Ryn was brought out of sleep by the sound of screaming, explosions and crunching wood.
At first he thought he was having another nightmare. The last two times he had been unconscious he had had nightmares of his mother and father being killed and his hometown burning.
But as he blinked awake and peered at the nightstand next to the bed he lay in, then over at the stirring form of Sagar in the adjacent bed, Ryn realised that the sounds were real.
Not again. His chest constricted; a shockwave of distress shot through him.
“Sagar!” he cried. “Get up! Someone’s attacking the inn!”
“Mmmmbbbrrr...wha?” said Sagar.
Another explosion sounded, and more screams followed, high-pitched and hysterical.
Sagar’s exposed eye opened wide and he scrambled around then fell out of bed in a tangle of sheets, banging his head on the floor. “Ow!”
In a moment he was up again, pulling on his shirt and jacket. “What in the hells is happening?”
“I don’t know!” said Ryn, hurriedly shoving himself back into his shirt. “It must be the Empire!”
“The Empire!? That’s ridiculous! We’re safe from the Empire here! Imfis pays her levies!”
Another explosion outside. The room shook and dust dislodged from the ceiling, tickling Ryn’s nose. More screams. Shouts.
Nuthea burst through the door, Elrann behind. Both their faces were pale white.
“The ship,” said Nuthea and Sagar at the same time.
Sagar strapped on his sword-belt and rushed out the door. Nuthea and Elrann followed without another word.
Ryn went after them. He hurtled down the stairs , past the desk at the front of the house where the innkeeper knelt on the floor with his head in his hands, back onto the cobbled streets of Ast.
He looked up into the sky and nearly fell over from shock.
Not just one broad black Imperial airship with pointed prow and cannons protruding from each side, but a whole fleet of them.
He counted at least five, and those were just the ones he could see from his current position.
They rained cannonballs on the city, bright flashes erupting from their hulls, emitting thunderous echoes and sending clouds of debris into the air.
But they were raining down something else as well. From the front of one of the ships Ryn saw a jet of flame spurt out, like a dragon’s breath, spraying down onto the buildings of Ast and setting them alight.
He stood mesmerised by the violence.
“Ryn, come on!” Nuthea called from somewhere ahead.
His legs were heavy. For a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to move them, but then his body came back to him and he darted forwards, pulse pounding between his ears.
As they ran they had to weave in and out of people stumbling out of their houses, looking up and wailing in terror, or dashing this way and that trying to find shelter, or just standing frozen in panic.
“Stay with me!” yelled Sagar over his shoulder. “I know the way back to the airfield!”
They ran round corners, down alleys, through streets, jumping over sacks, sidestepping the panicked citizens, ducking their heads instinctively whenever another cannon blast sounded and splinters and dust were thrown into the air. Ryn had never run so fast in his life.
It’s happening again, he thought as he ran. Wasn’t it enough that he had lived through one Imperial attack already? Why was he having to live through another one? Would he live through another one?
Eventually they made it back to the airfield at the edge of the city, its perimeter marked by the little stone cottage that the airship marshal they had met the day before lived in.
All of the moored airships that Ryn could see were on fire.
“Where is she? Where is she?” cried Sagar, charging into the field of flaming ships.
“Sagar!” someone called to him in a choked voice.
The marshal, Roldo, a little way away, crawling on his hands and knees. He coughed like he had swallowed some of the smoke. A big gash on the side of his face bled down onto his black leather coat, soaking it even darker in blotches. “Get out of here! Run,you fools! Run for your lives! They went for your ship first!”
“What?!” said Sagar, and kept on running into the airfield.
They ran with him past more of the burning vessels, black smoke billowing from them, some smashed to pieces, some with men on fire jumping off their decks to break their legs on the ground, until they reached Wanderlust.
Sagar stopped in his tracks and Ryn, Nuthea and Elrann pulled up beside him.
Wanderlust was not on fire.
Instead, soldiers in black armour were moving around on board it. Corpses lay strewn on the deck. Some wore black armour, but the majority of them were unarmoured, wearing skysailors’ leathers. Puddles and spatters of blood decorated the spaces between them.
And there in the midst of them, stood in the middle the main deck, was a hulking, unhelmeted man in black armour, with flame-red hair.
General Vorr.
