Chapter 55: Escaping the Execution Square
After witnessing the toxic cloud, the explosion, and the life-draining red mist, no one dared to remain. The initial shock that had frozen the crowd gave way to a primal, mindless terror. When the first person screamed and ran, it was like a dam breaking. The entire plaza erupted into a single, stampeding beast of desperation. The scene devolved into utter chaos. People, dazed and disoriented from the blast, scrambled in every direction, trampling the fallen, their screams lost in the roar of the panicked mob. The old man who had been sitting to my right, the one who had escaped the red mist, was not so lucky this time. He was frail, unsteady on his feet, and was knocked to the ground by a surge in the crowd. Those behind him didn't see, or didn't care. They ran over him, their heavy boots crushing bone and flesh, his tragic, unheard cry swallowed by the roar of the mob. I wanted to reach for him, to pull him up, but I knew it was useless. My small, weak body could never have saved him; I would only have been dragged down with him. Not reaching for him was the selfish, cowardly act that kept me alive.
“Jared! Don’t fall down! Whatever you do, don’t fall!” I screamed, my own strength gone. The single act of pulling him from the path of the red mist had drained me completely. I was a piece of driftwood in a raging human river, battered and thrown about, seconds from being pulled under and trampled into the grimy cobblestones. To fall here was to die. Only Jared’s hand, gripping mine like an iron anchor, kept me upright, kept me from being swept away.
My cry seemed to finally cut through his daze. The confusion in his eyes cleared, replaced by a sharp, focused intensity. He pulled me close and, with a grunt of effort, lifted me into his arms. “Hold on, Parula! We’re getting out of here!”
“No! Put me down!” I cried. “You can’t get through carrying me!” He could make it on his own, I knew he could. But with me as a burden, he was slower, more vulnerable. My own desperate plan was to lie on the ground and play dead, to hide among the other bodies left in the wake of the explosion, and pray the stampede passed me by.
“We go together!” Jared yelled over the roar of the crowd, his voice grim and determined. He didn’t fight the current, a fool's errand that would have gotten us both killed. Instead, he became part of it, a nimble fish using the river's own chaotic energy to navigate, slipping through gaps that seemed too small to exist.
Thankfully, the execution ground was an open plaza, with no narrow gates to create a deadly bottleneck. After the initial, terrifying crush, the crowd began to thin as people spilled out into the surrounding streets. They were a pitiful sight. Gentlemen’s top hats littered the ground like fallen leaves, their fine canes snapped and forgotten. The expensive dresses of the ladies were torn and muddied, and many people, both rich and poor, were bleeding from falls and cuts, their faces masks of terror. As Jared carried me out of the main square, I looked back over his shoulder, towards the stage. From the heart of the pyre, a skull formed of pure, roaring flame coalesced and rose into the air, its empty sockets burning with a malevolent, hungry intelligence. It turned its gaze towards the VIP gallery and, with a silent, hungry scream, lunged. The nobles and ladies on the gallery shrieked, their fine manners forgotten. They scrambled to escape, some even leaping from the high platform to the stone steps below. But the fat Baron Juan, his bulk making him slow and clumsy, could only watch in horror as the flaming skull descended upon him, its jaw of fire opening wide to devour him whole.
And then, a figure appeared at the Baron’s side as if stepping from a fold in reality itself. He was a young man in a simple grey robe and a tall, pointed hat, a weathered wooden staff in his hand. He looked for all the world like a wizard from a child’s fairy tale. With a single, dismissive wave of his staff, the flaming skull dissolved into nothing but harmless, drifting sparks. Then, he pointed his staff towards the stage, and a shimmering curtain of pure, crystalline water rose up and sliced through the raging fire, parting the flames as if they were a mere curtain. That was all I saw. Jared, his focus only on escape, took a sharp turn, and we plunged into the labyrinth of side streets, the grand, terrible, and utterly impossible spectacle hidden from my view.
Comments (0)
Please login or sign up to post a comment.