It started out like any other ordinary day.
Sorel awoke just after the break of day with the sun shining in through the crack in his thin curtains. He’d kicked the blankets off during the night, but the day was already warm enough that it didn’t matter. He could hear the faint sounds of his mother calling him from downstairs and reluctantly climbed out of bed to dress. Just as he did every morning.
“Good morning, sweetie,” said his mother when he finally came downstairs, yawning, “have something to eat.”
Sorel plonked down onto the rough bench in front of the table and gnawed at a chunk of bread. There were two empty plates on the table coated with scattered crumbs already, and the loaf was half gone.
“Did father and Seyla head out already?”
“Your father’s working and your sister’s gone to the town square with her friends to watch some dancers or puppeteers or something.”
Sorel nodded. His father worked with the local blacksmith and headed out before Sorel saw him most days. Seyla always rose early on in the hope that one of her little friends would come calling for her to go and see what street entertainment had been set up that day.
“I wish she wouldn’t waste so much time with them.” His mother sighed, collecting the dirty plates from the table and brushing the crumbs off into a pail of cloudy water. On a table beside it was a canvas sack of neatly folded clothes, wrapped in little bundles.
Sorel didn’t begrudge his little sister her amusement. Their mother had spent almost all of her life working as a washerwoman for those in the city well off enough not to have to do their own laundry, but not well off enough to have a permanent staff member. Seyla would have to do the same before long or hire herself out as a maid or washerwoman in another household. Sorel was happy to let her have her fun while she was still young enough and he could make the rounds with the laundry.
“Will you—“ his mother began.
“Yes,” Sorel interrupted, pushing his plate away. “I’ll take the clean clothes round. The usual lot?”
His mother nodded and took his plate, “six bundles in that sack. Make sure you collect the right payments.”
Sorel swung his legs over the bench and clipped his money pouch to his belt. He grabbed the sack, gave his mother a grin and headed for the door.
It didn’t actually take long to make the rounds of laundry. Sorel’s mother was only one woman, so she only took on laundry for up to six families each week. They were all relatively local, in the same district as they were, near the river. He delivered the loads in less than two hours and decided to spend the rest of the morning hunting down his little sister to see if the day’s entertainment was worthwhile.
Before leaving the front yard of the final property, Sorel made sure his money pouch was tightly shut and tucked underneath his jacket out of sight. He twisted his belt to make sure it was securely hidden and that his little dagger in its sheath was clearly visible, just in case.
Seyla’s usual haunt was the main town square, where the best entertainers would set up shop. Top singers, dance troupes, even plays would set up there. But if she and her friends didn’t like the entertainment on offer, or they got bored, they’d go off in search of other travelling entertainers in the smaller squares and avenues. Sorel headed off in the direction of the main square, no more than a half an hour walk from his house and close to the centre of the city. All the traders passed through there, which was why the best entertainers hung around. And why all of the bored kids in the city hung around there too.
By the time Sorel had reached the square, the day had grown hotter, and in amongst the throngs of people in the wider streets of the city centre it was almost stifling. The sun was bright overhead, and the sky was cloudless. The shops and houses closest to the river - such as Sorel’s own - hung pungent herbs inside and outside to ward off flies and mosquitoes, but there was no such relief here. Sorel slapped at a buzzing near his ear and grimaced. He hopped onto the decorative stone moulding of a nearby shop and grabbed the iron sign for balance to look out over the square.
Without needing to search too extensively, Sorel already knew that he would not find Seyla there. There was chatter and commotion amongst the people, yes, and there were colourfully tented stalls dotted about and the laughter of children, yes, but there was no music, and that meant that there was no Seyla. She and her friends - all other children from the river district - had no interest in fountains, for on the off chance that they fancied splashing around in the water, they had it on their doorsteps. They had no money to take an interest in the stalls, and all of them were too well-behaved to bother with stealing from them. Thus, Sorel concluded, if he couldn’t hear music, then there was no point in wasting time searching for Seyla in the square.
He hopped down from the moulding and crossed diagonally to a small alley in the square, squeezing past a few people down the winding streets. He was heading in a particularly meandering route back home. The route would take him through a few of the wider avenues this side of the city and a couple of other squares where his sister might be.
It really was like any other day. Do the laundry round for his mother and hunt for his little sister to see if she was doing anything fun and drag her back home when she’d been out too long. Searching the city for her was second nature. He knew all her haunts so well that the honey seller called out to him when he passed the shop and invited him in for tea.
Sorel glanced up at the sky, and since it wasn’t even midday yet, he decided to accept. The honey man said he’d seen Seyla and her little friends heading in the direction Sorel was going, but didn’t know where to. Sorel drank the tea and thanked him for the tip. He passed the shop almost every day and got his fair share of free tea and confirmation that his sister had passed by each day.
