Giles Croft didn’t wait for the sound.
He saw the diamond scales of Terravorax’s upper jaw lock open against the morning sky. Then, he pulled his heavy brass ear-muffs down over his head, clamped his palms firmly against the cups. Then he dropped into a braced three-point stance behind the stonework low roof wall.
“Cover your ears,” Giles roared at the top of his lungs, his voice muffled even to himself. “Open your mouths. Air pressure blast wave inbound.”
Beside him, Captain Kenneth Drake and Toby Karr threw themselves behind the sandbag stone retaining wall, their fingers jammed tightly into their beeswax-plugged ears, jaws hanging slack to equalize their ears.
Down in the crater, the ancient World-Wyrm Terravorax exhaled.
It wasn’t a roar.
It wasn’t a dragon’s cry of war.
It was an earth-shaking, world-size, biblical burp of pure, pure gastric relief.
