There was smoke in the air.
Kass slammed his foot on the accelerator. The smoke was thick and heavy, and it only seemed to be getting thicker the further north he went. Ahead was his destination, exactly where the smoke was. The hovercraft skidded to the right, narrowly avoiding the flaming trees blocking half the road. Only a few hundred meters further up was Gath’s place.
The near accident caused Kass to slow down and stop and take a deep breath. He was panicking. He needed to calm down. Kass noticed there were no signs of a fire service on its way. He quickly whipped out his communicator and sent an emergency signal. The nearby Rethan Fire Regiment would arrive in a few minutes. But he needed to make sure Gath and Retvik were safe.
Their house wasn’t far off now. He would have been able to see the open farm fields around the little cottage if it wasn’t for the blinding smoke. But what worried Kass most was that the smoke was getting darker and blacker. No longer was it just grass and trees that were burning.
Kass’s panic began to rise again as he reached Gath’s home, slowly burning away to itself. The fire had started quite close by. And neither of the house’s occupants were anywhere to be seen.
“GATH!” Kass shouted, not once, but three times. There was no answer. They had to be there. Both their hovercrafts were parked outside. Well, they used to be. They were now burning wrecks. He had to go and look for them.
Kass deployed a telekinetic shield around his craft to protect it, created another around himself then tried to find the front door amid all the smoke. He kicked a smouldering flower pot to one side and tried peering through one of the windows. He couldn’t see a thing.
“GATH! RETVIK!” he tried shouting again, but a sudden roar of flame meant that even if they were there, they wouldn’t have heard him. He found the front door. One of the large, heavy barrels normally used for storing flour had been placed in front of the entrance, meaning he needed to use extra force just to pull the door open.
As it finally opened up, a huge plume of smoke billowed out, causing Kass to splutter and lose his focus. As the smoke slowed down, he felt a tingling sensation on his skin. His shield had faded briefly on his arm, causing a minor burn. It didn’t matter. They were more important.
Kass immediately headed for the living area. It was midday, they’d be preparing lunch. It was barely possible to breathe, let alone see. Part of the wall though had fallen, collapsing in on itself.
“GATH?” Kass’s shouts began to get desperate. But something brushed against his leg. A tail. It was Retvik, with part of the wall on top of him. Kass amped up his shield, so it covered both him and Retvik.
“K-Kass, y-you found us!” Retvik cried, clearly in a lot of pain. He clearly couldn’t have called for help, his right arm was pinned down by a piece of concrete from the roof, and the wall had kept his legs pinned.
“Okay… Stay still!” Kass ordered as he started lifting off pieces of rubble. He wanted to just blast off the debris telekinetically, but the rubble pinning Retvik may have been part of what was keeping the house up. Luckily, it didn’t seem to be a supporting wall, and Kass managed to get Retvik free relatively quickly.
“I can’t… feel my hand…” Retvik tried to say as he coughed and spluttered.
“Can you stand?”
“W-with help…”
Kass wasn’t taking any chances. With a telekinetic bubble, he picked up Retvik and carefully carried him outside, towards Kass’s hovercraft. He lowered the defensive shield and threw Retvik in, before hastily heading back to the house. He needed to find Gath.
“He was upstairs, in our bedroom! It all burnt so quickly!” Retvik warned as the telekinetic shield around him powered up. “Just… Get them out of there!”
Kass raised his shield. The fire was getting worse and the stairs no longer seemed to exist. A small telekinetic boost got him onto the second floor, where the doorway to the bedroom had completely collapsed. Kass pulled as much rubble out of the way as he could so he could get in. That wall was load-bearing so he had no choice but to be careful.
Gath was inside, hiding in the en-suite bathroom, cradling something in his arms. He was whimpering, barely conscious, his eyes forced shut.
“Gath! I’m coming!” Kass called, but the terrified Ethran-type continued to whimper, unmoving in the corner. The hard ceramic tiles had protected Gath, but not by much. His skin, his armour, it was all charred. Kass immediately rushed over, only for Gath to push the thing he was cradling into Kass’s arms.
It was half an egg. Cracked and broken. A shell with nothing in it, any life-making fluids having evaporated away.
Kass snapped out of his trance and thrust the egg shell back into Gath’s hands. “Hold onto it. I’m going to get us out of here!”
He put his arms around Gath’s stomach, holding on to him as tightly as he could, as he expanded his shield around them. With a vast amount of effort, Kass forced them both through the ceiling and into the air above them. Gath screamed, but Kass did his best to ignore him until they’d landed safely on the ground.
Sirens echoed around them. The Fire Regiment had arrived. As had several ambulances, one of which had medical personnel attending to Retvik.
“Everything is going to be okay…” Kass shouted over the noise.
“No it’s not…” Gath muttered as he passed out, finally succumbing to the heat. A medical team flooded over, taking Gath away into one of the ambulances.
Kass turned around to face what remained of his friends’ home, a horrible feeling in his stomach that Gath was right.