Displaced

Chapter 7

Arlette Faredin awoke to fire. The north gate of Zrukhora, once a mighty and proud landmark of the fledgling metropolis, now was nothing more than a mass of melting rubble. Flames raged before her, consuming the sprawling mass of wooden building near the entrance and spreading inward with devastating quickness. Her people were somewhere in that inferno. She took a step forward as a large, strong hand grabbed her arm.

"Let me go!" she cried, refusing its pull as strongly as she could.

"Letty, we 'ave ta go!" Jaquet insisted.

Arlette continued to struggle against the large man's grip. "No! They might still be alive in there!" she cried.

"There's na way anybody survived in there. We need ta leave, now!"

"You don't know that! Maybe Akiva or Trip got a shield up! I can't leave while there's still a chance!"

"Don' be a fool, Letty! We 'ave ta leave now, before it's too-"

A deafening, earth-trembling roar unlike anything Arlette had ever heard shook her to her core. A primal fear surged through her being, any thoughts of rescuing her subordinates drowning in the tsunami of terror. The two shared a look before they both turned and fled for their lives.

With a tremendous crash, something gigantic and terrible landed amidst the burning debris behind them. Arlette risked a look back for just a moment and immediately regretted it. The impossible animal stood more than thirty paces high, and must have been over a hundred paces long from snout to tail. Not a single hair sprouted from its scaly, red and black mottled hide. It had a gaping maw that could easily swallow her whole, and wings sprouting from its back that looked large enough to block out the sun itself, but neither of those things were what unnerved her the most. No, that distinction went to the beast's glowing golden eyes, devoid of iris and pupil. They seemed to take in everything, like they stared directly into her soul.

A second mighty roar emerged from the beast's enormous throat. The initial fireball and its aftermath had attracted a large group of onlookers, wondering what had happened to the nearby gate. The initial roar had stunned and confused many of them, their minds unable to process its significance. It was the appearance of the beast and its second roar that sent the entire crowd into a panic, starting a stampede of terrorized people that threatened to trample Arlette and Jaquet if they were too slow.

"Wait for me!" came a shouted from her left. Oh, right. She'd completely forgotten that Basilli was there too. Three sprinted away as fast as they could from the monster and the oncoming stampede.

Without delay, the hulking behemoth began destroying each and every man-made structure in its vicinity before unleashing another ball of flames upon some poor fools who'd thought it a good idea to send some projectiles its way. Then it took flight, heading towards the western side of the city.

"What's the plan?" panted Basilli as the three of them continued their non-stop sprint southward.

"We're sitting ducks here," Arlette said. "We have to get out of the city as fast as possible."

"Aye," agreed Jaquet. "But 'ow should we get there?"

"We have to cut through the citadel. It takes up too much space in the center of the city for us to go all the way around it. We get through there, grab our stuff from the inn, commandeer a cart, and get as far away from this accursed place as possible."

"Best plan I've heard all day," Basilli said.

By now panic had seized the entire populace, throngs of screaming people moving this way and that. The group's progress suddenly slowed as masses of bodies clogged the streets.