To Sean, the beasts most resembled giant moray eels. Ones that blasted fire. Their bodies were brown as dried earth and mottled with darker splotches. They were thick as freight trains and just as long. The first three to fully emerge wriggled through the ash and took snakelike aim at the tower where they stood.
Sean screamed with half a dozen others, “Shields!”
An instant later, flames engulfed their platforms.
The beasts were fast.
In less than half a dozen frantic heartbeats, a dragon wrapped itself around their tower and blanketed them with the stench of seaweed and dead fish. The tower was protected with the same force that kept them alive. But with a series of loud bangs, the beast wrenched away the structure’s foundations.
Brodwyn gripped Sean’s arm and shouted loud enough for all the tower’s occupants to hear, “Overhead platform! Go!”
They transited up and crowded the railing. Directly below, the tower was now freed from its shield and was instantly crushed to a single twisted scrap. The fiend released its hold, sought a new prey, spotted the platform, and blasted them yet again.
Their pilot shifted position away from the flames, granting them a bird’s-eye view of more and more eels emerging from the waters. The lake’s surface boiled now, a single writhing mass of elongated, fire-breathing worms.
Brodwyn gripped her comm link with a fierceness that turned her hands to talons. “Team one, cage the sea! Team two, enfold and trap!”
The Praetorians were organized into the same tight units that had bested the aliens’ latest invasion. The downside was communication. Organizing their reprisal meant directing several hundred cadres. Commander Taunton took control of the sea-bound forces, with Carver and Dillon serving as his seconds. Brodwyn directed the assault upon the nine beasts that were advancing across the shore toward her troops’ rear positions.
Gradually their tactics developed into a sense of control and order. The beasts’ forward momentum became glutinous, as though they were trapped in invisible cages. But their immense fury did not diminish. Even when their progress was halted, they continued to shoot out great bouts of flame. Then nooses formed by the Praetorians’ combined force were fitted around the nine snouts, and the fires were extinguished.
Smoke and flames blasted across the sea’s surface, illuminating the multitude of cages that now enveloped all the remaining beasts.
One of Brodwyn’s rear guards shot a cannonade at the nearest sea cage. A faint crack appeared in the shield, and a head wriggled free and spouted fire at the closest transports.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Brodwyn was genuinely irate. “Who released that shot?”
Wisely, the comm link gave off nothing but a faint static.
“The next idiot who fires I will personally skin alive!” Brodwyn watched as the Praetorians crammed the beast’s head back inside and rebuilt the shield. She then said to Taunton, “With your permission, Commander, we will move on to the next step.”
In reply, Taunton said into his comm link, “Begin phase three.”