A blast of heat. Screaming.

The sky is peppered with flecks of rock and dirt, dotting it like stars, rushing through like wind. The dark shadows of the zeppelins linger behind all of it, suspended over them all, like old gods watching these mortal games.

The ground tilts and swivels as Hiran's feet rush to clutch at it, to grip with worn soles, to find standing as everything shifts and crumbles. Bodies rush and tangle, push and shove around him and his stone sword hangs in his sweat-slick hand, hovering, waiting.

One black and blue soldier turns, twitches, swings, and Hiran cuts them down.

"Hiran!" someone yells, scrabbles at his shoulder, hauling him back, up as another blast hits him and the thunder of man's creation explodes nearby. Ruben's grip on him is hard and sure, and Hiran places his own free hand on the Skill master's shoulder to steady himself.

Where am I even? he wonders.

"We have to get through," Ruben shouts. "I think Tara is on the other side."

How can we? The ground won't stay still.

"I need you to help me: we need to Skill a path through. I can hold the earth if you can spot me." Ruben's grip tightens. "Hiran, I need you with me."

"Yes," Hiran croaks back and he hauls up his sword. "Yes, of course."

He swings and slashes, around and up and down and over, hacking and heaving, until it's all nothing, and they don't even seem to be anything but demons in metal suits.

I've lost count, he thinks. I've lost count of how many people I've killed.

They had a plan when they first found their way out of the tunnels: get up high, locate Tara and the others, try to go around the perimeter.

The plan is gone. So is Lei. It's all lost, blown into dust, dirt, and everything else buffeting them as catapults swing in the distance and cold, steel contraptions crack up through the ground. The earth breaks apart not but a sprinting distance away and Hiran feels the slide, feels the crumble.

"Hiran!" Ruben shouts through everything, and the ground beneath Hiran's feet resists, holds up, if only for a second.

He scrambles, jumping quick, scrabbling up, moving blindly away, the Skill master behind him, not chasing, only running, running, running. Hiran breathes in dust, through his throat, into his lungs and it settles in there, turning into grit.

"I see them," Ruben says as Hiran coughs. "Beyond these two drills, Hiran. I see Dost and Tara."

Tara. Finn. Tara. How am I supposed to tell her? he thinks, swaying. How am I supposed to tell her I've lost Finn? We lost Lei?

"We need to get around them—Hiran, are you listening? We need to get around the drills."

A thundercrack; the ground shivers, and they shiver with it, looking around into a wall of dust. Beyond are dark outlines, things creaking, things turning up and turning down, the low whirl of spinning metal.

"Around them?" he croaks. "Ruben, we can't."

"We can."

"We can't, the ground—"

Ruben's hand is on his shoulder, gripping tightly. The wrinkles in his face are creased with dirt, cracked and growing, like circles in a tree, bark on a trunk. He's aged three decades in an hour, and the oldest thing on his face are his eyes, bleak and resolute, refusing to let Hiran look away. 

"Hiran," he says. "We have to."

Hiran swallows. His throat tastes like mud.

"Okay," he says. "Okay."

It's a field of gray glaciers, who breach up out of the earth like it's the tide, and every step, every direction is a risk, a chance. The crude, ugly things sprout up without warning, their noses spinning, whirling in the harsh sunlight.

How are they landing? Hiran thinks, and the captain of the closest one must have been wondering that too, because this one falls flat on its side, like a fish that leaps out of water only to have the misfortune of hitting a ship floor.

And Ruben does something mad.

Hiran means to shout, but his voice has died in his throat, because Ruben has not run away from the hulking thing, but toward it, scrambling onto its beached side.

"Help me find the hatch," he shouts over his shoulder.

The hatch? Hiran thinks stupidly, but he's climbing too, his body moving before his brain, following Ruben up on the side. They run over the arc of it, Hiran scanning for a crease, a hinge, a handle. He cries out, pointing, when he spots it, three strides from them. When they reach it, Ruben sinks to his knees, hands set on the cracks of the door.

"Do you see the others?" Ruben asks, looking for the latch, the lever.

Hiran turns, casting a look over his shoulder, out toward the horizon line, the shapes moving amongst the dust, the zeppelins hovering in the sky.

"There!" he shouts. "There, just west. On the base of one of the catapults. I see Dost, I see Tara, I see—"

Climbing up, quickly, silently, unseen, unheard—

Oh gods.

"Hiran?" Ruben says.

It doesn't matter—the haze, the mirage of heat, dust, sweat; the woman's armor glints through all of it, like shimmering liquid metal, hot iron. She moves like it, in her eerie way, and the things behind her move too.

"TARA," Hiran screams.

Dost sees Lei's awful sister first, turns, unSkillable metal in hand, and swings.

Hiran's boots skid and slide on the hull; he's sprinting and he doesn't care, can't wait, can't be cautious. Ruben is shouting, screaming too, but Hiran has to get down, has to get over there, over to where—

Another hatch on the side of the machine springs open, catching his side, blocking his view, a soldier following up through it.

"Get—" Hiran swings, screams in frustration and stone pounds into metal, crumpling the body beneath it. "Away—"

The others are still up on that faraway base, up there, and the maniac is fighting Dost, slashing down on her, jumping up and around like some goddamned spider, and Tara has two of those things coming at her, two—

Hiran slides, nails screeching on the smooth surface, body plummeting down, over the curved edge, out onto the churned up ground below. He hits with a stab of pain, a gasping blow. It doesn't matter, it can't matter. He rolls over and scrambles up, crawling up over the lip of rock as he hears Ruben crash down behind him.

Ahead, they're still going, still parrying, metal clashing with metal, pushing forward, pressing back. Dost is swinging—no, hammering, wielding the sword more like an axe, solid, hard, and true, driving the Imperator's daughter back, toward the edge, the brink—

She swings hard, horizontally, just like—though Hiran could not know it—Fae Urilong swung at Meg amidst ash and fire, but this time it does not hit its mark; this time the opponent drops, ducking beneath it all, feet dancing at that edge with calculating accuracy, body sliding up around the extended arm, over to the side where Dost is open, Dost is exposed—

The Smith-caller takes the Chieftainess's arm, and then her head.

No.

Tara screams. He can't hear it, but he can see it, and that woman is turning again, turning around, turning toward Tara, even as the blurred shadow of another person climbs up onto the dais behind them, oh god, no, no, no, no, no!

"Hiran!" Ruben shouts, a new edge of panic, and he must have spotted them, must have seen what Hiran understands and Hiran has to get up, get over there, run, run—

It's only then that Hiran hears the rumble, that he feels how the dirt slides underneath his feet.

Hiran looks down.

The noise is so loud that it blanks, blanks into nothing but whiteness, nothing but a hollow ringing, and Hiran experiences that sickening weightlessness of flying, and then the weightiness of being buried.

A/N: *wordless shrieking*

Chapter notes: Fae fights Meg in Prodigal's "Crown Me."