The swooping sensation in my stomach suggested we were falling alarmingly fast.

Byron channeled a long burst of intense flame. It stabilized us, but we began to drop again the moment he paused.

“Bye-bye! Keep that fire going!” his grandmother shouted.

Byron obeyed, but looked worried. “I can do this for a while, but not forever!”

“There must be a tear in the envelope,” said Kurt. He jumped and placed a hand on the edge of the fabric, which glowed briefly as he used Repair. “There is. It’s too big for me to fix from here. If I can hold the edges together, I might be able to do something. Davi, carry me out?”

“Yeah…” Davi said. “I don’t understand, though. I just came in from a patrol sweep and the skies were clear. There wasn’t anything that could have caused even a little tear, let alone a big one.”

“HOLY SHIT!” John yelled.

He was staring over the side of the basket and a fucking bench flew past. A blue Force Shield flickered into place just before it hit Frankenair. The shield shattered, but it did its job, slowing the bench enough that it bounced off the fabric before plummeting to the ground.

“What the hell?!” I peered over the edge of the basket.

It didn’t take long to spot the culprit: not many things could launch a park bench more than 3,000 feet in the air.

A monstrous tree dominated the landscape. It had clearly started in the parking lot of a store, then expanded until its growing mass had crumbled the front of the building. Its exterior was a pale pink, making its roiling tentacles look more like flesh than vines. From this height, the building itself was tiny, small enough that the cars around it were barely visible specks, and anything smaller than a car was undetectable. Still, the whipping motions made by a few of the tree’s branches were proof it was at fault… and that it wasn’t giving up.

Davi threw up a set of three force shields, blocking a piece of 4x4 lumber that had been launched toward us like a javelin. “I gotta get into the air! I can’t see well from here.”

I was still peering over the edge, but at her exclamation I turned and grabbed her arm. “Wait! There are flyers coming toward us. Dozens of them, maybe more.”

“Are you sure? I can’t see anything.”

I nodded, pointing. “I can’t see anything with my regular vision either, but they’re really obvious in infrared.”

Davi looked worried. “I can’t fight dozens. Not even dozens of hellbats, and these could be stronger than those. Maybe if Byron-”

The tall man cut her off. “I can’t deal with those and keep the blimp in the sky. Can we turn away?”

John shook his head. “We’re headed almost dead toward the tree. We can veer south, but if it can already hit us, we’ll still be in range for at least five minutes.”

There was a crashing noise as a ceramic birdbath shattered on one of Davi’s force shields. “That’s too long! I can see the flyers now. They’ll be on us by then, and if I stop putting up shields the envelope is toast!”

Byron cut off the flame.

“What are you doing?!” Annie asked. “We’ll crash!”

Byron let off a brief blast of fire. “We’re going down either way, Granny! I’ll get us to the ground safely, and hopefully have some energy left to fight when we land. Get your gear on!”

That last line had been mostly for me. Everyone but Davi needed to grab their weapons, and Kurt, Lottie, and Annie needed to put their helmets on, but I was wearing only exercise gear as I pedaled. I hurried to at least throw on my helmet and grab my weapons. My spear could only be carried, but I’d rigged a loop on my backpack for the hammer I’d gotten during the Challenge. It was good to have options.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Davi yanked away the plastic sheeting we were using as a windbreak, the ties holding it in place giving easily under her enhanced strength. She grabbed Kurt and darted through the opening she’d created.

Smart, I thought gratefully. Bruises or broken bones from a crash are no big deal for the rest of us.

The tree’s projectiles had been missing us since we’d started dropping, unable to predict the stop-start pattern Byron was giving our descent. It probably could have nailed us if it had been focused on us, but it wasn’t. Now that we’d gotten closer, I could see that its roots had burst from the ground in places, wrapping around several buses and trucks. Other tentacle-branches smashed into the ground, and I could see people, small as ants from our height, scurrying away from the impacts.

Eventually, however, our luck ran out.

We’d gotten close - almost within the tree’s reach - and I barely even saw the projectile before it hit us, just a hint of ornamental wrought-iron before Frankenair was jerked backward several feet and then began plummeting.

“Bail out!” John screamed.

