The "Aura-Mill" was a cathedral of turning gears and screaming wind. Nyra's harpoon had bought them seconds, but the Executioner's Guard was an immortal engine of war. He didn't fall; he merely pivoted.
"A heretic from the High-Spires," the Guard's voice boomed, metallic and cold. "Nyra of the Fallen House. Your head will fetch a fine price at the feet of the Zen-Zun."
"Then come and collect it, tin-man!" Nyra shouted. She didn't wait. She kicked a lever on the floor.
With a groan of protesting metal, the massive horizontal fans began to speed up. The air pressure in the room shifted violently, creating a localized cyclone that tugged at the Wing-Harrower's tattered wings.
"Kiron! Taz! Jump!" she commanded, pointing toward a maintenance chute that led to the island's underside.
"It's a three-hundred-foot drop to the secondary nets!" Taz screamed over the roar of the wind.
"Better a broken leg than a severed head!" Kiron yelled back. He grabbed Taz's collar, pulling him toward the edge. He looked back at Nyra. "What about you?"
"I'm the one with the crossbow! Now move!"
Kiron hesitated. He saw the Guard leveling his spear again. The golden tip was gathering light faster than before. Kiron's palms throbbed. That phantom heat—the "Blood-Prayer"—tugged at his soul, urging him to stay and fight. But he looked at his trembling hands and realized he was spent. He was a candle that had flickered once and gone dark.
He jumped.
The sensation of falling was a cold, stomach-flipping void. The wind tore at his clothes. Beside him, Taz was a blur of flailing limbs and terrified shouts. They plummeted through the internal guts of the island, passing pipes that hissed steam and gears that could crush a man into paste.
THWACK.
Kiron slammed into a heavy rope net designed to catch falling debris. The impact knocked the wind out of him, leaving him gasping for air that tasted like salt and old copper. A second later, Taz landed beside him with a heavy thud.
"I'm... I'm alive..." Taz wheezed, his face buried in the rope.
Kiron didn't answer. He was looking up. High above, through the opening of the chute, a massive explosion of gold and white light illuminated the Aura-Mill. The sound was deafening—a thunderclap that shook the very foundation of the island.
A shadow plummeted from the opening, trailing smoke. It wasn't the Guard. It was Nyra.
She slammed into the net twenty feet away, rolling expertly to dissipate the force. Her cloak was scorched, and her crossbow was missing.
"Did you kill him?" Kiron asked, his voice shaking.
"Don't be a fool," Nyra spat, coughing up a bit of grey dust. She stood up, her legs slightly shaky. "You don't kill an Executioner with a bolt. I just blew the main condenser. The whole mill is going to go critical."
As if on cue, the island beneath them groaned—a deep, tectonic sound. The Vort-Isle began to tilt.
"The buoyancy..." Taz whispered, eyes wide. "The island is sinking."
"It's not sinking," Nyra said, her eyes fixed on Kiron. She stepped closer, her gaze intense, searching his face. "It's being discarded. The Gods don't care about the rock, Kiron. They care about what's on it."
She reached out and grabbed Kiron's wrist, turning his palm upward. The skin was still warm, the faint gold veins beneath his flesh looking like a map of a city he'd never visited.
"You have no idea what you are, do you?" she asked.
"I'm a scrapper," Kiron said, pulling his hand away. "I'm nobody."
"The thousands who bled in the Koda District didn't die for a 'nobody,'" Nyra said, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut through the whistling wind. "The Zen-Zun are terrified, boy. They felt your pulse. Every shadow-monster and tainted knight on this planet is going to be hunting us now."
Kiron looked at the purple horizon. The Taint was spreading, swallowing the suns. Far off, he could see the silhouettes of other floating continents—places he had only heard of in stories.
"I can't fight them," Kiron said, his voice small. "I don't know how."
"Then you'd better learn fast," Nyra replied, looking toward the lower docks where a small, battered skiff was tethered. "Because the first God is already on his way. And he doesn't send guards to do a God's work."