Semblance, pride, whatever you wanna call it. It got her killed. The woman who became my mother died doing what she felt was right. Lived by a code. I hated that code, but I made it mine without realizing it.
She used to say, "The last man standing is the one in the right." I hated that saying. Hated it so much that I disputed her on it several times. How can that be a thing? It didn't make any sense to me.
The last time I spoke to her, our words were heated. She had gone for her gun, maybe as a show of force, or because she had known what was coming. I didn't fire. Never even drew my gun.
She drew first. Didn't shoot me. Thought she would have. Should have. Maybe this wouldn't have happened. You wouldn't have been in this situation.
Amina fought against an Alpha Beowolf the likes of which I had never seen. I had been fighting for twelve years with her. So when I fumbled my gun, I wondered how I could have done that. Still to this day, I wonder about it.
She shot it ten times in the chest and it barreled through me and into her, taking her into the lake. People always say that time has no meaning. I disagree. I watched the waters' surface for an eternity before she broke the surface. I pulled her onto dry land and knew it before she said it.
Amina was going to die. There was nothing I could do. That Grimm was still alive, too. It rose out of the water missing its entire left arm. I took aim and gunned it down. I reloaded that piece three times, even putting in some insurance by giving it more lead to the face.
Whatever horrors were coming for us had backed off or had just never been there.
I sat there 'till her body grew cold and lifeless. I didn't know what to do. She had died during the fight. Her final words to me become my biggest haunt.
"Nothing ends."
What does it mean? For years I thought it was something easy. I thought it would be simple. I could make the evils of the world so small with my gun in hand. I would be the symbol people needed. Proof that those that would wish us harm were nothing more than shadows to be banished. What a fool I was.
I vowed to be a better man from that point on. Live by her example with the Gun in hand.
But the funny thing was that I never found her gun. I searched for an entire year. Never had any luck. I went back to that lake once a week. She said it was mine by right of passage alone. I believed her.
"Sienna?"
Sienna pulled her eyes away from the diary and back to Adam. She blinked them a few times as she snapped the thing shut and put it back in her back.
"Where are we at?"
"No idea."
She hated not knowing. Not much she could do. She wasn't exactly being the ideal guard at the moment.
Yone had done them good in the end. Despite his death, his word still carried a lot of weight. Several trucks had been given to them, allowing transportation to be rather easy. Gave her time to read and reflect on what she learned.
Nickel had not been informed of Yone's death. It was something Adam found distasteful, but agreed to nonetheless. If Nickel learned of his death shortly after reuniting with someone from his former home, it might send him over the edge. It wasn't hard to hide, either. They're departure was done hours after the bodies were removed. A few Faunus guards had lost their lives in the fighting and Sienna felt bad that they had not acted when the news had spread of a Grimm attack.
Sienna looked at the mirror and saw the three massive trucks behind them following closely. When they rounded a corner, she spied the last pickup, Nickel in the front seat talking with Tukson. Tukson seemed very animated, despite driving, and was holding something up that Nickel looked to be politely refusing.
"Is he a bad guy?"
Sienna was quiet for a long time, her hand returning to her pack to grab the diary and finish reading it. She knew better and didn't.
"I don't think so." Her voice was soft. Nickel and Tukson's pickup disappeared behind the line of trucks and she turned to Adam as he adjusted his mask with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel. "He was troubled. Broken, even. He wanted to do good, but his Semblance made it so that he couldn't stay in one place."
"So he wasn't the Noble Man the people made him out to be?"
"He was certainly that. Didn't like the name, but never talked anyone out of it." Sienna shut her eyes and wished this wasn't so complicated. The more she read, the more she felt like she was further away from the truth of the man, and subsequently, Nickel.
"He regrets what he did to Nickel. That much is certain." She leaned against the worn backrest of the seat, her eyes shut as she breathed in the cool morning air. "He realized what he was doing too late to Nickel."
"But why not send him away?"
