In his daze, he had failed to notice that the Tovainar had blocked the hit. The laughter brought him back to reality. The screams of the moribund, the body of the Dragonking a few yards to his left, now charred remains. Feeling more anger now than fear, Fionn moved deliberately, trying to go for the killing blow. But the laugh kept unnerving him.
“Hello, old friend. Or should I call you master? I prefer mongrel. It fits you,” the Tovainar said, derision dripping from each word. He lifted the faceplate of his helmet. Behind it was the scarred but otherwise beautiful face of a man in his mid-thirties, with a carefully trimmed beard and eyes with irises as blue as polar ice, surrounded by a sea of red where the white of the eyes would otherwise be. In another time, those eyes had offered a sense of comradery and friendship, but now they were a mockery of the man he had been.
“Byron,” Fionn uttered, sweating cold.
“This reunion is worth a picture. Or your head on a pike,” Byron pushed Fionn again with enough strength to break a wall.
Fionn tried to gather his bearings, but so many memories, feelings, and thoughts rushed through his head. The only thing that brought him out of his reverie was Gaby yelling at him. He glanced to his left and saw her waving at him, yelling at him to come to the Figaro. Byron raised his sword to strike Fionn in the head, but an arrow hit his hand, piercing it.
Alex stood next to Gaby, readying the second arrow.
“Wait here for a second, Fionn, I need to get rid of the vermin first,” Byron started to slowly walk towards Alex and Gaby, followed by a couple of his ghouls. The ghouls soon fell to the ground, their heads pierced by a pair of arrows. Alex let loose a fourth arrow towards Byron, which hit him in the neck. But Byron simply ripped it out without losing pace. Instead of blood, black ichor and white worms came out from the wound, which closed almost immediately.
“We need to go now!” Alex kept yelling at Fionn while drawing his sword. Gaby did the same.
Byron just laughed. And it enraged Fionn so much that the ‘wolf’ inside him overtook his better judgment. Quietly, he cleaned the blood from his mouth and face, using his shirt. Disregarding the pain in his chest and nose, he moved as fast as his battered body allowed and cut down the remaining troopers, putting himself between Byron and the Figaro.
“Leave now!” Fionn yelled at Alex.
“How cute,” Byron readied his sword. “Always dragging along those unfit or foolish enough to die for you. Don’t worry, I will see that they meet their predecessors in a swift manner. I can’t promise it won’t be painful, though.”
“We won’t leave without you!” Gaby yelled. Fionn knew the look on her face. He had seen the same look on his wife Izia before the whole world came crashing down on them. But this time Fionn wasn’t going to allow history to repeat itself. He had failed Izia, Ywain and many more by being afraid. This time he knew what he had to do. He just hoped Gaby and Sam would understand.
“Please,” Fionn mouthed to Gaby and then ran towards Byron, who counterattacked his blow. Byron and Fionn traded blows faster than the naked eye could see, but it was to no avail. Byron was toying with him and Fionn felt the weariness of the duel taking over his battered body. There was no way he would get out of this alive, not without his healing ability. But as long as Gaby, Sam and Alex were alive, maybe there was still hope.
“A century passes and you haven’t learned a thing, Fionn.”
“I have learned to have a better fashion sense than you at least,” Fionn replied, smiling through the pain, backing up slowly, Black Fang barely up. Fionn found himself between the bottomless Maze and Byron. Fionn went for broke, launching a final strike that Byron deflected with ease before impaling Fionn in the gut with his sword.
“Your technique has improved… but your left guard is still open,” Fionn said, bleeding profusely.
“Always the master, trying to teach me,” Byron said. “The thing is, you were never my master. You were just a means to an end. A tool to be used and discarded, like the rest.”
“You won’t win.” Fionn’s voice was almost gone.
“Foolish hope. That’s your main defect. But be glad you won’t be around to see how utterly you have failed. Say hello to your wife from me.”
Byron then pulled out his sword, a sudden movement that made Fionn release his grip on Black Fang, which fell into the chasm, its green light getting lost in the darkness.
