48

  There was little air and less noise. Aerie Station’s largest remaining chunk was tumbling wildly away from the planet below, taking with it the shrine and its frantically racing occupants. As their sun and its necklace of worlds swung repeatedly past, those trapped inside struggled to right the asteroid's course.

  Their assailant had shattered the station's rocky base and its big, curving window. He’d severed its cable, as well, sending Aerie Station on a spiraling death-curve. Lord Erron ignored everything else to hoard what remained of their atmosphere, using life-and-heart manna; diverting what kept him alive, as he fought to maintain a bubble of breathable air.

  Hanna kicked herself away from a darkened control panel to join him. She struck with some force, which he absorbed, slipping an arm around her waist to steady her. There were frozen tears and lacy frost on her bruised face as she mouthed: ‘I love you.’

  Erron kissed his wife, feeling her magic surge over to bolster his own. Then the shrine goddess crept back out of her pebble. She was misty at first but gathered mass and power once she sensed that their attacker had gone. Now Lirrilan busied herself regenerating air, water and life. Began refilling the shrine’s fountain and mending its broken window with ice that froze solid and hard as a northern glacier.

  Marget and Zak kicked and hauled their way to the shrine’s console, meanwhile. Getting there, they went to work like a pair of cursing dwarf engineers, fighting to restore Aerie Station’s power. Nothing… nothing…

  ‘Try resetting the coil to zero, then linking back to the power gem,’ signed Zak, gleaming as much from internal circuits as shifting, reflected sunlight.

  Marget nodded, fighting an axe-blow high-altitude headache. She did not heed a male’s babble ordinarily, but there was no shame in admitting that a construct aerrior might know more than she did about its fellow machines.

  Marget hauled down on a metal lever, bringing the station’s radiant coil setting from fifty percent to zero. Beside her, Zak put his consciousness into the system, seeking exactly where their attacker had damaged it, all while they bobbed like corks in rough water.

  Nothing… nothing…

  Her artificial arm grew wires and probes from its fingertips, reaching into the console’s mechanism. Through it, Marget relinked the coil and gem on this end. Next, prayed to all of her mothers for quick wits and success as she pushed that lever back up to fifty percent (without ripping it loose of its base).

  Zak sparkled with calculation beside her, one brass-and-wood hand on the darkened console, the other gripping Marget’s belt, preventing the massive orc from drifting away.

  Still nothing.

  Then THUMP! A brief surge of illumination and noise filled the shrine, dying away like summer lightning in faraway clouds. Zak rattled a vicious curse, then tried again, sending repair bots to stretch and weld a connection deep in the station’s power core.

  Once again, THUMP! A series of stuttering flickers, while power struggled to flow. Then came a low, welcome, wonderful humming noise. The sound was as thin as an assembler’s flight-whine at first but rapidly gained in volume. Warmth, light and gravity returned, too, with breathable air like a thick, soft blanket.

  Marget found herself gasping prayers and curses with equal force. She wiped blood from her nose and mouth, then nodded to Zak before leaping across to catch Salem and Monkey. Swept them into her arms before they crashed onto that buckled and dented steel floor.

  The tabaxi’s spine had been snapped. She moaned a continual, wavering yowl, and her golden eyes were nearly all pupil, with only the thinnest bright ring around hollow void black. Worse, Monkey had nearly been gutted. Brought near to Salem, he broke up into shimmering motes and streamed across to the tabaxi’s shoulder, becoming a tattoo; just a faint and huddled gold ape, hiding its head in two long, hairy arms.

  Marget grunted as their weights were combined. Full gravity had magically returned, and the Old Ones… Erron and Hanna… bounded swiftly across to join her.

  “The healing spring,” urged General Erron, jerking his auburn head at that swirling pool. “Get her into the water, Warrior. Swiftly!”

  Marget took no orders from males. Advice on the other hand… suggestions… yes. They raced to the shining, re-landscaped spring. Were stopped short a few feet away by an unseen wall and a shimmering, lovely, implacable goddess.

