Building A Fortress 6

Irene gasped and sunk to her knees, with tears streaming down her face. "Ella, you're finally here. Marcus...he..."

"I know. I used a sedative to calm him down." Ella whispered and held out her hand to pull the woman back to her feet.

She found them when the beast was scaling the trees. But she remained in the shadows and watched them fall into desperation. To gain the full loyalty of the regular humans, Ella even manipulated the mutated plants to attack them until they lost hope, before making an appearance.

Her methods might be vile, and her schemes sinister. But to imprint a powerful image of herself in the hearts of her future followers, she would've even led mutated animals to encircle them before coming to their rescue.

What Ella wanted was to recruit people who would never betray her in the face of personal gain or preservation. And to do that in this crumbling world, she needed to instill both gratitude and fear in the hearts of the weaker humans, which could've only been p