The snow was pure white, almost soft-looking. It fell gently onto the floor.
This wasn't the same place I saw about a week ago. It was overrun by nature. Vines grew on the walls of buildings, trees sprouted out of others, and the sky—the sky is beautiful, almost a different hue of blue.
Then there was the air. It almost felt nourishing to my soul. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't think this was the academy.
The academy did have wildlife, but not to this extent. Most plants struggled to grow here, since the only water source was the spring on top of the mountain that flowed through the campus. Then there was the fact that the campus was a small plot of land surrounding the mountain at its base, just for the academy to be surrounded by deadland.
Deadland was what people also called the wasteland. It had multiple names: Beastland, No Man's Land, and Cursed Land. It was because growing wildlife there was so hard, almost as if life there was banished. Only a few things could survive in that environment. People under the prayers of Vivi and some plants that liked the soil and lack of water.
This is why this place was ideal for building an academy. The academy had a good natural resource, separated from any other living land. It isolated not only the students for learning, but also kept enemies away. Attacking living land from the wastelands was always a hassle; it cost a fortune. If a country were to do that, it would be better if they did it on another plot of land more valuable, such as an amber stone mine.
Usually, such attacks were carried out by air raids, but clearly, as I learned below, this wasn't that. I am looking at the proof right now. If it did happen, all these buildings wouldn't be standing like they are right now. They may have been in ruin.
Then, there was the fact that nature was everywhere. It was a completely different environment. Air raids wouldn't have done any of this. No, this was something completely different.
Recalling the book I read down in the bunker, the words pop back up in my mind. "Miasma," "mutation," and "unknown."
As I looked up, I could see the snow stop falling as the sun peeked out from the clouds. This was the first time in quite a while that the sun had hit me. I was paler than before because of it.
As I walked through the campus, I noticed several things. Nature overran the campus, yes, but there was something else to it. There were different plants, plants I had never even seen before. Plants that were out of the ordinary.
I got close to one, and I could feel it radiate coldness. It looked almost frosted. It had a light blue color to it, with thorns on the stem. It grew on the side of a building, alongside multiple other flowers of the same kind. The building was almost iced where it grew.
As I touched the plant, I could feel a light sting from it, causing me to pull back my finger and yelp a bit. Ael noticed this and yelled at me to keep up. Amiel wasn't that far behind him.
Ael wanted to go to the medical center, since he wanted to take better care of my wounds. He was worried that my wounds would be infected. This would allow him to clean my wounds properly and patch me up.
We had the tools to patch me up down in the bunker, but didn't have much to clean me up properly. Doing all this was just an extra layer of precaution, he said.
Amiel still followed us because we all thought there was still a sense of danger in walking around alone. If it wasn't for that, he would have just left us.
We didn't have a real connection to him. He was just someone we helped while he helped us. It was a forced relationship, unlike me and Ael.
Ael and I may have started off as a forced relationship, but it grew into a real friendship. My first friendship.
I honestly didn't know what it meant to be friends, other than looking out for each other. All I knew was that this relationship I had with him was more than I ever had with anyone else—well, besides my mother, of course. To be fair, I've never tried to talk to anyone before. I thought it was a waste of time and put me in too much danger.
Despite being from different backgrounds and levels of nobility, everyone here shared one goal. Getting out of this place safely. We all wanted to get home and find out what truly went down while we were in that bunker.
Off in the distance, I could hear a bird whistle. Turning towards the direction, a piece of rubble from one of the ruined buildings falls onto the snow.
The bird was coated in the white powder that fell from the sky—no, that was the actual color of its feathers. Not only did the plants change, but the animals did too.
'What happened in such a short time?' I thought.
A gust of wind blows past me as my eyes follow the bird, just to look away a moment later. After being out here for a few minutes, I can feel my face start to flush from the cold. We may have made some heavy cloaks from the clothes down in the bunker, but there was still much need for warmth.
It was taking us a while to walk to the medical center, seeing as it was halfway across campus. There was also the fact that some of the paths that existed were no longer. Some buildings fell over, blocking the path, while some wildlife grew, making it hard to get past. We had to find different ways around it. We also had to take breaks once in a while since my stamina was shot from the beating I took down in the bunker. A trip that should have taken about twenty minutes took about an hour.
As we approached the building, it was closing in at about one o'clock. The sun was setting faster, since it was winter, meaning we would most likely have to spend the night here.
"Hurry up," Amiel said, waving his hand as to tell me to walk faster.