  “This spring is intended for elves,” snapped Lirrilan, shaking her head so that her green-and-brown tendril hair drifted. “It is not to be sullied by lesser folk. True persons, only.”

  Uh-huh. Erron’s jaw set. His brows lowered dangerously over fierce, hazel eyes.

  “I am an elf,” he snarled. “One of the last three… maybe two, if we don’t hurry… that remain. The shrine system is meant to serve at my command, is it not?”

  The goddess hesitated, sensing a looming trap. Salem’s life force continued to ebb, bit by bit, in the meantime. Her head lolled to one side, and her limbs sagged loose like a broken doll's. Only the tabaxi’s wide, staring eyes and continual moan showed that she wasn’t quite dead. Squinting suspiciously, Lirrilan hedged,

  “Yes, that is so, but…”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “But nothing,” cut in Hanna, stepping forward to cradle Salem’s dropping dark head. “Make an exception. We cannot repair and anchor this shrine, or return you to yours, if we keep losing people!”

  Marget nodded agreement, while Zak stood aside, arms folded across his broad metal chest. 'No loss', thought the orc. Who needed the help of a cold metal drow?

  “My brother has been taken. We must find him before that corpse-lord kills him and the battle-god, both. Out of my way, spirit, or I will go through you!” A threat that she very much meant.

  The goddess gave no assent. Merely vanished, but so did her invisible force wall. Marget rushed forward with no grace at all, trampling newly sprung reeds in her haste. She bounded into the pool with a great splash, then lowered Salem gently into waist-high cold water.

  At first, the tabaxi merely got soaked, her black fur going from bottle-brush stiff to clinging wet. Then tiny bright lights began questing their way through the pool. Erron placed a firm hand on Marget’s left shoulder. Hanna took the orc’s right side, quietly humming the Song that Takes Away Pain. Both of them glowed with exhaustion and worry, bright as a pair of young gods… or a trio, for something deep inside Hanna shone with a tiny light of its own.

  “She has our protection,” growled Erron. “They all do. It is our will that these brave persons be fully healed by the spring!”

  And the lights responded, first gathering close, then flowing up onto Marget, Salem, her monkey tattoo, Erron and Hanna… and Baby. Just like that, between sharp, indrawn breath and long sigh, they were healed.

  Salem yowled, spat and then leapt out of Marget’s grip, touching as little water as possible to land on shore in a reed-smashing crouch.

  “Pftah!” she spat, her eyes still very wide and hysterically dark. “Water is toxic in more than a mouthful! Seek you to poison me?!”

  She was drenched and unhappy but whole, with a bright golden monkey tattoo flexing its muscles on her right shoulder. Hanna threw herself into Erron’s arms, sobbing wordlessly as she cradled a once-again curving belly. He stroked her head, burying his face in her dark hair and holding her close as she wept.

  Marget snorted rudely, then turned away from that morass of weak, raw emotion. Shifted her gaze to Zak, who stood looking on without interest.

  “We must stop what is left of this station from drifting, construct,” she said to him. “This lot will need time to recover their wits, and I have no patience for tears.”

  He nodded, returning to the control panel with a series of chiming metallic footfalls. Marget moved to join him, pausing long enough to make eye contact with Erron. Grunted,

  “I thank you, General. For taking our part and for deeming us worthy to save.”

  The Old One smiled at her.

  “I have no better friends than you and the cat-woman and Miche… and now Hanna, who has been saved in part by your actions. My life is yours, Warrior.”

  A thing that he very much meant. Now, all that they had to do was stabilize Aerie Station, then find a way back to the barren, dark planet below.

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  No one above had missed Gnameless at first, but things had been happening. The marten had been blessed by Firelord, then splashed with a bit of spring water, while trying to drink from the pool. Possibly nudged a little by Fate, the beast felt its mind grow, as purpose and genuine consciousness came creeping back.

