“We couldn’t kill them all,” Bradley says. “We’d only be guaranteeing our own doom.”

“What’s the Mayor doing?” I ask, my voice tight.

Bradley changes the projection angle again, and we see the army sorting itself into lines.

“No,” Mistress Coyle whispers. “He can’t be.”

“Can’t what?” I say. “Can’t what?”

“Attacking,” she answers. “It’d be suicide.”

My comm beeps and I answer it immediately. “Todd?”

“Viola?” he says, his worried face in my hand.

“What’s going on?” I say. “Are you all right?”

“The river, Viola, the river’s–”

“We can see it. We’re watching it right–”

“The falls!” he says. “They’re in the falls!”

[TODD]

There’s a line of lights in the shadows under the disappearing falls, stretching down the path Viola and I once took when we were running from Aaron, a watery, slippery stone path under the crashing wall of water that led to an abandoned church stretched across a ledge. The inside wall was marked with a white circle and two smaller circles orbiting it, this planet and its two moons, and you can see it glowing there, too, above the line of lights gathered across the rocky face of what’s now just a wet cliff.

“Can you see ’em?” I say to Viola thru the comm.

“Hold on,” she says.

“Do you still have those binos, Todd?” the Mayor says.

I’d forgotten I’d taken them back from him. I run over to where Angharrad’s still standing silently next to my stuff.

“Don’t you worry,” I say to her, digging thru my bag. “I’ll keep you safe.”

I find the binos and don’t even go back to the Mayor before I put ’em up to my eyes. I hit some buttons and zoom in–

“We see them now, Todd,” Viola says from the comm in my other hand. “It’s a bunch of Spackle on that ledge we ran down–”

“I know,” I say. “I see ’em, too.”

“What do you see, Todd?” the Mayor says, coming over to me.

“What are they holding?” Viola asks.

“A kind of bow,” I say, “but those don’t look like–”

“Todd!” she says and I look up above the binos–

One speck of light is leaving the line from the falls, flying out from under the church symbol in a slow arc down the riverbed–

“What is it?” says the Mayor. “It’s too big for an arrow.”

I look back thru the binos, trying to find the light, coming closer by the second–

There it is–

It looks like it’s wavering, flickering in and out–

We all turn as it flies down the river, as it takes a rounded path over the last trickles of water–

“Todd?” Viola says.

“What is it, Todd?” the Mayor growls at me.

And I see thru the binos–

As its path curves in the air–

And starts heading back towards the army–

Back towards us–

That it ain’t flickering after all–

It’s spinning–

And that the light ain’t just light–

It’s fire–

“We need to get back,” I say, keeping the binos to my eyes. “We need to get back into the city.”

“It’s heading right for you, Todd!” Viola’s screaming–

The Mayor can’t help it no more and tries to yank the binos from my hand–

“Hey!” I yell–

And I punch him in the side of his face–

He staggers back, more surprised than hurt–

And it’s the screaming that makes us turn round–

The spinning fire has reached the army–

The crowd of soldiers is trying to part, trying to get away as it flies towards ’em–

Flies towards us–

Flies towards me–

But there’s too many soldiers, too many people in the way–

And the spinning fire comes blazing thru ’em–

Right at head height–

And the first soldiers it hits are blasted nearly in two–

And it ain’t stopping–

It ain’t effing stopping–

The spinning don’t even drop speed–

It rips thru the soldiers like matches being struck–

Destroying the men directly in its way–

And engulfing the men on either side in a sticky, white fire–

And it’s still flying–

Still as fast as it was–

Coming right towards me–

Right towards me and the Mayor–

And there ain’t nowhere to run–

“Viola!” I yell–

{VIOLA}

“Todd!” I yell into the comm as we watch the fire curve through the air and slam into a group of soldiers–

Through a group of soldiers–

Screams start rising in the air behind us from people seeing the projection–

The fire slices through the army as easy as someone drawing a line with a pen, curving as it goes, tearing the soldiers to pieces, sending them flying, coating everything it even comes close to in fire–

“Todd!” I shout into the comm. “Get out of there!”

But I can’t see his face any more, just the fire cutting a path in the projection, killing everything in the way, and then–

Then it rises–

“What the hell?” Lee says next to me–

It rises up above the army, out of the crowd, out of the men it was killing–

“It’s still curving,” Bradley says.

“What is it?” Simone asks Mistress Coyle.

“I’ve never seen it before,” Mistress Coyle answers, her eyes not leaving the projection. “The Spackle obviously haven’t been idle.”

“Todd?” I say into my comm.

But he doesn’t answer.

Bradley draws a square with his thumb on the remote and a box appears in the projection, surrounding the fiery thing and enlarging it out to one side of the main picture. He dials some more and the image slows down. The fire burns on a spinning bladed S, so bright and ferocious it’s hard to even look at it–

“It’s going back to the falls!” Lee says, pointing back to the main projection, where the fiery thing has risen up out of the army, still curving, still flying viciously fast. We watch as it lifts higher in the air, completing one long circle, rising up the zigzag hill, heading towards the ledge under the now-dry falls, still spinning and burning. We can see the Spackle there now, dozens of them holding more burning blades at the end of their bows. They don’t flinch as the flying one heads right towards them, and we see a Spackle with an empty bow, the one who fired the first shot–

We watch as he flips his bow up, revealing a curved hook at the bottom end, and with perfect timing he snatches the flying S right out of the air, turning it with a practised motion, and immediately it’s reset, ready to fire again, tall as the body of the Spackle itself.

In the reflected light of the fire, we see the Spackle’s hands, arms and body are covered in a thick, flexible clay, protecting him from the burning.

“Todd?” I say, into the comm. “Are you there? You need to run, Todd! You need to run–”

And in the larger view, we can see all the Spackle raising their bows–

“Todd!” I yell. “Answer me!”

And as one–

They all fire–

[TODD]

“VIOLA!” I scream–

But I don’t got the comm no more, the binos neither–

They were knocked outta my hands by a wall of running soldiers, pushing and shoving and screaming–

And burning–

The spinning fire ripped a curve thru the men right in front of me, killing ’em so fast they barely knew what happened and setting ’em alight in two or three rows on either side–

And just as it was about to take off my own head–

It lifted–

Up into the air–

Curving round–

And flying back to the ledge where it came from–

I whirl round now to see where I can run–

And then, over the shouting of the soldiers–

I hear Angharrad screaming–

And I’m pushing back and hitting out and shoving men aside to get to my horse–

“Angharrad!” I yell. “ANGHARRAD!”

And I can’t see her–

But I hear her screaming in terror–

I push forward even harder–

And I feel a hand on my collar–