Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

Shy pulled the retrieved FTL drive to her back. “Go!” she yelled.

Tayel maneuvered down the steps, dodging patches of ice and shuddering at the cold. She veered past the wall of glacier blocking the archway — the result of so many detonated cryonades. Jace and Shy ran at her heels. She made a beeline to the stairs which would take them down to the rest of the castle. She paused at the first step, letting them run down first. The glacier exploded outward, dark waves of aether sprouting from between the shattered ice as still-standing guards darted forth from the room past the archway. Tayel ran.

Stealth had been abandoned. She followed Shy and Jace through the halls, winding a hard-to-follow path between the long corridors. Tayel’s motion ran purely on adrenaline and fear. Her arm burned, her shoulders hurt, and her head swooned with dizziness. Guards rounded the corner ahead, but Shy cut another path.

“This way!” she yelled.

Tayel shuffled to a slower pace to turn. A guard reached out, and an armored glove closed around her burned arm. She jerked to a stop. Pain screamed along her blistered skin. Jace stabbed his talons into the guard’s bracer. Fire lit under his grip. The man screeched and wrenched backward, letting Tayel go and swiping at the heated metal.

Tayel met Jace’s eyes for a half a breath and ran again, taking the turn that got her caught. Shy held a door open at the end of the path, waving frantically for them to hurry. Tayel darted in after Jace, taking in the small kitchen as the door slammed shut behind her.

Shy and Jace pushed a table, and Tayel joined them, enduring the sound of wood scraping across stone until it sat firmly as a barricade in front of the entrance. She steadied herself on the tablecloth. Jace stood beside her. Shy opened the window on the other side of the room, and stuck her head out of it.

Tayel squeezed her arm, trying to outdo the burning sensation. “Jace.”

Something heavy slammed into the door, and she stumbled forward, heart racing.

“Hey!” Shy yelled. “You — kid — get me that tablecloth. Now!”

Jace ripped the cloth off their barricade and jogged it to Shy as the door shook again. Muffled voices debated behind it.

“In here, sir! The raider princess and the others are in here!”

A wave of black, electrified aether blasted through the door and barricade. Tayel flew backward. Her back slammed into the ground. Dust hung like a cloud in the air. Debris rained all around, ticking and tacking off the stone floor and walls.

Tayel grunted as she tried to pull herself up. She couldn’t see much through the veil of gray dust. Her ears rang. Was Jace screaming her name? Or maybe Shy was. She shook her head quickly, trying to get her eyes to focus.

A figure stood in the doorway, dark aether pulsating from his hand. His face came into focus. First his short, dark brown hair and trimmed to a point beard, then his closed mouth pinched in a scowl. Finally, his eyes. Dark, narrow eyes staring directly at her. She tensed. He reached out and took a step forward.

Tayel scrambled to stand. Her foot snagged on a piece of the table and she fell backward. The man pursued her, one long stride at a time, his hardened stare unbreakable. She backed up, her hands and feet scraping over the cobblestone floor. Aether writhed around his hands. He rose them to strike.

Someone grabbed the back of her shirt and tugged. A glint of silver flew past. Her eyes shot wide. Cryonade. Stalagmites of ice detonated from the weapon’s point of impact, bursting outward like a deadly flower. An expanding edge of ice zipped past, clipping her shoulder. She groaned as warm blood slid down her shirt. The growing wall of icicles was the last thing in the castle she saw.

Whoever had pulled her let go, and she registered that she was falling. Window panes zoomed past. The starry night sky came into focus. Her back tore through fabric — an awning — and then into a bush. The wind knocked out of her. A million little cuts erupted over her exposed skin. Jace screamed for her, his squawk tearing through the pulse drumming in her ears.

She rolled over, head spinning, body aching. The horizon swayed like a rocking boat as she broke free of branches.

“My wing!” Jace cried. He held his right wing to his chest with his left talon, beak quivering. “My wing — Tayel — Tayel it’s broken!”

“We need to go!” Shy yelled. She swung the FTL drive around to her back and slicked a river of blood from her arm.

A chunk of stone collided with the grass a foot away. Tayel looked up. Stalagmites grew out of the castle wall two stories above, from where they’d fallen. Whoever that man was didn’t matter now, but hunting horns blew in the not so far off distance. They weren’t safe. There was no time to deal with Jace’s injury; there wasn’t even time to take a breath.

She helped him stand.

“No,” he squawked. “I can’t run! I can’t!”

“You have to.” Tayel’s own voice sounded far away.

He whined, but ran after Shy toward the forest, holding his wing and chittering in pain. Tayel kept a hand at his back. His pace was slow, and Shy grew smaller by distance, but Tayel would not run ahead of him. She would not let him go and escape on her own. She’d come too far for that.

Tayel scrambled after Shy, the princess’ sense of direction their only compass. The pale white light of the moon through the canopy lit their path. Every footfall shot pain up Tayel’s calves, and her arm stung as the wrap came loose. They’d been running for so long. Nothing looked familiar in the forest. Behind them — who knew how many paces — their pursuers blew hunting horns and yelled direction to each other. Fear and adrenaline pushed Tayel to her limit, but she wondered if Jace hadn’t already reached his.

He ran at a pace that for her would have been a jog, yet his legs seemed unable to pump any faster. She kept a hand at his back, exerting pressure whenever he slowed down. He sucked in raspy breaths and held his broken wing to his chest.

“Keep going,” she huffed. “We’re almost there.”

Liar. She had no idea where they were or how far they had to go. All she knew was Jace could not afford to stop. None of them could.

Maybe it was fatigue, but the events which took place before their sprint through the woods felt like a dream. The calling, escaping the guards, running through the castle, and the man — Ruxbane — all seemed so far away. Thinking about the expression on his face when he saw her made her run a little faster. He hadn’t bothered with Shy or Jace; he came directly for her.

She broke into the clearing after Shy and Jace, stunned by how everything went from obscure to recognizable in a few short seconds. Shy’s ship sat in the center of the wide span of moonlit grass, harsh light falling out the open door. Fehn stood behind a makeshift barricade of empty fuel barrels, the aether-tech shotgun from the ship’s small weapons cache casting his arms in neon green.

Tayel stopped behind the barricade, and Jace collapsed in the grass a few feet away.

Shy ran past them all. “Get ready; they’re coming!”

“What happened?” Fehn’s voice growled with urgency. He flicked his eyes to Jace, then back to Tayel, his eyes narrow.

She tested her weight against one of the barrels. “At the castle, we—”

Shy poked her head out of the ship, and tossed a shield. “Put that on, quick!”

Tayel snatched the bracer out of the air. Made of leather and dotted in chrome studs, it didn’t look very flexible. She struggled to slide it over her wrapped burn. Hopefully the extra layer would protect it from any further damage.