IX

Miah could feel the entire island wrapped in the resonance of sky shards.  She sat in the grass on the end of the semicircle of adepts and felt the ritual connect their minds with the shards.  Just as the power of one shard faded she could sense the next and the next, even though they ringed the island at ever increasing distances.  

It was exquisite. 

Eyes closed and concentrating, she didn’t see the skyship rise up and coast along the edge of the island, didn’t see her brother and the others running along the walkways towards it, didn’t see its prow smash through the end of the sky shard structure and destroy several posts while dragging itself across some brush.

She did feel a pain in her mind as the island began to tilt back level.  Down below her she could feel cracks spreading out through the rock and clay and dirt like a spider web of subtle destruction.

When she opened her eyes she couldn’t make sense of the scene.  A skyship was slowly advancing across the field, grinding its way through grass and dirt like a giant plow.  Kaspar had his two swords in one hand and a sky shard in the other as he leapt from a walkway, trying to use the shard to keep him rising up through the air.  Caelian and Isiah instead chose to run across the grass towards the near side of the ship.

That was when a sharp pain burst in her head.  The ground bounced her up a foot in the air and she felt the island break in half.  Miah tore herself out of the ritual and looked back over her shoulder in terror.  The entire back half of the island was rising up like it was on hinges.  She suddenly started feeling lighter and realized that they were all moving downward.  “Ohhhhh, shit.”

Miah grabbed her quarterstaff and jumped up into a run.  The skyship with the dreadgoblins was likely the only thing that would remain afloat in the next few minutes.

Aboard the ship, Kaspar landed hard on the deck.  His shortsword spun out of his grasp and he rolled to standing with only his longsword.  The whole ship was tilting forward, rumbling and shaking as it carved a trench in the dirt.  A dreadgoblin with a pike rushed at him.  He dodged around the blade and struck with two quick slashes, both of them hitting.  The dreadgoblin dropped and started rolling towards the bow.  Kaspar looked up and saw the captain leaving the wheel and grabbing his greatsword.  The fighter simply grunted and started running up towards him.

Caelian and Isiah climbed up some netting along the side of the ship and gained the deck.  Two dreadgoblins charged them with vicious looking billhooks.  Caelian bashed one’s head in.  The body tumbled sideways and took Isiah’s legs out from under him.  He tried to clamber over the body and took a slash in the arm from the other dreadgoblin.  Caelian leapt up and brought her mace down in an overhand strike.  The dreadgoblin took the hit full in the chest and coughed up a spray of blood before staggering towards Isiah.  The thief tried to dodge again but it was one dreadgoblin body too many.  He sprawled and tumbled towards the bow platform.

Kaspar had made it amidships when Woshaan leapt from the stairs and flew twenty feet across the downward tilted deck.   His greatsword high overhead in both hands, the captain soared through the air and came down with a mighty swing.  Kaspar brought up his longsword to block but weight and momentum pushed it back.  The captain’s greatsword came down on the flat of the fighter’s longsword and snapped it in half.  The edge of the blade scored a long mark down through Kaspar’s chainmail.  The dreadgoblin slammed his body into Kaspar and forced both of them into an uncontrolled roll.

Caelian wanted to rush to Kaspar’s side but staggered to a halt, not believing what she saw.  The southern half of the island was rising up perpendicular to the horizon.  It was about to fold itself over onto the northern half.

Kaspar tried to stand but slipped as the deck bucked upward.  He pointed towards the stern and shouted at Caelian, “Get to the wheel!  Get us out of here!”  Then he stepped in and slashed his broken sword across the captain’s chest.

Isiah stood on the stairs to the fo’cs’l.  They were the flattest surface around as everything else continued to pitch forward.  He could just see over the bow railing.  Miah was running towards the ship.  Stones like rain were falling from the half of the island now hanging vertically above them.

He didn’t know how to get to her.  The island was breaking apart and he could feel they were dropping faster.  He jumped up beside the ballista and saw it was rigged with a pointed grappling hook the size of his head and attached to a rope.

Back amidships, Kaspar ducked under the captain’s greatsword and stabbed him in the upper thigh.  The dreadgoblin roared in pain and staggered back against the forward mast.

Caelian ran up the deck and climbed the rear stairs that were now practically vertical.

Woshaan swung his greatsword but Kaspar blocked it.  The two of them kept slipping on the blood soaked deck and both grabbed ropes running down the mast to steady themselves.

Isiah grabbed the ballista and began to swing it around towards Miah.  He looked down and saw the rope was sliding towards the bow and hoped it still worked as he thought it should.

Then multiple things happened all at once.

Caelian grabbed the wheel and turned it so the rudderfan caught the wind and brought the stern end around and pointed the ship towards clear sky.  Kaspar swung a perfect blow and severed the captain’s head while also cutting the ropes that held the forward sail down.  The sail billowed upwards until a block stopped the rope against its hawser.  Isiah fired the ballista and the bolt shot straight into the ground just ten feet in front of Miah.

The skyship started to buck upwards and Caelian kept turning the wheel until the rudderfan was hard over.  She looked up and saw the southern half of the island was now overhead. Dirt, rock, wood, and debris of all kinds were thudding into the deck and ground everywhere.  Massive fissures opened up and the southern half started breaking into smaller pieces.  

Miah dodged a falling tree trunk and leapt up onto the rope just as the grapnel wrenched free of the ground.  Then the ground disappeared as a crevice split the northern half of the island into two pieces.  With a groaning crunch of splintered rock, the field she’d just run across collapsed in on itself.  The adepts were nowhere to be seen.

Wind gusted up through all the new openings and filled the sky ship’s twin sails, dragging the whole ship sideways back towards Jozinferal’s sky shard structure.  It punched through the middle of the remaining posts and out into clear sky just as the island halves slammed together in a blast like the Forged God’s hammer.  The entire thing broke apart and went into freefall.

Miah hung from the end of the rope with her feet resting on the grapnel while Isiah started winching her back up.  She watched as the Eldar’ai portal broke free from the rock that had encased it for ages and dropped away into the clouds.  “No...” she whispered.  In seconds, the whole island vanished like it had never existed.

Looking up at her shouting brother, she signaled that she was fine.  Miah suddenly realized how tired she was and leaned her head against the taut rope in her left hand.  She took in a deep breath, let the wind run across her face, and looked out across the beauty of the Shattered Sea in the bright mid-day sun.