I Found a Door to the Elven Realm

Chapter 176: Escape under the Smell and the Fire

They ran north through the village and it only took about forty seconds to reach the edge of the intact houses.

That was the thing about this place now. The village that used to stretch across a comfortable area with orchards and ranches and farmland on all sides had been burned down to a core. Everything outside the Totem’s protection ring had been reduced to ash and charred stone months ago when the dragon attacked the first time and what was left of the "village" was really just a cluster of surviving buildings around the central square.

Eren felt it again when they passed the last standing house on the north side and stepped onto the scorched ground. The ash was old now, packed down by rain and foot traffic into a grey-white crust that crunched under his boots.

Charred stumps of what used to be fruit trees stuck out of the ground every few meters like rotten teeth and the stone foundations of destroyed houses made low walls across the landscape that didn’t protect anything anymore.

The Totem’s protection circle used to cover a few hundred meters in every direction from the center. Now it barely covered the inner ring of houses and the central square. A couple of square kilometers at most where the barrier still had enough strength to keep creatures and magical attacks out. Beyond that it was open ground all the way to the forest edge and anything could walk right up to the barricades.

Griks was riding on Rury’s back because the kobold’s short legs couldn’t keep up and Rury allowed it because Griks sometimes brought her snacks from Lyra’s bakery. Actually that was an understatement. Rury had basically made Griks her personal food supplier and the kobold girl didn’t seem to mind because riding a giant wolf beat walking everywhere on legs that were built for tunnels not open terrain.

That reminded Eren of the other thing about Rury that made him smile every time he thought about it. She’d claimed one of the empty burned-out houses near the eastern wall about a month ago as her personal den. Just walked in one evening while everyone was eating at Selena’s and declared it hers with the kind of authority that made it clear she’d already made the decision and was informing the village as a courtesy.

[This is my den now.] She had announced to Eren and Emily and literally anyone within telepathic range. [Fury will sleep here too.]

[I didn’t agree to that.] Fury had said from across the yard where he was chewing on a bone.

[You are agreeing right now.] Rury walked over to him and pushed him through the doorway with her head. He stumbled inside and by the time he turned around she was already blocking the exit with her body.

They hadn’t slept anywhere else since.

Eren was pretty sure they were doing things in there at night that he absolutely didn’t want to think about. The sounds that occasionally came from the house after dark were... educational. Emily had laughed about it for twenty minutes when he mentioned it one evening. Selena had raised one eyebrow and said "Like mother like daughter" in a tone that implied she knew way more about wolf mating dynamics than she’d ever share with a half-elf from Earth. Even Thadric had walked past the house once at night and come back looking flustered enough that Toris made fun of him for a week straight.

Maybe it’s time to stop calling them cubs. At what point does a six-month-old wolf who weighs more than a motorcycle and has a live-in boyfriend stop being a cub?

But those thoughts evaporated the second they crossed the open burned ground on the north side and reached the low ridge where the scorched earth ended and the actual forest started in the distance.

The smell hit Eren first and Griks was right about all of it. It was burning but it didn’t smell like any fire Eren had experienced in this world. Not like a campfire or Selena’s cooking pit or the scorched-earth aftermath of the dragon attack that still lingered in certain corners of the village on humid days.

This was hotter and sharper with something underneath it that reminded him of the way the air smelled near a chemical factory his uncle’s truck used to drive past on the highway to Bursa. Like the air itself was being cooked from the inside and all the moisture in it had been sucked out and replaced with something that burned your throat.

Then he saw it and stopped running.

The entire northwestern horizon was orange.

A wall of fire was eating the forest from the far northwest and stretching in both directions as far as Eren could see. It was massive. The flames were taller than the tallest trees they consumed and those trees were sixty to seventy meters high in parts of this forest. Black smoke columns rose so high they merged with the clouds above and turned the whole late afternoon sky into something bruised and orange-brown that looked like the end of the world in one of those disaster movies his mother refused to watch because "they always kill the dog."

"That’s not.." he whispered to nobody and didn’t finish the sentence because finishing it would make it real.

The fire was maybe four or five kilometers away and moving toward them. Not fast like a wind-driven brush fire on Earth but steady and wide, eating everything in its path like it had nowhere else to be and all the time in the world to get here.

