46 – God’s Bane Awakens

A rhythmic red flash pulsed at the edge of her vision.

Ashley willed herself to ignore it.

The battle with the dragon and the confrontation with Celestine had left a hollow fatigue in her marrow.

Yet the [Forgotten Moon Staff] vibrated in her fist, aggressively dragging her [Mana] reserves back up.

A stinging prickle crept into her wrists with every point reclaimed.

She forced her mouth into a flat smile, buying time.

Her gaze locked onto Celestine’s eyes, acting as if the flashing warning bar didn’t exist, as if her next incantation already sat poised on her tongue. As if she had power to burn.

The faint smell of ozone from the dying flame made her nose itch, an absurd thing to notice before the sheer weight of the standoff drowned it out.

Behind Celestine, the Eternal Flame had darkened to midnight, sealed inside the crystal: a moonless sky fractured by black and blue lightning crawling across the facets.

Then a mechanical shriek ripped down the shaft, high above the top of the crystal.

It hit the room as a deafening howl of tearing iron and pressurized steam, broken by choking bursts from somewhere high above.

Metal clattered against metal, growing louder with every heartbeat as whatever was falling came plunging toward them from the blackness.

Ashley didn’t turn.

Celestine didn’t blink.

They both knew too well this wasn’t the time to give the other any opening.

Simon clamped his hands around the iron handles with everything he had left.

[God’s Bane] swung from the chain at his waist, the blade knocking against his thigh, but he had no time to worry about whether it might cut him.

The Gomp Three Thousand plummeted through the shaft, screaming through the vents.

Walls blurred past on every side. The bottomless dark rushed up to meet them. Wind whipped his face, tearing the breath straight out of his mouth before he could shape a syllable.

The chain between their waists snapped taut, slackened as the frame lurched, and yanked hard against his spine. A sharp grunt escaped past his teeth.

He forced one hand higher along the vibrating chassis, dragged it through a layer of hot grease, and hauled the other up. He hauled his body toward the gnome inch by inch while the whole contraption bucked beneath them like a dying beast.

“Gomp!” Simon pitched his voice over the howl, his throat raw. “Do something, or we’re dead meat!”

The gnome turned his head. His expression was a complete blank under the soot. Only his wide eyes and button nose showed through the matted fur of his face, his beard blown completely sideways by the gale.

Gomp looked down at the valves and levers in front of his face.

His fingers were wrapped around the jagged, sheared-off stump of a brass lever. The other half was gone, torn clean away from the housing.

Simon stared at the broken metal. His heart hammered against his ribcage.

He offered no reply. His eyes darted to the empty control slot, flicked to the useless scrap in his fist, and tracked back to the slot. The mindless loop repeated: once, twice, three times.

Simon slammed his hand over Gomp’s, his fingers closing around the gnome’s fist, squeezing tight enough to grind their knuckles together.

“Gomp,” he shouted, forcing the words through the roar of the fall, “listen to me. You built this thing. You understand it. So breathe, find the fault, and fix it. I believe in you.”

A sharp, clean heat kindled at the nape of his neck, surging down his arms like liquid silver. A brilliant pale glow spilled over his shoulders, bleeding across Gomp’s soot-covered knuckles. The gnome stared at the light, his eyes flicking straight to Simon’s face.

The wild terror in the gnome’s eyes hardened into a razor-sharp focus. Gomp bared his yellow teeth, hurled the sheared-off lever behind his back, and spun back to the control board with a frantic lurch.

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“Of course I built it,” he snapped. “And no invention of mine is going to embarrass me in front of gravity.”

His fingers blurred over the controls. He slammed a pressure valve shut, cracked another open with a brutal kick of his heel, and seized a pair of thick brass handles, wrenching them in opposite directions.

The pipes shrieked.

A lopsided torrent of steam blasted from the lower ports, tilting the whole frame onto two nozzles and twisting the machine sideways.

Simon’s grip slipped across the greasy handle, but his fingers held by sheer friction as the machine hurled toward the solid wall, missed the rock by inches, and corkscrewed out of the terminal plunge.

The tunnel opened into an immense cavern. The machine shot from the vertical shaft in a wide, sickening spiral, bucking and hissing over the thermal updrafts as the vast space below opened up completely.

A monolithic black crystal dominated the center of the chamber, a shadow so dense it actively drained the light. Fractured streaks of blue lightning crawled deep within its core, branching and folding like a thunderstorm trapped behind solid glass. Simon locked his fingers around the handles, staring straight into the abyss.

“Bring us around that thing!”

The Gomp Three Thousand veered from its straight plunge. It swept around the crystal in a wide arc, one nozzle coughing steam in ragged bursts while the other spat a steady white plume behind them. The trails curled through the chamber, bright against the black, marking their descent like a broken ring of cloud.

Each turn of the machine brought them closer before carrying them away again, circling the structure instead of dropping past it.

Simon could barely keep his eyes open.

The speed pressed tears from them and tore the air across his face, turning the chamber into streaks of black stone, white steam, and blue flashes. He squinted in the direction the machine was taking, trying to make sense of the shapes rushing toward them.