It didn’t move, didn’t attack. Just floated, silent and wavering.
Tayel draped over her knees. She held herself up against her thighs, swallowing gasps of air. Everything hurt. Her arms, legs, stomach, chest, neck, head. Even thinking hurt.
“Tayel,” Shy said.
Tayel huffed, pushing off her legs to stand tall and grimacing at the lance of pain through her side. She slogged toward Shy and offered a hand up.
Shy took it. “Is he dead?”
“I…”
“Just don’t touch it.”
“The cloud?”
Shy nodded.
“What is it?” Tayel asked.
“I don’t know; just don’t—” Shy sucked air through her teeth. She winced.
Tayel reached for her, hands hovering, ready to catch Shy if she fell. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I might have broken a rib. Or…” She stopped to squint over Tayel’s shoulder at the sharp whine of screeching metal rising from the rubble pile.
Tayel whipped around. Chunks of destroyed workstations rolled toward the floor as a force pushed upward against the debris. Blood drained from her face. Jace. She ran forward, willing her legs to pump faster, but every footfall was a plod. Her shins burned, her chest ached, her mind raced. A talon broke above the debris, and her breath came out as a cry. She jumped into the mountain of rubble, ignoring the scraping pains across her arms and legs as she scrambled upward.
The talon shoved another plate of warped metal away, and Jace pulled out of the debris, his glassy eyes widening at the sight of her. Her heart leapt. She reached him. She wrapped her arms around his boney frame, around the matted feathers and trembling beak, and pulled him close. He was safe. He was alive.
He shuddered. “I’m sorry!” he squawked.
“Jace—”
“I’m so sorry! I waited until the fighting stopped! I couldn’t — I wasn’t — I couldn’t!”
Tayel shifted slightly to let Shy up the path she’d blazed. “Jace, it’s okay.”
“I — no! I’m so sorry. I — I was so scared. I didn’t — I—” He pressed his beak into her shoulder and babbled incoherently, shivering as every other word became a choked cry.
“It’s okay.” She squeezed him tighter. “It’s okay, Jace; I’m here.”
Shy scooted past Tayel, next to the opening in the rubble Jace had dug out of. She picked up and tossed a bundle of wires from the narrow hole and reeled back after another look downward.
She slapped a hand over her chest. “Alhyt.”
Fehn scrambled halfway out of the opening, teeth clenched and arms shaking as he steadied himself against the wobbling debris. Tayel sighed with relief, but the air caught in her throat as he climbed the rest of the way. Blood seeped through a tear in his coat, under his ribs. She caught the sheen of sweat across his brow in the full light of the room, and how pale his skin had turned.
“Did I scare you?” he grunted.
“You’re bleeding,” Shy said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Couldn’t protect everything with aether, turns out.” He laid his head down and panted.
Jace shifted in Tayel’s arms, looking to Fehn. “I’m so sorry.”
Fehn struggled to wave away the apology, his cyonic fingers shaking with the attempt. “Not your fault, Feathers.” He flinched as Shy pressed her balled up coat to his wound. “Did we win?”
“Barely,” Tayel breathed.
“How bad does it feel?” Shy asked.
“Bad,” he groaned. “Not dead yet, but…”
“Can you move?”
“You’re kidding. Balcruf should carry me, since he” — Fehn hissed — “had the mind to start this whole mess.”
“It would have happened anyway.”
“W-where is Balcruf?” Jace asked.
Tayel frowned at the memory of his scream. Half sunk in Ruxbane’s portal, she hadn’t seen what happened. She adjusted to scan the room. The cloud Ruxbane’s body had morphed into pulsed and wavered and expanded where she’d left it, and swirls of the darkness that comprised it slid to the floor.
“Shy!” she warned.
Everyone looked, and a horrified stillness settled over all of them. The cloud spiraled down the way it had peeled up, and in seconds the ragged, bloodied body that had vanished reappeared. Ruxbane reappeared. He pressed his palm to his forehead, back hunched and jaw set as tendrils of darkness evaporated from his skin — almost like shimmers of heat wavering in the distance. He looked up and stiffened at the sight of everyone.
He let loose an exasperated gasp and half-limped, half-sprinted to the stairs at the back of the room.
Shy jumped to a stand, ripping her compacted polestaff off her belt.
“Wait!” Tayel yelled. “What are you—?”
“We can’t let him get away,” Shy snapped, and she stumbled across the debris, swearing as she slipped downward.
Tayel snapped her head back and forth between Jace and her baton, laying on the ground across the room where she’d dropped it.
“I… I’ll stay with Fehn,” Jace said.
“But what if Ruxbane—?”
“Go, Red,” Fehn groaned.
Tayel squeezed Jace’s shoulder and took off. She had to stop Shy. They needed to leave, while they still could. While Ruxbane was running from them instead of the other way around.
Her legs wobbled, but she made it down the rubble, her heart racing as Shy sprinted up the steps. Tayel panted running to her weapon. Her lungs refused to expand, and every gulp of air only gave her some relief. A flash of white fur pulled her sight rightward in time to see Balcruf stumbling out from behind a still intact workstation, but she didn’t have the breath to cry out. She didn’t even have the energy to feel relief at his safety. He shuffled toward the steps after Shy, crossbow barely lifted in his arms, and Tayel came to a stop above her baton.
She needed to breathe. She hung over her legs — just for a moment. One breath. Two breath. Balcruf’s heavy footsteps plodded up the stairs. Tayel grabbed the mag baton, gritting her teeth at its weight. She ran after him and after Shy, her throat turning raw as she battled to keep enough air in her lungs. She trudged up the steps, each one a mountain, and stumbled through the doorway.
It led to what she could only guess was a flight control deck — the true center of the mothership. The walls were lined in screens, though a huge one dominated the center back wall. Shy and Balcruf stood unharmed in front of a translucent purple shield stretched all the way across the room from floor to ceiling, separating them from the controls and Ruxbane on the other side. He hunched over one of the workstations.
“What happened?” Tayel asked.
“He got to the controls before I could catch him,” Shy said. Her nostrils flared. “Any ideas?”
Balcruf fired an icy bolt at the purple wall. It pinged off on impact, sending a flurry of lavender ripples through the shield.
Tayel shook her head. “No. But we should go.”
“I’d advise against that,” Ruxbane growled.
He limped to the barrier. The wavering darkness still lingered like floating, ethereal leeches across his arms and head, and wherever they rose from, his injuries began to vanish. Blood stopped oozing from the gash on his hairline, both ends of it knitting together toward the center to close. The dark aether was healing him.
“An offer for you, Tayel,” he said. “You come with me, and I won’t crash this ship into the city below, killing everyone left.”
Tayel bit the inside of her cheek, stopping the instinct to grin. It had been the intention all along to destroy the ship once the Varg were freed and the data collected. If the other, larger group from Kalanie succeeded in their escapade, then magi waited below ready to prevent the destruction Ruxbane promised. Balcruf watched her, his grave side glance a warning not to blow their plan.