Chapter 1090: 1089: The Burning West
Vhal-Sar was burning.
From where Simon floated above The Wall, he could see the whole city laid out below him like a painting someone had set on fire.
Smoke rose from a dozen places at once. Thick black columns twisted into the sky and joined together above the terraces, blotting out the light. Beneath them, flames spread from building to building, licking up walls and bursting through windows.
On the middle terrace, one of the high bridges had collapsed. Its golden railings lay twisted across the street below, half buried under broken stone. Something was moving beneath the rubble.
Near the trading district, a blue-roofed hall had caved in on itself. Merchants and servants spilled out of the surrounding streets, coughing, covered in ash, some carrying others who weren’t moving.
And everywhere, there were screams.
They came from the streets, the canals and the courtyards. Children crying for their parents. Soldiers shouting orders that nobody seemed to hear. Someone wailing a name over and over again.
One of the crystal pillars on the upper terrace had cracked down the middle. Its golden beam flickered weakly toward The Wall, stuttering like a dying candle.
Beside Simon, Seraya had gone completely still.
Her lips were parted. Her eyes moved from one column of smoke to the next, as if she were trying to count them and couldn’t.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no…"
Simon looked at her.
He wanted to say something. But there was no time.
"I’ll be back," he said.
Seraya turned toward him, but he had already vanished.
Simon appeared above the western district.
The open gap in The Wall stood before him, its golden edges flickering where the barrier had parted. Through it, the sea was pouring into the western harbor.
And with it came the beasts.
The western district had been a place of warehouses and docks, with long piers stretching into the water and narrow streets climbing up toward the terraces. Now it was a slaughterhouse.
Beasts that could survive on land were already ashore.
Crabs the size of carriages scuttled through the streets, their saw-edged claws tearing through shopfronts. Long, many-legged eels slithered up the docks and coiled around anything that moved. Something like a scaled lizard with a shark’s head bounded from rooftop to rooftop, snapping at the people below.
The beasts that couldn’t leave the water attacked from its edge. They burst out of the harbor and dragged people off the piers. They spat jets of water hard enough to knock soldiers off their feet. Their tentacles reached up from the shallows and pulled down anyone who strayed too close.
The harbor water had turned red.
Simon saw a squad of Daegrin soldiers holding a narrow street with their spears. A crab crashed into them. Two of them flew backward into a wall and didn’t get up.
He saw a mother running with a child in her arms. A tentacle rose from the canal beside her.
She didn’t make it.
Simon clicked his tongue.
"Tch."
He raised his hand.
Above the western district, the air began to glow.
Orange flames twisted into long, sharp shapes. Dozens of them. Beside them, crimson lightning crackled and stretched into spears of its own, humming with violent energy.
In moments, more than fifty spears of fire and lightning hung in the sky above the burning streets.
Simon lowered his hand.
SHHHOOOM!
The spears fell.
They struck like a rain of falling stars. A fire spear punched through the shell of the crab in the narrow street and burst out of its belly in a gout of flame. A lightning spear pinned the shark-headed lizard to a rooftop, crimson lightning crawling over its body until it went still.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions rippled through the western district. Eels burst apart on the docks. Beasts in the shallows convulsed as lightning spread through the water around them. The tentacles near the canal blackened and withdrew.
In a single breath, dozens of beasts were dead.
The soldiers in the streets stared up at the sky but Simon was already moving.
He dropped down to the harbor and landed on the surface of the sea, right at the mouth of the open gap.
This was where it mattered most.
As long as the gap stayed open, the beasts would keep pouring in. He could close The Wall but it would not be as strong as the defensive capabilities of The Wall.
However, he could do something about the water.
He pressed his palm toward the sea.
Frost spread out from beneath his feet.
It raced across the surface in every direction, turning the water white. Waves froze mid-curl. The ice thickened, layer upon layer, sinking deep beneath the surface, until the entire mouth of the gap was sealed by a wall of solid ice.
Beasts that had been swimming through it were frozen where they were, locked in the ice with their jaws still open.
Simon spread the frost further, along the edges of the western harbor, sealing the shallows where the water beasts had been dragging people from the docks.
Behind the ice, on the other side of The Wall, the second tide slammed against it.
CRACK!
The ice shuddered, but it held.
A shadow rose behind him.
Simon turned.
A massive eel burst out of the unfrozen water near the piers, its body as thick as a tower, its head lined with rows of hooked teeth, and its aura was far heavier than the others.
An Abyssal Beast.
Its jaws opened wide enough to swallow a house.
Simon summoned the Chaos Blade and slashed once.
SHHHK!
A crescent of compressed wind flew from the blade. It passed through the eel’s open mouth and out the back of its skull.
The eel’s head split in two.
Its body collapsed into the harbor with a heavy splash.
Two more Abyssal Beasts came at him from the side, one a crab with a shell as dark as iron, the other a ray with lightning crackling across its wings.
Simon didn’t even look at them.
Crimson lightning lashed out from the Chaos Blade and pierced the ray. Fire wrapped around the crab and burned through the gaps in its shell until it stopped moving.
Neither of them reached him.
Simon lowered his blade and looked around.
The western district was still burning. But the flood of beasts had stopped.
He turned his attention toward the streets.
And saw something that made him pause.
A Daegrin merchant was running back into a burning shop. A soldier tried to grab him, but the merchant shoved him away and disappeared into the flames. A moment later, he staggered back out, coughing, clutching a small iron chest to his chest as if it were his child.
He didn’t even look at the bodies in the street.
Further along, another Daegrin stood in the doorway of a warehouse, refusing to move while soldiers shouted at him to leave. Behind him, Simon could see crates of jewels and stacks of ledgers.
"I’m not leaving my goods!" the Daegrin screamed. "Do you know what these are worth?!"
A crab scuttled around the corner. The soldiers ran. The merchant didn’t.
Simon watched the crab drag him inside.
On a nearby pier, a wealthy Daegrin woman was pressing Hell Stones into the hands of two guards, pointing frantically at a carriage loaded with chests. Not at the people trapped beneath a collapsed roof beside her.
Simon stared for a moment and was genuinely taken aback.
He had known the Daegrins loved their wealth. He had seen their golden bridges and their children’s toys.
But he hadn’t expected this.
For some of them, wealth was worth more than their lives.
Simon looked away.
It wasn’t his business. He had other things to do.
He spread his perception across the western district, searching.
’Veyra.’
If she was still alive, she should be somewhere nearby. The western section of The Wall was her post.
He searched the watchtowers along The Wall. The streets. The harbor. The rubble.
Nothing.
No trace of her aura.
Simon frowned.
Then his perception brushed against something else.
Several presences, standing in the chaos as if it were a garden.
They weren’t fleeing. They weren’t fighting the beasts. And their auras carried the unmistakable pressure of Daemon bloodlines.
Simon turned his head.
On the roof of a burning warehouse stood a tall man with an ash colored skin and coral-like growths along his jaw and shoulders. He was watching the western district burn with an expression of mild boredom.
At the far end of the harbor, a woman with long black hair was walking calmly down the middle of a street. A Daegrin soldier charged at her. She didn’t even look at him. A shadow peeled away from the wall beside her and pierced through his chest.
Near the base of The Wall, close to the open gap, a broad figure with curling ram’s horns crouched beside a crystal pillar that had been shattered into pieces. He was brushing dust off his hands.
Simon’s eyes narrowed.
He understood immediately.
These were members of The Dominion.