They break into the hall—her, Lei, and a few of the other soldiers—running down the thin corridor, chasing the commotion.

"Do you think there's an accident?" one of the men is saying to another, heaving a medical bag alongside his sword.

Allayria can think of several heavy things that could have caused the upheaval, not to mention the Gods-only-know-what Qui Wren had packed inside these ships too.

They turn a sharp corner, racing onto the open side deck that wraps around the barracks, the wind blasting them, ruffling their clothes, shifting the blood-flecked debris that is scattered on the floor in front of them. Out, below they can see it: another massive ship pressed against their hull.

"That's Ship Two," one of the soldiers yells, skittering over to the railing, leaning over and looking out. "What the bloody hell are they thinking—?"

But there is something traveling across the sloping stretch of that ship's balloon: small figures clad in red.

Understanding hits her like a bolt in the dark, or the cold, icy touch of water.

This is not an accident.

A door ahead of them busts open, and just as they turn, just as Allayria begins to pull quick, silver strips of metal out of her pocket, a man comes outside.

Ben.

And then there's impact—an arm, thrust across Allayria's chest, pushing her back, pushing her behind, as Lei crowds into her vision, his back to her, facing the man across the way.

But Ben does not move forward; he darts back inside.

Where? Allayria starts, but is caught again as Lei's hands seize her shoulders, pressing, pushing.

"We have to find a way off of here," he yells, the coolness of his voice breaking. "Stay behind me."

"He doesn't have it," Allayria shouts back, still struggling to move around him.

He doesn't have the bow and, without it, he can't break the recurrence of Paragons. He won't risk the wait. He's not here for me.

She grips Lei's sleeve: "He's here for something else."

Whatever it is, he can't have it.

She ducks around the grasp of Lei's fingers, ignoring the way he screams, all fear and fury, as she shoves through the door. The inside of the aircraft is chaos; the presence of outsiders has been registered and the shouts and cracks of wood ring through the decks. Allayria looks around, questing for an indication of where he went—what he's after—and takes the stairs down, scrambling past a tangle of soldiers, over crumpled bodies, and around caved-in doors.

She gives chase when she catches sight of a figure in red, but it is not him, only some other faceless Cabal man whose head she cracks with a swing of steel. Shrieks sieve through the air and she pursues that, pressing out through crumpled walls and around precarious holes to break through to the lower level's outer walkway. There's more blood on the ground here, smeared and smudged with footprints and the wind whips up viciously as the whole contraption lurches, teetering ominously until it rights itself.

She's running, running across the shivering wood, on the metal beams, skidding when she catches the flash of red, when she hears above everything else, the footfall. An alarm blares out into the clouds, the loud bray of a horn, a call of distress, and she hears the horns in the distance—backup. But they are not here yet, and he is right here in front of her, still moving, still seeking something—

A door bursts open at the top of the stairs ahead of them; a masked, red-clad figure stumbles out, hand clutched around the collar of a graying, pale man—the one from the inn.

Ben turns back to see her sprinting up the steps, the wind catching his dark hair up and around his eyes. He says something to the figure who begins to drag the man away.

She can see it in his stance, see the glint of metal sliding out of his sleeve and she careens toward it, running now, climbing—

The unseen body hits her as a force, vaulting her to the side, over, hip hitting the railing, head flinging out, dragging her whole body over until her hand clamps onto the rail, pulling back even as the person leans into her. Allayria's other hand find their shirt, gripping and yanking so that the red-clad figure flies into the air; they plummet over the side and into the long, long descent in her stead.

She crouches down as another man comes at her; she moves around their stilted swings, kicking them out into the clouds too.

"I told you it would get easier."

She turns, looks at him as he looks at her.

"But of course," Ben says, his voice the same smooth lull, even in the ambient rush of buffeting gales and sound, "they would have only gone on to kill people who deserve to die."

"Says who?" she shouts back, still clutching tightly to the rail, measuring the distance, deciding the path—

"The people those people buried and killed."

"What about all the people you've buried and killed, Ben?" Allayria asks, chancing a step, watching as he notes it but does not move. "Were they the only ones who deserved to die?"

She takes another step.

"What about me?" she asks. "Did I deserve to die?"

It's a fractured twist, a sudden ripple across his features, something like pain, something like grief, something too mixed and taut to be clarified, inspected.

"No," he says, more a whisper than a yell, a confession that still cuts through the wind. "You and I both know it was never deserved."

He steps closer now too, down a step, his gray eyes catching the light as they stay, fixed on her face.

"And I told you a long time ago why it was necessary."

Her face contorts.

"How comforting."

