Chapter 101 The Siege of the Clouds
"Five thousand feet and still climbing!" Kael’s voice sliced through the roar of the updraft, his gray eyes tracking the altimeter etched in silver light on the war console. "The atmospheric pressure is dropping, Lyra! If we don’t stabilize the oxygen scrubbers, the servants will pass out before the first ship hits the deck!"
"Screw the scrubbers, Kael! Look down!" I stepped to the very edge of the jagged obsidian rampart, my silver hair lashing against my face like a whip.
The world below was a shrinking map of brown and green, the Border of Bones reduced to a thin line of charcoal. But the ten thousand Alphas weren't retreating. They were swarming.
"They’re using Wind-Magic!" Caspian’s roar came from right behind me.
I felt his heat before I felt his touch. He wrapped his massive arms around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest as the manor gave a violent, upward lurch. His Mark of the Sun was a searing brand against my back, the golden resonance vibrating through my spine.
"Look at the Southern vanguard!" Caspian pointed a scarred hand toward the clouds. "They aren't waiting for the airships to dock! They’re catapulting themselves!"
"Are they insane?" I gasped, squinting through the mist.
Small, dark specks were erupting from the forest floor, propelled by massive cyclones of emerald-green magic. Thousands of Alphas were being launched into the sky, their claws extended, their bodies encased in protective spheres of wind-energy. It was a vertical suicide charge.
"It’s not insanity, it’s a cull!" Rune’s thought slammed into the Hive-Mind, dripping with adrenaline and bloodlust. I could feel his heartbeat—a heavy, rhythmic thrumming in my own chest. They’re using the low-rankers as a screen! They want us to waste our mana on the fodder while the obsidian ships move into flanking positions!
"He’s right," Kael snapped, his fingers blurring as he recalculated the defensive grid. "Lyra, the Hive-Mind is spiking! The adrenaline from the brothers is feeding the Trinity! Look at the babies!"
I turned my head. The three infants were suspended in their silver-light cradle, their eyes glowing with a terrifying, synchronized gold. They weren't crying. They were laughing—a sound like breaking glass that echoed in the telepathic link.
"They like the height," I whispered, a faceslap of realization hitting me. "They aren't afraid of the fall. They’re hungry for the hunt."
"We have company!" Rune bellowed from the western balcony.
The first wave of Wind-Alphas hit the manor’s underside. I heard the screech of claws on crystal, the sound of five hundred desperate men trying to find purchase on a floating mountain.
"Caspian, the perimeter!" I commanded, leaning back into his embrace for a split second to draw on his Soul-fire.
"On it," Caspian whispered against my ear, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. "Let them come, Lyra. We have a kingdom to build in the clouds, and we’ll use their corpses for the foundation."
He let go of my waist, his form blurring as he shifted into his Alpha-Prime state, a towering beast of midnight and gold. He leaped from the rampart, diving five hundred feet down the side of the manor to meet the climbers head-on.
"Kael! The airships are closing the gap!" I screamed, pointing to the massive obsidian vessels emerging from the clouds like sharks in deep water.
"I see them! They’re using harpoon-cannons!" Kael’s voice was strained, his Mark of the Moon flaring so bright it was casting long, jagged shadows across the garden. "They’re trying to anchor us! If they pin the manor, they can board us from all sides!"
A massive, bone-carved grapple slammed into the marble of the manor’s hanging garden, barely ten feet from where I stood. The chain attached to it was thick as a redwood trunk, humming with purple Void-energy.
"Cut it!" I yelled.
Rune appeared from the mist, his Mark of the Earth turning his skin into living stone. He grabbed the chain with his bare hands, the Void-energy hissing as it tried to erase his palms.
"It’s too heavy!" Rune grunted, his muscles bulging until his veins looked like mountain ridges. "There’s an airship on the other end pulling us down! Kael, I need a frequency shift!"
"Hold it for five seconds, Rune!" Kael shouted. "I’m rerouting the Trinity’s resonance through your hands!"
The babies let out a high-pitched hum. Rune’s body erupted in silver fire. With a roar that shook the clouds, he ripped the massive anchor out of the stone and hurled it back into the abyss. A distant explosion told us the airship below hadn't survived the return to sender.
"Nice throw," I shouted, but my triumph was short-lived.
The clouds directly in front of the main garden gates parted. A colossal airship, three times the size of the others and draped in the black-and-purple banners of Alpha Vane’s personal guard, drifted into view. It didn't fire harpoons. It simply opened its massive forward ramp.
"The resonance is spiking!" Kael’s thought was a scream of warning. "Lyra, get back! Something is coming through the veil!"
The air around the airship’s ramp began to warp. The purple Void-ink we had seen at the border was pouring out like a waterfall, turning the white clouds into a necrotic sludge.
"You think a floating rock can save you, Little Luna?"
The voice didn't come from the air; it came from the center of my brain, a cold, oily touch that made my skin crawl.
A figure stepped onto the ramp.
It was Vane, but the man was gone. He stood seven feet tall, his body a twisted mass of obsidian fur and exposed, glowing purple veins. His face was a nightmare of asymmetrical bone, one eye a dead pit of Void-energy, the other a burning red star. He didn't have hands—he had massive, crystalline blades of hardened ink.
"Vane," I spat, my silver hair flaring as I stepped forward, the golden light in my eyes reaching a fever pitch. "You should have stayed in the dirt where you belong."
"The dirt is for the weak, Lyra," the Void-Werewolf growled, his voice a chorus of a thousand dying screams. "I have tasted the Beginning. I have seen the silence behind your 'Great Spirit.' And now, I’ve come to delete the Thorne line once and for all."
He crouched, the obsidian wood of the airship’s ramp cracking under his weight.
"Kael! Rune! Caspian!" I screamed through the Hive-Mind. "Formation Alpha! He’s not a wolf anymore—he’s a virus!"
Vane didn't wait. He lunged, a blur of purple-black lightning that crossed the fifty-foot gap between the ship and the manor in a heartbeat.
He landed in the center of the garden, his crystalline blades slamming into the marble, sending a shockwave of Void-energy through the floorboards. The flowers withered instantly. The silver light of the garden lamps died.
Vane straightened up, the purple ink dripping from his claws and eating into the very stone of our floating fortress. He looked at me, then at the three glowing infants in the cradle.
"A Trinity of heirs," Vane hissed, his red eye pulsing. "A Trinity of snacks. Which one shall I erase first, Lyra?"
Behind him, hundreds of shadow-knights began to pour off the airship, their blades drawn, their eyes glowing with the same necrotic purple.
Caspian and Rune scrambled back to the garden, landing on either side of me, their breathing heavy, their marks glowing with a desperate intensity. Kael stood behind the cradle, his arms outstretched as a final shield.
We were 5,000 feet in the air, surrounded by a fleet of obsidian ships, facing a monster that defied the laws of nature.
"You aren't touching them," I said, my voice dropping to a deadly, sovereign whisper.
Vane threw his head back and laughed, a sound that cracked the sky.
"Watch me."