Juryokine

Chapter Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Six

Fierce anger like nothing Toke had ever felt burned in his stomach as he flapped his artificial wings, rising out of the roof of Navras' laboratory. The ceiling must have been at least thirty feet above his head to begin with, and yet when he shot out into the open air he found himself surrounded with lush, green grass.

It was underground, he realized as he climbed higher and higher. Of course it was underground. Nothing that big could stay secret for so long otherwise.

None of that mattered, though. Toke could see the path the Terracaelum had taken the moment he left the laboratory. A long line of bare earth stretched out into the distance, with trees and boulders strewn haphazardly all around it. The inventor's ship had, indeed, created a massive Gravity Storm in its wake, but all traces of kaosuryo seemed to have passed as the Terracaelum left its birthplace behind.

A blast of cold wind hit Toke square in the face, and he had to flap his arms as hard as he could to keep from being thrown off balance. His legs flailed, threatening to spin him around and flip him upside down, so he pressed them both together and tried to keep his body in a straight line.

I wish I had thought of this before, he thought as his journey into the sky continued. The trees, and then the hills the trees were growing on, gradually became smaller and smaller as Toke ascended. This would be hard enough even if I knew what I was doing.

The Terracaelum's path of destruction became even more obvious the higher he went. From the sky, he could easily trace the ship's course as the devastation continued in a straight line for several miles, and then looped around to the left. After that, it continued in another straight line before...

There it was! So far in the distance that Toke had to squint to see it, there was a barely detectable glimmer of green in the sky. The Terracaelum, and the inventor it carried, were shooting across the horizon like a comet. And then, abruptly, it changed directions again, this time coming straight back towards the base.

He had to loop around so he could build up speed, Toke thought. And now he's going to make a beeline straight for Hashira.

He wasn't going to make it, though. Toke clenched his fists around his wings and took off in the direction Navras was coming from. He would stop him. He had to stop him. If he didn't, every Sorakine on Fissura was going to die.

The Terracaelum approached faster than Toke expected, and two minutes later the tiny spark of green had turned into a raging ball of kaosuryo big enough to engulf a building. The ship itself looked like it was being chased by the Gravity Storm, and had a lead on it by about fifteen feet. Even though it was miles away, Toke could already hear the engines roaring.

Toke was now thousands of feet up in the air and the wind was battering him like an ocean current, always trying to throw him off course. It took all his strength and concentration just to stay lined up with the Terracaelum. If his estimates were correct, the Terracaelum would pass about a hundred feet directly below him in less than a minute.

He would only get one chance to do this right.

Still flapping his wings, Toke counted in his head as he watched the Terracaelum come closer. And then—

"Now!" he grunted, and pulled the cord at his waist. The straps binding the wings to his body came free, and they were immediately blown away from him. Toke began to fall.

Keeping his eyes on the approaching Terracaelum, Toke flipped himself upside down so that he was falling toward Fissura in a perfect nosedive. His heart pounded in his ears, but his rage was strong enough to bury his fear.