I slammed my foot into her side as she passed by, as if to shove her out the hole. Fortunately, she stuck to my foot – for, if you will remember, she was wearing a jacket made with glass fibers.
Bastille whipped out of the Dragonaut, her jacket stuck to the Grappler’s Glass on the bottom of my foot. She twisted about, surprised, but grabbed my ankle to steady herself. This, of course, pulled me up and toward her – though fortunately my other foot was still planted on the glass floor.
Bastille held on to one foot, as the other stuck to the ship. It was not a pleasant sensation.
I yelled in pain as Kaz managed to angle the broken machine toward the beach. We crashed into the sand – even more glass breaking –and everything became a jumbled mess of bodies and debris.
*
I blinked awake, regaining consciousness a few minutes after the crash. I found myself lying on my back, staring out the broken hole of the ceiling.
There was an open patch in the clouds, and I could see the stars.
‘Uh . . .,’ a voice said. ‘Is everyone okay?’
I twisted about, brushing bits of glass from my face – fortunately, the cockpit appeared to be made out of something like Free Kingdoms safety glass. Though it had shattered into shards, the pieces were surprisingly dull, and I hadn’t been cut at all.
Australia – the one who had spoken – sat, holding her head where it was still bleeding. She looked about, seeming dazed. The pathetic remains of the Dragonaut lay broken around us, like the long-dead carcass on some mythical beast. The eyes had both shattered, and I sat in the skull. One of the wings jutted up a short distance away, pointing into the air.
Bastille groaned beside me, her jacket now laced with a spiderweb of lines. It had absorbed some of the shock from the landing for her. My legs, unfortunately, didn’t have any such glass, and they ached from being yanked about.
There was a rustling a short distance away, up where the beach turned into trees. Suddenly, Kaz walked out of the forest, looking completely unbruised and unhurt.
‘Well!’ he said, surveying the beach. ‘That was certainly interesting. Anybody dead? Raise your hand if you are.’
‘What if you feel like you’re dead?’ Bastille asked, pulling herself free from her jacket.
‘Raise a finger, then,’ Kaz said, walking down the beach toward us.
I won’t say which one she raised.
‘Wait,’ I said, wobbling a bit as I stood. ‘You got thrown all that way, but you’re all right?’
‘Of course I didn’t get thrown that far,’ Kaz said with a laugh. ‘I got lost right about the time when we crashed, and I just found my way back. Sorry I missed the impact – but it didn’t look like a whole lot of fun.’
Smedry Talents. I shook my head, checking my pockets to make certain my Lenses had survived. Fortunately, the padding had protected them. But, as I worked, I realized something. ‘Bastille! Your mother!’
Just then, a sheet of glass rattled and was shoved over by something beneath it. Draulin stood up, and I heard a faint moan from inside her helmet. In one hand, she still held her Crystin blade. She reached up, sheathing it into a strap on her back, then pulled the helmet off. A pile of sweaty, silver hair fell around her face. She turned to regard the wreckage.
I was a little surprised to see her in such good shape. Of course, I should have realized that the armor she wore was of silimatic technology. It had worked as an even better cushion than Bastille’s jacket.
‘Where are we?’ Bastille asked, picking her way across a field of broken glass, now wearing only a black T-shirt tucked into her militaristic trousers.
It was a good question. The forest looked vaguely junglelike. Waves quietly rolled up and down the starlit beach, grabbing bits of glass and towing them into the ocean.
‘Egypt, I guess,’ Australia said. She held a bandage to her head, but otherwise seemed to have come out all right. ‘I mean, that’s where we were heading, right? We were almost there when we crashed.’
‘No,’ Draulin said, stalking across the beach toward us. ‘Lord Kazan was required to take over control of the ship when you lost consciousness, which means . . .’
‘My Talent came into play,’ Kaz said. ‘In other words, we’re lost.’
‘Not that lost,’ Bastille said. ‘Isn’t that the Worldspire?’
She pointed out across the ocean. And, just vaguely in the distance, I could see what appeared to be a tower rising from the ocean. Considering the distance, it must have been enormous.
I was later to learn that enormous was a severe under-estimate. The Worldspire is said by the Free Kingdomers to be the exact center of the world. It’s a massive glass spike running from the upper atmosphere directly into the center of the planet – which is, of course, made of glass. Isn’t everything?
‘You’re right,’ Draulin said. ‘That means we’re probably somewhere in the Kalmarian Wilds. Well outside the Hushlands.’