“Mister Cain,” I called. I raised my voice over the villagers' screams and shouts.

  He didn't answer me, but he looked my way as he drew another bucket of water.

  I moved in closer to the well. I wanted to help, but the strange man nagged at me. There had been something unsettling about the way he had simply stood by and watched while the village burned. Was he afraid? Didn’t he have family? I found myself pained I wasn’t able to make out his face and at least alert his kin.

  Hightower was a small port village that stood elevated on all sides, above the south seaside. We were isolated from our surrounding neighbors, a vast forest lying down our mountainside on the other three sides of the village. My family had lived here for generations, and I rarely knew of visitors, or villagers who would come and go. For decades, we kept to ourselves.

  Though rare, we knew of magic’s existence in Hightower, though no one in the village had learned to use it. A nearly abandoned magical portal sat on the south side of the village as the land began to plunge towards the seaside, which connected the nearby villages. Hightower’s villagers generally prided themselves on the work of their hands, and only used the magic portal in the rarest of emergencies. It hadn’t been used in my lifetime, as far as I knew. But its existence allowed us to have some knowledge and understanding of what lie beyond our village and the trees surrounding us.

  Hightower sat on a plateau of the highest peak on a mountain range we called the Dagger Bluffs. The range contained other villages on the mountaintops and valleys that we knew little about. Hightower’s peak was surrounded by woods on three sides. At the base of the range to the south lie the docks to the sea, where my father had worked. The land plunged into the ocean with little room to level out. We were safe from floods, though exposed. Winter hit the village hard.

  But it was well known in Hightower that no one should venture too deep into the forest to the north. It was rumored for generations throughout the village that a curse lay on the land there, and mothers always feared that children who played too close to the trees would never be seen again.

  I thought again of the man at the forest’s edge, still suspecting no one had really been there at all. But… if he was, he was heading into danger going into the woods.

  But the way he’d disappeared into the forest had me feeling a bit haunted. I couldn’t really be sure he’d ever been there at all. Maybe I really had only seen shadows.

  “Did you see that man?” I asked.

  Cain’s only response was a grunt as he yanked on the rope of the bucket in the well.

  My eyes flashed again to the forest, then over my shoulder to the village.

  “How can you expect to put out these fires? They're catching over half of Hightower!”

  Then I heard the screechy, grating voice of Vax Finnigan ring out. “Talk while you're passing water, boy, or get out of the way!”

  Finnigan was the schoolteacher, and besides his already unpleasant demeanor, he seemed to despise me more than most. I had always assumed that it had to do with me having to drop out of school not long after Father died. We were struggling to make ends meet as it was, and with Mother needing to care for Ravel, it wouldn’t do for me to be in school all day.

  I was fond of most of the villagers in Hightower, especially when they gave me extra work to help put food on the table. Sometimes I helped fill my father's old port position, loading and unloading cargo from the ships, which he had worked when the crew wasn’t sailing. Though sometimes there wasn't enough work that I could perform, and those days it was harder to find bread.

  While I loved learning and envied Ravel somewhat for being able to go while I had other obligations, by now I had mostly resigned myself to reading old second-hand schoolbooks by candle light after supper each night. I didn’t have any space in my life to bother about Finnigan’s opinion of me, though I did wish he’d voice it a bit quieter sometimes.

  My family made it work, but somehow this man created a vendetta against me for trying to survive with my family.

  “Shut up, Vax!” Cain snapped, and passed another bucket to the next man in line. “Soren, we will do what we can. Hightower can use any help we can get. But if you have somewhere else you need to be...” he let the statement hang. He grunted louder with every bucket of water he raised.

  I stared at the raging fires and wondered when the well would run dry.

  “What happened?” I finally took the chance to ask, not able to move my feet to either help or to run. “Has the village been ransacked?”

  Cain didn't answer. The crowd around the well pushed the buckets faster and grunted harder, seeming to make a point of ignoring me.

  But the man in front of Finnigan said in a hushed tone, just loud enough for me to hear, “Monsters.”

  Finnigan gave him a solid shove, and the man dropped his bucket. A whole load of water spilled out around his feet and the man cursed Finnigan and spat at his shined shoes. Before the schoolteacher could manage a blow, Cain stopped drawing water to break up the fight. I wondered what the man meant, but I didn't get the chance to ask.

  Suddenly, the air grew frigid around us, cold enough for me to see my breaths as foggy puffs of vapor. This shift in temperature, despite the blazing fires and summer night air, felt even more chilling.

  Cain stopped, the next bucket tipped and splashing onto the shoes of the man behind him.

  “That's not natural,” Cain said, his breath coming in a shivering, white puff. “That’s a winter chill, in midsummer. Something’s very wrong.”

  I shivered. “Where did that gust come from?” I asked, but wasn’t surprised when I received no answer.

  There was no such thing as monsters. I knew magic existed in the world, though I’d never seen it used, as no one in Hightower had ever learned it. But foreign creatures were another story. None of this made sense.

  Despite the confusion, the men in line came back to life in the next moment, and the man behind Cain shoved his shoulder and yanked the bucket from his hands.

