I ignored Susie's excited jumps as I entered the backyard, and paused only long enough to grab a bag of treats before I continued into the house. The smell hadn't gotten any better from the first day I had entered it, and I quickly flew towards the front door. I glanced behind me, expecting to find the dog following me, but she wasn't there.

Susie was paused at the back door, where she had tilted her head in confusion. I hadn't entered the house at all since that first day, and I had skipped the normal ritual of tossing the ball around for her whenever I returned. She was confused. The dog whined at me, then turned back to run a circle through the yard. She stopped by one of the balls and growled playfully, then picked it up and ran another lap with it clenched between her teeth.

I hovered at the door and whistled. "Susie!"

The dog paused and tilted her head again... then ran another lap around the yard. She dropped the ball and barked at me, then dropped down in a 'play' pose and growled next to the ball.

I thought back to the crates being unloaded by the aliens. How many were there? How far away from the city did I need to get? Would they have to put them at different parts of the city, or was one location good enough to reach everything with? I doubted I had gotten lucky enough to find the one spot they would plant their bomb at, but how many other sites would they have to go through? The Votak had said the city had to be destroyed by the end of the week... but how far away was that? Was today Monday, or was today Friday? Did they even use the same concept of 'week', or was that just the closest meaning my brain could understand?

We had to go.

I flew out to the backyard and swooped over Susie's head with another urgent whistle of her name. She whined at me, but instead of following after she just grabbed the ball and stared up at me, as if daring me to take it from her. I hissed at her, trying to get her to understand, but she was too focused on the idea of playing - she growled back at me, then took off around the yard once more.

I sighed with a frustrated warble. Fine.

Another ball was lying in the overgrown grass, so I glided towards that one. Susie caught sight of me and seemed to realize what I was headed for. She dropped her ball and growled, then dashed towards the other ball. I flapped to put on some speed, and snatched the ball up just before Susie got towards it.

I flew back into the house... and this time Susie followed me. I heard her claws skitter across the wooden floor as she sped through the hallway after me.

I hovered next to the front door and dropped the ball, which Susie happily snatched up for me. I went to work on the door, unbolting the lock and then turning the handle, swinging it open wide and giving the dog access to the wide world beyond her back yard...

The dog just stared out the door with another look of confusion.

I dashed through the door and whistled for her, throwing a loop through the air on top of it, but the dog stayed inside the house. I whistled again, and she whined before taking a nervous step towards the door... then she stepped back, looking around her like she had just been caught chewing up the carpet or ruining the furniture. I circled around the outside of the house and grabbed the bag of treats from the fence, bringing it back and dropping it on the ground in front of her... but she just stared at it for a long moment before she looked back up at me and whined nervously.

I whistled at her again, but it was no use. The dog almost looked scared at this point, and I felt bad even thinking about urging her onwards. I hovered for a moment and tried to think. There had to be something else going on here - Susie wasn't scared of going outside; she was perfectly fine with going out the back door into the yard. It was only the front door she was worried about. I hovered for a few more seconds, then flew back inside.

Susie barked in excitement and spun in a circle beneath me, then she took off towards another room. I waited, not wanting to follow her too far into the house - it still smelled really bad in there - and after a moment I heard the dog scratching somewhere. Something thumped and fell over... and then Susie ran proudly back into the hallway, dragging a leash in her mouth and wagging her tail proudly.

I laughed at the sight. Of course - she must have been given a lot of training, and probably knew better than to go out the front door without her leash on. The habit was completely useless now, but it didn't matter. The ritual was an important one to her - if she wanted through that door, somebody had to put the leash on her first.

But it was still ridiculous. Susie was twice my size and weighed significantly more than me. The idea that I could guide her anywhere at all with it was preposterous; she was going to go wherever she wanted once she was out that door, and aside from bribing her with treats there wasn't a single thing I could do about it.

I dropped to the ground before the border collie and reached for the leash. She dropped it and started wagging her tail again, and I reached up to fix the metallic clasp on the loop of the collar.

Susie was out the door the second the soft 'click' signaled the clasp had closed. I held on tight to the leash as she yanked me off my feet and dashed down the street. I warbled and trilled in terror as we ran, but the sound was drowned out by Susie's thrilled yapping.

We ran for the rest of the day. I managed to get my wings underneath me before I suffered too much from the bumps against the concrete, and I flew up to cling to the dog's back. She took a lot of detours to explore, but if she got too distracted I would toss a treat ahead, or fly in the direction I wanted her to go and whistle.