“Déjà vu,” Byron paused. “I have seen this before. This is how I killed Ywain. I know how the story will go from now on: your daughter will attempt to attack me with a spell, she will fail and then she will die, just like Izia. And then you will be next. History does repeat itself when it comes to losers like you. How does it feel to fail your friends and family again?”
Fionn’s eyes opened wide at the mention of Samantha. “Yes, I know you have a daughter. Hunt finally broke down. Any last words?”
“Bite me,” Fionn replied, spitting a blood clot towards Byron’s beard, which elicited only a laugh.
Byron kicked Fionn into the same chasm and waved good-bye. The last things that Fionn saw while falling into the dark pit of the Maze were the Figaro in flames, starting a descent into the depths, while the shadow of a raven flew towards Fionn.
Chapter 11
Realizations
The Figaro’s alarms were blaring as the hatch gate closed. Gaby felt Alex dragging her to the cockpit, followed by Harland, who was tightly holding onto Sam to keep her from jumping out of the ship to avenge her father. Alex led them into the med bay and closed the door to keep them safe. The ship rocked under the heavy fire of the dreadnought. Alex and Gaby reached the cockpit and strapped themselves into their seats just as Sid pushed the thrusters to get the Figaro out of there, away from the platform and into the Maze.
Gaby’s heart ached as if it had been skewered by a thousand needles. The image of Fionn being impaled, his healing ability not working, and then falling into the void, seemingly dead, was stuck in her brain. Fionn was a hero. The Hero. The one she and Alex had grown up worshipping, reading about his exploits and how he always found a way to come victorious. He couldn’t be dead.
But the reality was a different thing. And then she thought of Sam who had witnessed what happened to her dad and to her students. They needed to go back to help but Gaby only wanted to cry. She shook her head. This was not the time to get lost in her thoughts. She took a deep breath and turned towards Sid and Alex.
“How can I help?” Gaby asked.
Alex was frantically pushing buttons and trying to help Sid with the additional systems, while the samoharo flew the ship around the Maze, trying to evade the barrage of fire from the dreadnought. To his credit, the samoharo had maintained his cool after witnessing what had happened to Fionn, and had taken them out of the place before that creature closed the gap. It had been a narrow escape. But they weren’t out of the fire just yet.
“Can you shut up that damned alarm?” Sid yelled. Gaby punched the dashboard and the alarm stopped.
“Better?” Gaby said with a calm voice. Alex and Sid freaking out was already enough. Someone had to keep the calm.
“Thanks. What’s our status?” Sid asked.
“Seems that we are going down in flames,” Gaby replied dryly.
“Care to be more specific? I can’t check the readouts and keep us from crashing at the same time.”
“The radar is offline, structural damage in the outer hull, the AI has called it a day, and for some reason the cores are being drained out,” Alex replied, looking at the instrumentation readouts.
“Drained out? By what?” Sid said, confused.
“I can’t say. But the closer we get to the dreadnought, the faster they drain. It doesn’t make any sense,” Alex tried to explain. Gaby saw his brow covered in sweat. “At this pace, we won’t have the power to be airborne.”
“And we will fall like
a rock.” Sid cursed under his breath. “Damn it. Alex I need you to go and check the cores, and see if you can keep them working.”
“How?” Alex replied, clearly frustrated.
“I don’t know! You’re the energy expert. Plug them directly into the emergency batteries if you must. I need power to get us out of here!” Sid almost screamed. He was busy guiding the ship to avoid the fire from the dreadnought’s cannons and the new batch of drones tailing them.
“If I do what you say, they will crack. And you can’t pilot this thing without a co-pilot with half the systems shutting down,” Alex countered.
“It seems that this is the end of the line then,” Sid mumbled.
As Sid and Alex argued and more alarms blared in the cockpit, it dawned on Gaby that this was the moment. Right now. It was the first clear realization of the day for Gaby that, if they were going to make it out alive, she would have to step up and take the lead.
