Chapter 17: Fire in The Skies
"Yes! Yes! Take that, fiends!" Queen Brahne shrieked, flipping her fan and grinning ear to ear. "That's what you get for ruining my play! For trying to steal my daughter!" She did a two step on her balcony, giggling like a school girl, as the ship went up in flames from the attack. "That should show you!" She danced with glee at her good work, proud of how strong her military could be. She never once gave a thought to the fact Garnet was currently on the ship she was so adamant about destroying.
The stone angel soared through the flames, not to be deterred, but her gait noticeably tilted downwards, as the bowsprit descended. Smoke billowed, as the ship sank from the lofty heights it had obtained only minutes before, headed for a romance with the ground that would leave everyone in worse shape then ever. The angel grounded, smashing several chimneys to bits, and taking off a church steeple.
"Come on, come on, you've got to fall," Brahne muttered, tapping her foot impatiently. "Let's see it, old thing, stop teasing so!" She pouted, her face red. "I've got to stop you...." Her voice dropped, honest emotion slipping into her face, something that rarely happened.
She grinned to see the ship listing, its flight stopped by the fires raging along the sides. Smoke billowed into the night, obscuring the moon, and darkening the scene, much to Brahne's annoyance. "No!" She pounded her fist onto the balcony, hard enough to shatter her fan to bits.
"Direct hit!" Zidane screamed, as the ship tilted, scraping rooftops with a horrific grinding noise, slates and bits of tile shooting off into the night like shrapnel, cats screeching off in terror. "We're losing her!" He held onto a railing in the deck, watching the night race past, the stench of fire and smoke thick in his nose.
An explosion rocked the hull, Garnet wincing at the blast, as she held onto a beam, watching the chaos: it had been a long night, and now it was ending by her being shot from the sky like a duck after the hunter's bullet strikes. The sense of freedom she'd felt only minutes before drained from her all at once, as she spotted her mother in the castle balcony, at this point looking like only a miniature figure on a toy stage.
The ship limped lower and lower, falling through low clouds towards the ground, rising and falling like a dying bird: inside, the steam making him scream to be heard, Cinna was trying not to fall, as the ship shook around them. "We're gonna crash! It's game over!" His feet pounded the pedals that turned the main propeller, but the hull damage was too great, the wind against them. They sank like a stone tossed into a pond, the wind whistling past the holes in the siding.
Blank went rushing by, trying to keep pipes from blowing with damp rags, as the hull gave a shudder, the side portholes of the deck shattering. Crashing through the last of the clouds, dark trees rushed up to meet the ship, as, with a terrible grinding crash, it hit the ground, the stone angel flying into a dozen pieces, as the unyielding earth tore the front of the deck off.
As the fire glinted in the distance, Brahne clenched her fists, tears blurring her vision at the corners. "Garnet... I never imagined you would do such a thing.." She took a breath, her rage melting at the idea her daughter was truly gone. "Perhaps you're not such a helpless little girl anymore, after all..."
She straightened, glaring. "Zorn! Thorn!"
They two jesters appeared at once, by her side. "Yes, majestic one?" The trilled.
Brahne huffed. "Is our little experiment ready yet?" She waved a hand in her face, regretting destroying her fan with the heat of the night at full blast now, the fires racing scatteredly along rooftops not helping at all.
Zorn did a little hop, his voice higher than usual with fear at the fires burning along the skyline. "Yes, majestic one, it is combat-ready."
"Easily terminate Princess Garnet it can, majestic one," Thorn added, pointing a finger at nothing.
Brahne's face went red with rage, as she whirled on the two. "I need her alive!" She screamed, spraying spit like a bull. Zorn and Thorn dropped into repeated bows, muttering about how useless they were, thinking it was okay to kill Garnet.
Brahne offered no denial. "Bring her back at once, do you hear? At once!"
She turned to look out at the raging fires, and smiled. "You can't just fly the coop, my little dove...."
"Hurry up and put out this fire!" Cinna snapped, "I can't carry 'em all by myself here!"
He tossed another band member outside, with no regard to their safety, snapping "What the hell are you doing, having a laugh? The whole ship's gonna burn up!"
"They're all looking for Garnet...she's gone," Zenero explained. He frowned. "Can't find her anywhere...."
He glanced at the ruins of the ship, fire burning merry hell along the once lavish deck. "Maybe she fell off...got squashed under the wreckage...."
Cinna slammed a palm into his face. "Great...this is great! First we kidnap her, then we kill her!" He groaned, hanging his head. "We'll all hang for sure...."
Zidane swung from a tree, having jumped at the last second: beyond a few cuts and bruises, including a nasty kink in his tail that would swell before too long, he was unharmed. He jogged over to Cinna, smirking. "You look like hell."
"I'm surprised you even made it, Zidane," Cinna said, "You jumped? Are you nuts?"
Zidane crossed his arms with an eyeroll. "I didn't jump, okay? I got thrown out when we hit." He glanced at the wreckage. "Everyone okay?"
Cinna nodded. "Yeah...we've all got the Devil's luck." He chuckled, darkly. "But if we don't find Princess Garnet, we're dead meat."