We took more breaks than I would have liked - Susie would get tired and flop down on the ground for a bit, and I would take the opportunity to break into nearby houses and loot them of canned fruits or soups to serve as quick meals for us - but for the most part, we kept a steady pace in a direction that was mostly away from the city.

We spent that night in a ditch. Susie woke me up a few times during the night with the sound of growls, but when I blinked open my eyes I couldn't see anything. The night passed pretty fitfully, and I was still tired when the sun rose... but the Morning Song rejuvenated me enough to guide Susie again.

By the end of that day we had traveled enough that the houses had become far more spaced apart, and seemed more like farm houses than regular homes. It was harder to find a house with food inside it on our rest breaks, but I managed to scrounge up enough to keep us both fed. We found another ditch to sleep in, and the night passed the same - though this time when I woke up to one of Susie's growls, I managed to spot a coyote eyeing us.

I didn't get any sleep at all after that.

At the end of the next day there was nothing but countryside around us. I managed to find a few apples growing on a tree after a short flight, and after I had eaten a few slices I managed to get Susie to eat the food too. It was pretty clear she wasn't anywhere near as excited about the fresh fruit as I was, though.

We had run half the day when the sky suddenly grew bright. I hovered in the air and looked back towards the city. Large clouds were blossoming on the horizon, rising up into the air and taking on a depressingly familiar mushroom shape as they expanded. A sharp bang reached me, followed by a loud rumbling... then the ground beneath me shook.

I held my breath and watched, hearing Susie whine from where she stood on the ground. There was no more point in running. Either we had made it far enough away by now, or...

The distant rumbling grew quieter.

The ground grew still.

I exhaled the breath I had been holding and dropped to the ground beside Susie. The dog whined at me, looking confused that we had stopped, but I just stared back towards the city. The clouds continued to rise upwards, but the motion was slower now, as if just an afterthought. The danger to me had passed, but...

Nothing in the city could have survived that. My home was gone now. So was the supermarket, and the homes of my friends, and the lab I had woken up in, and every other place I had ever visited or even just driven past on the way to somewhere else. It was all gone now. Erased.

And if what the alien had said was true, the same thing was happening in every other city on the planet. Humanity was gone. Our monuments and records were being erased. Every trace was being wiped away.

Nothing else was left of us.

I closed my eyes and let out a sad warble... and felt a warm tongue lick over my wing. I looked back up at the dog and lifted my tiny hand up to her side, petting her softly before touching the collar hanging lightly around her neck.

Well.

Not entirely. Not yet.

Susie and I wandered aimlessly after that. For a time I had a vague half hope of perhaps finding other dragonets that had escaped from the lab, but that hope faded as the weeks passed. I had no idea where they would have gone, and soon had no idea where I was, either. If they were out there somewhere... I couldn't think of any way to find them.

I led us vaguely northward, in the hope that one of the smaller towns I knew of in that direction could have been overlooked, but I never found anything. Either the towns had already been destroyed by the Votak, or my sense of direction was off.

Two months passed like that, until late one evening I saw the sky suddenly explode with new pinpricks of light. What looked like tiny fireworks fought with the stars to shine down on us. New stars raced overhead, appearing suddenly and traveling across the sky... then winking out, disappearing in one of the tiny fireworks. Flashes of light rose upwards from the horizon, tiny sparks climbing up towards the stars far in the distance...

It reminded me of the majestic electrical storms I had been so fascinated with in the desert skies. There was a silence to the display that was out of place with what I knew was happening. The flashes from the city I had fled must be from whatever weapon the Votak had put in the city's place. Each one of those lights in the sky was a ship, one large enough to be seen even from this distance...

One of the lights burst into a miniature firework while I stared up at the sky.

...and every one of those fireworks was an explosion. A ship being destroyed. People - or at least, creatures - dying. Hopefully most of them were the Votak. Given what they had done to my world, I had zero sympathy for them. But I knew some of the explosions must be ships belonging to the Kymari I had heard mentioned.

The world suddenly lit up as bright as the day. I squawked and flapped a few times in surprise, and I twisted my neck to shield my eyes from the brilliance. I was just barely able to make out a bright beam of light stabbing down from the sky to a point on the horizon, towards where the smaller flickers of light had been emerging from.

The light dimmed, and my eyes gradually adjusted back to the darkness. The lights continued flickering across the sky. More tiny fireworks bloomed randomly.

No more lights rose upwards from the horizon.