Page 183 of Keldori By Daybreak

“I’m out of bottles. I came back to make more, but I don’t have a lot of time before they’re back at the engine.”

I watched two more monstrous silhouettes join the others, each of them ripping into the left tank of the engine. More screamed in the forest.

They’d be joining us soon, too, and my backpack was feeling too light.

But we were so, so close.

Close enough, in fact, that I could now see the rising stone of an approaching city wall. We didn’t need to last much longer.

“Pass me a barrel! Quick, there should be an empty one!” I commanded, but Ciarán butted in with, “That’s too dangerous! You’ll blow up half the steamcart!”

Tiernan gawked up at me. “So do you want a barrel or not?”

“Yes!” I insisted, and Ciarán added, “Dammit, you better hope this works.”

“Wren?” Tiernan narrowed his eyes at me. “What the hell is going on with you?”

“Just give me a barrel!”

He maneuvered a barrel up to me through the hole in the roof, and I held it steady in the wind.

“Now what?” Tiernan asked.

“Skal. Just a bottle will do.” Ciarán spoke for me, giving into my plan. “Come on, Eldguard faster!”

Tiernan took an empty Skal bottle from his belt, filled it in one of the untouched barrels, corked it, and tossed it up to me.

“Take cover,” I suggested and started dragging the barrel across the roof towards the train’s caboose. It didn’t weigh much, but my shoulders screamed in pain where the rotsbane had cut me.

“I’ve got this,” Ciarán grunted, taking control. He jumped us and our barrel across the gap between carriages.

“What, you think I’ll blow up the train?” I asked.

“No, but I’m not taking chances. My body is inside. I’d like it to remain unexploded.”

He sprinted us to the final carriage and carefully set our remaining explosive bottles in the barrel. We both tried to ignore the three additional rotsbane chasing after us on the tracks.

Ciarán turned and faced the rotsbane on the engine. The city wall drew nearer, and I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we rolled into the station covered in rotsbane and what sort of damage they would deal to the harbor.

“Here we go,” Ciarán warned before dumping the bottle of Skal over the barrel. Magick warmed my hand, and the liquid ignited in a blaze of blue that rose into the dying night and licked at the fading stars.

The engine may have had more Skal, but the combusting magick drew the attention of the rotsbane. They shrieked as they abandoned the engine to chase my blue bonfire, leaping across carriage roofs in their charge.

Ciarán waited until they were almost on top of us, then swung the burning barrel up to fling it over the edge of the caboose in a blur of blue flames.

The roof shook with the thundering steps of rotsbane, and we dropped to the metal as the monsters leapt overhead in pursuit of the Skal.

I peaked out from behind my arms just in time to watch them converge on the barrel as it fell to the tracks and burst. Golden light silhouetted the monstrous, four-armed forms for a half-moment before burning them away.

The carriage rocked beneath me in the blast, but it managed to stay upright on the tracks, and I craned my neck to watch the smoldering, twitching remains of the rotsbane fall behind.

“Stay down,” Ciarán commanded and pressed us back against the metal.

Compressed air whooshed overhead as the breaking dawn was swallowed by dark stone. The train sounded ten times louder in the tunnel, and it rattled against my body.

The tunnel disappeared, replaced by tendrils of orange and blue that streaked the brightening sky over the low, wooden buildings of a harbor town. Salt hung on the air, and gulls cried overhead.

Moored ships rose along the far side of the town in a mess of wooden masts and metal smokestacks. Ocean glittered beyond the hulls and disappeared into fog a few miles off the shore.