The Desolate Guardians Read Online Free PDF

running after
him. A rumbling roar sounded, making speech impossible, but I could
tell she wasn't sure what he'd meant.
    He looked up again, and I saw… what was that? A curtain of tangible darkness, spilling down from
the edges of the dark red sky, as if the square's edges were the
lips of a basin into which an ocean was pouring. As I continued
watching, the word ocean became more appropriate… all
around, the darkness began crashing down to blasted earth and
spilling out across the terrain.
    It was water.
    In those moments, with frothing walls
approaching from multiple directions, I couldn't fathom what those
two must have been feeling. His heart rate was dangerously high,
and I could hear her shouting something just behind him as they
ran. Wherever he was leading them, they didn't seem to make it in
time.
    A massive fist of emerald water blasted down
the trench, and he leapt up the side and clambered onto grey dirt.
Looking to his right, he confirmed she'd done the same, but a look
to his left found the deluge swelling out onto their level just a
moment later. Standing quickly, and pulling her up, he braced
against the tide.
    It hit with visible force, quickly rising up
nearly to the camera's height - where was the camera,
anyway? She didn't seem to notice it, and it wasn't bouncy enough
to be on his helmet…
    He shouted again, but the roar drowned out
his words. The entire wasteland had a torrent of water rushing
across it in a vast flat and frothy plain, maybe three or four feet
deep judging by the level moving against him, and the force was
clearly pushing them both to their limits.
    What had he said? Don't fall
underneath… what would happen if they did? There were
waterlogged bodies in the trench, but had they died from this, or
had they just been soaked by repeated floods? He'd known the exact
moment it was coming…
    The camera rattled and then fell backwards
abruptly, and I froze as his ragged shout filled my senses. Had
he…? No, the woman had caught him, and now struggled with grit
teeth to lift him back up without falling herself. Desperate, he
shouted something akin to thanks, and then pointed at a distant
hill.
    At first, she seemed to think they were
supposed to head for it, but his meaning quickly became clear. As
all three of us watched, the surging green water coasted up and
over the hill and covered it four feet thick. Beyond the hill,
the craggy ruins in the distance glimmered darkly as water surged
up any surface it could, defying all logic. The only structures
that remained above the flood were those most intact and straight;
only pillars, towers, and the largest building sat clear under the
insane technicolor sky.
    Don't fall underneath, he'd said. It
seemed likely that, if one fell underneath, there was no coming
back up… what a horrible fate that must have been, drowning in
four-foot-deep water inches from your comrades? Had they tried to
pull their colleagues up, only to bring the emerald deluge up with
them, still covering the drowning men even as they ran around
clutching at the air and trying to breathe?
    I could tell by his vitals that he was about
to collapse. His heart rate was too high, and the strain was too
much. Was I about to watch this man die?
    Like a reverse blast, the emerald tide was
suddenly gone, rushing away across the wasteland. He collapsed onto
soaked grey earth.
    Above him, the woman stood and tried to shake
off water while also catching her breath. "That happen often around
here?"
    "Every day," he croaked, panting. "Get back…
down in…" Stumbling up with her help, he pulled them both back
towards the trench and fell roughly to hard dirt between two
corpses. "Over there… don't move… they're alive." He looked up
once, noting the sickly yellow patches of sky overhead.
    She followed his lead, lying in the trench
among the dead.
    What new horror was coming for them? I
watched with terrible fascination as strange glows began appearing
all around them… radiance which