The streets were erupting. Cracks formed along their rubble-strewn
lengths, widening into crevices, then crevasses, a dark, foul-smelling abyss
beneath. The Absolution skittered along the edge of one - the Former Baron doing
all he could to make sure her legs did not slip and fall into the waiting pits
below.
Something flickered out of the crack, almost too
fast to see - an impression of movement accompanied by a metallic, snapped wire
crackle. Ellis looked up and saw
something like a cable rippling in the air above them, alive with hypostatick
energy and - to his alarm - intent.
"We need to dodge right now!" he shouted.
Siren was already on it, spinning the wheel hard to
port even as the Former Baron switched his levers with furious speed and the Absolution climbed over the ruin of a
Barber's shop to avoid the whip like fall of the cable where it had been mere
milliseconds before.
"What on Shadow was that?" Gulliver
demanded, as they clambered over more collapsed shops between the streets. Already another cable was whipping through
the air on the other side.
"You have to understand," the Former Baron
began sheepishly, "before you all came in to my life I had a lot of time
on my hands, and Tiberius was always trying to assassinate me. It left me rather... desperate."
"This is your doing?" Siren asked,
incredulous, spinning the wheel one way and then the other to avoid the wicked
metal tentacles.
"Indirectly," he replied, "the
artillery barrage must have just reached the Grand Chateau on Tentacle Lane,
where it would have encountered my defence system."
"The one that nearly killed me that time,"
Gulliver added.
"The very same.
Only it was designed to do more than just protect the house. I feared that one day something would happen
on a grander scale so... so I tampered with the sewer systems, laying
extensions to my hypostatick defences all the way down to the shore. But," he added, his finger a shield as
much as an exclamation point, "it was only to activate if there was a
direct assault on the Chateau."
"So it was okay if Shalereef burned, so long as
you were okay?" Siren shot back.
"Well... I... uh..."
"I'm rather impressed, myself," said
Rosetta, "I really didn't know you had it in you!"
"If this is supposed to protect you,"
Ellis said, eyeing another whip-like cable as it sliced through the remains of
slate roof not five feet away from the deck, "why is it trying to kill
us."
"It was only supposed to protect the Chateau,
assuming that I'd be in it. As far as
it's concerned we're part of the hostile invasion."
Miss Barkcastle looked out at the hundreds of metal
tentacles rising all over the rubble of Shalereef, then turned to face the
Former Baron.
"Is there a failsafe, Franck?" she asked.
"No," he replied, shaking his head,
"no, no, no, I'm sorry."
Siren did not look away from the wheel, but Ellis
could tell by the hunch of her shoulders, her grip on the wood and the way she
was shaking very slightly that she was getting more and more angry.
"Because you never include failsafe measures,
do you Franck?" she snapped, "Everything's just a bit experimental
adventure for you, isn't it? It never
occurs to you that lives might be on the line, or that one of your inventions
might actually cause more harm than good!"
She took a deep breath and added in a softer voice, poisonous with
bitterness, "You're no better than her." No one needed to guess who she was.
The Former Baron looked crestfallen, and though he
opened his mouth as if to defend himself, no words came out. In his eyes there was only guilt.
"I'm... I'm sorry," he said eventually.
"Well, sorry isn't good enough," Siren
snapped and for a moment Ellis thought she might whirl away from the wheel, but
despite her anger she maintained her focus, weaving them in and out between the
flailing hypostatick cables, leading them on towards the wall of artillery
fire, which still blocked their way to the obelisk.
"Actually," Ellis said, surprising even
himself, "I think it is enough, for now at least. We have bigger problems right now than any
squabbles we might have, regardless of what any of us have done."
"Oh, spare me," Rosetta muttered.
"No," Sarah joined in, "Ellis is
right. We need to stay together through
this, right up to the end, or else..."
"If we fall apart, then there's no 'ope,"
Gulliver finished.
"But we don't even have a plan!" Siren
complained. "I'm steering us
towards a wall of fire and destruction, hoping that Franck's mad defence system
doesn't kill us first, but what do we do when we get there? There's no way through."
"If we can hold on just a little longer,"
the Former Baron said in a small voice, "then... just maybe..."
"Maybe what!?"
Frostfire came to amidst total chaos. If he thought the damage Tiberius' fleet had
done was the worst thing that Shalereef was going to see that day he had,
apparently, been wrong. All around him
his army was dying, men and stoneskins and lakhmaspawn alike were being
vaporised by hypostatick energy, shocked by charged cables, impaled or lacerated
by the razor sharp ends. Thos buildings
which had held the resemblance of their former shapes were now being sliced
into pieces. Above the sky roiled as the
sudden increase in hypostatick energy caused Lakhma to finally take an
interested in events, his/her tentacles dipping below the clouds only to recoil
as their metallic opposites flicked into action. There was a sound like rumbling thunder
crossed with the cries of a dying glasswhale and the evening sky began to turn
dark before its time. Lakhma was growing
angry.
