The Dragon Chase: A Tale of the Everburning City

Chapter 15: Amelian

"Set the latch!" Amelian said to Mia Vascel, as she and Valen Redgrave ran through the door and shoved it behind them.

They had run the quarter-mile at near sprint, after detonating the Salamander pits and driving back the Gloamtaken. They had been eager to get back up and enjoy the relative safety that high walls and thick metal doors offered.

Valen bolted the door shut, turned, and set his back to it, breathing hard. Mia stepped over to one of the taps and started refilling her canteen, drinking greedily as soon as it filled.

Amelian smiled as she watched, proud of them and what they accomplished. Skirmishing with the Gloamtaken was risky; the creatures moved at very irregular speeds, and a shuffling gait could become a sprint in little more than a heartbeat. To have delayed them as long as they did probably saved her life.

The old Sergeant had put on a performance that deserved to have stories made of it. Launching a sortie against the Gloamtaken, and improvised a series of Salamander pits to delay the horde, was something that no one else in the Army would have had the audacity to attempt.

But it was Mia that surprised and impressed her most. Even as a recruit, Amelian had an impression of the old soldier's fearsome skill, but had not expected to see the young corporal keep pace. Mia was focused, followed orders quickly, and her nearly supernatural sense for how firearms behaved was a stunning sight to see on the field.

It wasn't the first time tonight she wondered what the old sergeant had been. Or why he had been assigned to her.

"The locks will hold," Valen said, as he stooped to pick up a Salamander Mia had dropped. "There are ways around, of course, but it will take them hours. We should have some breathing room until we reach the cable-car."

"Good. Thank you, Sergeant," Amelian said as she glanced out the window. She set her gaze on the advancing mob of creatures and fingered the latch of her Salamander. "It's past time we torched the fields. Mia, light it up."

"Aye, ma'am," she replied, and opened the last set of valves, throwing herself into winding the wheel. Valen joined her, and slowly, the valves opened with a sharp hiss.

Below, geysers of flame began to pour out of segments in the causeway beneath them, hurtling fire in wide arcs across the fields. Rows of tall crops caught fire in the wake of the flailing tendrils of flame and began candling in rows, illuminating the once dark fields below.

Amelian smiled as the advancing horde was caught in the flames, and burst into brief flashes of fire before crumpling to the ground. "If they make it to the next wall, it won't be from here."

"And let the abyss take 'em!" Mia exclaimed, watching from another window.

As they turned to leave, Valen stepped ahead and put himself between them and the doorway. Amelian stopped a few feet away, curious. "What is it, Sergeant?"

"Ma'am. What you've done today defies comprehension," Valen said, quiet and solemn. Instinctively, she stood up straight and set her Salamander to rest on her shoulder, as if she were on parade.

"It was the dream of every veteran of the Fifth Invasion to stop a Golem at the last wall. It was a miracle when Crafter Olivia Polden singlehandedly stopped one in front of the Foundries," he explained. "This, ma'am, is difficult to find words for. Should the City survive, it will be on the tapestry."

Amelian whistled softly as the old Sergeant spoke, and recalled the day she took her oath as an officer. It was held in the Agora, the largest auditorium in the city, and the place where the five tapestries hung. Each was immense; a square nearly a hundred feet a side in a city where every fabric is carefully recycled. Each of them depicted the most desperate heroism of the defenders of the City. The centrepiece of the Fifth, the invasion before this one, had a Crafter atop a broken wall, wielding flame as a Golem raised its immense arm at her.