As Bone returned to the valley, he heard the first explosive gunshots from behind and above him. They were too heavy for small-arms fire, and glancing back he saw a bright tracer arcing across the valley from one of the helicopters. He wondered what it was shooting at. Its flight path was erratic, engine sounding strained. Moments later there was a snapping, whistling sound, and the dark shape shuddered and dived into a violent spin. The shooting ended, but the sound of the struggling rotors reverberated across the slopes.

Bone knew he should be running, but he could only stand and watch as the aircraft’s deadly plummet ended in a shattering crash and explosion. It shook the ground, sending a fiery mushroom boiling into the night sky and illuminating the hillside for hundreds of metres in every direction. The sudden action and almost immediate explosion had ripped the night apart and changed the valley to a place of noisy chaos.

Bone gasped in shock and ducked down low, then when the initial fireball faded he continued his flight downhill.

Now Colonel Miles and the others knew what they were up against. And once that fairy entered the fight...

More shooting erupted behind him, starting in several scattered locations and escalating until it seemed the whole hillside was on fire. Small arms joined in with the heavier, deeper sound of aircraft machine guns, and moments later he heard the screams and shouts of men, women, and maybe Kin dying.

The army had never confronted an enemy like this. By the time the arrogant colonel realised that traditional combat rules must change, this first contact would be over.

Bone reached the grey and edged left to avoid Longford and the area where Mallian and the fairy might still be. He realised that his father was possibly already employed in the fight, controlled and sent by Mallian. He hated the idea. His father had not exactly been a creature of peace, but he had been fair, a creature concerned with the wellbeing of others and the differences between right and wrong. Now he was being used to fight innocent humans.

He felt like he was floundering, rushing around blind with no real plan. He’d come here looking for signs of his father, and had found a deadly infection that might spread if it escaped the valley, and a conflict the likes of which he had never imagined. In many ways, Mallian and his Ascent mirrored Mohserran and the contagion he carried. Both offered a terrible threat to humanity. Neither could be allowed to escape—or be captured and taken—beyond Longford and its dead valley.

Events were now much larger than him. His had become a private affair in an increasingly public incident, and he had to return to the only people he thought might help. With all that was happening, he could no longer find and confront Mohserran himself.

* * *