Aida stumbled, coughing, as the hallway shuddered and rained dust. Another cracking boom echoed as more of the dome atop Jaxestack crashed down to shudder the pillar of rock to its watery roots. Dim white light swayed and threw stark shadows in the gritty air as the lamps carried by the refugees she now led through the dark maze of tunnels honeycombing the rock steadied themselves. When the lights stilled, a dark, seething shape panted at the end of the hallway.
Shuddering with revulsion, Aida growled a hummed up to a shout as the monster lurched towards them. Having already nearly killed them the first time they crashed into one of the things, she focused the tone tightly to avoid caving the tunnel in on top of them. Digging mangled men, women, and children out of bloody rubble would remain yet another experience of this chaotic flight from the dome she had no desire to repeat.
The demon or monster or whatever they called the awful things splattered against the wall, the body dissolving into threads of black flesh studded with bone fragments and jagged teeth. Whatever these things were made from or born as, they didn't die like anything else. Before it even hit the floor it began dissolving into its constituent fibers, liquids, tendon threads, bone shards, and an awful lot of black goopy stuff. They splashed through and shielded their heads from the dripping remnants of the thing as they pushed deeper into the stack.
"Are we even going the right way?" Aida said, turning to the pale-skinned, beautiful red-headed woman she'd rescued from a thing proportioned roughly half octopus, a third wolf, and the rest ugly not long after they'd left the dome. "I have no friggin' clue where the hell we are."
"Almost there, Dynast," the woman said. "A few more sets of stairs then we should be at the cavern where Jaxe's pleasure barges moor."
"Never would have thought yesterday that the height of my day today would be not being eaten by tentacle monsters," Aida said, jogging towards said stairs with Ghillie a step behind her and who knew how many servants, ex-slaves, Wretches, and citizens of Jaxestack packed in the hallway behind her.
Fortunately, no more beasties waited for them on the stairs. Within a few minutes she stumbled down a final flight to see the beautiful sight of dim sunlight streaming in through the wide, short tunnel leading from Jaxe's private cave-harbor to the wider ocean beyond. Sunlight reflected off the quietly-fizzing water, casting silver ripples across the walls and vaulted, rough-carved roof overhead. Three large, elaborately-carved barges and a dozen smaller canoe-like boats bobbed at simple stone quays. Aside from her, Ghillie, and a couple hundred desperate survivors spilling out from the stairwell about her, the place sat empty.
"The largest barge is missing," the redhead said, pointing at a gap big enough to fit two of the smaller barges. "I would guess that all the sailors jumped aboard and left together a while back."
"Smarter than we are then, I guess," Aida said. "Let's follow their lead, make like a banana, and get the fuck out of here."
She turned and ratcheted her strings up a couple notches to address the whole mob spilling from the stairwell. "If you know how to sail in even the slightest degree, head over there. Everyone else, split up among the barges."
"Where will we go?" a man's voice called. "Thornspire is overrun with monsters. I saw it with my own eyes!"
"They climbed straight up the sides of Broadcliff and went in through the balconies, ate the place from the bottom up!" another called, voice on the fragile edge of hysterical.
She tried to speak over the growing clamor, but people began to panic. Within seconds, they were pushing, jostling, and knocking each other over in their sudden haste to get to the barges.
"Stop!" she boomed, the force of her voice knocking half the crowd over. She kicked her voice down a couple notches after, tuning to a level that reverberated around the room to maximize effect without breaking anything or anyone. "If you are coming with us then you will be calm. Freak out again and start shoving each other like that again and you get the important job of staying here as monster bait while the rest of us sail away."
That seemed to get their attention pretty quick.
A remarkably orderly process began as they shuffled towards the barges. A handful of individuals wandered over where she'd indicated sailors to go. They proved an odd mix of rough-looking, sun- and wind-weathered deck hands contrasted with dark-skinned, elaborately dressed noble-types whose experience probably consisted of tooling around in sporty yachts yelling at the captain of their pleasure barges while banging the servants.
Seeing the two groups standing shoulder to shoulder made her want to laugh. Until the nobles began glaring at the menials until their 'lessers' stared at their toes and shuffled away from them self-consciously.
"Um, nope. None of that," Aida said, walking up and flicking a dark-skinned noble woman in the nose-ring. She supposed they were called Kin or Verser Ladies or something, but as their current occupation generally consisted of running for their lives, the number of shits she had to give was even more depleted than usual near-zero threshold. She suddenly realized by her amount of internal swearing, she was stressed out. Considering, she only seemed to be effective while dealing with a crisis, maybe she needed to swear more.
She tweaked her voice to resonance she hoped would rattle the nobles' teeth as she addressed them. "If you disdain them so much, I'll let you stay separate from them on the barges-"
Their faces perked up at that and several opened their mouths to speak. Their sudden hope made her want to vomit.
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"-by you staying here while we sail away. Monster bait, remember? You want to be the boss, stay here where you're the boss... at least until a demon with the munchies or whatever comes to quibble over whose in charge while munching on your guts. You get over the gunwales and onto a ship, get over yourself first. Help us all get through this or take your chances here. Any objections?"
Half-a-dozen jaws clamped shut at once.
"Right. Let's get this sorted."
Within tenish minutes they'd loaded the barges to the brim - the huge, ornate craft riding disconcertingly-low in the water. She worried a bit about it for a moment, then shook her head. There was no way in hell she was going to leave anyone behind so they'd just have to stay calm and not capsize the things.
