Chapter 37: Airplane

"I still can’t believe my father actually let you do this." Pina called out over the roar of the wind. Kren took a moment to answer, glancing over the edge of the narrow path they walked. His stomach twisted at the sheer drop visible below — a dizzying fall that seemed to swallow the mountainside whole. Why the Storm Eagles, and those accursed Lyndwyrms for that matter, chose to make their homes this high above solid ground was beyond him, even accounting for the fact that both species were clearly built for exactly this kind of terrain.

"I don’t think he had much of a choice." Kren said. "That’s how leadership works sometimes. You lie down with the enemy if it means keeping your people alive." His answer came out plain, almost matter-of-fact. Pina could tell he genuinely believed it, and that the belief came from experience, not because he wanted to be philosophical.

"Only absolute power affords anyone a real choice." Jomin muttered. Kren turned to glance at the boy, reminding himself that somehow — somehow — Jomin had been permitted to tag along on what was, by any reasonable estimate, a suicide mission.

"You still haven’t told me the plan. How exactly do you intend to kill the alpha?" Pina asked, a scowl tugging at her mouth from her brother’s interruption. Kren only shrugged as a violent gust tore across the trail from the right, whipping his hair across his face.

"You still haven’t given me the information I asked for. You’re just leading me straight to it." Pina flushed at that, caught off guard by her own oversight — she’d gotten swept up in how quickly Kren moved, how little patience he’d shown for rest, food, or setting up proper camp back in the village. He’d simply asked whether there was somewhere hidden, somewhere close enough to the alpha to be useful. When she’d said yes, he’d ordered her to lead them there directly. They would rest, observe, study the beast, and only then decide when and how to strike. At the latest, Kren intended to make his move by morning.

Still, no one genuinely expected him to move that fast. The alpha was no ordinary beast. Fighting it outside its own lair had already proven near impossible — fighting it inside was something no one here had managed to survive long enough to properly attempt. There had been no shortage of people who’d tried regardless, and the proof lined the mountainside they currently walked. Graves, marked and unmarked both, dotting the path like grim milestones.

"We don’t actually know where the alpha came from originally. One thing we’re certain of, though — it wasn’t born here, not like the rest of the clutch."

Pina led them around a sharp bend, the trail still climbing until it ended abruptly against a wall of stone. To their left, nothing but open air and a sheer drop. Ahead, a cliff face rose nearly fifty feet, climbing toward the mountain’s upper reaches, its surface draped in thick curtains of hanging vines that stirred gently in the wind. Pina stepped toward it, continuing her explanation as she walked.

"The Lyndwyrm population here wasn’t anywhere near this size before the alpha showed up. We used to hunt them regularly — twice a year, as part of a coming-of-age ceremony for our younger warriors. Each one gets paired with a craftsman. They hunt the Lyndwyrms, and the craftsman turns whatever the hunt brings back into something meaningful — a weapon, a tool, anything that marks both of them stepping fully into adulthood within the village."

She pointed toward the top of the vine-choked cliff. "There’s a massive opening up there. A shaft that drops straight down into the cavern below — that’s where the whole nest actually lives. It’s their only way in or out."

She moved to the left side of the rock face, running her hands slowly across the stone until she found whatever she’d been feeling for. She parted a section of vines, turned sideways, and slipped through the gap, vanishing entirely from sight.

Kren blinked in confusion, turning slowly to Toa and Jomin. "I totally did not see that coming." ℴ

"Well? What are you waiting for?" Pina’s irritated voice cut through, her head reappearing briefly between the hanging vines. "Come on!" Kren traded a quick glance with the others before following her in.

A narrow seam ran through the rock, barely wide enough for any of them to squeeze through sideways. As they inched forward, Pina’s voice dropped to a whisper.

"Everyone needs to stay quiet from here on. There’s a hidden space ahead — that’s where this tunnel comes out. The Lyndwyrms can’t sense it because there’s a layer of some kind of thin glass separating it from the main cavern."

Kren frowned, unable to help himself. "What do you mean, glass?"

