A loud crack and a sudden piercing pain in Eldin's hand announced the pistol shot that tore the windstone from his grasp and a yelp of pain from his throat. He cast wide, surprised eyes across the deck to find Laurian--who had been standing far enough away to be out of the tornado's range--aiming a discharged pistol directly at him. Eldin had been so focused on defending himself from the men closely surrounding him that he had entirely disregarded the danger posed by anyone else--and now he had paid for it. No longer in possession of the windstone, the purewind tornado ceased at once, and the spiraling windstones dropped uselessly to the deck. Eldin dove for one, but one of Laurian's men--bleeding all over and snarling--tackled him before he could reach it and pinned him to the ground.

When the remainder of Eldin's attackers recovered, they hauled him to his feet and dragged him roughly to Laurian. While two held him by the arms, two more searched him thoroughly for more windstones, and then--finding none--they pushed him to his knees to await their new admiral's justice.

Laurian looked Eldin over for a long moment, then turned his head, frowning. Eldin realized what the man had noticed: complete silence, indicating the suspension of cannonfire. "The work of the engineer, no doubt," Laurian said. "My men will rectify the situation soon enough. You should concern yourself more with your own fate, for it is perilous indeed. I cannot have you interfering with my command, so I hereby sentence you to execution by means of"--here he paused, assuming a thoughtful expression before continuing--"a dip in the miasma." At Eldin's sudden gasp and panicked eyes, he laughed. "Yes, I believe I shall bind your feet with rope and dangle you off the ship for an hour or so. That should set a fine example to others who may challenge me."

Eldin felt thick beads of sweat trailing down his face, and his heart hammered in his chest. His breath came quickly, and his vision blurred from terror. Not now, he begged himself. Keep it together.

"No words?" Laurian said. "No more resistance? Of course not. I've taken your only weapon away. Without a windstone in hand, you are powerless."

Eldin closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep, slow breaths to regain some semblance of composure. After a few seconds of this, when his body and mind obeyed him once again, he looked up into Laurian's eyes and said, "You're right--I don't have a windstone in hand." Another deep breath, and then, "But I have three in my stomach."

Laurian had only an instant to open his mouth and raise his eyebrows in surprise before Eldin amassed the entire pool of energy from the three windstones he had swallowed in the shuttle bay and summoned the most powerful gale of purewind he had ever wielded in his life. He released that energy in a full, outward-facing circle away from him, sending Laurian and all his men hurtling away at such tremendous speed they were almost impossible to track with the eye. They slammed hard into bulkheads, tables, rails, and posts, filling the room with the awful sound of bones snapping and contorting their bodies into twisted, grotesque, inhuman shapes. None of them survived. None of them could have.

Silence reigned in the bridge for a long moment, broken periodically by Eldin inhaling deep breaths. That massive discharge of purewind had drained him of what was left of his already dwindled energy, and he fell to the floor from exhaustion, feeling wearier than a dead man. As he lay there, staring at the ceiling and focusing on nothing but taking the next breath, the loyalist sailors in the room timidly approached him. "Orders, sir?" one of them said.

Orders? Eldin thought. Sir?

Of course. Both the admiral and his first mate were dead. Someone needed to take command of the ship, and by the expectant look on the sailors' faces, they wanted him to fill that role.

He closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep right there on the deck. It was a wonder he hadn't drifted off already. But it seemed his work wasn't done yet. "Someone help me up," he said, and a sailor gently pulled him to his feet. "Get me a medic for my hand, and send the rest of the medical staff on a shuttle down to the windwyrm. Let's do what we can for her."

"Sir, look over there," an officer said, and Eldin looked out the ports in the direction the man had pointed.

The windwyrm was there. She had drawn herself up alongside the Ventus, straining to erect herself tall enough to reach over the space in between the flying airship and the mountaintop. Eldin couldn't imagine how she managed such a feat, for she was in much worse shape now than when he had first emerged from the clouds. Dozens upon dozens of cannonball wounds--perhaps a hundred even--dotted the length of her colossal body. One of her horns had been destroyed at the base, and the other hadn't fared much better. Her face had been pounded into pulp, one eye caved in, serpentine tongue hanging out of the gaping maw that was once her mouth before her jaw had been destroyed.

Eldin's chest tightened at the sight, and it nearly broke him completely to realize that there was nothing they could do for her. No creature could survive such wounds, and when she looked through the ports of the bridge and locked eyes with Eldin, he was certain she knew it too.