  Enough so that… when they were attacked by that moldering elf-lord… Gnameless changed forms. From marten, the creature transformed itself into a small, flying beetle. Zipped through a storm of escaping air to land on Friend and then scuttle into a fold of red cloth. Power surged moments later, and all at once they were no longer up in that big, humming station. Down again. Back on a solid and dying planet.

  Friend was hurled to the ashy floor of a ruined chamber, landing with a thump and a rattle of armor. Gnameless-beetle clung tightly till Friend stopped skidding and rolling, then clambered through clothing and loose golden hair for a look at their altered surroundings. Little creature, small eyes… but those optics were bulging and compound, giving Gnameless a nearly 360-degree view of the chamber and its stalking, pacing corpse-lord. The distracted cadaver looked tasty, to his current form and new appetites.

  There were two others in the chamber: a fading spirit and a badly wounded humanoid female. On one side rose a broad, curving window, through which Gnameless glimpsed flickering light. Miche-Friend was alive but asleep, he sensed. The elf was kept magically out of the fight, the god within him trapped by a dark and powerful entity. What now? Once before, his elven friend had been paralyzed, the insect recalled. Back then, Gnameless had freed him by bringing fire, his element.

  There were still a few coals scattered about, last embers of a terrible explosion. As the fallen carcass-lord gestured and muttered (speaking words that the beetle’s earholes couldn’t pick up very well) Gnameless scuttled out of Friend’s red cloak. Their odds were never going to be better than now.

  He was not truly nameless, realized the glistening insect, as he leapt to the floor and then hastened toward the nearest bright ember. Just didn’t remember his identity or true nature. A puzzle, right enough, for he could recall nothing at all before finding Friend by the river, so long before. Stiff as a branch, cold and helpless the elf had been, until Gnameless stole and brought fire.

  Then as a marten, now as a very small bug, he took up a bit of glowing coal, wrapped it in manna and chitinous jaws. Next, keeping to cover, he hoisted and carried that ember back to his comatose friend.

  Into the elf’s slack mouth, Gnameless thrust that sparkle of flame. Sketched a healing rune on Friend’s cheek with a jointed foreleg, too. It was all he could do, while the (enticingly aromatic) corpse-lord constructed an altar of stone and debris in what had been a shrine. Meanwhile, the others he’d sensed drew closer.

  A small, crouched goddess crept near, seeming quadrupled and fuzzy at first, then growing in focus. Meanwhile, that dismembered witch pulled herself across the stone floor with the only limb she had left, a split and smoldering orc arm. Hauling with her big, stolen hand, pushing with tattered hips, she inched slowly forward. Gnameless waved his antennae and forelegs, beckoning. All were battered and weak, mostly helpless alone. But together…?

  They were discovered sooner than expected, for their enemy had turned from his task; altar completed. Ferocious blue eyes shone fever-hot in a ravaged face. Seeing the lot of them scraping through ashes and wreckage, the corpse-lord summoned his weapons and manna. He stalked across to confront them, laughing scornfully.

  “Formed an alliance, have we?” he purred, drawing a sword that blazed with corrupted flame. “Hoping to save yourselves and the traitor, perhaps? Such a pity your schemes are as worthless as you are.”

  No. Not worthless, nor entirely helpless, either.

  Gnameless changed forms again, finding inside of himself the shape of a little brown sparrow. He screeched and fluttered at the fallen elf’s head, switching to rabbit-shape long enough to deliver a clawed and powerful kick. The goddess rose up, as well, calling to whatever good remained in that desecrated shrine. And the witch? She hauled herself to Friend, who twitched as she reached her orc hand into his magical pockets. Groping, the witch bypassed day-brew and dragon steak, fumbling for some sort of weapon.

  Anything might have happened. Only, the worlds clicked together, that glittering light wall closed in, and the orc hand took hold… through space and time… of a certain glass bottle.