35. Florence

The door to her room slammed open, waking Florence with a start. Powell stood in the frame, his dust-colored hair seeming to fray at the ends with stress. Panting, a mess, he crossed to the bed in a long stride.

“Florence, we have to leave.”

“What? Why?” She shied away from his grip, uneasy in the man’s presence. She’d avoided and outright ignored him for two days since he had shown her the Dragon harvesting rooms. She didn’t know how she could feel about someone who seemed to revere Dragons for saving the world and endorse treating them worse than livestock in the same breath.

“There aren’t many trains left and they’re filling.” He reached for her upper arm, yanking her from the bed.

“Trains?” Florence ripped herself from his grip. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you must be seriously confused.” She stood her ground, pointing at the still gaping door from where he had entered. “Now leave my room.”

“They’re going to blow the guild.”

“What?” It was as if she had half the powders needed for a canister and he was expecting her to produce a complete shot.

“We have to get out before they do. There’s not much time.” Powell reached for her again and she sidestepped away. He cursed loudly. “Pitchforks and sickles, woman, if you want to stay, then fine. I didn’t have to come for you anyway.”

He started for the door. Florence stared at his back in a daze. Even if she didn’t fully understand what was happening, she knew desperation when she saw it. She knew what fight or flight looked like in someone who was struggling to fall into their training rather than chaos and cowardice.

Whatever Powell thought was going on—right or not—he really believed they were all in danger.

“Powell, wait.” Florence grabbed the back of his shirt. She regarded him with a glare, hoping to make it clear that she was still very aware of the uneasy terms they were on despite their situation. “When you say they’re going to blow the Guild…” she tried to speak slowly and evenly, coaxing him into some sense of calm that could bring order from what seemed to be a tempest of thoughts raging in his mind.

“The Dragon King has ordered every guild hall destroyed. We’re the first.”

Florence’s hand went limp, dropping to her side. She laughed. “What?”

“Florence.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her roughly. “This isn’t a joke, and we must leave.”

It made no sense. The Dragon King was going to destroy the guilds? Why? He needed them. Nova needed their technology and their production and, at the very least, their gold.

“We have to get Derek and Nora.” She was already at her friends’ door, banging loudly before entering. “Derek, Nora, we have to go.”

“Flor?” Nora rolled at her lover’s side, groggy.

“What’s going on?” Derek was far more alert.

“I don’t know,” she confessed, hoping they had enough stock in her decision making ability to trust her blindly. “But I believe we need to leave.”

“And quickly!” Powell urged.

Derek and Nora, to her surprise, did exactly as Florence asked. They left the bed without further question, not even bothering to tug on more than their sleeping clothes. Together with Powell, the three hastily started down the winding halls of the Harvesters’ Guild.

At first, it seemed they were the only people to know what was happening. The halls were quiet and empty; only random scampering as a person sprinted ahead of them, or someone darted from a side room with a bag in tow. But the open doors on either side of them told a different story.

They weren’t the first to know. They were the last.

As they wound down, the halls began to crowd with people. They were pushing by each other, forcing their fellow initiates and journeymen out of the way. None seemed to regard Powell as anything more than anyone else, despite his nearly being at Master status.

Everyone was running. Shouting. Pushing and shoving. They funneled into narrow walks that wound tightly beneath the Harvesters’ Guild in Faroe, compacting in on each other in tunnels that were not meant for the current capacity.

Elbows pushed against her, pressing her forward as the masses reached a point at which it seemed they could go no further. Florence looked to turn back, but it was already too late. More people had run up behind them, slamming into their backs as she had slammed into the backs of the people in front of her. They were part of a mass of people attempting to claw their way forward at all costs.

She felt very small, and compressed even smaller. Florence gasped for breath. Her footing was slipping out from under her. She was being carried along by the Fenthri tide. Nora and Derek were nowhere to be found, and Powell had somehow drifted out of her line of sight. She was going to die here, drowned in an ocean of panic.

