Prodigal - Book III

Marginal Line

"FINN!" Hiran screams in the dark, hands clutching at cold steel. "ALLAYRIA!"

The tunnel has collapsed in front of them, buried in clammy, unmoving metal, and no matter how much he grasps at it, he can't move it, can't Skill it, and he doesn't care if it makes him a fool to try.

He reaches out toward the ceiling to Skill around it, dig around it, but as soon as a few pebbles fall Ruben quickly yanks his hand back with a dismayed "No!"

"The whole tunnel will collapse," the Skill master warns. "Hiran, don't be a fool."

Somewhere nearby Lei is coughing, his breath quick and labored.

"We have to—" Hiran says, looking around, even in the blank darkness, groping along the wall, looking for a crease, a crack.

"We must go back."

Lei's voice joins him in the uproar, the shouting pinging off the unseen tunnel walls, mixing and mashing into wordless outrage, panicked defiance.

"We cannot get through," Ruben shouts above it all. "The way is shut."

"It's her and Finn!" Hiran yells above it all. "And those things, that freak of a woman and her psychotic mother, how can you expect us—?"

"I can't do anything," Ruben answers, quiet, his voice so small. "We have no light; the tunnel is too unstable. I can't fix this, Hiran. We have to go back, to Tara and Dost."

Hiran can hear Lei's haggard breathing beside him, an erratic staccato much like his own. The same, manic energy is coursing through his blood as Hiran's, the same pulsing panic.

"Go out, get Tara, regroup," Hiran says as if saying it aloud will help, will make this all be less of a suicidal shit show. This is Eastwatch again, stumbling back toward the fort in an icy tundra, facing a long, inevitable look at the darkness, a low horizon. This is the marginal line of luck.

I can't let that kid be alone up there, Hiran thinks. Even with the body control. He can't go up there with only Allayria.

"I can feel the wall," Ruben says. "Come toward me, we'll follow it through. I think I remember the way."

At first, they think the rumbling is only the crashing consequence of Qui Wren's catapults on the landscape, rocks and boulders rolling like giant-sized die on the field. They hear the grumble as they shuffle closer, clutching slick stones in the dark.

It's louder than I thought, Hiran thinks, wonders, as the walls tremble beneath his hands. Louder, closer.

Dost's army must have made headway, must have advanced closer to the mountainside. Hiran takes heart from this. They'll just get up there, crack a few empty skulls, and be on their merry way, their merry way to Tara and then to Finn...

Dust and debris spatters on his head from somewhere above, on the invisible ceiling. Hiran snorts, sneezes, shakes his head in disgust. It stinks in here.

"Almost there," comes Ruben's disembodied voice from somewhere up ahead and it echoes in the dark.

I can't wait to be out of here, Hiran thinks.

It's only when the three men find the mouth of the cave, when they stand, arms flung over faces, blinking in the sudden blaze of light, of eye-tearing bright yellow and tan and red, that their sight adjusts, that they understand. That they see the zeppelins, so far in the distance, and feel the vibrations through the soles of their shoes.

Lei gasps, a wavering, breath-caught, noise, when the first massive drill breeches up through the ground's surface.

A/N: Aaaaand everything goes to shit. Next chapter should be soon, guys. It's another mini-one, so we're pairing up for two postings this week, but I think you'll find it very interesting...

Chapter Notes: Hiran and Tara get stuck out in the cold with that marginal line of luck in Partisan's "Low Horizon."