And just as he’d done in the forest when he’d faced the hound, Cross grabbed hold of those shifting shadow energies, and he channeled them with a natural mastery over magic that both he and his sister had been born with. He let the darkness swallow him, but at the same time he took just enough control of it to push the black energy in the direction that he wanted it to travel.
Straight into the bomb.
Pain shredded his body. Cross trapped the pyroclast bomb in a shroud of Wormwood energies, in the shadows that existed between moments. Darkness soaked him. Cross folded the shadows around the bomb, sealed it away from its siblings in a cage of utter darkness.
Only one bomb would go off. The bomb there on the Necronaught.
Cross’ last conscious thoughts were of Snow. He saw her, at four years old, her gangly hair a mess thanks to the plum pudding she’d used to cover her face like war paint. He saw her, at thirteen, sleeping until noon no matter how bright it was outside or how hot it was or how many times he threw pillows at her in bed while she slept. He saw her, a woman grown, brave and strong, so wanting to help him and to do the right thing that she made a secret decision that would ultimately lead her to her death.
He thought of her, and his heart died. He hoped she would feel no pain.
Red and Snow screamed. Knight’s eyes went wide with shock. Cross clenched his teeth and pulled his rotting hand back from the moment. He released the pyroclast, and in doing so allowed the explosion to happen.
The first blast tore out in a wave of acid and flame. Steel and shrapnel exploded as the detonation ruptured the car. Fire roared down the access tubes in the ceiling and into the other cars, racing along until it found the fuel tanks. When the fuel caught, the entire train rattled sideways with a caustic blast and was thrown off its course. Cars groaned and crashed into one another. A crescendo of thunder shook the air.
Cross screamed. He stood at the core of the blast.
The cars at the rear of the train buckled, twisted, and rolled into each other. Storms of red ash roared alongside the screaming souls bound to the Necronaught. The bladed locomotive listed forward into the earth and tore the ground apart. Exploding fuel launched the cars forward and flipped them end over end.
The Necronaught careened over the edge and fell into the Carrion Rift. It broke apart in the fall, and plummeted in sections.
The train met its demise at the nadir of the Rift. A series of metallic blasts echoed across the plains, through the mountain peaks, and into the void of the falling night.
Steven Montano
Blood Skies
Cross runs through ankle-deep icy waters. The canopy of leaves collapses like green snow. Angry wind whips through the trees and bends the freezing rain. The black mountain stands, ever vigilant.
He is in the glade.
In the obelisk.
It must be safe, for us to be here now.
Cross runs towards the clearing. There are shouts ahead. His body is whole, but he feels faint, like he is fading.
He doesn’t have much time.
Cross pushes his way through the icy canopy of trees.
Red is there, and she runs from him. She has found a way out, a way to escape her death on the train by moving through the obelisk. From there she will travel somewhere else, to some other safe exit point back in the physical world.
He knows Red can accomplish this. She has uncovered the secrets of this place, after all. She will doubtless have found a way to break free.
But she runs as if frozen, trapped in the icy flow. Her every step is prolonged, dream-like. She is not meant to be here, and the world in the prison resists her transgression.
Cross closes the distance between them. She sees him, and runs faster. Neither of them can use their spirits here. They are all prisoners in this place.
She will fall up and into the sky, he realizes, just as spirits do when their time is done.
Cross hears thunder, the approaching rumble of hooves. Red speeds her pace.
Cross races toward the witch, even as a shaft of silver light embraces her from above. She holds up her arms, and her body begins to rise. Cross tackles her, and they both fall back to earth. They struggle half submerged in the platinum waters.
They roll and splash in the freezing marsh. He holds on to her tightly, gripping her hair and forcing her face into the water, not even sure if she can drown in this world.
His skin is frozen. He feels himself slipping away, fading. Light pierces his body. He grows translucent.
The unicorns emerge from the trees. Their bloody and jagged horns bear down on the two mages, aimed like a host of lances. Red screams and struggles, but Cross holds her tight.
Meet the wardens of this prison, he tells her without speaking. They protect the last vestige of our power and our hope. They are the guardians of what you wanted to take away from us.
Cross looks to the trees. He sees his spirit there, trapped in this cage with no walls, and she watches him. She waits for him.
He realizes how much he loves her.
The unicorns run both he and Red through. The horns cut straight into their bodies like ugly black blades. Red and Cross are trampled underfoot, their bodies mangled. The silver waters turn red.
They swim in pain. Cross holds on to Red. He will make sure he doesn’t die alone.
Red’s broken body folds. She screams as she is drawn up to the eternal sky. She does not make it far before her form is scattered like a flock of bloody ravens, torn apart as it leaves the safety of the glade.
It didn’t work, the voice of his spirit tells him. He can’t tell if she is near or far. Red has not escaped.
Cross lays on the ground, broken, bleeding and crushed. But he is still there.
He sees his spirit. She emerges from the trees and walks towards him.
I’m sorry. I’m finished. And with me gone, you’ll die, too.
It’s time, she tells him. It’s the way of things. One goes. Another stays. I want to go.
No.
It’s my choice. Not yours.
And so it ends. A unicorn horn pierces her torso from behind, and it punches through her chest. She gasps, and her hands cling to the bloody spike. She looks at Cross, and smiles.
I love you.
A beam of light from above takes hold of her. She is lifted out of the glade and into the silver sky, where she will fall forever in the company of other lost souls.
Steven Montano
Blood Skies
Cross woke to a cold and cloudy night.
His back ached like he’d been stabbed, and his joints and muscles were sore and stiff. Every last part of him felt heavy, except for his head, which felt stuffed with cotton. But he was whole. The wounds he’d suffered were somehow all gone: the plagued hand, the blade and claw wounds, even the broken leg. All he was left with was fatigue.
A deep chill gripped his skin, and when Cross took a breath he was struck with a fit of coughing that went on for what felt like hours.
Slowly, he sat up, and looked around.
He was in the graveyard.
She sent me home.
The industrial fires of Thornn lit the deep night and turned the clouds to copper. The vastness of the Reach stretched out behind him, a dark and endless field of shadowed frost. Just to his right, dangling from the lonely tree, was the featureless doll he and Snow had seen the last time they’d been there.
It was the last place he and Snow had visited together before he’d found out she was to be a part of Viper Squad. Before he found out she’d accompany him on what ended up being her first and only trip away from Thornn.
