“We need to go,” Yoshi breathed.
“Where’s Takeshi? Atsushi?”
Yoshi pointed at the incoming dust cloud. “Isao, we need to go!”
The boy paled, and the pair fell to their knees, crawling out through the shattered windows on the eastern side of the train. Yoshi stood, head swimming, rappelling up a service ladder and looking back west. The ground bucked and rumbled, roar building until it was almost deafening, and as Yoshi squinted through the rising cloud of deadlands ash, he realized the Stain was collapsing, a massive chasm spreading its arms out toward them, miles upon miles of earth falling away into nothingness amidst the howl of a colossal, tectonic unmaking.
“Run…” he told Isao.
“What do you see?”
“RUN!”
Yoshi dropped from the ladder, bolted away, Isao struggling to keep pace. Over the broken stone and gravel at the side of the tracks, into the fallow lotus fields on the other side, tripping and tumbling on the snow-sludged earth. The ground bucked and rolled away from them, throwing them down and tossing them up, the roar near deafening now, impossible to think or speak, but only to run, to run as fast as you could, the aches of your body a distant second to the raw panic in your chest, pumping your veins full of adrenaline and bidding you to run, run until there was nothing left inside you.
A roar overhead, scattered shrieks. Yoshi dared a glance up and nearly choked as half a dozen familiar silhouettes darkened the sky above. Blade-sleek and slender, all feathers and fur and cruel hooked beaks. He had no idea under heavens what the beasts were doing there, but there they flew, as solid as the shuddering earth beneath his feet, and Yoshi locked his eyes on the leader and screamed, screamed into the Kenning with everything he had left.
Help! Help us, please!
A voice touched his mind, loud as thunder and as beautiful as sunset lightning.
*YUKIKO?*
Isao stumbled and Yoshi dragged him to his feet, risked a glance behind him and saw the chasm spreading closer, closer, swallowing the locomotive, twisted carriages tilting and tumbling down into the bottomless maw.
I’m a friend of Yukiko’s! My sister Hana rides the arashitora called Kaiah!
The lead thunder tiger wheeled around, swooped low, followed by her packmates. Yoshi grabbed Isao’s hand, ran toward them, stumbling and almost falling, screaming with his voice and his mind and waving his free hand high.
Here! Over here!
The earth bucked, threw him forward, crashing face-first into the dirt. Yoshi gasped, spat out black soil, scrambling up onto his hands and knees, throwing a desperate glance over his shoulder as the chasm yawned behind him, the earth shivering and groaning and dropping away beneath him. Isao fell down into the dark, his screams fading to nothing. And as Yoshi began to fall beside him, as weightlessness seized him and the bitter, bone-shattering chill seeping up from that impossible hole stabbed his heart to stilling, he felt an impact at his back, the thunderous beat of mighty wings. He was torn skyward, the arashitora grasping him in its claws. The ground dropped away as they soared higher, chasm yawning wide and groaning its hunger, denied at the last by Raijin’s daughters. Filling the skies all around him with their cries; a moment of sheer beauty amidst total calamity.
Yoshi grasped handfuls of feathers, crawled up between the arashitora’s shoulder blades, refusing to look down. Breath ragged. His whole body trembling.
Balls of the fucking Maker God …
INDEED.
Yoshi put his arms around the thunder tiger’s neck, fighting to regain control of his pulse, his trembling, freezing limbs. He looked down into the pit that had swallowed Isao whole, unable to suppress a shudder. The beast’s warmth banished the chill of that awful abyss, and gratitude swelled up to replace the terror, flooding over his edges and out into the beast’s mind.
My thanks, great one. Truly.
GREAT ONE?
Faint amusement bubbled in the female’s thoughts.
YOU I WILL LIKE.
Yoshi looked around at the pack, all sleek ferocity, feathers of snow white and jet black. Behind them, just in front of the enormous ash cloud rising out of the collapsing Stain, Yoshi could see a Guild sky-ship, engines roaring with the strain of full burn, tiny figures on its deck.
DO NOT FEAR. THEY FRIENDS. WE CAME HERE SEARCHING FOR OUR MALES. FOUND THEM CHASED BY MEN IN METAL SUITS.
Her growl was a vibration up his thighs into his belly.
BUT THEY CHASE NO MORE.
Yoshi ran one hand down the thunder tiger’s neck.
Can I ask your name?
SHAI. SHAKHAN OF THE EVERSTORM PACK.
Where are you headed?
DO NOT KNOW. SEARCHING FOR YUKIKO AND OUR KHAN.
They’ll be in Yama. The Kitsune city to the north.
MUST BRING NEWS OF RISING DARK. HORRORS WITHIN.
Well, Yama was where we were headed.
INDEED.
If I ask nice, you figure I might trouble you for a ride?