Chapter 378: Golden Wyrm God
The Chicago skyline had been laid bare. Jada watched as one of the last three skyscrapers in the city collapsed. The monuments of steel and glass had fallen one after the other over the past few weeks, gradually increasing in frequency, despite surviving for 500 days of the assimilation. The loss of another iconic building barely generated a change of expression, so much had already happened before they reached the end.
The atmosphere was full of debris, making the details of each building impossible to perceive, but the silhouette of an eleven hundred foot tall structure practically disintegrating was difficult to ignore. It wasn’t so long ago that other survivors had been using the various buildings as their headquarters, housing people while they fought in the streets and hid from larger threats.
Jada was one of the last who hadn’t either left ahead of time, joining the ranks of the Lighthouse, or simply been killed by the Eradication Protocol. She had listened to the complaints of the others that had made the same choices, lamenting the fact that they hadn’t simply abandoned the city in favor of joining Ghost Reef. They never could have imagined that it would get this bad, but many of the more insistent warnings had been dismissed as fear mongering. When the monsters ramped up the pressure, there was a lot less time to complain.
Jada hadn’t really considered leaving the only place she had ever known either. She wasn’t strong enough to be particularly valuable, and if the situation really was as dire as the outsiders claimed, it seemed like they would be in danger no matter where they ended up. She had sided with familiarity instead of taking the leap of faith, knowing she would probably just be a burden no matter where she ended up. She wasn’t sure if it had been the best choice, or if there had actually been an option that could be considered best, but it wouldn’t do her any good to agonize over decisions that couldn’t be unmade.
The fallen building sent a wave of motion through the golden sands that had swallowed the city, rolling across the rubble of previous collapses. Sheets of dust rushed toward their holdout on the Navy Pier Marina, but the additional debris was ignored as it fell. Heavy blades slashed and long pikes were jabbed forward as reinforced shields diverted fatal claws and gaping jaws, representing more pressing actions that occupied their full attention.
The air was scattered with shining bits, reflecting the red haze still present in the atmosphere, forming the uniform sandstorm. Floating grains shifted above the failing lines of defense, where warriors shouted commands and warnings as they bled and killed.
Beyond the battlefield, the surface of the water was already coated so that it almost looked like shifting quicksand rather than part of a larger body of water. The extra dust just piled on top so that anyone unfamiliar might have believed that Chicago was established at the border of a cold desert.
There was a strange depth to the actual sandstorm, not exactly blinding as it was voluminous. Jada kept her eyes up, incapable of much more than shouting more warnings when she spotted something dangerous approaching.
The fighting continued as the atmosphere changed and grew more claustrophobic. People shouted into the faces of roaring beasts, covered in dust and sweat. The rumble of the demolition only briefly drowned them out.
Jada cast the only spell she could reliably summon, spraying a cloud of healing mists toward the backs of the nearest few fighters. It might help them in the next few contests, but with millions of the lizard-like creatures bounding down the fractured and unlevel surface of East Grand Avenue, there wasn’t much hope left.
As she finished her spell, a distant roar stifled all the rest, echoing across the city and further onto the lake as if it would keep going forever. It was so enormous, it actually caused the fighting on both sides to temporarily stall. Thankfully, it originated from incredibly far away. Whatever monster had emitted such a sound was not something Jada, or anyone else with even an inkling of sanity would be eager to meet.
The call for another retreat was made, and the people in direct combat with the monsters did their best to disengage in the surprise pause. They fell back to the next set of obstacles, leaving the collapsed Centennial Wheel behind. The piled rubble from a parking garage gave them a small amount of high ground, but it also made it clear that the people fighting on the opposite side of the pier were long gone.