Severing the Chain

The sledgehammer dropped toward the steel wedge, aimed at the tooth that kept ten thousand tons of mudbrick floating above the clouds. If the wedge split the release pawl, the mooring gantry would strip its teeth in two heartbeats, dumping the entire mountain plate into empty sky before Danique could climb ten paces. She threw her weight across the vibrating mesh of the catwalk, her boots skidding on slick grease and blown sulfur dust.

The heavy iron cable-hook whipped from her left hand. The braided lead whistled over the iron housing, snapping around the descending haft of the sledgehammer just four inches above the striker's knuckles.

Metal snapped taut. The sudden jerk dragged the hammer's arc six inches wide of the wedge, slamming the iron head against the outer bronze housing with a sound like a cracked bell. Spark spray washed over the winch frame.

The masked cultist snarled, wrenching back on the haft to yank Danique off her feet. Instead of fighting the pull, Danique launched herself forward off the catwalk railing. She cleared the twin reduction cogs in a tight tumble, drawing her right falcata mid-air. Her bronze blade plunged straight into the guide slot beside the release pawl, jamming the bronze teeth against the drive pin.

The shock tore up her forearm, vibrating through bone. The winch shrieked as fifty tons of cable tension bit into her falcata's spine.

"Get clear!" Joris roared from below.

His bronze spear took the cultist under the breastplate before the fanatic could recover his balance. The thrust drove the masked man back across the catwalk floor, lifting him off the grated deck and slamming him against the gantry strut. But the man did not drop his weapon. He seized the bronze spearhead with gloved hands, his boots scrambling for purchase against the edge of the abyss, and shoved himself forward along the shaft.

"The priests burn with us!" the fanatic shouted, spitting blood through the split seams of his mask.

With his left hand, the cultist pulled a secondary bronze firing peg from his sash.

Danique did not give him the breath to strike it. She lunged across the narrow housing, her boots balancing on the greasy teeth of the primary gear. Her left falcata came down flat across the man's wrist. The firing peg tumbled from numb fingers, spinning over the railing into four thousand spans of gray mist.

Joris twisted the spear, levered his broad shoulders, and threw the saboteur sideways over the lower rail. The man went into the cloud-belts without a scream, swallowed by the rising wind.

Danique stepped to the fallen sledgehammer, stripped her iron cable-hook from the bruised ash haft, and looped the braided lead back onto her hip.

"The wedge," Joris said, breathing hard. His bronze breastplate was smeared with soot and blood. "Danique, the wedge."

The hardened steel wedge remained buried deep in the release pawl. Her falcata blade was already bowing under the colossal torque of the levitation chain. Little flakes of scorched bronze chipped from the cutting edge, pinging into the dark machinery.

"I am currently looking at it," Danique said, wiping grit from her mouth with the back of her sleeve. "And it looks remarkably fond of that cog."

"Pry it loose."

"My blade is holding three thousand paces of chain tension," she muttered, bracing both hands on the hilt. "If I pull the steel now, the tooth slips."

Joris mounted the platform in two heavy strides, the plates of his greaves clattering against the iron grating. He dropped the spear, planted his armored boots wide across the deck, and gripped the steel wedge with both gauntleted hands. Tendons stood out along his neck as he hauled upward with the full weight of his back.

The wedge did not shift a fraction of an inch. The tremendous downward pull of the ziggurat's ballast had cold-welded the tapered flank of the wedge against the bronze teeth.

"The ballast has pinched the flank tight," Danique pointed out. She leaned over the vibrating casing, the Falcon-Aegis heavy in her shoulder harness, its bronze warmth pressing through her linen tunic against her ribs. "You cannot charm it out with manners."

"Then find something harder than bronze," Joris said. Reaching to his weapon belt, he drew the unspent spark-spike he had salvaged from the cantilever and slapped the black iron rod into her palm. The sigil of Arch-Priestess Beatrix caught the dull glare of the sky.

