OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

020 || Just Us, Together

CHAPTER TWENTY -        Just Us, Together ..

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          The rules you think you know must vanish and once they do, the darkness lifts — a cupola of spotted brightness stared back at them through the images broadcasted by all the drone cameras. This beast was a sun which grew in size and brightness, way past the point in which the image corruption of the first line of drones turned from expanding burns on their lenses into total annihilation of their system. By the time the howling sound hurred through the speakers into the hearts of the witnesses gathered in that room, a time which was by no means longer than a blink of an eye, the sheer energy of the blast was specking glitches into the second line of drones.

And it was a howling sound that reassembled a tempest, a typhoon, a force of nature that is unafraid and shameless in its noise. Though their speakers could do its greatness no real justice, it vibrated through clear enough for tears to gather in Daphne's eyes. She's skipped several blinks to watch the bright light take the shape of a mushroom cloud surrounded twice by circles. Her mouth hung agape, but the corners of her lips met the product of her obsession with a smile.

The sound it brought inside that chamber was inhuman, much as it was human-made, drawing silence from everyone in the room, everyone but Daphne, who leant back in her seat and sighed as if some great relief has finally been lifted off her burdened shoulders, "Le silence, l'espace affreux et captivant..."

She went as far as closing her eyes though everyone else watched in terror as the second row of drones was starting to tremor, taking more and more damage from the explosion whose light was dying out. But the groaning sound's fade is what Daphne was looking for when she indulged herself with the taste of satisfaction — for ten years, she's dreamt of this moment. Day and night, she's been haunted by this behemoth and her purpose of bringing its divine fury back amongst men. She owed the frightened child laying alone in that hospital bed and staring at her ceiling with small hands covering her ears a moment to take it all in — she inhaled slowly — and let it all go.

Upon her exhale, Daphne opened her eyes and stood up, raising her voice with strength to address everyone else in the room, "Start moving the second row backwards, at constant speed so we don't deteriorate the shield integritiy. Someone get me Officer Cress on the line!"

From the moment she raised from her seat, Coriolanus noticed the radiance of victory upon Daphne's features return to her the years she had lost to endless mind gymnastics and maddening struggles against atomic problems. She was, in the best way possible, a changed woman now, as people like them often are after the product of their labored obsession comes to a satisfying conclusion. The relief was an elevating high — perhaps they too counted as artists whose stage was not some small thing before a restricted crowd, but instead the whole world, a canvas at their disposal.

"That's enough," Daphne pointed at the screens. "The blast won't get any further. Stop the drones there."

"Officer's on the line."

Daphne wasted not even a single second in snatching the microphone from the table, lifting it up to her mouth and its cone attachment to her ear. "I need the entire coastline from District 4, up to ten kilometers in-land evacuated quietly, within the next hour."

"Ravinstill," Dr. Watt pretty much gasped, sitting up so violently his chair fell over behind him. Daphne closed and left the device back on the table before turning around and seeing that Watt was pointing at the screens. "The third row drones."