Now is the time, Lord Scieth. Awaken from your slumber. Tonight, the crew of the Liberator, the last of the dissidents will die.

Yes my queen.

The captain and the prime of earth must live though. They are the keys to our rise or our undoing. You must ensure it is the former.

Yes my queen. They will be preserved. The rest...shall die.

***

“Yep, I’m gonna die.”

That was Jim’s last thought before leaping off the side of The Liberator.

The plan was simple enough. Drop from the ship five kilometers up using bail wings, swoop down, and take the entrance guards by surprise. Then, they would peel away the forty or so feet of solid rock protecting the roof of the vault (that’s where Jim came in), and let loose with a mix of forty-seven pounders from above and elemental fire from below. Captain Rychist would head up that effort.

In a later conversation the night before over way too much mead, he had learned she was the only prime awakened of fire on the ship. He was eager to see her perform.

Accompanying him, aside from the captain, were nine fire awakened. Their success depended on absolute stealth. Covered head to toe in pitch black Suahm aviator suits, wearing bail wing survival backpacks, with white eyes peeking out of burnt glass goggles and black faces, the first attack wave cut silently across the night sky.

Through his goggles, Jim could make out a few shapes ahead of him. Directly ahead was the captain. To his left, Sasha. The young man was grinning ear to ear as they plummeted downward. He caught a glimpse in the boy’s eyes. Within, the same frenzied hunger he saw in Henry sat stewing.

He’s picking up some bad habits from that metal maniac.

Jim didn’t share Sasha’s enthusiasm. One thing he had developed over years of wandering the wastes was a sharp instinct.

And that instinct told him this was a very bad idea.

The first cloud layer was coming up fast. He knew, clouds weren’t solid objects but still, Jim couldn’t keep from flinching as they punched into the cool mist. Whoosh! His goggles fogged over momentarily as the air dropped ten degrees.

A shiver crawled up his spine. Despite the heavily layered leather and cotton jacket, the icy moist air chilled him to the bone.

As soon as it had begun, it was over. The silent divers emerged from the bottom of the cloud, its essence following each of them out in short twisted tails of grey. Looking around, it was a sight to behold. Freefalling toward the earth with nothing between him and the sky, he felt the rush of the moment.

For a few seconds, his cares slipped away as he was drawn downward. A few weeks ago, he was scraping along at the bottom rungs of society, and today he was flying through a star filled sky. With people he could dare to call friends.

The captain would be giving the signal to deploy soon. They had fallen well over a mile now. Any moment -

Then, it happened.

The pitch black earth beneath them was suddenly awash in fire light. Hundreds...thousands of turngun rounds flung themselves upward from hidden emplacements scattered for miles. The serene canvas of dimly lit topsoil was awash with a conflagration of fiery chaos.

All around him, hot rounds zipped past, streaking red lines through the air, leaving blinding lines in his vision. The sheer volume of lead in the air was remarkable.

Before he could understand what was happening, the clouds behind their group flashed a brilliant orange. Jerking his head to the left, he spotted an expanding orange fireball where the ship had once been..

It was a trap.

The cloud behind them shifted unnaturally apart. Seconds later, the overpressure blast hit. The wave of air and heat struck his helpless body like an anvil. The world around him was spinning now. Ground, sky, ground, sky, gunfire, fireball, ground, stars.

He had been knocked out of control and was flailing wildly through the air. Utilizing the few hours of training he had received prior to his jump, he shot his arms and legs outward attempting to control the spin.

The ground was coming up fast. Acting quickly, Jim pulled the deploy cord on his bail wings.

Nothing happened.

Heart in his throat Jim pulled harder.

The cord broke.

“What the fu--” BOOM BOOM The sound of the explosions above augmented the rush of wind and gunfire. Panic was winning the battle for his mind. He was close now. Again, the ground was whispering to him.

Despite his awakened powers, there was no elemental trick to transform the ground into a soft, fluffy pillow. Fighting the creeping terror, he tried to focus. The secondary cord! Jim pulled the frayed cord from his left shoulder strap. Not a very promising looking backup. He gave it a tug.

This time, he was met with a satisfying thud as the straps strained against his body. The wings deployed and momentarily slowed his descent. Rushing wind calmed, and for a second or two, time slowed.

Before he could celebrate, however, his body began to flail out of control again. The wings had slowed his fall, but without lift, he was entering into a flat spin.

The ground below was peppered in blinking dots of firing turnguns. The entire surface of the earth was arrayed against them.

As he waited for his body to rotate one more time, he was getting dangerously low. He could hear the turnguns firing, soldiers shouting, and awakened infernos raging. It seemed some of his companions had enough sense to deploy their own wings and were fighting now as they sailed downward to their impending death or capture.

Balls of flame struck an emplacement directly below him. Men shrieked as their bodies were engulfed. In one hole, mini gunpowder bags popped off violently and cut down the already burning men as magazines were flash burnt.

To his left, Sasha had survived the initial onslaught and was shouting something. Jim couldn’t make it out, but he could hear the indomitable rage in the boy’s voice.

The initiate was making a good showing for himself as he channeled the fire of incendiary rounds zipping around him. Each small flame formed a ball of plasma in front of him. The boy was too occupied with deflecting fire to return its destruction upon the enemy.

And then, he was gone. A lucky bullet folded Sasha’s left wing in on itself and he spun into the darkness below.

“No!” Jim shouted into the deafening roar of wind.

Another dark figure crossed his vision. It was the captain. With arms outstretched, hair flailing behind her against a backdrop of fire and fury, her prime powers were incredible. A searing inferno formed below them.