Slowly, ponderously, she stretched herself over the main deck of the Ventus, then opened what was left of her mouth and began heaving, her entire body seeming to convulse. As she did this, Eldin noticed a large bulge in her body traveling toward her mouth like a lone wave on the sea. When it reached her throat, she gave one final, painful-looking contraction of her body, then disgorged the largest windstone Eldin had ever seen onto the deck. It possessed such immense weight that it buried itself into the wooden planking of the deck several feet deep.

Eldin pushed through the crowd of sailors in the bridge and approached a port, placing his hand on the glass and watching the windwyrm. The instant her heart had become separated from her body, her one functioning eye took on a lifeless glaze and she dropped heavily. Most of her body had still been away from the Ventus; her head, however, slammed against the deck as it fell, shaking the entire ship violently with its weight and then sliding off as the remainder of her body tumbled down the mountain beneath the clouds to rest forevermore in a miasmic tomb. Eldin, unable to even draw a breath from the sight, averted his eyes back to the deck, and the enormous windstone that now rested atop it.

The windwyrm--in her dying moments--had given humanity the remainder of her heart.

Silence--dreadful, miserable silence. Not a man or woman in the bridge uttered a sound. It's over, Eldin thought, forehead against the glass and eyes closed. And I saved no one. But at least it's over.

Then, a terrible grinding noise sounded from several decks below.

Eldin looked around, confused, and gasped when out the ports he witnessed the mountaintop drawing closer and closer.

"Sir!" the helmsman said. "The ship, sir--something's wrong with the engines. We don't have enough power to stay aloft. We're sinking, sir!"

Eldin could only stare at the helmsman, mouth agape.

"Orders, sir!"

He shook his head once to force himself to focus. "Right. Direct us away from the mountain. It's far too steep to make a landing."

The helmsman pulled at the wheel, and the ship veered to starboard--still sinking, but at least not in danger of crashing against the mountain. Eldin exhaled the breath he had been holding, and heard most of the crew do the same. That served to avert the danger for now, but they only traded one problem for another, for if they continued to sink, they'd eventually dip beneath the clouds and into the miasma. Eldin felt his heart begin to race at the thought.

"El!"

The voice was distant, but he heard it clearly. He realized it came from the speaking tubes, and he strode over to the one corresponding with the engine room. "Fen?" he called into it. "Is that you?"

"Yes. El, we've got a problem."

"What's going on down there? The ship is sinking."

"One of Laurian's men shot at me, but the ship rocked like crazy at the same moment and his shot went wide. It hit and destroyed one of the purewind conductors. We're only running on half power now."

"Half power isn't enough. We're not in freefall, but we are definitely sinking. What can you do?"

There was a silence before Fenric said, "I can try to recalibrate the other conductor to draw more purewind from the windstones. Overclocking one conductor like that is inefficient and will waste a ton of energy from the stones, but it will keep us flying until we can repair the other one."

"You're a genius, Fen. Do it."

"There's a problem, however."

Eldin groaned. "Why wouldn't there be? What is it?"

"It'll take at least an hour to recalibrate the functioning conductor."

Eldin looked out the ports at the rapidly approaching clouds as the ship descended. "We don't have an hour. We can seal the ship against the miasma for a while when we fall beneath the clouds, but not for long, and we'll still hit the ground before you can finish the job."

"I don't know what to say, El. An hour is what I need."

Eldin pressed his palms against his eyes and exhaled loudly. "I'll think of something. Start working on the conductor."

"Understood."

Eldin moved from the engine room speaking tube to one that split into multiple tubes to reach every deck on the ship. At the end of each tube, a crewman would be manned, awaiting orders from the admiral. "Sailors," Eldin said, mustering as much authority as he could, "close and seal every port, hatch, and crack in the ship. Spread the word. We will be taking a"--he hesitated before continuing--"temporary dip beneath the clouds, and are required to seal ourselves against the miasma for the brief time we will be susceptible to it." He hoped his calculated phrasing would prevent panic, and ensure his orders were carried out calmly and orderly.

He turned away from the speaking tubes toward the crew, who had been anxiously listening to the conversation between him and Fenric. He spoke to no one in particular when he asked, "If we seal the ship against the miasma, can we make a safe enough landing on the surface until Fenric makes those repairs, then take off once we're able to?"

