He had expected them to scramble to get the ‘ladder’ contraption together, but the three of them moved as if they had been training for this for years. Ral’s hands felt numb. They had to act this way since… since the whole world was relying on this. Suddenly the bent length of flexible reeds he crouched on felt silly and inconsequential.
He gripped the freerunner staff harder, willing the metal tip at the end to an ever sharper point. The runes along the length rippled in light. Rask must have seen it because the old captain clapped at his shoulder in a familiar, comforting way. “Don’t let your sister outshine you, little sun,” he rumbled. “Or we won’t stop hearing about it.”
Ral managed to give his old mentor a weak smile.
There were more adjustments to the ‘ladder’. Ral shifted back slightly and they leaned slightly left. Verne and Rask grunted at the effort of keeping the contraption taut. He tried to align his view with the staff to the point in space where Aris’s smoke hand seemed to clutch at something. When Ral stilled his solute even slightly, he could see a glimmer between the smoke fingers reaching out to him.
“I’ll be right there,” he muttered.
The screams of the Unseeing grew louder. There was not much time to waste.
“Do it,” he shouted. His stomach lurched at his own words. “Now!”
The reed platform pressed into his feet and at the very last moment he mustered up every last bit of effort into launching off of it. Pain flared at his knees at the combined pressure but he ignored it, pushing it further than he did at practice.
There was no water to catch him this time. There will be no do over. He flew through the sky and he straightened his body out as much as possible. Air whipped past him and the glimmer between the smoke fingers rushed at him.
He can feel it. He can almost see it. Smoke swirled and grew denser around it, as if Aris was trying to create a target for him to hit. It also seemed like it was moving downward, as if she was trying to push it as far down as possible.
He could hit it. He could feel it. As he rapidly approached, he shifted his position to rear back with the freerunner staff in his hand. Ral fought against the fear of being untethered and ungrounded and concentrated every bit of his manus ability into his arm, shoulders and back. Then he flung his staff as hard as he could and it shot like an arrow into the exact space Aris indicated.
A light flared. The glimmer was still there. Ral realized the leverage of the ‘ladder’ and his jump ran out and he was starting his descent down to the Heart below - easily a ten story drop.
He started dropping the moment he realized he failed. There was no feeling that the solute was shattered even if he hit it.
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A shout floated by him and Ral turned just in time to see a second freerunner staff hurtling at him. He caught it and without thinking, willed the metal tip into a point and flung it as hard as he could again, this time with a desperate scream.
The solute exploded, the sensation rippling through the physical air and the Great Solvent. A strange sound groaned through the air as Ral felt the tension of despair and hopelessness dissolve. He started to panic as his descent started to speed up.
No, he had expected this. He tried to angle it so that maybe he could land on his legs at least, even if it meant it would cripple him for life. But he was most likely going to die.
Thick smoke engulfed him and suddenly his stomach stopped dropping at his extreme descent. He looked up and was shocked to see Aris’s face looking down at him.
It was her normal face and it looked real too, as if she was made of flesh and blood, not smoke. She had her normal gray eyes. Her hair swirled, mixed and disappeared with the smoke around them.
“We did it,” she said.
“You saved my ass,” Ral gasped. He was having a hard time staying oriented in what seemed to be Aris’s smoke form, but he could see through the translucence that she was slowly moving towards a roof and was going to lower him down on it.
But then his heart sank when he realized why she was moving him there. He first saw Verne sprinting over the neighboring rooftops to reach the one they were approaching. Then he spotted the body lying on the shingles.
Rask was already dead. He was covered in blood and his opened eyes stared up. When Aris finally dropped him onto the roof, she stayed floating in her smoke form above them, making it look like Rask was staring at her.
“He convinced me to fire him up too,” Verne said after he approached, his voice cracking. Of course, the freerunner was the one who tossed him the second staff. Of course Rask would have a contingency plan.
“He saved us all,” Ral whispered.
“I couldn’t catch him,” Aris said. “Promise you’ll bury him back in Caelis, where he belongs.”
“We will,” Ral said, frowning at his sister. She didn’t return his look. “He was as much a parent to you as he was to me.”
“I can’t,” Aris looked up. It was then Ral saw that her smoke form trailed all the way back up to the dark void still in the sky. The eye itself was gone, but a slowly dissolving dark smudge remained with the oddly solid smoke trailing into it. “I have to go.”
“No. You have to come back.”
Aris smiled, but she looked the saddest he had ever seen her. “No, I was only able to go to Mind because of Heel’s eyes. His power. But I’ve used all that up.”
“But you’re here right now,” Ral insisted.
“No, this is a projection of sorts,” Aris said. “I’m still up there, somewhere. Trapped.” She paused. “I’m glad I got to see both of you.”
“No. Don’t do this to me,” Verne murmured.
The smoke shifted and a gray hand reached out to stroke the Sekrelli’s cheek. The image of her face turned to look at both of them individually. “Goodbye, brother. Goodbye, Verne. Tell Camaz… tell him I’m sorry.”
And with that, the image of Aris disappeared into the fading smoke. Ral and Verne sat on the roof for a long while after that and watched the smoke disappear with the closing Gate in the sky as if hoping Aris would reappear.
But she never did.