Chapter 88: Idiot Who Rode the Sky
The jungle broke where the bridge should have been.
Mist poured through the gap like a slow river, dragging white veils across a ravine so deep it turned green to black. What remained of the span hung in two ragged jaws - ropes chewed, lattice beams split along the grain as if something had pinched them from the inside and twisted. No saw marks, no scorch, no bolts sheared clean; the stone abutments along either lip had warped inward, pressure-bent like clay before it sets.
The Wardens in the lead car braked hard. The second car eased in behind, like a big animal lowering its head to sniff a sudden edge. Lanterns swayed on the nearest trunks, throwing soft, patient light over ruin that didn’t care about patience.
Solomon leaned to the broader Warden without looking away from the torn mouth of the ravine. His voice carried no farther than it needed. "You think this is Anathema doing?"
The Warden’s eyes flicked over the bent stone, the way the fibers in the broken ropes had fused, then snapped. He didn’t answer with words. His throat worked once, and he nodded the barest fraction you can nod without admitting to fear.
Rain had stopped. Drops still fell in irregular ticks from leaves as big as tables - soft percussion over a silence that had weight to it. Far below, something moved and the mist folded over the sound.
"Options?" Raizen asked, already out of the door, already measuring angles.
"Turn around, detour four hours" the Warden said. "Or you do something I can’t."
He actually meant: Or you do the thing you do that makes bridges appear where bridges do not exist.
Ichiro stepped forward without needing to be pointed. The wrong, brownish gold woke under his shoulder - just a degree of brightness, just enough to tell his bones this was work and not war. He rolled his wrist once, the way you test a joint after sleep, and set his palm over empty air. The rock along the near lip shivered like skin noticing a draft.
The earth obeyed.
A thick slab rose from the ravine wall - wet clay remembering it had been stone a month ago - and pushed itself into a cantilever, flat and uncompromising, spanning five meters of nothing. Another came shouldering up beside it, then another, a set of broad tongues laying themselves out in gentle overlap, the start of a road that had the decency to pretend it was permanent.
Lynea drew a slow breath, fragments humming at her wrists like a halo decided to get practical. She reached - palms forward, fingers spread - and thin planes of shimmer stitched over Ichiro’s slabs: transparent fields overlapping like scales, phasing in and out as she doubled, tripled, then quadrupled the layers at the weakest seams.
"It’ll hold if you don’t insult it" she said, voice steady and brighter at the edges. "No sudden weight changes."
"Keep speed even" the Warden relayed to the lead car, already signaling. "No braking on the span."
Keahi was already out ahead, the image of restraint with her hands down and her eyes everywhere. "I’ll walk ahead" she said, moving to the lip. "If anything shifts, I’ll signal. If anything breaks, I’ll-"
"-swear politely" Arashi offered, squinting down into mist. "And then invent new curses on the way down."
"You aren’t helping" Keahi said, but the corner of her mouth tugged.
Hikari slid by Raizen, a hand catching his sleeve just long enough to say be careful without saying it. Esen bounced twice on his heels and rolled his shoulders like he was about to dance at the edge of a cliff.
The convoy crept forward.
The lead Warden eased his wedge up onto the stone tongue. Tires hissed across wet grit. The first slab flexed and thought better of it; Lynea’s fields brightened, layering another suture across a hairline fracture. Ichiro kept his palm up and fed strength along an invisible seam - stone thickening mid-breath.
"Good" Keahi called, stepping backward, one hand at hip level like a conductor quieting a section. "Keep your pace."
Arashi, walking on the outer edge just to annoy gravity, glanced back at the eight. "If I fall, tell my board I loved her."
"You loved her after ten minutes" Feris said. "Talk about being emotionally irresponsible"
The cars reached slab three. Mist breathed out of the ravine, a cool exhale smelling of stone and deep water. The makeshift bridge groaned like an old ship. Lynea overlapped another field. Ichiro’s jaw was locked - breath even, eyes on the far lip like he could pull it closer by looking.
The rear axle hit slab four.
A sound like a champagne bottle popping.
The crack spider-webbed across the face of slab two - silent at first, then loud as the weight behind it realized what had been decided in front. The plate sagged. The rear wheels slid half a handspan. The wedge’s engine revved, reflex and fear.
"Stop! - No - don’t stop!" three Wardens shouted at once, which is exactly how you get a driver to do the wrong thing.
Esen was already moving.
He didn’t think. He let the rings decide. His left hand hit the rear quarter panel with a not-so-friendly slap - his right hand followed half a breath behind, heel of his palm landing like a stamp. The shockwave went into the wedge, not against it - the kind of push you give a friend who has to jump a gap and doesn’t know they can.
The car lurched forward like it had been insulted in a language it respected. Tires skipped slab three, then four, then five, settling onto solid ground and kept going - driver gasping a profanity that sounded grateful.
Esen didn’t keep going.
Momentum made a choice for him. The flexion in slab two met the give in slab one and both agreed that down was attractive. The plate buckled. The lip under Esen’s boots disappeared with the elegant disrespect of a tablecloth pulled too quickly.
"ESEN!" Feris shouted, already moving, already too late.
He fell.
Mist took him in a single step.
"Don’t move!" the broad Warden barked, which is exactly how you get at least three absurdly gifted teenagers to sprint toward an edge.
Keahi’s arm barred Feris without looking like a bar. Hikari’s hand found Raizen’s sleeve again - harder this time - and didn’t realize she’d done it. Arashi swore with clean artistry and then clamped his mouth shut like a promise to be better.