A tall, short-haired woman stepped forth from the group; Eldin vaguely recognized her as Officer Tilda, who oversaw the maintenance teams onboard. "Sir," she began with a crisp salute, "while our one functioning conductor has given us enough power to avoid a total free fall, we're still descending fast enough to cause immense damage to the ship upon impact, no matter how ideal the landing site is." She spoke slowly now, every word a struggle. "If the Ventus lands, she won't fly again."

Officer Tilda's announcement plunged the bridge into a horrid silence while everyone present absorbed that discouraging information. Eldin stepped slowly to the ports, not even truly seeing out of them for how buried in thought he was. He stood there for a long time. Soon, the world outside began to turn orange as the miasma enveloped the entire main deck. They had fallen beneath the clouds, and were well on their way to the planet's surface.

He looked around the bridge, noting with relief that it seemed to be insulated well enough against the miasma; little of it was creeping in through the edges of the ports or the wooden planking of the walls. He hoped the rest of the ship fared just as well, but that wasn't the most pressing concern at the moment. "How long until impact?" he asked aloud, not even turning around to face the crew.

"Perhaps ten minutes, sir," a voice answered. "Probably less."

That dreadful silence returned, even worse now that they had a tangible time limit--and such a short one at that. "Sir?" someone said behind him. He turned to find another officer, a sweating man named Renault, anxiously fingering his hat in his hands. "What should we do?" he asked quietly.

What indeed? Eldin didn't answer, instead turning again to gaze out the ports once more. There, across the main deck, he could barely make out the vague shape of the windwyrm's heart hidden within the thick veil of the miasma, and it pained him to realize that her sacrifice will likely have been made in vain. If they had survived, the heart would have given them so many years of flight--for as enormous as it was, it would possess an extraordinary amount of purewind energy, more than he had ever wielded in his life by tens of thousands of times.

That thought sent a jolt through his entire body. His eyes widened, and his heart seemed to freeze.

He had an idea.

Eldin rushed to the speaking tube corresponding to the engine room, startling everyone in the bridge, and nearly shouted into it. "Fen! Fen! Damn it, man, are you there?"

A couple seconds later, Fenric answered. "El? Yes, I'm here. What's wrong?"

Eldin spoke so fast he nearly tripped over his words. "Tell me--what is the purpose of the purewind conductor?"

Fenric's voice sounded confused when he responded. "It draws purewind from the windstones, then directs that energy through the conveyance piping to the purewind nexus, powering the ship. We're in trouble right now because one of them is broken, so there's no way to draw the purewind we need and direct it to the core."

"Why don't I just manually channel some purewind into it?"

Fenric's voice was sympathetic when he said, "I'm sorry El, but that wouldn't be enough. No matter how many windstones you hold in your hands, you can't summon enough power to make a difference."

Eldin smiled. "What if I used a windstone the size of a shuttle?"

A pause. "That would certainly be different. Where do you intend to acquire such a colossal windstone?"

Eldin's smile dropped when he realized that Fenric had been in the engine room this entire time, and therefore hadn't witnessed the windwyrm's sacrifice. He had no idea she was dead. "The windwyrm," Eldin said tenderly, "she spat her heart out when she knew she was going to die. It's huge, Fen, and it's right there on the deck. I can use it to get the purewind we need."

Fenric didn't respond for a moment; Eldin knew he was processing the tragedy. But he soon seemed to have shaken it off and refocused, for he said, "That'll do it," in a voice tinged with just a touch of emotion. "I'll prepare the conductor to receive purewind manually. It doesn't need to function to still be able to direct that energy through the piping to the nexus."

"Fantastic, Fen. It's coming your way. Get ready."

"Got it."

Eldin turned from the speaking tube toward the hatch leading outside, feeling around in his pocket for a windstone to repel the miasma on his way to the windwyrm's heart across the deck.

He found none.

"Does anyone have a windstone?" he called to the crew. "Purewind can fend off the miasma; I need one to make it to the heart."

The crew checked their own pockets, as well as the drawers and desks around the bridge.

They, too, found none.

He could have used the three windstones he had swallowed, but they had been drained of their entire reservoir of purewind energy in the massive blast he had used to kill Laurian and the mutineers. He tensed before gasping in relief when he remembered that the windstones he had used in the purewind tornado had been dropped to the deck when he was shot. He ordered the crew to check the corners of the room and anywhere they might have rolled.

Still, they found none.

There were tricky nooks and cavities aplenty in the bridge, making it easy to lose small windstones in the vastness of the room--and with the motions of the ship in flight, they could have rolled anywhere. "Keep searching!" Eldin yelled, his anxiety mounting.

