After Daedalus, Silas and the others left, Gerald was moved temporarily to a room in the home of Alora Sutrenya, who had no students of her own at present. The others were expected to return in a week at most. He could hardly wait to hear what had become of the larger world.

Alora was an even harder task master than Silas when it came to study. She had him in the library almost all day so far, Studying on the seventh floor for the first time. The books on the seventh floor were on a wide range of subjects, but most of them having to do with nature and weather. Books about rivers, storms, wildfires, and tornados. It was a sign of his progress to be reading this high in the library, and he was duly proud.

He was just returning to Alora with three books to study, which she had just sent him to do, and he found her in the 7th floor sitting area. He found his temporary Mistress seated by a window overlooking the training square in front of the library, staring right at the spot where Darius had opened a doorway to a new world.

“I'm back with my three, Mistress,” he announced, rousing her from what seemed a daydream. She gestured for him to sit in the seat opposite her, facing away from the window.

Just as she was about to tell him to start reading, and to tell him what to focus on the power within the text, she made a surprised face before leaping to her feet and all but pulling him to his. She turned him toward the window, and saw that a doorway had opened in the training grounds. Someone was coming from the outside world.

Gerald was hardly expecting them back after one day, but he was excited to hear their stories. Strangely when he looked at her, Mistress Alora seemed deeply troubled. He wondered why at first. This could only be a good thing.

But then the door swung open, and a line of four armed men each with two great swords apiece, came marching out of the doorway one by one, looking like anything but a good thing. There were 12 in all, and when the last of them was out of the doorway, there was a roar, and the great head and long legless serpentine body of a fire drake came through behind them, folding its wings to fit. Behind that, a single fierce looking man in a white dress shirt embroidered with flames with a book in one hand and a sack of what must have been more in the other, was the second to last to enter before the doorway ceased to exist behind them. Right behind him, came Darius.

“Stay here, and do not move from this spot,” Said Alora, not quite managing to hide her apprehension. “I will go down and figure out what is happening. Watch from here, and if it looks bad, open a doorway out of Bastion's heart, and hide.” Gerald was at a loss to understand what was happening, but it happened regardless. Alora read the passage from memory to open a door down to the training yard, and all Gerald could do was watch from about, out the window of the library.

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He saw from his vantage as Alora arrived below, and walked up to meet the group of strangers. He saw that she addressed Darius directly.Of course he could not hear what was said, but the body language suggested the conversation was not pleasant, and quickly turned to Alora shouting at Darius. She even struck him, one hard blow across the face. Gerald ground his teeth as the man with Darius, the one in the flame embroidered shirt, stepped between the two, wound his arm back, and punched Alora full in the face, sending her sprawling. The man said something to Darius, turned on his heel, and climbed onto the Dragon's saddle.

The massive beast reared up, spread its wings, and took to the air, streaking toward the residential areas of Bastion's heart. Gerald had seen enough, it was time to run. He opened a doorway to Tyros, as far as he could get from this invasion on his own. Already, there was black smoke rising from Bastion's heart. Already he could hear folk screaming, and see the chaos that was to come.

He could not stay here. But where else could he possibly go. The screams were getting closer. He looked to the red wastes, out there where the monsters were waiting. The would be licking the marrow from his bones by this evening if he went out there. But was it better to be a prisoner of these strangers? Surely death in the wastelands was preferable.

As the smoke rose higher and higher behind him, Gerald ran toward the edge of town. He ran past the protective barrier, past the burned treewalker standing his lonely vigil, and into the wasteland. He did not stop. He did not slow. He did not look back. Before his eyes from horizon to horizon not a single living thing could be seen.

He ran until he could run no more and collapsed on the reddened ground. In that moment, he thought he would certainly die of exposure. Then he heard a sound, and twisted his body to look towards it. He would not die of exposure. One of the fell creatures that wandered the wasteland was coming toward him. He had not the energy to rise and flee, so he lay there, watching his death approach.

After a while, they drew close enough to see there were two of them, one about the size and shape of a large man and the other no bigger than a child. He closed his eyes tight with fear as they came to stand over him. Then he heard a small gravely voice say a single word. He thought it might have been the smaller one. “Hu-Human...”

He was too tired to process that the thing had spoken, to tired to be afraid. He drifted to sleep as the things grabbed him, dragging him somewhere he was too tired to wonder about.

He was surprised to find himself still alive to wake some time later. He was in some sort of cave, or else a pit that had been dug into the dry ground. He sat up to see himself surrounded by nightmarish creatures, but was confused to see that they weren't attacking him, weren't rending the meat from his bones.

There was a sound he never thought to hear again coming from behind him, deeper in the cave, for he saw that's what it was now, as he sat up. The sound was running water, a tiny stream somewhere in the dark.

“Human.” He all but leapt from his skin before he saw where the voice had come from. The smaller of the two creatures from before was sitting by his, holding a skin of water to him. It was, against all logic and possibility, a small, rail thin little girl dressed in clothes that looked to be made from Drake's skin, with hair tangled in a massive snarl that had never seen a comb. “Drink,” was all it said, and he snatched the skin from its hand and drained it greedily. He would not die quite yet.