Thrax

Chapter 7

The first shot from the descending vessel hit the opposite side of the Chateau from where the courtyard was.  Only the shocking, deafening blast of the explosion drowned out the screams and shouts of the civilians heading for the aerovans.  Their frightened but mostly orderly procession to the vessels waiting to carry them to safety broke into a panicked run, a virtual stampede.

 The voices of the Knights and Corps ordering them to stay calm and hurry along to the vans disappeared into the din.  Some of the uniformed dragons had to break into a low flight to keep from being trampled themselves in the terrified onrush.  Others spread their wings and extended their arms and stood at positions to make themselves a corridor through which people might run without stampeding.

 It was only partly effective; many of the Chateau guests ran around them on their way to the vans.  There were those who fell and were nearly pounded underfoot, and the dragons took to beating their wings and thrashing their tails to direct people around the fallen so as to help them up and get them going again. 

With the first shot came plumes of smoke and dust and a hail of debris that climbed and arched cruelly into the air.  Some of the fragments started to rain down like missiles onto the courtyard, striking pavement, trees, shrubs, and people alike.  Moving fast, Thrax stepped to one side, kept one wing in front of Agena, and folded one wing in front of himself.

 Pieces of debris hit the pavement in front of him and around him.  A small fragment struck the wing behind which Agena stood, making her flinch and making Thrax hiss angrily.  His other wing was pelted with pieces of walls and fixtures.  When this onslaught ended, Thrax let his wing down from Agena and kept an arm in front of her while unfolding his other wing to give himself a look at the alien craft now coming through the gouts of smoke that rose from the blasted Chateau. 

He opened wide a mouth full of gleaming fangs and uttered a roar so loud that Agena could actually hear it over the noise.  She shuddered as much from the sound of Thrax’s rage as from what was happening before her and around her.

Agena saw the weredragons actually pick up a few people who had been hit or had simply fallen and been stunned or dazed and fly them bodily to the hatches, where some of their fellow guests thankfully had the presence of mind to help them aboard.  Then she turned her attention back to the alien vessel looming overhead and saw the lights gleaming with menace on it once more.  Eyes widening and body clenching, she cried out, “THRAX!”

Thrax reacted as fast as she could shout.  Everything happened in heartbeats.  There was a searing flash of light and the most terrible explosive sound that Agena had ever heard.  There was a shockwave whose impact almost made her feel as if a stone wall were crashing into her.  There was a feeling of engulfment and a sudden darkness.  She felt scales and smooth metallic fabric all around her, enclosing her—and then she felt her feet lift the ground and a series of mighty whooshing sounds.  The bottom of her stomach seemed to drop away, and she remembered where and when she had felt this way before.

Realizing she had reflexively closed her eyes against the initial flash of light, she opened them again just as a rush of warm wind flowed across her face.  She blinked and found herself in Thrax’s arms, flying high over trees.  Carefully as not to struggle too much while he carried her, Agena peered between Thrax’s neck and wing and squinted behind them.  Beyond the twisting and curling of Thrax’s tail, past the trees, what was left of the Chateau where they had consummated their desire was now broken walls and towers belching smoke and flames into the sky, with the alien craft hovering over it.

 Agena watched the three aerovans rise out of the courtyard and veer off in the same direction that Thrax was flying with her.  Teeth clenching, she pleaded with the universe, Let them get away!  Just let them get away!  Searing beams of energy erupted from the alien ship.  One of them grazed across the top of one of the vans, producing an awful discharge of sparks and making the van lurch and list in flight before continuing to speed off.  Another energy bolt struck another van directly in the middle, and instantly turned it to a savage burst of light and fire and torn, screaming metal.  What was left of that van came down in fiery parts at the edge of the forest, and Agena screamed, holding on tighter to Thrax and burying her head in his shoulder.

Thrax did not look back, but he had heard the sounds of what she was seeing behind them.  Only his dragon eyes and the flaring of his dragon nostrils showed the rage and fury welling up inside him—and the retribution. 

In his mind, he multiplied the scene that he and Agena were fleeing by hundreds, thousands of other such scenes unfolding even now all over Lacerta.  And his heart was filled with one desire – the desire for a reckoning with the attackers of his world and the murderers of his people.

He flew them over the canopy of a forest until he came to a place where the trees parted and a little stream, much smaller than Serpent’s Tongue Stream, flowed through a clearing.  Flapping his wings to brake his flight and take them down, Thrax descended with Agena into the clearing and landed in the grass just off the bank of the stream.

 He set Agena down on the ground but kept one hand on her arm to steady her.  He knew that while she was not by any means a timid or fainthearted woman, her life of fierce physical competition had done nothing to prepare her for any of this.