The others did not question her. Together, they leaped from the safety of the raised platform. Nicci sprinted ahead, feeling the vitrified sand crunch beneath her boots. She could feel the vibrations as frustrated dust people moved under the ground, trying to break through the barrier with bony claws. The hard surface needed to last for only a few seconds, just long enough for them to run.
They finally reached Thistle’s home. Her aunt and uncle were scratched and bloody, wounded by the claws of the dust people they had fended off. Luna’s faded red head scarf had been knocked askew, and she pushed it back out of her eyes. Nicci loosed another flow of power to ignite the two nearest attackers as she shouted to the other woman, “Take Thistle and get inside!”
Marcus and Luna staggered to the doorway. The floor of their home was made of clay tile; Nicci hoped it would grant enough safety against an attack from below.
The house offered very few defenses, but this was their last shelter. Freed from the grasping hands of the undead creatures, Marcus and Luna retreated deeper inside.
Bannon and Nathan hacked apart two more dust people at the threshold, before they all crowded through the door. Behind them, the pathway of fused sand cracked, then shattered apart, and the dust people emerged from underground, pushing aside the hard slabs.
Marcus and Luna huddled in a corner of the home, holding each other. Luna sobbed, while Marcus opened and closed his mouth as if trying to think of something defiant to say. When the two saw that Thistle was all right, they cried out with relief and gestured for her to come over.
Nathan slammed the wooden door and threw the crossbar into place, but it was a flimsy barricade. Soon enough, the mummified creatures were pounding on it, scratching with their claws. The joined planks began to crack and splinter.
Nicci surveyed the home, studying its possible defenses. Bannon and the old wizard stood back-to-back with their swords ready as the thudding continued against the door. It would only be moments before the dust people surged inside.
Thistle’s eyes were wild, but determined as she stood next to Nicci. “Are we safe?”
Luna reached out her arms. “Come here, girl. We’ll be safe together.”
Before Thistle could start to where her aunt and uncle huddled, the hard clay tiles in the corner dissolved into a soup, and the floor opened up like a trapdoor into a hunter’s pit. Luna and Marcus screamed as skeletal hands grabbed them by the legs and hauled them under.
Nicci rushed to help them, but at that moment, the barricaded door shattered, and an army of dust people boiled inside. Nathan and Bannon stood to block them, sweeping their swords from side to side. Both were grimly silent as they fought with all their strength.
Nicci felt tiles shift beneath her boots as the foundation gave way. Glancing up, looking for any way out, she spotted the iron-hard wooden crossbeams that extended across the ceiling of the mud-brick structure. The beams led to an upper window that was open to the night and the roof. It was their only way out.
“Thistle, I’m going to throw you up there. Grab the beam and work your way over to the window.” She snatched up the scrawny girl. Without arguing, Thistle reached out her hands, and Nicci tossed her high enough that she could grab the crossbeam and nimbly swing her thin legs over it. Once she caught her balance, Thistle scooted along the beam toward the high open window.
Nicci turned to the two men. “Bannon, Nathan, we’ve got to get up there.”
“You’re going to throw me up there too, Sorceress?” Nathan asked, then swung back to cleave the dried skull of another attacker. “Do you think I can fly?”
“Not flying, but with magic, I will control the air and change your weight. I can move you.”
Without further ado, she released her power and yanked Nathan up high enough to grasp the crossbeam; then she did the same for Bannon. Not expecting it, the young man flailed and nearly dropped his sword, but managed to grab on to the beam without losing Sturdy.
Thistle had scooted her way to the window. The two men, balanced on the crossbeams overhead, reached down, and Nicci jumped, stretching out her hands as ten of the staggering monsters lurched into the dwelling. Bannon and Nathan deftly caught her and swung her up.
Dust people filled the confined home, reaching up toward the open ceiling, but they could not get to their four potential victims overhead.
At the open window, Thistle looked back and stared at the empty corner that had just swallowed her aunt and uncle. Tears streamed down her narrow face, carving tracks through the dust there.
“Climb out onto the roof,” Nicci said. “We should be safe up there.” Just then, the base of the home’s mud-brick walls shifted and started to crumble, as if the hardened structure were beginning to dissolve back into dust. “Quickly!”
Thistle scampered through the window and swung herself onto the tiled roof, while Bannon and Nathan followed with as much urgency. Sliding along the wooden crossbeam behind them, Nicci looked down to see more dust people rising from the broken floor. The walls shivered with rapidly spreading cracks.
She realized that even the rooftop would not be a place of safety.
The group sat gasping for breath out in the open night air and heard the hollow hiss of an army of dust people plodding through the streets of Verdun Springs.
Thistle’s entire home began to collapse beneath them. One wall sank down, destabilizing the roof, and loose clay tiles clattered like broken teeth to the ground. Bannon tried to keep his balance, but slipped and scrabbled as tiles broke under him. He was able to snag a wooden anchor beam, and Nathan grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him back up to temporary safety.
Nicci stood at the roof’s apex, searching for any possible escape. The orphan girl ran to the other end of the roof and pointed to an adjacent stone structure, a square, flat-roofed shop building made of quarried blocks rather than mud bricks. “Over here! This looks safer!”
The gap between the buildings was six feet wide. But with desperation, and a possible nudge of magic, the four ran across the crumbling tile roof, jumped, and all landed on the flat, open roof of the stone building.
Behind them, Thistle’s home collapsed, the brick walls crumbling, the roof sagging inward. The girl watched in dismay.
Standing on the roof of the much sturdier building, Bannon stomped with his boot. “At least this roof is solid beneath our feet, made of old wood, reinforced. And these stone-block walls won’t collapse so easily.”
Nathan pointed out an opening in the roof, which led down into the main shop below. “But those creatures could follow us, climb onto the roof.”
Pursuing them, the dust people tore open the unlocked door below and burst into the abandoned shop. They made their inexorable way upward, climbing the stairs to the open roof.
“We are still trapped.” Nicci scanned toward the edge of town, the rocky bluffs and canyons on the outskirts of Verdun Springs. “If we can get out there away from town, in among the bluffs, the dust people won’t be able to attack from underground. Maybe we can defend ourselves in the stone outcroppings.”
“It’s much too far,” Bannon said from the edge of the rooftop, swallowing hard.