King of Lies

We walked through the path that formed through the forest. It was the only path forward.

Ulrik supported Mark, and the twins helped in shifts.

I carried Gabriel with a little help from Milo. I still hated his guts, but he helped fight off the tigers with Malcom, or so I heard. Zara and the other powered folks took point.

The 5 cowards skulked behind us.

Gabriel was not okay. If he didn't get proper medical aid in time......he would die.

With that in mind, we walked at a very brisk pace.

When we reached the end of the path, what awaited us were large dark green tents at every turn, bustling with activity.

Men in all white garbs rushed towards us from the closest tent and carried Gabriel off. Another, a lady this time, came out from the same tent, carrying vials in each hand. She quickly explained their use, they were healing salves for I and Mark to use on our wounds.

Unlike Mark, my wounds had already scabbed over. She proceeded to rip off the scabs, with no shortage of curses from my side, and applied the ointment on my reopened injuries quickly attending to Mark next. I let out a chuckle when i heard him curse out as well. The ointment was very soothing, but it burned like hell on contact with our open wounds. It turned into somthing cool and soothing after the initial burn, so it was very welcome.

One thing we all noticed was the strong pressure every single one of those 'medics' gave off. Well, all of us except those 5 who had the misfortune to be without an ability. They were incredibly unfortunate as we would later find out what happened to them.

"Gather here!!" A shout, sounding more like a roar, rang out.

There was no room to rebel or even ask questions. Our feet marched forward on their own. We met up with other groups, many that looked better off than we did and others that looked much, much worse. Some joined the march alone. They had the tell tale look of shock, and their minds were clearly not all there anymore.

We all marched in silence.

The tents thinned out till we arrive at a hill. It sloped up at a steep angle, but I made out foot holds, carved into it's rocky surface.

"Climb!"

We moved forward once again.

It was an odd sight to see so many people march and climb in unison. It felt, and looked, unnatural. Humans were never meant to be that organized....

It was my turn to climb up the footholds, and when I finally reached the top......my heart sunk into my stomach.

There was a large wall spanning the entire horizon. It had no gaps. Just more wall interspaced with high towers.

The walls were thicker than 10 men combined if each stretched out and touched the other from the tip to end.

To say it was massive would be an understatement.

In front of those walls were settlements that looked more like barracks than anything else.

Despite the sheer scale of what I saw......That was not what made my heart sink....it was the writhing mass of black behind the walls. The pulsing amalgamation of rot.

A sense of wrongness assaulted me as I stared into it.

They crawled and squirmed over each other, fighting to crawl over the walls.

We were brought to this world to fight those things....these creatures whose mere appearance caused rot to spread in the air and on the earth.

We were at the boundary.

The second line of defense.

It wouldn't take a genius to guess what happened to the first...it was overrun.

We were to train and defend the walls as soon as we were capable.

I felt it was hopeless, no I knew it was.

This was not something humanity could overcome.

What awaited us was a slow and agonizing end, for all my eyes could see was an endless surge of black rot.