The captain threw a knife at a startled Dellen. It bit into his coat, tip first, slashed through his steelskin, and bounced off his copper-laced rib cage. He caught it in the air before it clattered to the deck. His torso stung, but not enough to slow him.

Inside, Dellen was screaming. He had been stabbed… Sort of. On the outside, he forced his hands to stay steady, and raised an eyebrow at her, “Is that the best you can do?”

The captain drew back, her face a picture of alarm. “Where did you come from? Who are you? Did Thaddeus send you?”

Dellen felt his world go unsteady. “Of course he did,” he lied. “How else would I have known to steal onto your ship?”

The woman visibly relaxed. “Sorry about the knife.”

Dellen lowered it partway, feeling its weight in his hand. He wasn’t sure it added much to his lethality. “Are you going to throw any more knives, captain…?” He let the words hang in the air as a question.

“Captain Thatch.” She said.

“Thatch.” Dellen repeated to himself, “And who are your lovely companions?”

“Who, Lira and Nessa?” Captain Thatch said as though there was a surplus of people to choose from.

“Lira and Nessa,” Dellen said to himself.

“You seem poorly informed for someone that Thaddeus sent himself.” Captain Thatch said.

A pair of thuds heralded Lira and Nessa returning aboard. Lira’s utility vest left her arms bare to the shoulders. Up close, Dellen could see that steelskin ran from her fingers to the edge of the fabric.

He took note of the blowtorch now tucked at her belt.

“I have new orders for you.” He said, “We need to return to Thaddeus; he’s changed his mind about where he wants the infusers placed.”

Captain Thatch’s face relaxed. “Oh well, that’s alright then.” She half turned to Lira and Nessa. “Hear that, ladies? Thaddeus sent him here to sneak aboard the Nightingale, wait for us to place a few infusers, and then tell us that our orders have changed.”

Lira took out her blowtorch.

Nessa took out a knife.

“Careful. He doesn’t look like much, but those forged hands go all the way up to his chest.”

“That how he took your knife, captain?” Nessa said.

“Bite your tongue.”

“Now, now.” Captain Thatch said, speaking to Dellen again. “Why don’t you just drop that knife and let us resolve this all civilized-like? You wouldn’t fight a woman, would you?” She pulled another blade from beneath her coat.

Dellen bounced the knife in his hand. “You wouldn’t stab a gentleman, would you?”

Lira rushed at him first, her blowtorch flaring back to life. She was fast, but it was apparent that she didn’t have any formal training.

Dellen wove to the side, letting the fire pass nearby him, but miss him entirely.

Nessa ran at him swinging her knife in an untrained wide arc. Fingers still wrapped around the knife, Dellen ducked, letting her well into his guard before he uppercutted her.

He felt her jaw break against his fist.

Nessa dropped like a discarded puppet.

Captain Thatch closed in behind him, “No one, and I mean no one, hurts my girls.” She said in a snarl bereft of mercy.

Dellen spun in time to catch a knife on his left forearm, slicing his steelskin through his coat. The blade scraped down his arm, pushing the fabric and peeling his flesh.

He grimaced and punched her with his right hand, knocking her back into the ship’s wheel.

The entire ship tilted.

For a moment, Dellen relived running on a cog while the ground slid away underfoot.

He slapped a hand onto the deck and locked himself in place.

Captain Thatch held onto the wheel, and Nessa fell overboard.

“Nessa!” Lira screamed.

Thatch did something frantic at the wheel, and the ship’s deck came back to level. “Hold on,” she yelled to Lira.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Lira stopped mid-advance, holstered her blowtorch, and found a handhold.

Captain Thatch tilted the airship’s prow down and accelerated.

Their floodlights lit the gloom below.

Thatch toggled switches at the helm, and Dellen felt his body try to fall behind the ship as it accelerated ahead.

A maze of support bars opened up before them. Thatch wove around the bars, with the ship just missing them.

The Nightingale passed through the last of the supports, then she accelerated through empty space, five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds, following a course straight down.

“There she is!” The captain shouted.

Dellen stared ahead in disbelief. There was a faint outline moving in ahead of them. A second ticked by, and the outline grew larger, Nessa’s falling body.

Thatch’s plan was reckless but obvious: match velocity with Nessa and catch her before they hit the ground.

Dellen didn’t know if they could do it. He didn’t know what affinity Thatch had, maybe Kinematic, Lira held Pyro Aether, useful no doubt for many things, but not rescuing someone. He could, maybe, generate a magnetic pull strong enough to pull her to him, but did he want to help someone who had tried to kill him?

He deliberated for perhaps a second before deciding to try to help; he didn’t know who Thatch, Nessa, or Lira were or why they had agreed to help destroy the city, but he knew that he did not want to be the type of person that left someone else to die when he could save them. He did not want to kill unless he had no choice.

His path clear, if only for now, Dellen watched as the Nightingale drew closer to Nessa.

Thatch roared at Lira over the wind, “When I bring her close, grab her, and I’ll pull up.”

“Captain, that’s crazy!” Lira yelled back.

