(Cassandra)
I angrily toss a small first day of kindergarten backpack across the store front. I've spent literal hours searching the plaza for a backpack while listening to the lighting strike off in the far distance.
The only other people in the plaza are other looters. I walk out of the thrift store I was in and sit on a curb while brainstorming other places where I could find a backpack that won't involve me walking halfway across town.
I spot a short man struggling to stuff a TV into his car not too far away from where I am sitting. I hold my crowbar tight and sneak my way behind the oblivious man.
"Well hi" I say looking over his shoulder to see what else he had stuffed in the trunk of his small SUV.
The jumps and turns startled, he reaches for a wooden bat that he had leaning against the car, before he can reach it I slam the crowbar into the car making a dent right next to the man's head, I am briefly surprised by my own strength before I try out an intimidating voice.
"A wooden bat versus a metal crowbar isn't a fair matchup. Listen I'll let you keep the car as long as you drive me to the mall" I say as I pull back the crowbar.
"That's all the way across town" The man pleads as he keeps eyeing his bat.
Sensing he is about to do something stupid I knock the bat away from the car and get up in the man's face.
"Listen dude, I really don't want to hit you with a crowbar today, or any other day for that matter, but I will hit you with one if you don't get in that car and drive me to the mall, there are probably better things at the mall for you to steal" I plead with the dude dropping my very crappy intimidating voice.
"Fine I'll take you to the mall" The dude says holding his arms up in defeat.
I eye him as he throws the TV to the ground and closes his trunk. We both get in the car and I hold him at crowbar point as he starts up the car and begins to drive towards the mall.
(Adrian)
I stand in the hallway drinking a bottle of water. It's all they had in the vending machine. As I drink my water I think about what I'm going to do about the temples and all that stuff.
I get the feeling that if I try not to activate the temples the voice is probably going to explode my head into a bunch of little pieces.
I could take public transportation but I doubt any are still up and running. I could try to drive but I have no idea how too and I doubt my mother or Russell will listen to me and drive me there.
A plane? I could try to take a plane. It actually seems like the safest possible form of transportation given everything I've seen as of recent.
There's no point in overthinking it. I'll eventually come up with something, right now I should figure out a way to get out of town without being killed by that fragment or that moose creature.
I pop my head back into Russell's room to see him and my mom talking. Those two aren't going to realize I'm gone until I'm out of town, even then I doubt they'll care all that much.
I walk down the hallway and begin leaving the hospital. I am met with screams of terror as a car crashes through the already broken glass doors.
The car crashes into the reception desk which was thankfully vacant of any hospital personnel, they are all off tending to patients. Plus none of them wanted to be in the spot where the man could just walk back in.
I go towards the car to check on the driver but I am cut off by the moose creature poking its head through the hole where the doors used to be. The creature let out a noise of frustration as it couldn't fully fit through the hole.
Its skin was visibly burned pretty badly and it was clearly still in some pain. Upon laying its eyes on me it makes a noise of anger and runs off.
I run up to the car and see that the driver was killed after a burst of concentrated sound rocketed his head into the steering wheel. Leaving the front windshield and steering wheel covered in blood.
I can't leave these people here defenseless; they'll die within minutes. And no matter how miserable my mom and stepdad are, I can't let them die.
I walk around looking around for an unoccupied room where I can sit and talk to the voice. I finally find an empty room.
I sit in a chair and close my eyes.
"Voice! Can we talk?" I ask into the empty room. In a second I'm transported back into the darkness.
"Adrian Victus. What is it you desire to talk about?"
"I need some info on what symbols do what. I'm trying to figure out how to stop these people from dying"
"Hmm… I regret to inform you that the information you want doesn't come for free, I shall give you a solution to your problem for a simple price"
"Price? What do you mean I have to pay a price!? Is me being your Preacher not a good enough price!?" I ask angrily into the darkness.
"Unfortunately No, it is not a good enough price for the information you seek. Me giving you that information will require that I use my power, in my current state I have to conserve what little power I have"
"What price do I have to pay?"
"A memory"
"You're a supposedly super powerful entity, but you want my memories?"
