The air became still, though Talis could still hear the wind. A deafening sucking sound. Only a few feet away, Meran’s long knotted hair and loose clothing flapped as though the gale was still buffeting her.
Her back arched again as she reclaimed Silus Cutter’s powers.
The ship glowed like the end of a poker in a forge as Meran lifted into the air and lost contact with the metal hull. There was a seismic groan, the protesting scream of twisting metal. The ship foundered, nose up. It spun clear of Wind Sabre, and then it went down, dropping out of sight below the railing.
Meran lifted her arms to the sides, struggling to control her motion within the whipping cyclone. She brought her hands together in a dramatic clap, arms extended, elbows straight. Talis heard the roar of wind again, as though it was approaching from across a great distance at high speed, and all the remaining alien ships rocked. Two of the vessels knocked into each other in the tumble, and the nearest fell out of the sky, without fire or any obvious damage. The rest scattered, blown back, tumbling bow over stern into the empty skies, until they were too distant to see.
The display in Sophie’s hand bleeped a complaint. The diagrams flashed, outlined in red, and then switched to solid gray. The ships were out of range.
The wind went quiet. Meran stumbled as she landed, and she dropped to one knee. Hugged her arms tight over her chest as she cried out in pain. Her back rose and fell with heavy breaths.
Talis heard the crackle of a fire in the stillness that followed. Smoke rose from the hull of her ship, drifted up over the railing. It was the black of a full blaze.
Talis looked to her crew and barked, “Someone wanna go put out those fires?”
Sophie handed the tablet back to Scrimshaw and moved for the companionway, pulling up the bandana from her neck to cover her nose. Her hands left blue streaks on the fabric and her cheeks.
Talis helped Meran sit up. Her grip was tight and her lips a thin line, but she nodded wordlessly. Leaning against Talis’s shoulder, Meran closed her eyes and fought to control her breathing as she braced to metabolize a second god’s power. Her shoulders tensed and twitched as her body shook.
Dug looked up from where he cradled Onaya Bone on the deck, uncertain. He looked at Talis but didn’t move. His captain, or what remained of his goddess. Talis forgave him the hesitation and was about to tell him so. But as she inhaled to say the words, the raven wriggled free of his arms, stumbling for a moment on unfamiliar limbs and joints that did not move the way she expected them to. She held her new wings as though she was still humanoid, clutching a blanket up around her throat, rather than a flighted creature who knew what to do with the appendages. When she’d taken a few steps away from Dug and the engine house, the dark wings expanded. Flapped. Tentatively at first, then with strong beats that lifted her from the deck. She lowered her head toward Dug. The motion might have just been her catching her balance, but Talis got the sense it was an expression of gratitude. Dug seemed to think so, too. He nodded and rose to his feet.
Onaya Bone circled them and let out an echoing raven’s cry before soaring away. Her black form quickly disappeared against the darkness.
Dug moved, as if freed, to follow Sophie below, but he halted, drawn up short before he reached the access hatch. Talis followed his gaze to the three figures hovering in the open sky, in the empty space formerly occupied by the Yu’Nyun flagship.
Arthel Rak, Lindent Vein, and Helsim Breaker watched Onaya Bone fly away, then turned their attention back to Wind Sabre and the strange woman on deck. They weren’t happy, but they held their position, looking as likely to retreat back to Nexus as to advance on the woman who beat the aliens they had battled against so ineffectively.
“Now!” Hankirk yelled. His hand clenched into a fist, he brandished the ring above his head. “Destroy them!”
Meran looked at him. Her eyes had returned to their simula blue. She raised one eyebrow.
“All your research,” she said, simultaneously mocking and pitying him, “and yet you know nothing.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but in an instant Meran had crossed the deck and seized him, one-handed, by the throat. Though shorter than him, she lifted him from the deck until his toes barely touched as they kicked desperately for purchase.
“I will no longer be commanded by anyone.”
“No,” he gasped through her grip. “The ring!”
Talis chuckled wryly, despite the scene. Despite the goddess in ruins. Despite her friend’s spiritual agony. Despite her own.
All eyes on the deck, except Meran’s, turned to her in disbelief.
“It’s a matter of willpower,” she told Hankirk, standing up and straightening her jacket, flicking the splinters of her ship from the lapel.
The corner of Meran’s mouth pulled back and up in a smile.
Hankirk gurgled. His eyes bulged. He clutched at Meran’s wrist. His left arm was a tattered loss, but his good arm was just as useless against her steel grip.
Talis rubbed at her throat. She felt a sting there and pulled her hand away. Her fingertips were red. She wiped the blood off on a pant leg.
“She only had the power of her little ring, but you scrapped that right down.”
It was nice that Hankirk couldn’t speak around Meran’s iron grip to interrupt her.
“That ring controlled her neatly, just like the aliens designed. But you gave her the boost of willpower she needed to overthrow Onaya Bone. You made her stronger and tipped the scale. Now she’s got the power of Lindent’s ring, Onaya Bone’s powers, and the powers the Yu’Nyun
