The Story of Evil: Volume I - Heroes of the Siege by Tony Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

was created that carried water from the northwestern part of Lake Azure, all the way down to Celestial. The aqueduct was built at a gradual decline (so that the water always flowed downwards), and used conduits to get through the hills of the Evergreen Forest that blocked its path. A city between Lake Azure and Celestial called Almiria was responsible for the treatment and sanitation of the water to make it drinkable, before it continued to flow down the aqueduct. The aqueduct ran diagonally through the Circle City on huge stone pillar arches, starting in the northwest corner before exiting into the Darien Sea from the southeastern corner. If people did not have immediate access to river water, they would be able to obtain their water from the aqueduct.
    Ostravaski’s Tower (as it was called by civilians) was one of two watchtowers that the aqueduct ran directly through. The aqueduct was a part of the actual tower. A lot of people had headed to one of these two towers during the siege. If an attack was bad enough, and they thought they might be trapped inside the tower for an extended period of time, they knew the aqueduct would provide an infinite supply of water.
    Steve ran towards the warriors’ watchtower which stood only 100 feet away. About halfway to the tower he heard a great sucking in of air above him. He looked up and saw an injured brown dragon shoot an elemental blast out of its mouth. The brown ball of energy crashed into the bottom of the watchtower. The direct impact took out a huge chunk of the stone wall. The brown dragon was brought down within the minute by an onslaught of arrows from warriors in the tower. It had known it was dying and wanted to make one last major attack. The dragon fell down onto the top of the aqueduct, bounced off, and crashed down hard onto the plaza’s stone floor.
    Distant screams brought Steve’s attention back to the tower. The entire cylinder fortress above the puncture hole twisted, ripped, and separated from the base. It began falling over like a tall tree that had been chopped down by a lumberjack. It was slow at first, but then the fall seemed to speed up. Warriors patrolling the top of the tower fell far down to the ground, as the floor they were standing on slowly tilted from horizontal to vertical.
    The shadow of the falling tower covered Steve. He sprinted across the plaza, trying to avoid being crushed by it. If he would have turned backwards and tried to outrun its height, he would have been dead before even clearing half of the tall tower. As it were, he didn’t even know if he was fast enough to outrun the width as it came down. Behind him he could hear the terrible sound of the crumbling tower with just his left ear. The flat stones underneath his feet began to shake like an earthquake as the sound of destruction got louder and closer.
    Steve did not turn around to look. He had enough trouble focusing on what was in front of him because of the dust that had been kicked up from the debris. It caused a dark, dense cloud of gray to spread over the plaza. Then Steve noticed another obstacle.
    Ostravaski’s Tower was pulling down the connected aqueduct with it as it fell. Across the entire plaza, the aqueduct columns were being torn from their foundations. Steve was trapped between the falling tower behind him and the collapsing aqueduct in front of him. He couldn’t go back and he couldn’t stop. His only hope was in continuing forward. He sprinted towards the aqueducts and crossed under one of the giant arches. Huge stones crashed down all around him.
    Steve kept sprinting forward, dodging and vaulting over the fallen debris and rubble. He felt like one of the parkour entertainers who raced through streets and on the tops of buildings doing acrobatic flips and daring leaps.
    Steve glanced back for the briefest of seconds behind him. He had successfully gotten past the trajectory of the fallen warriors’ watchtower. Through the dust he saw its thousands of