She would have to be the one turning this up. She stood up from her seat.
“Kiddo, I suggest you return to your seat,” Sid said, without looking at her. He was focused on what was in front of him, making the Figaro dance in the air, dodging blindly the enemy attacks. “This will be a rough trip to the ground.”
“Alex, go and do whatever you can to keep us afloat. Now!” Gaby ordered. Alex stared at her for a second and without saying a word, unfastened his harness and ran towards the engine room.
“Keep the comms open!” Alex exclaimed before disappearing inside the ship.
Gaby took his place, fastened the harness and looked at the console in front of her. Many of the switches and buttons had been labeled by Alex, with his horrible handwriting. Others labeled by Sid, with his cuneiform handwriting.
“What are you doing, kiddo?” Sid asked her.
“Helping you to fly the Figaro. What else?” Gaby said matter-of-factly.
“No offense, but you don’t have the required training.”
“What training do I need to crash a ship? It’s not like you have other options,” Gaby winked at Sid.
“Can’t argue with that. Just don’t enter into a trance, like before.”
“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing, trust me,” Gaby replied, as the irises of her eyes started to glow with their icy blue intensity. She just hoped she could use her heightened senses to predict the attacks. “You have a bogey at your eight.”
Gaby focused her Gift and her innate ability to predict things to help Sid dodge the attacks. She had never done something like this before, reaching through the ship to feel the surroundings. And she got a few calls wrong. But Sid’s skills at flying compensated for the mistakes. Even then, he was starting to get tired, as the drones kept chasing them. He was taking the Figaro far from Ravenstone. And that was the last thing Gaby wanted, as Fionn remained present in her head. In her heart, she knew he was there, somewhere at the bottom of the canyon and he needed their help.
“We need to descend into the depths of the Maze,” Gaby said, keeping an eye on the malfunctioning radar.
“That’s the opposite direction to where we need to go. If we don’t get out of the Maze now, we won’t have enough power to take off later,” Sid pointed out.
“Assuming we reach the top of the Maze, we won’t have enough power to get far, that thing will shoot us down anyways. Going deep down will give us a better chance to hide and will save energy by riding the gravitational waves to the bottom.”
“That… that makes sense,” Sid conceded. “But they could send drones after us once we get out of reach.”
“Not if we create a diversion. We could use those mining explosives as a decoy, make them think we crashed against a wall, timing it with one of those gravitational waves,” Gaby offered. “Alex, can you find a way to use the explosives crate as a decoy?”
“Already working on them…bzzz… I put a timer… on one,” Alex said through the comm. “I was listening ...sounds like a good plan. Actually sounds like one of my plans!”
“Great, now there are two of you with the hare-brained plans,” Sid said, rolling his eyes. “I hope this works.”
“Have faith,” Gaby replied. Deep inside her chest, she knew this would work. It had to. Fionn’s life depended on it. Then she added, trying to stifle a laugh. “Besides, I know how much you enjoy surfing.”
Unlike the stereotypical samoharo, Sid hated surfing.
† † †
Gaby stared at the gravimetric sensor and concentrated her senses on feeling the surroundings of the ship once more, while Sid kept dodging the drones and their fire. His green skin was covered in what passed as sweat for a samoharo. The veins in his neck were bulging under the strain. They had to find a wave that suited their plans and they needed to do it soon. Using the Gift in this way was draining Gaby’s energies. Her head was heavy and her stomach was grumbling for food. Then the sensor blinked.
“There is an incoming wave in twenty seconds. Get ready,” Gaby said through the comm.
“This better work,” Sid mumbled.
“Now!” Gaby yelled through the comm, as Sid pulled the yoke of the ship to the right. Gaby felt the gravity pull changing. Her stomach churned.
Sid opened the hatch bay and the crate with the explosives flew out of it. The crate floated in the air for a few seconds, a small gravitational wave keeping it afloat, before the timer activated, creating a decent sized explosion and generating a cloud of dust and debris. The Figaro started its descent with a certain grace, hiding in the debris cloud. Rock fragments impacted the hull, altering its trajectory.
