Read The Charred Lands: Apocalypse of Fire for Free Online

years
the monsters haven’t been able to reproduce. We placed this down to
sustained malnourishment. Once most of life on earth had been
drained many of them went into hibernation, turned to cannibalism
or simply starved to death. I fear we may have an Elder on our
hands here.” My dad said, with a gulp.
    That last part
shook me right to my core and sent shockwaves around the room.
Never for a second had I considered that the eggs may belong to one
of the original eleven elders. An Elder. Twice the size of the
other monsters, and ten times as deadly. Grandpa had told me the
story of how the civilization crumbled a thousand times over – it
was because of the eleven Elders. These Elders brought about the
destruction of entire cities and brought countries to their
knees.
    The year was
2014. There was no warning signs – nobody could have predicted what
happened. One day, people in a country called Iceland awoke to find
the Island’s largest volcano to be on the brink of erupting.
Surrounding cities and towns were evacuated, but it wasn’t just
lava that was sent erupting into the air. The volcano gave birth to
something. The very first Elder. A dragon, the size of an airplane,
stretched its wings high above Iceland, the country’s scared and
confused citizens could only stand and stare in curiosity as the
monstrous creature took flight above. Their curiosity soon turned
to panic as the creature began to rain humongous clouds of fire
down upon them. Thousands were burnt alive by the beast. This
dragon came to be known as Greyhorn. All around the world, another
ten dragons were born from the largest volcanos, each extracting
their own fiery hell upon the people of earth. Despite their best
efforts, the Elder dragons proved near invincible.
    It wasn’t just
dragons that the volcano’s gave birth too. Countless creatures, all
monumental in size soon followed. Even today, travellers describe
new creatures that haven’t yet been documented.
    The Eleven
Elders began to spawn young too – an estimated three hundred
dragons ravaged the skies and scorched the lands at the time of the
last official estimate. By the time most of civilization had been
destroyed, seven Elder Dragon’s still remained. It is said that
their spawn would take centuries to reach their size and strength,
or even to be able to breed for that matter, yet still they were
ferocious creatures, capable of unleashing unspeakable waves of
destruction with a single breath.
    It was because of these Elder dragons - and the other
countless creatures that followed them out of the fiery depths of
the earth - that mankind had been near destroyed. It is because of
these that the remaining humans must fight for their very survival
in a harsh and hostile world. These Elders created the Charred Lands.
    And now it
seemed one may have settled down, right at our door step. The
implications of this were unthinkable.
    There was a
chance that the nest didn’t belong to a dragon at all, rather
another one of The Charred Lands many mutant monsters – but the
damage done to Barry Deer’s house was pretty much concrete evidence
that a dragon had been in the area. The other creatures rarely ever
reached sizes above that of a car, I couldn’t imagine anything that
size being able to give birth to such large eggs.
    I had never
seen an Elder Dragon in all of my lifetime; few who had were alive
to tell the story. They were deadly, destructive creatures. On two
occasions younger dragons have flown over Haven, and several times
I’ve witnessed other monstrous creatures scatter past our walls,
but never have I come into direct contact with the beasts which
brought about the end of society.
    “ We have to destroy the eggs.” Timothy finally said, a firm
harshness to his voice – as though his mind was set in stone, and
no arguing otherwise would change his mind. Timothy was often like
that.
    “ Who knows what kind of consequences that would bring on
Haven.” My father replied.