Orbs of Myth

Chapter 2

A FEW DAYS LATER

Kyungsoo was exhausted. He had been keeping up a brisk walk all day with few moments of rest. He did not even stop to eat a hot meal but ate as he walked. He hadn't slept much the previous night between the recurring nightmares and the loud growling sounds he could hear in the near distance. He had seen tracks from a large animal on the path for the last 2 days as he neared the border. He couldn't identify the animal, but he knew that it wasn't a wolf and it wasn't a bear because the tracks didn't look like it came from paw prints. The tracks had a sharper defined edge.

Kyungsoo looked up at the sky and then back to his map. It was getting dark and he was at least another 14 hours away from the border. He sighed in irritation. It looked like he would be spending another night camping out in the open. He folded his map and put it into his pack. He had been keeping his eyes open around the path for a small clearing which he could use for a place to camp for the night that had some shelter. Thankfully, just a few yards off the path was a clearing.

He jogged up to the clearing and dropped his packs. He looked closer and saw signs that other people had used it before him. There was a small ring of rocks indicating someone had used the area for a camp's fire and a few charred logs had remained. Kyungsoo gave an internal sigh of relief as it would be easier and quicker to start a fire with the partially burned logs available to use. The charred logs wouldn't last very long into the night. He walked a bit into the surrounding wood and picked up small sticks and fallen wood that could be used to make a good fire. He returned to the clearing and used them to build his fire.

In preparation for his journey, Kyungsoo had spent months learning everything he could about travelling alone and what skills he would need to learn and practice before leaving. He remembered that trick from a book he had gotten from a travelling peddler. Kyungsoo quickly started to set up his place to sleep. He looked up at the darkening sky just as he was finishing and saw that there were no clouds to cover the stars that night. Kyungsoo gave a sigh of relief. A clear sky meant that there would be no rain. It also meant the moon would be bright and it would light up the clearing.

He had placed out his sleeping bag before taking out a pot from his pack. He had found a nearby stream when looking for wood and had filled up his canteen and used some of that water to heat some tea. While he waited for the water to heat, he thought back to the nightmares he had been having. He had begun to wonder if they were somehow connected to the terrifying sounds that he had heard the previous 2 nights.

He snapped out of his thoughts when he heard the boiling of water. He took the pot off the fire and reached into his pack and took out a small cup. He poured a bit of water into it before adding a few spices that he had learned were helpful in relaxing people. He sipped his calming tea as the light in his small campfire flickered about. He felt exhaustion overtaking him as he finished his tea. He quickly placed the cup back into his travel bag and left the pot with the water next to the fire. He climbed into his sleeping bag before he fell into the darkness of sleep.

Kyungsoo was running through a city, dodging people and plasma beams. The ground was shaking as he continued to throw chunks of rocks at the robots. Out of the corner of his eye, another robot came at him with a plasma beam. He dodged and hid behind a wall that had collapsed from the nearby building. The ground shook even more as yet another building fell to the ground. The screams of fleeing people grew louder and then abruptly stopped for a brief moment as the collapsed building caused an intense shockwave, sending anyone who was running near its falling path of debris to go flying off their feet and to the ground. Kyungsoo covered his ears as another explosion went off a few yards away on his left. His ears were ringing, but he pushed his tired body and got up and went back out there to continue to fight.