Sienna sighed. "He hasn't explained that yet. I think...I think he couldn't. Nickel was already too reliant on him and he couldn't change his mind." She reached back into her pack, retrieving the book and a bottle of water. There was so much left to read. Leon jumped from one story to another, losing his train of thought and forgetting what he was talking about. The man was truly afraid of something. Of that, she could see.
The Gun came to be a few years later. I gave up searching after one year. Never turned up.
The story of The Gun is surrounded in so much myth that it's hard to discern what's real and what's fiction. It's a gun. Not like the new weapons that are built nowadays. Those aren't guns. This is a gun.
The Gun isn't unique. He told me that. It's just a gun. I don't believe him. There is something unique about it. It's like some extension of my body, a missing piece put back into place for me. Holding it was enough in the beginning. Then it's touch was less soothing. A mortal reminder to the lives I had taken in my quest to reclaim that which was mine.
He, and that's He with a capital H by the way, was a real tool. I didn't like him. Still don't. Glad as hell he's dead too. Prick.
His name was Eli, great grandson of the original smith who made The Gun. Sometimes I get facts wrong. Part of life. No one knows everything. There are only three certainties in life. 1). Life sucks! 2). Someone always wants to kill you! 3). And no woman knows what she wants!
That last one might be a bit biased, but no woman ever said anything nice about me that didn't involve heroic deeds.
So, The Gun. How'd I get it? I earned it, according to Eli. When Amina died, The Gun disappeared. I searched that lake for an entire year. Where she surfaced, worked in mathematical equations for fish and underwater currents. Nothing. No trace. Like it never dove down with her. That Grimm came up with holes in its body where she hadn't shot it. She fired while under the water! It went in!
A few years later, after I had earned the title of Noble Man, Eli found me at a bar. I was telling some favorable heroics to a few pretty ladies. They weren't having it. Don't blame them. They were more interested in that dumb bird and silver eyed girl. They made a cute couple. Not sure they were, though.
Anyways. Eli walked up to the bar, turned to me and said some nonsense I don't care to remember. Talked about how this was a monumental moment of some sort. Bird Boy and Eyes were enamored by the story. I remember that much. Then he pulled out this wooden case, said something about his family being able to connect to the otherside, and opened the box. Inside was The Gun.
I might string the truth from time to time. But this is real. He held in that box, The Gun. It was there. Everyone saw it. Some whispered that it was a fake, but others shut them down. Eli gave it and a note from Amina to me. Said it was her final words to me. Words she had never been able to say.
I didn't believe him. I tossed the note in the fire of a candle and walked out. Do I regret it? Yeah. What if he was telling the truth? How could someone connect to the otherside? Let you read the final words from loved ones? Would you do it?
If her note was real, I should have read it. But I didn't.
The world is a big place. Lot bigger than people give it credit for. Grimm hold most of that property, but that doesn't mean we can't take it back. We've taken a fair amount of land from them. Worked it into fine villages and small cities. The Kingdom of Atlas has two capitals, and don't give a damn what James says or any other public official says. Mantal is a Capital as well.
Eli said it was drawn to me. The Gun, that is. It wanted to be in my hand. Sounds fishy, but it ain't the first story I heard about it.
Amina received it after her master died, remember? Her story was no different from mine. A woman gave it to her. She didn't get a name, or she just never told it to me. I'll call her "Sue" for this to keep track.
When Amina's master died, The Gun, which she called "Steel Barreled Justice" - Fucking mouthfull, honestly! - was lost. Gone to the wind. Disappeared. Just like mine. She tried to find it, gave up, and then just ran around all over the world helping people. Trying to do right because it was right. Then one day, poof, Sue shows up, same box in hand, same message given from her master.
Amina never told me if she read it or not. I think she did. She had more belief in the powers above. I didn't. Still don't. But she did. From that point on, she told me she was going to do more right. Right wrongs. Fix the world. Make it safer. Like she wasn't doing it already.
I think that's what's wrong with the world. Too many people are trying to change it. It works right now. Why try to fix something that ain't completely busted? It works!
