A horde of fliers and bone airships flew toward the Sleeper, which stood so massive it might as well have been the sky. Its inhuman howl was so loud its ripples could literally be seen as they shook the air. The entire city lurched.
The platform collided into a building with a deafening ring of steel. Gravity fled as Cross was lifted into the air to hang weightless for a moment before he came down painfully on his chest. The air was knocked from his lungs. He felt like he'd been pitted. His entire body was a bruise, and his left arm had gone numb because of his shoulder wound.
The platform tilted. It must have lodged into the building it struck, but it was still propelled by its arcane turbine engines, which, unable to propel the device forward, instead pushed one end of the disc higher into the sky.
With nothing to grasp onto, Cross slid down the platform. His stomach lurched.
Cross collided with a low set of steel poles that jutted out of the deck like quills. The impact sent sharp pain through his ribs and his back. He turned his body and propped his feet onto the poles. The ship hung at an angle that grew steeper by the moment as one end continued to climb. Vampires and consorts fell from the platform.
Above him, the vampire sentry howled in rage. It slid down the deck with controlled speed and held its claws out like a raptor's talons.
Ekko came out of nowhere and tackled the vampire. Her claws took it in the throat, and as it turned to lash back at her she tore its head from its body.
She looked at Cross. Her skin was deathly pale, and her claws were easily seven inches long in hands too large for her slender frame. Her eyes were black orbs without pupils. Her mouth was large, and lined with razor-sharp fangs.
Cross almost felt the connection between them. His vision flashed, and for a moment he saw himself in something like a bloody heat signature through her eyes. He tasted blood in the air. For the briefest of moments, Cross gazed into the minds of the vampire collective. He recoiled at the hundreds of vampires across Krul who worked in tandem as the shadow called Dra'aalthakmar approached. The twisted and alien hive-mind of the undead nearly tore his consciousness apart.
Not now, a voice came. Ekko's voice. She spoke inside of him. Now we have to go.
The platform pushed against tall Krul structures and continued to tilt: it was nearly vertical. Cross pushed his back against the floor of the platform and kept his feet on the metal bars. He felt like his body could fly into the air at any second. Ekko hung at an odd angle, with her claws stuck into the steel so that she hung like a sinuous ape.
Krul was in chaos. Buildings shifted and folded into defensive stances. Metal shells erected like insect carapaces and lent Krul the appearance of a metropolis of iron beams. Razorwings with steel-tipped claws moved in flotillas toward the attacking shadow, and their armored vampire riders assaulted the Sleeper with nail guns and handheld bone cannons. Airships made of ossified bone and dark iron launched explosive harpoons and razor-wire nets, necrotic torpedoes and pyroclast phalanx missiles.
Everything that was launched simply vanished into the Sleeper's form, swallowed into its dismal midnight heart. The mass of vaguely humanoid shadow didn't make a counterattack. It didn't need to, when it’s very presence was destroying Krul. Arcane engines sputtered, and stopped. Razorwings were overwhelmed by the maelstrom of psychic effluvia let loose in the city, and the shock of it caused them to fall out of the sky. Chains buckled and snapped their links, which shattered into steel shards that fell like rain into the darkness of the city below.
The air tasted like smelted iron. Cross stared into that mass of murderous shadow, and he saw oblivion.
There, Ekko commanded. He tore his eyes away. His feet slipped, and he desperately clutched onto the pitted steel at his back. Vampire bodies dropped hundreds of feet and faded to writhing slivers before they vanished into the obscurity of the distant poison fog. Cross shook so badly it was a wonder he hadn't fallen himself.
Cross! Ekko yelled into his mind. Go!
“ Go?!” he shouted. His voice was hardly audible in the groaning dirge of the Sleeper. “Where?!”
Ekko pointed. Directly below them, maybe thirty feet down, was the smaller sentry vessel with the prisoners tied to the bottom of the hull. Kane was already in the open bowl of the vehicle, locked in hand-to-hand combat with the Doj vampire. One of the females lay headless over the lip of the giant metal raft, one piloted the vehicle using some sort of console at the center of the vessel, and the third female, in spite of having lost an arm, pulled herself up from the floor of the open cockpit. She moved towards Kane’s back with her one set of claws bared.
Ekko took hold of Cross' arm and pulled him away from the platform, and into empty air. Cross would have protested, but all that came out was a panicked yelp.
He and Ekko plummeted through open space. Ekko held him as they went, twisted her body under his and took the brunt of the impact when they collided loudly with the vessel below. Ekko's mostly undead body was as hard as iron. Cross’ head hammered, and his arm felt like it was about to pull clean away from his body.
The smaller ship listed to the side, and he heard panicked screams from the prisoners secured beneath it.
They'd landed right next to one of the motor guns. The vampire pilot screamed and hissed at them. The other female saw them, stopped, and turned.
Go! Ekko barked. She pushed Cross out of her way, and he barely managed to shoot out his hand and grab hold of the motor gun instead of falling over the side.
Ekko and the one-armed vampire attacked each other with vicious claws. The pilot pulled a large-bored pistol from her holster and, with one claw still on the control panel, aimed it at Ekko.
Cross spun the motorgun around so that its massive rotating barrels aimed inwards, at the pilot. It wouldn't work, and he knew it. Vampire weapons were specifically encoded so that the living couldn’t use them, so that they wouldn't activate if touched by living hands.
But Cross was bonded to Ekko, and that seemed to be good enough.
The gun creaked and swiveled and seemed to start firing before Cross even pulled the trigger. The rapport was ear-shattering. Thick metal bolts hammered back and forth and rocked the craft. Cross had to hold on for dear life so that he wasn't thrown over the side. Heavy bone-and-iron nails shot out with staccato force and turned the vampire pilot's torso into a cloud of meat. Ekko dove down as Cross swiveled the gun up and stopped firing. His hands ached from the force of the motorgun’s motion.
The ship lurched for a moment before Ekko pulled herself away from the one-armed vampire and gained control of the vessel.
Kane and the vampire giant fell against the lip of the open cockpit. Cross brought the weapon to bear on the other female and fired. The roar and grind of the motor gun was overwhelming. When the smoke cleared the other vampire was gone, cast over the side by nail fire.
The male vampire snarled. It elbowed Kane in the face and reached for Ekko. It stood just behind Ekko’s body, preventing Cross' shot. He felt his spirit course and surge against his skin like saltwater, and he almost took hold and channeled her before he remembered that he wore no implement. He'd burn them both to cinders if he used magic now.
Kane pulled a saber from the vampire's belt, and in a fluid motion he hacked its arm off at the elbow. The brute turned to face Kane, and while it was distracted Ekko lobbed off its head with a swipe of her ample claws. Kane threw what was left of the vampire over the side.
In spite of the terror in his eyes when he gazed at Ekko, Kane wrapped her tightly in his arms. Cross couldn't hear what was said — the grind of collapsing metal and the sky-shattering call of the Sleeper drowned everything out — but she moved as if ashamed, as if she didn't want him to see her.