The next thing Arthur knew, he was surrounded by complete chaos. He blinked and found himself standing outside, taking in a lungful of fresh air scented with pine and the cold sharpness of snow. Then, suddenly, he was jostled from behind. To keep his balance, Arthur reached out and caught himself on another person, but they were unsteady, too, and the two of them stumbled into another. Somehow, Arthur and the man managed to keep their feet, but it was a close thing.
He was staggering forward, pushed from behind by a crowd of people who were all running down an extremely hard-packed road of dark, smooth stone with lines separating the middle. The panic and despair in the air was so thick that he could almost taste it, and the scourgling whistles from behind him were so loud that he could barely hear himself think. More people knocked against him, blinded by fear, and not paying attention to anything other than the need to get away.
If not for his dexterity and strength attributes, he might have fallen. And if he fell, he would have been trampled.
The moment he caught his balance, Arthur half turned to glance behind him. Then he knew why the crowd around him was so frantic.
What could only be described as a wave of scourglings galloped at them, not far down the road. There were so many, he couldn’t even tell for certain what shape they were, and they seemed to move as a mass. More scourglings were coming out of the thick pine forest behind them to join the mass and run the humans down.
Men and women dressed in randomly patterned green-and-gray uniforms screamed out orders to the fleeing people and pointed what had to be weapons at the scourglings. The weapons boomed—sharp reports that threatened to deafen Arthur further. The projectiles were so fast that Arthur couldn’t even see them. Some kind of card power? An enchantment?
The front scourglings fell as they were struck, tripping up others behind them, but there were always more to replace them. It slowed the mass, but not by much.
The fleeing crowd passed odd machinery, dead and broken on the road. They were some sort of cart, only made of metal with seats in the middle. In desperation, some people climbed in a few and seemed to be trying to get them to move, though nothing happened.
Other people were pushing carts full of children and elderly who could not run as fast as the rest of the group, but these had their limits too. The crowd parted around one woman who stood behind a wheelbarrow. Three children sat within, clutching a blanket and looking terrified.
“I can help,” Arthur said, slowing. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know!” She was half frantic. “The front wheel is so wobbly. I think the axle thing in front is broken. Do you know how to fix it?”
Arthur frowned. He didn’t have a lot of mechanical skills. “Do you have a part?”
Her answer was a stressed-out laugh. “Do I look like I do? This was all I could grab from the house. There wasn’t any warning!”
She went on, but Arthur was focused on the problem. Bending, he saw the pin that connected the axle with the wheels had snapped. It was metallic and oddly made, in a way he’d seen carved into wooden screws . . . but how in the world did someone manage that with metal? Did these people do everything with metal?
He did have a piece of kindling in his Personal Space made of hardwood that would fit in the hole. It was tapered wider on one end and hopefully wouldn’t fall out. Switching them out, he tossed the snapped metal screw in his Personal Space to show Brixaby later. Maybe it would give the dragons some ideas.
New skill gained:
Basic Mechanical Knowledge (Engineering Class)
Due to your card’s bonus traits, you automatically start this skill at level 5.