The fireball lights up the entire city. The shockwave almost knocks me off the Circus wall.
The huge crowned head of Emperor Zargon goes flying through the air, spinning end over end. It smashes into a neighboring building, which collapses in a plume of dust.
“Mystics!” Kiddu yells.
I try to ignore the chaos and zero in on the attacking archer. I spot him—now he’s glowing violet, just like the first figure. The light narrows into an arrow-beam. Shoots. A thin spindle of light—for a horrifying moment, I’m sure this magic purple arrow is streaming through the night straight towards me.
But it sails just over our heads and beyond the Circus, striking a storage building’s wide rooftop—and the attacker appears. Somersaults out of thin air, like the violet arrow had funneled his existence from there to there. He quickly stands up, illuminated by the still-pulsing fireball—a man in a dark robe and flowing turban holding a long bow.
Balanced expertly on the sloped roof tiles, the mystic draws an arrow from a quiver on his back. Nocks it. Points it at one of the watchtowers on the Dividing Wall.
He starts to glow orange.
“Get down!” Kiddu screams.
She pulls me down low, just as the mystic releases the missile. It shoots towards the watchtower with another whoooosh! and explodes into roaring flames. The heat punches me in the face.
The mystic quickly draws another arrow and warps away with it, trailing a silky bridge of violet light.
After only a moment of calm, another explosion, this time from the native district. A plume of fire and smoke belches up from behind the Dividing Wall.
I don’t know why it takes me so long to realize this, but now I do—the city is under attack.
In the space of time this fact filtered down through my brain, the imperial sorcerers must have been preparing a counterattack. Now they launch it.
A peal of thunder erupts from the Wall, and a blinding blue-white flash of lightning sears through the sky, sharper and louder and brighter than any of the mystics’ arrows.
It is the first of dozens of blasts.
From their tall watchtowers, the sorcerers’ onslaught is massive and indiscriminate. Streaks of lightning blast down into the natives’ mud hovels, shattering their adobe walls into powder, burning jagged lines into my vision. Thunderclaps shake the buildings and slosh my internal organs.
Below and behind, I hear a growl.
“Somebody’s awake,” says Kiddu.
The lamashu stirs, flexes its massive paws, stretches its feathered wings. Its eyes open, collecting the light from the explosions in ghostly glowing patinas.
Kiddu waves at the beast.
“Here, beastie beastie beastie…”
“Will you stop it!”
“YOU THERE! ON THE WALL!”
I turn around.
Three imperial hoplites look up at us, decked out in pearlstone breastplates, helmets, long spears, and huge round shields. Two of them hold up their spears overhand, flexed to throw. The third takes out a boltwand tipped with a bright blue gem and points it straight at my chest.
Instinctively, I hold up my hands in a surrendering gesture. This includes the hand with the bomb
“He’s got flamecraft!” says one of the hoplites.
The one with the wand gives the order: “Jump down! NOW!”
Before I can comply, Kiddu grabs my arm and pulls me tumbling down on the other side of the wall—back into the lamashu pen. The sandy ground knocks the wind out of me.
A thin bolt of lightning angles up above us. The hoplite with the boltwand must have discharged and missed. Beyond the wall, I can hear them cursing.
Kiddu has already bounced up to her feet. She pulls me up.
Through the tumult of sorcerous thunder I can hear the hoplites running around to the back door. The Empire also has master keywands for opening gravitic doors and they probably work much faster than the one I used.
Opposite the back door, down the open-air passageway, the lamashu has apparently just realized it is no longer chained. It rears up on its hind legs and spreads out its wings—its body as long as one and a half of me, its wingspan as wide as three of my heights—and then slams its front paws down, kicking up a cloud of dust.
The beast stands in front of the big wooden gates to the main arena—the only other way out of the Circus.
“Kiddu,” I say, “maybe we should—”
What I want to say is surrender to the soldiers, but then I notice a more immediate problem. The lamashu, staring at us with its mask face and lamp eyes, has lowered its head. Its good horn points at us like a spear.
It snorts and stamps its paw on the ground.
“—Get the hell out of here?” says Kiddu.
“No! If we move, it’s going to pounce!”
The beast stamp-snorts again, this time beating its huge wings at the same time. Sand and dust blast everywhere.
I’m still holding a smoke bomb in one hand and a lighter in the other.
I don’t know where I get the inspiration, or the decisiveness—but in a second I light the flamecraft and hold it aloft.
The beast growls at this new light.
“What do you think you’re doing!?” says Kiddu.
“Um! Cover! Fire in the hole!”
And with that, I lob the smoke bomb. Not aiming so much at the beast but somewhere between us. The lamashu traces its flight through the air with its big head.
Then it explodes. A white orange flash. The force is surprising, shocking—I thought it was going to be mostly smoke. We’re knocked back flat against the wall. The explosion knocks the lamashu backwards too, but it beats its wings, using the blast to lift itself up into the air.
It ends up perched precariously atop one of the big wooden gates. This gate begins to swing open and sag dangerously off its hinges.
The lamashu beats its wings again and pushes off from the gate. This time, the gate tears away completely from its hinges and slams to the ground. A dust cloud explodes up from the impact.
More wingbeats from above now—and another sound. The gravitic door behind us opening—
“Go!” yells Kiddu, and drags my dazed body into a steady run down the passageway, over the collapsed gate, and into the central sandpit.
The center of the Circus is wide and empty. Chaotic sounds of the night echo around the circles of stone benches—crackling fire, clanking armor, deafening thunderbursts, screaming, and now a roaring, flying lamashu.
I watch the beast soar and swoop through the sky, wingbeats heavy and thick. It’s amazing—this is the entire reason I came out, to see this creature finally free.
As I’m watching the lamashu I almost run straight into two hoplites.
They’ve thrown open the main entrance and have charged through, shields and spears in battle positions.
Kiddu tugs my hand just in time and we run towards the center of the arena. The hoplites fan out, joined now by a third hoplite from the back door. They cast long shadows from the green lit-lamps ringing the pit.
I feel like I’m being corralled like a wild beast. They advance slowly, pearlstone helmets blank and skull-like expressions in the dark.
A wingbeat blasts from above—and I see the whites of the nearest hoplite’s eyes triple in size beneath his dark helmet.
“GODS IN HEAVEN!”
He swings his shield up just in time—the lamashu’s hind claw rakes the pearlstone, batting the soldier down into the dust. The beast growls and propels itself back up into the air, nearly flattening me with the force of its wings.
“Now!” says Kiddu, and she pulls me around the two standing hoplites who are now much too distracted by the beast overhead to block us.
Only when we reach the arched corridor leading out of the Grand Circus does a soldier finally notice our escape and yell to give chase.