The sounds from above and around the Caldwell house echoed heavily in the lightly furnished foyer. Ford knew that only danger would greet him and his family on the other side of the front door. “Should we leave now?”, he thought. “Can we really make it out of the city in time? Will there even be space left in the tents by now?"

Ford froze in silent hesitation, his mind racing with anxiety and dread. He could hear his wife and children asking him questions, but the words sounded like a jumbled mess to his ears. The only sounds Ford Caldwell could clearly make out were the sounds coming from outside the house.

Roaring.

A thud.

Another thud.

Hissing.

Creaking of wood under too much weight.

A crash.

Through the ceiling came a great serpentine beast. There was little light in the house, and all anyone could see was something large and scaly writhing around the living room. Terrified and screaming, the Caldwell family poured out of the front door. It was dark, and the air was vile. Atop the roof was another serpent, greater in size.

The best unleashed a terrible roar that made all previous anxiety pale in comparison to the assault on Ford’s ears. The creature then leapt off the roof of the house and dove into the ground. Rather than landing hard and injuring itself as most creatures would, the monster seemed to burrow with incomprehensible speed.

“RUN!", Ford bellowed at his family. The four took off down the street, with a desperate hope that the creature could not see them in the near darkness. All the lanterns along the street had gone out. Making their way down the street, Ford could see that there were others attempting to flee as well.

There were dozens of bodies littering the street, accompanied by the stench of blood and other bodily fluids. Ford now felt that his stench memory would stay with him for the rest of his life. There were pieces of carcasses piled in trenches along the street. Curiously, some were encased in thick layers of salt.

As they ran, Ford observed many more corpses encased in salt. People were screaming in agony on the side of the road, some missing limbs, and many bleeding out from their injuries. Ford again heard his nightmare echoing in his head.

“Why didn't you save them?” "Aren't you going to do anything?"

All around Ford were lives he could not save if he wanted to get his wife and children to safety. The air was now much thicker with the taste of salt, but Ford did not notice. Now he had tears streaming down his face. The massacre that was taking place in Harbondale had brought more carnage than any battle Ford had ever seen.

The screams.

The bodies.

The blood.

Salt.

Ford could no longer ignore how terrible the air had grown. Though he was witnessing carnage and destruction unlike anything he had ever seen or heard tales of, he choked on the air with every breath he took.

The earth trembled.

A high-pitched scream caught his ears. The scream of a child.

His daughter.

Claire.

“DADDY!", she cried as she was carried off into the sky. Just as she had tripped on a severed leg, one of the beasts had erupted from the ground and snatched her. Ford fell to his knees as Lara stopped and clapped her hands to her mouth. “NOOOOO!", he wailed. “CLAIRE, NO!!” Ford was lost for words. Lost for thought. His precious, beautiful daughter was being dragged off by a monster. And the monster released her.

Ford screamed but could not hear it. Collin cried, but Ford could not hear it. Lara sobbed uncontrollably, but Ford could not hear it. Through the gathering darkness, he saw a small body collide with the earth, but he could not hear it. The only sounds Ford could hear were his heart pounding in his chest and his world crashing down around him in a high-pitched hum.

To his left, he felt a rush of wind. Turning, he saw only his son’s arm lying on the flagstones. Bloody and unattached. He did not hear his son’s cries and did not know what he said in his final moments. But in his broken heart, he felt the crunch as a maw of teeth ripped into his son.

Now on his hands and knees, crying and screaming with his face towards the ground, Ford was truly broken. His children were gone, and only Lara remained. He had to protect her, but he didn’t know how. He looked up to see her still frozen in shock. No words fell from her lips. Tears ran down her face. She was shaking and shivering in the intense heat.

In an instant, her face changed from shock to horror. A thick, long tail struck her across the middle of her back. And Ford did not hear the impact. Lara flew through the air in front of him, but he could not believe his eyes. It must be a dream. It must be 6:03 the previous morning, and he must still be asleep. He watched as her body hit the flagstones, but again, he did not hear the sound.

The hum grew louder. His heart broke further. His voice felt like it had been ripped to shreds among his screams and cries. And the air was vile with the taste of salt.

To his right, he felt the breath of the beast but did not hear it. He turned and saw the creature’s gaze, lit softly by the pale moonlight.