“Don’t you be dragging her on those laundry runs! Let the kid have some fun.” He called out to Sorel as he was leaving, with a grin on his face.
“I know, I know. I just want to see what she’s up to.” Sorel gave him a wave and went on his way.
He wasn’t far from home - only a few blocks - when he felt it. He hadn’t found Seyla yet, but given how close he was to home, he’d assumed that she and her friends had given up on entertainment in the city and had gone to paddle in the river. He was leaning against the wall of the local baker’s house, thankful for the slight coolness that the river’s proximity gave the air, when a sudden gust of hot air rippled through the street.
Sorel stood up straight and pushed his ruffled hair out of his eyes. The city was hot almost every day and had its fair share of warmer winds but this was different. This was like opening the stove and feeling the rush of the flames on the skin. There was another wave and Sorel closed his eyes against the dry, crackling air. The baker stepped out of the door and shielded his eyes.
“Sorel, what the hell was that?”
Sorel grunted, “I don’t know.” Even after the wave, the air around him felt drier. He was mere blocks from the river and yet the air was completely devoid of its moisture. He looked down the street and, in the distance, saw smoke.
“It’s a dry day, Sorel,” the baker said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, “it must have set a fire.”
It was a dry day, and a city in a hot, dry place would be prone to fires. But the majority of the city was made of stone. There were wooden frames and some wooden houses, but a fire to cause those pulsing waves of dry air, to ratchet the temperature of streets in seconds, was unheard of. That would require a fire of magnificent proportions.
There was another wave of heat, this time accompanied by a whoosh of air.
“I’ve gotta find my sister and my mother,” Sorel said to the baker, and hurried off to the next street.
He was uncomfortably aware of the air becoming steadily warmer as he jogged, but he couldn’t see more than two or three thin trails of smoke above the city. Fires, probably, but small. A cart or a stall caught alight. There were periodic rushes of burning air and whooshes as he made his way.
“Sorel!” Came a cry from above him. Sorel stopped and squinted upwards. He was making his way through a small square with a church, and someone was in the bell tower calling him. “Get up here, Sorel!”
Sorel recognised the voice as Veren, a friend of his, and darted into the open church to ascend the tower. He wanted to find Seyla and his mother and make sure they were alright and that nothing was burning down, since many of the houses next to the river were wooden, but since none of the smoke he’d seen was coming from that direction, he decided he had time to see if the bell tower offered a better view of what was going on.
“Sorel, you alright?” Veren asked, grasping Sorel’s wrist to pull him up onto the tower with him.
“What’s going on, Veren? Why is it so hot, and what’s with this wind?”
Veren didn’t answer him, and just pointed.
The bell tower offered a decent view over the rest of the city. Behind him was the river district and the districts across the river, and ahead was the main square and the centre of the city. It stretched on, unobstructed except for the occasional other tall building or tower. In the horizon, sweeping over the distant buildings at the edge of the city, was a great shadow.
It was still a clear day, as it had been all morning, but the edge of the city was obscured by haze and the waving hot air. And smoke. Sorel felt another rush of hot air pulse against them and when he opened his eyes and looked where it came from, he saw the massive shadow twist and flap a great pair of wings.
“It can’t be…” Sorel muttered, his voice grating in the dry air.
“I’ve been watching it since the first wave of heat,” Veren said, “it’s just been circling like that.”
Sorel stared at it, trying to make out the creature’s form through the distortions of the air. He could see the source of the smoke now, buildings further away than he’d thought. They were smouldering gently, and he couldn’t make out any signs of roaring flames. The beast was circling like a vulture, its head hanging down to stare at the three trails of smoke. It’s tail was as long again as its body, and its wings were enormous. It barely moved them at all, like a bird of prey. When it did flap its wings, moments later there was that pulse of air and the whoosh.
“What do we do?” Sorel asked, staring at Veren, who just shook his head and shrugged.
The creature flapped its wings again, suddenly, and rose higher. It stopped circling and instead opened its mouth and unleashed a roar.
Sorel clapped his hands over his ears and Veren did the same against the noise. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard - louder than any creature he’d ever heard before and once the sound died the beast unleashed a torrent of flame from its jaws and incinerated the buildings it had been circling.
Sorel couldn’t tear his eyes away. Most buildings in the city were almost entirely stone, but they burst into flames and collapsed all the same. The monster - the dragon - had set fire to everything within those three trails of smoke.
Veren had fallen to his knees. “Did you see that?” He said, his voice croaking, “that thing—“
“It destroyed that district like it knew exactly what it was doing.” Sorel stared at it in disbelief as it hovered in place, still screaming a torrent of fire until there was nothing but smoke and flame beneath it.
And then with a flap of its wings acting like a bellows, it spread the flames and turned towards the bell tower.
“Veren!” Sorel shrieked, grabbing his friend by the arm, “we need to go, now!”
