The Celestial Way

Chapter 7.5 - First Steps of the Way

Veralla kept looking back as she and the others made their way down. She felt a small pang when Airo sank into the roaring, otherworldly blizzard. Kiana led them back to the communication tower with haste. She and Zuckeroff barricaded the building as best they could, and then settled to wait for the warpstorm to pass over.

Now, much later, Veralla stood beside one of the viewpanels, and watched the warp-engulfed glacier, her tail and wings twitching restlessly.

"Do you think we will survive this, Ki?" Zuckeroff asked for the fourth time. He leaned on the nearby wall, fiddling with a sniper rifle in his hands. Kiana stood next to him, her arms crossed, staring sourly at the ceiling. Their combat armors were sealed, since the strong radiation was penetrating the comm tower's interior. Veralla had been given a small tightbeam headset so she could listen and speak over the commlink.

"Ain't no idea," Kiana snorted. Her tone was grim. "My head's spinning from all the vertigo. That shit about willpower better be true, or we're going into exotic places soon." She tapped the wall to punctuate her words; the comm tower's sides were expanding and contracting in a rippling pattern, without doing any actual movement.

"I've never been in a warpstorm," Zuckeroff said with a shaky voice.

"Nobody here has been, gamebrain," Kiana snapped. "Just sit tight, and grit your teeth. Let's hope the self-righteous bastard's plan works."

Veralla peered intently through the viewpanel, trying to see into the whirling darkness of the warpstorm. She felt her anxiety increase with each passing minute.

"Do you think the Boss will return?" Zuckeroff asked tentatively.

"You stupid or something, gamebrain? He's not returning," Kiana said bitterly. "Nobody can survive what's out there. Tall, dark, and imperious made his foolish heroic sacrifice. He's probably dead already."

Veralla whipped her head around, the words piercing her heart like a talon.

Then she bolted to the tower's exit.

"Veralla, WAIT!" Kiana shouted after her.

She went outside and ran toward the glacier, the storm descending upon her in full force. Furious gale whipped her webbed ears. Blinding thunderbolts laced her slit-pupiled eyes. Tiny, almost invisible particles danced at the edge of her vision, cutting and piercing the very air, slamming into her scaled skin in miniature tingly explosions, their presence tinging the air in blue afterglow. It was radiation, she realized. The land around was rising and falling like some unseen predator, disorienting her and making her crests flare with tension.

She struggled to find purchase on the ground, her claws scrabbling the ice. She was frustrated at her body and her limbs and her wings, all of them so small and lacking in might. She wanted to take flight, to challenge the raging storm, to tear through it as she hastened to save the person who gave her her life and her name. She leapt and bounded across the valley, hissing in fear and concentration when she slipped or tumbled after a misstep. All that time she kept her head high, looking straight ahead, toward the glacier, where she could sense a flicker of life which was slowly winking out.

She waged an unfair battle with the storm and its otherworldly nature. She pushed herself to the limit, bidding her small body to go faster, for time to slow down, to allow her to reach Airo before it was too late. She started to climb the summit, and she pushed harder, digging her talons in the ice and propelling herself upward.

At last she went over the rim, staggering and panting heavily from effort. Here the wind tore at her with tremendous force, and she leaned hard to avoid being blown off. The E-beacon was enveloped in a mantle of piercing radiation particles, and they washed over her, raking her skin and stabbing her eyes. She looked around hurriedly, blinking against the broken perspective, and spotted Airo lying prone next to the beacon, covered in snow and ice. She swiftly came by his side, and prodded him urgently.