But the worst was the scene that awaited him as he
turned towards the shore and saw the fleet of the Noble Society less than half
a mile out, still firing their hundreds of cannons upon the hillside. Cables, stretching out like the roots of some
ravenous planet caught the last rays of dying sunlight as they raced towards
the ships.
It's over,
he thought, everyone is going to die here
today.
And then the first ship exploded.
"Maybe that," the Former Baron said,
pointing towards the bow of the ship and the wall of fire beyond. As Ellis looked he saw the explosions seemed
to gutter out, one by one, not replaced by the next barrage but leaving burning
gaps. The heat would still be intense,
and it would be tough to traverse, but the Absolution would no longer be
obliterated just by trying to pass - and the gaps were growing larger.
"What's 'appenin'?" asked Gulliver,
rushing to open the door of the wheelhouse to peer out behind them. "Your system is destroyin' the fleet,
Franck!"
"Tiberius is getting what he deserves
then," Rosetta observed drily.
"No, wait..." Gulliver continued,
"one of them appears to be... liftin' out of the water. What the..."
Ellis joined him, poking his head out into the
breezy deck as the Absolution
continued to hurry through the wreckage of the district. As soon as he looked astern he saw that
Gulliver was right. The largest ship,
the one he assumed must be Tiberius' own, was slowly rising up above the sea of
explosions that had once been a thousand ships as a series of vast balloons
inflated above it. Water drained from
its bulbous hull like a mountain cascade, revealing gigantic propellors and
what appeared to be the hypostatick equivalent of VTOL jet engines, huge
funnels of brass evaporating the sea beneath them. It was awe-inspiring and sent a chill down
Ellis' spine.
"Lakhma must have given him resources from all
over Shadow," Doctor Barkham said from somewhere behind. She sounded jealous rather than fearful. "Who knows what that thing is capable
of?"
"Let'th twy not to find out," came Lord
Blood Dragon's voice. He had been
staying out of the arguments with Rockspark towards the back of the wheelhouse,
but now he too had taken the opportunity to see what was becoming of Tiberius'
fleet and the massive vessel which had taken to the skies. "Thothe gapth are widening," he
continued, "tho now would be the time to pweth our advantage!"
"Of course," agreed the Former Baron.
Siren remained silent, but she spun the wheel so
that they were directly in line with the centre of one of the growing gaps in
the firewall. Hypostatick cabling still
flailed untamed to either side, but, as Von Spektr increased their speed and
Siren made adjustments along the way, they remained agile enough to stay ahead
of them. All around was chaos and
devastation but the pyramid of the obelisk loomed before them, a belt of city
lying untouched at its feet and a hypostatick barrier, not unlike the one they
had crossed at the secret isle would offer them a kind of sanctuary for a time.
"We're going to make it," Sarah said with
relief and Ellis saw her close her eyes for a moment, lips moving.
What is that
all about? he wondered.
There's only one thing to do, Frostfire thought as
he watched the Terror rising up out
of the wreckage of the fleet and making its way towards the pyramid. It was so massive - a landmass in the sky -
that it seemed to move at a continental pace, but he knew it would be there in
no time. And I need to be there too. I
can't miss out on this, whatever happens.
He picked his way through the rubble and corpses,
ducking every now and then to avoid the whiplashes of the cables that rushed
past to slice up the remains of the vessels in the bay. It was a good couple of miles to the pyramid,
but he was as strong as he ever had been and an excellent runner. Besides, there would be no army to slow him
down now - only wreckage and smoke.
It was only when he started moving, however , that
he realised he was not alone. He was
being pursued, stealthily and at a distance, but relentlessly
nevertheless. He started to weave
through alleys of debris, some the remains of streets, other formed by the
cables or the cracks they had emerged from.
He leapt across the sewer canyons and scaled mountains of rubble, but
his pursuer could not be lost, slowed or disadvantaged at all. He caught them - a misshapen shadow - out of
the corner of his eye and then he knew who it was. That was when he realised that he could just
stop and wait.
He found the smoking ruin of a blacksmith's shop,
propped himself up against the sturdiest-looking wall, then turned to face the
direction in which he had last spotted his pursuer.
She would join him shortly, of that he was
sure. They both wanted the same thing, after
all.
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