Her heart raced into her throat, preventing her from even calling out. All there was to see were shades of shifting gray, illuminated by the tunnel’s dim lighting. Her ears filled with the groans and grunts and cries, dizzying her mind.

A hand, sure and strong, calloused from years of work, wrapped around her forearm and yanked. Her shoulder popped and her skin bruised instantly from the force. She was threaded through the line of people—barely—to reach her friends on the wall.

Powell held her tightly, preventing the masses from ripping her away from the group again. Derek and he shared a linked arm as Derek held onto Nora with the same might. Florence gasped for breath in the small space Powell created between his chest and the wall for her.

“We have to go along the outside. There’s a door ahead, a worker’s tunnel, and I have the key,” Powell shouted. “When I open it, you have to run. You have to run as fast as you can. Don’t look back, don’t think, just trust me and run. If you fall, you will be trampled.”

Derek and Nora gave fearful nods. Florence looked up at Powell as he sheltered her from the writhing masses at his back.

“Run, and I’ll run with you.”

He gave a nod, and they pressed forward.

They squeezed in a chain, hands wrapped along elbows, along the outer wall. Derek’s nose exploded with black blood as a man behind him pushed his face directly into the wall. Florence was nearly smothered once as someone tried to turn her into a ladder to see above the masses.

“Why aren’t they letting us through?”

“Let us through!”

“Why isn’t the door open?”

“There are still people here!”

The chorus of shouts was deafening, a cacophony of fear and pleading agony.

Powell reached the door and pulled out the key. Florence positioned herself near his side, Derek and Nora pressed behind. As soon as he saw they were all there, he disengaged the lock, and let loose the floodgates.

They sprinted. Florence didn’t look back. Her lungs and legs burned, but her magic kept up. It made her faster—nearly faster than Powell, who was half a head taller.

“This way!” Powell veered left.

They followed.

“Down!” He gripped an iron ladder handle, vaulting over the edge into the darkness below as though it was nothing more dangerous than measuring gunpowder. His hands flipped their grip, his booted feet met the ladder, and he slid into the darkness.

Derek and Nora followed, Florence skidded to a stop. She couldn’t see the bottom of that yawning blackness. She couldn’t see where the iron ended.

But she could hear the screams behind her. The front of the pack was mere steps away. She had to make the leap of faith.

Florence jumped onto the ladder, her feet landing on a rung. She shifted her hands onto the outside, releasing her feet as well. Her stomach shot into her mouth as she free-fell and Florence had to expend every conscious thought on arching her feet around the outside of the ladder, pressing in with as much strength as she could muster to slow.

The iron burned against her bare flesh, catching and ripping. Her arches shot daggers of pain up into her calves. But she didn’t stop.

She fell for a seeming eternity before she finally let out a scream. She was falling into those endless pits she’d seen on the train. The infinite strip mines that spiraled down further and further into the earth, stopping only when they had been exhausted, when the Harvesters had taken everything they could. She was going to fall to her death, and die in the darkness fate seemed determined to condemn her to at every turn.

Two hands grabbed her waist, pulling her from the ladder. They fell together in a heap of momentum. Florence opened her eyes, but was only met with more darkness, darkness so black that she couldn’t even see with her improved Dragon sight.

“You’re all right,” Derek soothed, standing her.

“We have to keep moving,” Powell stressed. “We’re losing time.”

They linked hands once more and marched forward into that endless blackness. The sounds of the other fleeing people began to fade as they were filtered into the worker’s tunnels, splitting at forks and dividing into smaller, equally hopeless packs. Men and women were behind them, but their lead was growing. Florence chose to focus on the sound of Powell’s hand sliding against the rough-hewn walls, instead of the screams behind them, begging for deliverance from the endless black.

