The training base was stationed about thirty kilometers away from the city, but the sounds of explosions and buildings being crushed was loud enough to wake Hyrin up in the middle of the night. The destruction was heavy enough to send shockwaves through the earth that made her bed shake.

She bolted up and looked around completely disorientated. It took her a second to realize who and where she was before she jumped out of bed and ran to the only chair in the room she shared with Lily. She yanked her training clothes off it and nearly tripped over her own feet as she tried to put them on while running out of the door.

"Hn… Rin?” Lily’s sleepdrunk voice reached her from their room, but she didn’t stop or go back. She didn’t need to hear the alarm or be told what those sounds meant. This wasn’t the kind of commotion a house class drake could create. It had to be a skyscraper class. Drakes that were sometimes bigger than even the tallest skyscrapers in the city.

From what she had learned about them, they were few and far in between, but they weren’t exactly rare. Captain Harumi had very smugly bragged to her that he had cut the hearts of at least thirty sky classes in his fifteen year long career.

"Hyrin?”

She stopped and turned around to see Vice Captain Leyleina run up to her. She held her breath, sure that the Vice Captain would tell her to get back to bed, that this wasn’t something they were ready to get involved with.

The Vice Captain looked her up and down for a moment, narrowing her icy blue eyes, but then gave a little nod to the right to tell Hyrin to follow her.

“Since you’re going to insist on coming anyway,” she told Hyrin in a short voice, “there are plenty of ways for you to help.” Her look darkened. “But not like that.”

She guided Hyrin to a room filled with row after row of racks full of weapons and uniforms and anything you could ever imagine needing. Hyrin even saw oxygen tanks, gas masks, high-powered water guns, and what she suspected were electricity conducting staffs.

“Quickly pick a uniform that fits and choose a weapon you’ll be able to still sprint with,” the Vice Captain ordered her as she impatiently glanced out of the door. Despite her clear desire to leave with the other soldiers that only came in to grab what they needed and then ran out of the room again, she waited until all recruits had gathered in that place.

“Sky classes are the most dangerous drakes,” she explained while Hyrin pulled a heavy, long sleeve sweater with a high collar over her head. It fit neatly around her body and didn’t feel as hot or stuffy as she had expected it to, but she could tell from its stiffness that it had been made with some kind of protective material. One that wouldn’t easily be pierced by the relatively small claws of a shrine class drake, she thought with a frustrated grin.

“Due to their sheer size, they destroy everything in their path just by walking a few steps,” the vice captain continued. “Not to mention that their hides are much thicker and more difficult to pierce by our bullets and that their chests are up so much higher that they are more difficult to reach.”

Her cold eyes moved over the sixteen of them and the expression on her usually stone face told Hyrin that she didn’t actually think any of them would be useful.

“Like last time, your mission is to help evacuate. Protect any civilians that haven’t heard or listened to the alarm at any cost.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do not engage in combat in any way. If you get in the way of any of our soldiers or worse, captain Harumi or me, the consequences will be dire.” She turned around. “That is, if you survive, of course.”

She pulled open the door. “Go, go, go!”

“W… woah,” Seren quietly mumbled next to Hyrin as they got out of their armored truck and stared up at the skyscraper class, even though it was still kilometers away.

Looking at it, Hyrin almost regretted having used the word monster to describe the house classes they had seen up until then. Those small drakes nearly seemed cute now that she stood in the dark shadow of this behemoth.

“My body feels strangely numb…” Row confessed with a weak chuckle and Seren, Lily, and Hyrin nodded. None of them felt like turning it into a joke. Only the thought of not actually having to face this monster stopped Hyrin’s knees from giving out.

“Ley, the evacuation is done.” Captain Harumi appeared next to the Vice Captain with a dark expression. “Team eight is checking for stragglers.”

The Vice Captain clicked her tongue. “I told them to wait and let the recruits handle it. Now what did I even bring them for?”

Captain Harumi snorted and glanced at the cowering group behind them. His gaze stopped when it reached Hyrin, and she could feel her blood turn cold.

“Why not let them fight?” He mentioned casually. “Their weakest link suddenly got her act together, so they should at least be able to assist from a safe distance.”

He turned back to his Vice Captain. “Any extra bullet counts with these monsters, you know that better than anyone.”

Hyrin heard Seren and the others hold their breath, but she already knew what the answer would be. There was no way their zealous Vice Captain would let them go back or just hang around somewhere far away and waste this learning opportunity.

“Pair off in two’s and join any of the eight teams,” she ordered them, pointing at the radio device in her ear. “Set your frequency to four and give me updates on where you are and what is happening, I’ll give you orders accordingly.”

She scowled at them as if they had already disobeyed her somehow. “Stay behind your team at all times and obey the lieutenant’s orders. Do not get in their way.”

“Yes ma’am!” All of them swung their hands to the right in a salute and within seconds, they had formed pairs and run off.

“Seren, Hyrin, to team one,” the Vice Captain ordered them through their small, black earpieces. “Head north and get on the roof of the Regony building. If you didn’t bring any gear, use the fire escape.”

“Yes ma’am!” Seren pressed the button on the black band around his neck that his earpiece was attached to to answer and let go, glancing at Hyrin.

“You okay to climb up the fire stairs?” He asked.

