Apocalypse Harem Book Three: MFFF Contemporary Harem Series (Apocalypse Harem) by Carley Hitchens

Author:Carley Hitchens [Hitchens, Carley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Though I saw it when I was asleep, I knew at once it was no dream. As plainly as I could have looked out my bedroom window and glimpsed the mountains, the chestnut trees and birches and pines, the blue shimmer of Otter Pond in the distance and golden eagles and osprey wheeling about in the sky, I saw the burned city.

Or, rather, the burning city.

Chicago had not burned entirely, not yet. A scattering of skyscrapers and apartment high-rises jutted out from the wreckage – brick and broken concrete, half-melted rebar steels, shattered glass and streets filled with melted blacktop, now just hardened clumps of tar – while smoke wafted up from the detritus and gouts of flame burst up from cracks in the sidewalks.

The sky was hazy from the smoke clouds and debris but the dragons glided through the poisonous mist, belching fire. Their wings were massive and leathery and dark, their heads topped with crowns of jagged bone or jewels or simply long horns, their mouths opening wide enough to swallow cattle whole.

I felt the heat from the fires on my face, like standing just downwind from a blaze, I could smell the ash in the air and, now and again, I’d catch the scent of cooking flesh.

Looking ahead, I saw it lording over the wreckage, tall and proud – the Sears Building, the tallest in Chicago, 1400-plus feet of concrete and steel and reinforced glass, the window panes now caked in soot, the street-level pulsing bright red-orange as swirling smoke snaked up toward the lord dragon perched upon the roof.

Yes, that’s what it was, a Lord Dragon. The title came to my mind effortlessly, a singular honorific worthy of the beast. Three, four times the size of the lesser dragons, the Lord Dragon curled itself around the tower, its scales alternating shades of red and black, blood and volcanic rock, its head topped with horns longer than a megalodon’s ribs.

Its eyes shone a dim yellow shade, like melted gold cooling, eyes that brimmed with intrinsic intelligence, eyes that turned my innards to ice when I looked upon them.

But the Lord Dragon wasn’t alone. A sole human figure stood before it, beneath its front clawed feet, wearing a robe the color of fire and a steel helm shaped like a dragon’s head still steaming and glowing with heat, like it had just been pulled from the fires from which it had been forged.

The helmed figure thrust his arms out – it was a man under that mask, I didn’t know how I knew, but I did – and in one fist he held a wooden staff topped with a glowing geode, alternating colors – magenta, ultramarine, bright red, others – like it had just been plucked from the fires in the belly of the earth.

I opened my eyes and sat up in bed, where I’d gone to sleep in the guest bedroom the night before. Deep in my bones, I knew that had been no dream.

Perhaps I should have been terrified.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.