Ryn did a double take. It was definitely him. He was standing right on the main deck of the airship beneath the centre of its blimp, barking orders at the Imperial soldiers.
The spark in his heart lit the flame of Ryn’s rage, and he leapt forwards, lungs filling with heat.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Ryn, no!” came Nuthea’s voice from behind him. “Don’t! It’s not safe!” But it was far away now, and growing dimmer by the moment.
The palms of Ryn’s hands grew hotter as he cleared the distance to the ship and clambered up the handholds on its starboard side.
Then he was over the rail and shouting “You!”, pointing at the Imperial officer.
Vorr’s head snapped round and his forehead crinkled for a moment before his eyes glinted with the light of recognition.
“The boy from Cleasor!” the Imperial General said disbelievingly. “How did you manage to survive the crash? How did you even get here?”
“General Vorr!” Ryn shouted, fists shaking, heat building. “You murdered my mother! You killed my father! You destroyed my hometown!”
“Did I?” chuckled Vorr. He looked up and to the side. “Yes, I suppose I did…” he said, and rubbed his chin, as if he was considering the most insignificant fact in the world.
“KILL YOU!” Ryn shouted.
He flung his hands palm-out at Vorr and let out a primal roar of hatred.
A jet of flame materialised and shot out towards Vorr.
The flames hit the officer square on, right in the chest. They spread out on his armour and then enveloped him, encasing him in an aura of orange and red as Ryn continued to pour the fire forwards.
He willed his hatred, he willed revenge, he willed death into those flames.
Then Ryn finished exhaling and the flames from his hands disappeared.
His arms quivered where he held them up. The exertion of the fireblast had drained him deeply.
It took a moment, but then the smoke around Vorr cleared, leaving...
...the Imperial officer, still standing, just as he had been before, a malevolent, sharp-toothed grin twisting up his round, red-headed features.
Ryn’s legs nearly gave way.
“N...no…” he stammered.
“Pitiful little peasant,” said Vorr with a leer, in his deep, well-spoken voice. “Didn’t you think that I would touch the Fire Ruby for myself? Can’t you see? We have a whole battalion that can project fire now. We’re going t conquer the whole world! This invasion of Imfis is just the beginning! Haha!”
With that outburst of jubilation, he flung out one of his massive hands in Ryn’s direction, launching a fireball through the air.
Ryn felt the force of the fireball crash into his face and knock him backwards to the ground. The back of his head hit the deck and stars danced in his vision for a moment.
He put his hands to his face, but he was not burned, and he felt neither pain nor heat there.
He pushed himself back to his feet.
Vorr loomed over him. “Ah, yes. Of course. You have touched the Ruby too, so you are also impervious to the kiss of fire. Not to worry. I have other ways of ending your worthless life.”
Ryn watched in horror as Vorr reached behind himself, clasped a round steel hilt from between his shoulders, and slowly drew from a scabbard on his back an enormous, wide, long, black sword. The same sword that had pierced his mother’s heart. It seemed to take an age just to slide out of its sheath with a long sliding scraaaaape of metal, then flashed in the light from the burning airships as Vorr drew it back, ready to kill.
Ryn was faintly aware of Imperial soldiers standing in a circle around them, blocking his escape. He did not know if he had the energy left to run.
“Allow me to send you to the same place that Mummy and Daddy went with this, then,” said Vorr. He paused, and sucked in his lower lip for a moment. “Although...you don’t happen to know where the captain of this ship went, do you? Or that Manolian hussy we locked you up with?”
Ryn remained rooted in place by despair. He had nothing left to say.
Mum. Dad. Cleasor.
“No?” said Vorr. “Oh well. I’ll find them soon enough—if they’re alive to be found, that is.”
Vorr’s blade sliced through the air towards Ryn.
The world slowed.
He was about to die.
Words passed through his mind.
Mum. Dad. Cleasor. I failed you. What a stupid way to die.
Something slammed into Ryn’s side and he was pushed off his feet and sent skidding along the deck, out of the way of Vorr’s swordswing.
He landed with his back against the ship’s rail and looked up to see what had happened.
Stood atop the opposite rail was Sagar, two curved swords drawn in a stance of open provocation of the Imperials, jaw set in defiant fury.
What happened? thought Ryn. What did he hit me with?
