Each time Aloz beat her wings, the pectoral muscles connecting the outlines of her wings trembled powerfully. Her long tendons stretched, and the wing membranes descended to generate airflow. Then the pectoralis minor muscles rising from the keel of her breastbone suddenly contracted, pulling the wings upward to create lift. The muscle groups covered in golden dragon scales writhed like snakes, and every contraction and expansion provided tens of thousands of pounds of force.
The four dragons pierced the center of the storm like four straight lines.
She swung her enormous head through the murky tempest. Her long horns, shaped like blades, cleaved through the pitch-black clouds. A ring of golden flames in her eye sockets swept across the uneven ground with the precision of radar waves, leaving nothing hidden in the chaos.
Rushta had vanished. This once-prosperous region, which had been home to over a million people, was now nothing more than a colossal crater in Aloz's eyes. The crater began around Kuruk in the east, reached the middle of Cloak Hills in the south, bordered the Hazel Mountains in the west, and stretched northward all the way to the southern foothills of the Ludwig Mountains. Apart from the chaotic creatures crawling and staggering through it, not a blade of grass remained.
Aloz's gaze swept over the forests scorched along the disaster's edge. Tens of thousands of acres of woodland had turned to ash in an instant. Now, only bare, charred trunks stood across the desolate earth, shrouded in the hazy black storm. The charred corpses of animals lay everywhere in the forest. Since the tiny organisms on their bodies had all been annihilated, their remains had yet to decompose.
The occasional flash of purple lightning in the sky reminded them that time was still passing in this world.