The War Revealed - 3rd Novel in the Shadow Series

Chapter 29 .

Vai

Everyone was screaming. Homes and roads across the city were destroyed. People were dead. But the worst was that they had been abandoned. They were alone inside their heads. There was no comforting presence to fill them with happiness and tell them they were doing the right thing. When it got difficult, the miasmids left them.

Waves and waves of pink clouds seeped down deep into the dirt, deeper and deeper into the world until the white destruction coming from the Gathering warships couldn't touch them.

The people sought shelter in their homes, in old bomb shelters, in underground tunnels that ran near the surface, but the white found and obliterated them everywhere they tried to hide.

The children had been in school with their teachers - away from their parents. Parents left their work or homes to find their children only to be killed by the white blasts. Teachers tried to comfort the children, but what comfort was there to be had when they had been so completely abandoned? The teachers couldn't keep track of all the children in the panic. Many children now ran in the streets, among the rubble that had been blasted from other areas of the city. They screamed and cried for their parents.

A little girl saw her mother running towards her across the street. She started forward only wanting to be in her mother's arms, but the white light came down and completely destroyed the entire street for as far as the little girl could see. Her mother was no longer there. The buildings were no longer there. A large crevice cut deep into the ground. The little girl almost tumbled in where she would have surely died, but an older boy grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. But that touch made the little girl realize she was in pain. Her bodied hurt, burned, scorched, was overheated and she cried. And the tears hurt as they touched her raw, burnt skin.

The miasmids could have taken her pain away if they had stayed inside her, but they had abandoned her long ago to hide deep within the planet - deep where the horrid weapons couldn't kill them. But she didn't hate them. She missed them. She craved them. She needed them.

I woke sitting straight up in my bed. My cheeks were cold. I reached up and gingerly touched my cheeks with my fingers. Wetness greeted my fingers. There were tears on my cheeks - in my heart. Then I realized my hands were shaking.

Please just let that have been a horrid nightmare.

"Son," my computer mom said.

I closed my eyes and let her familiar, welcome voice wash through me.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "Do you need a doctor?"

"No," I said. "I'm all right."

Had it just been a dream? Or had I touched the planet in my sleep? I knew I hadn't healed anyone. I felt more refreshed than earlier, not weaker. Had the Corruption truly abandoned the Brist? Did they hide away in the planet while the Brist died on the surface? Had my dream only been a dream - a manifestation of my worries - or had a little girl truly just watched her mother die?

I swallowed hard and pushed away the algae shake Warpaint forced in front of my face.

"You need to eat, sir," Warpaint said. "Your 2 hour break will be over soon and you'll have to go back out there to heal. You should drink this and get your nutrition." He shoved it back in front of my face. I took it from him, but didn't drink it immediately.

"Drink," my computer mom encouraged.

My bedroom door opened and my dad walked in. "Good, you're awake," he said.