Meteoroid

His first thought was to find his village and hope everyone was alright. But as he looked around at the trees, he realized just how lost he was. He turned in a full circle. Every direction looked exactly the same. It was great, just great.

If the sword wouldn't work, maybe the spell would. But how? He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the book had said. Something about pulling and gravity. It was all just a bunch of big words and nonsense. He held out his hand, concentrating, trying to feel for something, anything. Nothing happened. "How am I supposed to do this?" he grumbled. He wished he could see the page again.

Suddenly, the air in front of him shimmered. A cloud of purple dust swirled into a form, gathering itself together until the same book from earlier appeared, floating right in front of him. It was already open to the page that said Meteoroid.

He read it again. He still didn't understand the big words, but he tried to get the main idea. Drawing and compressing particles. It sounded like grabbing a bunch of air and dust and squeezing it into a tiny, hard ball. Accelerated downwards. That sounded like throwing the ball at the ground, really, really hard.

He held out his hand, closed his eyes, and focused on that simple idea. Squeeze the air. Throw it down. He felt a tiny twitch in front of his palm, like a little zap of static, and then it was gone. He opened his eyes. Nothing.

He tried again, putting all his anger and hunger into it. He pictured it clearly: grabbing the air, crushing it into a rock, and chucking it at the sky. A loud BOOM shook the forest, and he jumped back. He looked up just in time to see a flash of bright light streak across the sky for a second before fizzling out. He stared, shocked. "It worked?"

Then he remembered the part about his eyes changing. He had to see. He remembered the small stream he had found earlier. He ran through the trees until he found a spot where the water pooled into a little pond. He knelt at the edge and looked at his reflection in the still, murky water. His eyes were normal. Just his plain brown eyes looking back at him.

So the power only turned on when he was actually doing it. He had to try again, and watch himself this time. Staring hard at his own watery reflection, he lifted his hand and focused one more time on the feeling of squeezing and throwing.

This time the boom was softer, the flash of light in the sky quicker. But in his reflection, he saw it happen. As he focused on the spell, the white parts of his eyes turned a dark, smoky grey. And his brown irises turned purple that slightly sparkled, just like the word from the stone: stardust.

He gasped and scrambled back from the water's edge, his heart pounding. It was real. And it was weird. He looked back at his reflection. His eyes were normal again. The change in appearance faded away the second he stopped trying to use it.

Amazement quickly gave way to the needs of his body. He was still starving and thirsty. He knelt by the pond again, this time drinking deeply until his thirst was gone. Then, he set off to find food.

He didn't have to look for long. He found a bush covered in large, deep blue berries. He recognized them from lessons in the village. They were safe. He ate them by the handful. A little further on, he saw it: a tree with the familiar, waxy leaves and heavy, orange teardrop-shaped fruit, just like the ones from Vorlag's orchard. He pulled one down and tore into it, the sweet, familiar taste flooding his mouth. He ate until his stomach didn't hurt anymore, until he felt some strength returning to his limbs.

As he was finishing the last of the fruit, he smelled something nasty. The sharp smell of smoke. He looked up, and in the distance, he could see small plumes of grey smoke rising above the trees. oh boy, that was not a great sign.

He started walking towards the smoke. After a short trek, passing a few small animals that scurried away from him, the trees and the shape of the land started to look familiar. He came to a small hill. It was the same hill he and Briar had been to, right before they were captured. The smoke was hidden by the vegetation now, but he knew the way.

He followed the path back, half-walking, half-running, desperate. He broke through a final line of trees and stopped dead. It was his village. Or what was left of it.

Most of the mud huts were collapsed into piles of rubble. Smoke curled up from smoldering fires. The central market area was a ruin. And there were bodies. Dead villagers lay where they had fallen. But what shocked him were the other bodies. Green and brown-scaled Lizardmen were scattered among them. But there were shackles around the dead villagers necks. Fuck, the lizardman did find the village. Did they burn it? No, that wouldn't explain why their dead here too.

Just then, a roar echoed from above. Kai looked up and saw a brownish-gold dragon circling in the sky. It held something in its massive talons. A person. It was the dragons who burned the village.

