The Dragon Chase: A Tale of the Everburning City

Chapter 11: Mia

For the first time tonight, Corporal Mia Vascel was glad to have no one else around.

For the last few hours, her fear had grown as the number of people with her diminished, from over a dozen to just two others, and now, only the old Sergeant. Right now she was one old heartbeat away from being alone, as far away from the City as anyone alive could be, with a breach in the wall. It was nerve-wracking, and she dearly wished for company.

Until right now, she mused to herself as she ran. That old heartbeat belonged to an old man who was kicking her ass in a half-mile run.

She darted around an obstacle and took a few quick steps away from it before she recognised what it was. A single solid brick, half again as tall as her, with a thick bar of steel poking out of one side.

It had been a part of the wall, no more than an hour ago.

Up ahead, Valen had slowed to a quick walk, as he approached the gap, where nothing but darkness had replaced a section of the wall. She smiled in relief, for long enough to realise the old sergeant had readied his Salamander and started marching.

She dashed to catch up with him, stopping a few feet away and slinging her weapon off her shoulders. "Sir! Any sign of the Lieutenant?"

"Nothing yet," Valen replied. But his gaze wasn't set towards the watchtower, where the Lieutenant had brought down the Golem.

He was staring at the world beyond the last wall. Into the impenetrable grey shadows of the Gloam, still lingering beyond the fading pilot lights.

Mia turned to look, and nearly cried aloud.

The mountain of stone that had started pummelling the wall was lying, broken, in the distance. Immense pieces of it were severed and scattered, chunks hewn apart and blown so far that most of its ruined form had already been swallowed by the Gloam.

But the broken Golem was not what had drawn the old Sergeant's attention. Mia followed his gaze and caught sight of something else moving in the distance.

Caught in the flickering firelight, the shadows of figures darted in and out of sight. Mia thought she could see dozens, and silently prayed she was wrong.

Valen stopped behind a piece of stone slightly larger than a table; a piece of debris that afforded a generous line of sight through the breach. He waved for Mia to follow, as he scanned the horizon.

"We need to hold here," Valen said, and stepped behind one of the larger pieces of stone in the breach. He began taking rounds out of his pockets and lining them in groups of four along the rocks in front of him.

"Sir? I thought we were grabbing the Lieutenant?"

"We are," he said, smiling. He pointed further into the field, to a solitary shape moving in the shadows. "She's on her way. But those things..." he pointed out past the gap in the wall, where flickering shadows suggested the presence of hundreds of figures. "Might cut us off. And if we can't light up those fields, they'll chase us right up to the next wall. So we hold until she arrives, then we run like the invasion is right on our heels."

"It is," Mia hissed. She was twitching, anxious, her eyes darted erratically, and she struggled to contain her nerves.

"Aim for the chest. Those things are animated by the Gloam in their lungs. Puncture it, and they stop," Valen reminded her, slowly and clinically. The relaxed, almost bored tone of voice was a reassuring contrast to the panic she felt, and helped force her to take a slow, deep breath.

The endless months of drilling clicked suddenly, in the back of Mia's mind. She recalled the first entry in the manual: The Gloamtaken were animated by the Gloam that sat inside of them, playing them like a puppet. To cut those strings, force the Gloam out.