Rainhorn: Chapters 25-26 (The Weirkey Chronicles) (Patreon)

We're coming close to the end of TWC2, after which there will be a little time off so non-patrons can finish, as usual. However, this time the real delay has nothing to do with writing or posting and everything to do with getting the right covers for this series.

The image you see for this post was the cover I originally commissioned for the second book, trying to work well ahead of schedule. No longer useful, since I'm changing the branding. Since it's already paid for, you guys might as well get to see it. For the past while I've been trying to prototype a number of potential designs for the series, then eventually get a really good cover. This will delay the story, unfortunately, but I don't want to waste release energy before this aspect is right.

That has nothing to do with getting two chapters today, though. The climax was going to need to be divided one way or another, and I felt this made for a better sequence. Three final chapters next week, though this book also has an epilogue.

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Chapter 25

Even after they discovered there was no sign of the city locking down, their exit from the city worried Theo. The guards would no doubt include some Archcrafters, and above all they couldn't afford to bring higher authorities - and Authorities - down on them. But in the end, Fiyu had persuaded him to try her stealth technique, which she had been strengthening.

Theo made the sleigh weightless, allowing the levitation materials to lift them well above the surface, then Fiyu extended her sphere around the entire vessel. With those combined, they avoided the bridges entirely and glided over an empty part of the lake. Though he worried the entire time, and watched the ripples extending beneath them despite his best efforts with gravitational fields, in the end they slid out of Nlukoko and into the northern wasteland.

"Well done, Fiyu!" Nauda beamed up at her as Fiyu sat happily in the central seat.

"The walls are completely reinforced with the reflective bark, and I've completed my central carving. The chamber is finally complete." She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her head. "I will focus on attempting to resist Archcrafter observation while you move us away."

Though Theo's imagination conjured sleds racing after them or Authorities rising out of the city, he didn't see any sign that they had been followed. Far from being a tense chase, they cruised away from the city peacefully until Nlukoko vanished in the distance.

That took less time than it normally would, because the ground only became more twisted and hilly as they continued. The sleigh wanted to remain a constant distance above the ground, which meant they ended up weaving up and down the hills. He saw a few scraggly trees at first, but vegetation receded and even the ground seemed leeched of life.

It was so alien to Tatian that he wondered if this region had been damaged in a past battle between powerful soulcrafters. The Landguard might be formidable, but they couldn't prevent all collateral damage. He wasn't completely sure about the details, but he knew that the strongest soulcrafters could have a radical effect on the world around them, creating effects that, if not permanent, could last for generations. Perhaps this was a blighted zone, perhaps even tied to Nauda's past.

"Sporp!" Senka let out another nonsense exclamation and he tried to ignore her, but a moment later he heard Nauda's intake of breath and turned back to look.

A silver mote winked in the distance, another sleigh rising and falling over the hills. No, when he watched more carefully, he realized that there were two silver vehicles in pursuit.

"Don't worry, everyone." Nauda hefted her staff while putting on a false smile. "I'm sure that's just a friendly Deuxan group that happens to be going on a picnic in the same direction."

"He can see us." Fiyu wilted in her seat. "I thought we were so close to invisible..."

"It isn't your fault, Fiyu." Though Nauda turned back to give her a real smile, she soon focused behind them again. "I'd bet that Esaire is on that sleigh, and I think he has a full chamber dedicated to an Archcrafter-tier observation technique. That, or he has some entirely different way to track us."

Though Theo eyed Senka suspiciously, her face actually looked concerned, and she had been the one to warn them. He decided to cut through Fiyu's unhappiness and get her focused on what mattered. "We don't have time to figure out his observation technique now, the question is if he's gaining on us. I was already going as fast as the sleigh can manage, so just judge his speed."

It wasn't long before he got an answer from Nauda. "I think he's gaining, but extremely slowly. Their sleigh seems to be faster, but they're not navigating the hills as smoothly."

"Then let's increase that advantage." Theo again wished that he could apply gravity directionally, but instead removed their gravity as they arched up the next hill. The sleigh shot into the air before he removed the field, skipping the valley entirely and instead landing on the next slope.

Unfortunately, with his attention on driving, he couldn't reduce their momentum perfectly, so the impact was a bit jarring. Fiyu gasped as she was jolted from her seat, only just gripping the next to reduce the shaking. They needed something else...

"Nauda, can you use your binding technique on the sleigh?"