"Yes, give me what I want and you shall get what you want"
"Fine, what memory do you want?"
"Hmmm... Your memories of your first two years of life is all it shall cost you"
"Deal. I barely remember anything before the age of 5" I feel a sharp pain in the back of my head as new information is added and old information is taken away.
My eyes snap open as I now have the ability to make sure these people won't die without me here. Not wanting to smear my blood on the hospital walls I look for a marker or something else I can write on the wall with.
I find a blue marker in the room across the hall. I learned a symbol that when used is supposed to put up a temporary barrier around the person who activates it that will shield them from danger while still letting non hostile things through it. But the voice showed me another way to use it so I could put a barrier around a structure.
In order to put up the barrier I have to write on all four primary walls of the building. I spend a couple of minutes finding the right places to write the symbol. Every time I write a symbol I am hit with a small wave of nausea.
I put the fourth symbol up on the wall. A luminescent green sheet coats the wall, the green sheet fades and becomes luminescent.
I step away from the final wall and am hit with another wave of exhaustion and nausea as I just used four symbols in a row. I slump against a wall and decide to rest up and prepare to leave the hospital in an hour or two.
(Cassandra)
As I step out of the car the dude who drove me here quickly drives off back into town. I watch him turn out of my sight and turn to look at the three story mall. With just a glance I can tell that the place is already packed with looters, either looters or people trying to wait out the apocalypse.
I walk closer to the mall just in time for a bolt of lighting to hit the mall. This is where the lightning has been striking, why? Why is it striking here of all places?
Despite my weariness I walk through the front doors of the mall. Just past the door is a small plaza with a giant stone fountain with a platform at the top of it. The platform at the top used to be used for parties held at the mall.
Sitting on top of the platform is a man being circled by electricity. I stand there astonished at the electricity circling the man, along with being astonished by the man himself.
As I stood there the man opened his eyes and stared at me in bewilderment.
"A human! Finally I was hoping a new one would show up!" The man said, he hopped off the giant fountain into the water. He steps over the edge of the fountain and he takes a seat on the edge
"So. What are you doing here?" The man asks with a permanent smile on his face.
"I'm looking for a backpack" When I look at him I get a gut feeling and feel like I should run.
"Backpack?" The man's smile drops and he sits there staring blankly at me for a couple of seconds.
"Backpack! Sorry about that I'm still absorbing the knowledge of you humans"
"What do you mean your absorbing knowledge, and why do you keep calling me human?"
"Hmm… I suppose you wouldn't know what a shard is. Me and my brethren were once a part of The Great One who resides above us. We broke off when the Great One was being reborn"
"So why do you look like a human?"
"I couldn't retain my true form unlike some of the others who fell, I had to Inhabit this body to avoid total destruction"
"So you stole some poor man's body, and now you are using him like a meat puppet?"
"I guess it would seem like that to a human. Fear not, this man was already partially dead when I found him, it seems he looked upon the Great Ones true form and couldn't handle the mental pressure"
"What are you doing here of all places?"
"This place had the highest concentration of humans I could find"
"What happened to all the humans who were here?" I ask as the lack of other people suddenly hits me, there should be a ton of people judging by the parking lot.
"Oh, I was very curious about humans so I needed some test subjects" The 'Shards' smile grows even larger as he snaps his fingers.
I look up to see a bunch of people emerge from inside of some store fronts that I couldn't see inside of. I tighten my grip on the crowbar as I watch as hundreds of people watch me from every floor.
"Any chance this ends peacefully?" I ask getting ready to run out the front door.
"A hundred percent this ends peacefully. BACKPACK!" He yells up to the second level of the mall and a brown backpack is thrown down towards my feet.
"It has been nice having a civil conversation with a human. Most I got of these ones was violent screaming and pleading" He waves me towards the door and climbs back up the fountain.
I can't afford to look this gift horse in the mouth. I grab the backpack and run out the front doors before he changes his mind and decides I would make a good test subject.
I stick the crowbar in my new backpack and decide to search the parking lot for a bicycle or something else that doesn't require me to drive.
At the far end of the parking lot I spot a row of bikes. I begin walking my way across the parking lot.