She turned back to her mission, and glanced out. She was very close now, well within throwing distance. She pulled the pin and cast the grenade over, but it fell short of the target by just a few feet. If it had been anyone else, it would have been close enough to kill them, but it was just outside the shield of the Birth-master. Just outside was not good enough.
Taberah shook her head. “Damn it, I really wish we had Soasa now.”
There were still seconds left on the clock before the grenade ignited. Taberah considered dashing towards it, but she knew she would not make it in time. Either the Birth-master would get her, or the blast would. She did not feel like following Soasa's exit from the world.
She took out her revolver and emptied the barrel into her hand, before replacing the metal casings with rubber pellets. They were practice ammunition, kept for making harmless warning shots, and she never really thought she would find a better use for them in battle.
She aimed her gun at the grenade and fired. The bullet struck the silver casing, denting it a little, and pushing it slightly closer to the Birth-master's shimmering crystal shield. He was so busy firing shards at the others that he did not notice the grenade creeping up beside him.
She fired again, and pushed it a little closer. The dents were becoming bigger, and she hoped her bullets would not pierce the shell. They might have been only rubber, but the force of the gunfire made them strike like steel.
The last few seconds were approaching. It all rested on this final shot. Three.
She clicked the trigger. Two. The bullet nudged the grenade just inside the shield, easily bypassing whatever protection the Birth-master had in place. One.
The explosion was a mix of machinery and magic, red fire joined with blue. They heard the Birth-master shriek, and it was neither a human nor a maran cry. The shadow on the wall convulsed and contorted, writhing about in a silhouette of agony. The crystalline shell fell apart like a smashed mirror, and all that was left upon the ground was a pile of sand and burnt robes.
The other two Birth-masters backed away.
It was then that the two Magi saw their opportunity, and came out from their cover. They advanced on the retreating Birth-masters, Gouet shouting words of power, and Mudro picking up the fallen staff. There were no buttons or triggers. It worked by will alone, and he willed it to end the lives of the demons.
The Birth-masters must have realised their doom was at hand, for they looked to one another, and seemed to agree something in their stare. One stepped forth to fight, while the other began to flee. Taberah charged after it.
The fighter reached his hands up to the air, until his fingers shook, and then the cavern roof shuddered, and the dangling stalactites trembled in place. Gouet weakened the demon's will with words, while Mudro weakened his body with crystal blades. He fired until there were as many embedded in his body as there were in the ceiling above.
Then the stalactites fell, and it was a shower of a thousand blades. Crystals sliced and smashed, and those that shattered sent out a thousand smaller blades, until there were few places that had not been stabbed with Glass. Gouet and Mudro tried to dodge, and tried to weaken, and tried to kill, but the hail hounded them, tearing through their clothes and slicing through their skin, until, by the time the Birth-master fell, Mudro had been weakened, and Gouet had been killed.
As the blades continued to fall, cutting off most routes into and out of the chamber, Taberah spotted the remaining Birth-master fleeing the scene.
“No!” she screamed, chasing the taunting shadow through the tunnel. She knew she could not let even one of the Birth-masters escape. She had to end their stranglehold. She had to end it once and for all.
35 – BROKEN GLASS
Taberah chased the Birth-master through the tunnel, ducking momentarily as it cast a crystal shard behind it from its staff. The shards were fewer now, and many of them broke apart mid-air. It seemed that the further he got from the others, the weaker he became.
Taberah replied with her pistol, never stopping to take aim. Bullets struck the cavern walls, missing the Birth-master. In a way, the further she got from the others, the weaker she became too, because she was running out of ammunition.
The tunnel dipped down, turned sharply several times, and then opened out into a gigantic mining chamber, one of the hundreds that burrowed through Landlock. She remembered them well from Project Glassfinder, when they secured enough Glass to make a hundred thousand amulets.
There were steps, bridges and passages all over the chamber, few with any safety rails. The Birth-master turned sharply left, slipping on some loose rock, and dropping his powerless staff in the process. He clambered up and raced across a short bridge made of wooden planks, which rocked beneath his weight.
Taberah followed him, trying to guess where he might run next. It was not an easy task, because it seemed like he had not been in this particular part of the cave network before. He was not powered by mind now, but instinct.
The Birth-master followed the closest wall, hugging the stone as he shimmied around on a narrow ledge. Taberah tried to grab him, but he reefed the arm of his robe from her grasp. She edged around after him, spotting him sliding down a ledge, the rock tearing his robes.
She dived after him, but now he was climbing up another rock face, heading towards one of the mining posts. She kept up the chase, but the gap was growing. He wanted to escape more than she wanted to catch him—and she wanted that a lot.
He knocked tools from the nearby tables as he passed. She leapt over them, grabbing a hammer from another table and hurling it at him. He yelped as it struck him in the back, but the pain only pushed him on, like a slave-driver.
He reached a set of stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. He turned sharply on a square platform, which had a deep drop on two sides. The stairs continued to the right, with more platforms at periodic intervals, littered with debris, tools, or containers.