"I like to think sometimes that terrible things happen to us for a bigger purpose," he says, and she remembers the time amongst glowing orbs of lantern-light when these words were murmured against her skin. "That we suffer to prepare for a greater challenge—"

"No," she snaps furiously and they break, she dashing up and he darting down, metal clashing over their heads in the bright sunlight.

"I wish there was a time," he says amidst the strain of muscles as neither yields but both push, "a space where this doesn't have to happen, where I am only me and you are only—"

She kicks out through the blind of tears, forcing him to jump back as she swipes forward, swinging hard and recklessly.

"None of this had to happen," she throws back, voice caught in the tear between grief and rage. "Nothing you've done, none of anything you ever said—"

"Some of it was lies," he agrees, catching her slash with his knife again, leaning back, holding it, but making no move to strike. "We've never been very good at telling each other the truth."

You're not even angry at me, she thinks, wild with it now. You're not even angry at me and you still want me dead. Still want to kill me. What kind of person does that make you?

"But I never lied about the important things," he says. "And neither did you."

"Important—"

He twists and she crumples forward, stumbling past as his hand clamps on her wrist, shoving her weapon away from his turning body as he holds her still.

And then his other hand cups her face.

And in that split second between first contact and the subsequent swing of her free fist, he seems to falter, the calm broken by an anguished gleam of his gray-blue eyes. He doesn't touch her the way an enemy should, and his voice is a low murmur shared only between the two of them:

"I regret it."

The world teeters, disrupted by a sudden collision, a tangle of limbs as another person splits them apart. It's a blur of faded blue, a hard body, and the swing of ice comes up and crashes down over the edge of Ben's held-up blade, shattering and shivering as Lei moves again.

It is all blows and strikes, all strength and no artifice as the two men match and meet each other's swings, fighting in feeling, on brute instinct, as Allayria scrambles forward, darting in to intercept only to be caught around the ankle and yanked.

Her knees hit the floor and she turns, catching sight of another familiar face with short, spiky hair. She doesn't wait for the next attack; she swipes, pulling the metal out, flinging it forward where it will be easily dodged but still cause distraction, giving her time to jump to her feet.

They meet with rock and root, shaking along their bones as they clatter, shivering instruments in the wind. The pelt of rocks that follow the first kick of Meg's foot takes Allayria by surprise; she does not make the same mistake again.

She has one eye trained on the Nature-caller, another on the fighting men to their side, and then the pair shifts further out, past the railing, onto the outstretched, open plane of the ship's wing.

Allayria follows them, abandoning this fight, hearing Meg give chase. A sharp punt of rock whizzes past her ear; she twists, catching it and spinning it back, flinging out a spurt of fire. She needs to grab Lei, needs to turn him back to the ship, away from the edgeless space Ben has led him into.

She dashes between them, away from the rush of Meg, and circles around Lei, reaching out only to have him evade her grasp. He's focused on Ben, focused on the silent struggle and another clobber of rock flies past her head—but not toward his, not interfering—

She's distracting me. Allayria's insides turn to lead. It's a lure for him and she's distracting me.

She can hear the rush of the next wave upon her but she turns from it, throwing instead her newly-made metal shield in front of Lei. It catches the jab of Ben's knife just as blood starts to run down Allayria's head, but she has Lei's shirt in her grip now, she has him stumbling back, she's crowding him behind her so her bleeding body is between his and the two leaders of the Cabal.

There is confusion written across Meg's face, but something uglier in Ben's.

"This is what you want," he shouts, "this man?"

He looks at her then, a fierce, breaking expression, as he shakes his head.

"No, he is too boring, too staid."

He steps forward, across the wing.

"I am the wind beneath you, the breath across your face. As long as I walk this world my soul will call to you, and yours to mine."

There's something terrible in this, but the man behind her is solid and warm beneath her hands and the feeling of his stuttering pulse beneath her fingers roots her when Ben would have her upbraided.

She looks him full in the face.

"Not anymore."

It's shouts, cries of alarm that quaver through the squall; she can hear the captain hollering and Lei's grip is suddenly ironclad as Allayria glances back and sees the zeppelin on fire.

A bullhorn brays, rippling above them as a shadow casts across the burning—slowly dropping, slowly falling—aircraft, and Allayria glances up in confusion, gazing at the underbelly of another zeppelin. Black coils tumble out of it, plummeting down in slinking jumbles, and Lei is yanking her back toward the collapsing ruin, back toward where the ropes descend.

"Climb," he yells at her, and once she sets her hand on it, the rope is the only real thing left to her.

She does as he asks; she climbs and feels him holding the rope with a hand beneath her as heat blasts itself into her face, over the nape of her neck; the outer hull is breached.

"Lei!" she shouts as the zeppelin falls in earnest, and the Nature-caller seizes the rope with both hands, kicking off from the burning deck.

They are exposed now, defenseless, and she halts for a moment, halts in the first fear of this, but also in a second feeling she won't name.

