The wind rushed past Shwaan’s ears, whipping the silvery strands into a frenzy around his face.

He banked sharply, wings held rigid for a moment before beating in rapid, powerful strokes. The maneuver paid off, carving him a path through the high-rise buildings towards his destination.

He skimmed the rooftops, eyes scanning the urban sprawl that stretched beneath him in every direction. The forest of metal and concrete made it hard to find the ones he was looking for.

A sudden eruption of color drew Shwaan’s gaze – silver, gold, and crimson sparks spattering skywards.

His eyes swept the scene, before zeroing in on a broad avenue behind a shopping mall.

Despite its considerable width, the road all but pulsed with a writhing mass of bodies, the atmosphere poised for upheaval.

A cacophony of shouts and wails rose into the air.

Shwaan dove lower, angling himself for a better view. The once-distant throng solidified into a massive gathering…of what looked to be frenetic, placard-wielding protestors.

Shwaan sighed.

A sea of indecipherable placards – penned mostly in dramatic red ink – bobbed above the crowd. Some of the protestors held aloft huge portraits…depicting a face that had been all but etched into Shwaan’s mind.

Viman Rai. His stern, unsmiling visage framed by the word ‘martyr’ emblazoned in bold lettering.

Shwaan closed his eyes momentarily, a wave of weariness washing over him.

How many more times must he watch this scene play out, repeating itself beat for beat every few days? What was it about humans and their seemingly boundless reservoir of manic, hell-raising energy? Did they never get tired of their own drama?

Whatever it was, he didn’t have time for it at the moment.

Shwaan weaved through the surrounding buildings, homing in on the heart of the gathering. The focal point – from where the sparks had originated. And to which all eyes were currently glued.

The petite, pigtailed figure of Hiya Kinoh. Wrapped in her white-and-red school uniform, she stood steadfast before the crowd, her face showing an almost equal mix of trepidation and unyielding resolve. Her white-knuckled fingers clutched the bulky schoolbag strapped to her shoulders.

Shwaan tensed, watching a white-clad, placard-wielding protestor reach out towards her. A member of HAVA, if the style of clothing was anything to go by.

Shwaan’s wings flared, poised to propel him into action.

But before he could intervene, Vikram stepped forward, pulling Hiya behind his broader frame.

Squinting from above, Shwaan belatedly noticed another figure behind Vikram. It was Sri, Vikram's son. Clad in the same school uniform as Hiya, he stood stock-still, silently clutching Hiya’s hand. Refusing to let her launch herself at the volatile crowd in a bout of righteous fury.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Shielding the children behind him, Vikram spoke to the crowd. Both his hands were raised in a placating gesture, his manner characteristically mild and unthreatening. Shwaan couldn’t decipher his words, but it was clear he was trying to calm them down, de-escalate the situation.

Which was easier said than done.

A wild-eyed woman with disheveled, sable hair stumbled forward, shouting shrilly as she pointed at Hiya.

A skinny youth with skull-shaped ear studs grabbed Vikram’s shirt and yanked on it, his manner provocative. Less than a foot away, a large, bearded man screamed into Vikram's ear, spewing spittle with each word.

The crowd pressed in, a hundred accusatory fingers jabbing angrily at Vikram and the two children.

Hostility crackled in the air, the situation teetering on the brink of a full-blown riot.

Hiya shifted subtly, her movements almost imperceptible. A second later, the air erupted in another dazzling display of technicolor sparks.

This triggered a startled yelp, followed by a wave of overlapping shouts. Instinctively, the crowd recoiled.

Hiya had lit another Aeriel feather. Her second one in under ten minutes. The first one, minutes earlier, was what had drawn Shwaan’s attention to this overcrowded avenue.

Shwaan’s lips twitched despite himself.

To light an Aeriel feather, in a situation like this…

What the girl lacked in self-preservation instinct, she more than made up for in sheer audacity. Clearly.

With a thunderous beat of his wings, Shwaan swooped down into the chaotic milieu. The movement of his wings created a powerful gust that sent the crowd scrambling back in a flurry of confusion and outrage.

He remained airborne. There was no point engaging with this rabid crowd, so he didn’t try. Flying low over the gathering, he seized Vikram with one hand. Sri and Hiya, clinging to each other for dear life, were scooped up with the other.

With his precious cargo secured, Shwaan surged upwards. Putting as much distance between himself and the angry protestors as possible.

And that might’ve been enough, if not for the presence of HAVA cultists among the crowd.

Before he could try and depart, a sifblade whizzed towards him from below. Its metal gleamed faintly in the late afternoon sunlight.

Stifling the curse that clawed at his throat, Shwaan contorted his body mid-flight. Evading the hurtling sifblade by half a whisker.

One arm wrapped around Vikram and the other holding the children, Shwaan wasn’t in a position to use an energy-shell. Not that he’d have been inclined to commit mass murder in broad daylight, had his hands been free. But clearly, the fact he was encumbered gave the cultists an inflated sense of security.

The white-clad HAVA activists surged forward, their faces upturned and contorted with self-righteous fury.

But in the end, it wasn’t Shwaan that foiled them. It was gravity.

Having narrowly avoided the sifblade flung at him, Shwaan inadvertently flicked it with one of his wings. This caused the blade to spin in the air until it pointed downwards.

Inevitably, gravity took hold, and the sifblade plummeted towards the ground. Towards the white-clad HAVA cultists who’d surged to the forefront of the crowd, moments ago.

Panic erupted, the dense press of bodies making it impossible for everyone to move out of the way of the falling sifblade.

A sudden, ear-splitting shriek rent the air.

The disheveled woman with sable hair had been shoved violently forward by a burly man. In his panic, he had all but used her as a human shield.

She scrambled to get out of the way, clawing at his chest. But the press of bodies around them trapped her, leaving her no choice but to watch in horror as the glinting blade hurtled towards her.

A large, dark object zoomed by, knocking the sifblade off its lethal trajectory at the last possible second.

And colliding squarely with the woman’s face.

The impact left her momentarily dazed, her splotchy face turning an alarming shade of purple. So, it took her a few moments to register that the object that had struck her…was in fact a child’s backpack. The emblem of the prestigious Holy Child School was embroidered meticulously across its front.

She looked up, her big black eyes disbelieving.

Hiya, suspended midair in Shwaan’s grasp, had somehow maneuvered to take off her schoolbag and hurl it – with remarkable accuracy – at the descending sifblade.

The outcome being that the sifblade clattered harmlessly to the ground a little distance away. And its potential victim was left to contend with a bruised face, instead of a blade piercing her skull.