Madeen clutched Vincent in her talons and held him close as she climbed. The wind howled in his ears, drowning out his expletives. His body jostled from side to side as she rose. He held onto Madeen for his dear life as she continued to climb, gripping with such vigor that his arms and shoulders screamed in agony.

  He was looking down into the depths of hell and he could not look away. The mouth of the entity that pursued them must have been one hundred feet in diameter at the very least. Orange walls and rotating magma spun inside the abyss. The deeper it went, the brighter it burned. The entity plowed through the forest, funneling trees and dirt into its whirling hot maelstrom of molten rock. He could not see much of its body, assuming if it even had one. The brightness of its fire overwhelmed all of its details, which remained hidden in shadow. But he thought he saw hints of a rocky texture behind the maw. The fiery colossus carved a trail of destruction. Jets of flame flanked the sides of its maw. The land behind it glimmered with embers and glassed dirt.

  The monster shrank into the distance as Madeen flew away, acting as if it had not seen them take flight. But then it turned upward and aimed its maw at Vincent like a search light and continued its pursuit. It had no wings, none that he could see, yet it began to ascend like a rising sun.

  Mists enveloped Madeen and him both as she pierced the low-hanging clouds that blanketed the land, leaving wetness on Vincent’s wings. When she broke through the cumuli, the two of them were bathed in Tarn’s crimson light. Vincent could see their shadows on the clouds below. Every movement made his stomach flutter, every twitch caused his heart to skip. The wind pinned his wings against her feet and the tips of his membrane flapped like a kite.

  Fold.

  A single word was projected into his mind, but he had not noticed it.

  Fold, Madeen repeated, Wings.

  He could not move even if he wanted to. He could not even breathe. A scream was frozen in his lungs and he could not let it out. His arms were about to break off from clenching so hard, but he could not let go. The clouds moiled below them with promises of death. Madeen repeated herself again, but he did not have ears to heed her projections. So, she jerked him in her grip to snap him out of it.

  “Stop!” he yelled. The wind devoured his cry.

  Fold. Wings.

  This time, he brought his wings in, folding them against his back and reducing their drag on the air currents. He could not see where they were going since he was facing backward toward Madeen’s tail end. Madeen’s flight reached its equilibrium and stabilized. She kept her wings spread, catching air currents and riding the eddies. She only beat them occasionally to maintain her altitude.

  Aching pain shot through Vincent’s arms and adrenaline coursed through his veins. They coasted through Admoran’s heavens, with the cosmos twinkling at them from above. The whispers of Vincent’s schizophrenia flew with them. It rode the air and danced among the mists. He saw eyes hiding within the clouds, watching as he passed them by. The Bane painted the heavens with a macabre tapestry of madness.

  Far behind Madeen, the clouds began to glow orange. Orange became yellow and in seconds, the colossus burst through, rising through the cumuli like a shark from the sea, blasting away the clouds with its heat. Its maw was churning fiercely . Illuminated in Tarn’s light, Vincent could now see its entire body. It was shaped like a massive cornucopia, growing narrower toward its tail. The “skin”, held together by some invisible force, was formed of loose rock and crystal that tumbled into each other like gravel. Ripples travelled through the sediment as it moved, scanning its entire length, which must have been almost a thousand feet from maw to tail. It was as majestic as it was terrifying.

  It was not facing them, however. Again, it acted as if it were oblivious to their presence, continuing to rise instead of pursuing them. But then it turned and gave chase. Vincent could feel the heat of its radiance against his skin. Its inferno blasted away the cumuli. Clouds parted as if stepping aside for royalty. It was gaining on them.

  “Madeen!” he shouted. As if he needed to let her know.

  Trust.

  “W-what?”

  Trust.

  A bellow escaped Vincent’s mouth as she flipped him around so that he faced forward. Then she pulled him close to her chest, wrapping her legs around his torso. He was locked in her embrace. Her warm feathers tickled his neck. Then she climbed the air, rising higher and higher. There were mountains in the distance and she was headed right for them.

  But the creature behind them was catching up. Both of them could feel the colossus at their backs. Vincent could hear its buzzing, like a million cicadas screaming in unison. He didn’t know how close it was getting, and he couldn’t look even if he wanted to. But he could feel the inferno growing. Its heatwaves buffeted Madeen’s wings, destabilizing her flight.

  She banked hard to the right and veered into a towering wall of a clouds. The heat left their backs and for a few moments, they flew through mist before breaking through the other side. Tendrils of cloud whirled off of Madeen’s wings. She corrected her path and aimed toward the mountains.

  Vincent turned to the left and saw the colossus in the distance, flying in parallel with them. What? It wasn’t pursuing them anymore. It was just flying. It continued like this for a bit, then it turned right toward them. It was faster than Madeen was, and Vincent could feel the zerok straining.

