Angel Monarch

The horizon was only starting to brighten up, but in the ruined city there was already movement. A girl, barely into womanhood was flying around with her brilliantly white wings. They really brought out the contrast between them, and her dirty body. She seemed to be looking for something in the destroyed buildings. The girl was of course Seraphine. She was preparing for the road to Castleburg.

"C'mon where is it? I just only need one and I'm good to go." She was mumbling under her breath.

After digging through the rubble a bit more, she finally found what she was looking for. In her hand was a banged up metal flask.

"Ha-ha, I finally found one."

Then she flew back to the campsite. There were a lot of new things all around the place. More meat was missing from the Hellhound, some of it roasting, most of it packed away. She even found some seasoning and salt to use.

"Okay so let's see if I found everything I wanted: lighter check, talon-knife check, backpack check, as much food as I can carry check, a large part of a car covering 'thingy' against rain check, pot for boiling stuff check, some extra shirts and pants check and check and finally a flask full of disgusting blood check."

Sera packed everything together, had breakfast, drank a mouthful of blood, nearly vomited and flew into the air. She was finally leaving behind the remains of Newber the only home she ever knew. In the air she looked down on the destruction one last time, then she turned her back toward the dawn and never looked back. It was time to move on.

While flying she thought back on her preparations throughout the night. After the Sun went down she lay on the ground for a couple hours, but she didn't feel safe enough to sleep, so instead went to prepare for today.

She looked around the ruins trying to find useful things. She gathered a lot, that could be very helpful throughout the journey, sadly her carrying capacity wasn't infinite.

'Carrying capacity...It reminds me of those games I used to play before enlisting in the Academy. The characters in those games could carry an abnormal amount of items, multiple big weapons which only an Evolved could lift, or 100s of wheels of cheese. I wouldn't mind an inventory like that.'

She had to leave a lot of stuff behind. For example she couldn't bring anything for her cycle.

'Wonder if Evolved still menstruate or just live their life happily. Why don't we get taught about these kind of things, the important stuff.' She laughed about that thought. 'Supernatural sex education, what a dumb idea.

Sera would figure out eventually if she still had her cycle or not. And if she still had it well, the monsters should probably hide from her on those weeks.

Entertaining herself with thoughts like this she ate up the kilometers, with no sign of danger anywhere her progress was phenomenal to say the least. By afternoon she was already nearly 50 kilometers closer.

'If I can keep this up I will arrive to Castleburg in a week or so. Still, it's weird to not meet any monster on the way.'

Then she heard a noise far away and saw a bunch of black dots moving in her direction.

'Fuck, I just had to jinx myself, didn't I.'

Sera was about to fly above a small town, that was destroyed probably before the apocalypse, maybe in one of the wars that devastated this part of the world.

'This will do for now, hopefully those monsters will just fly through the area and I can go on my way. I was hungry anyway so at least I can eat while waiting.'

She glided down near a two-story family home. Checked around the house for surprises but there was nothing. Summoning the Insatiable Hunger she approached the entrance.

She opened the door slowly, and stealthily began to see if the house had any unwanted guests or not.

'The first floor is empty, time to check upstairs.'

But just as she was about to take her first step something moved in the corner of her eye and was heading in her direction. Sera's reflexes saved her and with the help of her wings she moved back dodging the attack easily.

Sera looked at the direction of the attack but what she saw didn't make sense. There was nothing on the wall there, or was there?

'Its like the wall has eyes, that's kind of weird.'

Then she remembered something about the animals that lived in the wild before the apocalypse, there were a type of lizard and some water creature that could change their color so they could hide from their preys as well as their predators.

The eyes moved on the wall and seemed to focus on her. She didn't thought about it much and attacked the wall with eyes on it. There was a weird scream like sound, then she heard her Watch in her head.

'You have killed a Venomous Chameleon, a Tainted of the 2nd Tier! Your Soul is Nourished!'

She looked at the dead 1 meter long lizard monster and was thinking: 'Venomous eh? Thankfully I didn't chance it. That could've been bad.'

Then Sera looked around the broken down home and a realization hit her.

'If I didn't notice this first one, then how do I know there was only one?'

Suddenly venomous tongues started to rain down on her, they had spikey tips and moved with the speed of a whip.

She fell on one knee and covered herself with her wings.

'I couldn't just be wrong once. No, there needs to be dozens of them.'