The days soon blurred by. Skalrin retook notes of the horned one's features, while it reexplored the ziggurat. The horned one found the ziggurat to be ever static, while the conversations from the residents to be ever changing. The horned one wanted to explore the mire below the lowest level but the guards continued refusing passage.
One day, the cavern began to quake. The rock that held the walls of the cave began to crack. Crackles of stone and dirt was all around, until one wall burst open, and revealed an army of gold-armoured rats. Platoons of armored rats carrying weapons marched forth to the silver ziggurat. The silver mice scrambled in panic as they hastily prepared their weapons.
The rats bombarded the ziggurat. They razed it. The mice were surprised, not expecting an attack from their nemeses, the rats. The silver city burned. The air was full with smoke and the stench of blood. Bodies of mice littered the streets. Skalrin and his fellow mages skirmished against the rat mages of gold. Bolts and dancing tendrils flew in the air as they attempted to cause casualties in the other side. The mouse mages were slowly picked off one by one.
The horned one was stuck in the middle of the mayhem. Rat berserkers plowed through gangs of weaker mouse warriors. The pillars of the ziggurat were being torn down, causing the ziggurat to destabilize and fall apart. The rats were breaking everything in their way.
Buildings burned alongside the streets while struggling trees were choked by golden roots. Smoldering pieces of construction littered the paths and streets. The horned one hid in the burning remains of the ceramics shop, but a trio of rat warriors found and cornered it.
Fear coursed through the horned one's veins, feeling helpless and trapped, paralyzed. The rats' twisting golden weapons readied to attack. Then, electricity seemed to engulf every sinew of the horned one's being, shocking. It prompted its body to grow ivory teeth, fangs, and claws. The horned one's slit pupils contracted to as thin as needles, turning its fearful gaze to a fierce fearsome stare. Its mind was subjected to heightened alertness as if it had become ever more awake that it ever had been. The horned one's fear was abolished; it no longer weak or trapped, but rather strong and powerful.
The horned one pounced the rats with the utmost swiftness before they could get the chance to strike. It mangled them, and tore them. Their flesh and viscera thrown around aimlessly. The horned one panted as it tried to flush adrenaline from its system.
Then, it was heard. A loud crackle resounded in the chamber. The building collapsed along with the wall it sat on. It fell like a rockslide down the side of the ziggurat and into the mire that surrounded. The horned one was brought along by avalanche of stone and metal, burying the horned one in mud and rubble.
The horned one sat there, feeling the most powerless in its entire life. Buried under rubble, and impaled in place by odd rods. But despite the horned one losing will to live, a being laboriously dug the horned out of the mud and rubble.
The kind being remained unseen by the bleary-eyed horned one. Its gaze befell upon the razed argentine ziggurat. The scene slowly receded from view as the being dragged the horned one through mud. The great black fulgurite lost hold and fell to the pile of rubble that was the ziggurat and shattered into pieces like a firework going off. The scene receded even more, and soon the silver trees entered its field of vision. They were writhing and twitching, fighting against the golden roots that choked and ensnared them.
A cloud of blur consumed its sight. All details it could see were lost in the blurred fog. Black crawled from the edges of its vision and steadily consumed its sight. The horned one soon fell unconscious.
YOU ARE READING
Children of the Stone
FantasyA flood came and swept away the three amphibian brothers. They get separated and now seek to find each other, but in their search of each other, they get involved in a war in the caverns.
