Page 157 of Elven Crown

The air filling this main strip, which acted as a bottleneck ravine through the amusement park, felt particularly stale, shielded from the breezes rolling through the woods surrounding the property and blowing in across the open fields.

As a result, the silence had only thickened, drowning out the already hushed sounds of Rebecca and her team moving across the chipped and slanted cobblestones.

Like all the other buildings, these also lacked their windows and most of their doors. The wooden balconies extending from the second-story windows slanted dangerously, many of their floors having already given way and caved in.

Others had buckled to the point of threatening to break from the building’s facade and crash down onto the equally rundown wooden porches extending into the main strip at ground level.

The likelihood of enemy targets lying in wait for the rescue team within the second-story rooms above seemed infinitesimal, judging by the state of these buildings. But the Shade team couldn’t assume anything at this point. Not after doing so had gotten them blown up once already.

They’d almost reached the center of the abandoned main drag, pausing only to aim their weapons inside the doorless storefronts before confirming the rooms beyond were empty.

None of them could have predicted the return of that awful, head-splitting roar before it crashed again through the entire park, much louder and therefore far closer than the last time.

Maxwell stopped. The team stopped behind him. Nearly everyone swayed or staggered beneath the onslaught of such a physically powerful bellow rising across the park before they regained their balance.

The Western-town buildings trembled violently on either side of them, floorboards creaking and snapping, window frames and loose, haphazardly crooked shutters rattling against wooden frames. From the direction of the saloon behind them came the tinkle of shattering glass before the buildings themselves fell apart.

One especially loud creak and groan came from a second-story room on Rebecca’s left. She had just enough time to consider the fact that if these buildings folded and buckle and collapse inward toward each other and the center of the main strip, she and her team wouldn’t even have the time to flee toward either end of the main street.

They would be crushed by both buildings converging upon the center of the street.

Then the deafening roar ended, its echo continuing for several seconds before the silence crept back in around them. Something in the building on their right shifted significantly.

The ensuing creak from above sounded far more like weighted movement than simple foundational settling. Something solid and heavy thumped onto the wooden floor up on the second story, making the floorboards groan again as it rolled for several seconds.

The sound cut off, as if someone had reached down to stop the rolling object with a hand.

Something else shifted again almost directly above Rebecca before wood splintered and snapped apart. Half the balcony overhead broke free and dropped.

She leapt back, narrowly avoiding the chunk of warped and splintered balcony plummeting toward where she’d just stood. It clattered onto the wildly uneven cobblestones at her feet, splintering even more and sending up a thick cloud of dry, dusty dirt and wood chips.

Then the next warning cry changed everything.

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“Up on the balconies!” Shell shouted.

As if that shout of alarm were the secret password, everything went to hell.

The attack rained down on Rebecca and her team from the second-floor balconies she’d been so sure couldn’t have held any extra weight, let alone what now looked like a dozen enemy combatants opening fire.

Brilliant bursts of organic magical light and augmented magitek rounds blasted down at them from those balconies in staccato bursts.

“Cover!” Maxwell roared as the team ducked or tried to pinpoint their attackers to return fire. “Take cover first! Then we’ll beat them back!”

In seconds, the team broke into pairs, half of them offering cover fire so the other could dive toward shelter before their roles reversed.

Rebecca couldn’t help but think how easily they’d walked right into this one. Or how easy the enemy must have found it now to open fire on them from above.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

She moved for cover while augmented gunfire blistered through the air, filling it with the crackling static of conjured attacks and battle magic.

Despite their dilapidated state, the storefronts lining the main avenue still had plenty of substance left to add more noise and debris to the chaos.

Glass smashed and shattered, busting out of window frames or toppling off shelves inside. Chunks of stripped wood and splinters rained down everywhere. Fragments of the old buildings burst apart and fell away beneath both enemy targets on the second-story balconies and Shade operatives down below.

Rebecca dove through the closest storefront doorway and pressed her back against the wall beside it, exchanging intermittent weapons fire and snarling at herself.

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