"Not enough to fly or anything like that..." Nauda still hefted her staff and picked up her broken fork. "But you just want to reduce the impacts, right? I'll see what I can do."

It took them several jumps to coordinate properly, but soon they managed it: instead of weaving up and down the hills, they skimmed over the top of each. The sleighs didn't lose much momentum on inclines, but their path was still a straighter line. Behind them, the silver sparks began to recede into the horizon, only occasionally winking from between the hills.

"Do you think they'll follow us forever?" Fiyu asked. Now that Nauda had adjusted to catching them each time they came down, she was able to answer smoothly.

"They've already left their home world, negotiated with Nlukoko, and come this far." She shook her head slowly. "I doubt their determination will run out, but their supplies might. They're probably underestimating how far we intend to go... I'm not sure what will happen."

"What matters for now is reaching the gate," Theo said. "If we actually reach a hub city, their authority won't mean anything, plus we can disappear into the crowds."

"I'm not sure it will come to that. We have a long way to go."

Part of Theo had been slightly disbelieving Nauda, assuming that she'd overestimated the distance in her mind, but as the hours wore on, it became obvious why they'd needed a vehicle. Even flashing forward at their current speeds, they didn't seem any closer to their destination. Judging from the food she'd brought along, Nauda expected the journey to be much longer.

As the journey continued, Theo taught the others how to use the control spheres. Fiyu seemed confused by their design, but rapidly became skilled at sliding around the hills, while Nauda grasped the basics right away but didn't seem to enjoy driving. They couldn't maintain their pace skimming over hills for long, so they slowed down and watched the horizon.

The days stretched on and they fell into a strange rhythm. They traded off driving, sleeping, eating, and soulcrafting to maintain their pace day and night. Once, at the top of a very large hill, Nauda caught a glimpse of a sleigh still following them, but they remained in the lead. When Theo and Nauda were both awake they returned to skimming, just in case their pursuers had other tricks up their sleeve. Overall, it seemed that they might make their escape successfully.

Three days into the journey, Theo finally saw a black structure on the horizon. After so long over dead land with no sign of Tatian civilization, he was eager to examine it... until he realized that it wasn't a building.

"Pull up, up!" Nauda had been partially asleep but now pounded on his back in abrupt panic. He acted without thinking, sending their sleigh high into the sky.

The building unfurled, enormous jaws lunging into the sky toward them.

Theo had no time to look at it, just cast another gravitational field to send them higher. Fiyu partially rose and unleashed a hail of bolts with one hand, but they dissipated against the beast's rocky skin. The jaws slammed shut beneath them and the beast fell back down, leaving Theo to desperately shift fields to keep them from slamming back to the ground too violently. Being so high might make them visible to their pursuers... though they had a much bigger problem, including in the literal sense.

While sending them coasting back down, Theo finally looked back toward what had lunged at them. It crouched on all fours, much larger than a house, but its shape was a strange amalgamation he'd never seen before. The body was bulky with trunk-like legs ending in heavy paws, while the back end curled into a scorpion-like tail. Strangest of all, the head was roughly humanly shaped, unnaturally flat with an enormous mouth and dully glowing eyes.

It certainly looked dangerous, a fact confirmed by his glance at its soul. Clearly a sublime beast, one with several concentric rings of dark rock. He couldn't get a good look but estimated at least three, suggesting that the sublime beast would be a match for even a Ruler.

"What," Theo asked icily, "is that?"

"They're not usually up here..." Nauda took a deep breath, staring at it with an expression he couldn't read. "It's called an eryo, and it's going to chase us."

The eryo had been staring after them, but almost as if prompted by her words, it grasped a hill and pushed itself into the air. A single bound ate up a startling amount of the distance between them and Theo wished that he had more resources. Attacks were clearly useless, so if they couldn't outrun it...

"It's much too strong to fight, and I'm afraid it's too fast, but they're stupid." Nauda looked forward, eyes scanning the horizon carefully. "They're also not very good hunters, instead sitting still and relying on prey to get close to them. So our best hope is to hide until it gets distracted, hopefully by our pursuers. Fiyu, bring your sphere back as soon as we get out of its sight."

Since Nauda was the local expert and the eryo had taken another leap after them, Theo began looking for a hiding place without a word. He would have to ask Nauda some hard questions later, but that could come after they'd escaped the vicious monster.

