Chapter XXI (21)

  “We’re going to die.” Holly said as she leaned on the table for support. They both took a moment to gaze out at the storm of ash in front of them.

  It was bizarre to watch the ash rage while she stood in utter stillness mere meters away. There was magic here. But even the strongest spells could be conquered if approached correctly with the right tools. Neither of them had the right tools needed for breaking out of the initial dome that had descended on them or freeing themselves from the timeloop, but this barrier of soot and wind was an altogether more manageable hurdle.

  “Probably. But it’s either that or starve to death,” Mitsuko said from under the table.

  She was hammering a smaller table in place laterally. The legs had been chopped off so only the wooden top remained. The plan was simple, they’d approach the problem like a tortoise. With their sides shielded, they would have no issue slowly pushing forward through the wind. Or…at least she theorized this might work.

  Originally, she thought to maybe use doors on the sides, but other tables turned out to cover the surface area without extending out far. She didn’t want to risk wings off the side for the wind to snatch up. That might immediately blow away their cover and leave them exposed to the elements. Two other smaller tables were already nailed in place on the table’s sides. Holly continued to gripe and fidget, but she offered no other solutions so Mitsuko continued to hammer down more wood for their protective shell. While Mitsuko would never claim to be a carpenter, but she had learned a bit about construction from her father growing up.

  With everything firmly set in place, with an abundance of nails on all four sides of the wooden contraption, Mitsuko slipped under her creation. She flicked her wrist and created a sword. She stabbed it into the underside of a side table and repeated the process with the table on the other side. With that done, she now had two makeshift handholds. Hopefully with her and Holly’s weight pressed down on the swords, it would be enough to keep the thing from catching the wind and flying away.

  Holly took some coaxing, but eventually joined her under the table. She snapped her fingers, creating an illusion of light above her hand.

  “This is so idiotic,” Holly complained. “I can’t believe this is what you came up with.”

  “Make sure your divination spells work,” Mitsuko said. “You’re the navigator, I’m just pushing us forward.”

  She ran her fingers through her purple hair and acted all dramatic, but Mitsuko could tell from the way she bit her lip and tapped her foot that she was excited by the idea of danger. There was a reason the two of them traveled together. And this was nothing compared to some other stupid risks they’d taken over the last few years.

  Holly began her divination spell and pointed them forward. Mitsuko heaved the amalgamation of nailed together tables up on her shoulders and shuffled in that direction. It was easy. Up until they hit the barrier of ash.

  The entire makeshift structure shuddered madly, threatening to tear apart at the wind’s impact, but Mitsuko pushed, piercing through the barrier’s start. Then she immediately shifted tactics on how she held their shield. Instead of carrying it forward on her shoulders, she now leaned down on her swords, weighing them down. Then she shoved her way forward. Every step left a divot of dirt in the ground and only progressed them centimeters forward. But she continued pushing forward.

  Her swords crack and nearly broke. She reinforced them with Mend. The walls of the structure split on the corner. Wind blasted inside, filling the air within their little bubble with soot. Mitsuko stretched out a hand to touch the break and felt the rush of polluted air. Then demanded her wall hold itself together with her spell. And then it mended back together. Time after time she rebuilt her rattling wooden shield.

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  Holly tried adding her small weight to the swords whenever Mitsuko had to fix anything, but the gnome’s weight was negligible. Her role was just keeping them in the right direction. Four different times she had to redirect Mitsuko’s push.

  Sweat trickled down her face, mixing with the ash to create gray streaks. Every few minutes she let go of her swords to wipe the soot and sweat from her eyes. It was dangerous. The wind battered at their defenses and spun them slightly to the side, but Mitsuko needed to wipe away the stinging pain of the grit.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, they hit the midpoint of the ashen barrier where instead of pushing them backward and to the side, the wind instead shoved them forward and to either side. Pushing from there went three times as fast, but Mitsuko only got half a dozen steps forward before Holly flung herself at her. The impact nearly made her lose her grip on her swords. Mitsuko’s body shook, unstable and weak from the constant struggle forward, but somehow she caught herself before collapsing to the dirt.

  “Stop!” Holly yelled. “Stop, stop, stop!”

  Mitsuko did as demanded, but not before the table nailed onto the bow of their structure passed over the edge of a drop. An extremely high drop.

  “What now?” Mitsuko asked. “You didn’t mention a cliff!”

  “Well…I didn’t see it until a second ago.”

  “What? You’re one of the most powerful diviners I’ve ever met!

  “Ah shucks, your flattery is making me blush, Mitsuko!”

  “Holly!” Mitsuko yanked her weight back as a gust attempted to now push them forward, threatening to topple them over the cliff edge.

  “Okay, okay. I couldn’t see much. Not more than a general compass direction and two meters of details directly in a radius around myself. There’s powerful magic inside this wind. It’s cutting off my sight. It’s the same reason why I couldn’t contact anyone outside the city boundaries with spells.”

  Mitsuko gritted her teeth. She knew all too well about divination blocks like this. She’d been raised in one. The Hon Basin was the most notorious divination dead zone in the known world.

  “Can you see down?” Mistuko asked. “How dangerous is the fall?”

  Holly closed her eyes and focused.

  “Yes. The ash is making it fuzzy. But the drop is somewhere between ten or fifteen meters.”

  Not a fall Mitsuko wanted to experience. Still, she thought she could probably survive that height. Especially if there was any foliage below. Then again, surviving with two broken legs was just another way to rephrase dying slowly.

  “No chance you happen to have a featherfall potion on hand?” Holly asked.

  “Nothing so convenient.”

  Mitsuko sighed, then released her grip on the structure. She couldn’t see any way forward with it. Wood made for a poor parachute.

  The tables shifted forward, blown by the tailwind. Mitsuko snatched up Holly into her arms as she took two quick steps, matching the wind’s pace. Half the table was already over the edge when she leaped down the cliff’s edge, gripping her friend under the armpits. The back-end table narrowly missed her head as it flew past them and into the gray cloud of ash overhead.

  And then they were falling. Holly cried out but Mitsuko ignored her as she repositioned her body in the split second they had before connecting with the ground below. Legs down, bent at the knee slightly, Holly in her arms still. Silently, Mitsuko kept telling herself that the fall wouldn’t kill her. Soot and wind stained her eyes, blinding her in tears and not letting her see what lay below. She desperately hoped for any sort of plants below to help soften her fall.

  As it turned out, there was foliage. Thorn bushes.

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