  Without warning, she closed her wings and dived. He felt his stomach lurch and his soul leave through his mouth. Air raced at his face until it drew saliva from his mouth and tears from his eye. They were falling...falling...falling. They pierced the sea of clouds and Madeen opened her wings slightly, pulling out of the dive. Phosphenes danced across Vincent’s periphery.

  The ground appeared far below, racing past. But then Madeen used the momentum to fly up into the clouds. When they reached the apex of their trajectory, the zerok flapped her wings and continued to climb. Though Vincent could not see the colossus, he could tell Madeen gained some distance with the maneuver. She repeated it several times throughout the night. She kept diving when their pursuer came too close. Then she climbed to gain height, waited for it to get close again before diving. Rinse and repeat.

  She tried to bank, right, then left, then right again, she tried to throw it off. Sometimes it seemed like they lost it, that it would leave them alone. There were times when it seemed like it was straight up ignoring them. Madeen would dive, double back, and fly underneath it. It would pass overhead, seemingly oblivious to the fact that its prey had flown below. But moments like these were always false hope. It always continued its pursuit.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  They eventually reached the first of the mountains. Vincent had not noticed that they had reached the range until narrow gyres of rock poked through the clouds. He was fighting to remain present. Every dive tested him. The g forces pushed him to the edge of unconsciousness. That, combined with the fact that he was in the throes of psychosis, meant he was nearly vacant.

  In the corner of his eye, he saw something flying toward them. Another zerok. It was holding The La’ark in its talons. She was gesturing something to Madeen, Vincent did not see what. But the zerok holding her dove into the mountains and Madeen followed suit. The two of them stayed low, dipping in and out of valleys, flying through arches. Rockfaces flew past. Vincent caught glimpses of small surge-beasts, creatures of crystal and stone, crawling over veins of liacyte.

  Time passed in spurts as he edged on the border of awareness. But at some point, he felt his stomach trill as the zerok flyers descended. The La’ark’s flyer landed on a riverbank and soon, Madeen did the same. She landed on her back feet and deposited Vincent on the shore. The La’ark wasted no time. She walked right up to him and shouted his name.

  “I...I...” he muttered. When she saw the madness in his eyes, she felt around his garments until she found the Triasat.

  “Cure yourself!” she barked, “I need you present. Hurry!”

  But he was trembling too much to handle it. Swearing, she grabbed the bottle, opened it, got a drop on her claw and shoved it into his mouth before he could react. The elixir acted immediately. Vincent felt its fire coursing through him. A violent fit of coughing seized him as it always did. As it burned away his schizophrenia, black smokey whisps poured from his snout. When it was done, his mind was clear.

  There was very little greenery around aside from a few shrubs embedded in walls of stone. Dry vines clung to the gray-black rock that formed the valley. Like the jagged mountains near Lorix’s observatory, these mountains were made of the same glassy obsidian. The only difference was the rounded tops did not look like they’d cut open the sky.

  “Are you here now?” The La’ark demanded.

  “Yeah...” Vincent could barely move. But he took the bottle from her and shoved it deep into his pocket. His shoulders were killing him and he was queasy from the flight. Madeen and the zerok were drinking eagerly from the river. “What the hell is happening?! What is that thing?! Did we lose it?”

  “No, we did not lose it. It’s a zeffyr! You cannot throw off a zeffyr. You can only slow it down.”

  Vincent thought he heard rumbling in the distance.

  “Telo’s wing...” The La’ark swore as she paced back and forth, “Those fools! Those damn fools! Jalharan scarheads!”

  The La’ark’s ears folded back against her head Vincent heard the most dragon-like hiss escape from her teeth. Her jaw was clenched so hard, pinpricks of blue blood appeared where her fangs bit into her gums.

  “Where the hell did it come from?” Vincent asked, “How do we fight it?”

  “You do not fight it!” she spat, nearly laughing at the suggestion, “We run! That is the only option we have! It is Jalharan lore, and we do not know how it works. But it is clear they know about you, and they desperately want you dead.”

  Jalharan... Vincent was not too familiar with the history between Jalhara and Mid-Admoran, but he learned from Sperloc that there had been a war, and that relations were tenuous. They wanted him dead. Why? No...it was obvious. And just as he thought of it, The La’ark spoke his thoughts.

  “Somebody talked,” she said, “They know about you, what brought you here. That is the only explanation I can think of.”

  “Well, what do we do? Where are the others?”

  “Are your ears clogged?” she spat, “We run! As soon as the zerok have quenched their thirst, we leave. There is no stopping that thing. Mountains will slow it down, but it will burrow through them to get to you!”

