The Crucible of the Dragon God

into one of the towers themselves.

Dammit! Kali thought, dropping the rope and returning to the controls.

She had little, if any, idea of their internal workings and so did the only thing she could — thump them. Hard. She thumped them again but there was no response. And then, for the sake of variety, she kicked them. There was a slight response then and the course of the ship corrected slightly. But only for a second. Clearly the ship had leaked too much charge to continue without some persuasion and the implication of that couldn't have been worse.

She couldn't abandon the ship. She had to ride with it into the portal. And this time she doubted she would be coming back.

Kali looked up. The portal was directly in front of her now, fully formed, filling her world. The junction between realities seemed to slow the world around it, so that the ship edged rather than raced forward, but Kali wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not, because it gave her more time to see what was waiting for her inside. Looming large, directly on the other side of the portal — filling it — was Domdruggle's face. That angry, wizened, no longer human face. And it was roaring at her.

'Hooper!' it shouted.

Or did it? The voice seemed to come from behind and below her, faint on the wind, and somehow not possessing the rumbling, vocal gravitas one might expect from an ages old, spectral wizard.

'Hooper!'

No, she thought. It couldn't be.

Kali raced to the rear of the deck and looked down. Oh Gods, no, it really, really couldn't be…

But it was.

There was a naked man on a horse following the ship.

Correction. There was a naked man on Horse following the ship.

Riding him across the rooftops.

Kali stared, and despite her predicament couldn't help but smile. The fact was, Slowhand wasn't so much riding Horse as Horse was allowing him to stay mounted as he galloped in pursuit, the great beast taking the gaps between buildings with powerful leaps, flinging the archer about in the saddle. Quite how he had gotten here so quickly she could only guess at, but presumably filled with indignant anger at being unceremoniously — and literally — dumped, Slowhand had survived the Rainbow River and hot-footed it to the Flagons and coaxed Horse from his sickbed with warnings about how she was in mortal danger. The bamfcat's unusual abilities took care of the rest. Kali's heart lifted to see how well the beast had recovered under Merrit Moon's tender ministrations, and having him nearby made her feel less alone against what she faced. The archer, too, she supposed begrudgingly.

'Hooper, jump!' Slowhand shouted, his voice faint across the distance between them.

'I can't!' she shouted back, hoping that he not only heard but realised there was a reason for her refusal beyond the dizzying height. Fortunately, the ship juddered once more to illustrate her point.

A second passed, Slowhand sizing the situation up. As Kali corrected the ship's course once more, she heard: 'Hooper, just time it!'

Time what? Kali thought.

Because despite their mutual effort, Slowhand and Horse remained too far away. But at that second the nose of the ship impacted with the portal, squelching as it entered, and the effect the portal had on seeming to slow time was magnified tenfold as it slowly began to suck the ship through the bridge between worlds. Two things became immediately apparent to Kali — one, that this would give Slowhand and Horse time to draw closer and, two, that the ship no longer needed to be steered. It was entering the portal now no matter what and that made the difference between heroism and suicide. The jump itself might be suicide but at least she could try.

Again, she raced to the back of the ship, saw Slowhand and Horse had drawn closer, galloping now across some of the higher rooftops surrounding the Andon Heart. But they were still some way away and one hells of a long way down. She'd never make it.

Still, Slowhand had to have some kind of plan. She knew he thought she thought he was an idiot but he was an idiot she had learned to trust. Even Slowhand wouldn't suggest she leap to her death. She had to trust him, whatever his plan.

As he had said, she had to time it, wait until the last possible moment before she leapt. Decided, Kali returned to the bow of the ship and stood directly before the portal, drawing a deep breath to steady herself against Domdruggle's immense, looming visage. And as the ship penetrated ever further into the portal she began to back up, keeping the threshold at a safe distance all the time. As she did, she mentally envisaged the deck shortening behind her, waiting for the exact moment when it had become just short and long enough to make her leap a viable one. And then, with a roar of determination, she turned and ran.

Kali pounded along the remaining deck, legs thumping, arms pumping, her panting drowning out every other sound as she watched the Andon skyline bob before her. And then she was in the air.

She soared from the end of the ship, legs still pumping, arms windmilling as, behind her, the ship continued to be absorbed by the portal, but she was no longer interested in what was behind her, only what was in front and below. As the air whistled about her she tried to orientate herself enough to spot Slowhand and there he was, spurring Horse up the sixty degree slope of the roof of an Inn. And then, at full gallop, he spurred Horse off it so that the great beast seemed, momentarily, to be making a jump towards the heavens.

Then the pair of them disappeared.

Suddenly they were gone. Completely.

Oh crap.

She had recognised the disturbance in the air about Horse enough to know that he had just made one of his 'leaps' but she had no idea if the leap had been made by accident or design. Maybe Horse had simply panicked at what the archer had made him do, or maybe it had been a deliberate, if mistimed, attempt to somehow reach her.

Alone now, Kali watched the rooftops grow beneath her and tried not to anticipate the impact she would soon feel. It wasn't the first time she had been in a situation such as this but it was different. Falling from a suicide slide above the rooftops of Scholten was one thing but here she was, having leapt from somewhere almost forty stories high, and that was something else entirely.

Suddenly Horse appeared directly in front and a little below her, a roaring Slowhand on his back. The shock was so great that Kali almost dropped right past them thinking: Hey, that was neat. Then her survival instincts kicked in and she grabbed for the beast — and missed. Luckily, in the second she'd made her attempt, Horse's momentum had carried him slightly further forward and, with the aid of a horn that he suddenly thrust forward, she was able to flail and grab again, flinging herself up onto his back behind Slowhand. At the exact moment she did, all three of them succumbed to gravity and they fell.

The world disappeared around her.

Reappeared.

Horse impacted with the ground so hard that his hooves shattered the stone flagging.

But they were down.

Safe.

Almost.

'Thanks, Slowhand,' Kali said, and leaving a stunned and naked archer behind, began to run off along the street.

'Where the hells are you going?'

Kali produced the prism from her equipment belt, waved it in the air.

'Have to see a man about a god!'