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4. Aerith
Aerith ran. At her heels, Heartless snapped like rabid dogs. Well, 'snap' was perhaps the wrong verb. The nipped and grabbed with their claws. The hem of her pink novice robes were slashed and her ankles were crisscrossed with cuts. For creatures apparently made of shadows, they were disturbingly solid.
"Help!" she yelled as she ran. "Someone! Anyone! Help me!"
As she passed from one hall to the next, she realised there was nobody left to help her. Either they had been killed – by the Heartless or by other people in their mad rush to get away, as the few pathetic crushed bodies told her – or they had already fled the castle into the city.
She passed by a casement window that looked out over the storage places – great big barns where Lord Ansem's court kept everything from food to retired vehicles waiting to be stripped for scrap metal. The stables and hangars for mechanical transport still in service were on the other side of the grounds, near Healer House. The White Mages had always complained about the noise from airships landing and taking off when they were trying to meditate.
A small group was running towards one of the storage barns. They were the first living people Aerith had seen since she woke up. She checked herself and changed direction, heading away from the Great Hall, where people usually gathered during emergencies so the Royal Guards could defend and lead them to safety. Some of the bodies she had seen wore Royal Guard uniforms, so it seemed likely she would find little help in the Hall. Maybe it was stupid, but she would take her chances with the group outside. Maybe they could help her escape too.
Why had her mentors and the other novices left her behind? Had they thought she was already dead? She hoped that was it. The alternative didn't bear thinking about.
A pair of yellow eyes loomed out of an alcove. She stumbled as the Heartless sprang at her. Her lungs burned from all this running. Healers were a studious lot. Physical training had never been an issue – as long as you wouldn't faint when you used your magic, nobody much cared whether you could run the hundred metres in a minute or less.
She burst out of the servant door and pelted as fast as she could across the cobbles. Behind her, the fire ad spread from courtyard to building and one of the towers flared orange against a perfectly black sky. You couldn't even see the stars anymore. Was that some sort of omen?
What happened? wondered the part of her not solely concerned with survival. How did all this happen to us?
She gasped, her knees cracking against the sharp stones as she fell suddenly. She stuck out her own hands to keep from falling on her face. What she saw when she looked behind her made her pounding blood turn ice-cold. A hand gripped her ankle. Swirls of shadow blossomed around it, as the rest of the massive Heartless rose up out of the ground. It had no mouth, so it couldn't leer or snarl, but its eyes burned like the flames around the tower.
Aerith screamed.