Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

Screams of agony mingled with shouts of warning as the citizens of that once-quiet neighborhood took to the streets, some of them scurrying around in a blind panic like mice stirred up by a barnyard cat. More than one of them was on fire. A woman cradling a baby in her arms crouched in the middle of the street, screaming at a black firedrake that toyed with them before making a meal of both mother and child. A man in the apron of a butcher did his best to fend the creature off but was rewarded for his gallantry with a stream of blue-flickering acid to the face. Marek marveled at the precision of the firedrake’s attack. He had done well in their breeding indeed.

Aware that the spells that granted him a limited ability to fly and rendered him invisible would both soon fade away, Marek tore himself from the spectacle and hopped off the rooftop and into the air. Though he was certain it couldn’t see him, he had to dodge one of the firedrakes that swooped down to slash at the back of a draft horse. Though too small to carry the animal, the firedrake’s black dragon blood must have sent that idea to its limited brain. It quickly realized the error of its ways, though, and alit on the street to snap at the draft horse the old fashioned way. Though he had scant seconds to lose, Marek snuck furtive glances at the horse’s courageous if futile efforts to fend the firedrake off with its powerful hooves. By rearing up on its hind legs, all it did was open its groin to the firedrake’s acid. Left writhing in pain at the end of its harness, the cart behind it bobbing up and down so hard the wheels finally shattered, the horse succumbed to a savage bite to the neck.

Marek whipped around a corner, following the obvious, ever-widening path of destruction the black firedrakes-his black firedrakes-had left in their wake. Three blocks of Sulfur Street were already ablaze, and if he’d bothered to count he would have seen at least pieces of a hundred human bodies. Great columns of choking black smoke rose up into the warm, unseasonably sunny, early spring sky. Marek had to hold his breath and close his eyes for a few seconds as he passed through one of the smoke columns. He came out the other end dusted in black soot and coughing just the same.

Pulling up a bit higher in the sky, he looked in the direction of the underground hatchery, expecting to see the path of destruction end-or more properly begin-there, but it didn’t.

“They found a back door,” Marek muttered to himself, then closed his lips tightly so as not to draw the attention of one of the swooping, soaring firedrakes that filled the air around him.

Below him, Marek saw a small pottery shop he’d actually frequented a few times-they were one of the few shops in the Second Quarter that specialized in local artistry, where most others were caught up in a growing craze for imported ceramics from Shou Lung-and he knew then how the firedrakes had gotten loose.

The little shop was still on fire, though more accurately it was the pieces of the little pottery ship that were on fire. The building itself had been burst open from the inside, and Marek smirked at the irony of the image that crossed his mind: a black firedrake bursting from the confines of an egg.

The floor of the shop had been shredded, and from the way the planks were standing up along the rim of all three of the biggest holes it was obvious that the lizard-creatures had broken up from the cellar. That space was rendered open to the sky, but the smoke still rising from it stung Marek’s eyes and he couldn’t see how they’d managed to get into the basement.

Finding no other recourse, Marek quickly rattled off a spell to protect him from the blistering heat of the ruined cellar. The wood glowed orange and gave off little yellow sparks that shot up into the air only to come down as snowflakes of black ash. Even through the spell, Marek began to sweat, and he had to squint against the smoke and ash that colored the air around him.

The bass rumble of an explosion from a few blocks away startled him. Another seller of volatile wares-alcohol, perfume, paint-any number of things might have gone up like that.

Setting himself back on the task at hand, Marek swatted at smoldering timbers and stepped through half-melted nails and jagged black shards of broken glass, until he finally came to a yawning hole in the floor of the cellar. It might at one time have been a cistern, or a glory hole, or even a well, but it appeared to Marek as if it had been sealed off years ago-likely even before the pottery seller took over the building. It was an easy guess that the shaft connected to a tunnel that connected to another tunnel that connected to something else that connected to the underground space he’d taken over for the firedrakes. Cursing his bad luck that they’d found it more than his negligence in not finding it first, Marek scanned through his memory for a spell that would seal it, and seal it well and for good.

With a sigh he remembered the perfect transmutation, and at the loss of a few other spells he’d thought that morning would have been more useful, he conjured the right elements from his mind, drew upon the Weave, and filled the shaft in by moving the very earth itself around its edges. He had to step back, then use the last few heartbeats worth of his spell-granted ability to fly in order to keep out of his own area of effect, but while more fires burst into life in the city blocks around him and more screams and shouts echoed through the streets and alleys, he turned the gaping hole into a smooth-bottomed crater. With the blackened remains of the ruined shop still creaking around it, Marek thought the whole thing looked like a fireball had gone off, and all trace that the firedrakes had come from the cellar of the little pottery shop were-

“They came from the cellar of the little pottery shop in Phriterea Alley!” a young man’s voice shouted from behind him.

With a deeply pained sigh, Marek turned to see a pair of wide-eyed young watchmen stumble from an alleyway, casting about for any sign of the black firedrakes, or any sign of the shop. Their eyes never paused on Marek, who remained invisible.

“It’s right there,” the guard who’d spoken before said.

His comrade, a slightly older fellow whose tabard showed the rank of sergeant, asked, “Are you sure, mate?”

“Positive,” said the watchman. “I saw them break through the walls with pieces of the pottery merchant’s wife in their jaws.”

The young man gagged into the back of his hand at the memory, and the sergeant spat on the wreckage-strewn floor of the alley.

“Have you told anyone else?” asked the sergeant.

The younger man shook his head, and the sergeant took him by the arm and said, “Come on then, lad. The captain will-”

He stopped because that’s when Marek became visible. The sight of the man in soot-covered robes appearing from the thin air startled both of them. Marek saw a flash of relief cross the face of the younger watchman when he realized it was just a man and not a firedrake.

But then, Marek Rymut didn’t consider himself “just a man.”

And he hadn’t become visible on purpose. It’s what happens when you cast a spell meant to kill someone.

The fireball engulfed both of the guards in a sphere of blazing yellow-orange. The already burning buildings on either side of them cracked and bent, the few parts of their walls not already scorched danced with livid flames, and smoke ballooned into the sky, rising like the bubble from a breath let loose underwater.

The younger man had the decency to die instantly, but the sergeant stumbled around a bit, his iron helmet melted to his scalp, his clothes and armor burned away to reveal what was left of the skin underneath, just a mass of swelling blisters. He took a few steps, groaned, and fell over dead.