Chapter 8: Province 512
The scorched plain of Province 429 dissolved behind Bullet as he staggered through a rift that opened like a wound in the air, its shattered glass and ash faded into a haze.
His bare feet touched something soft...moss, thick and spongy, clinging to stone that floated in open sky.
Province 512 opened up around him in impossible defiance of gravity. Islands drifted through clouds like ships on an invisible ocean, their surfaces covered in lush vegetation that shouldn't exist at such heights. Waterfalls cascaded from floating rocks, their water vanishing into mist before it could fall to whatever lay below, if there was a below at all.
The sky was a soft pastel haze, pinks and purples bleeding into pale blues, lit by auroras that danced like living ribbons of light. Beautiful, in a way that made his chest ache, but wrong. Everything here was wrong.
The air was thin. Every breath was not quite enough. His lungs scorched with the work of drawing enough oxygen in. There was a slight hum, a vibration, emanating from the floating boulders, an echo in his very bones that set his teeth on edge.
The pull in his chest, that insatiable hook which had guided him through every province, blazed now with a new intensity. It pointed upward now, toward something high above the clouds. A destination he couldn't see but felt with absolute certainty.
The pipe hung heavy in his hand, his only weapon, its metal scarred and chipped from battles with mirrors and elementals and countless desperate fights. More than a tool, it had become survival given form.
The shard in his pocket pressed against his thigh, its circle bisected by a jagged line. A question he still couldn't answer, yet its faint warmth pulsed in rhythm with his heart scar.
Beside it, Spark's unetched shard pulsed weakly, cool to the touch. A debt he carried for a woman who'd helped him, and died for it.
No name beyond what strangers gave him. No past that he could remember. Only the pull and the scar, driving him upward through a sky that should have been impossible.
---
The floating islands were connected by precarious bridges, rope and wooden planks worn thin by time and weather, swaying to winds that came from nowhere.
Bullet stepped onto the first bridge, feeling it dip under his weight. The planks were slick with moisture from the passing clouds. His bleeding feet left dark prints on the wood.
Below, through the gaps in the planks, he could see nothing. Just clouds and mist stretching endlessly down. The vertigo hit him hard, making him grip the rope railings tighter despite the pain in his blistered hands.
The bridge swayed violently, wind gusting from the side. He froze, waiting for it to settle, then continued on with carefully placed steps. Each footfall was measured, deliberate.
The movement of the clouds beneath them revealed a shadow, large and serpentine. It circled beneath the islands in the manner of a shark beneath boats, waiting for something to fall.
He reached the next island and stepped onto solid ground with a sense of relief. The moss beneath his feet was soft, almost welcoming after the treacherous bridge.
Strange plants grew here...vines with thorns that pulsed in bioluminescent light, flowers that opened and closed as if they were lungs breathing, trees whose bark seemed to resemble scaled skin. Everything was alive in ways that felt unsettling rather than natural.
A creature emerged from the foliage, humanoid but not, its limbs too long, joints bending in directions they shouldn't. Its eyes were clouded white and its mouth full of too many teeth. Scars covered it like it had spent years clawing at itself.
It lunged at him with a shriek that echoed across the floating islands.
Bullet swung the pipe, connecting with its skull. The creature's head caved inward with a wet crunch. Black blood sprayed across the moss. It collapsed, twitching, before going still.
His scar flared hot over his heart as he caught his breath. The pull urged him onward, upward, always upward.
Hours passed, or perhaps longer. Time felt strange here, elastic and unreliable.
He crossed island after island, each one a little higher than the last. Some were small, just big enough to stand on, while others were huge, with forests and streams and clearings where the auroras cast everything in changing colors.
They grew progressively more treacherous as he climbed. Some were missing planks altogether and he was forced to leap across gaps with the whole structure swaying beneath him. Others had rotted through, their rope frayed to single threads.
He fell once, his foot going through a rotten plank, and he plunged through, catching the edge of the bridge with his arms. The shock and impact sent agony through his ribs. His legs dangled over the void, kicking at empty air while the shadow circled far below.
He hauled himself up with a roar of effort, muscles screaming. Blood dripped from his reopened wounds, falling into the abyss.
The higher he climbed, the more frequently the creatures attacked. Sometimes they came in pairs, other times alone, but always that same desperate hunger. He killed them with the pipe, with rocks when he could find them, once with his bare hands when a creature surprised him.
Each kill added weight to the guilt he carried. These had been people once, maybe. Twisted by the province into something monstrous, but people nonetheless.
Patch's blood in the sand. Cowboy screaming as the maw swallowed him. Rivet's body on the canyon floor. Glow strangling in her own vines. The litany of the dead grew longer with every province.
