Quinn took one look at the hulking knight and fled.

  The last time Quinn had seen the man, he had punched the teeth out of Maxius the Younger without hesitation. No doubt the knight had come to finish the job, and Maxius needed to be warned.

  Empowered with life-aspect weaves, Quinn sprinted faster than was normally possible for a human. After being without an aura for weeks, it felt so good to use ethermancy again. It was fortunate that the man who called himself "Messiah" was able to split auras and dole them out. But if the knight was able to get past the Messiah, then it was likely the old man was dead. He had only been a witch for a few hours or so, at most. Instinctively, Quinn reached into his pack and grasped the leathery spine of the book the Messiah had given him.

  If he's really dead, Quinn thought, then this is all that's left of him. A legacy bound in leather.

  Quinn had watched with fascination as the binder sewed the signatures, bound the case, and ironed the gold foil into the leather, all traditional methods reserved for binding The Book of the Lawgiver. This was just a notebook, but the Messiah seemed to think it was important enough to send to Maxius the Younger.

  He skipped across the flatbeds in the dim green light of the signals overhead. A shudder ran down the length of the train, followed by a metallic whine as the wheels began to turn. As he ran, the cavern ahead opened up into a vast shunting yard filled with other trains, illuminated by dull yellow and red gas lamps. Quinn was able to leap between the cars, and after just a few moments of sprinting in the light, he made it past the last of the packed airplanes to the first passenger car. The door was closed, and, not wanting to lose his momentum, Quinn leapt up onto the roof of the car and kept sprinting.

  Clank clank! the wheels went. Clank clank! Clank clank!

  The flashing green lights of a signal blocked the way ahead, almost flush against the roof of the passenger cars and suspended from the solid rock. Nowhere to go. Quinn dropped between two passenger cars to avoid being smacked in the face by the signal. He tried the door but it was locked, so he activated a metal-aspect weave to cut clean through the bolt. It gave way, and as Quinn was entering he caught a glimpse of the soldiers aiming at the door with their rifles. He dodged to the side as gunshots rang out, barely audible against the distorted ding-ding sound of the railway signals.

  "Hold your fire!" one of the soldiers bellowed. "He's friendly! HOLD YOUR FIRE!"

  Quinn found himself scrambling in the darkness a fraction of a second later, as the entire train had left the light of the shunting yard and entered a lightless tunnel. His eyes adjusted enough to make out the doorway, barely visible, flickering orange. Quinn raised his hands and entered. The car was, in fact, lit only by the lanterns of the soldiers within.

  "What's wrong Quinn?" one of the soldiers asked.

  "Imperials," Quinn rasped.

  "RELOAD!" the man bellowed. Quinn decided the man was a sergeant from his voice alone.

  "I need to get to Heritor Maxius," Quinn continued. "The Messiah gave me a book that Maxius had asked for. Some type of weave that only witches can use. I was going to wait until after all the airplanes were loaded."

  The sergeant nodded, marched to the rear of the car, and unlocked the door. He plucked the cup of an acoustic string phone from beside the rear door and began to speak into it: "Stand down. Quinn is coming with a special delivery. Open all the doors. Once Quinn has passed, lock the doors and prepare to fight."

  Ding ding! Ding ding! Ding ding! Yeeeeeerrrr! Dun dun! Dun dun! Dun dun!

  The sergeant opened the door and Quinn continued his flight. He went through several more cars filled with soldiers before finding another flatbed car. He could not see much of it, just a pair of huge crates crowned with blue tarp and secured with ropes, with the metallic bed vanishing into the darkness beyond. He stopped.

  "Take this!" one of the soldiers said, offering a lantern.

  Quinn thanked the man and took the lantern and continued. The tunnel was very narrow, bone-white stone without a hint of ethersteel. One side opened up into a maw of stalagmites and stalactites, continuing on under a stone shelf into a space where no man had ever ventured. The light of his lantern revealed more paint pots in that void, bubbling red and green and blue and purple. Then the cavern narrowed into a tunnel yet again, unnatural, lined on all sides by ancient bricks arranged with mechanical precision. Thankfully, periodic lamps embedded into the pillars provided ample light, and the ceiling was two man-heights above the roofs of the cars ahead.

  Brilliant indigo lights announced an upcoming junction. Quinn stole a moment to look back at the passenger cars far behind him, beyond the flatbeds. A shadowy hand lanced out, smashed a soldier against the roof of the tunnel, and ground him into a pink mist. There was an explosion as a fireball erupted in the gap between the cars and the roof. Quinn could see the flashes of gunshots, but they were too far away to hear, drowned out by the sound of the signal overhead.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  He kept sprinting along the flatbeds, until at last he could see the ornate car where Maxius waited. It was made from polished wood and decorated with cast-iron filigree with a beautiful green door carved with the likeness of animals, a gavel, the Lawgiver himself. Quinn threw the door aside and there, standing with his arms outstretched, stood Heritor Maxius the Younger, delivering a sermon to the leather-clad pilots kneeling in the pews.

