At first we cut through the crabs like a hot knife through butter.
For the first hour, I barely have to work at all. Tartak bonds lock the crabs in place, keeping us safe from their sudden leaps, while a rolling wave of Myrkai fire blasts them to cinders. Zarun and I walk in front of the advancing line, cutting down the occasional larger crab that emerges from the firestorm maddened and burning. Behind us, the column advances, step by step, and behind them the rear guard fights its own battle.
After falling into such an easy rhythm, the arrival of the first blueshell is a rude shock. The huge crab bulls through the bolts of flame like so much hot air. Light blue Tartak bonds snatch at its legs, slow it down, but they stretch and snap in the face of its prodigious strength. Its two huge claws strain toward us, mouth full of sword-tentacles writhing.
“You can break its armor, can’t you?” Zarun says, as the thing strains closer.
I nod. “But last time, I had to hit it in the brain to bring it down.”
“We don’t need to be quite so ambituous. Left claw first. Come on!”
He jogs forward, looking almost cheerful. I follow, warily. The monster shifts, bearing down on him, and with a wave of his hand he generates a Tartak binding holding its right claw in place. The other claw swings toward him, and Zarun parries with his Melos shield, the impact driving him back a pace in a maelstrom of green sparks. He leans into the shield, pushing against the crab with all his weight.
“Now, Isoka!”
I summon the Melos spike, gathering power in my right hand, and dodge around him. Before the crab can pull its claw back for another swing, I jam the spike home, punching through its armor. Melos energy ripples into the limb, cracking chitin, and bursts of blue blood spray from the joints. The claw goes limp, dragging on the deck. The crab rears up, ripping its second claw free of the restraints and bringing it down; again, Zarun blocks it, and we repeat the process. With the beast effectively disarmed, a squad of Myrkai adepts steps up to close range to punch through its hide with firebolts.
“Very neat,” Zarun says, approvingly.
“Much less painful than last time,” I agree.
They keep coming, though, and gradually the battle takes on the aspect of a nightmare. I work with Zarun to cut down another of the long-legged red variety, let Jack distract a bulbous, pseudopod-covered juggernaut while I slice my way to its heart, and stand between Thora and a thing like an enormous dandelion puff as she rips it to pieces with Tartak force. A rain of Myrkai fire from behind us blasts the things off the bridge or cooks them in their own juices.
And it’s not enough. Zarun and I can only be in one place at once, fighting one enemy at a time. There are other adepts among the hunters, but we’re the strongest, and when we’re distracted it’s left to the others to engage the cart-sized monsters with fire, force, and spears. I hear screams from behind me, and the grisly crunch of breaking bodies, but I can’t spare the time to turn away. I’m breathing hard now, sweating freely, my hair matted and my skin tender with premonitions of powerburn. I kill, and kill, and kill, and it’s not enough.
When we come to a platform or a stairway, I follow the gray thread in my chest, and the others follow me. Zarun doesn’t question, not now. The path leads us forward, but also down, taking spiral stairways and long ramps that lead steadily toward the base of Soliton. We’re going back to the Deeps.
The rear guard is fighting hard, too. Once I hear shouts and blasts of flames halfway along the column, something that got through. There’s no time to investigate, and I can only hope that Meroe and the others have it handled. Once again, I find myself praying, as I haven’t since the first night they hauled me aboard.
Blessed, if you’re listening, keep her safe. I can’t bear to lose her. Not now.
* * *
We’re getting close. Foot by foot, yard by bloody yard, we push down the bridges and stairs, until I’m certain we must be near the plain of white sand where Meroe and I landed. Instead, the last staircase leads to a broad expanse of deck, stretching into the darkness in every direction. There are no more of the star-like lights ahead of us, only behind. I can see something else, though, a softly glowing pillar, extending up and out of sight toward the deck so far above.
“Now what?” Zarun says, when we pause for a moment. There are fewer crabs here, as though they don’t like the solid ground.
