Guards Guards - Explosion

The dragon flamed.

It was a beautifully controlled line of plasma. It went through the roof like butter.

It cut through stairways.

It crackled into ancient timbers and made them twist like paper. It sliced into pipes.

It punched through floor after floor like the fist of an angry god and, eventually, reached the big copper vat containing a thousand gallons of freshly-made mature whisky-type spirit.

It burned into that, too.

Fortunately, the chances of anyone surviving the ensuing explosion were exactly a million-to-one.

The fireball rose like a-well, a rose. A huge orange rose, streaked with yellow. It took the roof with it and wrapped it around the astonished dragon, lifting it high into the air in a boiling cloud of broken timber and bits of piping.

The crowd watched in bemusement as the superhot blast flung it into the sky and barely noticed Vimes as he pushed his way, wheezing and crying, through the press of bodies.

He shouldered past a row of palace guards and shambled as fast as he could across the flagstones. No-one was paying him much attention at the moment.

***

Guards Guards - p315