"Beatrix's personal toy," Danique said, setting the chisel tip of the spark-spike against the underside of the wedge. "Drive it upward."

"If the cap strikes the housing, the charge ignites."

"Then strike it true, Shield-Captain."

Joris did not hesitate. He retrieved the cultist's fallen iron sledgehammer from the deck, dropped his stance beneath the housing lip, and swung the eight-pound head upward in a savage rising undercut.

Iron met iron with a deafening crack.

Driven from below, the wedge jumped half an inch from the seat. Danique leaned her weight into the falcata, using the flat to lever the dislodged steel free of the bronze teeth. With a metallic screech, the wedge sprang out, skittering across the iron mesh of the gantry.

For half a second, the winch held. The primary pawl clicked into the hardened ratchet seat with a solid, echoing thud that traveled up through the soles of their boots.

Danique let out a sharp breath, her fingers trembling against the leather wrap of her falcata. "See? Absolute perfection. We should charge the temple a maintenance fee."

A dull, shuddering groan rose from deep within the ziggurat's stone belly.

No gear had slipped. Bedrock was splitting along an ancient fault.

Beneath the mooring platform, where the massive central link connected the gantry to the primary keystone of Zilver-Heem, spiderwebs of white dust puffed from the masonry housing. The sledgehammer blow had not merely loosened the wedge; the violent shock reverberated through the rigid anchor rod into the compromised keystone beneath the Sun Well.

A deep, hollow boom resonated from the center of the terrace above them.

"The keystone," Joris said. His grip tightened on the sledgehammer haft.

"Tell me that was just a counterweight settling," Danique murmured.

"The masonry is fracturing."

A fissure three fingers wide opened across the arch above their heads. Mortar and crushed brick showered over the catwalk. Then the central link of the levitation chain, a bronze hoop thick as a horse's torso, groaned with the terrible scream of failing metal.

The ziggurat shuddered violently, dropping three spans in a single stomach-churning lurch that tore Danique's footing out from under her.

She slammed against the gantry rail, her falcata skidding across the iron mesh. The world tilted twenty degrees to the north. Wind howled upward through the floor grating with the force of a gale, smelling of damp clouds, ozone, and pulverized stone.

"The anchor is gone!" Danique yelled over the deafening roar.

The central chain did not break link by link. The entire keystone socket tore free of the ziggurat's foundation in an explosion of shattered stone and snapping iron stays. The titanic chain whipped downward like a severed tendon, punching straight through the lower maintenance floors before vanishing into the cloud-belts below.

Without its primary kinetic tether to the levitation planes, the Ziggurat of Zilver-Heem lost its balance. The immense floating mountain plate listed hard to starboard, its ancient terraces shearing against the sky.

Joris grabbed the gantry rail with one arm, reaching out with his other hand to catch Danique by the wrist as the catwalk floor began to twist into scrap. His bronze armor groaned against the iron frame under the violent deceleration.

Danique did not waste the breath to panic. She gripped his forearm with both hands, uncoiling the heavy braided ascension lead from her hip with swift, practiced fingers. She whipped the tough hemp braid three times around Joris's waist, through the bronze ring of his harness, and snapped the heavy iron hook directly into the front buckle of her own lodestone rig.

"What are you doing?" Joris shouted against the scream of the wind.

"Securing my baggage!" Danique shouted back, pulling the knot hard against his ribs. "If we fall, we fall together!"

"Danique—"

A colossal detonation of splitting granite drowned his words.

The entire northern half of the high sanctum sheared away from the mountain plate, tumbling into the void in a storm of tumbling columns and golden tile. The gantry underneath them snapped its last support struts. The catwalk tilted entirely vertical.

The platform fell away beneath their boots.

The sky tore open in a blinding rush of gray mist and whistling air as Danique and Joris plunged together over the broken edge, falling straight down into the four-thousand-span abyss below.