As she found herself a spot near the aft of one of the ships with Ghillie standing in her usual alert mode like a tiny, camouflaged guardian angel. While everyone settled in, she found an unexpected few minutes with nothing to do but to reflect.
Jaxe was dead. She'd expected to feel exultant, righteous, vengeful, or anything, really. She just felt empty. Revenge and resentment had fueled much more of what she'd accomplished since the flight from Heaven's Tread than she'd thought. Now that she'd taken the bastard out with anticlimactic suddenness, it felt like she'd lost an engine and a rudder both.
Then Ocyl being her dad landing right after... damn. She reached into her pouch and traced the shape of the chess piece, then pulled out the can she'd stuffed in beside it as they'd fled the rapidly-destabilizing white dome a couple hours that felt like a couple days ago. Though she'd idly wondered about her missing father since she was old enough to formulate the thought, she wasn't the sort to dwell overly on, well, pretty much anything. In spite of that, having the blank piece of her past suddenly filled in felt like... like an ancient, dusty chest found locked in the basement that popped open unexpectedly and was found to hold... what? A hole in her past gaping her entire life had been filled, but like a new filling in a tooth, she couldn't help at feeling its roughness and newness. Relief? More confusion? Comfort at finally knowing and discomfort at who it turned out to be. Who ever expected your dad to be a five- or six-hundred year-old borderline sociopath ruler of his own universe?
When she stirred from her reverie, the first barge already floated down the tunnel, the sailor-types there using long hooked poles to snag the rope-lines anchored periodically along the walls to grab on to and pull upon to haul themselves out towards sea. All of them kept glancing back at the stairs, waiting for the flood of monstrosities they just knew had to spill out at any moment. Aside from the occasional faint, echoing scream, muffled cracks and thuds from far above as the last of the dome collapsed, and the soft, sussurant noise a couple hundred frightened people made while preparing to flee their home, the stack remained still and silent.
As she gave the order to push off, Ghillie tugged at her sleeve and pointed towards the water near the third barge.
Something sleek and dark slid through the water, moving swiftly and silently towards the wallowing craft.
"Look out!" Aida shouted, thrumming her strings up. A jagged lump hit her stomach as she realized her sonic attacks would probably do little to something ninty-percent submerged and anything strong enough to hurt whatever that thing was would probably blast the barge to flinders in the process.
She turned to Ghillie as their own barge sluggishly drifted away from the dock. "Ghillie, can you help them somehow?"
No more than you. She tapped at a needle tassel dangling from a sleeve and gestured towards the aquatic horror suddenly putting on a burst of speed as it neared the doomed barge. Monsters and demons made different. Slivering Way won't do much, especially against something that size.
People spotted it. The screaming began. Everyone pushing against everyone else to get back a shore. More than a few fell into the water, thrashing either from lack of swimming know-how or due to being attacked by who-knew what. A handful of brave souls drew swords and pushed towards the rail to face the monster, but the thing couldn't be smaller than a killer whale by what Aida could make out in the gloom and was likely ten times the size.
Aida looked away. Gritted her teeth. Forced herself to look back and watch.
The monster hit the barge below the waterline, the force of its impact cracking the vessel like an egg. Amid a chorus of a hundred screams, the deck cracked and angled into two rapidly-angling slides. Desperate people clung to the polished brass railings to delay their fate or scrambled and leapt for the docks. Most churned in water suddenly full of darting shapes and thick with blood. Aida didn't know if the smaller shapes were tentacles, smaller monsters following the big one, or something else, but she felt sick regardless.
A few dozen survivors made it back on the stony flat that served as a dock and raced for the stairs. Apparently the commotion had caught the attention of horrors higher in the stack, however, for huge, twisted things strained against one another to push down the steps. Those who had made it ashore crashed into each other then froze, paralyzed by the Sophie's choice of death on land or water.
Unable to watch the horror and carnage anymore, Aida thrummed her strings to maximum amplitude as fast as she could. The moment the barge she rode reached the mouth of the tunnel, she gripped the rail tightly, braced her legs, and screamed at full volume. Stone shattered, bodies flew, and the ceiling began an immediate cascading collapse. Falling stones thundered into the water, smashing the aquatic horror to a pulp and surging a wave that propelled their barge down the tunnel like a spitwad down a straw. The screams of the doomed cut off mercifully quickly, drowned in the splash, crash, and crunch of falling stone.
When their barge cleared the stack, people frantically set to paddling with oars, planks, silvered serving trays, or anything else that might serve to push them a tiny bit further from the stack. Ahead of them, the occupants of the other barge did the same as the three small, square sails on each craft caught wind. A few dozen other boats, galleys, and barges of various shapes and sizes pushed towards the sunset. Aida figured they knew better than her where to go and shouted, perhaps unnecessarily, for the barges to head that way.
When they'd gotten a kilometer or two from Jaxestack, the entire immense pillar of stone suddenly shuddered and groaned. Some combination of the dome's collapse at its apex and Aida's scream detonating in its bowels apparently broke something fundamental in the honeycomb of the stack. With the exaggerated slowness of the immense, massive fragments sheared off and fell to the sea or formed long cracks and tilted off like falling skyscrapers. The long trolley ropes or wires running off towards nothing ripped and plummeted, ending dangling from\ nothing thirty or forty meters away from where the stack's peak once stood.
Immense waves churned the oceans surface into chop. For a moment, she thought the wallowing barges might capsize, but as the craft somehow stabilized, they found themselves propelled an extra half-a-kilometer.
Within minutes, only a jagged outcropping of broken stone rose from the waves amid a cloud of settling dust. Jaxestack was no more.