Teeth bared, she clawed at my eyes and hurled strikes at my throat. All I could do was shove a Death Metal shield between us while I waited for my lungs to open up again.
Her fists thudded off the shield, and her face twisted with fury. The blows stopped. She ripped at her Transferogate in a frenzy, like a coyote trying to chew its leg off to get out of a trap.
The contraption reacted as violently as I remembered. She spasmed and fell off me, thrashing in pain, mouth open in a silent scream. She was so out of it that she banged her head on the corner of a cage, opening up a gash on her eyebrow. Blood the color and consistency of mercury welled up.
Finally, my lungs started working again. I sucked down a huge breath of oxygen and turned over, pushing myself up to a crouch.
She came out of it, panicked eyes darting around until they landed on me.
We both froze.
At the same time, she threw herself at me, fingers outstretched like claws, and I lurched to my feet, coming up with the scythe forming in my hands.
The angel stopped where she was. She glared from the gleaming black blade to me, then to the Transferogate on her shoulder.
With an ear-piercing shriek, she spun around and raced toward the elevator. She leapt into the shaft, kicking off the walls like this was House of Flying Daggers, and vanished up into the darkness.
For a couple seconds, everything was silent except for my ragged huffing and puffing.
Then the small woman who’d been freezing the hinges said, “It wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t let her out to attack you on purpose. I was just opening cages as fast as I could, I swear.”
Her eyes were huge like she thought I might cut her in half.
Probably because I was still in skeleton form and holding the scythe like I was looking for my next target.
I let the handle go. The scythe tore through the muscle and settled in place around my bones.
“It’s fine,” I told the small woman when I had my vocal cords back. “I mean, she did save me from that gray lady, so, really, I owe you one.”
“Strange.” Rali scratched his chin with the butt of his walking stick. “Don’t you wonder why she saved you?”
“Scythe rules?” I said, thinking out loud. “She didn’t want the gray lady defeating me and taking the scythe?”
Warcry hiked himself up onto an unoccupied cage.
“Gotta hand it to you, grav,” he said, adjusting the straps on his ruined prosthetic. “I thought you were a ponser, scared of some dainty invisible angel, but that gal’s a bleedin’ beast, ain’t she. If she coulda used Spirit, you’d be a dead man.”
Blood ran into my eye from one of her fingernail gouges.
“Tell me about it,” I said, wiping my face on my shirt.
While Warcry worked on his fake leg, Rali helped the small woman and the Ylef bust the rest of the fighters out, and I went back to slicing off Transferogates. With all the Contrails either escaped, dead, or trapped down below in the broadcasting arena until they could get the elevator wreckage out, the job became less stressful, but the blade was too unwieldy for this kind of work. No matter how careful I was, it still cut each fighter.
“A memento of rescue, the scar will be,” a cat-lady purred. “Silly human did his best, and Shilla is grateful for this.”
Most of the other women seemed to agree with that, but it didn’t make me feel much better about it.
When we finally got the rest of the fighters free, there was still the problem of getting them up two floors to the surface without a lift. It would’ve been a great time for one of Kest’s chain ladders.
“If we could find a rope, one of us could climb up and tie it off,” I said, “then everybody else could climb up.”
The green girl lifted a hand shyly. “I might be able to help with that, if I could see your boots for a second.”
“My boots?” I glanced down at them, confused.
“All three of your shoes, actually,” she said, looking from me to Rali to Warcry. “I need the mud in the soles.”
I hooked one ankle at a time in my hand, holding my work boots up while she dug the bog mud out of the cracks with her fingernails. She did the same to Rali’s sandals and Warcry’s combat boots, then balled up what she’d collected and set it on the floor. Her hands glowed brilliant green, and a little plant pushed its way out of the dirt. She doubled up on her Spirit, and the thing started to grow.
Pretty soon it was too big for the ball of dirt. Roots the size of my arm dug into the floor, breaking the tile up. The vine, now as wide as a telephone pole, climbed up into the dark elevator shaft and disappeared toward the top floors. Leaves and smaller vines coiled off of its stem at convenient handhold intervals. The green girl kept feeding it Spirit until some sense or ability told her it was enough.
“It’s found sunlight,” she said.
I glanced at Warcry’s crapped-out prosthetic. Not exactly ideal for climbing a beanstalk. And Rali wouldn’t want to attack anyone he found up there unless they were attacking someone besides him.
“I’ll head up first and make sure it’s clear,” I said.
The only life on the next floor up—L1—was the women in the cages, and when I made it to the shack topside, there was no one on guard.
I reported back to Rali and Warcry, then we headed up to start setting the fighters on L1 free. Fighters from below climbed past on the vine, but the green girl, the small woman with the Ice Spirit, and the Ylef stopped to help.
It took twenty minutes to get all the fighters on the last floor out of their cages and free from their
