Seemingly out of nowhere, a man dressed in blue overalls leapt up and grabbed the officer from behind. Before anyone had a chance to react, the attacker took a knife and opened the officer’s throat from ear to ear.

The female mage was the first to scream, as the officer fell with his white shirt stained with a spray of speckled blood. Some men jumped from their seats, others dived towards the murderer. Amidst more roaring and shouting, two Simians climbed across the table and wrestled Malroy to the ground. The black Simian Farris had identified as an agent joined the fray. A glass whizzed by Farris’s ear, smashing against another Simian’s face.

He turned and saw the white knight unsheathe his sword, charging towards the murderer who stood fighting another pair of Human crewmen.

Suddenly, Farris found himself knocked to the floor. Looking up, he saw the fat, bearded agent crouching over him, and felt cold steel against his throat.

“I don’t know what you were planning, rat, but I’m gonna make sure you regret it.”

In a flash of light and a burst of flames, Farris was free. The bearded agent rolled across the floor on fire, screaming as his life burned away. Farris got to his feet, and another ball of fire flew past, narrowly missing a now standing Fenían Malroy before it erupted against the wall.

What does he think he’s doing? A pair of brawlers stood and charged towards the Pyromancer. The boy yelled, and streams of fire poured from his hands, engulfing the two men and lighting up the floor beneath them.

“Chester!”

Farris looked down to see Eoghan, crawling across the floor, his face covered in blood.

“Chester… run, warn the captain. We need to land… engines… right below us.”

Farris sprinted across the room without hesitation, the wooden floor already starting to burn. He pushed open the door and made for lower deck.

“Fire!” he yelled through thick smoke, hoping those up in the hull would hear. “Fire in the mess room!”

He tore down the stairs in a single swing, but the ship violently heaved as he did so, sending him stumbling to the floor. A Simian engineer standing at the hull’s entrance yelled down to him.

“What the hell is going on up there?”

“There’s a fire,” Farris rasped. “The mage, I —”

“Tell the captain that we need to descend.” The engineer’s voice was incredibly calm. “We can use gas from above to repel the fire, but we’ll lose altitude. Hurry!”

Farris turned and ran as the engineer bellowed commands at others in the engine room, but the crackling flames raging overhead quickly drowned out his voice.

The ship rocked again as Farris approached the bridge. He pounded on the door with both fists, and it opened almost immediately. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Get in! Quick!”

Next thing Farris knew, he was in a room unlike the rest of the ship. Brilliantly white floors and walls surrounded him, and a huge window looked out over beautiful green hills and mountains below. An assortment of switches and machines filled the room, with several men and Simians tending to them frantically.

“Chester! What’s happening up there?”

The door to the bridge closed again, as the officer who pulled Farris in locked it with three cross-bolts. It was the captain who spoke, at least Farris assumed so, considering she was dressed in the same immaculate manner as the other officers and navigators, but with more stripes and badges across her chest.

She thinks I’m Chester too?

Farris didn’t know where to start.

“There… there was a fight, and then the knight, and the mage… the red mage joined in and….”

He had seen death at the hands of men and Simians. He had seen people die slowly to hunger and to cold. He had seen many terrible things in the criminal underworld of Penance, but he had never felt so afraid. He was trapped, up in the sky, with nowhere to go but down. He spoke up again.

“The engineers, they said we need to land.”

One of the navigators snorted. “We can’t land here; we’re flying over the Godsforsaken—”

A crash and a surge of screams came from outside. The whole room shook again, knocking Farris off his feet. Even as he hit the floor, he still felt as if he was falling, spiralling through the air. It took his brain a moment to orientate himself, but when he did, he noticed that he now lay on the windshield, the rest of the room upside-down.

His final thoughts were of the man who murdered the officer. He closed his eyes as he painted another mental portrait of the spy. Blue overalls, dark hair, stubbled jawline. He smiled.

Four. The glass began to crack beneath him. That makes four out of four.

Chapter 11:

The Invisible War

Morrígan waited in the darkness for her uncle to give the signal, the other half of his resonance crystal clutched tightly in her hand. She was in an unfamiliar chamber; one her uncle had found before she joined his research. Although a flick of her wrist would reveal the cold, damp walls of her surroundings, she found herself growing more comfortable with the absence of light. She stood in silence as the funeral continued above the ground, just over her head.

It had taken little effort to kill Mrs. Mhurichú. All she had to do was omit the vital fungal ingredient in her medicine, and the old woman died in a matter of days.

I did her an honour. If bringing the end to a life half lived is what it takes to end death for all, then so be it.

Mrs. Mhurichú had died painfully, but slowly enough to not rouse suspicion. The hardest part was convincing Yarlaith to steal the corpse once the funeral ended.

Does he want all this to be a waste?Does he want these bodies to rot beneath the soil—food for worms and maggots—instead of being used for something great?

She heard the faint rumble of voices from above ground.

Poor little Sorcha. You’ll never get to be the mid-summer’s maiden now.

There was supposed to be a festival later to celebrate Mid-Summer’s Eve, but Sorcha’s mother had been well loved in the community, so it was cancelled as a mark of respect.

It’s as if her death had come as a shock. How fortunate she was not killed by a bloodthirsty troll!

The rumble of voices grew louder, and Morrígan wondered if it was a sign that the funeral was almost over. Sure enough, the resonance crystal in her hand began pulsating slowly, bringing illumination to her immediate surroundings: Yarlaith’s signal that it was time for her to act.

Morrígan clicked her flint-rings together. A tiny spark formed where they collided, and with a subtle tug of Pyromancy, the spark erupted into a ball of fire in her hand. She motioned towards a pair of torches on the opposite side of the wall, filling each with a bolt of flames. In the light, she examined the markings her uncle had left on the ceiling, indicating where the coffin was being lowered. Rolling up her sleeves, she reached up and pushed the power of her soul up into the rocks overhead.

Morrígan and Yarlaith had rehearsed the sequence of events many times before, and there was little time to act. Topside, she knew her uncle was lowering the coffin into the grave himself with Geomancy, while the rest of the mourners looked on.

In a matter of seconds, Morrígan had a firm grasp on the cavern ceiling, focusing on the chalk markings upon the stone. It reminded her of Necromancy; the need to concentrate on the specific parts of flesh was more important than the amount of power that went in. She kept an eye on the crystal as it resonated softly through the darkness. Like sand running through fingers, her power merged with the rocks and soil overhead.

The crystal, now discarded on the ground, omitted a constant glow, confirming that Yarlaith was ready for her to take full control of the coffin.

With a gentle sweep of her free arm, the rocks slowly cracked along the white lines on the ceiling. As the last fissure formed, the weight upon Morrígan’s shoulders increased tenfold. Her knees buckled with effort. Tensing her shoulders and gritting her teeth, she took a step backwards as soil and stones trickled down onto her head.

How on earth did Yarlaith manage this by himself?

The rocks were loose now, and Morrígan held all of their weight with her power. Slowly, she brought both hands down as the rocks broke free from the ceiling. The coffin emerged from the trickling soil, suspended on a bed of stone.