Lord of the Inferno - Chapter Nineteen

This week’s episode features a chapter from Lord of the Inferno, Volume Two of War of the Fathers. War of the Fathers is available as a free ebook if you sign up for the Dan Decker Newsletter. Here is an excerpt from the show:

The front of the town hall was all but destroyed. Adar was relieved to see that the back of the structure near where the archives were located still stood firm. He intended to go back into the archives to poke around if he got a chance, there hadn’t been time to explore during any of his previous visits. The rest of the building was on its last legs. It looked weak enough that the smallest of breezes should be enough to topple it.

It must be sturdier than it looks, Adar thought when the wind picked up, and the remaining part of the destroyed structure didn’t move.

A Hunwei ship had crashed into the field before the town hall and slammed into the building. The small side door Adar had used when leaving the town hall earlier in the day was still standing, but the great double doors were not, they had been shattered by the impact. 

A large piece of the great door lay on the ground not far from where Adar knelt, peeking out of the open door of an empty home. The great doors had been works of art. It saddened him to see them lying in pieces.

The same could be said for the town hall itself. It was a relic of the ages past. It was a shame it had made it through the invasion only to be taken out now. It may have taken more than a decade to build, but it had been destroyed in the blink of an eye.

The domed roof over the great meeting hall had caved in. Adar had noted it had suffered a lot of damage when he had passed through the large room earlier in the day, right after the tower had been activated. At least something had still been there. Now the whole of it was gone. It had stood for more than a thousand years and was gone in an instant.

Smoke still rose from the pile of burning Hunwei bodies that had blocked his path earlier. The flames had died down, and it was possible to see bits of the armor pointing out here and there, but much of it had melted as it slowly formed into a single mass.