The beast was larger than anything Ford had ever seen. Its head was the size of a horse. The teeth were long, sharp, and covered with blood and muscle fibers. It had great wings that seemed to stretch on forever. The talons on the tips of those great wings were pale and curved into jagged points. The body was long and slender, with magnificent yellow scales throughout. The belly of the beast was slim, and the scales were a much lighter shade of yellow. In the dark, lit only by a few torches from a distance, the tail could only be seen as a faintly glistening shimmer in the darkness behind the beast.

With every breath, the beast’s torso rose to its shoulders, and the scales from its belly glowed with a golden hue. The golden glow rose into the chest, where it then amplified on its way up through the throat. Finally, the breath and glow erupted through the maw of the beast into an ear-splitting and majestic roar. Accompanying the regality of the primal cry was a blast of salt. The monsters that had defiled his home, devoured his family, and destroyed everything he held dear were dragons. Yellow dragons.

Ford felt as though the roar had split his very soul, but he did not hear it. He fumbled in his bag and removed his revolver. He fired a shot at near-point-blank range at the dragon’s eye.

It howled.

The sound shattered Ford’s temporary deafness, and he collapsed to the bloody flagstones. The dragon writhed in agony for a few moments before slumping over dead a few yards away. Another roar rang out nearby as a second, smaller dragon flew overhead, landing behind Ford.

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The dragon hissed and snarled as it bared its teeth. Rearing its head back, Ford saw the glow rise from its belly to its maw before it let out a terrible stream of salt with its breath. And the air became far viler than it had been before. Reacting before he could think, Ford turned the revolver towards the new dragon and fired a shot after spinning the chamber.

Ford missed, and the dragon roared louder. Battered by the wingbeats, Ford was blown back to the flagstones as the dragon rose up. Ford spun the chamber once more and fired again. The dragon rose higher and continued roaring. Ford spun and fired, spun and fired, spun and fired. Only one of the shots connected with the wing of the dragon, but Ford did not know which shot it was.

The dragon turned midair and flew away from Ford. He got up and ran in the opposite direction. As he ran, he saw more corpses and more salt, but he couldn’t recognize a single one as any member of his family. He thought back to the beginning of the attack and remembered how thick the air was with the taste of it. Had there been bodies covered in salt then, too? Ford was unsure. His memories were hazy, all blurred together. His wife and children were dead, and his home was destroyed. All around him were people, his neighbors and friends, dead and dying. And he could save none of them.

Ford ran on, seeking shelter in a nearby building. Whether it was a home, office, or storefront, he could not tell. Even when he entered, he could not discern the purpose of the building from the wreckage. But the air was less repulsive and oppressive here. Ford drank a potion and checked himself for injuries. He found none. His family died within mere feet of him, and he came away unscathed.

"A cruel, twisted joke”, he thought, “that I should lose everything that mattered most to me and not pay with a single scratch or scrape."

To gather his wits for what he was about to do, he pulled out his journal and began to write down the details of his weekend. He wondered if he could truly process it better by writing it all down, or if it would only add to his pain. Most of the previous days' entries had been short notes about wounded soldiers, his patients, and how much he missed his family and wished the raid would end soon. Today’s entry was much longer, but he still wrote about how much he missed his family.

A few hours later, once he no longer heard the sounds of screaming, crunching, roaring, and wailing, Ford left his shelter. He walked slowly through the streets on his way to the fields, inspecting every person he came across. Most were covered in salt or missing limbs in puddles of blood. And the blood filled every crack and gap between the flagstones on the streets.

More and more corpses he came across until finally he found a small boy, younger than his daughter Claire. He was still crying softly as he bled onto the street, his legs encased in salt. Ford was only a block away from the town gate, about an hour's walk to the war camp and medic tents. But he had finally found a life he could save. Ford saw a difference he could make, and he could not pass up the opportunity.

Ford rushed over to the small boy and examined him closely. There was a gash across the boy’s left arm and rib cage, but it wasn’t very deep. The dragon that attacked him must have barely made contact and kept moving on. He got out his medical kit as the boy screamed “Help me, help me; I don’t want to die!”, all while fighting to break free from the thick layer of salt. Ford’s hands trembled. Had his son cried the same thing? His daughter? His wife? Ford’s hands were trembling, and he couldn’t hold them still. And in his head, he heard only the continued echoes of his nightmare.

