Beneath the calm morning sun, Daisy Riddle stood atop a grassy slope and stared in abject horror.

She wasn't supposed to have ended up here. She wasn't even supposed to be [i]near[/i] anywhere [i]like[/i] here. It was her surefire way of avoiding trouble: always follow the maps, and the maps clearly said that this was supposed to be a quiet forest route through a small town with some nice views and a friendly populace.

Instead, she'd found ruin.

A swath had been cut out of the landscape, as if some vast hand had reached down from the sky and dragged one finger across the earth. Flattened, broken, blackened trees, seething pools of caustic rot, the jutting foundations of buildings that had been pulverized out of existence. Daisy blinked, and squinted, and rubbed her eyes, but the vision did not disappear.

Even with the harsh truth stretched out before her, a part of the young girl refused to accept it. Surely nothing of this scale could just [i]happen[/i]- especially not around her. It was a trick of the light, or a forest fire; the town on the maps would be just around the corner from here. She breathed in, steadying herself. That had to be it. She just had to follow the maps, and everything would be okay again. [color=fff200]"Follow the maps..."[/color]

And so Daisy stumbled onward, a bright and frail figure wading helplessly through a trail of death.