Sorel yanked him to his feet as the dragon drew closer. It hung its head downwards and breathed fire all the while, like it had been testing before and was now ready for destruction. In the bright light of the sun and the fire, the dragon’s scales shone a blueish purple that would have struck Sorel as beautiful in any other context. He dragged Veren to the ladder and forced him to start climbing. The dragon drew closer, but Sorel couldn’t even be sure it was over the main square yet. It was so enormous it was hard to tell exactly where it was apart from the growing heat.
Sorel tried to see where the fires had spread to and was relieved to see that they were probably only just reaching the main square. They still had time. He forced the thoughts of those little children splashing in the fountain out of his mind before they could turn to flames and followed Veren to the ground.
“Sorel,” Veren pulled him out of the church and gripped his arm, “to the river?”
“To the river.”
Sorel glanced back as they sprinted down the street and saw tendrils of smoke beginning to creep into view. The tall buildings and narrow alleys which they ran through blocked his view of the dragon, but he could hear it’s earth-shaking roar and the sounds of stone cracking and buildings collapsing from the flames. The heat was growing ever more stifling and denser, with a thickness punctuated only by the chaotic wind of the dragon’s heavy wingbeats.
Sorel and Veren emerged from the alley on the wide riverside street and were immediately swept into the crowd of people sprinting to the water’s edge. Sorel gripped his friend’s arm as they were caught in the human current to keep them together; they couldn’t control their own movements even if they’d tried. In the wide street lined with low buildings, Sorel glimpsed the dragon again.
It was illuminated from above and below, shimmering in gleaming blue and deep purple. It seemed to have stopped heading directly for them and instead was sweeping back and forth above the city, leaving no street unburned. Sorel didn’t realise how uncomfortably close it was until the great beast’s tail caught the bell tower and sent it crumbling. He exchanged a look with Veren.
“It’s huge!” Veren shouted over the crowd.
Sorel looked back. It was hard to tell, what with the encroaching smoke now streaming through the crowd and it’s incessant flight back and forth, but as the dragon swooped low and close Sorel saw that it would have been big enough to swallow a horse whole if it wanted. The crowd pressed forward and - still keeping his grip on Veren’s arm - he pushed diagonally sideways through the swarm. Though the throngs of people seemingly insisted on pushing forwards, he managed to pull the two of them free to slip into a tiny alleyway between two houses barely big enough for each of them to face forwards.
“What are you doing, Sorel?” Veren hissed, looking over his shoulder back at the crowd, “did you not see that thing? We need to keep moving!”
Another roar, another wave of hot hair. Sorel could hear the flames crackling now, meaning that the fire couldn’t be more than a block away and the dragon itself would be almost upon them. The crowd was almost obscured by smoke. Sorel grabbed Veren’s arm again and pulled him down the alley. “We need to keep moving,” he explained, “but we can’t stay with them. We’ll get crushed or burnt.”
“God…”
“That thing… look at it. Look at how it’s sweeping the city. It’s burning everything. That crowd…”
“Is a target.” Veren coughed, “I get it. We need to stay away from the crowd and cut through to the river.”
“We’re heading for the bridge.” Sorel said. Veren didn’t object; the dragon had clearly been collapsing stone with its flames, but the bridge was old, very old. It had been around for centuries and made of sturdier, thicker blocks than the buildings in the city. If they could get to the riverbanks beneath, they might be able to shelter. It was the only idea he could think of.
Sorel led the two of them through more thin alleys and backyards, occasionally having to double back because of the smoke. He knew these cut throughs like the back of his hand thanks to playing chase and hide-and-seek with Seyla and before long they burst out of an alley and onto the few metres of muddy, marshy land between houses and river.
“Sorel - the people!” Veren grabbed Sorel to stop him from darting forwards to the water and pointed.
The crowds were emerging from the street to the jetties in the river. There were piers and steps leading directly into the water, and people were already crowding there. It was a deep and relatively still part of the river, usually where people docked their little boats and swam on hot days, which had now become a place of refuge.
As Sorel scanned the crowds piling into the water, he spotted two familiar figures: his mother, and Seyla.
“Sorel!” Veren kept his grip on his friend as Sorel tried to run to them, pulling him backwards until they both fell down into the mud. “Sorel, it’s there!”
Sorel stared in horror as the great shadow of the dragon swept over them, its immense size making the shadow take seconds to pass over, it’s wingbeat pushing them back down to the mud in a blast of burning air which made them cough and close their eyes. Sorel crawled backwards, dragging Veren with them until they backed up against the walls of the bridge and the dragon flew over the crowds pouring into the river.
Despite the enormous creature with its deafening roars passing overhead, the stream of people leaping into the water didn’t slow. The dragon banked, tilting its great wings and turning back.
