Matt Forbeck - Marked for Death

“Down!” Bastard said again.

Deothen bent over and hustled along as fast as he could. Even though the city had stopped moving, Bastard and the hole above him seemed no closer. Soon Deothen could no longer stand at all. He threw himself down and scrambled forward on his hands and knees, his flaming sword still clutched in his fist. Bastard wasn’t so far away now-perhaps a score of yards-but it seemed like miles of dark and broken road.

Deothen’s hand slipped, and he found himself on his belly. He tried to rise to his knees again, but there wasn’t enough room.

All around the knight, the walkers who had been carrying the city above them folded themselves down on the ground. Unlike him, they didn’t need to breathe. They had no lungs from which the air would be crushed by the horrible weight above them. They could just lie there in the suffocating dirt for hours, even days, and then rise once again at their master’s call.

“Down!” Bastard said one last time.

The heavy platforms came down flush with the ground. Deothen kept worming ahead until his armor wedged stuck between the earth and the platform above. He was almost close enough to strike out at Bastard. He might die here, but he was determined to have one last chance to take the warforged leader with him.

Deothen lashed out with his sword at Bastard’s feet, swinging the blade flat and true through the final inches of space left to him as his armor began to give.

“Sallah!” he cried with his final breath.

Bastard stepped backward out of the knight’s reach. The platforms came down within bare inches of the ground beneath them. Blood spurted from Deothen’s mouth and everything went black.

High above, the airship had stopped bumping around. As Esprл fought to regain control of the ship’s wheel, she saw Te’oma slip her hands from the leather safety straps and walk across the bridge to deal with Xalt.

“You’re tenacious,” the changeling said to the warforged. “I never see most of my victims again.”

She reached out with her foot and kicked the artificer’s hand that clutched the edge of the ship’s deck. Xalt cried out in pain.

“Is it because you’re a warforged?” Te’oma asked. “Are your kind harder to kill?”

She ground her boot down on the Xalt’s fingers, then stomped down on them again. The warforged shouted in agony.

“You are durable,” Te’oma said. As she spoke, she drew her black knife and got on one knee next to where the artificer’s battered fingers still clung to the airship’s bridge.

“No!” Esprл screamed. She had had enough. She grabbed the airship’s wheel and gave the elemental trapped in the ring of fire a nudge. The ship lurched forward.

The changeling howled as she pitched over the aft of the ship. Her black knife tumbled from her hand and spun end-over-end down to the arena floor. Te’oma reached and grabbed at the edge of the shattered railing. The tips of her fingers latched on the last spindle there.

“Don’t do this!” Te’oma shouted at Esprл.

“Drop him!” Sallah yelled from below.

Hope leaped in Esprл’s chest at the sound of the lady knight’s voice. Then, when she heard her stepfather speak, that hope grew tenfold.

“Drop Brendis!” Kandler said. “We’ll catch him!”

“I won’t let you kill him!” Esprл shouted at Te’oma from the wheel. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Over the past few weeks, she’d seen more than enough death. She couldn’t let the changeling hurt anyone else again. She still remembered the look on the warforged’s face when the black knife had slipped into his back, and she was ready to do everything she could to stop anything like that from happening again.

The ship bounced just a bit into the air, and Esprл heard something crash to the floor below. Kandler cried out in pain.

“To stop me, you’ll have to kill me,” the changeling said. “And you’re no killer. You’re-No!”

The railing from which Te’oma hung cracked and gave way. The changeling cascaded back from the airship, the spindle she’d been clutching still in her hand.

“No!” Esprл screamed as Te’oma fell out of sight. She let go of the airship’s wheel, stretching out her hands in a feeble hope of somehow being able to stop it.

The warforged reached up and pulled himself up onto the bridge. Still on his belly, he scrambled across the deck to where Esprл knelt, crying into her hands. He reached out and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No,” Esprл said between sobs. “Did-did you do that? Pull her off the ship?”

The warforged hesitated, then nodded slowly. Esprл felt a terrible mixture of hatred and gratitude toward the warforged. She reached out to hold him and wept into his arms.

“Don’t cry for me, little one,” Te’oma’s voice said from above.

Esprл uncovered her eyes, and she and the warforged looked up to see the changeling hovering over the edge of the bridge on her bat-winged cloak. The girl gasped. The war-forged scrambled up and put his arm around her shoulders and their backs to the bridge’s console.

The changeling glared at the warforged. “Now,” she said, “where were we?”

The warforged stood between Esprл and the changeling. “I will not allow you to harm this child,” he said, his raspy voice trembling with emotion.

Te’oma threw back her head and laughed. She executed a sharp loop with her batwinged cloak and came back to where she’d been before. “You silly suit of armor,” she said. “She’s never been in any danger from me.”

The changeling’s smile faded from her thin, white lips. Esprл shuddered at the sight.

“You, though…” Te’oma said. “What’s your name?”

“I am called Xalt.”

“Well, Xalt, your time is now.”

Xalt reached back to squeeze Esprл’s shoulder and then sprinted toward the edge of the bridge. When he reached the damaged railing, he leaped into the air, pushing off hard, and spread his arms wide like a bird of prey soaring down out of the sky at a hapless meal.

Xalt smashed into Te’oma and wrapped his arms around the hovering changeling. Te’oma screeched with frustration and clawed at the warforged’s back, but he refused to let go, and the pair plummeted to the arena floor like a meteor from the Mournland’s gray sky.

Burch pulled himself out from under the wreckage of the wall that he’d been standing on when the enraged titan knocked it down. The titan lay shattered around him. The creature had pushed though the wall and over the platform beyond to cascade over the city’s edge and onto the ground beyond.

As Burch tried to stand, the titan stirred. It raised its head to look around and spotted the shifter. It tried to reach out and grab him with its arm, but it only flailed a splintered stump at him instead.

Burch kicked the titan’s head, which hurt his foot more than the creature. As the shifter stood over the creature and pondered what he should do, a ballista bolt slammed into the titan’s chest, and the thing fell still.

Burch looked up and saw the ballista crew that had missed him cursing at each other as they hurried to reload the weapon again. This close to the arena, most of the stations along the edge of the city had been abandoned after the stampede away from the fire, but the warforged staffing this ballista seemed more determined than most.

Burch retrieved his crossbow from the wreckage and checked its action. Despite the wild ride and final crash, the weapon still worked. He slammed a bolt into it and glanced up to see the loaded ballista pointed straight at him. He dove left, and the bolt impaled the spot where he’d stood. He took a deep breath, aimed, and loosed a bolt of his own, and one of the warforged staffing the large weapon keeled over with Burch’s missile sticking out of its face.