"Quiet! Are you trying to get us all killed?" Pina hissed back at him. Kren shot her a glare she completely ignored, though she answered anyway, undisturbed by his irritation.

"Honestly, I don’t fully know. The rock’s grown around some kind of structure over the years — whatever it originally was. Either way, it’s given me a safe place to hide whenever I come scouting out here."

True to her word, the deeper they moved, the less the walls around them resembled natural stone, and the more they looked like rock that had slowly grown around something else entirely. Kren reached out and brushed his fingers across the surface — some patches felt distinctly metallic beneath the stone, corroded but unmistakable after decades, maybe longer. They followed Pina until the narrow tunnel finally opened into a small chamber.

To their left stood a solid rock wall, though Pina had clearly claimed it as her own over the years — weapon racks lined the stone, holding a modest but well-kept arsenal. To their right, the space continued past rows of what had once been seats, upholstery long since rotted away, leaving only bare metal frames standing in neat, eerie rows. The passage sloped downward nearly fifteen feet before terminating at another rock wall. But along the left side, a line of small, grime-coated windows ran along a metal wall — several of them propped open on old, surprisingly intact latches, offering a direct view into the cavern beyond, and the hundreds of Lyndwyrms crowded inside it.

Kren made his way to one of the windows and looked out. The cavern stretched wide and bright, lit by clusters of glowing crystal embedded in the rock and veins of gleaming ore running through the walls like molten rivers frozen mid-flow. Kren swallowed hard — not from the staggering number of Lyndwyrms filling the space below, but from the sheer, almost obscene wealth glittering throughout the cavern itself.

His gaze drifted further, tracing the shaft Pina had described earlier, a stream of golden sunlight pouring down through it from somewhere far above. Massive stone pillars rose around it, holding up the cavern’s ceiling, each one lined with ledges where Lyndwyrms rested in clusters, some stacked by the dozen. Stalactites hung in heavy clusters across the roof overhead, and the sight of them pulled a slow smile across Kren’s face despite everything. He finally turned away from the window, his attention dragged back to the strange structure surrounding them.

"How did you even find this place?"

Pina glanced around the chamber, then shrugged. "Pure accident. I snuck out for my coming-of-age ceremony a year early — insisted on going as a warrior instead of a craftsman, which my father flatly refused. I told him I could do both. He said no. So I went anyway, on my own. Ended up falling off that cliff running from the alpha." A faint, almost disbelieving smile crossed her face. "Guess you could call it luck. The vines caught around my ankle mid-fall, and the momentum swung me almost perfectly into the tunnel mouth. I blacked out from how hard I hit the walls on the way in, and the vines just... covered me. Hid me completely. Woke up three hours later with half my bones cracked and a concussion. But I was alive. All because of this place."

Kren gave her a slow nod, genuinely appreciating the story — but something about the chamber itself kept nagging at him, insistent, familiar in a way he couldn’t quite place. Not threatening. Just... recognized, somehow, like he’d seen or read about something like it before. He turned, sweeping his gaze across the space again — the neat rows of seat frames, the dust-caked windows, the metal bones hidden beneath the stone — and then it struck him all at once. He turned toward Aki, who only stared back, visibly confused.

"I know what this is. I can’t believe this, Aki!"

"Can’t believe what, Your Majesty?" Aki asked, wariness creeping into his expression.

"This place! It’s not some ordinary structure — it’s a machine! Bernice taught me about this, she had actual textbooks, showed me illustrations of what they looked like! Damn it, Aki, you were in the room for those lessons!" Kren snapped, more excited than annoyed. Aki raised both hands in surrender.

"Those were your lessons, not mine. Stop dancing around it and just tell me what this thing is." Aki pressed, and Kren turned his wide, almost giddy gaze on him fully.

"This is an aeroplane. An airplane. A commercial airliner — somehow, it crashed straight into the Storm Mountains. But how?"

Aki blinked, thoroughly lost, turning helplessly to Ruhu for some kind of explanation. The only word that managed to escape him was: "...What?"