But when she looks back she sees Ship Two, the one that had banked against them at the onset, hovering beneath the now imploding craft, and she sees the two red-clad forms jump from the wing, watches as they latch safely onto the other ship's side.

But the jolt of rope above her disrupts her concentration, and she feels it yank up as she tightens her grip on it, and soon she's close to the underside of looming deck, close enough that she scrambles up, and a ghostly white face peers over the opening.

"Thank the gods," Hiran says as he heaves her over, going back and reaching over for Lei as she staggers to her feet. "Jin nearly ordered the ship blown apart before we spotted you on the wing. The comm bird has been going nuts—"

"Are we still in range?" Allayria demands, stumbling toward the command center as the zeppelin lurches. She yanks the door open, reeling through the entrance as the horn blasts again.

"Shoot it down," she orders, gripping the doorframe, peering out of the bright center windows. "Ship Two, blow it apart—"

"We can't anymore," Jin yells back, her knuckles white against the chair she's clutching. She's leaned over an operator, peering out at the descending craft as the communicator shouts news from the other ships. "It's too far down now; Ship Three struck it in the rear. It won't be operable by the time they get to the ground."

"Drop down," Allayria commands as she reaches the front. "Go back and drop down now—"

But Jin's hand is clamped on her shoulder, and her voice is quieter now.

"We lost an entire ship," she reminds Allayria. "We don't need to lose any more."

And Allayria swallows bile back, swallows back the easy fury and adrenaline that is suddenly doused, a chalky, black ruin of its own, by the sense of Jin's words.

"We are searching every space of the other five zeppelins," Jin assures her, misunderstanding the expression on Allayria's face. "We will find any remainders, but we need to press forward—"

"Of course," Allayria interrupts hollowly. "Keep going."

"Take my quarters," Jin says, inspecting her face. "There's a washroom, clean up and see a medic. I will let you know if I hear anything—"

"Thank you. I appreciate it, General."

Inside the quarters, the water is a spray of flickering, pebbling warmth. She's inside some kind of enclosure that seems to have replaced the tub, and, after fumbling with strange handles, raindrops are spurting out of the metal fixture above her. It's gurgling, but she can't muster the energy to wonder at this new contraption.

Her head hangs under this conjured torrent, feeling numbly how the droplets bead and thread around her face, pooling and dripping just beneath her eyes, along the ridge of her nose. In the calm, in the quiet, everything feels heavy again as the water at her feet turns red, swirling around another hole, this one in the tiled ground, and she just stands there, watching as the liquid disappears into it.

I regret it.

"Liar," she whispers to nothingness, the floor swimming to her eyes, and she can still feel his hand on her face, feel his touch crawling there, a thing she can't seem to scrub off no matter how hard she tries.

I am the wind beneath you, the breath across your face. As long as I walk this world—

She hears the door click; the shuffle of other feet in the room. There's a fog set on this glass, rendering the world outside a cloudy blur, even as the hot tracks streak down her cheeks, and it's all just a blur anyway a blur of meaningless things, in a meaningless space, in a meaningless time.

She had been so afraid of what Ben would try to do to her when they next met; she should have been more afraid of what he would say.

There's no way out, she thinks, and the cracks in this armor splinter further as it feels like these metal walls collapse in more around her. There's no way out from underneath this.

"Allayria," someone murmurs on the other side of the glass, a hand pressed against its ghostly surface.

I wish there was a time, a space where this doesn't have to happen, where I am only me and you are only—

It's muffled against blanched fists, set against the teeth that sink into them, as she sinks to the floor, the water tapping on her neck, her spine, running rivers around her face and across her back. She wants the rage, the white-hot anger at his nerve, his daring to say it, after all of this, but all she finds is the melancholy pain from the fact that he meant it, that everything she once believed is still there, but that won't change what he plans to do.

It would have changed it for me. I would have let the world fall into ruins for you. Why couldn't you do the same for me?

Pale, long arms circle around her, holding her tight. She can see him in the glass's reflection, see, along the naked ridge of his spine and across the rib cage ladder of his torso the dark markings, long and thin and cross-hatched, the patterned web work of mottled scars.

It's his forehead which touches a notch on her spine first, then the bridge of his nose, and last, the warm press of his mouth, a different touch than the pounding water or the cool press of his limbs. It anchors her here as Lei tucks her against him, between his long legs and behind the shield of his crisscrossing arms so that, if the sides of this metal box should collapse in on her, they will hit him first.

A/N: I have been sitting on this chapter for FAR TOO LONG. Aaaaaaah! What do we think? How do we feel?

One final chapter and then Part 2 is all wrapped up. Can we guess who it is? Hint: no one's going to be happy about it but me. HAHAHA...