Florence had to put faith in the Harvester before her. This man approached these tunnels with years of knowledge and all the fearlessness of a Raven jumping into the Underground. His mind was likely spinning a mental map not unlike Arianna’s would be. The latter thought gave her more hope. If Florence thought of him like Arianna, she could find the faith she needed.

She held Powell’s free hand tighter.

They reached another door, this time unlocked. Light flooded the tunnel the second Powell heaved his shoulder into it. Any relief Florence could feel was abruptly cut short by the squealing hinges and the screams that rose like heat off a pyre.

The four of them ran along a narrow catwalk suspended over Faroe’s under-city terminal station. Three platforms were vacant; the fourth already had a train departing. Men and women flooded over the platform, trying to press themselves against the vessel in some odd hope that they might stick. That left the fifth train, already billowing steam and clouding their vision high above as the engine began to gather heat.

“We have to make that train!” Powell shouted.

Florence’s legs burned, her feet felt like rocks, but she kept pushing forward. She worked through the numbness to the point that sliding down another, long ladder to the chaos on the platform below didn’t even hurt her bare feet. Powell continued to forge a path for them, Derek at his side. Florence kept her shoulder against Nora’s, elbows linked.

“Powell!” a man from within one of the open cars called. “Powell, here!”

“Max,” Powell shouted in reply. Harvesters flooded around them, everyone desperate for the same opening.

“Let us on! Let us on!” the people chanted and cried. They begged and bartered. But those on the car had no solution for them. To make room for those on the platform below required those on the train above to give up their spots.

Powell jumped onto the car, helping up Derek by the elbow. Florence reached for the offered hand when Nora was ripped from her side.

“This train is for Harvesters,” a man screeched.

“Nora!” Florence and Derek called in unison. Their friend became nothing more than a lump on the floor, hidden under the stampede of feet.

“Let me on!”

“Nora!” Florence tried to push back to her friend. The man stepped in front of her.

His hands reached out. He was going to grab for her shoulders just as he had Nora’s. He was going to take her and throw her to the ground, too. She was going to be nothing more than a lump of flesh on the floor, disregarded in the chaos as nothing more than a life less valuable than those of the people stepping upon her.

Florence reached for the holster that now never left her shoulders. One revolver, six canisters. She drew her gun and tracked the barrel right between the man’s eyes.

“Touch me and I will shoot.”

Fight or flight. Florence breathed heavily. Fight or flight. The man grabbed her shoulders. Fight or flight, fight or flight, fight or—

Fight!

Florence pulled the trigger, blowing off half the man’s face at point-blank range. His skin exploded, curling back and away from the epicenter of the blast. The contact shot vaporized his skull and pulverized his brain. It sent blood and gore flying.

Those around were stunned into a brief moment of silence. The world stilled as everyone realized at once what they should’ve known all along. Every choice, every decision now, was a judgment call of whose life was more valuable. And every man, woman, and child, would always put their own life before any others, by virtue of instinct if nothing else.

“Nora.” Florence took advantage of the moment, pushing people aside, stepping through the gore, grabbing for her friend. Black blood smeared Nora’s body, but she remained breathing—dazed, but intact.

The people closed in again, as Florence pulled her friend toward the car. “Don’t touch us,” she screamed again, cocking the weapon. “Don’t touch us or I will shoot to kill.”

She waved her gun through the air, keeping the people at bay. She had five more shots; they could overpower her in a moment. But people seemed to favor the chance of potentially getting on the train somewhere else rather than certain death from the wrong end of her firearm.

Derek pulled Nora onto the train, then turned to help on Florence. She found her spot pressed between Powell and Derek. The Harvester’s side she was flush against was too hot. It was kindling to the spark of her swift and sudden guilt.

Florence swallowed, looking at the body on the platform. She had never killed a Fenthri before. Not like that.

