Snippet: The Quarry

This is a snippet from Breaker's Ruin, book 2 of the Convergence Series and a work in progress. Book one of the series, Bramble Burn, is available wherever ebooks are sold.

Monday morning, Daisy flew with her brother to the Quarry. From the air, she could see fields of grain stubble, some of which had been plowed and planted with winter wheat. There were scattered houses and a cluster where the small town of Airway Heights clustered around Highway 2. Beyond that was the commercial airfield with its red and white checkered water tower, right next to the air force base.

One the opposite side of the road lay the Quarry. Smoke rose in lazy curls from steaming pools of lava and mud, and she could see the shadow of darting things hunting in the concrete ruins.

Which only made the six story towers of basalt more impressive. Octagon shaped, the dull, charcoal colored towers had polished, faceted black window trim, and the polarized windows reflected pink, purple and turquoise. There were four of them, one per city block. Roads and sidewalks had already been laid in that section, and there was a park in the center with stone bridges, benches and sculptures. The bare dirt where there should be grass and lack of trees gave it a harsh, unfinished look, which only made the tethered BAT overhead look more colorful. Floating at 3,000 ft, the helium tube had a wind turbine suspended inside and stubby stabilizing fins. It was also painted like a Chinese dragon.

“That is so cool,” her brother murmured, a trickle of smoke escaping his mouth. “Now I’m looking forward to meeting this guy.”

“Look at that,” Daisy said, knowing it wasn’t necessary to raise her voice with dragon hearing. “He built an arena. I wonder what for?” The coliseum had a ring of basalt pillars for the outside, and the seats were ash gray stone overlooking a sandy floor. Eight towers with private viewing boxes provided an excellent view…if one had dragon vision.

“Sports. Monster trucks, gladiator fight pit, dirt bikes… Cool.” Luke sounded intrigued.

Luke circled around, heading for the tower with a large red, decorative tile on top with a white number one. A quick look showed each tower had a distinctive tile, reminding her of dragon house numbers. Had he designed the towers with dragons in mind?