Try fifteen metres to the left of you, the voice in the back of her head murmured. There might be more hope there.

Slowly, she nodded as she moved, pulling her cloak tighter around her. Her claws pressing into the soft, ash-ridden ground she moved those steps that he had advised, eyes scanning over the landscape before her. The same black ground, angled and bare trees and abandoned, sorrowful roofs stretched before her. A grey sky, soaked in the shadows of the billowing smoke from the super-volcano, dressed in the sins of the many before them. In the horizon it itself could be seen; a severely decapitated mountain with naught but his pride to bear him and the slow threat of lava still yet to be released.

When the metres were up, she twisted to stare ahead again. Shifting from foot to foot she angled her beaked head, trying to catch a view of what apparently he had seen. Her line of vision was between two rows of houses, leading in a direct line to the volcano on the horizon, and meeting the vast, hard rocky wave of the strange black substance that had leaked from the crater. The locals said it had flowed like a river, yet was not molten or consequential, like magma was, and had cooled rapidly to reveal this crude rocky formation. Since then, the townsfolk had left, leaving these houses all intact, and fled into the temporary settlements that had sprung up around the rock. They called it 'obsidian,' born from the dark colour that it had, and linking it to the one who had realised its potential in the first few hours. Strong and black, people said it was mine-able, and in the last month that it had existed a strange euphoria had built in the minds of the money-maker guilds, despite the fact that the sky was still burning.

Yet that was not why Stare was here. Indeed, she had met with the settlers. When her and Vitruvion had arrived that morning, his arms tightly curled around her still thin and frigid form, they had meant to come to a place of peace, at the edge of a natural disaster which they could watch and know exactly when it might erupt. Then, their plans, whatever they might be, could be sorted there and then - the ultimate idea had been it was safer to be closer to the volcano, not further away where you could not directly see what was going on. Survivable was entirely probable for both of them, being harmed was nowhere on the agenda. But Vitruvion had made the decision that - after the pain of the last two weeks - being here, on the edge of hell, was better than anywhere where he might have to wait for news of the apocalypse rather than see it directly happening. The man, who really was a god, had a strange way of thinking, and now, with all that she had survived, Stare did not question his decision.

Instead she walked a path under the rain of ash, seeking what he swore he had seen when they had first arrived.

A slit in the obsidian, leading to a moonlight sky, yet in the ground itself. It sounded impossible, yet the two of them had seen the horrors of hell and returned.

Tilting her beak, she shook her head. Still cannot see anything, Vitruvion.

Hmm, he grunted. Are you sure?

She nodded, slowly, tugging her cloak around her. Her thin, though still strong body held its own beneath it. Yeah, I am going to head back, she said. And she began to turn -

When she saw it. A ship, somewhere in the distance, thronging with people. She stared, her black eyes widening in her feathered head. Others are here.