It wasn't always like this. Never before has our world been shaken so badly like what it is now. Everyone gets mad over the smallest of things. No one covers the big new stories anymore. Sometimes, they just focused on past events.
Mountain Glen is a good example. It was on the news for years after its fall. People still talk about it to this day. It was Vale's first attempt at expansion. Backfired all to hell. Can I blame them for what they were trying? No. Never would.
For the longest time, the media covered the "Radical" White Fang group. Said they were uncivilized people. Monsters. Criminals, even. I hate what I did. Truly. I do. You may hate me, but I tell you now, I hate what I did. You're in the right to hate me.
Back when I worked with Amina, we did a lot of jobs. Not all of them were good. In fact, I'd say a good number of them were wrong. There were days we walked into small villages where the leader would talk about some evil monsters that were coming to harm them.
I'll never live it down. I took more from the Faunus community then they ever took from us. We did them wrong. I mean, we really did them wrong.
A group of Faunus showed up to town I was guarding. This was before I got The Gun. They walked up to the gate, said they were here for a peaceful protest. Maybe it would have been peaceful. Maybe not. They had weapons. That much I remember. The head guard said something and then it all kicked off. I killed four Faunus that day.
I was considered a hero that day. Saved those people from terrible monsters. That's not what that was. Not what I did. Yes, I killed those people. I hate what I did. But it got worse. Time went on. Amina and I killed dozens of them in our time together.
You have to understand, it was a different time. Faunus weren't people. They were things to be feared. Before and after the war, even now, they weren't people to us. They were things. Some still see it that way.
I killed so many of their kind. Grew up being told they weren't people. Just things to be used by us. If any of them got out of line, put them down.
Never knew them as people 'till I met a team from Atlas that had one. Funniest guy I ever laid eyes on. He was some sort of lizard Faunus. No wings. No tail. Just scales over parts of his body. Nicest guy I ever met.
The job was simple: Guard a section of the wall in Mantle. Not hard. Rather easy. Killed five Grimm that day. He spoke to me about his past. Said he knew who I was and understood why I did what I did. Never said he hated me for it. Wouldn't blame him if he did.
Naturally, I was a real jerk to him. Told him what I thought of him. Said horrible things. He just smiled and waved it off, like it was nothing. Maybe he'd heard that all his life. Probably had.
His name was Valencian, but his team just called him V, Val or Vale. It was a one week job. Stuck around for a little longer. I got to know him and was introduced to his Human girlfriend. Real cutie. Was it right for them to be together? Maybe. I don't judge, not anymore. Back then, some part of me felt betrayed by her. Another part of me was happy for him.
He was the first Faunus I spoke to, and gave me a small understanding of their struggles. We suppressed them, and I saw for the first time that Faunus weren't the monsters I had been led to believe.
I had my doubts about Faunus still, but found working with them a lot easier than putting them down. Night operations against them were difficult. Some had other abilities outside of their Semblance, like flight, tougher skin, ability to breath underwater, and release poison from other appendages on their body, making them that much harder to fight. But working with them? It was far easier dealing with Grimm in certain locations thanks to them.
When The Gun came to me, I had already worked with over a few hundred of them. Most of them were old enough to remember me and my actions. Made first time jobs hard on us. They didn't trust. I don't blame them.
Then, when working with Silver Eyes, the Twins, and Blonde, we got an emergency call to a village close to Mistral. We kicked in the door, shot a bunch of Grimm, shot a couple more just to be safe, and then I found you.
I took you, not because you had a similar life to me. Do you know how many children I saved that became wards of the state? Too many to count. So, the obvious question is why I took you.
Well I was selfish. I'd come across dozens of orphaned Faunus children when doing rescue work. Parents did what they could to save their children. Anyone would. Well any good parent, I guess. You weren't different. I saw nothing special in you. When I took you to that orphanage, that lady told me to take you to Menagerie. I could have. But I looked at you and thought I could use you to absolve myself of my past sin. Make amends to the Faunus by doing something I thought no one else would do. So, I took you in.
Over time you became a good student to me. Taught you how to survive. How to fight. When I knew it was time to put down my gun, I knew I'd made a mistake.
