Aela tried to stop breathing heavily as she ran to the Gradennes Central Square. Not quite a square, actually. The corners were curved. Of course, the corners were invisible at that moment, buried under thick debris from the ruined buildings.

“Hendar!” Aela shouted, hearing her voice echo chaotically amongst the rubble. She propped her shield against a pile of brick and concrete as she scanned the square. “Bretin? Croh! Is anyone there?”

With sudden relief, Aela recognized a friendly face in the shattered remains of the square’s fountain, a formerly spectacular structure in the center of the square. Picking up her golden shield, she raced toward the man she had met when she first arrived on the planet Home several years ago.

“Jake,” Aela said to her White friend. She stepped over craters and blasted-out pieces of buildings, trying to look away from the muddied corpses strewn amongst the rubble. “Jake, you will never believe what…”

Aela’s steel-toed boots scraped to a sudden stop as she leaned over the low concrete railing of the fountain. Two artillery shells had hit the formerly beautiful monument. The gold-painted winged statue of Graden, the legendary founder of the city, had half his body and his massive spear blown off. The rest of the fountain was covered in bullet holes and crumbling concrete from where a second bomb had hit its edges. In the gap where this second bomb hit, lay Jake.

“Jake… Jake,” Aela said, and bent down to touch his neck, feeling no pulse. Biting her lip, she tried flowing some of her healing energy into him. It had no effect, and Jake lay in that ruined fountain, his blessed white headband useless.

Aela looked around. The Central Square looked nothing like it once had. Not a single building stood more than three stories high, and most of those standing were covered in the floors that had been demolished in the fighting. The remains of a troop truck, turned on its side, smoldered on the opposite end of the square not far from the smoking pieces of a blown-out tank.

Were she not a Gold, or less experienced, Aela would have been shocked at the sight of so much destruction, so much death. As she sat down at the fountain’s edge to rest, Aela found it strangely comforting to know that there was no way of identifying the hundreds of dead soldiers around her. The flags and colors of their uniforms were covered in mud and debris, hiding the sides they fought for. Only the Prophets, their indestructible blessed weapons beside them where they fell, were noticeable among the dead.

“What happened?” Aela said as she looked around.

It was faint at first, more like a whistling sound in the wind, but as Aela sat and thought about how she’d come to this situation, she swore she heard a voice. Tilting her head in the direction she thought it came from, Aela suddenly realized what she heard.

“Singing?” Aela said, and rushed toward the collapsed building the sound came from. “Who would sing in a time like this?”

The Gold Prophet reached the far end of the square, a few meters from the remains of the tank, and stood on the exposed rebar of a building. She noticed an old painting of a woman dressed in the garb of a well-to-do urban dweller on a broken wall with the words Hersh Styles and Boutiques painted beside the woman in burgundy letters.

The muffled singing came from the stones. Aela could barely hear the words as she discovered where they came from. “…and around his life did turn till they all did up and die!” the muffled man’s voice sang.

“Hello!” Aela said. “Are you okay?”

A pause followed as the man realized someone had heard him. “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Are you hurt?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I don’t think so. I’m trapped over here by the roof. At least I think it’s the roof. That’s the part that fell on me anyway.”

Aela turned and saw the metal roof, twisted and bent but with a pyramid-shaped piece of it still intact on the pile of rubble. “I see it. Hold on. I’ll get you out of there.”

“You sound familiar,” the man under the rubble said as Aela tried unsuccessfully to pull the chunks of concrete and metal away.

“Hold on a second. I’m going to see if I can lift it. Can you crawl out if I pull this part up a bit?” Aela asked, and tapped her shield on the pyramid-shaped part of the roof.

“I think so.”

“Okay.”

Aela swung the straps of her shield so it hooked around her shoulders and stayed tight on her back. It shone through the morning sun as she used her power to give her a quick burst of strength. With the groan of metal and the cracking of concrete, Aela bent down and lifted the ton of material just barely enough for her to see a man crawl out. The entire structure collapsed in on itself as her strength gave out and she dropped the debris.

Panting, Aela turned to see whom it was she’d rescued.

“Thanks, I…” The man turned to see who it was that had rescued him.

“My pleasure, I…”

“Aela?”

“Darren?”

“Aela!”

“Darren!”

The sibling Prophets embraced each other and bounced around, spinning in a circle and laughing like they’d done as kids during festivals. They laughed and smiled as they couldn’t believe their eyes. When they started tripping over the jutting rebar and imbalanced debris, they stopped spinning and nearly fell over laughing.

“Aela.”

“Darren.”

The siblings paused a moment, their laughter ceasing as their expressions turned.

“Aela!”

“Darren!”

“What are you doing here?” Darren asked.

“What am I doing here? You’re supposed to be on Prosper!” Aela accused.

“I got called in when they needed reinforcements. Since when did you leave Ieral?”

“Since they decided to land at Gradennes — how did you get trapped under there?”

“I think that should be obvious. The building fell on me. Where’d everyone go? Last I knew they were pushing back at the Torin counterattack and that had to have been hours ago.” Darren looked around, realizing the time. “Whoa. It’s morning now.”

“You’re the first person I’ve found,” Aela said, and turned away, covering her face with her hands. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I can’t believe you’re standing there when we could be attacking,” Darren said, and hopped off the ruins of the Hersh Building. “Come on. We’ve got to find Hendar and the others.”

“Which is exactly what I was doing before I found you. Darren, wait.” Aela grabbed her brother by the shoulder. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

Darren smiled. “Same to you, sis. Oh, before we head out.” Darren pulled the clip out of his empty pistol, holding it above his head. It glowed brightly, shining like a red lightbulb.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting my ammo back.” After a brief moment where nothing happened, a little red bullet flew toward the clip and hit it with a clang. Like an ultra-magnet, one by one the bullets Darren had fired flew toward the gun till seventeen had been retrieved, sticking to the clip. “Hmm, there was one more.” A puff of concrete burst behind them as the last bullet bore its way through to clang against the clip. “There’s the last one.”

“That’s…actually pretty impressive, Darren. How did you learn to do that?”

“Learned it pretty quickly once I figured out I couldn’t use normal bullets,” Darren said as he reloaded his pistol. “Kind of an advantage and a disadvantage, don’t you think? I get a more versatile bullet but once I shoot all eighteen I have to pull them back in.”

“How fast can you load it?” Aela asked, pulling her shield into its position on her left arm.

“When I want to, pretty much instantly.” It took less than five seconds for Darren to put all eighteen bullets into the locked and ready black and red pistol. His pistol held in both hands, Darren moved toward the street where the corpse of the tank smoldered. “Let’s go.”

“Hold on, don’t go running ahead. I’m the Gold here, remember. I’ll take the lead.”

“Since when do you take the lead?”

“Since I learned the ability to take a bullet and not die,” Aela noted.

“Well how about I kill the person who shoots at us before he makes you take a bullet,” Darren said.

“Or you could let me take the hits then kill the attackers.”

“And have to shoot around you? That’s a waste of time.”

“Don’t be stupid, Darren, I’ll lead.”

“I’m not being stupid here, you’re the one who’s trying to be stupid wanting to get shot all the time.”

Aela rolled her eyes, beginning to regret removing her brother from the collapsed building. “Look, why don’t we just walk together okay?”

“That’s what I had in mind in the first place. Come on, follow me.”