Page 437 of Of Empires and Dust

Neera raked lightning across more of the creatures that flooded from a side street, but they swarmed over their dead, unrelenting.

“Lightning Storm!” Four Battlemages charged from the building beside Rist and Neera, threads of Air, Spirit, and Fire whirling about them. Rist joined his threads to theirs, howling wind smashing the kerathlin against the walls and the ground, lightning tearing them to pieces.

“Justicar Irudan,” one of the men said when the threads faded, grasping Rist’s arm, then Neera’s. “Where are you headed?”

“To the tower,” Rist answered.

“Well, you’re either fucking stupid or fucking crazy. Either way?—”

The man’s words were cut short by a roar that tore across the sky. Rist looked up to see a dark shape illuminated amidst the clouds by flashes of lightning. Slowly, the clouds began to glow with an incandescent light. They swirled apart as a pillar of dragonfire erupted from the dense canopy and poured down in the distance.

The dark clouds swirled again, the rain physically parting as the inconceivable shape of Helios descended, obscured by the buildings. Within a few heartbeats, the great dragon rose into Rist’s field of vision once more. The dragon had one of those monstrous scaled creatures thrashing in its talons, luminous yellow eyes misting in the night.

With a crack of his wings, Helios rose higher and at the same time bit down into the creature’s back, then unleashed dragonfire over it, rising higher and higher until Helios was once more swallowed by the stormclouds. A roar thundered, and the flaming body of the giant monster dropped like a meteor into the city.

“Depth Stalkers,” Justicar Irudan muttered to himself. “What in the gods is happening?”

“You know those monsters?” Rist asked.

“We lost hundreds to one of those bastards in the scouring of Kolmir. They should not be here.”

In the back of Rist’s mind, he heard a high-pitched ringing noise, barely audible, as subtle as a whisper. “Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That noise… It’s…” The ground shook beneath Rist’s feet, gently at first, then stronger and stronger until cracks spread through the stone. “Go!”

Rist grabbed Neera and pushed her back towards the tower, shouting at the others. “Run!”

He glanced over his shoulder to see the ground falling away, cracks spreading, a hole forming. Two of the mages fell, the screams swallowed by that high pitched ring. Justicar Irudan and the other mage turned to look for their companions when kerathlin flooded from the newly formed hole in the ground, washing over them in a wave of stone carapace and black claw.

“They’re making tunnels,” Rist said to himself as he ran, lungs heaving.

Rist and Neera moved from street to street, making their way towards the High Tower near the city’s centre.

“Please!” a voice called. “Help us! My wife is?—”

Rist never even saw the man who had shouted. The only noise that followed was screams. Everywhere they went, citizens flooded the streets, screaming and shouting, trampling each other as they fled in the dark and the hammering rain, the clouds blocking out the moonlight from above. The streets ran red with blood, and bodies lay everywhere.

At first, Rist tried to help those he saw. He was a Battlemage, and they looked to him for protection. But no matter what he did, every soul he came across died. It was all he could do to keep himself and Neera safe as they moved.

They turned a corner into a wide street where Lorian soldiers stood in a tight circle around a group of screaming men and women. The soldiers hacked and slashed as the kerathlin scuttled around them and ripped at them with obsidian claws.

Rist was moving towards them before he even realised it, opening himself to the Spark, drawing in threads of Air, Earth, Fire, and Spirit.

Being a Battlemage had to mean something. Whether he’d been lied to or not, it meant something. He would never become an Arcarian. That would not be his mark on the world, his permanence. Nor did he want it to be.

He would not be remembered in the books and stories. He would be the only Rist Havel, and he would be remembered in the hearts and the minds of the people who knew him, the people he saved, and the people he loved.

That would be his permanence, and he would take pride in knowing he stood when he could have run.

Neera sprinted at his side. She didn’t question him or tell him to turn back. All she said was, “Tell me what you need.”

Rist lashed out with threads of Air, sending a wave of concussive force through the writhing swarm of kerathlin and carving a path to the soldiers and citizens. The creatures shrieked and hissed as they were launched into the air.

The soldiers stared open-mouthed at Rist and Neera as they charged through the channel created by the Spark.

“Pack in tight!” Rist roared, pointing to the soldiers and the men and women they shielded, a slew of bodies about them. The soldiers did as commanded, compacting in around the citizens, swords and shields held high.

---