Argyll’s breath evacuated his lungs. Chaos erupted aboard The Dreadnought. People screamed in anguish and fear, but none could do anything but watch as the body of Thunder took flame. The flames spread over the canvas envelope quickly, as it slowly descended. Within seconds, the canvas burned away, leaving only the metal frame of the hull; a burning patchwork of iron shapes that collapsed into one another.
All eyes aboard The Dreadnought were fixated on the smouldering ruin of Thunder, but Argyll wheeled himself to the side of the ship to find the source of this destruction.
He peered over, and there, directly beneath The Dreadnought, was a dark, winged figure floating in the air.
Morrígan!
Desperation took hold of Argyll. He glanced around. No one else aboard the ship seemed to notice she was there, just below them. He quickly considered his options. Sure, there were likely some Sons of Seletoth aboard, somewhere, with the arms to fight back. But was there time to find them, to alert them?
As he leaned over the side of the ship, Morrígan’s attention was still fixed on the burning ship, which now fell slowly to the ground. How long before she realised another ship was sailing above her, waiting to be burned from the sky too?
There was no time to consider these questions, no time to assess these outcomes. Before he even realised what he was doing, Argyll started wheeling himself across along the deck, focusing still on the girl. There once was a day when he trained to be an engineer and found he could estimate distances and speed with ease. He was no true mathematician, so close estimates would have to do.
Once he reached a certain point, representative of a certain distance ahead of Morrígan, with her a certain distance below, Argyll climbed from his chair. He pulled his body onto the ledge of the deck, limp legs dangling over the side. He did not know long much time this would buy them, nor how well this would even work, but without any further hesitation, Argyll threw himself overboard.
All seemed to slow as he fell. For a moment, weightless, he was free from his chair. Free from the limitations of his injuries. But he could not dwell on this freedom for long, for figure of Morrígan sped closer and closer to.
This is for my legs, he thought, balling his right hand into a fist. For Farris and Nicole. For Simiankind.
As he approached, Morrígan turned. Against the blackness of her clothes and her wings, her pale face shone. A face that grinned, taking joy in her slaughter.
But her smile quickly vanished at it collided with Argyll’s fist, sending both spiralling to the ground.
***
Pain surged through Argyll’s body. He opened his eyes, slowly, blinking through the cloud of dust that rose above him.
Where am I? he thought, raising his head slowly. He pressed a bloodied hand into the ground beneath him, feeling ragged stone pressing painfully into his skin.
Morrígan! he realised. Where is she?
He found himself lying inside a building of some sort. A wooden roof above him bore an open hole, from which heavy sleet fell within, on top of him.
Each movement brought him great pain, but he pulled himself from the wreckage. Slowly, he crawled out into a cobblestone street. Glancing up, with a surge of relief he saw that The Dreadnought was still in the sky.
Across the street, something moved. He glanced to see Morrígan in a heap on the ground, her wings bent crooked from the fall. Gradually, she stood and turned her attention to the ship overhead.
Argyll reached out his hand and shouted to try and pull her attention away, but he was interrupted by a sudden whoosh. Bright light bathed him.
Between him and Morrígan, a great, glowing figure landed. It shone like a golden statue, with huge, gilded wings spreading from its shoulder. It turned to face Argyll, and when it spoke, he felt a fear unlike any he felt before, burning deep in his chest.
“You have given the Simian people a chance at a new life,” it said. As Argyll looked up at this figure’s face, he saw the vague likeness of Firemaster Fionn in there.
“For your courage,” the figure said, “I shall mend your wounds, and allow you to walk—”
“I don’t give a shit!” cried Argyll. Whatever religious nonsense was going on, they could leave him out of it. He pointed towards Morrígan. “Just stop her!”
***
Fionn turned to see Morrígan stepping across the street.
“I see you have done as I asked,” she said. “By killing Seletoth and merging His soul into your own, you can help me rid this world of its meaningless life. And together we can start anew.”
A ball of fire formed in her hand. She looked up to the airship that glided through the sky overhead. Fionn darted forward, crashing into Morrígan and sending both hurtling into and then through a nearby building.
With great force, Morrígan pushed away from Fionn.
“Why do you fight me?” she cried. “You have seen the Truth yourself. The Lord is nothing more than a celestial monstrosity, and all that we have lived and suffered through served only to play back into His hands. This life is nothing more than a tool He created to save Himself.”
“You’re wrong!” roared Fionn. “It matters not where we came from, but the lives we lived.” He gestured towards the sky. “Why not let them live, and allow them to forge a new life across the sea, away from the lies of the Church and of Seletoth?”
“That too will be a life without meaning!” She raised a hand and pulled a large chunk of stone from the ground below. “No life born of Seletoth can have meaning. We once believed the Eternal Sea had no limits. But we were wrong. The seas we know are but raindrops in the oceans of existence. All we know hangs in the infinite darkness of the Endless Firmament, and nothing that happens here serves any purpose.”
She flicked her wrist, flinging the chunk of stone at Fionn. He lunged forward and shattered it into a thousand pieces as it came. Through the cloud of dust it left behind, he flew, approaching Morrígan.
“You were once ignorant of these things,” he said. “And you found joy in life. Or have you forgotten?”
Morrígan paused. “What do you know?”
Fionn let his mind give way to the vast knowledge of the Tapestry of Fate. One memory, one life, one dream tumbled into another, then another, and another and another and another until the cascade of ideas became a huge waterfall of the lives that had come and gone, and among them there was many that Morrígan had touched, had enriched, had taken away, and he turned these thoughts outwards, so that she may see that once she sat in the back of a classroom, passing notes to the innkeeper’s son while a teacher’s voice droned on about letters and numbers and stories, for that teacher was himself a mage, with a lineage that traced all the way back to Móráin the First’s most loyal servants who had followed him across the baren, icy lands to Alabach, but that did not matter here, as Fionn steered his thoughts back towards that classroom, to that village, to the man named Yarlaith the White, who called himself Morrígan’s uncle, but in truth was her father, and he had—
“No!” cried Morrígan, leaping towards Fionn. With a surge of Geomancy, she caused a huge stone column to burst forth from beneath Fionn’s feet. Distracted by the knowledge and wisdom that flooded his mind, Fionn could not react. The collision sent his body soaring upwards. Further and further up he went, until the skyline of Penance below slowly vanished beneath clouds.
***
Argyll covered his face with his hands as the two gods, or demi-gods, or whatever they were, fought on. He lowered them only after one strong assault from Morrígan sent the golden creature that may once have been, or possibly still was Fionn, hurtling into the sky.
No better chance than now, he thought. He bared his teeth as he pulled himself across the street, hands grasping the ground and dragging himself forward, one cobblestone at a time. He had once climbed many walls of many manors in his youth, a second-story burglar of significant talent. This was just like climbing, but more horizontal. Although he could not use his legs to help, at least gravity was on his side. If anything, this was easier. If not for the pain that raged within.