“Run, you idiot!” Sagar shouted at him. “Run, pup, run!”
“It’s the skycaptain!” Vorr bellowed. “Get him! Hurt him, but remember, we want him alive!”
Imperial soldiers rushed at Sagar.
He brought both his swords down through the air and a gust of wind flew out from where they moved, flowing across the deck, knocking the soldiers over, making Vorr stumble and pressing Ryn back against the rail again.
What?
“Ryn!” someone called. “This way!”
Ryn looked over the rail. Nuthea, Elrann. They had run round to the other side of the ship and were beckoning for him to go with them.
His legs remembered how to move and he ran to the handholds and scrambled over the rail. He flew down them but slipped and lost his grip a few metres from the ground, dropping and landing with a roll as the breath was knocked out of him.
“Quick as you can, please, Ryn!” called Nuthea as with a wave of her hand and a crack she sent a lightning bolt back at the soldier coming down the handholds after Ryn. He screamed and fell to the ground from a much further height than Ryn had.
Ryn did not need to be told twice. He made it up again and dashed for Nuthea and Elrann. They sprinted full tilt away from Wanderlust, through the burning ships. Sagar joined them, running too. Shouts and cries followed, but these were soon lost in the noise and chaos of the burning, besieged city. They made it out of the airfield into the residential area that bordered it.
“Follow me!” Sagar took the lead.
Ryn kept pace with the others, lungs prickling agony. His fire-hurl had sapped most of his energy but it had not completely exhausted him this time, and he still had just enough left to run for his life. But it hurt like hell all the same.
Gradually the brick houses changed to steel warehouses, to wooden shacks, to a slum of tents, most of them now abandoned, to grassy fields. Their pace slowed a little once they had made it out of the city and they looked round to check that they weren’t being pursued, but still Sagar did not let them stop.
Ryn ran on, though his legs were starting to seize up and he thought he could taste blood at the back of his throat.
Run Ryn, run away, live to fight another day. Live to train another way. Live to find Vorr again and make him pay.
The rhyme bore him on.
Finally when they were under the trees of a little wood at the foot of a hill and had gone some distance into it, Sagar let up and allowed them to stop.
Ryn collapsed on the grass and lay on his back, panting deeply.
The others hit the ground too and breathed hard like they’d just come up for air from having almost drowned.
They all lay there for Ryn did not know how long, panting and looking up at the trees.
At some point Sagar passed round a flask from somewhere about his person. It stung Ryn’s throat and he guessed it was rum, but he didn’t care about the pain—it was good just to drink something.
After a long time, their breathing slowed. One by one they got to their feet with difficulty. Elrann. Sagar. Nuthea. And Ryn.
In the distance they could still hear the faint sounds of explosions and people shouting.
They looked at each other without saying anything, holding silent counsel. Elrann’s bottom lip was wobbling slightly. Sagar’s face was red and his exposed eye had a manic, bloodshot look. Nuthea was still white as a sheet.
Cannonball-shocked, Ryn supposed. She had stayed so calm when the airship they had been imprisoned on had been attacked. But she had thought that her ‘countrywomen’ were coming to rescue her then. And this time, it wasn’t just an airship that had been attacked, but a whole town. And she had lost her means of transportation back to her homeland.
“Come with me,” said Sagar, breaking the silence at last. “There’s a clearing further up this hillwith good views of the city.”
He turned and left. Ryn looked at the women for a moment, and they followed Sagar.
Now they were safe, or at least hoped they were safe, they were able to take the walk up the wooded hill more slowly. Ryn’s breath still came in ragged gasps and his legs ached something awful, not to mention his lungs, his chest and his head. But at least he was able to walk.
In time the thin, gangly trees parted and, sure enough, revealed a sloped clearing. A short trek up, and they were able to sit and look down on the leafy wood they had just hiked through, and beyond it the slums, the industrial quarter, the airfield and the burning town of Ast, wreathed in smoke, with no less than twelve black airships hovering over her. People moved about it or streamed away from it like ants fleeing a flaming anthill. Beyond that, the grey soil faded into a sandy crescent, and beyond that the blue of the Leviathan’s Channel could still be glimpsed glittering in the morning sunshine, a beautiful backdrop to the scene of terror and destruction before it.