Feet that tickled like pebbles. The sensation of nail polish dragged against nails with no heat. To his left rested Otie, book in hand, the light parted by curtains kissing his figure. Akli picked at his teeth as he got his legs massaged.

  Why couldn’t they have kept me somewhere else? Akli thought as he waved away the ladies. His gaze turned to the boy a bed length away.

  “I’ll get someone to arrange you your own room. It must be uncomfortable having to sleep near an older man that you barely know.”

  Otie put his book down, with the light framing his silhouette he spoke: “I won right?”

  “Huh?”

  “Our game, I won it?”

  “You brat…” He’s still thinking about that game? “Who knows…we’d have to ask the judges.”

  “You’re a poor liar.”

  Brewing throughout the heavens was a dragon of crimson scale, blazing fur, fingers made of glass and eyes born of magma. Ocean water filled its belly and its wings climbed the clouds, piercing them like leaves on a lake’s surface. Akli and Otie gazed upon the golden light breaking the sky, as shards of their own reality fell apart.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “What in the…? The sky…” Akli mumbled.

  “It’s falling…the sky is falling,” Otie said, his jaw locked open. “I must be dreaming.”

  “Otie, we must get out of here. The hospital can’t be the safest place to be.” Akli’s hand was already pressed against the warming glass. His veins began to thump with an uncomfortable pulse.

  “Mayor…what is that?” Otie pointed.

  A gargantuan ship with the head of a thousand horses broke through the portal, and off the shore line they could see chains as big as skyscrapers racing from the bend of the horizon to the other edge of Ontiganel. Brown leaves flew through the streets, birds cried, passing along the way of prayed dreams.

  “How’s it looking?” Urjohar asked. Pulling up his sleeve. Along his arm were two sprawling dragons, upon his hand was an eight eyed dog skull. “Pretty cool…”

  “You’re gonna regret that,” Taiga said as he read the newspaper. “Hey, doesn’t it feel…”

  “Yeah…you know what the weather was supposed to be like?”

  “You think I check the weather?”

  “What does the paper say?”

  “Warm, sunny, not a cloud in the sky…”

  “Then…”

  “Yeah, those dumb-asses are wrong like usual,” Taiga said. The two looked up at the darkened sky. The clouds curling into one another left patches of eyes sparking with lightning hovering over the city.

  “We should go,” Urjohar tapped Taiga’s shoulder.

  Taiga nodded as the two began to run. Cars rattling and street lamps swaying.