The Dragon Chase: A Tale of the Everburning City

Chapter 9: Valen

For more than a hundred feet across its length, the wall bulged into the farmlands behind it. Steel reinforcement strained to hold the crushed stone in place. Deep cracks ran from the pulverised section; a monstrous spider's web of jagged rivulets that ran in all directions from the shattered bricks that barely hung in place. A third of the wall, from the top, had been scattered across the fields behind, pounded into rubble by the horrifying onslaught of the Golem's immense fists.

Valen watched the window with clenched teeth, with one hand resting on the frame. Despite the darkness, and the cloud-covered sky, the fires from the various pilot-lights and exhaust ports along the walls left the farmlands below well lit, and anything more than a yard tall left a long shadow. It was easy to track Lieutenant Rustov as she cut through the fields to the nearest watchtower.

"Don't you dare die, kid. I've spent too much time on you already..." he muttered to himself. His fingers tapped restlessly on the stone.

His only company, Corporal Mia Vascel, heard him mutter, and asked, "What do you mean?"

He cringed and looked back to the former gunnery specialist. "I trained the Lieutenant from enlistment. She's been deployed on the last wall for almost five years," he told her, and smiled as he said it. "I've known her since her first day in the service."

He remembered her during her time as a recruit, with a handful of others selected for the last wall. She had been eager to impress, and quick to obey from the first hours she wore the uniform. He had feared, for a time, that she was too willing to obey.

Whatever else he might have said was interrupted as the air itself howled in pain. The Golem smashed its fist into the wall again, breaking another train-car sized section of stone into rubble and scattering bits of rock across the field.

Mia cringed, as she shook her head. "Abyss below, sir. I know I've said it before, but I wish we had some real firepower out here. It's hard to be doing nothing while that thing slugs the wall."

Valen shook his head, sadly. "You'll get your chance. I wish I couldn't guarantee that. But we're not making our last stand out here over a few acres of sugar cane. When I set you up, you'll have enough firepower for a fighting chance."

He smiled as he watched the Lieutenant crawl out of one of the irrigation lines after the bits of stone stopped falling. She climbed to the top of the trench, glanced up for a moment at the ruins of the wall she had passed, and carried on.

She grew smaller and smaller, until all Valen could follow her by were the long shadows the torches cast. She was making good time, likely pushing herself to make it to the watchtower.

It was a good instinct, Valen thought to himself. The wall didn't have a lot of fight left.

Again, the Golem swung its immense fist into the wall, and another building's worth of stone was reduced to pebbles and dust, as stone cracked and crumbled beneath its onslaught. The sound of the blow was more force than noise, causing Valen to exhale sharply and pause for breath.

"She's inside," Mia said, from beside him. Valen nodded and smiled, his hand fidgeting on his short-sword impatiently.

"What did it take to put that thing down?" Mia asked as Amelian disappeared from view. Valen turned to Mia, and found that she had settled her gaze on the Golem. For the first time since it had appeared, it wasn't fear in her eyes.

"A lot," Valen said simply, and flinched as she shot him a glare. Involuntarily, he found himself remembering his distant past; exhausted crews packing shot into cannons, and metal balls as large as his head pattering like hail against the towering form marching towards them. He shuddered and focused himself. "Round shot takes off chunks, but I've seen one shrug off an hour of it. Incendiary shot is more effective..."

"But you'd be close enough to hit it with a Salamander," Mia finished for him. Something caught her eye, and she glanced back to the distant tower, fixing her gaze on something in the distance. "She's out."

Valen smiled, as he caught sight of the Lieutenant. He was just in time to watch her point her Salamander straight up, and fire a long jet of blue flame into the air. The blue flash burned into Valen's eyes like a bolt of lightning, and looked startlingly surreal against the faint red light and long shadows. Despite himself, Valen eagerly turned away to wind the wheel that controlled the distribution line.

"Mia, check the exhaust ports along the far segment of the wall. Make sure they're cold," Valen ordered as he returned to the window. Corporal Vascel turned to the furthest windows across the room and scanned the far wall.

"Cold and dark out there, sir!" she exclaimed as she returned to his side. "What's the Lieutenant doing now?

Valen glanced down, to see a shadowy figure dash through the doorway, and out of sight. "She's waiting inside the watchtower."

"What do we do now?" Mia asked.

"We watch," Valen said.

Along the wall, the exhaust ports flared up, pouring out long jets of red fire into the air. The light caught the Golem, which suddenly seemed immensely tall, as even the towering columns of flame were dwarfed by the mountain raising its impossibly large fist to strike the wall yet again.

Stone screamed as the Golem's arm stretched behind its bulk, just as the wall seemed to throw itself to meet it.

Valen felt the light first. The flash of red fire hit his eyes like a blow, and he reflexively shut his eyes and started to turn his head away.

Right about then something hit him, hard. The force knocked him away from the window, skidding along the stone floor almost halfway across the room. It pushed the air out of his lungs and left him dazed as he slid to a stop, nearly ten feet from the window.

He didn't try to rise for a long moment. He was too shocked to do more than lie on his back and stare up at the ceiling in disbelief. After he drew in a few slow breaths, he glanced around to find Mia.

The corporal was on her stomach, her Salamander still in her hand. The explosion had knocked her far enough to reach the controls in the middle of the room. She seemed to have taken the hit well, as she smiled when she caught Valen's gaze.

"Burning hell!" she exclaimed. She pushed herself off the floor, gingerly, and turned her head left and right before trying her feet. "That worked!"

Valen smiled as he stood. The grin wouldn't leave his face, despite the ache in his head and the high-pitched note ringing in his ears. He ran gingerly to the window and looked out to the wall.

He noticed the noise first, the faint patter of something that sounded a lot like rain. The patter was irregular, muffled by distance, but surprisingly loud. It took Valen a moment to realize it was bits of stone, smashing into the ground.

At the wall, a single column of flame rose hundreds of feet into the air, swirling about in a tight, fierce whirlwind. Beyond that point lay an enormous gap in the stone wall, nearly a hundred feet across. The ground had been blasted in, stone chunks were scattered around the area, and nothing remained of the once immense fortification.

"Where's the Golem?" Mia asked, as she glanced out the window.

Hope felt as if it would burn a hole in his chest, and he nearly cheered aloud. "It's down. The Golem's down."

"Burn me," Mia whispered. "She did it."

Valen's gaze shifted to the watchtower where Amelian had taken refuge, past the now wide gap in the wall. And he remembered that the Golems were not the only things that came from the mists of the Gloam.

"Grab all the extra ammo you can carry. We need to get to her, now," Valen barked, as he slung one of the rifles over his shoulder.

She complied quickly, stuffing a satchel and her pockets with extra rounds out of one of the small crates. "What's the rush, sir? The Golem's down. You said so."

"True," he replied. "But the wall is wide open."

Mia only nodded in response, and started moving faster.