He could see what Sanko was gunning for below. The front chunk of the plane, which was carrying the pilots and most of the captive Rainlords. It vanished into the storm clouds, and Sanko pushed in after it. Wet and murky darkness washed over everything.
He tried to stay calm. He could only see gray. He could only hear howling winds. And at any moment, it felt like he might puke or pass out or both. Staying calm wasn’t really an option.
But Reza’s words were there in his head. ‘I told you Korgum would suck!’
It took all his focus just to respond. ‘Can you sense anything yet?!’
‘Well, there are six fighter jets out there! At least! Happy you asked?!’
They finally made it through the clouds, and Dunstan could see that Sanko had nearly caught up to the missing half of the plane. She closed the gap by stretching her metal neck down and biting onto the hull. And that was all it took for the rest of the plane to become hers. The metal bulged and grew, adding to the Gargoyle’s avian bulk.
Dunstan saw the jets Reza had mentioned. They broke through the stormy ceiling above, hardly more than specks to Dunstan’s eyes at this distance, but the cloudy trails they left behind made their positions clear enough.
More missiles were already en route, but one of the jets had boldly decided to draw in close to Sanko in order to spray her with a hail of gunfire. It only lasted half a heartbeat as the jet sped by, but that was still enough time for the Gargoyle’s wing to shoot out and snatch the jet out of the air. Her body wrenched to the side as she held on and devoured it whole, bulking up once again.
The next batch of missiles were there now, and Sanko bundled up around her passengers, wrapping them in a suddenly windless darkness. Dunstan heard a loud swiping sound, followed by the clang of metal on metal, and then a string of explosions. One of them, however, caught the Gargoyle’s side. Fire and shrapnel shredded Dunstan’s cabin.
And then he was falling through open sky without a parachute, his two seatbelts still attached to him but not the wall that used to be at his back.
His fellow watchmen were all around him, most of them in multiple pieces.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
First
ReplyDeleteNot sure if typo:
ReplyDelete"It only lasted [a half a] heartbeat as the jet sped by,"
It feels like one of those "a"s is wrong (I'd say the first), but maybe this is just a fixed expression or something.
Couldn't resist googling:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/43294/a-half-a-cup-of-something
Third comment on that site reads (in part):
"A half a(n) X" is an Americanism; I suspect it may be somewhat more
prevalent in the South, but it is certainly not exclusive to that
region. Looking at the Google Ngram for "a half a mile" you see that the
frequency peaks at .000013 around 1850-1890 in American English. This
is roughly six times the highest frequency of this expression in British
English (1940-1965).
Mm, I do like it a little better without the first 'a,' actually. Edited, thank you.
ReplyDeleteSo these are SERIOUSLY soul-strengthened missiles, if they can actually put dents in Sanko's work
ReplyDeleteLet this story be thousands worth pages.
ReplyDeleteApologies if this has already been decisivly answered in a previous page's comments, but at the age/bond levels these old servants are would going into long-term Pan-Rozen (or whichever) be a potential solution to the 'falling through planes' problem?
ReplyDeleteNot just Sanko's work, but Sanko herself. Spread out a bit, but I think she's around 400, so yeah, crazy powerful.
ReplyDeletePan-Rozum is only useful for not falling out of planes if you have a fluid transfiguration power. Also, you have to be around fifty or so to use it safely, and its a strain to use for long even at one hundred years a servant.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think most forms of Pan-Rozum can be leveraged to travel as fast as or faster than a plane, so there's that.
ReplyDeletePan moc and pan forma are both mid-level states, so they would be options as well.
For alteration and mutation, though, pan-wzrost is supposedly the easiest and would work just as well. However, we don't know how it works, so it's possible that it only lasts a few seconds.
Pan-Wzrost doesn't actually offer new abilities while in use. What it does is allow you to permanently expand the capabilities of a power. You can't do something while in it that you couldn't do after you left the state. On the other hand, we know that even someone in the 5-10 year old range can use it, because Nola clearly must have to mess with organics.
ReplyDeleteNow is it the shrapnel or the explosive?
ReplyDelete