“Now comes the tricky part,” Sid murmured
“Which is?” Gaby asked him.
“Not crashing. Everybody brace yourselves!”
Sid guided the Figaro, dodging most of the stalagmites protruding from the ground. The belly of the ship hit a few, making it jump and almost roll over. But Sid managed to keep it steady through a clever use of flaps and the smaller directional thrusters.
Gaby and Sid braced themselves for the rough landing. To its credit, the Figaro managed to land as softly as was possible for a ship that size with failing power. It slid for several meters, until it finally stopped, leaving a groove as a trail. Sid turned off all the systems and tried to contain his breathing as much as he could.
Then, with bated breath, they waited. And waited. Until the canyon known as the Scar fell into the silence of a graveyard. Until no enemy was in sight.
“I’d better start checking the ship if we are going to get out of here before they consider returning to check our ‘remains,’” Sid said.
“And I will check on Sam, Harland, and Alex,” Gaby replied, unbuckling her harness.
“For the record, you did well,” Sid said to her.
“Thanks,” Gaby said softly. Coming from the gruff samoharo, it sure felt like the best compliment she had ever received.
† † †
“Wello, we are screwed!” Sid yelled, throwing a wrench to the floor.
Gaby watched as Sid went into a longwinded rant. If the situation wasn’t as dire as it was, it would have made for an amusing scene.
The samoharo was angry. His cheeks were changing colors, the way his species showed discomfort. “The AI refuses to work, the electric system needs severe reroutings to work at least at partial capacity, the hull has considerable damage, and I won’t even mention that the landing gear is shot. More important, the cores are almost drained, so we have no power for the time being.”
“In summary?” Gaby asked him, trying to smile. Her smile calmed the samoharo just enough to stop him from ranting the whole day. Or at least make him pause and breathe.
“In summary, kiddo, I might be able to repair most of the damage, but we need a miracle just to find a way to recharge the cores. We. Are. Stuck. In the biggest crack on the planet,” Sid said with anger, finally catching
his breath. He had been surveying the state of the Figaro’s systems alongside Alex, trying to find what to fix so they could at least reach the top of the canyon. Climbing was out of the question as its walls didn’t provide enough hand holds.
Gaby knew Sid well enough to know that part of his anger was frustration for having his beloved ship damaged. It was his life’s work. But the other part was because at heart, Sid was still a warrior and hated losing, even more, when it meant that his charges –and there was no doubt in Gaby’s mind that Sid looked at her and Alex in that way – were stuck in a dangerous place and he couldn’t do a thing about it. She walked towards him and gave him a hug, startling him. Then she broke the embrace.
“Look, I’m sure you will find a way to fix the ship. Then we will find a way to recharge the cores or replace them. The Scar, and especially the Maze, is famous for possessing crystals of all kinds. I’m sure Alex will figure out which ones could help us to recharge the ship.”
Sid looked at Alex, who shook his head.
“It’s not that easy, Gaby,” the samoharo said.
“What do you mean?”
“If we were at the Thunder Pass, I would just put a lightning rod on top of the ship and catch some energy from the constant lightning and ion storms, even if it meant frying half the circuits. But here? I can’t see how we can recharge the cores, not without a lot of patchworks to avoid systems buckling under the stress of the process,” Sid explained, waving his arms to make his points. “Yes, the crystals of the Scar pack a punch, energy-wise, but they are unstable in their raw shape. Without the proper fixes, we could end up exploding. If we had a self-sustaining core or a regenerating battery to recharge, it would be easier. It’s not like I can plug Alex into the system and ask him to power the thing up.”
Alex looked up as if he had just started to make the calculations in his head.
“Don’t even think about it!” Sid exclaimed, pointing to Alex. “That’s stupid. We don’t know if that’s possible or won’t kill you. I prefer to take my chances with the crystals lying around here.”
The Withered King Page 16