What was Lost

City

Sorry for the wait!! Tell me what you think?

Not edited/proofread

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Chiron stared at me, and I stared at him. For a minute, nothing happened and then I felt moisture run down my face and collect at the corner of my mouth. I flicked my tongue out to catch it. It was salty.

I cursed myself for crying, and immediately began to furiously wipe at the tears.

"God-damn stupid tears!" I sniffed again, internally berating myself for becoming so emotional over the fact that they had left. Why? Why had they left? An arm awkwardly wound itself around my shoulder and for the third time in the last twenty-four hours, I was pulled into a warm, firm chest.

"I'm sorry-I did not know. I-I don't know what to say," he admitted, still holding me to his chest.

"No. No. It wasn't your fault," I said, slowly managing to calm down.

It was okay. I was okay. They were only a means to an end, I tried telling myself, though I knew I was just lying. Chiron-my Chiron-had left me, though obviously not of his own accord. Then, my mates, too, left me in a sense. The sting of rejection cut deep.

I broke out of his hold and observed him, wondering what next to do. I still had to get to Hattusa, but without Ura I had no way of knowing how to get there.

I looked again at Chiron, who was staring at me with a frown on his face. I didn't know how to get to Hattusa, but Chiron might.

"Do - do you know how to get to Hattusa?"

He looked at me puzzled, "of course."

"I need to find someone - some people, actually. I know that one of them is in Hattusa. Do you think you could tell me how to get there? Or show me someway?" It was a long shot, but with Ura gone, I didn't have many options.

He stared at me, but his gaze went through me, as if he were caught in his own thoughts. He nodded, then quickly shook his head only to nod again, this time slowly. The action sent a pang of nostalgia through me - it was what he always did when he was deciding something.

"Actually, I was heading to Hattusa myself and I want to know more about you. Who you are. Why you know so much about me. I may come to regret this decision, but, what do you say to travelling there together?"

I didn't even have to think my reply.

"Yes."

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He had only entered the Inn for food, and after filling up and collecting everything the thieves had left on the bed, we left the confines of the Inn to begin our journey under the hot desert sun.

He had no means of transport like Ura had, so we travelled North-West on foot, in relative silence. The terrain was sparsely desert, and mostly farmland with beaten dirt roads leading every which way. We talked, sometimes. Things like 'do you have water?' Or 'should we rest here?' but never anything more substantial.

Neither of us brought the conversation to ourselves, I guess we were both a little afraid of what we would learn. The days went by without much problem. We went from town to town, collecting supplies whilst gradually making our way closer to Hattusa. I found myself sneaking glances at him numerous times, and more times than not, I caught him glancing back.

We stayed in our limbo for just over a fortnight, till we reached a mid-sized town three-quarters of the way to Hattusa. Its buildings were all one or two stories, and made from the same sandstone like material common to all buildings of this place.

For such a large town, so close to the capital, we saw nobody from afar and once we got closer the streets were barren and eerily silent. We ventured inside a well-built building that had not being locked and looked to be abandoned. Inside, we saw the remains of a perfectly good house that had clearly been abandoned.

There was a well-cut wooden table with four stool like fixtures that looked to be chairs in multiple states of disarray around it. One chair was merely knocked over, while another had been destroyed. On the table lay four bowls of soup that were untouched. In the centre was a plate filled with flat bread.

Chiron stepped towards the table and dipped his forefinger into the nearest bowl. Wiping his wet finger on his trouser he turned to me, shaking his head.

"Cold"

He said nothing else, and we made our way back out of the house. A couple more houses we looked in were the same, but there was still no sign of any humanity.

We reached the centre of the town, a large circular area that clearly at one point had been a market place, going by the empty stalls lining the clearing. But those were insignificant. The thing that mattered, was what was in the centre of the clearing.

There, roughly stacked upon each other were at least a hundred bodies. Men. Women. Children. Babies.

The sight was horrific. Corpses in various states of decay lay next to each other, the bodies covered in vile black boils, some of which had popped to ooze out a sickly yellow pus.

Something twitched in the pile, and a giant rat the size of my shoe scurried out and scuttled across the clearing to dissappear into one of the buildings.

My stomach heaved, then rolled, and the vomit came faster than I could stop it. Luckily I was near a ditch of sorts, so I could empty my stomach without much of a mess.

The sight of the bodies hadn't caused me to hurl, not even the rancid sewer rat had. There, in the middle of the city was a pile of decaying corpses.

Only, not everyone in it was dead.