  “Let’s keep it movin’, Ald,” the man barked.

  A deep, guttural, animalistic roar sounded from above the rooftops. I reeled as my ears rang. Then a freezing cold gust blasted sharp fragments of what felt like broken glass against my skin. The puddle of water on the ground near my feet crystallized and my toes felt the sting of icy cold through my thin shoes. Sharp fragments left scratches down my arms and over my cheeks. They fell to the brick street and melted into droplets of water. Not glass, but ice.

  Above a row of flaming houses behind us arose an enormous reptilian head on a serpent-like neck. Deep blue leathery wings pushed upward and the beast's whole body flew. My mind unable to wrap itself around whatever that thing was, I silently hoped that Ravel was nowhere near it.

  The monster's thick talons crushed the brick chimney and tore into the rooftop, spouting flames around its face, creating a horribly eerie glow. The beast screamed another ear-piercing roar just before the icy breath blew out the fire. It continued to blow, shooting the sharp ice needles. A young woman emerged limping from the building, tugging a screaming child along by the arm.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I had watched Cain brave raging storms to protect his cargo at the docks, fighting off torrential winds and rain. But the winged beast seemed to lock its eyes on the well, and I saw Cain freeze. The creature cast another wave of icy shards at us.

  When the blast released, Cain broke free of his daze. He grabbed a fistful of my shirt at the chest and yanked me behind the well for safety. Most of the villagers had scattered away, but the icy needles and the bone-chilling cold struck a few unlucky ones. Grown men lie curled on the ground, pressing their hands to limbs or torsos seeping with dark wetness.

  I saw my breath leave my body as a cloud of fog, but Cain and I seemed to be safe from the sharp stings, for the moment.

  When the monster had flown off, I feared it aimed to torment other unfortunate villagers. Cain rose to his feet. He assessed the damage of the village’s men, but he was not the old woman Theri, Hightower’s only medical healer. Nor was I. There would be little we could do to help the injured stragglers.

  Instead, Cain turned back to the burning homes. We still had so much work ahead of us. He tugged at the rope to bring up the water bucket, but I watched his face flash with fear in the light of the remaining blazes. I peered over the edge to see what had alarmed him. Suspecting we may have run the well dry, I tugged on the rope myself.

  It wouldn't budge.

  “The water in the well's frozen solid,” Cain said, defeated. “We've nothing left to fight the fires.”

  “What about the waters from the creek at the base of the mountain?” I asked. Though, even as I said it, I knew the pitfalls of such a plan.

  There was a small stream down the mountain, and the water was available if needed. It was good for fishing and game. But to haul enough water back up the mountain, especially with men now injured, seemed an insurmountable task.

  “The stream is so far. These men are already tired; they would have difficult hauling enough water quickly.”

  Cain suddenly ducked, and I spun to see the creature had come back. It opened its great, sharp-toothed mouth and launched another icy blast, but its aim was at other targets. Its gust blew out another rooftop fire to smoldering embers, but then it moved on to ravage more of the buildings, causing far more destruction than help.

  “Still, we must try,” Cain said, cautiously standing. “I'll rally some men.” Cain began to shout, catching the attention of men and older boys in range. “Find some carts!” he cried to anyone who could get on their feet. “Load them with empty buckets and drive down the mountain to the creek. It's the only option left.”

  I looked around, noticing how many faces I noticed were absent. Strong, important men were nowhere to be seen. A sense of dread washed over me.

  “Cain, where are all the other men? Paddock, Grimes, Dale?” I rattled off more names of men with whom my father used to work on the docks with Cain. “Even Mayor Hatch?”

  Hightower, likely the smallest village in the Bluffs range, was like a large, close-knit family—though not all were treated as such. Still, none were strangers. It was easy to tell that people were missing.

  “Nobody's seen them. They’ve either fled...” he paused, then lowering his voice, he said, “or they're still in their houses.”

  A pang struck my chest as I immediately thought once again about Ravel. If even they couldn’t have made it out of their homes in time, what chance did my nine-year-old sister have?

  I shook my head, determined not to let the fears and desperation wear me down. All of Hightower was depending on each other tonight.

  “Mayor Hatch wouldn't have fled his village,” I protested.

  “I agree,” Cain said.

  The weight of what I said hit me. Nobody in a cramped village would sleep through such wails. If anyone was still in their home, I doubted they would be making it out.

  “But...” I argued with myself, “They're such strong and smart men! I won't believe they're trapped in their homes. How did other villagers escape?”

  A few might have been unlucky. But nearly all of Hightower's strongest men, gone? It made no sense.

  “People act in strange ways during crisis. Ways we might not expect.”

  The well frozen solid and his duty diminished, Cain looked at me, seeming to see me for the first time of the night.

  “Where’s your mother, Soren? Your sister?” he asked, glancing around.

  “Mother is outside the bakery. Brag found us when we made it to the street.”

  Cain nodded, but then seemed to catch my unsaid words.

  “Where’s Ravel, then?”

  I heaved a sigh, trying to fight off a sob. My body was exhausted, but so was my mind. “I don't know. I haven't seen her since we went to sleep last night. She wasn’t in her bed when we left the house. Mother and I haven’t seen her anywhere.”