  It had been several weeks since Quinn had seen the man. In those weeks, Quinn had done mostly the same things he had done back at the University of White Chasm. He remembered Bjorn's equations. He remembered the principles of three-axis control and stability. With access to the best mathematicians and engineers in the Theocracy, it did not take Quinn long to design a new airplane, a flying weapon of war, one made entirely from ethersteel. And though none of the machines had ever flown through the sky, Quinn was confident from his wind tunnel tests that they were more than capable.

  "Quinn!" Maxius said. "Why have we departed so early? Are all the airplanes loaded already?"

  "We've been discovered," Quinn replied. "I saw that tall knight, the one who normally carries a spear. I also saw a woman with red robes and an obsidian mask, a Vjiskaldi warrior, and an oculomancer."

  "Sir Zachary, the Knight of Summer. It is no secret that his niece wants my head."

  "There is something else," Quinn said. He reached into his pack and produced the leatherbound tome. "The Messiah entrusted me with this book. He said it was very important."

  Maxius snatched the thing and began to rifle through it. He stopped after a few pages. "It's mostly empty. Just two weaves."

  "What are the weaves?"

  "The notes here says, 'A life-aspect weave to make the user more intelligent, and thus all further weaves become trivial.' And for the second weave, it says, 'A heaven-aspect weave to slow your perception of time, which will have the effect of magnifying your intelligence relative to the rest of the universe.' I wonder why he didn't use these weaves himself?"

  "He must have," Quinn said.

  Maxius nodded, then offered the book. "Either way, I've memorized the weaves. Clever, yes, but not at all surprising. I saw stuff like this back at the Eight Color Monastery."

  Quinn took the leatherbound tome and stuffed it back in his pack. "I'll keep it safe," he promised.

  "Look," Maxius whispered. "I don't know if it matters anymore. We aren't going to make it to the Gale Temple at this rate, not before Sir Zachary finds us."

  "Then I will take one of the airplanes and leave," Quinn said.

  "How will you take off?" Maxius asked.

  "If the train was going faster, then we could point the noses forward and take off from the flatbed cars," Quinn explained. "The airspeed just needs to be high enough to create lift. We could save all of the airplanes on the front half of the train if we leave right now."

  "Brave pilots!" Maxius began. "The time is now! Go forth, to the forward airplanes, and begin the attack on the Blue Wolf! Any man who dies on this mission will be guaranteed a place in the Lawgiver's Paradise!"

  The pilots began to rise.

  "Will you come with us?" Quinn asked.

  "That won't be necessary," a woman said.

  She walked forward from the back of the car, beyond the last of the pilots. She looked like she was among that strange race of people from his hometown. She had green hair and green scales on her cheeks and on her forehead. Strangely, her hair was very pale, like the minty drinks Seth would buy for his girlfriends.

  "Light Elemental!" the woman demanded. "I wish to establish a kindred bond with this man!"

  She pointed to Maxius the Younger. The railcar was silent except for the distorted sound of a railway signal.

  "I do not need his consent!"

  Suddenly a brilliant flash of golden light exploded from Maxius. It was so bright that Quinn was forced to stuff his face into one elbow. By the time Quinn recovered Maxius was trembling, his hands vibrating like a man diseased.

  "HAHAHAHAH!" Maxius screamed. "I WILL SIRE A NATION!"

  Quinn veered away from the man, and settled in with the pilots as they shuffled through the door. Outside, the gloom of the brick tunnel was replaced with colorless white. A cold wind struck Quinn's face. The track hugged an arc-shaped ledge behind a series of waterfalls overlooking the rocky north shore of the Eternal Forest. On one side the gray stone was dusted with snow, and on the other, gnarled evergreen trees braved the wintery heights. Quinn sprinted ahead, bypassing most of the pilots.

  "I SEE THE LIGHT!" Maxius continued, his voice amplified by wind-aspect weaves. "I WILL HAVE TEN THOUSAND WOMEN! I WILL BREED THE LESSER RACES LIKE CATTLE!"

  The rock wall was hidden behind shapeless heaps of glaucous ice, jutting overhead at an angle. The cars underfoot clanked onto a rainbow bridge which spanned the gulf between two snow-clad peaks. The wind was strong. Quinn knelt and released the glass canopy on the ethersteel airplane on his flatbed car. Nearby pilots began to untie the ropes, their green hair fluttering in the wind.

  "We'll follow you!" one of the men said. "Lead us!"

  Quinn plopped down onto the thin leather cushion, grasped the stick with both hands, and pressed his feet against the rudder pedals. One of the other pilots rotated the canopy down gently and Quinn locked it in place. He watched the airspeed indicator. As the train picked up speed the needle slowly moved toward the green region.

  With a great overhead swing the last of the ropes was severed, and the craft began to vibrate. Clank clank! Clank clank! Quinn activated the fire-aspect weave required to start the engine, holding one hand forward to face the nose as he did so. The other pilots dropped away, clasping the ropes and the rails as the propeller puttered and started. He pulled back gently, ever so gently on the stick, and the wings wobbled, then he was aloft.

  Ding ding! Ding ding!

  He pushed forward on the stick, toward the flatbed car, to barely duck under the signal. Then the sky opened and he took the nose up toward the clouds. The railway and the train dropped away, snowflakes blasting the canopy, freezing fog melting against hot ethersteel. For the first time since his brother died, he was flying and he was free.