Quickly, the torches once burning below were snuffed out, their fire feeding the growing cyclone of death. Men and women screamed for a split second before being instantly charred. Black figures of horror still thrashed and wailed as their bodies took a few agonizing moments to catch up with the reality of their demise.

He was in wonder of her incredible control. The cyclone was systematically incinerating a path through the emplacements.

For a brief moment, he dared to hope.

Then she was hit. Even from hundreds of feet away, he spotted the spray of blood erupting from her side. A lucky bullet had found its mark. Her silhouette cut hard right and disappeared in the void.

They were all doomed. There were still many dozens of working emplacements on the hillside. Racked with grief, Jim’s survival instinct took over. Time to get the hell out.

At the far edge of the carnage, Jim made out what looked like a small gash in the earth. Possibly a canyon, or a cliff. It was too dark to know for sure. If he was going to survive this, it would have to be there.

Tucking his head down for maximum aerodynamics, he picked up speed. His wings allowed for enough lift that he could fall at a steep angle, and his finned helmet granted him at least a small amount of horizontal control. Jim pulled up his right sleeve and fixed his eyes on the copper plated glass altimeter watch. It was dialing down...fast.

One kilometer - - Eight hundred meters - - Five hundred meters - - One hundred meters

He was too close. It was now or never. Squinting, spotting the shadow of what he hoped was a canyon, he pulled the cord for his landing bottles.

“Landing Bottles” were dual forty centimeter long containers of highly pressurized air. They contained about five seconds of thrust. Just enough to slow one’s landing, or in his case, fly like hell through a storm of gunfire with the small chance he might survive a plummet downward into what he hoped was a not so deep canyon.

It’s that or plummet to certain death, he figured.

The bottles erupted with incredible effect. For a moment, it seemed he would spin out of control again. Wrenching his body into a backward arc and turning his finned helmet, he was able to direct most of the thrust behind and below him. His downward fall turned into a horizontal tear of blinding speed across the sky.

He was only a hundred meters above the ground now. Emplacements flew past as his bottles quickly spent their stored energy. Fire was still erupting from at least a few surviving divers. He could hear the explosions and shouting.

There was nothing he could do for them, but they were mercifully holding the attention of the gunners below. Jim soared eastward unnoticed.

That was lucky.

His thrust bottles emptied. The roar of escaping gas became a hiss, then silence. Pressing his arms and legs together, he did his best to create as little wind resistance as possible. Precious speed bled away quickly. The canyon was fast approaching. Indeed, it was a canyon and not a jagged cliff face.

Lucky, twice in one day.

His body started to shake as forward velocity was once again depleted. The bail wings were losing precious lift. In another moment, he would enter another flat spin and plummet to his death. As his body neared the far sloped canyon wall, he arched his back once more and let the wings absorb what little velocity remained to him.

It wasn’t enough to keep him from crashing into the canyon wall.

OOF Jim’s body struck the slanted ground with a thud. A shooting pain on his right side meant a likely broken rib. Falling now, he couldn’t catch his breath. His lungs had been emptied of air.

Gasping.

Rolling.

Gasping.

Pain.

Scraping, scratching, tumbling.

Somewhere his helmet had been knocked off. His unprotected head struck the ground, and the world turned an odd shade of green as his brain tried to process the impact. He could see dirt and shrubs flying past his vision but could only observe.

He assumed he was sliding face first along a steep slope, but it all felt like a dream - half remembered and half forgotten. Muted sound, tinted vision, disconnected mind; Sure signs of a concussion or shock. The slanted earth against his head slowly dragged to a grinding stop.

Jim lay motionless as the colors swimming across his vision cleared and sound returned. In the distance, he could still hear the cracks of turnguns firing, but the frequency of fire was slackening. By now, his friends must have been captured, killed, or were fighting to the death.

The crew, he thought with creeping hopelessness. A momentary thought of their bodies tumbling from the broken and burning Liberator to plummet to their doom threatened to overtake him.

No time for that now, he thought as he pushed the thoughts from his head. Survival first. He still couldn’t feel pain. One of the more desirable side effects of shock.

Laying face down on the dark hillside, he turned slowly allowing the weight of his legs to roll downward until they were below him. He sat up with the slope beneath him. Quickly the blood drained from his now throbbing head, and he nearly lost consciousness.

Taking a moment to center himself with his head between his knees, he took a few slow breaths. The shock began to wear off, and his side started to ache. Labored breathing confirmed it. Ugh, a broken rib. Maybe more.

Looking down, Jim could see his jacket and leather flight pants had been shredded along one side. If he had been wearing anything other than Suahim leather armor, the fall would likely have skinned him to the bone.

Bleeding out in a ditch wasn’t how he’d planned to go. Aside from plenty of scrapes and bruises though, he had survived yet another impossible escape.

Lucky three times? I’m sure I’ll pay for this.

Then he heard her voice.

The figure lay mangled in the bushes below. Contorted into very wrong angles. She looked like a ragdoll tossed aside carelessly. Despite the pain in his side, his legs seemed to be working. Jim rushed the rest of the way down the canyon.

As he reached her, she spoke. Her authority, her confidence, her power, all gone. From her lips escaped words of sorrow and regret. Between a whisper and a sob, the broken form of Alia Rychist spoke her last.

“I’m so sorry, Jim.”

His heart sank.

Fate had plucked the only friends he’d known from his hands. Worst yet, the woman he secretly admired. His life of loneliness and sorrow had seen a few precious moments of content. And now, it was taken away. As was always the case in the land of Ruin; happiness was paid for with tears.

Then, Alia Rychist fell silent.