Emergence: Chapter 11

The bottom-most floor of the house was rather bland, Tors thought. There was nothing on the whitewashed walls that could be seen as decoration, only a sheet of mould above Pandora's screen; obviously caused by the damp in the air. Winds continued to buffet outside, illustrated by the few remaining signs and trees pointing the wind forward. The rain had subsided slightly, or at least, Tors thought it had; the pounding on the windows was not as loud as it was before.

“Rain's easing a bit now.” Tors turned to the others and gave them a half-hearted smile; their house was almost levelled now and they all knew that if the winds got any worse, the house would cease to exist. Acknowledging his smile, Pandora raised her eyebrows and gave a brief nod whilst comforting her hair; it felt her fear. Emola stood at the screen, trying to turn it on but to no avail. “It's not turning on, Emola.”

“God dammit all!” Emola's scales flashed briefly to a darker blue and he kicked the base of the screen. Tors heard his one of his toes crack as it met the base and Emola winced and grimaced. “Power's out still.”

“Course it is,” Pandora muttered. The power had been out for about an hour now, shortly after the two higher levels were destroyed. “No-one to fix it.”

Emola looked round at her and fixed her with a scathing look. “Don't be sarcastic with me.”

“Why? It was obvious it wasn't going to work.” Pandora rose from her chair, hair bristling as if it was challenging Emola.

Emola sighed. “Yeah...”

Pandora sat back down, and her hair wrapped itself around her chest. “Why did I come here?”

“I don't know,” Tors said non-committally, “Something history based?”

“I could have gone anywhere else,” Tors did not know if she had heard him, or if she was even listened him. “But instead I find myself on a dying world, just to see a glimpse of Adjeti technology. And all it was was the wrecked engine of the world-burner! Nothing interesting! I expected satellites, weapons...”

She continued for a while more, but Tors had stopped listening by that point and he wondered over to the window. He watched the winds whip up everything on the ground and throw it into a whirlwind which powered through the streets, growing larger and larger as it went. Tors watched it in silence as took down a street-light and picked that up too, swinging it like a club at any victims it could find. But there was no-one outside. There never was anymore. People would rather starve than risk the wind and rain.

The twister of debris stopped abruptly and dropped to the ground with a clatter. The street-light landed on its base, before it teetered briefly and fell with a clang. The few remaining trees fell back to a resting position and the windows stopped rattling. Silence.

“The wind's stopped.” Tors observed. “Odd.”

Emola and Pandora approached the window and checked that Tors was right. “Huh.” Emola said, “All it needed was your moaning!”

Pandora reluctantly smiled at the jibe. “Shut up, you.”

Emola smiled back, and Tors could see a sparkle in his eyes and a brief paling in his scales as he looked at her. Emola dragged his eyes away and looked out of the window again, craning his neck so as to look at everything. Naarl's house was still ruined, but most of it was scattered through the street. Tors was not upset with the old man's demise; he had already gone through that anguish a thousand times as everyone he knew was slowly killed by the storms.

“Tors!”

Tors turned to Emola, who was tugging on his shirt and looked terrified. Pandora also looked over abruptly. “Over there,” Emola pointed over to where another house stood, mostly intact. Tors could see the outlines of the inhabitants moving inside. “What is that?”

Next to the house was swirling green whirlwind, similar to the one which had been carrying the debris. It moved closer until it reached the middle of the street. It was then when they realised that this was not a natural phenomenon; as they watched, the winds unfurled into a serpentine form comprised entirely of the green, always moving gas. Tors stepped away from the window, and so did the others. “The hell is that?” Emola seemed breathless; presumably out of fear, Tors dared not look away from the creature just to check Emola's scales. He knew that his own would be the darkest they had ever been.

The gas at one end of the entity shifted itself into an ovoid shape and Tors saw something bright red within it; an eye perhaps? The ovoid opened into four pieces and let out a scream that echoed around the street, bounding off of the walls. It was impossible to aptly describe what it sounded like, but Tors knew what it felt like; pure fear injected into his ears, complete with the pain.

“We're going to die, aren't we?” Emola's question remained unanswered as the creature's head closed up again.

The red light from inside the creature's head seemed to scan everything around it, before it faded again and the creature disappeared. Tors let out a sigh of relief and the tension in the room was shattered.

In their rush to comfort each other, neither Emola nor Pandora noticed that the winds began to pummel the street as soon as the creature disappeared.