Fortunately, what Nauda had said about the beast's intelligence proved correct. Even just curling around the side of a hill and changing direction misled it, the eryo rumbling forward for several leaps before realizing they had shifted. It looked around after that, and unfortunately he couldn't drop low quickly enough to avoid its gaze, but he had the beast's number.

Several swerves later, they hid underneath a rocky crag, listening to the eryo storming further away from them. He realized that it didn't growl or roar, which might make sense if it was an ambush predator. Fiyu renewed her stealth technique and they waited above the rocky ground, hoping that they had evaded it.

Aside from questions of why such a sublime beast was on Tatian, Theo thought they had a bigger problem: what Esaire and the others would do. No doubt they'd seen both the sleigh and the eryo, so the question was how they would respond. In an ideal world, their hiding place would remain hidden from both of them, or Esaire would retreat at the sight of the danger. But given the world they lived in, Theo assumed that they wouldn't be so lucky.

They were all silent until suddenly Senka began struggling over the side of the sleigh. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"It's scary! Senka is scared!"

Though he lunged to try to catch her, he was an instant too late and she slipped over the side. Landing lightly on the wasteland below, the brat scampered into a pile of rocks and hid with her hands over her face, as if no one could see her that way. Nauda sighed and started to get up after her, but Theo cut her off with a gesture.

"Let her. The eryo might come back at any moment, and we need to react instantly to have a chance at escaping it. We can't let her sabotage us."

Though Fiyu obviously disliked that idea, she let it pass, given the obvious danger. Soon Theo no longer heard the eryo thumping into the ground at all, which should have been comforting but actually made him more nervous. Maybe it had passed out of range, but it was also possible that it was moving cautiously now, creeping back in their direction, its maw ready to appear overhead at any moment.

Minutes crept onward and he started to believe that they might have escaped... until a silver sleigh floated through a canyon beside them.

"This has proved a much more interesting trip than I thought." Esaire jumped up onto the front of his sleigh, regarding them directly through Fiyu's technique. "But I've wasted our family's resources on this, so I'm afraid I need to have something to show for it."

"Are you really attacking now?" Theo decided to risk leaving the sleigh, since having it damaged would be an even greater threat than a direct fight. "You saw that sublime beast, didn't you?"

"Powerful, but stupid. Your hiding place wasn't enough to escape me."

"You're going to die!" Delarde jumped out of the second arriving sleigh with his pike in hand, though he wasn't foolish enough to yell. "You've gone too far against the Armeau family!"

"This is stupid." Nauda slipped to the ground as well, her armaments ready. "You said that anything taken during a hunt was fair game, so we hunted your sleigh. The insult can't possibly be worth all this trouble."

"You don't understand." Esaire stepped off the sleigh and landed unnaturally lightly, his cloak of cantae flaring up around him. "The family's prestige is everything, and you dealt it a serious blow. Being forced to walk back to Anguedan... I can't allow that to stand."

While they spoke, Theo analyzed the others in the sleigh, and he didn't like what he saw. In addition to Esaire and Delarde, there was another Archcrafter and seven first-tier soulcrafters. Every single one of them had a decently-sized soulhome and he doubted that any were inexperienced. Assuming that they'd all soulcrafted a defense against his gravity, he didn't see any possible way to overcome the gap in power.

When Esaire moved, it wasn't to attack, it was a signal to the unnamed Archcrafter. The woman hurled a shining orb directly at them, and Nauda stuck out her staff to bind it... but the sphere just kept coming. Nauda grunted and twisted, barely managing to redirect it. Whizzing past them, the sphere struck the cliffside silently and silvery matter began spreading over the rocks.

Esaire smiled and readied his gauntlets, confident in his superiority. Theo took a step back, since he didn't see any chance of victory. Yet with this group and those unknown projectiles, escape was also a poor gamble. The female Archcrafter tossed and caught another sphere in her hand, Delarde lowered his pike at them, and Esaire took a step forward.

A rock tumbled down the side of the cliff, striking another, and as a cascade started they all looked up to the top.

"Oopsie?" Senka had somehow fallen flat on her face, but now looked up in surprise as the falling rocks turned into a small avalanche that made both sides retreat. For a moment Theo glared at her, but only a moment.

Then a roar echoed over the canyon and they heard the eryo begin thundering toward their position.

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Chapter 26

Everyone froze at the sound of the eryo approaching, but Theo recovered first and grabbed Nauda's arm, pulling her back toward the sleigh. Senka was scrambling down after the rocks toward them, but there was no time for her, they needed to get out before the eryo arrived.

