J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

A mass of aircraft decloaked, two different types, all painted bright green and orange. One kind was smaller, more lithe, with two gleaming cannons, their armored shells like half circles set on their end, the curved part facing behind. The second type was bigger, with two powerful, rotating engines on either wing, and two or three walkers dangled underneath each one. Dropships. Reinforcements.

The airships floated and bounced, trying to regain control in the chaotic turbulence. It was difficult. A flash of green lightning lanced downward in a shower of sparks into one of the smaller ships. It spun in a crazy descent and slammed into a dropship. Both ships listed badly and tumbled down, crashing into the ground in a giant blossom of flame.

The Royal trumpeted angrily. The Mas’Erinhah were one of the few clans whose Electives allowed them to pass through this land, but, still, it would not be easy. It would lose half its forces hunting the Scion, but that was why it had summoned so many. In the end, it would all be worth it.

From the burning wreckage of the crashed airships came a burst of light. The Ephemera were leaving their Hosts, forming into their golden, fluctuating, crystalline shapes. They had no choice, their machines were burning, but it was clear something was wrong.

The shapes, bright as they were, flickered weakly, the energy that encompassed them losing cohesion. It couldn’t form, couldn’t solidify. The Royal, and every other Mas’Erinhah, felt the sensations that bled off the Ephemera and colored the Whole with their light.

Pain, dread—and fear.

The light of the Ephemera dimmed as the Royal and his Hunters watched. The energy stored within those shapes dissipated into nothing, vanishing into the air like gold liquid thrown into the sea. At their loss, even of just a few, the Whole grew less colorful, less bright.

The Royal trumpeted in frustration. It was this place. Its kind could not survive here, not out of their Hosts, and it sensed more fear stirring the Whole. But it would not tolerate weakness.

It projected its anger and resolution, and its forces responded. The fear vanished, the doubt, too. They would follow, even to their destruction. They had no choice.

Behind them the dropships began to unload their cargo, depositing new walkers onto the torn, fragmented ground, amid the glowing crystals that dotted it. One after the other, hundreds of them, filling the darkened landscape with their numbers.

HOLT AND MIRA FOLLOWED THE WHITE HELIX north in a seemingly unending march through what was once North Dakota. Now it was a nightmarish world: oppressive, dark, absent of life. The foliage had all died long ago without sunlight, and the spidery, unsettling remains of dead trees were the only indication it had ever been anything else. Green lightning flashed, and the strange, everpresent aurora field wavered in the black sky.

They had been following an old train track the last few miles, and now they had come to an obstacle. Holt took another precarious step across the top of the old train, trying to balance in the dark. Its roof was wide and solid, but that wasn’t the issue. The problem was the sheer drops on either side that streaked down to a shadowy river hundreds of feet below. The remainder of the train, dozens of cars, had broken loose of their tracks and tumbled over the edge, and if Holt looked behind him he would see all of them, hanging in the air, paused in time as they fell, the bridge breaking into pieces.

They were in what Mira called a Time Loop. Where the semitruck from a few days ago came unstuck if you touched it, this train and the disintegrating bridge entered back into real time at fixed intervals. They had less than eleven minutes before that happened, according to Avril. The train would unstick in time and the entire thing would come crashing down—and then it would all go back to how it was—frozen, waiting to repeat again.

Holt tried not to think about it. He hated this place.

Mira was behind him, moving between two White Helix escorts. The others were already across.

During the entire journey so far, Dane had practiced what Avril called the “Spearflow.” It was intense weapon practice coordinated with his movement. Each step he took resulted in a different form or swing of the Lancet. After watching it awhile, Holt could see a pattern. It took about seven minutes to go through one entire repetition of the Spearflow.

Dane suffered his punishment quietly, sweating profusely, but he never faltered, never slowed, and he never took a break. There was always a moment near the middle of the exercise where he spun and walked backward, and each time he did, he glared directly at Holt. And every time Holt held the stare. He had no animosity toward Dane, but the feeling clearly wasn’t mutual.

That was a problem for later. Right now, Holt’s concern was crossing over the top of this train without plummeting to the river below. He carefully moved his feet one step at a time.

“Is it possible for you to go any slower?” Mira asked from behind. “I only ask because the White Helix and I have a bet.”

“You ever hear ‘measure twice, cut once’?” Holt retorted without taking his eyes off his feet. “I’m applying a similar principle.”

“Slower isn’t always better. We need to get clear of this thing, and we have, like, three minutes to do it.”

“And the Outlander plans on using all three,” the Helix behind them observed. “Never seen anyone make putting one foot in front of the other look tough.” The boy was a little shorter than Holt, but a little bigger, too, with short brown hair and the same easy gait that all White Helix possessed. His name was Castor. The Helix girl in front of them was Masyn. She was taller than Avril but just as lithe, with long, blond hair tied in a braid that hung down her back and brushed the top of her Lancet.

“Works for me,” Masyn said. “Always wanted to ride this thing down, anyway.”

“I’d prefer we didn’t,” Holt said testily. The entire time they’d been moving across the train, Masyn had been entertaining herself with somersaults, skipping backward, or doing handsprings. Right now she was walking on her hands, and it was unsettling to watch, with the dropoffs on either side, but it didn’t seem to bother her. That only made Holt like her even less.

“Then move, Outlander,” Castor said from behind.

Holt sighed and took another step, staring down warily.

“We have names, you know,” Mira said. They’d been called Freebooter or Outlander since they’d left Polestar, and it was starting to get old. “I’m Mira. He’s Holt.”

“And I don’t care,” Castor replied. “Walk.”

Holt took another step. Masyn was maybe only a year younger than Mira, but, oddly, the creep of the Tone in her eyes was much less prevalent than it should be. Castor’s eyes were more solidly filled in, but he was old enough that he should have Succumbed already. Holt had seen the same thing in the eyes of the other Helix. For them, the Tone seemed to advance slower, probably because of the Strange Lands’s effect on time. If more people knew about that particular advantage to being White Helix, Holt wondered how many more would make the journey every year.

Ahead of them, Avril stood impatiently with her arms crossed, watching them move over the train. Dane was behind them, still stepping back and forth, practicing with his Lancet. He was drenched, but showed no signs of weakening. The rest of the White Helix waited there as well.

“What’s Avril going to do with us?” Mira asked.

“Avril isn’t going to do anything with you,” Masyn said, gently lowering her feet back down and walking again. “It’s not her place. It’s Gideon’s.”