There was enough of a gap now that he could take a moment to booby-trap the way. He grabbed a barrel from the next platform, filled with Glass crystals, and turned it on its side. As Taberah charged up the stairs after him, he kicked it down towards her.
The barrel thumped down the steps, gaining speed, and there was nowhere to go to avoid it but back down. Taberah raced back the way she had come, and the barrel broke apart on the final platform, half of it continuing over the ravine.
She turned back to the stairs and clambered over the shards, which sliced into her hands and knees. She gritted her teeth, focused her eyes on the fleeing Birth-master, and let every little pain and stumble nourish her anger. He was getting away, but she could not let him. She had to do this for her. She had to do this for Elizah. She had to do this for every woman, for every mother.
She darted up the steps again, watching him turn off to a wooden platform to the left, where the mining tracks for this chamber began. He struggled with the lever on the rusty mining cart there, saw her gaining on him, and abandoned that means of escape, returning to the ever-rising stairs.
He was close now, mere metres away, but if he matched her frenzied pace, he would still escape, and all of this would have been for nothing. Rommond might save the world from the bomb, but if she could not save it from this, none of it would matter. He tried to save the future of the world; she tried to save the future of humanity.
Her limbs ached, and her breath was painful. She breathed in slivers of Glass and iron, particles of sand and dust, and not enough air. Her mind hammered like a smithy, her heart like a piston. Part of her felt like she was the anvil, the passive slab against which the sword was honed—but another part felt like the sword.
He slipped on the steps, falling forward. Her eyes widened like a beast of prey, salivating at the stumble of the meal. He clambered up, and continued his flight, but the gap was narrower than ever. She could almost taste his fear, and she was glad that he was afraid.
The steps kept going, like a ladder to heaven—except they felt like they might die from exhaustion along the way. She chased the demon up, but thought that perhaps she should have been chasing it down instead.
Then he stopped suddenly and looked around frantically. She spotted the large gap in the platform ahead. There were only three ways to go now: turn back, jump across, or fall into the depths below. With her thundering up behind him, it was not much of a choice.
He readied himself for the leap, but she reached him before he could. She never slowed or stopped, but let the momentum strike him like a cannonball. She dived into him, grabbing him by the torso, and pulled him off the edge.
“It's over!” she spat into his ear as they fell.
She saw his demonic shadow try to crawl up the stone pillar, slipping constantly, with many gnarled hands reaching up, and clutching nothing.
The fall felt like forever. She loosened her grip on the Birth-master, and he tumbled away from her, but still he tumbled. No magic could stop that fall.
Then the Glass crystals at the bottom of the ravine appeared like knives, and Taberah heard the crunch of the Birth-master's impact, before feeling the sharpened stalagmites rip through her own ribs. What little breath she had was knocked from her, and her torn lungs could not take another. The pounding of her heart increased for a moment, then suddenly abated, as if it too had taken its own great plunge. She lay on her back, bent and broken over the gigantic Glass crystal, the pain overcome by shock.
Her strength was failing quickly, but she had just enough left in her to turn her head slightly to the right, where she saw the broken body of the Birth-master, laid out on the torture rack of the earth. She gave the slightest of smiles. Then she felt a sudden tingling in her abdomen, and wondered if that was her injuries, or if it was what all human women were then feeling, the ability to conceive human children again.
Something caught her eye on the other side, and she turned slightly to it, and it took almost everything she had left to turn. Elizah stood there, older now, about the age she would have been if she had lived. She reached her hand out to her, and Taberah tried to touch it, but the darkness came then, and everything was swallowed up by the nothingness that ends it all.
36 – CRASH LANDING
Whistler knew he was running out of fuel, but he also knew that the bomb was slipping through everyone's fingers. He was not big or strong like most, and his grip was not great, but he did not have the luxury of letting go. He had to try, or fail. He kind of thought it likely he would fail, but when he saw Rommond and Jacob still keeping up their struggle, he knew he had to join the fight.
He flew beneath the Dreamdevil and tried to match its speed, but it was not an easy feat. Just as he got close, and fell beneath the shadow of the bomb, the larger plane jetted ahead suddenly, or he fell behind as the furnace burned low.
Even with the canopy closed, blocking out the howls of the wind, he could hear the straining wires. It was an awful sound that penetrated through the core of people, that worked its way into their bones. Yet, there was a noise more terrible that they tried to avoid—the sound of a world exploding.
At last, he managed to pull directly under the bomb, and push up enough to feel the wooden shell of his vessel touch the metal casing of the weapon. The agonising wail of the wires abated for a moment, replaced by the dreadful creaking of timber.
He held this position for what seemed like forever, rocking along the runway of the clouds. He knew he could not keep it up until the end of days, but he did not know how to let it down without simply dropping it.
The copter came around, and he saw Jacob and Rommond inside the tinted window. A mechanical arm extended, reaching its two metal fingers towards the bomb, holding it steady. He could see his comrades talking inside. He glanced towards the radio, but heard nothing. Maybe they had a plan—but he did not know what they wanted to do.