Unfortunately, the Deuxans wouldn't let them go so easily, Delarde leaping after them with a roar of his own and the woman hurling another sphere. Nauda again struggled to redirect it, while Fiyu managed to catch Delarde square in the chest with her bolts, which didn't injure him but knocked him back into the canyon.

For his part, Theo grabbed at the controls, but the path forward was no longer obvious. The sleigh would be destroyed if they tried to pass Esaire's group and he wasn't sure of the eryo's exact location. With no immediate exit, he instead tried to slide around one of the cliffsides to at least reduce their vulnerability to attack.

Somehow Senka leapt from a nearby ledge and tumbled into the sleigh, though she struck her head on the side and lay still. Fiyu reached down to check on her, but the other two had no time, Theo trying to navigate and Nauda deflecting blasts of cantae from soulcrafters who still didn't understand the threat.

Everyone understood the next moment: the eryo landed on the nearby clifftop, dwarfing the impact of the avalanche. Its flat face swung back and forth, as if the new number of targets had overwhelmed its tiny brain, and everyone froze in anticipation.

If it had only turned on Esaire's group, Theo could have made his escape, but by sheer dumb luck it turned toward them instead. Not only that, when it stepped forward one of the enormous claws slammed down into the path he'd been intending to drive, leaving them driving down a canyon directly toward the largest threat in the region.

Though Theo swung to the side, now they'd caught its attention, so the eryo swung its entire body after them, mouth thudding closed in anticipation of reaching them. Fiyu raised her hands nearly together, releasing a focused burst of light bolts targeting the creature's eyes, but they were absorbed into the rough gem-like surface without any effect.

Theo reacted on instinct by casting a gravitational field to make the eryo fall up: it didn't matter how massive it was, gravity would still make it fall straight into the sky. Even as he cast, he realized that its body would probably resist the effect, so it was worse than useless.

Instead, the massive beast clamped its legs and tail down into the stone, refusing to fall.

For a second they were both puzzled, the beast baffled at an environment it had never experienced before while Theo was shocked that it had failed differently than expected. The eryo didn't have any resistance to gravity manipulation, yet it seemed only mildly troubled to be turned upside-down. Once it recovered, it took a careful step toward them, not letting itself fall. He could add more gravity, but he had a feeling that it was too firmly embedded in the rock.

They'd lost their momentum to avoid running into the beast, which unfortunately left few paths out of the canyon. It had gotten close enough that falling up might put them in range of its jaws, so he didn't see what options he had left.

In a single movement he reversed all the gravitational fields, instead trying to slam the eryo into the ground. It dropped, but the impact from the short distance did no harm to its bulky body, and soon it began to rise again, claws still gripped tight in the stone. Theo realized that it was just too physically powerful: even if he could hit it with far more gravity, the raw cantae flowing through its muscles would keep it on its feet.

The eryo opened its jaws, looming closer... and froze.

"Move..." Nauda barely grated out the word, both her armaments thrust out toward the beast. It trembled in place, but she was already sweating. The beast might be more slowed by surprise than her binding technique, so they only had a moment.

Reversing their own gravity, Theo sent them shooting up into the air, past the dull face and into the sky. Soon they were far overhead, but the creature was beginning to move and Nauda slumped against the side.

Without warning, it unleashed another roar, and with it a shockwave of cantae radiating through the air. It didn't disrupt Theo's gravitational fields, but Nauda let out an agonized cry and fell backward. Only Fiyu lunging to catch her prevented Nauda from falling out of the sleigh.

Their momentum took them to the side, but not very quickly, leaving them still over the beast's head. It was now free of binding, beginning to look around itself. He could easily imagine it looking up, then making another leap for them. Though his first thought was to let them keep falling higher, Theo realized that he had another option.

He grabbed one of the gilded pieces of the old sleigh and hurled it downward at several times normal gravity. The ornate wood glanced off the eryo's face without doing the slightest harm... but the beast swung toward that side, suddenly facing Esaire's group again.

As he urged the sleigh to take them further from the battle, Theo couldn't help but look back. If the Deuxans had been sensible, they would have run away at the first chance, but instead they actually attacked the sublime beast.

They struck with cantae bolts and a few thrown weapons, but the eryo roared again, sweeping aside all such attacks. Then it was on them, a claw sweeping down and tearing apart a soulcrafter in one blow. Delarde danced around its feet, striking with his pike, but the weapon glanced off harmlessly and he soon retreated.