"Sir," Officer Tilda said, "we're running out of time. I think there's no choice but for you to..."

She trailed off, but Eldin didn't need to hear the rest of her sentence. He knew what he needed to do.

He needed to walk through the miasma.

At that thought, the familiar panic he had struggled with for over a decade began to build in his gut. His heart--already in a state of turmoil at the dire circumstances of their present situation--intensified in its violent thumping, producing a sudden wave of dizziness that nearly sent him stumbling to the deck. His palms became drenched with sweat, and he felt like he was boiling in his windsuit.

Her face appeared in his mind. The blistering red face of his mother, most of her features melted away to nothing, wheezing desperate breaths as she squeezed her bawling son's hand. The face he saw in his dreams almost every night.

The crew stared at him expectantly, trusting him with the lives of everyone onboard: The officers and crewmen; all the civilians; Fenric.

And Inpheria.

The thought of her flashed through his mind, replacing the gruesome image of his dying mother with that of a headstrong, bookish girl with hair like fire and a splash of freckles across her nose. A girl who would die soon, if he allowed it.

He decided he would not allow it.

Without hesitating or pausing for an instant, he strode to the hatch, flung it open, and stepped out into the miasma. He closed the hatch behind him and began sprinting across the deck toward the windwyrm's heart.

The heat was tolerable for only a few seconds, for no amount of determination could protect against the miasma. The stuffiness he had felt from anxiety inside the bridge was nothing compared to the blistering, hateful swelter he now experienced, and soon, tears formed in his eyes that evaporated almost immediately. His eyes burnt painfully and he wanted to shut them to escape it, but he willed them open to keep his gaze on the obscure shape of the windwyrm heart--and their salvation--far ahead of him.

He coughed; it hurt his chest. He coughed harder; it hurt harder. He wiped rivers of sweat from his forehead and felt the raised bumps of blisters forming on his skin. He knew he'd look like his mother soon. Her face--Andira's face--flashed in his mind. He forced it away and replaced it with Inpheria's, giving him another small burst of resolve.

It wasn't enough. He tripped. When he tried to stand, he couldn't rise higher than his knees. He tipped forward onto all fours and began crawling. The deck was hot. The skin on his hands began to sizzle like cooking meat--for that's exactly what it was. He moaned in pain, his voice nothing but a hoarse rasping now. He couldn't take more than a quarter of a breath without coughing.

His crawling slowed. He forced his head up, hoping to find the windwyrm's heart within arm's reach.

It wasn't.

Ten paces away, the heart taunted him, promising salvation if only he could push himself just a little bit farther. He crawled another step, then another. He attempted a third, but his muscles gave in, and he collapsed onto his stomach. He began to suffocate, his body convulsing as it desperately tried to draw a breath. He dragged himself another half-step, then tried again, but couldn't manage it. His body no longer obeyed his commands. He let go, finally surrendering, resting his head against the deck. He felt the agonizing pain of his cheek lying against the baking wood, but he couldn't muster the energy to care, much less move. He lay there, roasting, ready to die. He closed his eyes.

Then, he felt his body rising.

His mind tricked by near-death delirium, he thought he was flying through the skies in a windstorm, far above the clouds, the place he loved most. But a fit of hacking coughs returned him to reality, after which he realized with utter amazement that he could breathe again. He raised his eyes from the deck, observing that the miasma was being pushed back by purewind, like he had done during their trek to and from the windwyrm's nest. But who was doing it?

"Nap time's over, El," Inpheria said, hoisting him up with one of his arms around her shoulder. "Come on--you've still got a job to do."

"Inphy?" His voice was gravelly. "But how?" Inpheria had never been able to summon purewind from a windstone. But just as he spoke, a high-pitched chirping sound drew his attention skyward, where he discovered a miniature version of the windwyrm circling the air around them like an eel in water. Eldin could sense the purewind energy emanating from it as it not only produced the barrier against the miasma, but used that same wind to fly in the air, much like a Windchaser in a windsuit.

He laughed. It hurt his throat. "You hatched the egg. How?"

"Focus, El. Let's move." She started walking him forward. His injuries forbade a fast pace, but at least they were moving. Inpheria answered his question while they hobbled. "I had remembered seeing a book in the archives titled Colorful Crenya: A Study of the Unique Hatching Cycle of Wyrmish Eggs. It was ancient, published before the Ascension. When the windwyrm spoke of her eggs as crenya, it prodded my memory. I went to the archives to find it, and within its pages I learned how the eggs hatch: It's purewind. The egg has to be juggled in a certain pattern by a stream of purewind powerful enough to hoist and twirl it about. The pattern is very specific and nuanced. It took several attempts to finally manage it."

