DOOOOONNNGGG…

DOOOOONNNGGG…

DOOOOONNNGGG…

It was a bell, a big one, emanating a deep rich tone all over the city, and for that one moment every man, woman and child in Mellawin, paused.

As did I.

As did everyone in the Main Branch.

But only for that moment. Because I knew what that sound meant, I had heard that bell ring before in this city, twice, and what it signalled for the people of Mellawin, was one simple horrific thing.

“…monster wave.” someone whispered.

After those two words were uttered, the doors to the restricted section burst open in a flash. Suddenly wild gales of wind were blowing through the library as flashes of shapes, what looked like figures, shooted out of those doors

After that, what happened next was only natural… Everyone panicked.

People dropped whatever it was that they were doing and started bolting for the door, and whoever might have been still confused and taking their moment to try and figure things out quickly joined the bandwagon as the panic of the crowd instilled in them the fear to join in on the frenzied exodus.

Everyone, except me.

Putting aside my time in the Tower, I had just experienced the most dreadful and most fear-inducing moment of my life, and was hardly in the condition to even move let alone run for my life.

But as I sat there in my little alcove, stunned and wobbly, an insane thought just… popped into my mind.

This…This is perfect!

The Main Branch is empty! The boy who was just about to expose me is gone, and will probably forget the whole thing, even if he survives the next couple of days.

This is my chance!

So, even though I well knew the danger of the calamity that was ruthlessly bearing down on us all right this instant, I put that to the side as I decided to take advantage of this make or break moment this abrupt disaster had provided.

As I jumped to my feet, my legs nearly failed me as I almost tumbled to the floor. Thankfully however they soon promptly righted themselves as I began scurrying over to my quarry. I walked with stunted steps but I endeavoured nonetheless as I made it over to the bookcase where my Baptisms were waiting for me.

Once there, I recovered from my wobbly state as my legs too started functioning more normally again, so I was able to get to the ladder where the boy had left it, climb it, and begin pulling the books down off the shelf. Though it took a few rounds, by the end, I was on my knees on the floor with 27 books piled up in front of me.

I knew, even if the Main Branch was vacant for now, that I still had very little time to get out, get to safety and get disappeared. My life, endless though it might be, was hanging on a thread for a very real short window of time. So without pause I pulled off my long jacket and laid it across the cold stone floor beneath me, before I then started piling all my books onto it. Once that was done, I tied the ends of my jacket together into a little makeshift pack and slung it over my shoulder.

The books were heavy, but years of manual labour had made me strong and though I struggled with my first few steps I soon adjusted to the weight. After that, though delayed compared to everyone else, I rushed out of the Main Branch and out into the city.

Compared to the quiet and stillness of the Institute Main Branch however, the outside world was in full on crisis mode.

I had survived in the slums of this city for nearly a century but even with challenges and tribulations I had encountered and struggled through to survive there, the disease outbreaks, the fires, the cruel weather and the effort to even eat every single day, the hardest things I ever had to survive were the monster waves.

Even in the foggy recollections I have of that time those two events shine through with solemn graveness of how close to death I was back then.

The first had started simply, with confusion. The day was bright, the wind was gentle, and I was of course begging by the docks for Bits and scraps as I had been the same everyday for years before. But then… the bell toll swept across the city.

The sound was just so unexpected. So unexpected that it startled me from my malaise as I, along with everyone else around me raised our heads up together to try and figure out what was going on.

But that unifying moment of curiosity turned almost instantly into something else, as what next met our ears, was bubbling.

As one, the thousands of people at the docks that day turned their faces towards the ocean, to see what would in fact kill nearly all of them in the next few minutes.

Crabs.

Not just any ordinary crabs. Monster Crabs.

Crabs the size of elephants, the colour of angry blood, all coming out of the ocean in numbers rivalling the largest ant colonies as they emerged from the water.

When I saw that, I ran.

Living on the streets had been hard, at times even tortuous, but one advantage it had given me was the sharpening of my instincts. Even back then, without thinking, I knew staying there meant death, so with all my speed I ran away in the exact opposite direction, back to the slums, without stopping, without turning back.

My quick reaction was the only thing that saved me that day I think. I had heard the screams of dying crowds and their consumption behind me as I sprinted away, that then turned into the clashing sounds of Warriors and Wizards upholding their charge as they arrived to meet the challenge of the beasts.

I went to my little hovel of course, and for the next three days and three nights stayed curled up in my gross little shelter waiting for the sounds of battle to die down, petrified that when they would end the crabs would swiftly sweep in and eat me.

That didn’t happen though.

When the noises did finally stop, I emerged from my hiding and came back out to see what had happened to the city in my absence, only to find it largely destroyed.

A battle. A huge city sweeping battle had taken place while I hid away. The docks and a good portion of the city further inland had been reduced to rubble in the collateral. Blood was everywhere, some red but most green, the blood from what I could only assume was crab.

After that, the next few months were very hard. Most of the beggar population had been wiped out, but in no time at all however, those numbers replenished and maybe even doubled as the ruined survivors that couldn’t recover fell down into the slums alongside the rest of us pieces of trash to replace the fallen. To survive I still begged, but most people's finances had just been decimated so the only way I kept alive for the next few years was by eating bugs, worms, rats and even once a stray dog that I found dead lying in a gutter. Overall, though I had somehow escaped the calamity, I and everyone else who were still alive didn’t simply get off lightly, not at all.

But the second wave was worse.

The night had been dark and quiet back then, and I had been sound asleep in my little shelter as I dreamed my dreamless dreams.

