Chapter 207: The Black Current Tore the South Root Away

Kaul’s rider had to cut the thing beneath her feet.

Between two currents, the caught south root stretched toward breaking. Black water pulled Skykeel forward. Star-water and the following lance held the crystallized end behind. Every heartbeat opened the fracture through another empty room.

Her ruined green sail wrapped the first spear core inside those rooms.

"Cut inward of the crystal," Olsa shouted. "Leave the whole weapon."

Balanced on crystal, she left Kaul’s blade buried in the roof seam. "You have mistaken repetition for persuasion."

"My weapon is about to kill you. I am trying clarity."

Behind them, the second lance struck the crosswake’s outer curl.

Its point vanished into black water. A chain link followed, then another, each one snapping sideways as the wake bent the weapon around the caught root.

Kesta’s ropes jerked across Skykeel. She dropped to one knee and caught herself on a bandaged forearm. Residents behind her wrapped lines through door teeth, but the fracture kept moving toward the first inhabited bridge.

Jiang could see the rider. He could not see when the current would let her cross.

Debris passed in both directions. A broken star shell rushed toward the armada while roof splinters from Skykeel shot deeper into the wake. Any signal based on the surface would be wrong before it reached her.

He dove beneath the center root.

Aylin paid out his ankle line. "Do not disappear under the city."

"I will disappear beside it."

"That is not better."

Jiang found shelter behind a moving shard of pale root. Traveling with Skykeel, the shard shielded him from the first black curl while connected water passed around both sides. He folded his flippers, stopped kicking, and waited for the wake made by his own body to fade.

Pressure touched him before the ability did.

Skykeel dragged one broad wound through the water. Sharp repeating blows from the star-lance chain followed it. Smaller bodies crossed near the caught root, too tangled to separate.

Jiang became still enough.

`Pressure Wake I` opened across his skin.

Movement crowded him from every direction.

To Jiang’s senses, the city became a torn wall. Chain blows arrived through his beak and feet. Residents, hunters, bells, loose roofs, and the rider vanished into overlapping pressure before he could tell one from another.

Beneath all of them moved a slower force.

It pressed the entire crosswake upward, paused, and pressed again. That pause held more than empty water. It was the space behind something enormous finishing a stroke.

Pain flashed behind Jiang’s eyes. He released the ability before the next city-wide overlap could strike him.

Water returned without names or a map.

He stayed behind the shard and watched.

After the deep pressure rose, bubbles along the root flattened. Star-shell grit stopped spinning. Jiang’s loose black feather, caught in the same eddy, hung still before sliding toward the caught south root.

The physical lull matched what his skin had felt.

Jiang left shelter and swam for the surface.

Cold flow struck his bare breast first. Its shock stole one kick and forced his torn shoulder open against the current. Aylin drew the line until he reached the copper lip, then stopped before hauling him onto it.

"You used something," she said.

"Briefly. Everything moved at once."

"Useful enough to hurt."

"Painfully. Watch the bubbles beneath us. When they flatten, the deep stroke has ended. That is the only quiet we have."

Olsa heard him. She looked down into the black water, then at three of her hunters holding the fracture ropes.

"The next lull," she called. "Release the weapon and pull the rider across."

One hunter’s fin-winged companion left his side.

He did not send it. The animal bumped its brow against his bare wrist, released the loose tether between them, and swam out toward the rider. Its wide throat fins closed tight against the crosswake.

The hunter watched it go. "She hates loose metal."

"Then your captain and I finally agree on something," the rider said.

The animal reached her as another chain link hammered through the outer curl. It offered neither saddle nor command response. It hooked both forelimbs around a remaining crystal rib and opened a space between its body and the root.

The rider understood the offer.

She pulled Kaul’s blade from the roof seam and crawled toward the inner fracture. Beneath her, the sail around the first core had lost every trace of green. The broken halves of Kaul’s copper plate showed through it like ribs.

Her hand stopped on the cloth.

That bundle had carried no flight since she wrapped the core. It was still the last place her old flights physically existed.

Kaul lay across the widening gap at Skykeel’s center. His pale bell covered his shoulder. His chest made one shallow rise that reached nobody but himself.

The rider looked at him until the bubbles flattened.

"This is not yours to ask of me," she said.

Kaul made no attempt.

She cut the inner root.

Kesta and the residents pulled together. Olsa’s hunters opened their hands from the weapon side and caught only the living ropes. Neris released the nursery’s last connection to the empty tower. Beras kicked the bridge tooth free when his twisted hand failed to move it.

The fin-winged companion tore the rider from the separating root.

They entered the black current together. She held its armor with one arm and kept Kaul’s blade turned away from its body. The animal chose the low turn already carrying Skykeel and brought both of them into the city’s wake.

Its hunter reached from the nearest rib. The companion ignored the loose tether until it had placed the rider’s good arm across copper. Only then did it turn, press brow to the hunter’s palm, and let him take the line again.

The rider touched two fingers to one of its closed throat fins. "Thank you."

The animal shook black water over both humans and returned to the current.

The south root came away.

Crystal, wrapped core, broken plate, ruined sail, empty tower, and the last sound spar fell behind as one dead limb.

Freed of the drag, Skykeel surged forward.

The rider watched her wrapped sail diminish behind them.

She wanted to follow it. Fear showed at last. Every bad landing in her life had still contained another flight. This one did not.

Aylin reached her and stopped with a coil of rope between both hands. "Do you want a line?"

"I want my sail."

"I cannot give you that."

Her gaze dropped to the blade she had carried back. "Then give me the line."

Aylin passed it across. The rider secured herself to Skykeel before the following weapon reached what she had lost.

The second star-lance reached the abandoned root.

Its jaws opened around the old core. White fire met the damaged white chamber inside the rider’s wrapping. For one instant, both weapons shone through the crystal.

Then the south root became light.

The blast did not vanish inside the crosswake. It punched downward, split the black current, and hurled the released chain back toward the armada. Heat rolled over Skykeel hard enough to scorch an empty roof band and throw Olsa against a brace.

Olsa regained her feet and searched the moving ribs until every hunter answered with a lifted hand, blade, or living companion. She looked last at the rider. Neither woman mistook survival for peace.

Beneath the city, the slower moving force struck again.

An immense dark wing crossed under Skykeel. It was wider than the remaining south side and marked by pale feeding scars along its edge. The star-lance blast opened one of those scars into a white-burning cut.

The wounded wing folded against the body.

Every current around Skykeel lurched toward it.

Ahead, the silver-sailed vessel dropped beside the wounded shape. Crew crowded its open keel, throwing whole pieces of dead star shell into the dark water.

A voice carried from the ship through a bronze water horn.

"You brought a city into Morrowfin’s wake," a woman shouted. "If you want to live, stop treating the animal like a road."