The train lurched to life, bringing on more screams as the people on the platform were faced with the realization that there simply wasn’t enough room for all of them. They chased the train. They jumped for the vessel. Some missed, tumbling under the train’s wheels with unsettling thuds. Others managed to find a hold, only to be splattered the second the train entered the narrow tunnel leading out of Faroe.

It seemed like an ocean of black and red blood was going to drown them all.

“Powell…” Florence finally began to catch her breath. “That man…”

“It was you or him.” The Harvester at her side verbally recognized the fact, but he didn’t look at her. He remained focused ahead, looking into the wind that carried only the darkness of the tunnel. “You had no choice.”

“He was of your guild…”

“The rest were as well.” Powell shook his head. “I chose to get the three of you on board.”

“Why?” Florence asked.

“For Loom. I did it for Loom. The Alchemists and Ravens and Revos and Rivets—rusted sickles, they may not have gotten warning. You may be the last ones. As a Mast—As a Fenthri, knowing at least some of my guild escaped, I had an obligation to preserve the widest reach of knowledge. It was my duty…” For now, Florence willingly chose to ignore the idea that she may be the last Raven, or Revolver, alive.

The train shot from the tracks in the dim light of morning. The world was awash in sepia tones of clay and rock. The morning seemed almost peaceful, until Florence looked back at the guild hall they were fleeing at bone-rattling speeds. High above, rainbow trails curved and spiraled. Concentrated magic glimmered down as light.

“Dragon Riders?” Florence remembered what Powell had said, but it made no sense.

Florence watched as a Dragon leapt from a high rooftop, caught by another mid-air. They began to arc and spiral away, uncaring of the trains and people fleeing. They made no effort to pursue.

No, why would they?

Florence realized the truth of it as the very evil in the air iced down the column of her spine. They wanted an audience. They wanted people to see.

She knew what was coming the moment she saw the wide canister lofted above a Rider’s head. But Florence still screamed. She screamed before anyone else, because she had seen those canisters before. Hidden away one of the dark nights that she studied in the Revolvers’ Guild proper, she had laid eyes on them as every Revolver should at a certain point in their studies. They were a testament to the truth of the Revolvers—that just because they could, did not mean they should.

The bomb fell like a dark omen against a silver sky.

Seconds stretched on as she watched it plummet toward the guild. It was so tiny from her vantage that it was almost as if she could reach out and pluck it from the air. But she couldn’t. She could only watch, and hold her breath.

A flash of blinding light, brighter than any day. A wave of heat and air that jostled the train itself. An explosion of magic and chemicals so loud that it silenced all else in the moments to come, both demanding and earning a committed audience.

The top of the guild shuddered and groaned, toppling like the building toys of a toddler Rivet. It began to fall in large pieces as they tumbled away from what had been the epicenter of all supplies for Loom. The room she had learned about with Powell—gone. How many records of their resources, the very lifeblood of Loom, had been lost? The true shock waves of the day were going to reverberate long into the future, long after her cheeks dried and her ears stopped ringing.

But the Dragons spared no kindness. Secondary explosions rang out from deep within the guild. The walls exploded outward, tumbling the very foundation upon which the oldest city in Loom was built.

Faroe was tumbling and with it went all those who weren’t safely on a train, whizzing away. Florence’s mind returned to those who had entered the worker’s tunnels with them, the souls who had sprinted into the darkness and would never find a way out.

The riders watched as the walls shuddered and shook. They stayed long enough to see the spiderweb fractures pop and split into existence. And then they left, as behind them the guild crumbled and burned and violently exploded, reduced to nothing more than rubble and smoke.

Florence watched with the rest of them, with every other Fenthri who screamed and sobbed and then stared silently in horror, at a complete loss for all emotions. They watched as the Dragons razed the first guild of Loom. The Dragons, who had always claimed to be their saviors, their guiding hands, demolished one of the five fundamental pillars upon which their world stood.

Florence burned the image into her mind with the heat of rage. She watched as the city of Faroe crumbled and fell into the hungry abyss that surrounded it.