Angel Monarch

The rest of their group slowly gotten used to flying on the hippogryphs, but they still weren\'t very comfortable. The only ones who actually enjoyed it were Sera, Bea and Vicky.

Vicky\'s mount was a younger, small, gray mare. Kastral said he was about 5 year old and it wasn\'t his son. She was flying all over the place laughing, it brought a big smile on both of her mother\'s faces.

The Sun was about to set when they reached Brema, but they knew from kilometers away that they were close.

About hundred years ago there was a large war on Earth, it nearly destroyed humans and the planet. But from its ashes new people, smarter people rose.

They figured out technologies previously thought impossible. After some time they even began colonizing the solar system, but greed is something no society can escape.

In those times the world was made up of 7 continents and each became its own country. Their shapes and sizes changed from the previous large scale war, when countries threw miniature suns at each other... At least that\'s how the records say it happened.

Currently they were in the continent of Europe. In the past before the Apocalypse it was the strongest out of the 7. The people of this country made the first bases on the Moon, Mars, Mercury and Venus.

They were the first ones to discover cloning, gene manipulation. With these their society became a superpower within a few years. Their population rose into the tens of billions and with agricultural scientific improvements they could not just feed themselves, but other continents as well.

But of course they didn\'t trust the other 6, so they also made sure to have the largest military this world has ever known. And the heart of this military was Brema.

A huge military city with tens of millions of soldiers stationed there constantly. Large flying warships carrying thousands of spacecraft. Weapons that could decimate cities with ease.

Sera saw one of those warships on a picture once. It was about 15 or so kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide, back then she thought they were really powerful and nothing could take them down... Now she knew better.

Just like every other strong empire Europe fell because of its hubris. The people back then became too confident in their technology, their weaponry, their soldiers. They didn\'t even know how they died.

In school they learned a lot about the past, the source were patchy at best, but it was something. They learned about humanity\'s fall, then the rise of the 7 continents and eventually... The Last War.

It happened right before the mass Realm Gate opening and the Apocalypse.

They actually knew it before hand. Their technologies became less and less accurate, like some outside force was disrupting the signals.

At first they lost contact with all the colonies outside of Earth\'s orbit. To this day no one knows what happened to them, some say that the gates opened on those planets as well, others speculate they are still out there, confused about what\'s happening on Earth.

For a couple more days the Earth\'s Moon still lasted, but then it became silent as well. They tried to fly to the Moon, but the high grade navigation systems and ion powered engines all failed.

At that point there were billions of humans living on different planets in our solar system... By their knowledge all of them are dead, just like the billions living on Earth.

But this was only the beginning, since their whole life was based around these techs, when they suddenly stopped working came the first famine in hundreds of years. In the span of a few months a quarter of the population died... Close to 30 billion people...

Then the Last War started, every country attacked Europe... They believed the unresponsive technologies were their fault. They didn\'t even care that the famines hit Europe the hardest.

The war never really had a conclusion, but today their group will see the aftermath of the last battle before the Apocalypse. A relic of the old world, Brema –– The military capital of Europe.

They flew high in the sky, but the craters were big even from up there. For the past hour below them were only destroyed military vehicles, crashed planes and the skeletons of long dead soldiers.

The city was still just a speck on the darkening horizon, but the destruction only got worse. They couldn\'t even begin to understand the scale of this battle, even after their own fights and war... Compared to this, their war was like a joke.

Their were craters that spanned kilometers and inside them were even smaller ones. Judging by the skeletons they used a giant missile to destroy a large amount of terrain, then dropped smaller ones to use as trenches.

\'They were truly the military genius of their era.\'

The strange thing was that even after 25 years, nothing grew here, like this part of the land was truly dead with no chance of ever being alive again.

\'So that\'s why Azriel chose this place to live in. He feels comfortable with the corpses.\'

Flying through the field of death, there weren\'t even monsters living here.

"I hope we finish this hunt soon, this place gives me the creeps"

Said Sera through the bond. Kastral looked back at her with a strange expression, like surprise.

"Really? This tiny battlefield? The others told me that Aerin\'s destruction was as big as one of your continents... But it is hard to judge since Aerin is bigger than Earth and also not a planet."

\'So Aerin is one of those special realms.\'

It is a rare phenomenon humans observed. A lot of realms weren\'t planets, they were more like land floating in nothingness. They were much bigger than Earth, but you could actually fall off its edge.

Every realm was different in some way... unique. But all of them had one common denominator, intelligent life.

While imagining all the realms she learned about, they began their descent towards the city.

It was gigantic, even bigger than Castleburg. The city was also destroyed, but not like Havel or Hannover... No, this city was a proper ruin.

Whatever bombs those past humans used, they didn\'t spare anyone. Every building was either just a pile of rubble or could crumble by the slightest touch.

Very carefully they landed on a semi stable building and went inside. Whatever it was in the past, it had a huge door so the hippogryphs could easily fit inside too.

After making sure there weren\'t any monsters hiding, they made a fire and cooked meat... A lot of meat since there were a lot more and larger mouths to feed.

This was another problem, there weren\'t any monsters for about 50 kilometers. Hunting was going to be an issue so they needed to finish this hunt fast.

Faith and Lucy went away to do some scouting. Clockwork just walked around the area trying to find a sign of Azriel, but something was disrupting his signal.

While waiting for them to come back they took out the eggs as well. The warmth they got from the leaves and fur was negligible, barely enough for them to survive. Usually a hippogryph egg would hatch in about 4 months, but for that one parent has to constantly sit on it.

Because of all the moving around they didn\'t sit on them as much as they should have. The eggs were more than two months late and it started to worry the parents. There were so few of them left and most were a bit old, if these batch of children don\'t make it... They didn\'t even want to think about it.

Luckily for them Bea quickly got to work and soon reported that the eggs are fine, they just need a couple more weeks to hatch. When she told them this information, all of them began snuggling her and while she was trying to push them away with an embarrassed look, Sera was rolling on the ground from laughter.

When night came and darkness spread Lucy and Faith returned with bad news. There was no sign of Azriel anywhere in the city, which meant one of two things. Either he moved away, that was very unlikely or he could simply hide so well neither of them could find him.

They decided to continue the search tomorrow and just to be safe non of them would sleep this night. Since they were evolved staying up for more than 24 hours wasn\'t much of an issue.

Sera was looking down at the ruins, deep in thought. She didn\'t even notice when Bea sat down next to her. When she placed an arm around her shoulder she yelped and nearly summoned her sword. But then she just settled back and continued watching the city in complete silence.