  Burrow through mountains...good God! How was that possible? He could still hear the distant rumbling, and he knew The La’ark was telling the truth. That thing was coming for him. It didn’t matter if there were mountains in the way. His thoughts raced. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Why would they send that after you?” The La’ark murmured.

  Vincent remembered what the Puppeteer told him.

  “You will be hard to kill. Your vessel will always try to repair itself, even beyond mortal injury...”

  He went cold. When he broke his back on Lorix’s Observatory, he could feel his nerves repairing themselves. And when the Puppeteer broke his neck, it did not stay broken. The healing was slow and unlike the Triasat, which was fast but gentle, this regeneration was brutal. His body would not let him die. Not easily. Is that why somebody sent that colossus after him? Did they know what the Puppeteer knew? Is that why they wanted to vaporize him right down to the atom? Because he was “Herald-work”?

  “There’s...there’s gotta be something you can do!” Vincent said, “You said the Jalharans used these things like weapons, right? But they didn’t conquer you! So, you guys had to have found a countermeasure! Otherwise...you wouldn’t be here!”

  “I do not have time to give you a history lesson, Vincent Cordell,” The La’ark said, “so let me be brief. There is no countermeasure. Zeffyrs were rarely used because their creation came at a great cost. But when they were used, they were unstoppable. They only died when their target was devoured.”

  She ground her teeth and glared at the rising plumes of smoke in the distance.

  “What do we do then?” Vincent asked.

  “We run. I need to think.”

  When Madeen and the other zerok, whose name Vincent learned was Selefi, were finished quenching their thirst, it was time to leave. Madeen embraced him against her chest like a mother holding a child and took off. The clouds gave way to clear skies, allowing the mountains to be outlined in Tarn’s crimson gaze., looking like blood-tinged teeth. Veins of glowing liacyte, reminiscent of those found back in Meldohv, splintered and raced along cracks and fissures. His escorts stayed low, putting the thickest parts of the mountains between him and his pursuer, buying time.

  Daylight began to tease the horizon when they flew down to take another break. The zerok were visibly panting. Vincent could see their round, tooth-lined mouths behind their open beaks. Madeen flew off to get food. When she returned, she was carrying an animal that she had slain. It resembled a mountain goat only it was larger, and had a bonelike crest where its horns should have been.

  She plopped it on the ground and used her beak and talons to rip it apart. When Selefi came over, she moved aside to share. Vincent saw the mouth behind the beak distend, grapple onto the pieces of flesh with its teeth, and tear chunks off before retracting its organ and pulling the meat into her beak. Watching the zerok eat reminded him of a documentary he had watched about bloodworms. It made him shudder.

  “We should have bought ourselves some time,” The La’ark said, “Drink. Relieve yourself if you must.”

  “What happened to the others?” Vincent asked, “You didn’t answer me before.”

  “They are fine. I left Akhil and Oris in charge of the rest. When the Shaydos meet us, I will tell them to go back for them. I came because my mind is sharp. You need to be kept alive.”

  “And what about us? Are we just going to keep running?”

  “No...I may have a plan. I have to think about it.”

  As the morning brightened, Vincent could see clouds forming in the zeffyr’s direction. Pillars of destruction rose into the sky and the air grumbled. Everything was happening too fast. After pacing back and forth for a bit, The La’ark walked over to Selefi, who had mutant-goat blood all over his beak.

  “How far are we from the Stillwater?” she asked.

  Vincent did not hear the answer.

  “A days’ journey...” The La’ark muttered, “It has to be done. We need to bait the zeffyr into the marsh.”

  Madeen and Selefi stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

  “I do not know if it will work!” The La’ark hissed, “But we have to try!”

  “You’re leading it into the Stillwater?” Vincent asked.

  “That is my gambit,” she said. “The zeffyr cannot be stopped by conventional means. Yet the Stillwater releases nothing.”

  “An unstoppable force meets an immovable object,” Vincent rasped. It was a crazy, terrifying idea. But he didn’t see that they had any choice.

  “We will stay in the mountain range and use them to slow it down,” she said, “Then we will lead it into the silent ponds of the Stillwater and hope it drowns.”

  Suddenly, Selefi looked alert.

  “What is it?” The La’ark asked.

  Her ear twitched. The distant rumbling was gone. It had become quiet. Smoke still rose on the vista, but the sound of the zeffyr’s destruction had come to a full stop.

  “Did it stop coming after us?” Vincent asked.

  The La’ark did not answer. They all waited and listened. A thousand cicadas abruptly filled the air with their susurration.

  “No!” she barked, “We should have had more time!”

  Both of the zerok reacted immediately. They dropped their meal, ran over, scooped The La’ark and Vincent up and took off. The air behind them filled with boiling distortions, the same kind Vincent saw back at the camp. The zeffyr burst through.