Isabelle faced ashore just as the carriage gunners cocked the flintlocks on their cannons. Similce stood exposed at the helm. Isabelle bore her to the deck just as the cannons roared, spitting fire and smoke and grapeshot. Iron shot took out several spokes of the ship’s wheel. Several aeronauts screamed.

The ship shuddered and began to descend. Isabelle sank her talons into the rail and hung on as the weight left her feet. Marie grabbed Djordji and clung to the mast.

Djordji was splattered in red. He wasn’t moving.

The brig fell past the skiff, past the level of the docks. Cannonballs flew by overhead.

Down and down fell the brig, the aethercoral cliff wall streaming by. Far below, the choking Miasma rushed up to meet them.

Suddenly there was no cliff wall. They’d slipped below the skyland. It hovered above them like a great stone ceiling.

“Heel us to port and charge the keel!” Isabelle shouted over the whistling wind of their descent. Similce repeated the order, and cursed all soulless sorcerers. The ship rolled to port, wood and rope groaning under the strain. Unsecured supplies slid across the deck and smashed into the bulwarks. Malgiers clung to the foot of the mast.

The ship’s fall slowed. Every stout board bent around the aetherkeel’s cradle as the aetheric current grabbed it.

The brig slowed, stopped, and began to rise. The aetherflow deflecting around the skyland changed direction, the push up became a push sideways and the brig flowed along with it. Up toward the skyland they rose but also out toward its edge. The upside-down forest of aethercoral cones raced by above them, a ceiling of stalactites getting closer and closer like down-thrust spears even as the inverted horizon grew wider before them.

Isabelle’s heart raced so fast that she thought it might leap out of her chest. The jagged roof was less than a cable away. Half a cable. Two long stakes of aethercoral jutted down like grasping claws ahead of them. There was no way to steer.

With an almighty crash, the coral spikes sheared off the top spars. Taut ropes snapped. The whole ship quaked. Isabelle sank her toe talons into the deck to keep from falling. The whole world seemed to lurch and suddenly there was sky overhead. Stars winking in the darkness as night captured the world in its embrace.

Isabelle hauled herself up and looked around. They’d come up on the side of Joubert’s Folly opposite the harbor. The coastal ridge was tilted up so they could still see the turvy side of the skyland, but they were completely out of sight of the base. Turenne would be some time figuring out what happened to them even if he didn’t assume they’d plummeted into the Gloom.