Driftmetal by J.C. Staudt

we. My stomach leapt into
my throat, a rush of fear and adrenaline. We were sinking, a slow
and continuous descent. All the upward thrust The Secant’s
Clarity could muster couldn’t prevent us from falling anymore. Dangit Leridote, if we have to land on that Skytemple of yours,
I’m gonna be pissed …
    Vilaris came leaping down the steps, hoisting
himself by the handrails. “We got the fire going. The air’s warming
up, but it’s not hot enough yet.”
    “How much longer?” I asked.
    “Another minute or two.”
    I bounced my knees, drummed on the armrests with my
fingers; reached for the valves, took my hands away. “Untie Chaz,”
I said after a moment. “He’s doing better. I think he understands
it when you talk to him now.”
    Vilaris obeyed. “Chester? Do you know who I am?”
    Chaz cleared his throat, gulped. “Yes… I can
remember. I know you.”
    “What do you think?” I interrupted, feeling the
ballast pipes for warmth. “Now?”
    “I don’t know. Try it,” said Vilaris.
    “I can’t try it. If I fill the ballonets
before there’s hot air in the pipes, they’ll fill with cold air
instead and we’ll drop even faster. Here, take the helm for a
minute. I’m gonna go check.”
    I leapt over the controls and darted up the steps,
taking them two at a time. On the deck, the clouds were rushing by,
heading upward too fast now for comfort. I descended into the aft
cabin, where Blaylocke sat tending the fire. His face had a dour
look, black smudges and fingerprints across his eyes and nose.
    “How’s it looking?” I asked, crouching to get a look
at the furnace myself.
    “Fine.” He was listless, his face a mask of
sorrow.
    I felt the exhaust pipe and the lines that snaked
across the ceiling toward the command capsule. Both were hot to the
touch. “We’re going to be alright. Just keep that fire going, and
keep it as hot as you can.”
    Blaylocke nodded, staring into the flames as though
he hadn’t heard me.
    “What’s the deal with Blaylocke?” I asked Vilaris
when I’d returned to the controls. I was already cranking the
valves to start the ballonets filling.
    Vilaris gave me a knowing glance. “Is he still
looking miserable back there? We couldn’t find kindling to start
the fire with, so Gareth had to use parchment paper… including a
letter he’d written to his wife. When we started falling, he got
pretty upset. He was like, ‘ We won’t survive this time. This is
it. It’s the end. ’”
    “How was he planning to mail letters to a hidden
city that nobody knows about?”
    “He was going to write to her every day, like a
journal of sorts, and give her the letters when we got back.”
    I shut my mouth. I didn’t know what it was like
having a family you wanted to get back to. Not anymore. I’d
only been away from my parents for a few weeks, but I could say
without reservation that they’d been the best few weeks of my
life—torture and other hardships aside. Being on your own was the
absolute nuts , as far as I was concerned. I didn’t need
anyone, I told myself, unless they had the potential to be of use
to me. Blaylocke was weak, and that gave me another reason not to
like him.
    Soon we stopped sinking and leveled out. After a
minute, the ballonets filled up with the warm smoky air from our
impromptu fire, and we began to rise again. I rotated the engines
to push us forward, knowing I’d have to use engine thrust alone to
control our altitude now. We collided with a thick head of clouds
and found ourselves engulfed in a pocket of obscuring mist. I sent The Secant’s Clarity rising faster, wanting to escape the
feeling of sightlessness before anything else went wrong.
    When we cleared the tops of the clouds, they became
a carpet below our feet. The airship seemed nothing more than an
insect, soaring over the soft white blooms of a cotton field.
Grand, stately floaters drifted on skyward currents, massive
islands replete with sprawling towns and palatial cities