A wave of anger washed over Kai. But his first thought was his family. Amberlin. Sparrow. Adelaide. He had to find them. He ran into the ruined village, calling their names, his voice choked with dread. "Mom! Dad! Adelaide!"

Another dragon swooped low overhead, its shadow passing over him. It let out a piercing shriek. He darted for the cover of the forest at the edge of the village. He thought it might have seen him because it began to circle his area. He saw more of them now, five or six dragons, all similar shades of gold brown and tan, circling like vultures.

Trapped, with nowhere to run, he thought of the only weapon he had. He lifted his hand, pictured the air squeezing and throwing, and focused all his fear and anger into it. He didn't even look to see if his eyes changed. A loud BOOM, louder than before, cracked through the air. A streak of light shot up into the sky, not very far, but the sudden noise and flash of light was enough. The circling dragons shrieked in alarm, their formation breaking. They spooked, flying off into the distance, leaving Kai alone in the ruins of his home. He had no idea why they would attack and why there were so many of them suddenly. They would only hear one or two a month. Were they looking for something?

He ran back into the smoldering ruins, his feet crunching on burnt straw and broken pottery. The silence left by the departed dragons was even worse than their roars. It was a dead silence. The sound of whatever the Meteoroid was spook every animal apparently.

"Mom? Dad?" he called out again, his voice cracking. He scrambled over the collapsed wall of what probably used to be his neighbor's hut. "Adelaide?"

"No, no, no," he muttered

He saw more shackles now, the same iron loops the Lizardmen had put on him, clamped around the wrists and ankles of the dead villagers. The story became sickeningly clear in his mind. "They found us," he said to himself, his voice cracking. "They said they were getting close… they found us and… and they were taking everyone."

He ran to where another nearby area. It was just a smoldering pile of dirt and charred straw. Nothing was left. "Amberlin! Sparrow!" He kicked at the rubble, desperate to find something, anything. A piece of his mother's woven blanket, one of his father's tools. There was nothing.

He saw a man lying near the remains of the market, his body burned. Even in death, his face was frozen in a look of shock.

He kept searching, his movements becoming much more frantic. He saw bodies of Lizardmen guards, some pierced with arrows, others burned beyond recognition. "So you fought them," he whispered, looking at the dead villagers. "You fought them, but they still got you… and then the dragons came."

It was a massacre. The Lizardmen had come to enslave, and the dragons had come to destroy. His people, his home, were caught in the middle.

He heard a weak cough.

He spun around, hope surging through him. Under a partially collapsed roof, a woman was pinned, her leg crushed. It was Mrs. Gable, the woman who was always sweeping her patch of dirt. Her face was pale, her breathing shallow.

Kai rushed over, trying to lift the heavy beam off her. "Mrs. Gable! Are you okay!?"

She blinked, her eyes struggling to focus on him. "Kai…?" she rasped, a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth. "I... Her breath hitched. "So… much… fire…"

"Don't worry i'll patch you up. Who did they take?" Kai begged, his hands slipping on the beam. "My family? Did you see them?"

She just shook her head weakly, a tear rolling down her dusty cheek. Her eyes lost their focus, staring up at the sky. Her chest fell and did not rise again.

She was gone. He was too late. He was too late for everyone.

Kai scrambled back, away from her body. He looked around at the ruin, at the dead, at the smoke. It was all gone. Everything he had ever known, everyone he had ever loved. Wiped out.

He screamed. It wasn't a word, just a raw, animal sound of pure agony and loss. He screamed until his throat was raw, until his lungs burned. He fell to his knees in the dirt and ash, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the grime.

He stayed there for a long time, the sounds of his own sobs the only noise in the dead village. He cried until his eyes lost all their moisture. Then, A rage so deep and pure welled inside him it burned away the grief.

He stood up, his body trembling, and looked at the sky where the dragons had been. He thought of the Lizardmen and their cruel, yellow eyes.

"Never again," he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous growl. He looked at the bodies of his people, at the shackles on their wrists. "This will never happen again."

He clenched his fists, his knuckles white. He vowed that he would make them pay. All of them. The dragons, the Lizardmen, any monster that dared to harm an innocent human. He would become something else. Not just him. He would become something they feared. A weapon. A hope for humanity, so no one would ever have to suffer like this again. So nobody had to live a life like his.