As it reached the crowd, reached Seyla, it opened its mouth and unleashed hell.
Sorel screamed as the dragon did. He didn’t see what happened to the people. The fire hit the water with an explosion of steam, obscuring both the dragon and the people taking refuge. The dragon rose above the steam cloud, hovering, still breathing fire. Only when Sorel felt the mud beneath him growing hot and saw the river itself begin to boil did the dragon close its mouth, flap its wings and cross the water to the city on the other side.
As the steam dissipated, Sorel saw the bodies begin to drift downstream towards him.
He wasn’t looking for his mother or Seyla, but even if he was, he wouldn’t have seen them. He was vaguely aware of Veren’s sobbing next to him as the bodies drew close. They were charred beyond all recognition, their flesh burnt and cracked, their bones splintered and steaming. Black skeletons and cooked flesh drifted with the still-roiling current. It was impossible to tell how many had been in the water; the river was a soup of human flesh and bone, burnt and mixed together indiscriminately. The jetties were gone, destroyed by the flame, and piles of corpses half turned to ash lay strewn upon the steps. Still the dragon roared, and still the fires crackled.
Sorel stayed seated on the hot mud, sinking, his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his hands. He and Veren were surrounded by smoke; he knew that they couldn’t stay here for long. He tried to think of what they needed to do, tried to push the sight of burnt pieces of human floating down the river from his mind. What if that charred arm had been his mother’s? What if that skull with the flesh melted away from the bone was his little Seyla? They were in the river. They were in that stew of death just yards from him, somewhere. He would never bury their bodies. He would never say goodbye.
He took a deep breath, attempting to force the images from his mind and calm himself, and was instead immediately drawn back to reality by the thick, choking smoke he drew in.
“Veren,” he coughed, “we’ve got to move.”
Veren nodded, pointedly keeping his eyes away from the river. “How?”
Sorel stood up and pulled his shirt up over his mouth. It helped, a little. The smoke was thick all around them; it blanketed the direction they’d come and was spreading down to the river. The city across from them was filled with fire and the deafening sound of buildings collapsing. The only place where the smoke was thin was nearest the river.
“We’ll walk along the riverbank.” Sorel said, swallowing his gorge at the thought of being so close to those human remains. “We know the water’s too hot to go in and full of… we can’t go in the river. We walk… downstream. Out of the city. Away.”
Veren nodded and let Sorel pull him to his feet. Sorel pulled Veren’s shirt up over his nose as well and gripped his hand as they edged as close as they dared to the river. Sorel could feel the heat through his boots but judged it safe enough. Determinedly refusing to look to his right, to the river of corpses, he trudged on.
Sorel had been right. The smoke was bearable this close to the river, but thick enough that it covered the smell of the dead. With every roar and every rush of hot air and every shake of the earth they stopped in their tracks, waiting for the dragon to come. Once, Sorel chanced a glance over the river and saw that the dragon was well occupied. One of those earth-shaking thuds, it turned out, had not been a building collapsing but the great monster landing. It held its head high on its curved neck, like a swan. It was close to the river; Sorel pulled Veren into a crouch to hide in the heavy smoke as they crept along the water’s edge. Based on its attack of the crowd, it didn’t look like it was targeting people individually, but he couldn’t be sure. Although it was standing on all fours, it towered over everything around it. The buildings of the city didn’t even reach its knees. With a swipe of one of its clawed hands it turned a building to rubble and sent bricks flying into the river. Something hot and wet splattered onto Sorel’s cheek and he couldn’t be sure if it was water, or blood, or both.
The dragon lowered its head and unleashed a torrent of flame into the streets it stood in, sending up plumes of smoke and the sounds of further destruction.
Sorel led his friend along the edge of the river in the smoke until they were both choking and coughing, the smoke so thick now that they could barely see. When Sorel looked back, he couldn’t see the city at all, and all he could see of the dragon was the occasional flash of light when it opened its jaws to spit fire.
When they finally emerged from the smoke onto the open plains, after walking for hours and coughing and squinting through their pained eyes, they collapsed.
“Are we,” Veren said between coughs, “are we out of the city?”
Sorel looked back at the way they’d come. He couldn’t see the city. All he could see was a great mass of smoke, like a storm cloud curled around the city. Every building was obscured by the black smog and even on the plains, miles outside of the city, Sorel and Veren were still sat in a grey haze. The river beside them ran reddish-black, unidentifiable chunks floating in the current. The grasses were scorched and the blue sky above the city rippled with heat like metal in the sun.
“We’re out of the city,” Sorel cleared his throat and spat a glob of thick black phlegm onto the ground, “but we need to keep going.”
Veren nodded and helped him to his feet. They had no water, no food, no supplies, and they could barely breathe.
But behind them was a dragon, and destruction. They pressed on.
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Copyright © 2022 Aimee Dias
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