My Semblance isn't always active. It kicks in when it wants to. I have no idea when it starts up, but I can control the range it has. Make it easier to calm masses when they're scared.
I tried like hell to send you away when I realized it and the curse. I wasn't just infecting you with my Semblance, I was doing what my master did to me. I made you a pawn for the Gun's legacy.
Eli was straight with me. Told me that himself. Said that it had seen more hands than most people knew. Gone by other names, too. Steel Barreled Justice wasn't the original name. It's first name was Last Rites. I did some digging. Found that it did have some truth to the story he told me.
Last Rites wasn't just a gun. It was a work of art for its time. It was given to a man who had unlocked his Aura and Semblance, making him formidable in the time during the war. He lived in a small village, acting as the only law in it. When a group of Bandits and soldiers passed through, ravaging their lands, he fought back with all the strength he had. He threw lightning at them. Brought the heavens down upon them. Rose a mountain to block their advance.
It wasn't enough. Nevermind the power this man seemed to have. Might be just a farce. But, beaten, not broken, he returned to his village to give the news. They would be dead at weeks' end.
Despair hit them hard, but the smiths of the village weren't giving in. They poured their very souls into a single weapon: Last Rites.
Just as day turned to night on the final day, they came out of their shop, handing the weapon to him. They asked him to try to defend them with it. Ignite the weapon, use it against their enemy, and push back the night.
Last Rites in hand, he vowed to do that. For four years he fought a battle for a small village no one cared to remember. It's been stricken from the world's history. If you find the children of the smiths, they may remember, but they find you. Not the other way around. Guess it gives more myth to it.
As he lay dying, he offered the gun to his daughter, who took the weapon and made it her own. But it was unwieldable in her hand. It didn't act the way her father had used it. Not a day later, Last Rites disappeared with the daughter, only to appear a year later in the hands of another man.
Last Rites went under a new name, Warden's Reach. That wielder wandered Remnant, going wherever bad men lived. He killed without discrimination. During his time, he was accompanied by another. I don't know who. The history from that point is skewered. No one knows what happened, as it disappeared for twenty years. When it turned up again, it was once more under a new name, Defiant Spade.
In each story that you can find, the wielder would take another person with them after acquiring it. This person that followed would then take the weapon from them, but only receiving it after they proved themselves.
It took me three years to realize that I did that to you. I took you originally to absolve myself of guilt, believing I could make things right. When I realized what I was actually doing, I grew scared. I had to get you away from me. This wasn't a life I wanted to pass on to another. When I learned what little history I could, of this thing, I wanted to be the last. I vowed to be the last.
Yet, by some unknown power or fate, I found you and took you.
Sienna slowly closed the book. How? How could this man do this to him? Was he that inept that he forgot the curse of a gun? What possessed this man into thinking that he had any rights to take Nickel, let alone use him to absolve himself of past sins?
And the weapon. Did it have a will of its own, enabling it the ability to act without a wielder? It was so preposterous that she couldn't think of a single mystical way that it could choose it's wielder. No power, not even those from above, could make a weapon sentient enough to give it free will.
But his previous actions against the early years of the White Fang were deplorable. He came from a time shortly after the war had ended or was close enough to it that the previous hate filtered down into him. Teachings and fear mongering were the bread and butter of uninformed people.
Noble Man he was not.
When she thought of someone with that title, they were more than just a man. They were someone so brave, strong, and fast with a desire to protect ALL life. Yet he got the title from killing a few Faunus. It was sick.
"Monster."
Adam turned his head just enough to see Sienna shoving the book back into her pack, her eyes tightly shut. It was a minute later that she opened them. Rage burned behind her amber eyes. There would be no peace for a while.
Putting his eyes back on the road, he wondered what horrible truth she learned. He wanted to ask her, but thought better when he saw the large wooden arch of the next village.
Between them and the village were a group of Humans, all armed with weapons, ranging from pitchforks to crossbows.
