Below her streams of tiny iron boxes raced back and forth, traveling along two wide black strips set in a shallow trench. The trench cut through the human city, snaking gently and occasionally joining up with other trenches in curious curling structures reminiscent of spilled entrails. Many more of the iron boxes stood motionless on parade grounds dotted between the buildings. ‘Perhaps they worship them’ Megaaeraholrakni thought; she could think of no other reason to go to such extreme efforts for the chariot’s sake.
The gorgon could sense the nascent portal ahead; indeed it would be hard for her to miss it, given how much psychic energy it was leaking. Belial had exhorted the naga to put every effort into this attack and they were obviously giving it everything they had. It could be that this focus on power accounted for their lousy aim. She was drawing near now and the air itself seemed to crackle with power. The portal mouth was bobbing high in the air over a dark L-shaped castle, or more precisely over the bone white chariot-filled parade ground behind it.
Megaaeraholrakni began a slow sweeping turn, oblivious to the attention she was beginning to draw on the ground below. She reached out with her mind, the psychic force radiating down from her wings to caress the extra-dimensional nexus at the heart of the portal. Crude ‘dragging’ was for novices, one merely had to induce a desire to move in a particular direction and the portal would do the work (or rather, the teams of naga powering it would be forced to do the work, but it was all the same to the gorgon). But mere seconds after the portal had begun to move it began to oscillate wildly, shedding energy that arced to the ground as lighting. Megaaeraholrakni had no choice to use every ounce of strength she possessed to wrestle the portal back into submission. Flying directly above it, buffeted by the thermals created by the arcing, it seemed to her that she was riding an untamed beast, ready to throw lighting back at her at any moment. The gorgon’s confidence in her own ability was supreme however, and perhaps not unwarranted, as she soon had the unborn portal simmering in a semblance of submission. Grimly she set off towards the great gleaming towers, a corner of her mind already devising a way to gain revenge on whoever was responsible for this mess.
Tanner Firearm Supplies, Northern Detroit
“Thanks for keeping these aside for me Erwin. I know they’re hard to come by right now, what with the Brits adopting them as standard and grabbing the whole production run.”
“Hey no problem Danny. Wouldn’t want to see a friend short of firepower if one of those monsters makes an appearance.” The shopkeeper insisted on shaking the customer’s hand. The man then scooped up the box of. 338 Lapua from the counter and made his way out of the store.
Daniel Wright had stowed the ammo in the under-seat safe and was about to start his pickup’s engine when a glint in the sky caught his eye. He considered himself something of an aircraft buff and took a closer look, trying to the identify the type. It was bronze colored, the silhouette changing as he watched… something clicked into place as he realized that it was not a plane, but a creature. A creature that looked just like the grainy news footage from England. At first it had looked like it was circling over the AA amp;M building. Now it was definitely heading for downtown; the shop was built just off the I-75 and the demon was flying roughly parallel to the highway.
He leapt out of the truck, grabbing his Barrett 98 from the rack. Fortunately the optics were still in place from his Sunday range visit. As Daniel unlocked the safe he hesitated for a second; shooting into the sky was usually a reason to make fun of ignorant third-worlders, as what went up had to come down and it could well come down on someone’s head. But only for a second. The Sheffield death toll had now passed 16,000 and he had to stop that happening here at any cost. Daniel clicked the magazine home, braced himself on the side of the truck, brought the monster into the sights and fired.
The shot was on the edge of effective range to start with, and without tracers it was basically impossible to correct for drop, deflection and wind drift, so Daniel just had to give it his best guess. He could hear other shooters opening up, and with luck one of them got lucky. He blew flew the first magazine with no apparent effect on the distant flapping form and as he was reaching for the second he noticed that other shoppers from the gun store had joined him in the parking lot. Some were starting at him, some at the sky.
“There’s a damned Baldrick up there!” he shouted, “grab a rifle and start shooting, or it’ll burn the city.” He didn’t wait to watch them respond, the fresh magazine clicked home and he soon had the rifle realigned on the target. This time the creature definitely seemed to be hit, dropping suddenly and flapping erratically as he fired his last three rounds. No way to know if it was one of his rounds that did it, but it didn’t matter. Erwin and Bob were back with AR-15s from the store, and beside him even Emily was enthusiastically letting fly with her Smith amp; Wesson 586. Top marks for effort, Daniel thought, as he noticed a large dark green and very old half-track coming to a stop on the side of the freeway. The ready platoon of the 3rd Michigan Infantry Regiment, United States Volunteers had arrived with an M-16 quad-50 they’d “liberated” from a museum and they wasted no time opening up with their much-loved M2 mount. Wright recognized some of the volunteers as they took up their positions, the 3rd Michigan had been built around a re-enactors group and to Wright, they looked a bit odd in modern BDUs.
I75-I94 Interchange, Detroit, Michigan
The gorgon’s mood had improved somewhat as she flew south towards the human towers. This realm’s bright direct light had been painful at first, but now it felt pleasantly warm on her back. The proto-portal seemed to have settled down, and she was free to gaze at the landscape below, savoring her power to end their pitiful existences. She was death incarnate, an avatar of cleansing flame come to burn this hive of vermin off the face of the planet. Megaaeraholrakni had always reveled in the exercise of psychic power, and now this was the culmination of all those millennia of effort.
That said she did have something of a dilemma. As she ascended it became clear that the towers were built next to a wide river. If she opened the portal over them, the lava would pool there and many of the lesser buildings would be spared. Perhaps it would be better to open it some way from the river, to ensure that the rest of the city burned? There were a great many parades of chariots here – the big flat buildings next to them could be workshops, and Belial had been quite insistent about destroying those. On the other hand, blocking the river with lava would not be so bad, the scalding steam and the flooding was sure to be amusing…
Megaaeraholrakni’s musings were interrupted by a sharp pain in her right wing. Suddenly she became aware of the irregular cracking sounds coming from below, coming faster and faster with each passing second. Agony flashed down her side as something tore into her flank. The gorgon looked back in disbelief at the green blood dripping from the wound. How dare they? She’d heard the rumors of the human’s newfound magery… now too late she realized how foolish she’d been to dismiss those warnings.
Another projectile slammed into the base of her tail, shattering a vertebra and sending pain shooting up her spine like a white hot poker. Megaaeraholrakni screamed and flailed wildly in the air, an act that granted her a brief respite as the next few shots went high. The portal crackled dangerously below her and she threw her wings out again, desperately trying to glide clear. It was at this moment that the hail of machine gun rounds began to arrive. The heavy rounds ripped through her torso, spraying yellow blood into the air as the gorgon began to fall out of the sky, trailing limp wings behind her. Megaaeraholrakni had a final few seconds to reflect on her folly before she plummeted through the phantom portal mouth. The massive electrostatic charge building there found a convenient discharge path through her body, and the gorgon finally died in a white hot flash of lightning, her charred and broken body tumbling down onto the interchange below.