But the pull wouldn't let him stop, wouldn't let him rest. It blazed in his chest like a star going nova, demanding he climb higher.
He swam to a bigger island, the biggest he had come across so far, with proper buildings carved into the surface.
A sprawling camp of sorts occupied the center of the island. Ramshackle shelters cobbled together from scavenged wood and fabric. Rope bridges that connected varying levels. And people, real living people who hadn't been twisted into monsters.
They watched him approach with wary eyes...scarred faces, bodies marked by years of survival in this impossible place. Some held weapons, crude spears, knives made from sharpened stone. Others just stared with the hollow look of people who'd given up hope long ago.
A woman stepped forward from the group. They called her Vine. He heard others mutter the name as she approached.
She was tall and lean, her body a topography of scars that told stories of brutal survival. Vines had grown into her flesh in places, wrapping around her arms and legs like living tattoos. Her eyes were hard, calculating, taking in every detail of Bullet's battered appearance.
"You're climbing toward the vortex." she said. Not a question. A statement of fact.
Bullet nodded slowly, one hand resting on the pipe.
Vine's expression didn't change. "We all tried that once. Thought it was the way out. The way home." She gestured to the camp around them. "Now we know better. The vortex doesn't lead anywhere. It's just another trap."
"I have to try." Bullet said, his voice rough from exhaustion and thin air.
"You'll die." Vine said flatly. "The creatures get worse the higher you go. The islands become unstable. And even if you reach it, even if you somehow survive that far, the vortex will tear you apart or spit you back down here. Broken. Useless."
She took another step closer, her eyes searching his face. "Stay. We've built something here. It's not much, but it's survival. We help each other. Share food. Watch each other's backs."
The offer hung in the air between them.
Bullet looked at the camp, at the people watching this exchange with expressions ranging from hope to suspicion to complete indifference. At the shelters that would collapse in a strong wind. At the thin, scarred bodies that spoke of rationed food and constant struggle.
This wasn't survival. This was slow death, drawn out over years.
"No." he said simply.
Vine's jaw tightened. Anger, perhaps disappointment, flickered in her eyes, but she moved aside, allowing him to pass.
"Your funeral." she said coldly.
As Bullet walked through the camp toward the bridges leading higher, he felt eyes on him. Some watched with pity. Others with resentment. Why should he get to try for escape when they'd given up?
Yet, one in particular had caught his eye. The woman stood somewhat to the side of the rest, yet not quite apart from them, either. Her presence was tolerated rather than welcomed.
She had deep slashes across her arms and chest, old wounds that had healed badly. Burns on her hands and neck. Thorns embedded in her flesh that had never been removed, growing into her skin like Vine's own corruption but more chaotic, less controlled.
She watched Bullet with an intensity that made his scar pulse. Recognition without understanding, like she saw something in him that resonated with something in herself.
He didn't know her name. Didn't ask. Still, her gaze followed him as he left the camp behind, climbing towards the next bridge, towards the higher islands, towards whatever the vortex promised.
The islands grew stranger as he climbed.
Some rotated slowly, their moss-covered surfaces tilting at angles that made every step feel like scaling a wall. Others pulsed with that bone-deep hum, vibrating so hard that standing on them made his teeth rattle.
Magnetic currents flowed between certain islands, invisible rivers of force that could catch him and pull him toward or away from his destination. He learned to feel for them, to use them when they helped and avoid them when they hindered.
On one island, a waterfall flowed upward, its mass of water defying gravity, cascading toward the sky. He stared at it for a long moment, trying to work out the mechanics, before giving up. Nothing here followed rules that made sense.
The creatures became more aggressive. They hunted in packs now, coordinated attacks that forced him to fight while standing on ledges barely wider than his feet. One nearly knocked him off an island entirely. He caught himself on a vine at the last second, thorns tearing into his palms as he hung over the void.
He pulled himself up, killed the creature with a savage blow to its skull, and kept climbing.
The pull intensified with every island gained, a fire in his chest now, a desperate need drowning out the pain and exhaustion. Up. Higher. The vortex was close. He could feel it.
He reached an island where others had congregated, more survivors who'd climbed this far and stopped, unable or unwilling to go further.
A dozen people, maybe more, scattered across the surface of the island. Some sat staring at nothing, broken by the climb. Others tended to wounds that would probably kill them given time. A few still had that spark of defiance in their eyes, that refusal to accept this as the end.
Vine stood among them. She'd followed him up, moving more quickly than he'd expected as the vines wrapped around her body gave her an advantage in this vertical world.
She looked different here, less a confident leader from the lower camp, more like someone clinging to control by her fingernails. The altitude got to her, too. Her breath came in gasps. Her scars stood out starkly against skin gone pale from thin air.
