Marked In Flesh

CHAPTER 52

Cel-Romano

In villages all along the Cel-Romano border, people regarded their restless, fearful animals and, remembering stories passed down through generations, knew what was coming.

After sundown, when soldiers bivouacked around the villages wouldn’t see and report them to the Important People, they placed bowls of sweetened milk on their back doorsteps, or a slice of bread with a bit of oil or butter, or a slice of cake that had used up precious rations. They placed their gifts and whispered, “For our friends,” before they gathered their children close and prayed they would see the dawn.

They heard the rat-tat-tat of gunfire and the truncated screams of the soldiers who had laughed at the villagers for their superstitions about the creatures that lived in—and guarded—the wild country. They heard things bump against their doors, sniffing around the gifts. And they held their loved ones tight as a terrible silence brushed against their homes and continued on its way to the Big Cities where the Important People lived.

Elementals rode their steeds through the cities on the western half of the Mediterran Sea, tearing through factories and warehouses, leaving nothing but rubble and fire in their wake.

Elementals rode their steeds through the cities on the eastern half of the Mediterran Sea, the pounding hooves shaking buildings into pieces, or cracking the land to swallow buildings whole.

And the leaders of the Humans First and Last movement, fleeing their cities, saw a truth about the world just before Namid’s teeth and claws tore them apart.

Alantea rode Hurricane across the waters of her domain, gathering a storm full of fury and vengeance—a storm unlike anything that had been seen in a very long time. She caught small ships and snapped them in half, driving the debris and toxins inland for miles as she struck her enemies’ shores.

On the eastern side of Afrikah, Indeus rode Tsunami, heading for the strait that Earth and Earthshaker had expanded to accommodate the monstrous waves that struck that part of Cel-Romano minutes after Alantea and Hurricane galloped onto the western side of those lands.

And on her island in the Mediterran Sea, ancient Tethys summoned the waters to rise and reclaim the land she had once, long ago, ceded to Earth.

As the waters of the Mediterran receded and the surviving humans stumbled around the ruins of their cities, looking for the living and mounding the dead, the Plague Riders came down from their isolated lairs to feast and breed and establish new territories within the broken cities.