The sky about them was ash-choked, seething, the remnants of the Tōnan mountains and First House falling among the black snow. A wave of fumes rose from the Stain below, fissures crumbling, the deadlands dropping down into bottomless black—just a great, seething hole where the entire plain once lay. Kaori looked down into that darkness, felt it looking back; a black too vast and bottomless to comprehend. A bone-snapping wind rose from the fissure, the stench of funeral pyres and burning hair, her mind alight with a tuneless, screaming hymn, a roar of pure psychic terror, and she clawed her ears bloody in her attempts to block it out.
“Fly!” she screamed to the comatose helmsman. “Godsdamn you, get us out of here!”
The female thunder tigers roared in terror, tearing away north as things rose up from the darkness, seething at its edges, shapeless winged nightmares, slithering, skinless horrors, fingers with too many joints, faces with too many mouths, heads with no faces at all. And beyond it, swelling pregnant in the gloom, Kaori could feel it, feel Her, a fear and hatred so perfect she could sense her sanity splitting, clawing its own eyelids as it screamed.
Her father’s body lay on the deck in front of her. Eyes closed. At peace. How easy would it be to lie down beside him? To sink into the arms of the things rising from the maw beneath them, to welcome them home, to smile and hum along with the song that would slay the world?
You promised.
The thought dragged her in from the dark. Dug fingers into her skin.
You promised him.
She crawled across the deck, grabbed the helm and dragged herself to her feet. Misaki lay on the boards beside her, gleaming spider arms dancing a twitching, terrified jig, her head beating against the deck with a stuttering, off-beat time. Eiko was curled up in a corner, screaming, just screaming, knees against her chest as she rocked back and forth. And Kaori spun the wheel hard north, pushing on the throttle as if by will alone she could make them fly faster.
A chill wind rose at her back, frozen fingers entwined with her hair, a whisper in her ear, old as creation itself.
“I am home, oh my children…”
Eyes locked on the skies ahead, teeth gritted, refusing even to blink.
“And I have missed you so…”
*
A howl in his mind, a wail from a time before the womb, before the dark, when all was void. Kin rolled onto his belly, hands to his ears as he screamed, the ground splitting beneath him and crumbling away, dragging him down into bottomless, empty black. But no, he wasn’t falling, he wasn’t, all in his mind, his mind, gods what is that noise?
The air was filled with the stuttering clatter of mechabacii, every Guildsman twitching on their backs as the machines on their chests spat the same broken-beat rhythm, the backs of their heads beating against the floor in time. Kin crawled to the closest Shatei, dragged out his aidkit with shaking hands. Filling a hypo of opiates, he stabbed the needle into his arm, sighing as the pain disintegrated. Bliss rose up on shadowed wings, whispering for him to sleep, close his eyes and let all of it just wash away.
Hush, child.
Eyelids fluttering on his cheeks like the wings of butterflies he’d only seen in paintings.
Hush now.
The kind that didn’t exist anymore thanks to the lotus poison spewing ever skyward …
And he raised his head, clutching his thigh. He stood on feet he couldn’t feel and stumbled through the smoking dark, finding Shinji twitching and drooling, smashing his head against the floor in that stuttering rhythm. Kin unplugged the mechabacus from the boy’s chest, the machine falling silent, the seizures slowing until Shinji opened his eyes wide, pupils like saucers, teeth chattering as if he were freezing to death.
“Shinji?” Kin touched the boy’s arm. “Can you hear me?”
“Gods above…” Shinji blinked, wiped the tears from his eyes. “Kin…”
“Are you all right?”
“I could hear Her,” the boy breathed. “My gods, She was singing to me.”
“Can you walk? We have to get out of here before they wake up.”
Shinji looked down at the mechabacus strapped to his chest. The cables burrowing like worms into his flesh.
“I don’t think they will.” The boy shook his head. “Not while She’s singing…”
“Get up.” Kin stood, dragged Shinji up with him, faintly aware that his palms had no skin, that his forearms and knees were bleeding, shedding and frayed.
Shinji raised an eyebrow. “First Bloom, are you all right?”
Kin pointed to the empty hypo on the floor, a mirthless smile on bloodless lips. Shinji grabbed another aidkit from a comatose Guildsman, fishing out pressure bandages and wrapping Kin’s wounds. The boys limped across the listing floor, through near-blinding smoke, the ticktick of cooling metal accompanied by the beat of a dozen heads bashing into the floor. Climbing the stairwell, along the upper gantries, Kin felt lighter than air, tongue slightly too big for his mouth.
Passing more Shatei in the tight corridors, all flat on their backs, twitching in time to the soundless tune. They reached the service elevator at the Earthcrusher’s spine, stabbing the control and watching it descend. Kin licked the taste of smoke and bad dreams from his lips, breathing deep. Dislocated in the opiate haze, reminded of the Iishi again, the burns he’d suffered there, he and Yukiko sheltering in their little cave by the rock pool.
“I won’t tell them. N-never tell anyone. I won’t let them hurt you. I promise, Yukiko.”