The capital sat between two sheer valleys of ghost-white rock. Uptown, home to the royal citadel of Alderhall and the richest, most powerful people in Ashen, was at the highest point in the city, furthest away from the stink and squalor of Beggar’s Way and the Gutters, and the hustle and bustle of Crown Bay harbour.
Dyr, Nathin and Mell passed a group of drunken sailors snickering to themselves and falling over one-another as they stumbled to whatever destination their desires took them to. They smelled of week-old fish and looked as though they hadn’t bathed in months.
The trio rounded a corner and Nathin stood back in silence as they eyed a man in a long coat wearing an eyeglass, locking up his store with an armful of books.
Mell wanted to take the opportunity, but he was held back by Nathin who ushered Dyr on with a tilt of his head.
Dyr knew exactly what to do. He inconspicuously walked up to the man as he fumbled around with his ring of keys, pretending to be on his way home. The man with the eyeglass did not turn around.
In a split second, Dyr had spotted the man’s coin purse hanging at his hip from his belt. He did a quick step towards the man, as if having lost his footing all of a sudden, before swiping it without so much of a bump.
As quick as a cat.
The man had not noticed a thing.
Nathin nodded with a grin. He had been teaching the younger Dyr how to pickpocket for about a month, and the boy was getting rather good at it. His willingness to do so while barefooted gave him the extra advantage of silent steps.
Three Anai in the darkening, gloomy streets were hard to spot and even harder to hear.
They slipped away into the shadows of a side alley before the man with the eyeglass had even finished locking his store.
Nathin snickered as Dyr handed him the purse. “Humans, they’re so oblivious.”
“Nice job, lad. Smooth as a whore’s ass,” Mell praised.
There were only a few marks inside. Nathin separated them into thirds and handed Dyr and his brother their share before pocketing his own.
Dyr had never seen himself having to resort to pickpocketing. It made him feel as though he was only adding validity to the awful things the humans said about his kind.
Yet, he could not deny the rush it gave him, nor the necessity of finding gold to survive when his master paid him next to nothing.
Loud voices from a few blocks away startled Dyr. A woman shrieked and a man was calling out.
“What’s that?” Dyr said. Nathin shrugged.
“Probably a knifing,” Mell said casually.
More screaming, from more people. It sounded like panic.
A loud horn thundered through town.
The three Anai looked to each other, turned, and raced back towards Crown Bay to try and gauge what was going on. Others in the area of all kinds, human, Anai, some Valkhor, heard the commotion and were doing the same.
As they got to the cobblestone road that lined the harbour, Dyr spotted the screaming woman. She was taking steps back, pointing out towards the sea.
A city guardsman was attempting to direct people away from the area with little success. Everyone wanted to see what was happening, brainwashed by their morbid curiosities.
Dyr looked out across the harbour. Heading straight in their direction at tremendous speed was a huge trading vessel. The ship was at full sail. It rode through the waters at full speed straight for the harbour.
“What is that?” Dyr said with concern. He did not like what he saw; that ship was going way too fast.
“Looks like they ain’t gonna stop,” Nathin replied. “What the fuck are they doin’?”
The ship wasn’t slowing down as it careened straight for land.
Dyr could not see anyone on board. What was going on?
A smaller fishing boat was unable to get out of the way in time. The people crowding the docks and wharfs tried calling out for them to flee, but the colossal trading ship simply ploughed through the smaller vessel without losing a shred of speed.
The fishing boat was utterly decimated, sending shattered wood and the fisherman flying into the water.
“W-we… we need to get out of here!” Dyr realised.
Mell had dropped his pipe and was already running.
The crowd began to flee back away from the harbour. Dyr and Nathin’s pockets jingled from the marks within as they bolted.
The vessel did not slow as it crashed into the wooden piers first at an angle, shearing them completely in half and crushing through the docked boats. The sailors onboard leapt into the water.
Dyr turned as he ran to see wooden fragments and roaring waves proceeding the ship. It was far larger than he had initially realised. It towered as high as a two-storey house.
The ship clipped one of the harbour’s wooden guard towers, causing it to twist and collapse. It slammed into the main walls of the docks, the bow of the ship creating a cascade of water, wood, and stone fragments.
The masts detached and collapsed like towering trees, falling forwards with the inertia of the impact into the houses lining the nearest street. Their tiled roofs caved in from the intense force.
The rest of the ship sliced like a knife into the dock walls before completely breaking apart upon the road where Dyr had just been standing moments earlier, before ultimately coming to an ear-splitting halt.
A baby wept in the distance as one of the buildings that bore the brunt of the impact began to crumble.
Dyr halted as an eerie silence then gripped the streets. The ship’s hull had caved in and was broken in several colossal pieces, some embedded into the seawall. The street was a mess of rubble and wreckage.
Dyr
