Flauraan

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Pulling myself off of the bed, I swept my eyes around my room and quickly reasoned that nothing I owned would be of any particular use to me that morning. Wasting no time, I crossed to the door and entered the hallway, turned and then headed towards the front door. Opening the door, I hesitated for a moment, wondering whether I should inform my parents that I was leaving or not. I decided against it, not wanting to trouble them again after the emotional response I gleaned last night.

With that I slipped silently through the doorway, carefully shutting the door behind me before setting off at a run towards town.

It was not quite dawn yet, but it was not far off, as evidenced by the rapidly lightening sky.

I hoped that the humans wouldn't detonate the bomb early, as that would be disastrous and end everything before we even got a chance to fight. Well, that's true of any bomb but in this case it would be worse because of the waiting Weraynians. I shuddered involuntarily, and quickly pushed the thoughts away. There would be time to worry about that evil race later on.

I arrived at the centre of town in record time, and discovered the Counsel building empty, along with the surrounding buildings. I quickly turned around and took the road that led to the field, going fast and catching up with them not far from the force field boundary.

Quite a lot of the town was travelling in quick procession towards it. The leaders were at the head of the crowd, and each Paladanian seemed to be holding a shield. There weren't many Halapatovians there, and looking around at each of them told me that none of their people were carrying any kind of visible defensive object. Knowing of their powers though, I assumed they could summon up their own sort of shield at will.

I weaved expertly through the crowd, and quickly found Ray.

"Oh, hello Abigail." He greeted tiredly, and handed me a shield of my own. "We thought you'd turn up."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." I responded grimly, getting a hold on my new shield and staring forward as I moved with the crowd.

Suddenly the entire body of people stopped as one. Craning my neck as the throng panned out, I realised we had reached the force field. Behind the shimmering barrier could be seen large machines, all wired together to create the dreaded bomb, as well as the humans who had been preparing to detonate it. Each human there had a look of utter surprise on their face, coupled with fear. Clearly they had not been expecting this.

I saw the Halapatovian leaders at the front raise their hands to face the force field, and with a sudden, loud, electrical snap, the force field dissolved before them.

It was too much for the watching humans. Half of them turned and fled, yelling for a retreat, as the other half stood defiant yet uncertain still in our way.

The front row of the crowd took a jolting step forward, and I could see panic closing in on the faces of the remaining humans. They were outnumbered, they knew that much, and so they were drawing on the one advantage they had left; their technology. Though our general standards of technology were good, theirs were outstanding. Their weapons and machinery surpassed anything that we Paladanians used, and was almost as advanced as what the Weraynians had.

So we watched as one of the humans pulled out a communicator and barked into it before running away, and the rest of them pulled out their guns.

Bolts of energy flew straight at us, but we had those shields for a reason. The shields were all turned on, giving off their own hums of energy. Each shot was deflected easily. The humans stared in disbelief, and that was when we began to advance again.