Crimson and Furs

Chapter Forty Six: Apocalypse-mare

Cough! Cough!

Daniel coughed as he walked through the yellow puff of smoke, waving his hands. His brown hair was dishevelled as if it had not been combed for some months now, his brown eyes dreary. He kept on walking till he came out of the puff of smoke.

"What's this place?" he asked himself as he looked around. The whole place was desolate and barren. If there had not been scraggy skyscrapers drooping down like an old man and the vehicles caked in rust and dirt Daniel would have thought that he was in another world.

Isn't this Earth? Daniel asked himself as he looked up into the sky. Where's everyone gone to? What happened here? Why are there no living beings?

So many questions were left unanswered as he kept on staring in the sky. The sky which was supposed to be blue or white or red (or whatever) was caked in a kind of haziness he couldn't describe. No it wasn't right to call it haziness. This was literal nothingness!

Abyss? Daniel was shocked as his pupils dilated. Wasn't this the Abyss which he had heard about? How did it penetrate into the world so quickly? Weren't the members of the Abyss Cult preparing for some rituals recently? How come they succeeded?

He looked at the destruction again, his heart becoming heavier as the reality dawned on him. Everyone except him had been destroyed in the apocalypse. No one survived.

"Mum, Felicia, Ryan, Jackson, Evil Buddha..." Daniel began muttering the names of those he loved as tears welled up in his eyes. Everyone he knew were all gone—buried in the bosom of Abyss.

Daniel couldn't believe his eyes and pinched himself. It was believed that pinching oneself in a dream would make one exit the dream. And that was what he was doing right now. How could he believe that the world was gone in just a couple of minutes he slept. How could he believe that the world he grew up in and the people he knew had been erased just like that. Why then was he alive? Who or what kept him alive and for what purpose?

A sharp pain overwhelmed him as blood trickled down his wrist. So painful yet he didn't wake up from the socalled dream.

"This is...reality?" Daniel asked himself as he wiped his eyes with his hands. "No, no...I can't accept this. I need to try and survive. I need to escape this."

He stretched his hands and flexed his fingers. Instantly claws snapped out of them. It was at this moment the reality dawned on him. He still had his Wolfman powers.

"It's definitely a reality," Daniel was very much saddened as his eyes lost their luster. The apocalypse had happened faster than he had expected. He had wanted to plan against it—to advance and become powerful. But no, he had failed. Maybe he had been too late or members of the Abyss Cult had been too fast. Whatever was the reason wasn't good—it was devastating. All life had been lost forever.

"I need to fight for my survival," he regained control of his emotion and took a deep breathe. If he could know everything about what happened there was a little chance that there would be a way out.

Thud!

He leaped into the air and landed on the ground with all fours, running eastward. He was moving so fast that he became a blur, his brown hair fluttering to the wind. He had not ran for five minutes when he saw a darkness. It was like a boundary encircling the destroyed world.

Daniel stopped in his tracks and stood up, staring at the darkness from afar. He was very cautious not to approach it and stayed at a safe distance to observe the darkness far away. This darkness was filled with so much corruption, chaos and yet...and yet...

"It feels so non-existent," Daniel told himself as he narrowed his eyes. "This is the Abyss? Or is it safe to say that this is a node that connects the Abyss with the real world?"