"But you can't summon purewind."

"To my eternal regret. But Veric can. When I learned that I needed a Windchaser, I first ran off to get you. But I stumbled into Veric almost immediately after leaving the archives, so for the purposes of efficiency I employed him for the task."

"Veric? How did you convince him to help you? I beat him in our duel--I can't imagine he was in a good mood."

"Oh, he was absolutely livid. But after I pointed my sword at his groin and threatened to cut his windstones off, he was only too pleased to assist me." She spoke these words with immense pride in her voice.

Eldin laughed. Despite everything--the pain of his blisters and seared skin, the dreadful situation they were in--he laughed. "You're the best, Inphy. You really are."

She gave her own laugh at that, but it was a sad one. "Thanks, El. Still, I had intended to hatch the egg to convince the admiral to call off the attack, not to save you from a foray into the miasma. It broke my heart to learn what had happened in my absence when I reached the bridge with the hatchling. The windwyrm dead, your father betrayed and murdered, and you, outside in the miasma, burning alive."

"You saved me."

"Of course, El. I always will. Zephyrs fly together."

If he'd had any lingering doubts about whether the void between them had been mended, they were dispelled at that moment. He felt a swell of emotion in his chest.

"Here we are," Inpheria said. They had just arrived within arm's reach of the windwyrm's heart. Eldin pulled his arm from her shoulder and stood on his own. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Something long overdue," he said, then pulled her close by the hip and kissed her deeply.

He felt her body tense in surprise, then relax in passion as she eagerly returned his kiss, the pent-up desire of over a decade taking over all at once. He lost himself in the electrifying feeling of her touch, and for a brief instant, nothing in the world existed but him and her.

Then, almost as an afterthought, and while still locked in a passionate kiss with the woman he loved, he placed a hand on the windwyrm's heart.

Power surged through him, of an intensity and strength he would think impossible if he weren't feeling it himself. The energy filled every fiber, every molecule of his body, suffusing his very essence. His heart soared and his soul felt as light as wind itself.

And this was only a fraction of the power contained within the heart.

It filled his body to the brim, no single human capable of bearing such an enormous pool of energy. It begged to be released.

He obliged it.

Eldin summoned a torrential stream of purewind that flowed like a surging river away from him. While it was no larger than any gust of purewind produced with a regular-sized windstone, the strength of energy it possessed was astronomical. As it stormed along the deck, it cut through the miasma with enough force to repel it a half-mile in either direction, leaving the entire main deck of the ship completely cleared of the deadly orange veil that had hung in the air just an instant before.

His eyes were still closed, kissing Inpheria, but he didn't need his sight to see where he was aiming the purewind, for the overflowing power of the heart gave him an instinctual connection with it in his mind; he could sense where it was and where it was going. He sent it streaming down the companionway and through the many decks of the ship, knocking aside civilians and crew in the passageways as it flurried past them.

It soon reached the engine room. There, it poured through the doorway and surged past Fenric into the broken chamber of the purewind conductor. The conveyance tubes guzzled the purewind eagerly, channeling it directly to the purewind nexus. As the nexus absorbed that energy, it glowed a vivid green that was so bright it painted the entire room emerald.

The engines moaned--almost as if in satisfaction--as they came into possession of that power, and an instant later, the purewind that was only trickling from the jets before swelled into a roaring tempest, arresting the ship's fall before sending her soaring upward at a velocity she had never been capable of before. She climbed well beyond the clouds and toward the heavens, as if chasing the stars, and it wasn't until Eldin began to feel the beginnings of altitude sickness that he released his hold on the windwyrm's heart.

He kept his hold on Inpheria for much longer.

The purewind nexus was able to store much of the energy he had funneled into it, giving the ship ample power to remain afloat while Fenric worked on the broken conductor. Later, when the engineer announced the completion of the repairs and the ship became able to support herself on their cache of windstones once again, the crew exhaled a collective sigh of relief before throwing decorum to the wind and whooping for joy in the bridge. Hats were tossed in the air and officers leapt into one another's arms.

Eldin issued some orders, requesting a damage and casualty report, then excused himself from the bridge to convene with his two best friends, where they congratulated themselves on a successful species-saving endeavor, mourned the loss of two great heroes, and generally savored the company of one another.