Mike Wild - The Crucible of the Dragon God

He looked around him, ducking as the explosions from the Old Race mechanisms increased, sending plumes of fire into the paths of the airship crew. Most were on board now, only himself, Jenna and Ransom still uncoupling the ship not on the safety of the deck. And, of course, Fitch. The threadweaver was still struggling against the arrows holding him, and Slowhand was pleased to see an expression of panicked horror had overtaken the usual arrogance that filled that face. His temptation to leave the bastard exactly where he was almost overwhelming but -

Slowhand sighed, swiftly pulled the arrows from Fitch's robes and then bundled him towards the gantry. The last thing he expected — but should have expected — was that at the last minute Fitch would plant his palm on his chest and send him hurtling backwards into a pile of crates. Dazed, he watched as Jenna and the last crewmembers boarded, and the airship was already pulling away by the time he rose and ran after it. The archer tried to make the jump from dock to airship but stopped himself at the last moment by grabbing onto a rail. The gap between them was just too great.

"Jenna," he shouted as the airship receded further beyond his reach. "I have to know — is there anything of you left?

His sister stared back, the wind whipping at her face, and Slowhand wasn't sure whether it was that or something else that made her eyes tear up.

Then she dug into a pocket, took out a small object and threw it across the widening gap towards him. Slowhand flung out a hand and then stared down at what he'd caught — a bracelet — before looking back up to question what it was. But, in the brief moment he had looked down, the airship had begun to turn away, as had his sister, perhaps not voluntarily, towards Querilous Fitch. Slowhand roared as the threadweaver approached her and then placed his palms on her skull and the hopes that he had harboured until that moment — that even now he might be able to turn Jenna away from the Final Faith — were finally dashed as his sister quivered beneath Fitch's touch.

Watching the airship descend to the harbour's entrance tunnel, Slowhand could not remember when he had last — if ever — felt so lonely. But there was no time to dwell upon the feeling as another fierce explosion from behind almost blew him off the gantry.

The archer looked around, searching for something — anything — that could help him get off this rock. But the only viable method of transport had already left and all that remained was the bones of its sisterships. Then it suddenly occurred to him that if Jenna and the Final Filth could build their flying machine piecemeal, then anything the Filth could do, he could do too.

Slowhand worked quickly but precisely, skewering bolts of cloth from the rotted dirigibles with arrows from Suresight, before pulling them down and framing them around struts of lightweight metal. He tied the pieces of cloth into place with catgut from his quiver, pulling each piece taut until, when he flicked them, they thrummed like drums above the two triangular sections he had created. Finally he linked the two sections together, creating a makeshift hinge by tying the metal struts to the flexible frame of Suresight itself, swung a strap beneath the two, and then stood back to admire his handiwork.

Looking like a pair of artificial wings, what he had created would not emulate a bird but he could hang beneath it and it would glide. He hoped that was all he would need. There was no time to test its airworthiness, however, as the explosions around him had now become so frequent that they were one solid, roiling mass of ever expanding combustion. The only thing that he could do now was fly.

Slowhand slung the device on his back, tightened the strap, and ran, the precipice that loomed before him doing nothing to discourage him — because if he stayed he was dead anyway. Suddenly, he was in the air and plummeting, and with desperate shifts of his weight from his left and to his right, he managed to manoeuvre the contraption between the numerous metal struts and beams that filled the cavern, dropping past and through them until the floor of the cavern was in sight.

Here, Slowhand arced his body upward, feeling the strain not only on his muscles but on the contraption itself. However, as it groaned in unison with him, his flight path gradually changed from the near vertical to the horizontal. He banked to the left, into the harbour's exit tunnel, its striplights blinking by him, and he could feel the wind from the outside on his face. But with a quite literal sinking feeling, he realised that the air currents within the tunnel were not enough to keep him aloft. Thankfully, the explosions in the harbour above obliged him at that very moment, blasting a wave of heated air and flame down into the tunnel buffeting him forward as effectively as if he had been swatted away by some giant, invisible hand. Slowhand yelled with surprise and with exhilaration and, as the sky darkened around him, realised he had exited the tunnel and was above the Drakengrats once more.

He was just beginning to think he was safe when the entire underside of Thunderlungs' Cry began to blow apart in a series of thunderous and buffeting explosions. There was an ominous cracking from above, too, and as the air about him began, suddenly, to fill with falling stones, rocks and even boulders, he realised that Thunderlungs' Cry itself was coming down. Slowhand cursed and frantically began to manoeuvre the glider through the deadly rain, avoiding pieces of the collapsing bridge by inches and aware that even a single impact could slap him from the sky. Whether through some innate piloting skill or sheer luck, he emerged unscathed, and was about to whoop in triumph when a growing shadow on the distant ground made him instinctively look up.

Ohhh, fark! he thought.

Because Thunderlungs Cry had saved the best for last, it seemed, and — seemingly in slow motion — an entire middle section of the bridge was plummeting towards him.

Slowhand never thought he'd be grateful for more explosions, but for the final, momentous detonation from the rockface, he most assuredly was.

He suddenly found himself being punched across the sky. The shockwave from the final detonation had caught the glider and punched it into a spin away from the rock face and, to Slowhand's misfortune, higher rather than lower into the mountains. As he sailed dizzyingly above the immense chasm he realised that while he had been punched higher, this did not necessarily mean that he was going to remain high as the shockwave had severely damaged what little integrity his invention had possessed in the first place. Swallowing uneasily, the archer craned his neck to inspect how bad things were, and his worst fears were confirmed. His jerry-rigged frame was bent and warped, and where he had lashed catgut to hold it together, it was now either snapping away from the metal or uncoiling from it with a sound like multiple cracking whips. He estimated he had perhaps a minute before the whole thing came apart.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to keep the glider aloft, and there was nowhere he could bring it in to a forced landing. He was going down.

Slowhand found his attitude becoming unexpectedly philosophical. Maybe Hooper and he were going to meet up again, after all, and he could imagine the conversation already.

"Hooper."

"Slowhand."

"How's things?"

"Ohhh, you know… dead. You?"

"Dead."

"Mmmm."

"Mmmm."

"So…"

"So…"

Killiam Slowhand smiled, but it was a smile that faded as it formed. Because one of the last things he saw from his aerial vantage point were the k'nid, spilling towards the peninsula.

Then, abruptly, there was no more time and the glider impacted with the ground.