From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 26: Fly

The ground disappeared beneath my feet, and my stomach seemed to climb towards my throat. For one horrible, suspended moment, I was neither flying nor falling, just hanging in the empty air, the wooden frame of our glider suddenly insubstantial in my white knuckled grip. Beside me, Kira made a small, strangled sound, her body swinging closer to mine as gravity claimed us.

Then we dropped, the sickening plunge sending my heart pulsing against my ribs like a trapped animal seeking escape. I bit back a scream, not from fear of attracting Corruptors, but because my lungs had simply forgotten how to function.

"Hold tight!" Kira shouted, her voice thin against the rushing wind.

The world tilted constantly as our glider tipped forward, the nose dipping toward the approaching ground. My body dangled, pulling the frame downward. Every instinct screamed to thrash, to fight against the fall, but I remembered Mira’s warning, any unnecessary movement could send us into a deadly spin.

I forced my body to remain rigid, arms straight above me as we plummeted. From the corner of my eye, I saw the other gliders dropping alongside us, fifteen exiles suspended in their wooden frames, a bizarre flock of human shaped birds diving towards certain death.

Then, a miracle or physics happened, I couldn’t tell which. The wings caught air. The clunky transition from falling to gliding pulled my shoulders, nearly separating them from their sockets. Our descent slowed, the angle of our flight suddenly less vertical, more horizontal.

Ahead of us, Gale hung alone from his glider, his chest had grown to impossible dimensions. I could see the strain in his body, the rigid tension as he held that massive breath. His hands made intricate, pushing gestures, fingers splayed wide against the invisible currents of air. And suddenly, I felt it, a powerful wind lifting our glider, nudging us higher as if invisible hands were supporting us from below.

The wind he created wasn’t just air moving, it was structured. A highway of pressure crafted by his will and sustained by his held breath. Our glider caught it perfectly, riding the current like it was a solid thing. The others found it too, the ragged formation stabilizing as all eight gliders caught the same rush of air. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"It’s working." Kira gasped, her knuckles tense around the frame but her voice cadenced with wonder. "We’re flying."

We were. Actually flying.

The sensation was unlike anything I’d experienced, weightlessness without falling, movement without effort. Below us, the ruined mall receded, becoming one more geometric figure on the landscape. The metal jungle we’d navigated on foot now looked like a complex silver cobweb from this height, the alien vegetation creating strange patterns of green and shadows across its surface.

And beyond it stretched the wasteland in all its terrible beauty. From above, I could see how the land was shaped not by gentle erosion but by a violent calamity. Massive fissures split the earth, their edges ragged as fresh wounds. Scattered throughout were pools of darkness that I recognized as black water, their surfaces unnaturally still compared to the chaotic landscape around them.

"Look." Kira breathed, her face turned toward the horizon.

There, distant but unmistakable, the barrier of Argent rose like a green mirage, a perfect dome of shimmering protection against the sickly lit sky. Even from this distance, I could make out the spires from within the Citadel, gleaming towers reaching upward as if in defiance of the wasteland that surrounded them.

Home. Or at least just safety.

A surge of something dangerous flooded through me, not quite hope, not quite relief, but a feeling adjacent to both. The sight of Argent, even miles away, triggered something primitive in my brain, some animal part that recognized shelter from danger.

I wasn’t alone in this reaction. Around us, other gliders dipped and bobbed as their pilots momentarily lost focus, distracted by the view and the emotional response it triggered. Phinyx and Lin swung wildly to the left as Phinyx raised one arm in an excited gesture. Coco and Rolen dropped several meters before stabilizing. Even Darien and Finn, leading the formation, wavered slightly in their trajectory.

For precious seconds, we allowed ourselves this release. The grim, emotionless masks we’d worn since entering the wasteland slipped, revealing the frightened, exhausted humans beneath. Joy, fear, hope, desperation, all the feelings we’d suppressed for survival bubbled to the surface like water from a spring.

Then I noticed the movement below.

It started as a subtle shifting, darker patches in the wasteland suddenly flowing against the prevailing breeze. Then more distinctly, black distortions rippling across the landscape like heat mirages, but moving with purpose. With hunger.

Corruptors. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. All suddenly pausing in whatever incomprehensible activities occupied them, their human forms orienting toward our position in the sky.

"They sense us." I hissed, nodding downward. "Our emotions, they’re tracking our emotions."

Kira’s face drained of color as she looked down. "There’s so many."

From the front of our formation, Darien made a sharp, slashing gesture across his throat. The universal signal. Cut it off. Feel nothing. Be empty.

I tried to recapture the emotional void I’d cultivated in the tunnels, the careful blankness that had kept us alive thus far. But how do you suppress the thrill of flight? How do you empty yourself of feeling when the ground is hundreds of feet below and only a wooden frame and stitched fabric separate you from a deadly fall?

My heart thundered in my chest, each beat a beacon to the creatures below. I couldn’t stop it. None of us could. The fundamental contradiction of our situation, needing to feel nothing while experiencing everything, was impossible.

Below us, the dark distortions began to move more purposefully, flowing toward our projected path like mercury seeking a depression. They didn’t simply walk or run, they flowed across the landscape with terrifying speed, their forms elongating and contracting to navigate obstacles without slowing.

"They’re following us." Kira said, her voice grim.