The cavernous dark was full of the sound
of breathing. The gigantic seed-eaters
that the Nadumon used instead of carnivorous warbirds weren’t happy jammed into
a too-tight space next to their predators, but the thunder from the sky had
cowed everyone for the moment.
There was no more shaking. The floor underfoot was still.
“There might be quakes afterwards but we don’t
need to be –“ Kyrus wasn’t sure of the word but thought it meant ‘trapped’ – “in
here,” someone said into the dark.
“Prime did that,” someone else
said. “Prime just flattened my life out
of the sky.”
“Shhh. Everyone quiet. Yellow alert… we’ll see if it’s still red
outside.”
“Get us out of here, Head!” Some yelled
and was forcibly shushed it sounded like.
Kyrus could just understand enough Nadu to get all that. The Lainz were silent. The Nadumon’s birds were starting to trill
and whine.
“Shut those birds up before they set off
the damned Clawhooks!” They must mean our warbirds, Ky
thought. He managed to slide down off
his bird and help his new Nadu friend down as well, in the pitch darkness. “Ouch!” The boy’s pet, that had somehow clung
while Kyrus’s warbird had bounced over walls and along them like a bead of cold
water bouncing and skittering on a glowing hot stone, bit him.
“Oh, sorry, Naser, did... was Ikky a bad
boy? I’m sorry, he nips… he’s not venomous, sorry, sorry, my mother hates him
because he often ruins her shoes overnight sorry.”
Into the flow of his words, there came
an echoing ‘click’ but the big metal doors didn’t open, the unrelenting dark
didn’t abate. “It’s a good thing they
can’t open the door immediately,” the kid said.
“Our fowl would try to run wild now that they’ve had a few moments to
recover. And likely yours, too.”
“Kid, our warbirds are hooded and would
stand because they can’t see anyway,” Kyrus snapped. “M’ name’s Kyrus, what’s yours?”
“Archie.
Archibald Warren-Smith the Third, actually but I go by Archie.”
Kyrus could hear Werfas snort in the
dark, trying hard not to laugh, not to offend the touchy Nadu. He could hear his wingbrother close by and was grateful that they hadn't be separated by much in the mad dash for underground. I'm grateful enough to kiss him.
“Nice to meet you Archie, wish it were
better circumstances than an armed face-off in your town square or crammed into
a stuffy hole in the ground with my cheek pressed tight up against my own bird’s bung-hole.”
That got the kid laughing. Good.
If Ky had learned anything it was to recognize a higher ranked boy than
him… though technically that wasn’t true anymore, with his da being His
Radiance… but it felt wrong to him to try and high-nose it. “I wish.
We’ll be sending someone out through a crawl-hole to check and see if we
can stand-down from—“
A clangor started, distantly, as if
someone were beating a couple of iron bars together in a specific pattern,
outside.
“Oh, good. The Bugouts aren't meant to be closed much longer
than this,” Archie said. “That’s the all
green.”
“So, Archie, if you folks were so sure
that you were Prime’s private flash, whyd’ you build these… Bugouts?”
The massive doors boomed and then
clicked as they began to ratchet open, people all walking a circle… a windlass,
Ky supposed… to get the doors open quickly.
Light and heat poured in, even at the bottom of this canyon, and the
water that had shown slippery along the stone floor was just gone, evaporated.
Kyrus pulled his bird’s head down, the
goad hooked into its breakbeak, as it began shifting and sidling around as the
air moved into the cavern and the seed-eaters began milling and pressing to get
out and away from the warbirds.
“Private flash??? Um... I think I understand what you mean. The Head says that the committee can
believe what it likes but it would be stupid to believe blindly and with no options… especially
since you Lainz have been talking about being wiped out from the sky for
hundreds of years.”
“She’s smart.”
“Yeah,” Archie said. “Mum’s like that.”
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