Goal of the day: 784 words. Written: 785.
It took away the promise and took the last breath from his lips. I gasped and my head thumped.
“Arena… What happened here!? Is that Ovid's hammer!?'
The other end of the arena was full of dust, gray, incessantly billowing smoke... And - is that the upper part of it gone, and the skyscrapers of the city can be seen in the background? The walls of the arena were first high and solid, but now there was obviously a huge gap in them. How big, I couldn't see through the dust, but it was there.
I looked at the sides of the Arena. Miniature human figures began to flow away from the oncoming smoke and billow. The shouts of the crowd did not stop.
And then I saw Ovid looking at the approaching wave of fine dust, apparently as surprised as I was. And in front of him, on the roof of the temple ruins, was the handle of his hammer.
"It's not his hammer!"
Suddenly, a violet flashed in the smoke and something exploded again with an eardrum-splitting sound. I quickly covered one ear with my palm, and tried to cover the other with my shoulder, because, after all, the stone in my palm was in the way. However, this did not reduce the noise much. More precisely, almost not at all.
Ovid also raised his hands and covered his eyes, as the smoke increased and the wave accelerated after the explosion. After a moment she flew to Ovid and then to me. Dust and smoke flowed into the nose and throat, suffocating, preventing breathing and thinking at all.
I tried to cover my ears, from noise and noise, my mouth and eyes, from dust and smoke. But all together, there was a lack of hands. Or a good face mask.
The heaviness gradually subsided, so I could concentrate only on the dust. I opened my eyes and tried to look around and figure out where to run, but the dust was so thick that it seemed to stick to my eyes.
"Kneel, it will be easier," I heard the voice of Stone.
I bent my healthy leg and knelt down. It didn't get any easier, but it was probably better than standing with aching limbs and back trying not to inhale fine dust and smelly smoke.
Bzzzzzzz, my eardrums started ringing. They finally got stuck behind the noise and I started to hear a little more clearly. There were screams of panic. Somewhere above me, something flew by buzzing, and in the noisy end of the Arena there was a relatively quiet thud, as if the stones that were still supported by the ruined walls were falling down.
“Explosion? Something exploded in there!? …I need to get out of here!”
I took a deep breath. I coughed, but gathered my strength and stood up again. Turning away from the dust, I felt the dust and the wind start to move my discolored, bleeding back, but at least there was less smoke here. Coughing again, I gripped the Stone tighter and, first starting to walk slowly, I let myself run. Somewhere. Away from the center of the blast, because whatever happened there couldn't be good.
More rubble and columns flew past me as I ran, until I finally ran out into an empty dusty field, the edge of Arena Square. As the dust had begun to dissipate at least somewhat in that time, I could see the giant shadow of the wall in front of me, and below, a step several meters higher than my head.
"There's no way I'm going up here."
I looked around and started running along the ruins - somewhere in the wall there should be something I could climb on. Even if everything was set up here to keep me from escaping, I should at least find the gate.
After a moment, I realized that after running around the side of the Arena farthest from the explosion, I began to approach the epicenter of the explosion in a circle.
"Look for a place where we can climb on the outer wall," said Stone instructively.
- I know, I know! What do you think I'm looking for here? - annoyed and out of breath from running and dust, I growled back at him.
"That's not what I mean, idiot," he shot back. And then, after a short pause, he immediately added, - Pala! Yes, run straight!
"What does he mean?" Is he seeing something?”
Running where I had planned to run, straight, I tried to see what Stone could see ahead. But I didn't see anything.
“Pala, does he even have eyes? How does he see anything at all?”
Turning the Stone towards me, I looked at him. It looked like just a big greenish-red crystal.
...And then I almost fell to the ground, tripping over some stone. I quickly stretched and focused back on running towards the dust cloud.
"I'll ask later."
The closer I ran, the clearer it became that there was more than just a tiny collapse in the Arena. She was missing a whole piece of wall!
Behind the clouds of dust and smoke, some yellow and red lights flashed, someone screamed something. Large dark objects flashed above me again and disappeared behind the walls of the Arena. The wall of the arena was not just destroyed, but it just fell apart in pieces, giant stone blocks. The closer to the center, the more and bigger these were scattered and they got tangled under the feet.
- Don't stop even closer to the wall. On the left, - the Stone spoke again.
I still couldn't see exactly where I was running in the cloud of dust, so I took his word for it. I could only see a step or two in front of me, so when giant yellow-green crystals rolled out of nowhere, embedded in the ground, appeared in front of my nose, I immediately had to change my trajectory and try to run around them.
Somewhere in the distance, someone started chanting something. Some voices rang out over the loudspeakers... And maybe people's screams, maybe sirens. I didn't understand what it was because of the distance. In the distance, something thumped and boomed.
"What's going on here? It is clear that it was unexpected for the Arena spectators and organizers. Like Ovid!'
- What's going on here? - I turned to Akmenis while running and sniffing deeply.