Silence below. Water slid along rock somewhere unseen, the bridge now a long exhale held too long.
Solomon didn’t say Esen’s name. His jaw tried to work once. He tilted his chin up a degree and watched the mist as if it would remember it owed him something.
The ravine answered.
It started with a tremor you felt in your knees - a bass note in the bones, a low, throat-clearing rumble under everything. The mist bellied outward. The ropes on the near side thrummed like strings plucked by a giant. The smell of hot mineral hit their faces, bright and metallic.
"WATCH OUT!" someone yelled, for no good reason and every good reason.
The world punched upward.
A geyser tore itself out of the ravine - a column of water, stone and steam, white and shining and very angry to be interrupted. It went higher than the lanterns, higher than the first limbs of the massive trees. It carried with it a ridiculous, flailing, laughing idiot who had discovered his favorite thing.
Esen rode the centerline like a saint on a cathedral spire. Arms wide. Rings flickering - tiny glints. He whooped, head thrown back, ginger hair plastered, and if there had been a god of bad decisions watching, that god would have blessed him and would have told him at least to try and be careful next time.
The column arced. Gravity remembered that it had notes in this concerto. Esen began to fall.
He tried to be responsible about it. He clapped once - ring to ring - sending a dome of force down a meter above the ground to catch himself. It hissed like rain on a hot plate, bled off speed, turned a deadly drop into a... How can I call it... A survivable slap.
"Nononono -" Feris said through her teeth.
The final meter didn’t care about his engineering.
He hit the mud with a noise that was an argument between soup and shame. Water came down in mean sheets, drenching the entire platform - and Solomon most of all, his white sash becoming a wet ribbon, hair slicked flat, face unreadable only because he needed it to be.
For three breaths there was no sound but laughing and rain.
Esen pushed himself up with elbows that had no right to be cooperative. He squinted through hair, smeared his bloody nose with the back of his wrist, and grinned like a sunrise. "Best. Thing. EVER!"
Arashi made a strangled noise that might have been admiration hidden inside offense. "Let me guess: You blew up a river."
"Geyser" Esen corrected, delighted. "It was already there. I just... asked it very loudly." He wobbled to his feet, swayed, and planted them wider, as if the entire world were a rope he intended to run.
The Wardens stared in a way that suggested paperwork would be written about this for generations. The Ukai Warden who’d nodded at Anathema marks earlier pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered "Please don’t do that to the hot springs."
"Hot springs!? Where? Esen asked, enthusiastically"
"Best ones are at the Canyons, at Haldor. But that doesn’t matter!"
Hikari let out the breath she’d been saving since the crack began. Keahi’s hand fell from Feris’s shoulder, and only then did Feris move.
She marched straight up to him with all the righteous fury of a friend on the edge of becoming something else, close to an angry mom that slaps you for dirtying your new clothes (Come on, we’ve all been through this...), yanked a handkerchief from somewhere suspiciously ready, and shoved it against his nose in a way that was... A tiny bit gentler than her glare. "You absolute idiot. You could have died."
"Hey, hey, hey! I did NOT die" he said, cheerful, trying to breathe and not sneeze at the same time.
"That’s not the point!" she snapped, cheeks pink, eyes wet and pretending not to be. "Don’t blow up anything else!" she blinked hard, recovered nowhere and everywhere, and dabbed at his face with a precision that suggested she had overcorrected into competence.
Esen’s grin softened. He stood very still, which for Esen is a rare and delicate act. "Okay" he said. "Hmm... I’ll... try to explode less."
"Good" she said, absolutely not looking at his mouth, still stuck in a wide grin.
Raizen let his hand fall from the hilt he hadn’t drawn. His eyes lingered on the broken edges - on the way pressure had warped stone, on the chew marks in wood that no animal mouth would make. He filed images where his blades kept memory - clean, ready to be compared later.
Solomon peeled wet hair off his forehead with two fingers, looked down at his sash clinging to his ribs, and then up at the repaired span. He smiled. Just for a second. He wasn’t the ruler practicing neutrality in the rain. But that second passed away, and his cold look returned.
"Let’s go" he said softly to the Wardens. "Before the mist decides to settle again."
The convoy reformed. Keahi swung back to her place near the Ruler. Hikari gave Esen one last once-over like a medic in denial, then jogged to the car with Raizen at her shoulder. Ichiro let the last raised ridge settle a fraction, the way you tuck a blanket around a sleeping child. Lynea shook her hands out, fragments returning to a quiet orbit around her wrists like tame birds.
Arashi stepped past Esen and clapped him on the shoulder. "If you ever die, I’m going to be very annoyed. I’m gonna bury you in a plastic bag."
"Deal" Esen said, beaming through the handkerchief.
At the lip, Solomon paused long enough to look back across what had happened. He didn’t look at Esen, who had finally stopped bleeding. He looked at the damage - the warped stone, the bent anchors, the way the lattice hadn’t failed so much as been persuaded to change its mind.
"Ruler?" the broad Warden prompted, gently impatient.
Solomon’s eyes were very dark. He whispered as if he were filing something in the city’s memory. "If this was indeed Anathema work..." he said, quiet enough to make people lean in, "it wasn’t an attack."
He glanced once into the mist, where the broken span had been, where water still fell in quiet threads like undone stitches.
"It was a warning."