Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

Slobad pulled up alongside Glissa and looked down. “Huh,” he commented. “Why can’t Slobad see all the way to the center?”

“That little point of light-I think that’s the end,” Glissa said. “We’ll be there soon enough. You ready?”

“Ready,” Slobad replied. Glissa checked on the levelers, which had left the twitching wurm behind, its corpse oozing ichor into the forest floor. But many had been destroyed, and with luck, the lacuna would take care of the rest.

“Okay. Try not to lose sight of me.”

“You sure this work, huh?”

“Of course not. I just couldn’t think of anything else.”

As if on cue, Bruenna’s flight spell finally gave out, and the pair dropped like stones into the lacuna.

“Good plan!” Slobad shouted as they plummeted into the lacuna’s maw.

“In the plan, I was-ow!” Glissa yelped as a wiry, melted treeroot hanging from the inside wall of the lacuna smacked her in the shoulder. “I was alone, and I had time-oof-to call on the energy here!” She flailed, trying without much luck to get a grip on the lacuna wall. The walls were smooth and freshly polished by the heat of an erupting moon, but her claws did come back with a few splinters.

Glissa could make out screams and howls from above as the levelers reached the clearing and cut into the many hapless creatures that had been drawn to the magical energies. The animals reacted as any animals would-by fleeing or fighting back. The result was that many of them were tumbling down the lacuna as well, along with wrecked or unbalanced levelers.

“So? We’re still here, huh?” Slobad shouted. “Give a try!”

The goblin had a point, Glissa realized. She was in the heart of the magical field, which was just where she wanted to be. She kicked at the nearby wall, pushed herself closer to the center point of the lacuna, and closed her eyes. This time, instead of imagining the end result of her attack, she focused inward. She visualized the power flow from the spark into her bones, down her arms, to the tips of her claws, the raw energy of the lacuna …

Glissa felt flickers of energy crackle down her arm, and opened her eyes in time to see green-white flame erupt from her hands and shoot straight upward. The destructive blast richocheted off the smooth walls of the lacuna, crashing back into itself and creating a maelstrom so bright that anything on the other side was lost. Glissa held her arms upward, ignoring the effect the massive output of magic was having on her rate of speed, rocketing her downward.

The energy was going to carry her past Slobad, but she managed to hook the toe of her boot in his tunic as she blasted downward. The goblin grabbed onto Glissa’s shin for dear life as they shot toward the center of the world on a rising plume of fire.

Glissa felt the levelers dying above her, both in the circular tunnel and on the rapidly receding surface. Surrounded by the greenish glow of intense mana residue, the experience made her feel more like a conduit than a destroyer. She felt as if all the magic in the Tangle flowed through a central point in her chest, filtering through her willpower to become ribbons of light that cut into wriggling segmented torsos and slashing, scythe-like blades. She struggled to maintain control.

Half a minute later, the last of the levelers burned out under Glissa’s withering assault. As the realization came, she felt the well of energy go dry, and she was once again just an elf falling to her doom. Only now she could expect to find herself under several tons of twisted metal, when she landed.

Wait. Where would they land?

“Hey!” Slobad cried through the storm, still clinging to her leg. “We slowing down, huh?”

“What?” Glissa shouted in reply, but realized the goblin was right. The downward pull of gravity wasn’t as strong, and their descent was slowing by the second. Fortunately, the ruined leveler army over their heads didn’t get any closer. “It must be something affecting everything in here,” Glissa said. “Look, the levelers are slowing down too.”

“Glissa?”

“Yeah?

“Why we slowing down when I still barely see end of tunnel, huh?”

Glissa craned her neck to look down to the other end of the lacuna, where they would emerge among the towering mycosynth spires in the light of the burning mana core. It was bigger than the pinpoint she’d seen before, but they were still easily as far from the center as they were from the surface.

“That’s it!” Glissa shouted. Though the wind whistling in her ears was no longer as loud, the clatter of construct parts tumbling down from above had become almost deafening. “We’re reaching the center!”

“No, that down there,” Slobad bellowed. “Big ball, remember?”

“I mean the center of the lacuna. It’s magic.”

“You think?” Slobad asked.

“I mean a big, big enchantment. Something that covers the whole world. Makes it so you can stand on the inside and fall ‘down’ toward the surface, or-”

“Stand on surface and fall just plain down, huh?” Slobad said. They were drifting like feathers now, almost floating. The wreckage above them had become a slow-moving chaotic swirl, like a handful of sand released underwater. But these grains of sand were jagged, twisted, and occasionally burning. Even if everything dropping down the lacuna came to a stop in midair, which was looking inevitable, it would still leave them floating in a deadly mess of metal with very sharp edges.

“Slobad, we have to get to the wall.”

“How?” Slobad asked. “Can’t swim through air, huh?”

“If we get there, we can stand. Remember the last lacuna?”

“Right, we run down inside. Been trying to forget that,” Slobad said.

“Well, if we can’t outrun that falling metal, you’re going to forget everything you ever knew, and so am I.” Glissa flapped her arms and kicked her legs, trying to get closer to the side of the tube. Slobad yelped and finally let go of her leg. Flare, why had she kicked out to the center in the first place?

Glissa’s efforts didn’t help much. She got a few inches closer, but it was slow going. She needed a push, but the far side of the lacuna had to be half a mile away.

“Hey, have idea, huh?” Slobad said, floating alongside. “Watch.” He reached up at the nearest hunk of shattered leveler, and pulled himself closer to the wall. Then he caught another piece, carefully, and pushed himself closer, repeating the process. Glissa thought he looked like a bottom-feeding scavenger fish pulling itself along a silvery river bottom. Glissa reached up and grabbed her own hunk of leveler, careful to avoid the sharpest parts, and pushed off, floating after her goblin friend.

“Slobad, your gift for finding obvious solutions is vastly underrated,” she said.

As soon as she made contact with the lacuna wall, Glissa felt gravity shift again, this time becoming stronger and pulling her upright-with her feet flat on the wall. A chunk of construct smacked her in the back of the head. “Ow!”

“Duck,” Slobad said, a little too late.

“Thanks.”

Slobad extended his hands. The left contained a small, sharp piece of metal that looked like a leveler mandible yanked out at the root. In his right he held, point down, a blade that Glissa knew had recently been attached to the forearm of one of the deadly constructs. “Which one you want?” Slobad asked, though Glissa could see his right arm was drooping under the weight of the severed scythe blade.

“The big one, I think.” Glissa said diplomatically, and took the proffered weapon. It was a little off balance, but felt surprisingly good in her hand. The blade had not broken off, but had been severed-by what, Glissa couldn’t say, but she suspected it had been a piece of fellow leveler-just below the joint of where it had been affixed to the construct’s limb, leaving just enough metal to form a hilt. Not perfect by any means, but better than nothing. It would go through Memnarch’s chest, and that was the important thing.