Then he heard it underneath the roar and crackle of burning wood. A sound that didn’t belong to fire. Deep and guttural and so low that he felt it in his ribs before his ears caught up. A roar that came from inside the flames, not from above them. Something enormous was moving through the burning forest and screaming and the vibration traveled through the earth under Eren’s feet like a small earthquake.

The dragon wasn’t flying over the fire.

It was walking through it. Pushing the flames ahead of itself toward the village like a farmer driving cattle.

Eren turned around and saw Thadric standing right behind him. He didn’t know when the rancher had followed them but the elf was there with his spear in one hand and his free hand gripping the strap of his shoulder bag so hard the leather was creaking. Thadric had seen dragon fire before. He’d survived the first attack. But the look on his face right now was something different from that day and Eren could tell because the elf’s lips were pressed thin and his jaw was working like he was chewing on words he didn’t want to say out loud.

Thadric said them anyway.

"The barrier won’t stop this." His voice was barely loud enough to hear over the distant roar of the approaching fire. "The Totem blocks magical attacks and creature charges and energy-based threats. But this fire.. it is natural fire Eren. Spread from tree to tree by heat and wind. There is no magical signature in it. The barrier has no reason to recognize it as an attack." He looked at Eren and the rancher’s calm finally cracked. "It will pass right through the protection ring like it isn’t even there."

Eren stared at the approaching wall of fire and the dragon roared again from somewhere inside the inferno. The ground shook under his boots and a flock of birds he didn’t have the name for burst from the nearest surviving tree and flew south in a panicked cloud of grey and white feathers.

So that’s why it’s doing this.

Dragon didn’t need to burn through the barrier. It just needs to start a big enough forest fire and let physics do the rest. And it was all natural fire with no magic signature. Just heat and wind and wood.

The Totem probably couldn’t tell the difference between this approaching apocalypse and a campfire someone lit to cook dinner or maybe there were some rules about totem territories, Eren wasn’t sure.

Smart lizard. Really smart and we’re the idiots who thought the barrier was enough for a bit more. I wonder why this motherfuc*er wants to destroy the village. I don’t think it’s about it’s own territory or anything like Emily said.

I feel like this is more personal..

He turned around and saw Griks gripping Rury’s fur so hard her scaly hands had gone white and her little horns were trembling.

Fury had moved in front of Eren without being asked and was facing the fire with his teeth slightly bared, his whole body lowered into something between a defensive crouch and a position that said he was ready to fight even though there was nothing to fight. Thadric was gripping his spear like it could do something useful against a fire the size of a province.

Several elves from the northern watchtower had already spotted the fire and started running toward them. Eren could see the panic spreading through their movements because elves almost never panicked but when they did their composure cracked all at once like ice breaking on a lake. One of them was yelling something in Elvish that Eren couldn’t make out over the growing roar from the north.

He didn’t have time to think about it for longer than three seconds.

"I need to move everyone to Earth." He said it loud enough that the approaching elves could hear him over the distant fire. "Right now. Not tomorrow. Not in an hour. Now."

He turned to Thadric and grabbed the rancher’s shoulder with his right hand. "Get every person in this village on their feet and moving. Tell them to grab food and weapons and anything small they can’t live without. Nothing heavy. Leave the furniture and the stone and the tools that can be replaced. Half an hour. Maybe less depending on how fast that thing moves."

Thadric’s eyes were wide but the man was a fighter underneath that rancher exterior. He’d proven it during the first dragon attack and he’d proven it every day since by organizing the defense volunteers and keeping the barricade crews working through long shifts. He nodded once and hard and ran toward the village without another word.

Eren looked at the wolves. Fury met his eyes and the wolf didn’t need to hear the details because after six months of living together and hunting together and fighting together Fury could read Eren’s intentions through their bond before the words even formed.

[We will help move things.] Fury said.

[I left three pieces of dried meat in my den.] Rury’s voice came right after and there was genuine concern in it. [If those burn I will be extremely upset with this lizard.]

Eren almost laughed at that. Almost. His hands were shaking and his chest was tight and behind him the orange glow on the horizon was getting brighter with every passing minute but Rury’s priorities had a way of making everything feel slightly less apocalyptic.

He started running toward the village center after holding the Griks and the wolves ran beside him and Griks held on to Rury’s back with both arms while her little legs dangled off the sides.

Half an hour. Maybe less. And then this village that these elves built and protected for centuries is going to burn to the ground for the second time.

Eren really hated that damn Dragon!