Until the bell toll.

I awoke instantly. I was up and outside my tent the next moment looking around, fearful that I may already be surrounded by those monster crabs, but I wasn’t.

I was surrounded by something much worse.

Even though it was dark, the light of the stars and the three moons provided some illumination to see through the blackness of the night. That however soon became greatly diminished, as black shadows covered the night sky, accompanied by the sounds of flapping wings and a smell like vomit creeping into the night air.

SCREEEEECCHHHH!!!!!!!

With that one battle cry the battle commenced, and the city could now see what we were all facing.

Birds. Giant birds, like vultures, covering the sky over Mellawin. As soon as they started screeching, so too did the forces of the Coalition start unleashing strikes and spells up into the sky against them.

The birds didn’t sit and fly idle though, immediately after the opening blow thousands of avian giants met the challenge and started belching out yellowish breaths in retaliation. The sight filled me with terror, recognizing the threat, but only understanding what it was as I saw what happened to whatever those breaths landed on. A pile of rubbish, only a few spans away from me…

…melted.

It was acid! They were breathing acid!

Just like last time, I didn’t think, I just ran. Even without deeper thought I knew that it was likely the whole city was about to be doused in acid, magical acid, and if I wanted to live I needed to be far away from the battlefield and whatever other biochemical weapons those birds might unleash.

So I ran. Through the dark labyrinth of the slums, screams and carnage sounding in my ears.

The slums were thankfully on the edges of the city and well away from the focus of the bird's attacks, so I was in the area least affected. But even so, plumes of acidic clouds slithered their way into the slums and dissolved their way into all spaces.

Even with my quick speed and fast reaction I was clipped and brushed by the sickly yellowish vapours that were slithering and coiling around me as I ran. My flesh sizzled everytime I brushed a strand of gas and the pain only built and accumulated as I kept on.

After some distance was made I finally, by some miracle, made it out of the slums. Without pause I dived straight head first into my sanctuary, the river, and started swimming across it in the dead of night, battling the cold waters and strong currents.

Eventually I made it to the other shore, though how I did I couldn’t answer. I only cared about escaping the monster wave and so once more, I started running through the dark night and wilderness until I collapsed from exhaustion.

The next morning, I awoke to a noxious smell pervading its way into my nostrils. Getting up I discovered that I just happened to be in the middle of a field, atop a soft patch of grass somewhere outside the perimeter of the city.

The Sun was bearing down on me. I was weak, tired, and covered in burns, but still mobile, even after the tribulation I had just barely survived. Awake and aware, and filled with hunger, I made my way to my feet as I started to make sense of my circumstances.

Following the noxious smell and few of my tracks leftover from the night before I could find along the way, in time, I found my way back to the river, and was greeted by the now sorry sight of Mellawin.

In several ways, I was seeing the city for the first time. Firstly, I had never seen Mellawin from such a distance before and it gave me a new perspective to the whole city. Secondly, I had never seen the city in such a state.

Even before, after the first monster wave, a good portion of the city had remained untouched by the devastation.

Not this time though.

Everything was smouldering and fuming, giving rise to a very ghastly looking cloud of smog hanging over the city. Surprising for me at the time, I discovered that there were no more attacks occurring. The birds were all gone, either dead or flown away I didn’t know, but nonetheless they weren’t there anymore and the city remained, even if completely decimated.

I remained outside the city for a few more days to let the smoke clear and the clean up to begin. After that I swam back over the river and once more delved back into the slums, my life once again harder in the wake of a monster devastated city, but naturally time passed and my life once again returned to its normal miserableness.

These were the memories I was reflecting on as I made my way through the chaos of the main square. I had always remained on the outskirts of the city when the monster wave calamities descended, but not this time. This time I was in the thick of it, and it wasn’t pretty.

People were running everywhere, in every direction. The crowd was filled with Warriors too but with the sheer volume of people moving around and the disaster we were all about to face, they didn’t have the capability to even notice some random guy running through the crowd with a sack over his shoulder.

Nevertheless, I kept an eye out. All the Coalition members were either looking at each other or out in the direction of the ocean, my guess where the monsters would be coming from, so it was probably safe to assume that birds were out of the picture this time, but whether that was a good or bad thing yet I didn’t know.

I just kept moving, hard as it was through the shouting and screaming masses.

I pushed. I shoved. I shouldered and I barged my way through the hordes of people, most of whom I could see were consumed with fear. Very unlikely it was that they had experienced the previous monster waves, but terrible memories can travel down through the generations, even if the ones that saw them may no longer be around.

Through the bedlam and mayhem, it was only when I got out of the square that the crowd eased off a bit, for the weather to then turn and start pouring an icy rain down on us all.

“Fucking rain.” I muttered to myself as I kept moving.

All I was thinking about was making it to my warehouse. It would take some time in these crowds and this weather but I have to make it there. Now was my only chance to do so because after this wave ended, I’ll either be dead, or they’ll be hunting me.

Maybe not of course, but definitely maybe. Monster waves are devastating but they come and go. But the millenia old empire that is the Coalition has always remained, and the terror they can unleash if they seek me out is incomparable to this real time tragedy.

“Get to the warehouse, get to the warehouse, gettothewarehouse, gettothewarehouse” I repeat to myself, over and over as I fight through the weather, hours bleeding in to more hours as the rain gets harder and colder, the wind getting louder and fiercer.

And so it was that finally, as the warehouse came into view…

RRROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

…the wave arrived.