I noticed the changes all too slowly.

Around me, the air itched at my skin. It raised hairs on the back of my neck while simultaneously forcing sweat from my pores. It dried out my throat and heated up to almost sweltering within the space of a few seconds. It distracted me from whatever Keris had done.

I coughed, noticing the grey tinge to the world around me. Squinting, I tried to wave it away, but it seemed ever-present. A thick, smoky fog had descended upon the temple. One that grew thicker and thicker the further up it went. As I raised my head, I even saw a tinge of slight red when it collected near the top of the—

Screams. Horrible, haunting, unfathomable screams.

I jolted, blood hammering against my ears as my mind spun to catch up. I tried to figure out what was going on—to understand all of the changes that had suddenly taken place. But the source of the terror put my understanding on hold.

My eyes dragged over to the middle of the room. Looked through the thickening smoke and at the massive group of knights and cultists who’d been fighting only moments before.

They weren’t fighting anymore.

All of them appeared frozen, in fact, but some were even worse off than that. A few of them were doing what I’d almost done. They were staring directly up at the ceiling of the temple. It would be the last thing they ever saw.

Slowly, their eyes widened. And it looked, for a moment, that their muscles had been rendered completely useless.

At the same time, they all screamed again.

I winced, taking a step back as the terrifying sounds echoed out through the room. Unconsciously, I threw my hand out to the side. My thundering heartbeat calmed as I brushed over Kye’s shoulder. She turned to me with her eyes wide and her lips pressed shut as the screams faded away.

Their absence didn’t mean our respite, though.

Another piercing noise followed the screams of knights and cultists alike. It came in slowly as if rising from the base of my ears. Traded off with the echoing screams in waves. Eventually, it won out and crescendoed, leaving a high-pitched, screeching sound to tear through all of our minds.

Gritting my teeth, I shook my head. I tightened my grip again and again to ground myself. To try and to push back on the sound. The white flame lent me some of its energy for the endeavor, but it was useless. No matter what we did, the noise stayed. It emanated from inside of my own mind as though making sure it had my attention.

Like a warning of some sort. One that I didn’t particularly want to ignore.

Eventually though, the piercing sound subsided. It faded from my skull and let my thoughts unscramble for a moment.

In the corner of my eye, Kye bent over and gasped. She leaned forward on her knees and tried to prevent from falling to the stone. Lazily, I stepped toward her. I tried to console her or support her, but even that was interrupted.

A flash of light from above. It seared my vision and sent me grimacing. I coughed, wheezing smoke out of my lungs as my vision adjusted again. As I had to spend even more time and energy simply figuring out how to stand in a stable position rather than figuring out what the fuck was going on.

Kye didn’t have as much luck. She stumbled backward in a similar way as I had, but she slipped as well. Her form slid to the ground despite all efforts to stay up.

I froze and turned. Clarity rolled in on a wave of fear as I pushed toward her myself. Only the single goal of helping her was what kept me thinking properly. It was all I had energy for as the confusion mounted higher and higher.

Reaching down, I grasped Kye’s wrist. The huntress wheeled, jerking her head backward and trying to scramble away. I shook my head and kept my grip, coughing out even more smoke. A soft grunt even slipped between my lips in hope that she’d recognize my voice.

It worked. Or, something worked. But it didn’t matter as she relaxed and let me haul her upward. Despite the flashes of red fire I could see in the corner of my vision—small sparks falling from the thick cloud of shifting smoke above—I focused on making sure Kye was alright.

Once she was, I turned to let more horror cascade through my mind.

I shuddered. A hitch caught in my throat. The scene made the backs of my eyes itch, my mind rebelling against the sight. The fire of battle receded from my blood. Reason started fleeing from my mind. And even the white flame doubted itself between frustrated flickers of fury.

In the smoky air ahead—the air directly above the main group of knights—red sparks were falling. Slow. Painfully slow. They were following some sort of predefined path and seemed to be pushed on by… something that my mind just felt incapable of detecting.

The observation registered somewhere in my mind. In some fresh memory that I should’ve been able to access. But I couldn’t. All I could do was stare.

Seconds bled together in a smoke-filled blur as the red sparks fell. But eventually they did reach the ground. Though, none of the knights in their path had moved in that time. They couldn’t have—that was what my rationality told me, at least. It was impossible for them to escape for some reason. It had to be.

Squinting in disbelief, I almost questioned my thoughts. Almost.

The red sparks stopped falling as soon as they moved within range of fresh bodies. They leapt instead. A whole plethora struck through the smoke and latched onto both knights and cultists alike.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

They killed unconditionally—burning through metal and bone with ease and then enveloping each body they touched in a burst of red flame.

Any shrieks that escaped were stifled before they could even echo out.

My stomach rolled, curling into knots. Charred bodies fell onto stone, some even piling on top of each other as nobody in the entire crowd moved. None of them could move, I reasoned again. It was impossible. It had to be.

The anger that I had felt before came back. It rushed up through my mind only to morph into disgust. Into a sense of revulsion so deep and core to my being that it didn’t even qualify for thought. It just was. I felt it in each and every one of my bones. The same sort of resistance that I held against the reaper itself.

Because even though I couldn’t figure it out, I knew one thing. Whatever was happening was wrong. It was unnatural. Warped and terrifying like some sort of fever dream. But I was in too much aching pain for it to be a dream.

Whatever it was... it was real.

Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. Eventually, it became too much. Watching the charred bodies continue to drop was too horrifying for me to even process. So instead, I latched onto one of the only other feelings even worth considering. I latched onto the burning curiosity that wanted to understand exactly the world had forsaken us with.

I looked up.

At once, weight pressed down on me. It imposed itself against my eyes as though trying to dissuade me from perceiving. But I ignored it and pushed on, flicking my eyes back and forth over the red-tinged smoke at the top of the room.