  “You need to find her and leave with your mother. Escape to Fairview to the west.”

  “I can't find her! She didn't answer me when I called. And I can’t leave without her.”

  Or at least, knowing what had happened to her. Not only would Mother never abandon hope of finding her youngest child if any remained, but I couldn’t even imagine greeting Ravel again in the future, knowing we’d left her behind without doing all we could to reunite.

  Besides that, I couldn’t leave. I needed to help. Hightower was so short-handed already. I could search for her while I helped put out the fires.

  Cain usually understood. He'd been the one to tell Mother and I that Father hadn't come back from his last voyage, and he knew I clung to what was left of my tiny family. I didn't understand why he was pushing me to find her and go.

  The possibility that she was already gone was too heartbreaking to feel real, even if there was some likelihood of truth in it. My mother would search for her baby until she ran out of tears to cry. There was no way we could flee.

  I looked up at Cain, who was studying the village over his shoulder.

  “If only Hightower were equipped for this,” he cursed. “We never stood a chance.”

  I knew what he’d meant. A village in the mountain couldn’t flourish on growing crops like Fairview in the plains. At the highest peak of the Dagger Bluffs, we weren’t like the rest of the villages. We had no cavalry, and the militia doubled as the docking crew, half of them now missing. The only work animals we harbored were the dogs, and the cart mules bought from the bottom of the mountain.

  “But who could have known this would come?” I asked. “These monsters—what are they? Everyone knows dragons aren’t real… but I’ve never heard of anything like this before!”

  Cain couldn’t answer. The beast behind us roared, and I winced. I prepared for another blast of chilled air, but it didn't come. Then screaming voices rang from the distance, and a shiver ran down my back anyway. The monster veered away from the well, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I envisioned the enormous claws ripping across a grown man’s back, or a young woman being crushed under the weight of the flying beast’s haunches.

  My lips trembled as I spoke a silent plea for the protection of the villagers, though I usually didn’t believe in the village’s superstitious lore any more than I had believed in monsters. The villagers worked hard and lived hard, and did not deserve to die hard as well. No one deserved to die charred in his bed or torn apart by those horrifying talons.

  Cain stopped me and pulled me aside, his face deep and serious.

  I forced myself to remember how to move my body again.

  “Soren, we need help. I know you don’t want to leave. But we’re outmanned. We need reinforcements. The only way Hightower might survive this is if we send word to Fairview, now!”

  “But, my Mother—”

  “We’ll take care of your Mother, Soren. And we’ll do all we can to help find Ravel. Right now, I need you to get to the portal on the south side and port to Fairview. It’ll be the fastest way to get word to them, and it’ll keep as many of the grown men here as possible. That way they can take on more of the load than you—”

  “I can work! Don’t try to tell me I’m not strong!” I seethed.

  “I know you’re strong, my boy. I’ve seen you work! But the other men may be stronger, while you’re faster. You have the skills we need right now.”

  “Fairview is two day’s travel on foot if you go down the mountain, but you can make it there and back again in a fraction of that if you take the portal. Go, and call for Fairview’s cavalry.”

  “How will it help, without water?”

  “Our houses may be destroyed tonight,” he said grimly. “But not our people. As long as we can fight the creatures, and still have numbers to call ourselves the Village of Hightower, we can rebuild.”

  But not if the monsters destroyed us, I realized. The monsters served a greater threat than the fires, but how they had ignited still pulled at me.

  “Go, Soren.” Cain forced something into my hand. “Take to Fairview. Warn them in the west. Bring men to help us, with horses and weapons. Anything they can bring.”

  I stared at Cain a moment. Then I opened my hand and looked down at my palm. In it rested a small metal charm on a silver chain. The figure was round and flat, with a jagged pattern on the copper reminding me of flames. A topaz-colored stone sat in the center.

  Though I’d never seen it before, I recognized its shape as the same indent on the magic portal, where a sort of “key” was meant to be pressed in. When I was younger and the other children and I would play around the portal, I had seen the indentation and often wondered what the key would really look like. But I never knew of anyone using it in my lifetime.

  Hightower was a village built by the hands of men, and we were a people proud of our non-magical skills. The portal had supposedly been set up sometime early in Hightower’s development. It, like all magic use, was regulated by the Regional Council of Magical Use in Millrain, the largest town in the north. Millrain, in contrast, was a town founded in its use of magic, including the Academy of Magical Learning set up within its walls.

  The portal was capable of transporting to other linked towns in the Dagger Bluffs as well, but Hightower was so close-knit and self-sufficient that we rarely had a cause to leave. Only in the rare case of an emergency did the timing require us to utilize it.

  “This is the only key we have, Soren,” Cain said. “Don’t lose it.”

  I nodded solemnly. I slipped the key around my neck. I felt compelled to ask again if Mother was truly going to be alright on her own, but I knew that if anyone was going to take care of my family, it was my father’s old friend.

  I said goodbye to Cain. He was a kind man. I hoped he survived. I thought about the other children, my old schoolmates and friends, and wondered how many of them were safe.