She scoffed. “Ask me if I’m okay to face that thing as inexperienced and unprepared as we are.”

He chuckled despite himself. “Are you?”

She sighed and watched him pull down the fire escape of the enormous building they were supposed to scale. “I don’t know. I feel like it’d be just our luck for that thing to knock off the top of this building right before we get there.”

Seren jumped to grab and climb onto the first step of those stairs and reached his hand out to her. “I don’t know, I feel like it’d be more our luck for you to somehow defeat it by yourself and then spend another week in the hospital afterwards.”

She laughed, a little too loud maybe, and followed Seren up endless zigzags of stairs. After what felt like hours, she stepped onto the ledge of the roof. Even she had to catch her breath after that, although she didn’t have to lean her hands on her knees like Seren did, which left her feeling a little disoriented for some reason.

“Seren and Hyrin?” A tall, dark-skinned woman with scales as bright yellow as the sun covering the shoulders of her uniform walked up to them. “I’m lieutenant Slin, Ley filled me in, you two position over there.”

She pointed to an open spot in a row of soldiers sitting on the ledge, their weapons at the ready. A spot right in between two others, not at the back at all. Part of Hyrin wanted to protest, but if this woman was anything like their Vice Captain - and the deadpan look on her face suggested she was - then anything she said would fall on deaf ears anyway.

“Yes ma’am,” Seren answered instead, and walked over to the spot the Lieutenant had pointed out to them. He sat down on one knee, like the soldiers on both sides had done too, and pressed his heavy looking rifle against his shoulder. A different rifle than the one they had gotten last time, Hyrin realized, although she herself had chosen a different one as well.

He glanced at her over his shoulder and she kneeled down next to him with a sigh, giving a short nod to the soldier on her left.

“Bringing a sniper is a bold choice when you were only supposed to help evacuate,” the Lieutenant mentioned, stopping behind Hyrin. “Although it worked out for the better now.”

“A sniper?” Hyrin repeated, looking at the heavy weapon in her arms. Now that she had so much more stamina and barely even got tired from anything anymore, she had just picked one of the bigger, more dangerous looking weapons that she had seen in that store room. Within reason, of course, not like the kind of ridiculous bazooka that the Vice Captain logged around.

The Lieutenant shook her head. “What is she even teaching you?”

“To be fair,” Seren defended the Vice Captain to Hyrin’s surprise, “there’s a lot to go over and we haven’t been here very long yet.”

Lieutenant Slin crossed her arms with what could only be described as a pout, immediately making Hyrin reassess her opinion about her. She was nothing like the Vice Captain.

“Unlike most teams, we will be engaging head-on,” she explained, staring at the monster in the distance with a dark look. “The others will be lying in wait on both sides, attacking the legs and arms in an attempt to immobilize it. We will aim right here,” she pressed her finger against her chest, right where her heart was.

“It’s our job to destroy the outer scales, Ley will then destroy its flesh, and the Captain will cut its heart.”

Just like any other drake, Hyrin thought, but the look in the Lieutenant’s eyes made it clear to them that this would be nothing like any other drake. She felt it in everything. The tension of the soldiers around them. The much higher pitched alarm that kept ringing in her ears. Even the look on the Captain’s face before had been slightly off.

“The sniper is heavier and bigger than most rifles,” the Lieutenant continued, “but it has a much longer range, enabling you to hit it much earlier than most of us here.” She looked down at Hyrin with an approving grin. “You must have quite some strength in those skinny looking arms of yours.”

Hyrin chuckled awkwardly, but then quickly turned back to the monster approaching them in order to avoid any more questions. She crouched down behind the elevated ledge and put the sniper rifle on it, pressing the back against her cheek so she could look through the scope. It brought that giant monster so much closer than she had ever wanted it to be that she almost flinched back.

The shockingly beautiful purple color of its scales reminded her of a kind of flower. The deep, pinkish purple ones that grew on butterfly bushes. It got lighter over its stomach and around its claws, although it never reached that really pink color of the scales that the Captain had on his uniform.

She breathed quietly. Somehow, focusing on those shining scales rather than on those black claws that were as big as a house, or those white, razor sharp teeth, or its sheer, massive size, helped her to stay calm.

“Wait for the others to engage first,” the Lieutenant instructed them. “Then aim straight for its chest and nothing else.” She crouched down behind them. “Just do what you can and trust that the others will cover what you miss,” she added in a warm, reassuring voice. “You’ll be okay here with us.”

She slapped the both of them against their shoulders and then walked away, taking her own position. Hyrin glanced at her from the corner of her eye. She hadn’t expected a superior’s words to ever calm her down, especially not with the superiors she had engaged with up until that moment, but Lieutenant Slin’s words had actually affected her. Her heart was no longer painfully beating in her throat.

“Hyrin,” Seren whispered softly and she looked up at him, but he kept his gaze aimed tightly at the sky class that came closer every second.

“I know I’m not really worth much at the moment,” he said softly, “but I’ll do whatever I can to protect you, no matter what hap-” He gasped and suddenly grabbed her head, pushing her down.

She felt her skin scrape against the concrete ledge for a flash of a second, before a hot woosh of air blew over her and something enormous crashed onto the roof right behind them.