“Just do it!”

Dellen saw Lira struggling to maintain a grip and prepare to leap for Nessa.

The Nightingale lined up with Nessa.

“Get ready!” Thatch yelled, ignoring Dellen.

Dellen reached out with his free right hand and magnetized it.

Nessa was yanked out of the air and slammed into him, belt buckle first.

“What are you doing?” Lira yelled at him.

Thatch leveled off their descent and brought them to a horizontal cruise.

Nessa collapsed, unconscious on Dellen. He lay her down on the deck and backed away, quickly. Hands up, trying to appear unthreatening.

“I don’t need to fight either of you.”

“Let me burn him, captain.”

“Check on Nessa,” Thatch commanded.

Dellen looked at Nessa; her jaw hung in a way that wasn’t right and made his stomach roil.

“What did you do to her?” Lira screamed at him.

“I’ll remind you that all three of you attacked me, not the other way around,” Dellen said.

“Quiet,” Thatch said, her voice low, but intense, “Both of you, quiet.” She killed the floodlights.

An eerie, quavering call came out of the darkness, then another. It was like an echo coming from all around them. Lights appeared.

Before, Dellen had greeted lights under the city with a feeling like salvation. These lights felt like threats.

Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and drenched the back of his shirt. Fear assaulted him like a tangible entity.

The lights were close, and they pulsed.

Another eerie call intruded.

“Maybe go up?” Dellen said, just loudly enough to be heard over the engines.

“Hold on to her,” Thatch said before she angled the Nightingale as close to straight up as Dellen had ever seen an airship fly.

Dellen heard Lira scramble over to check on Nessa. “One wrong move, and I will burn you.” She said.

“How far down are we?” Dellen asked, doing his best to ignore Lira.

“Free fall like that?” Thatch said, “About twenty seconds spent going straight down? More than a mile.”

“What are these lights around us? What lives down here?”

“Monsters, now stop your talking unless you want to bring them down on us.”

Dellen held his tongue, feeling the much slower acceleration of them traveling up rather than down.

The lights followed them, but Dellen could see them lagging behind; the further they lagged, the more the feeling of irrational fear ebbed. For a moment, Dellen felt like he could relax.

Above them, the abyss began to swirl with activity. The darkness pulsed with a strange glow.

“What in the seven hells?” Thatch muttered.

Dellen squinted at the darkness, trying to see what was ahead.

A cloud of superheated steam rolled over the ship. Dellen flinched and closed his eyes against the attack; he felt his steelskin blister.

The floodlights flared back on, visible through even closed eyelids.

Dellen cracked his eye back open. In front of them was a much larger and entirely metallic cousin to the squids he’d seen in the city. It moved with an unsettling, almost liquid grace.

“Steam Squids!” Thatch yelled. “Hold on to something!” She barked, wrestling with the controls as she tried to navigate through the searing mist, but more bodies appeared, more shapes, more squids.

White knuckled, Captain Thatch gripped the help, “Brace yourselves!”

Before anyone could react, a fresh wave of steam enveloped the Nightingale. Water condensed on the deck where Dellen held on.

Even with the floodlights, visibility was compromised, like they flew through a thick, burning fog.

Dellen felt, rather than saw, the Nightingale veer to the side. He heard the sequential thud of tentacles slapping against the ship. The ship lurched to the side, and a tentacle the size of his torso wrapped over the airship’s side, landing on the deck.

“Cut it off!” Thatch yelled.

The tentacle thrashed about the deck, questing for any warm body.

Dellen took the knife Thatch had thrown at him and leaped at the tentacle, blade first. He hit the tentacle and sheered through perhaps an inch of steel-rich flesh before his knife stopped.

The tentacle slapped him across the chest, knocking him against the wall at the back of the deck.

“Don’t dance with it; cut it!” Thatch yelled at him.

“A little fire might be good right about now,” Dellen yelled at Lira.

“I’m busy here!” Lira yelled, clutching Nessa and spraying fire at another tentacle that had invaded the other side of the deck.

Dellen leaped at the tentacle again, swinging the knife in a wild attack. He hit the tentacle in the same spot where he had cut it before. This time, the blade sank in, and snapped when the tentacle flexed.

The arm slapped him down again, then suckers clenched onto him, lifting him clear of the ship.

A fresh spike of fear raced through Dellen.

The tentacle wrapped around him several more times, pinning his arms against his chest. Dellen kicked his legs ineffectually in the air. “Fire, Lira, fire!” He yelled.

Lira glanced at him, shrugged, and stayed where she was.

The arm holding him pulled away from the ship, and he saw the Nightingale pull away.

Dellen looked around, trying to find anything he could use. All around him was a tumultuous jumble of movement, everything moving too quickly to see or focus on.

The repulsion technique he’d tried to use while navigating under the city, maybe he could use it all around him, and force the tentacle open. Dellen ignored everything around him, and tried to build up the Electrical Aether all around his body in order to push the arms away.

He was standing upright on a railed balcony with the landscape spinning by at an idle pace.