I grabbed Lottie and raced toward the edge, leaping free just moments before the basket crashed into the tree’s roots. My reinforced legs absorbed the force of my landing easily, even with Lottie’s extra weight.

We were about a hundred feet from the crashed airship. I could see that John had made it out of the basket: he was on the ground and moving his arm, so he was awake. With his Healing Touch, that meant he should be okay in short order, so I didn’t have to worry about him. Byron and his grandmother were a bigger concern. I didn’t see them on the ground, and if they were still inside Frankenair, they wouldn’t be able to even see if a tentacle was coming to crush them.

I dropped Lottie on her feet. She started stammering apologies… I’m not sure for what.

“No time,” I said. “Stay safe!”

I raced over, grabbing the side of the basket with both hands and pulling a panel away.

Byron was lying in a pool of his own blood, a sheared-off section of aluminum basket cutting through his spine and stomach. His grandmother knelt nearby. Her arm was bleeding, but that seemed to be the worst of her injuries.

Annie turned toward me. When she spoke, her voice was desperate. Shaky. “Help him! Damn fool was trying to protect me.”

I was at his side before she finished speaking, doing more damage as I wrenched him off the frame, then dumping heals into him until the wounds closed and his eyes opened. There’d been no time to clean the injury, but infection was a worry for tomorrow.

I grabbed one of them with each hand, popping the closest wall panel off with a kick. “Come on! If that tree decides to smash what’s left of Frankenair, we’re pancakes.”

We were mere feet from the airship’s corpse when the tree did exactly that, crushing all that remained of our hard work and faithful ship with a horrific noise of screeching metal.

Lottie had been following me over, but had fortunately stopped before she reached the airship itself. She took two steps backward, more emotion on her face than I’d seen since I met her. “We… we have to get out of here!”

She turned away from the trunk of the monstrous tree, then screamed as a giant root burst through the pavement in front of her.

Easier said than done, I thought to myself. What the hell do we do now?

I was pretty sure I was fast enough to get out of here and evade harm, but I couldn’t carry everyone at once. The flyers weren’t the fastest, and they’d all flown up after us… but they’d turned after we’d passed them and were almost back. They were ugly little things: bat-winged naked pink birds. They weren’t too fast or too large, but the swarm that was bearing down on us made that kind of irrelevant. Fighting that number would be… difficult.

“HEY!” A voice I didn’t recognize interrupted my thoughts. “Colonel saw you crash! Got orders to get you inside. Excuse me!”

A man in a military uniform ran up beside us and grabbed Lottie. He was fast. Maybe faster than me?

“Our friends-” Byron panted.

“Someone’s been tasked with retrieving them too. Please move! Got someone holding a tunnel for us, but she can’t keep it open that long. Taking the girl over, then I’ll be back for the rest of you.”

He took off at speed.

“HEY!” shouted Byron, but it was no use. His young cousin was disappearing around a curve in the roots as we spoke.

I grabbed Annie without discussion, ignoring her indignant squawk. What was there to discuss? I didn’t know or trust this guy, but he’d taken Byron’s young cousin. Abandoning her wasn’t an option, and this wasn’t someplace where we could stand around and debate.

I sprinted after our mystery soldier, following him around a root to see a tunnel leading into the center of the tree. The massive trunk was… hollow?

I stared.

The soldier shoved me in the back. “Get her inside and help me grab your friends! It’ll close up soon, and I’ve got a couple stragglers to rescue, too. Aw, fuck!”

Another tentacle was crashing down toward us and he darted away. I moved toward the opening in the side of the tree. A stone collar of sorts was sitting in the opening, growing by the second as an older black woman rested her hands on it. I could see why: she was in a race against the bark of the tree, which was trying to grow faster than the stone collar and seal the opening.

I set Annie down and ran back after the mystery man. He grabbed John and I did the same for Byron.

Going inside a supposedly-invincible killer tree? It seemed like a horrible idea. But there wasn’t any other shelter nearby: the crushed houses and buildings were testament to that. The fact that I could get clear myself hardly mattered, since I wasn’t abandoning John, Byron, Annie and Lottie.

At least these people seemed to have some organization, some kind of plan?

I prayed it was a good one.