[b]PARIS[/b]

She awoke and ended her nightmare.

For a brief moment the only sound in the little Parisian apartment above the bookstore was the sound of the rain beating against the window and the gasping of Sophie Desmoulins as she groped for the lightswitch. Finally she found it, and as light flooded the small bedroom she caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Her face was bright red, as though to match her hair, and streaked with a wet mixture of tears and sweat.

For the fifteenth night running, she had had the nightmare again. But this time was so much more vivid, so much more real. And rather than seeing the one thing, there were many others, each as large and dangerous as the one she had been seeing.

Sophie got out of bed, staggered into the bathroom to splash a little cold water on her face. She looked longingly at the empty side of the bed, wishing Monica was there to comfort her now. But Monica was long miles away. Sophie had to confront this by herself.

Gradually, her heart slowed, but her racing thoughts did not. The dreams had been so clear. What was going to happen was inevitable, and it was coming soon. In the next few hours, even. Her years of reading about the occult had convinced her of the power of these dreams. She prayed she was wrong. But in her heart Sophie knew great danger was coming. 

But what could she do? She was only one woman, the daughter of New Age hippies. No one would take her seriously. Not even her friends took her seriously. Only Monica did. 

She had to try, though. To save even a few, she had to do something.

The only clear picture had been of a city a few kilometers north, the rest only vague shapes towering amidst fire and death. Sophie grabbed her address book, frantically flipping through the pages as she tried to find who she knew living in Amiens. A second cousin studying at the university. The woman who had lived next door when she was a child who had moved out there. An old friend from lycée with whom she had not spoken for a decade. Anyone at all. 

Biting her lip, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table and dialed numbers, hoping someone would pick up rather than simply ignore it, like most people would do in the middle of the night. As she listened to the rings, she thought about what to say.

“Hello, it's Sophie. Listen carefully, you and everyone you know need to leave Amiens right now. . .”

[b]AMIENS[/b]

It awoke and began a nightmare.

It was very late and the old streets of Amiens were lashed with rain. It was a city with a long history, stretching back to the days of Caesar. Most importantly, its proximity to the Somme battlefield made it an important command center during the First World War. And so the punishment began there.

Not even the most beloved son of Amiens, Jules Verne, could have imagined the gaunt 90-meter form that emerged out of the darkness in the rain. The first desperate, panicked 112 calls came from the outer suburbs, where houses and their occupants were crushed by something gigantic. Gas mains broke and caught fire. The suburban roads were soon packed with desperately fleeing civilians in their nightwear, who found their ways blocked by fallen trees and enormous footprints that had caved in the streets. In the distance, silhouetted by the occasional flash of lightning, they could see the thing making its way into the city center. 90 meters tall, shaped like a very thin man. It screamed with a sound like a thousand men yelling in pain and anger.

Buildings crumbled at its touch, the concrete and steel snapping like cheap matchsticks. A single blow from its house-sized fist broke the slender waist of the Tour Perret, the brief holder of the title "France's tallest building" back in the Fifties. The Amiens Cathedral, one of the largest churches in the world, took a little more effort but was soon reduced to a pile of stones growing slick in the rain. It deliberately ignored office buildings, knowing they were empty for the night, and instead struck at houses, apartments, landmarks. Simply brushing against them was enough to cause tremendous damage, sending showers of glass and stone into the streets below and burying the occupants alive.

A few brave gendarmes unloaded pistols and rifles into the monster, but they may as well tried to attack the storm itself. There was little anyone could do but flee. The huge thing seemed to follow civilians, though, wading through buildings in order to cut off large groups and then crush them underfoot or push debris onto them.

By the time the first blue light of dawn tentatively began to shine through the gray clouds overhead, Amiens lay in flames and rubble as the towering figure they had began to call L'Accusatuer finally made its way out of the city and began to walk through the countryside, heading north at a leisurely pace. It left behind thousands of dead, tens of thousands injured. A few people breathed sighs of relief that the horror was over.

It was far from over.

It had only just begun.