Chapter Two
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ARKAS WOKE FROM HIS long slumber in the Void when he slammed into water.
Dazed as usual, it took a few seconds to come to his senses.
He figured out which way was up and swam to the surface.
No one was within his immediate range as he peered around.
It was strange, but he felt as if something had shifted inside himself, yet he couldn’t figure out what it was.
Neither humans, nor his brothers were showing up on his radar.
“What the hell is a radar?” he muttered as he swam towards the nearby shore.
Knowledge about the current era began to surface in his mind.
It was snowing lightly as he strode barefooted and naked away from the small lake he’d landed in.
Too tiny to be a tourist attraction, it seemed to be on private land.
A huge pale blue house stood a few hundred yards away. No lights were on inside, but he approached it cautiously anyway. His first course of action was to find some clothing.
More buildings were nearby. The largest was a barn, but he couldn’t see or hear any animals inside when he drew closer to it. The fields were empty, but he didn’t think it was because of the weather. Some vegetables could grow in winter if they were hardy enough.
“Something wiped out the crops,” Arkas figured when he caught a whiff of old rot.
Vehicles were parked inside a gigantic garage. The ones closest to the entrance had snow, dust and dirt sitting on their hoods. They hadn’t been used in weeks, if not months. Someone had left the door that slid upwards to lie flat against the ceiling open and had forgotten to shut it.
“What happened here?” the knight mused when he spotted a corpse lying on the gravel driveway. Still wearing the remnants of clothes, animals had torn it apart and had scattered the bones. A bullet hole was in the front of the skull. A far larger exit hole was in the back of it.
Arkas looked around and saw a few more bodies lying here and there. It seemed the humans had killed each other in a gunfight. Their weapons were beginning to rust from exposure.
He couldn’t sense anyone inside as he moved closer to the large house. Another body lay half inside the front door. The tattered clothing on the skeleton had been a dress. Even the womenfolk had been murdered. From the squeaking noises coming from within, rats had moved in.
Entering the house, the warrior’s eyebrows rose at all the hunting trophies that adorned the walls.
Animal heads had been mounted all over the place.
He strode into a huge living room and saw a grizzly bear rearing up on its hind legs.
“Humans are even sicker now than they were in the past,” he said, shaking his head at the idiotic things people collected.
Rats had set up camp in the kitchen when he took a quick look inside.
They’d chewed their way into the pantry and had eaten everything they could stomach.
He entered a hallway and walked through an open door into a library.
Religious books were lying on a table to the right.
Arkas moved closer to take a look at a notebook someone had been scribbling in.
“Something called the Rapture wiped out half of the population,” the knight surmised after scanning the first few pages.
Things had rapidly gone downhill after that, it seemed.
Disease had ruined the crops and killed wild and domesticated animals.
That had occurred two days before God had decided to trigger the apocalypse.
“Plants and animals died and the people in Tennessee turned on each other,” he said.
There was no longer enough to go around, so neighbors had become enemies and raiding parties had tried to rob each other.
“I can see how well that worked out for them all,” Arkas said wryly. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked at the moment. It didn’t look like anyone had been here since the massacre. Rats had ruined the provisions that the now dead humans had hoarded.
Arkas left the library and headed up to the second floor to the bedrooms. Humans tended to be smaller than the Knights of Order.
At six foot three, he wasn’t the tallest warrior in their squad, but he was just as muscular as the others.
He searched the closets and found some clothes that almost fit him.
Leaving the sneakers off for now, he needed to sleep off the exhaustion of falling from the Void.
Rodents had made their homes in the bedrooms as well. He didn’t have the energy to hunt them down so he could sleep in peace. Arkas headed up to the attic and found a sprawling recreation room. It was rat free and had a huge black sectional for him to lie down on.
“I hope Amaros turns up soon,” the knight said as he closed his eyes. “It’s weird that I can’t sense any of my brothers,” he added. Something niggled at the edges of his mind. It didn’t feel like the bond he had with the other knights.
Drifting off to sleep, Arkas slept like the dead and woke up at dawn.
He still couldn’t sense his commander as he ambled back downstairs in his borrowed sneakers.
This was as good a place to wait as any, so he decided to take steps to secure the house.
His first order of business was to clear the front door.
“I’m going to need a shovel,” he figured and headed to the barn. The corpses of farm animals were still trapped in their stalls. Rats had fed well on their flesh. Crows and other surviving animals would have dined on the fallen as well.
He found a shovel and returned to the porch.
Arkas shoveled the remains of the female onto the yard, trying not to feel disrespectful and failing.
If the ground hadn’t been partially frozen, he would have dug graves for the bodies.
The best he could do for now was to pile them together and set them on fire.
The flames would consume what was left of their remains.
“I might as well get rid of the rats,” he figured. Inactivity was the knight’s nemesis. He became bored easily and always tried to keep busy. Arkas found a rifle that shot pellets in a gun safe in an office downstairs. Grabbing spare ammo, he began hunting the critters down.
Two hours later, most of the rats were either dead, or had fled.
The corpses went into the bonfire he’d lit on the front lawn.
Already bored from standing around, the warrior needed something else to occupy his time.
Amaros would show up sooner or later. He just hoped it wouldn’t drag out for too long.
No one had come to investigate the smoke yet.
He would be ready for them if they showed up, whether they were friends or foes.
Another smaller building stood next to the barn.
Arkas crossed the yard and tried the doorknob.
It was unlocked, so he stepped inside. His reflection was the first thing he saw.
His pale blond hair and light blue eyes were disturbingly similar to Lachial’s, but at least he didn’t have a red tint to his eyes.
“I’m way hotter than Lachial,” the knight joked, flexing his biceps.
Muscles bulged beneath the sweater he’d pulled on, making it strain at the seams.
Chuckling, he looked around the small art studio. One of the humans had been a painter. Landscapes of various sizes hung on the walls. They looked like they were local scenes, judging by the trees. One was in progress on an easel and would never be finished now.
Arkas spied some unused tools sitting on the long counter against the back wall.
“These will come in handy,” he said in approval as he studied the wood carving tools.
He’d picked up whittling eons ago. In the past, he’d carved with sharp rocks, since his sword was far too big for the task.
He’d switched to knives once humans had evolved enough to craft them.
The warrior usually spent his spare time carving things in between their battles with the Soldiers of Chaos.
Rolling the leather case shut, he tucked the tools into his pocket, then went in search of a suitable piece of wood to carve. “This one looks about right,” he said when he found a short, fallen branch beneath an oak tree.
Sitting on a rope swing that hung from a thick branch, the knight began to carve as he waited for his leader to turn up.