“I think that’s it,” I say, pointing to the tower. He just blinks, confused, and I realize he can’t see it. The glow must be Eddica energy. Ordinarily, it’s only visible close up. Whatever’s out there must be absolutely thick with the stuff.
“It’s going to be hard to hold the line here,” Zarun says, looking around. Unlike the narrow bridges, this flat deck leaves us open to attack from any direction. “But they seem to be thinning out—”
“Deepwalker!” A boy runs up to us, gasping for breath. “They’re attacking the rear guard. There must be hundreds of them!”
Blessed’s rotting balls. I grit my teeth, trying to think, but Zarun answers first.
“I’ll go and help,” he says, then turns to me. “You say we’re close?”
I nod.
“Take half the vanguard and push forward. I’ll get the column running. The rest of us will bring up the rear.”
No time to make a better plan. I nod again, and he hurries off, shouting instructions. Then he’s gone, pushing backward along the column with a group of hunters, as the remainder gather around me. He’s left me Jack and Thora, I’m glad to see.
“We’re going to run for it,” I tell them. “Kill anything that gets in your way, but don’t stop. They’re coming in from behind, and Karakoa and Zarun won’t be able to keep them back for long.”
Grim nods. I ignite my blades, crackle-hiss, and gesture. We form ourselves into a loose wedge, and charge into the darkness.
Crabs loom out of the shadows with startling suddenness. Scuttlers launch themselves from the sides—I intercept one on the edge of my blade, block another with my new Melos shield, and cast it aside. Myrkai fire and Tartak force rip them out of our way. Jack runs beside me, her hair spiky with sweat, her jaw set, no silly quips to be heard. Her shadow runs beside her, fluid black slipping over the deck without any source of light. She eludes the crabs, her body turning shadowy and shadow turning solid, gets behind them for a quick stab with a long blade, then runs on.
The first big crab, a hammerhead, charges out of nowhere, bulling into the left flank of our formation. A big iceling boy gets caught in its jaws, his scream cut off abruptly. Without prompting, Thora and a dozen hunters peel off, surrounding the thing. Her Tartak bonds fix it in place, while the others close in with spears. The rest of us keep moving.
This whole time, the tower has been growing, getting closer. It’s bigger than I thought, which means it’s farther away. In the soft ghost light of the Eddica current, I can see that it’s a cylindrical structure, much larger than the towers of the Upper Stations, rising out of the deck and stretching as far overhead as I can see. The line in my chest leads right to it.
The Garden. This must be it.
We’re close enough now that the others can see it, too. Real light glows from big square doors at the base of the thing, not firelight but something closer to sunshine. It looks warm and inviting, and the hunters fight harder the nearer we get, slashing and tearing through the crabs that throw themselves at us in a frenzy. A blueshell rears up and is cut down by a dozen blades, hunters taking wounds from its sword-tentacles and ignoring them in their hurry to kill it and move on. I barely have time to reach it and finish it with my armor-piercing spike. Then we’re past, and the glowing doors are just ahead. I pull up short, blinking in the sudden radiance, and the rest of the vanguard slowly comes to a halt around me.
The tower is dark metal, like the rest of the ship. But through the doors, we can see another world.
The light is sunlight, golden and warm. A shallow slope rises up from the doorway, a gentle hillside, made of rich brown earth, not steel. Tufts of grass at the edge give way to a solid carpet of green, tall stalks waving in a wind we can’t feel, dotted by clusters of trees and bushes. It’s a perfect park, in high summer, somehow dropped here in the depths of this steel leviathan.
The Garden.
I’m only a few feet short of the door, but it’s a moment before I can bring myself to cross the threshold. I walk forward, expecting a trick—invisible glass, a field of magical energy, something to keep me out. But I step past, and my boot sinks a little in the soil. New smells fill my nose, wind and grass and the aftertaste of rain. I look up, and the sun blazes in a cloudless blue sky.