CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED-SEVEN
Abe never saw the Keuja’s blast. He only heard and felt the result.
A sudden storm of lightning bolts crashed around him, and suddenly the stone and metal ground all around him was exploding, throwing chunks of shattered Glukkon residences through the air. He couldn’t see—thunder rumbled in the air, and he heard screams and felt the ground shake under him, then felt himself falling and felt his face slam hard into the shifting stone—
But he couldn’t see.
He heard Oner swearing bad enough to make an Outlaw blush with shame, then felt the ground rise up under him and send him spinning away through the air. He had to resist the simultaneous urge to scream, throw up, and curse in the instants before the sudden but expected impact with a house.
He lay there on the ground for what seemed like an eternity but was only but a few seconds, praying that the ground would stop rocking and that he wouldn’t throw up.
A Slig slammed down on his back so hard and suddenly that it forced his breath out of his lungs and left him coughing and choking in the dusty air. Abe rolled over and dislodged the offender.
“Get—off—!” he gasped.
The Slig was Oner, and he sat on a pile of rubble beside Abe. “Sorry about that, buddy…didn’t mean for you to lose your cool—”
“You’re going to lose a lot more than your cool if you don’t stop getting in my way!” Abe roared at him.
He glanced around briefly, as he pushed his bruised and bleeding body off the ground. Only a few seconds before, this land would have been easily recognizable as an industrialist heaven, a land of factories and smoke ruled by Glukkons and Sligs –
But now? Now the whole area surrounding the front gates and about half a mile inward was a sea of broken metal and stone. Slig and Mudokon forms were strewn randomly about the wreckage, some moving, and some crushed to death.
And standing amidst the wreckage it had just caused was the Keuja.
The monster did not look so triumphant at the destruction as it did tired. Its tentacles were not flailing and it was not gloating over them, but neither did it look as if it were going to collapse with exhaustion. Abe did not know what they were going to do about the monster. It had to be killed, but there was nothing that could do it.
“We need—” Abe started.
“A miracle,” Oner interrupted.
Abe sighed, and wished he still had a gun. His had unfortunately been crushed in the minor lightning-caused earthquake. “Yeah.”
Oner suddenly pointed to the sky. “Miracle ho!”
Abe looked up. A dozen Slig troop transports were buzzing across the horizon toward the city.
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