But the Deuxans had severely underestimated the enormous beast's speed. Another leap brought it on top of them, smashing another soulcrafter and spearing one through the chest with its tail. Delarde stumbled on one of the rocks, going down, and the eryo bent down toward him, maw opening.

Esaire flashed in front of it, both palms striking the creature's face. The explosion of cantae actually made it stagger backward, but it lashed back savagely, one enormous claw catching Esaire's side and driving him to the ground.

Though they were much further away by that point, it looked like Esaire's body was still intact. Everyone else the eryo had struck had been torn apart, yet though Esaire had fallen, it looked like he'd only been injured. That didn't make sense for an Archcrafter, unless he'd soulcrafted a Corporeal Floor already. His followers certainly did their best to retrieve him, one of the other soulcrafters giving their lives to distract the eryo.

"Theo..." Fiyu said his name softly, pulling his attention back to the sleigh. Nauda slumped in place, her hands covered in her own blood, and Senka lay unconscious atop the supplies. Fiyu was right: they needed to focus on themselves.

"The enemy is hurting worse than we are. We just need to survive this." Theo redirected the sleigh toward the north again, though he knew they couldn't reach the gate in this condition. Instead, he looked through the wasteland carefully for a better place to hide.

He barely spotted it: a cavern tucked around the side of a craggy hill. Though it didn't look inviting, it was far too small for the eryo to follow them, and that was top priority. Theo shifted their path to the cavern, which proved larger than he'd expected, though they needed to get out of the sleigh in order to push it inside the entrance.

"Is it safe?" he asked. Fiyu took a deep breath and he thought he felt something pass by him as her senses extended deeper.

"There are no living creatures within," she reported. "Beyond the turn ahead, there is a fractured hall and then a larger cavern opening in the opposite direction. It may be too dark for you."

"Then we go deeper. If we stay here, they might spot us as easily as we noticed the cavern."

They guided the sleigh deeper inside, around a sharp corner, and he was glad to see Nauda begin to return to herself. After another twist it was pitch black inside the cavern, but Nauda had bought a small spirit lantern along with other supplies. It illuminated a rough cavern around them, thankfully separated from the threats outside.

"This is close enough to safety." Theo finally let himself sigh in relief as they reached a dead end in a large cavern. "We can afford to rest here... actually, we can't afford not to. Nauda, are you alright?"

"It... hit back hard." She sat on the edge of the sleigh, staring at her hands as they trembled. Fiyu hastened to her, providing one of their water canteens and a clean rag, which Nauda gingerly used to wipe the blood from her hands. Seemed like they'd hurt a lot, but she hadn't lost use of them.

With Fiyu tending to Nauda, Theo supposed that Senka fell to him. He walked past them to find her small body, laying in an odd position atop the supplies, her head twisted to the side. For a moment he actually worried about the little imp, wondering if the fall could have-

"That's blooky..." Senka mumbled some more in her sleep, then contorted herself into an even more awkward position. Theo scowled and had to force himself to check that she wasn't bleeding anywhere before he left her there.

Close as the call had been, and fraught with ill luck, they'd survived. No losses or permanent injuries, which counted as a win against a sublime beast that powerful. The sleigh had been roughed up a bit, but none of the levitation components had been damaged and they had only lost a few supplies that had been sitting out. They could recover from this.

With no other meaningful actions available, Theo took a moment to just sit down and breathe. He made sure that his soulhome was filling up with cantae again, but it actually hadn't been exhausted. His gravity techniques might lack in power, but they were fairly efficient.

As before, the problem was just raw power. Theo looked over all the sublime materials he had available to him, wondering if he could craft a new chamber that would give him an edge. In his past life, he felt like he would have stumbled across an amazing resource in the cavern, but it was just a simple empty hole in the ground.

Once she'd recovered a little, Nauda seemed to need to impose some order on her environment, but her hands were too injured to do tasks easily. Instead she directed Fiyu, who seemed happy to obey her instructions. Soon they had set up a basic camp, taking the bedrolls from the sleigh and placing them around the lantern. After days struggling to find a good sleeping position in the sleigh, it would be nice to stretch out and truly rest.

That was when Delarde walked into the camp.

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One reader said this section was ambiguous in terms of whose sleigh got smashed. Any sentences you feel are confusing in this regard?