He felt the Dreamdevil dip slightly, pushing him down, pushing all of them down. He wondered if that was the plan, to try to land together, every vessel holding hands tightly.
A thick cloud stood like a wall up ahead, and they flew straight towards it, unable to turn sharply, or rise quickly, or fall rapidly. The white hue smothered them all, forcing them to rely on instinct, on sound and feel. He could still hear the creaking wood, and could still feel the weight of the world above him.
Yet the cloud did not cushion them. It shook the aircraft, steadily at first, then more violently as they continued to disappear into it. They had no idea where they were going, and sound and feel was starting to be drowned out by the shaking of their vessels.
Then Whistler heard a sudden, sharp snap of wire, like iron lightning. He saw a flicker of black across his field of view, and heard the sound of a cable tangling with metal blades, like iron thunder. There was an explosion ahead, which rattled his monoplane, and sent out a black cloud to penetrate the pallid fog.
“Jacob,” he called into the radio, but there was no response.
A blade from the copter's main propeller flung against the canopy of his plane, scratching the glass before blowing away with a clatter of wind. There were many other sounds, of struggling engines and failing parts, but he tried not to listen too closely to them.
They'll be all right, he tried to reassure himself. We'll be all right.
The bomb weighed more heavily on him than before. There was just a single wire securing it to the Dreamdevil, and he heard its wind-piercing whine, like the taunts of a hundred thousand dead.
Then it snapped.
“Oh, God,” he blurted, feeling the weight of the bomb pushing the plane down, like the mighty finger of a god trying to crush him. Though the weapon rested on the straining wooden frame of his aeroplane, it kind of felt like it rested directly on him, like it was on his shoulders, on his back.
He tried to pull up, but nothing could resist the awful push of the bomb, or the awful pull of gravity. In the sky he felt at home, powerful, but now he felt entirely powerless, hunted back to the earth by the real powers of the air.
He glanced at the fuel meter, where the needle flickered in the red zone. He wished he had not seen it, but kept looking back and forth between the needle and the still great distance between him and land.
He did not want to think it, but the thoughts exploded in his mind: I'm not going to make it.
He grabbed the radio, and clicked the button. He heard the phantom voice of static.
“I'm almost out of fuel,” he said, his voice shaking. The radio shook in his hand too.
There was no reply.
He felt a sudden well of tears, and gulped down the lump in his throat. The sky did not scare him. Even the fall did not frighten him. The silence did.
He waited for a moment, even though there was really no time for waiting.
“Guys?” he asked the radio. He hoped he was asking his friends, but it felt like he was just talking to metal. Even the static did not seem to pay him any heed.
He had always felt alone, no matter how many people there were around him. Yet at that moment, with the world fast approaching, and not a waking soul in sight or sound, he never felt so lonely. He gripped the control stick—not for steering, but for support. He would have rather gripped someone's hand. Maybe it might have been his mother's. Maybe Jacob's instead. It almost did not matter. And yet—everything in those fleeting moments mattered more than most.
The flat fields seemed to rise like mountains, and the sky fell suddenly away, the clouds fleeing from him, and from that awful world-swallowing cloud that would soon follow. He descended faster, the bomb pushing him towards his doom. That he would be the first it claimed was perhaps inconsequential in the end, but it was significant to him.
Whistler closed his eyes, and tried not to feel the sinking or the rumble, or the pressure, or even his heaving heart. He wanted to think of something good. He wan
ted his final thought to be a happy one. He searched his mind, but was constantly dragged back to the sinking and the rumbling.
Then he felt a sudden lift in the pressure, and he thought that he had somehow bypassed the explosion, that he was now ascending to heaven. He opened his eyes and looked up, and he saw the struggling copter, bleeding black smoke, its mechanical arm clutching the tail of the bomb.
His plane descended much more slowly now, the bomb pulling on the copter instead of pushing on his hull. Yet it still fell, and he did not have enough fuel left to fight against the fall. The ground did not rise as swiftly, but it still rose towards him.
He was startled by something that struck the canopy, and was surprised to see Jacob there, clutching the glass. The smuggler bashed against the window, holding up a bag of coal in his other hand.
Whistler unlatched the canopy, and pushed it up. Jacob hopped inside. It was a tight fit, not designed for two pilots like the larger plane used by Trokus. But it beat hanging on outside.
“Phew!” Jacob said. “Remind me never to do this again.”
Whistler smiled at Jacob. He did not really know what to say.
“Sorry,” Jacob said, pushing the boy to one side. He tore open the bag of coal and fired it, bag and all, into the dying furnace, which spluttered to life immediately.
Whistler saw the needle of the fuel meter rise a little. Not a lot, but he thought it might just be enough. He pulled up, and the plane obeyed.
“It's working!” he cried to Jacob.
Jacob glanced up through the canopy, where he could see Rommond in the copter, struggling to keep his grip on the bomb. The general looked at him, and did not look confident that they would make it in the end.
“Well,” Jacob said, holding out his hand to Whistler. “If this is how it all ends, it's good to end it with a friend.”
Worldwaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 5) Page 15
