My father slowly entered the room that was barely even standing at this point.
I had positioned myself on top of one of the buildings that allowed me to have a clear view of the room through the hole in the wall. I tried to keep myself as small as possible and hid behind an illusion.
Carefully he examined the interior wile his gaze seemed to avoid the rotting corpse in the room. Still holding on to his spear like it was his life itself, he ventured deeper into the room.
With a disgusted expression on his face, he kneeled down next to the woman. He carefully inspected her back and then flipped her over.
An even more horrid stench of rot left the body of the woman and my father was clearly struggling not to puke.
After a while it became clear that whatever he was looking for was not there. He stepped away from the body. He was clearly relieved that he no longer had to stand this close to the corpse.
Still nauseous he walked away towards the wall that had been blown up by his weapon.
I instantly became really nervus.
What if I had not been careful enough? I could verry well have left some claw markings on the broken wall.
Tough I knew that if that had been the case, then it would barely stan out in contrast to the nearly chattered bricks in the wall. Yet that knowledge did not make me feel better.
My father let his burned hand slide over the rough edges of the wall. Until he stopped.
There was a rather deep clean cut in one of the bricks in the lower half of the wall, close to the side.
I was not entirely sure if it was a mark left by one of my claws, or that the wall just happened to be damaged in this way.
My father also seemed uncertain about this particular damaged rock.
He struck his spear in the wall. Tough the impact was nothing special, he repeated it multiple times over. Until eventually the brick came loose.
I could hear the soft cracking noises of the building as it protested about the fact that it was going to be destroyed even more.
But it was still too soft for human ears to hear it.
Greatly worried about the safety of this building, I tried to move a bit closer. Just in case things would go wrong.
I immediately froze in the mid of my movement as a small stone fell of the roof and hit the floor. My father stopped removing the stone from the wall and stared in my direction.
He slowly moved backwards and reached for something in his pocket.
When his hand reappeared again, he was holding a sone with a hole in it, an adder stone.
It was a stone with a natural occurring hole in the centre. A stone like that would offer protection against witches and fairies. In some cases, it could even help to see trough illusions if one looked through the hole in the centre.
The only thing was that the hole in the stone must be natural and have had no interference while forming.
If for example a human placed a stone under a small stream of water so that the water would carve away the material in the centre. It would not work. Then it would just be a stone with a hole in it.
That is why adder stones are not used in the security of Atlantis. It is just too hard to tell if one is real or fake.
He placed the stone in front of his eye and looked around. Until eventually he looked up.
I could immediately tell that this stone was real, as my father slowly pointed the spear at me.
I started to panic and had no idea what I should do.
Then he fired. Immediately I snaped back into reality and flew up to doge the blast.
However, the impact made one of the towers crumble and fall over on top of the building where my father resided.
I manipulated the air around me and let myself fly toward him as fast as I could. I knocked him over in my fall. But that was actually a good thing.
This allowed me to catch the roof that was giving in, on my back so that it would not hurt him.
The roof came down with such a great force that I could feel the bones in my wings crack.
I roared in pain wile the blood dripped from my back. the sound seemingly echoed endless trough the nearly empty ruins.
I looked at my father who had passed out due to being hit with a smaller rock on his head where there was now a small cut. For as far as I could see, he was fine except for that wound. And he would probably wake up soon.
I sighed, relieved that I had managed to push him away right before the roof collapsed on top of him.