image [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/574524632b8dded535877035/a69c0d02-c86b-45c9-9a6c-672acac79342/Sword+1.png?format=1500w]

63 - Watching The Impossible

* * *

Suni

“Gahhh!” someone screamed from inside the Drossomer, and I cringed. The voice was silenced a moment later by an echoing crunch.

A pang of guilt stabbed through my chest. I’d lured the komodo after those other men; had thrown my bloody coat below deck. They hadn’t been the ones who’d shot down the Stormcrow—probably—and they didn’t deserve to die. But then again, neither had Aristos, nor Elpida, nor any of the others who’d met their end in the Far Wild.

The skyship groaned above and a shadow dropped over me. I swallowed hard and held my breath. There was time to feel guilty later.

Sure, I’d ditched the coat, but I was still bleeding. The wounds were covered in dirt now, would probably be scabbing soon, but I’d bet anything the komodo could still smell them. The coat had been a nice distraction, but it was akin to having a steak when you could take the whole cow. Apparently, the komodo had enough cognitive intelligence to understand that.

A hiss echoed from above and I looked up to find the komodo staring down at me. Seemed the trick of hiding against the skyship wasn’t going to work twice on it.

“Well, shit.”

Hot breath poured over me as the komodo opened its mouth and reached down.

“Fire!”

Several somethings whooshed through the air above me and slammed into the side of the Drossomer, the komodo, and the nearby ground. Javelin-charges, I realized as the hissing of their fuses became apparent.

Javelin-charges that were about to explode.

I tried to run, fell instead, then kicked frantically at the ground, scurrying away.

The charges exploded one after the other in a series of deafening booms. Burning earth and debris whipped past and a concussion blast planted me face-first into the earth.

Everything smelled of burning powder. The blasts had ended but the world was still shaking. Or, at least, it was to me. Shaking and spinning, to go along with the fresh scrapes on my face and my mouthful of dirt.

I spit out the dirt, groaned, and rolled on to my back to look up at where the komodo had been.

A few holes had been blown in the hull of the Drossomer and steady streams of black smoke billowed into the sky from where fires were burning, but the komodo was nowhere in sight.

Too much to hope it was dead.

And then, there it was. The smoke cleared a bit and the komodo stepped down off the Drossomer. The thing’s hide was charred in a few places, but it seemed mostly uninjured. Had none of the javelin-charges hit it? Or had it just not cared?

Ancestors above but the thing was indestructible.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I jumped to my feet, prepared to run again, but even as I did, the komodo turned away from me.

Its gigantic head swung to the side and its eyes fixated on the Dreadbore and the ranks of soldiers gathering around it.

“Go! Get us into the air!” an important-looking person, a commander maybe, shouted on deck. At his urging, the ship began to rise, engines whirring to life. Men clung to its sides like ants, the luckiest or strongest just managing to climb aboard as it rose higher.

The komodo roared and charged.

The Dreadbore was in the air, though, and its reloading ballistae were still targeting the komodo. They fired another volley, peppering the giant lizard and the ground around the Drossomer with javelin-charges. They exploded and the komodo screamed. No doubt all that fire didn’t feel very good. All the while, arrows poured out from the lower decks of the Dreadbore. Most bounced off the komodo’s skin, but the beast didn’t look particularly pleased.

“You’ve lost this fight, big guy,” I said. “Better for us all if you just get scarce now.” Despite everything I’d been through with that big, voracious son of a swindler, I still felt empathy for it. It may have been huge, mean, and endlessly hungry, but in the end, it was just an animal. A predator, doing what predators did. There was no malice in it. No cruelty. That was just how nature went. Nature was a frightening, powerful, ancient thing. It’d been here before us and would persist after us. But today, in this moment, nature had lost. Mankind and machinery would take the day.

The komodo seemed to disagree.

The Dreadbore was readying another volley but the giant sprinted toward it. It shifted its weight backward then reared up on its hind legs and, as I watched, the damn thing jumped. Not high, but high enough. Its front legs slashed across the side of the skyship and its jaws clamped down. The upper deck was crushed, and another beneath it, before the jaws ground to a halt.

“Ancestors above,” I said, watching with mouth agape as men and debris tumbled from the torn hull. They bounced off the komodo on the way down.

The Dreadbore’s engines kicked and whined, straining to lift the ship away, but still the komodo held firm, jaws sunk two decks deep into the thing.

The tendons in the komodo’s throat strained tight and then, impossibly, the beast pulled the skyship down.

All four engines were working overtime, steam beginning to hiss from them, but to no avail. The komodo fell back on to four legs, then jerked hard to the side. The Dreadbore slammed into the earth and its bow caved inward in a shower of splintering wood.

For a moment, there was silence. Felt like the whole camp was frozen, watching the display. Watching the impossible.

Then the komodo reared back its head, opened wide, and roared over the broken corpse of the Dreadbore.

What we were seeing, it shouldn’t have been possible. A skyship, the greatest technological advance mankind had made in a century, against a giant lizard, and the lizard had won. It hadn’t even been close. The komodo’s skin was scorched in some places and a few open wounds were visible, but they looked awfully superficial. The creature certainly didn’t seem to mind them as it gave chase to the men fleeing the wreckage of the Dreadbore.

Soldiers and crewmen alike fled, staggering to their feet and stumbling off the sides of the ship. Those that could still run did so: sprinting, limping, dragging themselves toward the still grounded Drossomer. And me.

Right, I was a part of this. More than just an observer. And I was still in danger. Even more so if the komodo decided to follow the men fleeing in my direction.

A quick survey of the camp revealed the Needlethroat was still grounded, but there were men on deck, readying it to depart. Bospurians, too. Not Cyphites. I’d half expected Senesio to have already reached the ship, to have taken it in some overblown display of heroism. But even as I looked, I realized he was working on it.

The Cyphite prisoners were running toward the ship—were dangerously close to the downed Dreadbore, actually. It looked like it’d just missed them as it crashed. A miracle, considering they were moving so slowly, running in one big, stumbling flock. Senesio was ahead of them, though, and as he reached the Needlethroat’s gangplank, I rose and sprinted toward him.