Slowly, I gathered sights. One after another and each accompanied by pricks of mental pain. They each came as if someone had stuck a new needle into the back of my eye in a way that was just dull enough to make me not pull away.

Swirling, shifting smoke that moved on its own. Two separate maws of fire on either side of the cavern’s ceiling. A glimpse of reflective scales. A round, catlike eye staring directly at me.

I wheeled back, gasping. The dull needles at the back of them stabbed in all at once and forced me to fall into a crouch. Beside me, Kye murmured something out of concern, but I didn’t hear.

I couldn’t hear, really. My brain didn’t work. Sound registered, but I didn’t translate it. No. I needed help. It was pure pain. I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand it.

White flame flickered in my head. Warmth spread out over the inside of my skull and forced the mental pain to recede a little bit. The vision in my left eye sharpened again and stopped sending me fractured images. I could breathe again. I could think.

And as I did, I almost wished that I hadn’t been given the opportunity. Because while the swirling, fiery smoke above us thickened ever-more, I got closer to an idea. I started putting the pieces together to form a puzzle that I didn’t want to exist. But remembering the temple around me—the sweltering heat, choking smoke, and terrifying rain of fire that rendered all of us useless—I couldn’t ignore it.

Whatever was up there, it was larger than us. It was stronger and it had access to more power than any of us could muster. It went as far as to damage the inner workings of our minds without even breaking a sweat.

It lived up to the kinds of overblown destructive conceptions I kept deep in my mind. Except this wasn’t a story—this wasn’t a myth.

“Kye,” I muttered as I forced myself up on shaky legs. Blinking lazily, I tried to keep my brain moving. “Kye.”

The huntress didn’t turn. She stood frozen in place with her shoulders twitching and her lips trembling. Her gaze was transfixed on the blackened bodies that kept collecting in the center of the room as hell rained from above. She stared at the lives that kept being taken away almost without effort, as though the oppressive power we’d mustered was truly insignificant on some sort of grand scale.

I swallowed dryly and stepped toward her. “Kye. Please…” My eye twitched. Her name was the only thing I could think to say. “Kye. Kye.”

Finally, she turned. She ripped her attention away from the horror at the recognition of my voice. Her features softened a sliver as she saw my face.

“Agil…” she said. “W-What—”

I shook my head, stopping her right there. The next word rose to my tongue, but it almost felt wrong to say. It felt impossible. It had to be. Yet…

“Dragons.”

The word fell away from my mouth and clattered through the smoke. At once, a weight lifted from my shoulders and I felt a little more clear. I felt a little more capable of conducting motor function without falling flat on my face.

Kye paled, but she nodded. “I…”

“Do. Not. Look. At. It,” a voice yelled from across the room. It was strained yet surprisingly stern for the situation. Both Kye and I glanced at Lady Amelia.

She stood firm, her head shaking in struggle and her heels digging into the stone. But as per her order, she wasn’t looking up. She wasn’t even looking at the group of dying knights. No. She was staring directly at Keris.

The pyromancer wasn’t smirking anymore by the time I looked his way. Instead, he was struggling to even keep a straight face. The crazed look in his eyes, however, was still there.

“Rik,” Lady Amelia said. The hammer-wielding knight turned, fighting back a grimace and locking his teeth. “If you…” She gasped. “If you will.”

One heartbeat later, the two of them erupted into action. The stone underneath Keris’ feet grew up and wrapped around his ankles. It morphed to Lady Amelia’s will and shackled him in place. Except this time, she didn’t just let him sit to break out.

The two knights ran with abandon. They raised their weapons and charged the pyromancer to make sure we had one less problem to deal with. Faintly, I registered the smirk growing back on Keris’ face. By then it was already too late.

A flash of light. Orange fire tinged with red at the edges. An explosion of rock and dust followed by screams and shouts. Scuffling, scraping, and sliding over the stone.

Their forms moved like rag-dolls as the three fought each other.

I blinked, shaking my head and trying to track the fight more clearly. But by then, they weren’t even brawling. At some point, Keris had pushed himself back and started laughing again. Even among the chaos, the terrifying cackle wormed its way into my mind.

A moment later, he rose into the air. Not a jump. Something slower. He ascended through the smoke as fire enveloped him like a phoenix. Blood poured from his nose and his fingers trembled in pain, but he didn’t stop.

After a few seconds, he froze. An indescribably horrible image took shape in flame behind him, and sparks started flying through the air. As if he was tearing energy from its natural state, waves and waves of embers rose out of thin air behind him and floated into his hands. It was like he drew power directly through the wide stone wall on the far side of the temple.

Somehow, that felt important. For the life of me, I couldn’t place why.

Without waiting any longer, Keris screamed one last time and grasped the energy right into his gauntlets. A second of quiet followed, one that I was sure would break into fire and fury.

But it didn’t.

Instead, Keris fell from his place suspended in the air and crumpled. I watched as his body collapsed on the ground, hacking up blood the entire way. Even as his muscles went limp, though, the demonic smirk didn’t die.

It grew even wider as he laid there, in fact. As his body slumped and his eyes glossed over, he somehow looked as smug as ever.

I opened my mouth and tried to ask what he’d done, but it was pointless. I knew my answer quickly enough.

Keris’ head fell to the floor.

A loud, ethereal growl seeped through the space.

It left only silence in its wake. Every single note of noise was killed in its presence, and all of my lingering doubts were as well as my lips slid shut.

I knew what he’d done. We all did.

Rath. The queen of the dragons. The mother of destruction. The mythological, incomprehensible entity of pure fury. It didn’t matter what name was used.

We’d come to attack her temple.

Now she’d come to defend it.