When War Calls(39)

Jaden was speechless. It had just been there a moment ago, but had vanished so quickly it took him a moment to accept that it was completely gone. He looked down into the pit and thought he could see something lit with blue below, but other than that, it was only darkness. The earth churned again beneath his feet, this time making him fall backward. When he was able to stand again, many of the chasms, including the one that had taken his house had sealed shut. It was almost as if the planet itself had become hungry, opened its many mouths and taken much of what was on its surface down into its gut.

With a mixture of so many emotions, Jaden yelled as loudly as he could as the shield disappeared. The ground settled as the earthquake passed half a minute later, and the sounds of war resumed. Jaden remained where he was, no longer sure of what he was doing or where he was going. The urge that drove him forward to find the Daijuarn sentinel had disappeared. He would now have to rely entirely on his survival instincts to know what to do.

There were soldiers nearby. He had heard their shouts to one another and the cries of their victims that were not killed instantly. They were getting closer, but how far away, he could not tell. His answer came as he spotted something moving around a corner to his right. It was a figure wider than any man he knew with strange devices attached to its head and body. He knew this could only have been what so many travellers in the past had described. It was a soldier of the Alliance. These were not the same men of Hawan that had taken him earlier. The soldier took aim immediately, but did not have the chance to fire. An unknown man wielding a broken plank of wood had struck the soldier hard in the head and knocked him to the ground. Jaden was ready to run and help finish the soldier off, to mount a small resistance and save what little they could, but the man soon fell lifeless, a second soldier becoming apparent and putting a quick and brutal end to the man’s short-lived bravery.

Jaden looked on in defeat, the small hope that had bloomed crushed as quickly as it had formed. There was no use in fighting. They were outnumbered and overpowered.

Jaden would mourn the fallen man later, but for now he would not allow his efforts to be in vain. He used the distraction to make his escape, bullets chasing after him as he dodged around the building to his left, some of the shots ricocheting off stone blocks as if still seeking their target. Soldiers seemed to have infested every part of the village, with two or three in sight no matter where he turned. He found his way to the eastern border by weaving through the buildings on the way. He was heading for the crops, hoping to hide within them as he made his way to the mountains.

The only stretch of land in his way was the end of a road that dropped off with a steep edge. There was a fifty-yard dash between the houses that marked its sides, but it seemed soldiers had not yet reached this part of the village. To be safe, he waited for the next round of explosions before making his way across the opening. Halfway over, he heard the wind up of a soldier’s weapon. The next thing he knew he was falling hard to his right, down the slope where his arms and legs were battered by the pointed rocks. As he landed on the grass below, he got up carefully, his head spinning from how fast he had been sent rolling off of the edge.

He had been hit by something. A bullet perhaps, he was not sure. He checked himself over. There were no visible injuries except from the rocks. What had happened? Had he just fallen? He looked back up the slope to regain his bearings, and saw that there was a soldier standing on the edge, looking down to where he must have thought Jaden had landed. Jaden moved cautiously backward a few steps, careful not to make any sudden movements. The soldiers seemed to have keener sight than he did, their helmets fitted with some kind of vision-enhancing device. This was proven true as Jaden hadn’t realised he had been spotted until bullets began to slip into the dirt in front of him. Quickly he turned and jumped into the thickest section of trees he could find and then ran as fast as he could without looking back. He zigzagged through the crops as he had done so many times before when escaping Ardim and his gang, and was soon on the mountainside, hiding as much as he could among the leaves and bushes as he hiked up its slope. The soldiers could not keep up, their weaponry most likely too heavy to run with, allowing Jaden to leave them far behind.

In the clear, shock from the disastrous onslaught was now weighing him down, forcing him to trudge along at a slow pace as he tried to focus on three things at once; on the path that faded in and out of his vision, the sounds of the explosions and gunfire echoing in his thoughts, and the sickening feeling that was now bubbling in his stomach, threatening to make him fall with each step he took if it were not kept under control.