Adam snatched up the mic on the radio. "We might have trouble up ahead." He turned his attention to Sienna as she snapped from her fury, stopping the vehicle a few dozen meters away. "Any ideas?"
Sienna threw the door open with a visible scowl on her face. "Tell everyone to get into the last two trucks," she ordered as she stepped out, slamming the door as she did. She could hear Adam giving the same order as she marched up to the men, all of them smiling at her approach. "Can I help you, gentlemen?"
A tall man with a rifle stepped forward, the rifle slung over his shoulder.
As if he weren't taking her seriously.
"Yes you can. We understand your kind is doing a bit of traveling. We can let you pass, but it's going to cost you."
"Oh? I know of no toll for using this road."
"There is. Small one. We got mouths to feed. Anything helps."
"I'm sorry, but sadly, we have very little. Only little supplies to get us to Argus."
The rifle wielding man nodded slowly, no longer playing the nice guy. "Well that won't work. How about this? You leave whatever you have, the women as well, and I'll let the rest of your friend people pass."
Sienna gave a fake smile. Of course you'd make an impossible request. "Let me talk to my people."
"Rick, go with her!"
A sword-wielding teen walked up to Sienna, eyeing her up and down before snorting and marching towards the convoy of vehicles, the Bengal Faunus tailing him. They passed the pickup and got to the first truck. Rick threw the tarp back and found it empty.
"You're not getting what you want." Sienna grabbed the back of his head and shoved it into the metal tailgate, denting the metal and caving the front of his skull in. She tossed him into the back of the truck and turned to offer a smile to the truck behind her and it's driver.
Sighing in frustration, she slid under the truck and crawled to the pickup in the back where Adam was waiting. "Plan?"
"Drive like hell!"
Tukson punched it and the remaining two trucks took off once they got in front of them. What men that had ranged weapons all fired on their vehicle. Nickel lowered his head and a bullet shot through the back window and out the front. Sienna and Adam climbed out the passenger windows and jumped to the back two trucks as they drove through the village. Tukson did his best to avoid people, most of which ran scared from their presence.
"Map?" Tukson shouted as gunfire continued to crack like thunder behind them. He made it to the other side of the village and drove for another ten minutes before he calmed down enough to let rational thinking return. He pulled the pickup over and climbed out with Nickel. Sienna and Adam walked around the last truck, smiling and looking at the two.
"You guys gunned it," Adam joked.
Tukson growled. "What was that back there?! You said get ready for a fight. I thought we were fighting."
"We're trying to keep the loss of life to a minimum, remember?" Sienna told him.
"Fair enough. Now. Map?"
Adam licked his lips and scratched the back of his head in sheepish shame. "I left it in the pickup we were using."
"My backpack?"
"Got that." Adam made a quick dash to the back of the pickup and hefted Sienna's pack, causing her to snatch it up from him and sling it over her shoulder. "Any idea on where to go from here? I remember a fork in the road a little further up, but not which one to take."
"Get in." Nickel ordered as he got in the front seat. "I know a place that's close by."
"Is it safe."
"Was."
The three arched a brow before complying. With night quickly approaching, anything would be better than sleeping in tents and doing night shifts. Once they were back on the road, Nickel began giving instructions. Dusk turned to night before they came across a ruined wooden wall with two massive doors to the gate smashed in.
The courtyard was barren of life. Buildings were burned or torn down, either by the structural damage or by the hammer of time. Grass was knee high in front of various houses with crops behind a few that had been eaten at by wild animals. Some buildings had mounds in front of the homes, giving the ghost village an eerie vibe to the children.
"I don't remember this place on the map." Adam confessed.
"You won't find it on a map. Too new." Nickel answered quietly. He walked off in a drunken haze.
"If it's new, then how does he know about it?" Tukson asked.
Sienna looked at one of the mounds of dirt and then to the building it was in front of. It hit her a moment later as Tukson went inside to find anything viable for a bed. "It's his village." Slowly, she faced Adam. He had realized it too. "We brought him home."
Adam watched Nickel wonder into the distance, heading up the mountain. "We shouldn't have come here."