Chapter 34 - A Dreadful Conviction

I am startled awake by a resonant boom. I only hear the tail end of it but I can feel its effects through my bedframe.

My eyes snap open to the oppressive darkness of my room. Another one follows, I catch it in its entirety this time, as my basin rattles a frantic dance against the wood. 

Then comes the screaming.

It’s not a single voice, but a chorus of them. It’s a sound that has haunted my sleepless nights for years. The sound of pure, undiluted terror. 

My heart seizes in my chest, a hard fist of concrete. I twist the skin on my arm in hopes this is just another sleepless night. 

A dull ache finds its spot on my arm as my brain immediately shifts to finding Orville. 

I stumble out of my room and into the main hall.

“Orville?” I call out, as my voice is swallowed by panic. 

There’s no answer. I rush to his room, my hand slapping against the rough timber of the doorframe as I swing inside. The bed is empty, the sheets thrown back in a state of disarray. 

He’s gone.

I’m outside before I can process it. 

There it is, the full force of my nightmare.

Fire, so much fire. The stench of scorched earth and sulphur coat my nose and mouth. 

Houses that were warm and inviting yesterday are now blazing pyres, spitting embers into the sky.

I want to look away. I want to keep it out of my sight. It’s too much to bear witness to again.

How can this be happening to me all over again?

The show must go on. My old mantra of inaction, a ghost from my past I thought I had left behind.

What was I supposed to do to prevent this?

Beneath the sea of flames I catch a glimpse of it. The beast that must have caused all this devastation. Its scales are catching the firelight like a thousand polished pearls. As I focus on the area, its silhouette becomes more clear under the smoke and its stature reveals itself to be truly eldritch. 

My feet are fused to the cobblestones. 

“It can’t be real. It can’t be real. It can’t be real.”

I twist my skin in every direction possible trying to wake myself up.

The blaze doesn’t cease, it only intensifies as wave after wave of heat keeps beating me down.

“You were supposed to honour them by living.”

Just hearing those words in my head gives me a brief moment of clarity. It reminds me of what I signed up for.

“Let stone be cloud, let tether be freed…”

The words come to my lips, not as a thought, but as a desperate, instinctual prayer. My voice is a choked, trembling mess, but the words find power because I know my purpose.

My practice has paid off, my legs move of their own volition as I gasp a shuddering intake of smoky air. and I run.

As I move through the haze, I fail to collect a coherent image of anything other than static. 

I finally break through a layer of smog as I see a villager I don't recognize get pulled down by three small creatures.

They scream my name as the creatures lunge their claws through their throat. I close my eyes knowing it’s too late to help. Tears cascade down my face as the panic beckons to my soul. 

Each flickering remnant of the village I catch is a tableau of violence. There are creatures beyond my comprehension. Dozens of them writhing, chittering in hordes of mismatched parts and impossible anatomies.

I make it to the town square where the carnage is less pronounced. I find myself turning in every direction in an attempt to orient myself. 

It’s head is gone.

It’s body and wings are intact but it’s head is gone. 

From the gaping hole of its severed esophagus, a continuous torrent of incandescent, white-hot flame, sweeps back and forth in a methodical arc of destruction.

The blinding white dissolves wood and stone into glowing slag. The creature moves with an unnatural grace.

No one can win against that, I have to find Elara and Hakota. They can’t take care of themselves.

I can hear the desperate sounds of battle as I grow closer to their home. 

Burning brimstone crashes down just feet away from me, sending a shower of sparks into the air. 

The ground quakes beneath my feet as a vicious roar is unleashed. 

I round the final corner, my lungs burning, my limbs tense. My incantation is fading.

Their home…

It’s annihilated. The front wall has been completely torn away.

Splintered wood and shattered roof tiles litter the ground in a wide field of debris. 

The modest, well-kept house is a gaping wound, open to the night sky. 

I slow to a stop, my breath catching dry in my throat. My eyes are drawn to a single point of colour in the devastation. Lying on a patch of unsigned woodwork is a neatly folded bundle of cloth. It’s my clothes. 

The fabric is clean, the colours still dull. But they sit stark in contrast to the blackened ruin around them. She fixed them. She folded them. She left them for me.

The sight of them, so ordinary and out of place, breaks something inside me. 

A sob escapes to my lips as they finally lose their resolve. 

I continue into their home with a shy hope still present. 

At first, I don’t understand what I’m looking at. It’s just a heap of wreckage, shattered furniture, torn bedding, dark, wet stains that soak into the splintered floorboards. Then my eyes adjust.

They’re there. 

Lying amidst the ruin. It’s not two bodies, but a single, tangled shape of mangled flesh and bone, barely recognizable as human. I can see a flash of rusty hair, matted into the rug. The shape of a hand. Fingers interlocked in a final, desperate grip with another. 

I’m branded with pure horror that will never be healed. 

My stomach heaves, as I stumble back. My hand catches my mouth to stifle a scream that threatens to rip me apart from the inside out.