Chapter 7: The Law Of The Wastes
A figure emerged from the ruined skeletal remains of a highway sign. A woman that is lean and tall, with weathered skin and eyes like flint was the one who appeared. Her dark hair was braided with leather cords, and a patchwork cloak covered her scavenged armor.
A hawk-beast perched at her side, its feathers were gleaming like folded steel and its amber eyes were burning with unnatural clarity looking directly at Kelvin.
Kelvin rose slowly to keep moving while he kept his spear low. "I’m just passing through," he said, hiding the pain in his voice. "I am not here for trouble."
The woman, whom he would later learn that her name was Mara made an explosive sound and looked at the crude bandage on his thigh and said, "Trouble follows you, boy, those wounds are not the wounds of a clean getaway."
The hawk-beast shrieked, and Kelvin felt it deep in his bones. The creature’s gaze locked onto his sleeve at the sigil beneath the sleeve. He didn’t dare look down.
"She senses me," the Xerion murmured but Kelvin ignored the voice. "I had found nothing but just a dead bunker and a collapsed ceiling."
"Liar," Mara said, her voice was low but with certainty. "That place stirred up the wastes like a wounded Rift, something old woke up down there, and you walked away with more than a limp."
Before Kelvin could respond, a strange sound filled the air, a high-pitched voice like a chorus of grinding blades. The ground beneath him trembled, although he knew that sound within him. "Down!" he shouted, diving as the earth cracked open in lines that are not consistent.
From the split earth, came a swarm of Rift-spawned locusts, each of them are of the size of a grown man’s fist, their wings were vibrating with violet energy.