Orc And The Lastborn [Progression, Gunpowder Sword & Sorcery]

They were falling. She grabbed for something, for anything to hold onto. Her hand closed over Orc's. She looked for his eyes and she found them looking back and then the bridge shattered beneath them and they landed hard upon its pavers. They fell no further. In the river of fire she saw kingsmen burst into flames shrieking. The bosun seemed to slide across empty air and land on top of her. Where was Daraway? She couldn't see her anywhere. The broken pavers shifted under her as she cast about. There was a kingsman plunging toward her like a child riding a ropeswing, his trousers on fire and his eyes wide with horror. She met his face with her alpenstock. Orc shouldered next to her and tossed aside the man but his body struck some invisible surface and slid back down upon them. Only then did she realize they were all of them stuck at the bottom of the orb.

The shrieking had ceased. She heard shouted commands but could not see over the bridgehead. There was the anvil, suspended on its chains. She heard Daraway's voice raised in defiance. In triumph.

"Help me," said Orc.

She looked down. He had his hand pressed hard against the bosun's neck. Blood coming through his fingers. His other hand sought to beat the fire out of the dead kingsman's pants. She scrambled over and snuffed out the fire.

"How is he?" she said.

The bosun's eyes followed her and he grinned what must have been some sort of reassurance. The crevices between his teeth filled red with blood.

"He'll live," said Orc.

She looked up and she would've called to Daraway but the orb had begun to vibrate.

"Ye feel that?"

"Yeah."

It was shaking now and the cracks running through the crystal began to spiderweb out. To grow inch by inch. She roved about. There was no way out. No way up.

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"Ye got any rope?"

"No."

"Ye got anythin we can climb?"

He shook his head.

The orb now quaked and lurched about like a mongrel desperate to be free of its lead. She fell and could no longer stand. The cracks shot up and out in every direction in snaps and groans like a falling serac. She looked between her hands at the river of fire below. At least she would be slagged back into the mountain.

Suddenly the orb stilled. Hung in silence. She looked up. There, on the far bridgehead beneath the balconies and banners of the first colony, stood the longhorn. He raised an enormous hand as if in greeting and then the orb shot away like the slug from a longarm. They were all thrown to one side of the orb and the wall of the black heart of the world rushed toward them and it was everything she could just to cover her face with her leaden hands. There was a crash and a deafening roar and a darkness and a growing light. The far hemisphere of the orb glowed white hot. Bodies and stones and slugs of cooled magma whirled around her and Daraway was plastered to the inside of the orb just above her and the anvil did sway from its chains and she could see there, in the dead center of the orb, the first stone was as black as a hole in creation. Blacker than skyshard. Blacker than the souls of the damned.

Her hands were so heavy she couldn't move them from her face. She stared between her fingers. Unable to close her eyes. Unable to move. Flesh and blood yet frozen in place as if she'd already finished stoning up.

The roar overwhelmed her. She heard the tortured voices in it. The frictive screams of stones disintegrated by the orb's tunneling. Of the orb itself. Embodiment of the first dwarves' exquisite craftsmanship that could tolerate no more. Crystalline shards as fine as sand sloughed off of its interior and misted down upon her in a rain of fire, got in her eyes, in her lungs. Nearby she heard Orc bellow. How could he draw enough breath to do?

The orb now shrieked at a resonance with the sun itself and might have blown asunder if not for its sudden escape from the black heart. The roar subsided and the white hot glare cooled and she saw they now soared not through stone but through sky. She turned her head to the left and there it stayed, forced into the side of the orb by its growing weight. Gray murk blew past, swirling in the gales made by their passing. She saw beyond the gloom a wall of earth racing past. On and on it went and she knew then they were in the great gouge of the spalling. Racing along the scar as if this orb backtraced the meteorite that made it. Whole mountains flew past, faster and faster. The world began to darken. The heaviness pushed out the contents of her stomach. Water and acid down the side of her mouth and pooling around her cheek. She heard no more bellowing. No more roar. She saw only an end of the mountains. A flattened landscape. An oblong ridge filled with slate-colored sea. By the time they struck the water she had blacked out completely.