“Why didn’t you save him?"

“Why aren’t you doing anything?"

“Do you want the boy to die?"

The mental assault of his own anxiety drowned out all thoughts in Ford’s own mind. He gazed down at the boy, still crying and weakly asking for help. He could see the blood still trickling from the gashes and the burn marks on the boy’s skin where it made contact with the layer of salt.

Ford knew he needed to treat the child’s wounds, but instead decided to shatter the salt imprisoning him. He used his now-empty revolver to bludgeon the casing until it cracked and gave way. With the boy free, he administered a healing potion and other medicines to ease the boy’s pain. If he couldn’t dress the wounds and burns, he would have to get him to another doctor at the tent a couple miles away.

As he reached out to lift the child from what would have been his salty tomb, Ford heard the approach.

A roar.

Wingbeats.

A thud.

The angry scrape of talons on the flagstones.

A hiss.

A dragon had landed mere feet from Ford and the boy. It swung a closed wing at the child and sent him flying. The boy hit the flagstones in the distance, and this time, Ford heard it. Turning to look at the dragon, he saw a bullet hole in its wing and a murderous glare in its eyes. He thrust his hand into his bag and pulled out the handmade revolver. It was all Ford had left. Hastily, he aimed at the dragon and fired. He hit the dragon’s tail, and the dragon howled again with rage and pain. It flew in the air, and Ford fired yet again, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t jam or misfire. The bullet sailed past the dragon’s head, and it inhaled deeply. Ford fired a third shot, again hoping the revolver would help him. And again, he missed. A faint glow formed in its belly before the dragon let out a roar, accompanied by a blast of salt. The nearby streetlamp went dark.

Now there was no light around him. Ford took aim at the diminishing glow in the dragon’s belly. He fired a fourth shot. The revolver exploded in his hand, burning his face and chest and tearing off several fingers. He fell to the bloodied flagstones and screamed with pain, clutching his maimed hand.

There was blood everywhere, and he couldn’t see out of his right eye. Out of his left, he saw a dark shadow descend to the flagstones and heard the deep hissing breath of the dragon. It almost sounded like laughter. And then the dragon spoke. He could not decipher the draconic words but understood their intent. The dragon was taunting him.

Ford had only heard draconic a handful of times in his life. Though he’d briefly studied it in college, he could recognize only a few words of the dragon’s taunts. The dialect was distinct. A distorted version of the original language that was an assault on Ford’s ears as the yellow dragon spoke.

Ford lay bleeding out on the flagstones. The streets were already a river of blood, and his would soon add to it. The dragon inhaled and blew out another blast of salt. This time, the blast was smaller and more targeted. It struck Ford in the face and his bloodied hand. Ford screamed louder, for the pain was unbearable. It was unmistakable now; the dragon was laughing harder. Ford heard the laugh change to a terrible, yet majestic roar. Then he felt it.

The crunch.

The blast of salt.

Ford watched in horror as the grains covered his body, burning him and encasing him in salt. He struggled to breathe as the claustrophobia set in. He screamed in terror and pain. Ford knew that the dragon could hear him, for its laughter grew only louder and stronger. Through his prison of super-heated salt, he could see only a bright glow from where he assumed the belly of the dragon might be. Ford cried, thinking only of his wife and children. He wished he could hold them one more time. Then he heard it.

A roar.

A hiss.

Laughter.

Then he felt it.

A crunch.

The talons were now breaking through the shell of salt, digging into his body, and ripping out whatever they could find. Through the shock and the pain, Ford heard it.

More laughter.

Again, Ford thought of his family and wished this were all just a dream. Many thoughts were now racing through his mind—all of the events of the weekend.

The stench memory.

The breakfast.

Tea.

Collin’s clumsy footsteps.

Claire’s dresser drawers closing.

Lara’s eyes as she smiled at the book.

The nightmare.

“Why didn’t you save him?"

Then Ford thought of all the warning signs of what was to come this weekend.

The screech.

The streak of color across the sky.

The hot, salty air.

The man in the yellow overcoat.

The performers also dressed in yellow.

Ford was only vaguely aware of the yellow dragon’s rage as it unleashed its malice on his body and could barely hear the sounds of its assault.

Ripping.

Tearing.

Crunching.

Scraping.

Roaring.

Nothing.