"Still climbing?" she asked when she saw him. Her voice contained an element between respect and contempt.
Bullet didn't reply. He started moving toward the bridge that would take them to the next island, already eyeing the route upward.
"Wait." said Vine, and something in her tone made him pause.
She approached, moving with deliberation, her eyes holding an emotion not quite readable in the ambient evening light, calculation mixed in with something else. Desperation, maybe. Or hope wearing a different mask.
She said quietly, "If you're really going up there, take me with you."
Bullet studied her face, searching for the trap. "You said it was suicide."
"It is," Vine agreed. "For most people. But you." She gestured at his battered body, at the pipe in his hand, at the scars covering him from head to toe. "You're different. You might actually make it. And if you do, if there's really a way out up there...I want to be there when you find it."
The offer hung between them, heavy with unspoken implications.
Before Bullet could answer, others began to stir. They heard the exchange, knew what was being proposed.
A wiry man stepped forward, his hands deeply scarred from a myriad grips on rough vines. They called him Thorn.
"I'll help you." Thorn said, his voice low and unsteady. He held a length of rope, moving carefully, almost reverently. A worn bead dangled from his wrist, faded and chipped like a token of faith that had been tested too many times. "The vortex...it's gotta be the way home, right?"
The words cracked at the edges. He was asking more than telling, wanting it to be true so desperately.
It echoed the uncertain pull in Bullet's own chest. Home. The word stirred something, though he couldn't say what. A longing for something he couldn't remember having.
Another woman lingered near Vine, staying close to her side. They called her Fang, and the reason was obvious, her teeth had been sharpened to points that glinted under the auroras' violet glow.
But her eyes were wrong for a predator. They darted constantly with raw fear rather than malice. She moved quietly, hands trembling slightly as she watched Vine's back.
Her loyalty was not because of devotion, but it was due to the fear of falling, of being cast out, and of dying all alone in the mist.
Bullet studied them all, these desperate survivors clinging to hope or power or simple survival. He saw reflected in their scars, in their exhaustion, in their refusal to give up even when giving up would have been easier.
"Fine," he said at last. "But I'm not waiting for anyone who can't keep up."
Relief and determination crossed their faces in equal measure.
Together they ascended, Bullet in lead, Vine close on his heels, Thorn securing ropes and Fang bringing up the rear, eyes darting with nervous energy.
The islands became more treacherous. Narrow ledges that were barely wide enough for single file, bridges reduced to single ropes that had to be crossed hand over hand while legs dangled over the void, platforms that tilted violently without warning, trying to throw them off.
Thorn proved his worth immediately, securing ropes across impossible gaps, finding routes that Bullet would have missed. His hands moved with practiced efficiency despite their trembling.
"I think I was a rigger." he said once, as he secured a line across a chasm. "Before. In the real world. Worked on tall buildings." He laughed bitterly. "Maybe I was training for this without knowing it."
Vine moved with a predator's grace, her vine-wrapped limbs giving her purchase where for another there would be none. She took risks that made Bullet's teeth clench. Leaping across gaps that should have been too far, trusting her strength and balance in ways that spoke of years surviving in this vertical hell.
Fang followed like a shadow, never quite comfortable but competent enough. Her sharpened teeth glinted every time she looked up at the vortex growing brighter above them.
They fought creatures together. When a pack of three attacked on a narrow ledge, they worked in brutal coordination. Bullet and Vine striking while Thorn and Fang kept their backs secure. Blood sprayed. Bodies fell into the clouds below. They kept moving.
The pull grew stronger with each island climbed. The vortex was visible now...a huge spiral of light and energy that rotated in the sky above them, bright enough to hurt when looked at directly. It pulled at him physically, making his scar burn with intensity bordering on pain.
"That's it." Thorn breathed, staring up at the vortex with reverent awe. "That has to be it. The way home."
Vine didn't say a word, but her eyes fixed upon the light with an expression that Bullet couldn't quite read...hunger perhaps, or fear masquerading as determination.
They reached a critical juncture, a gap between islands that was too far to jump, too wide to bridge with their ropes. The island beyond was small but directly beneath the vortex. The final step before whatever waited in that spiral of light.
"There." Thorn said, indicating a magnetic current that flowed between the islands, visible as a shimmer in the air, like heat waves. "If we time it right, we can ride that current across."
"Or get thrown into the void if we time it wrong," Vine replied.
Bullet studied the current, feeling for its rhythm. It pulsed, strong for a few seconds, then weak, then strong again. Predictable but dangerous. One mistake would be fatal.
"I'll go first." he said.