The Alchemists of Loom (Loom Saga #1)(68)

Wretches on their tails, Arianna nowhere to be found, and the only thing separating them from being lost in the Undergound forever was the map that spun madly inside Helen’s head. They were falling apart at the seams, cracking under the pressure. Florence swallowed.

Fight or flight.

The instinct rose up in her, hot and searing under every nerve. She dropped her bag, falling to the floor of the cart with it. Flight after flight, she’d run through life. From avoiding responsibility in the guild, to running out on Will and Helen, to letting them leave Ari now.

“What are you doing?” Cvareh asked as she frantically tried to make sense of the state of their current supplies. It wasn’t much. She couldn’t restock with everything she’d needed in Ter.4.2—there was no substitute for Mercury Town.

“I’m trying to get us out of this mess.” She passed Cvareh her revolver, loading it with three canisters. “Hold this.”

He took the gun skeptically and turned back to the Wretches.

“No, you’re not shooting them. Don’t fire a shot.” Florence dumped one canister over the side of the cart, the precious gunpowder lost to the air whipping around them. It hurt her very soul to see it wasted, but she didn’t have anywhere else for it to go and she needed a blank vessel of some kind.

While she was up, she tried to assess how fast they could be going, but the numbers all blurred in her head. Ari would know what to do, a voice in the back of her mind nagged. But Ari wasn’t here. She was, and someone had to think of a solution, however wild and reckless.

“Helen, when’s the next downhill?”

“Uh…”

“Helen.”

The other woman spun the wheel frantically.

“Helen! Log it aloud, recount later to figure out where we are, and take the next downhill,” Florence demanded.

“Understood.” Helen began muttering to herself, a method Florence knew the girl used to help commit things to memory.

Florence’s hands shook as her brain replayed chemical after powder, reaction after reaction. She shuffled the deck of everything she’d been taught from Ari, from her Revo tutors, from books. She threw out every ounce of conventional wisdom on explosives and bombs; she needed the most unstable reactions. The world was upside down, and the only way it was getting righted was with an explosion that would shake the foundation of the earth itself.

She cradled the canister in her hand, trying to counter the sudden movements of the cart so nothing would be set off prematurely. Helen was finally able to fulfill her request and the cart tipped forward. Will frantically twisted and pulled, trying to temper their fall.

“Let it go, Will!” Florence demanded. “Let it all go.”

“But if we gather that much sp—”

“Just do it!” Her order didn’t vibrate with the same resonance as Ari’s would have, but it carried equal weight.

He flipped a few levers, and the cart became a bullet barreling down the darkness. The sound of the Wretches grew distant and Florence exchanged the pistol for the canister in Cvareh’s hands. The faint glow of the glovis eyes they’d harvested rattled around the bottom of the cart, illuminating his confusion.

“I’m going to shoot three times. On the second, you throw that and wait for the third shot before you push every ounce of magic you have into that gold pin.” She manually placed his thumb over the pin at the end of the canister, the spot where the golden hammer of a gun would strike.

“You got it.”

“Flor…” Helen had stopped muttering.

“Ready?” Florence raised the revolver.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Will shouted.

Florence spared him a brief glance before curling her finger around the trigger. “What Revos do best.”

She fired. The first shot exploded against the ceiling. On the second shot Cvareh threw, and rock began to collapse in place. On the third shot he did exactly as she had instructed, and the three, their cart, and everything in it were sent flying forward by the shock wave.

The earth groaned and Florence groaned with it. She instantly panicked, thinking she’d gone blind somehow, only to remember that she was working with nearly no light. The tunnels rumbled with shock waves. Large chunks of rock began to fall and Florence heard the first satisfying hiss of a Wretch crushed beneath one.

Another set of spider web fractures cracked across the ceiling above them. Florence pushed herself to her feet, running on pure adrenaline as the world spun. “We have to move.”

She wrapped her arms around Will, hoisting him to his feet with all the strength she possessed. Her left arm couldn’t get a good grip on him, and just as she nearly lost her ability to support his weight, he found his balance.

“Helen?” Florence called further up the tunnel, scattered glovis eyes gave them barely enough light to see by.

“I have her,” Cvareh called. Helen was cradled in his arms; Florence suppressed her panic at the sight. If their navigator died, they would be stuck forever. “Hurry!”

They sprinted forward through the dark tunnels. Florence and Will led with a glovis eye each. It wasn’t until the last echo of the cave-in that they all collapsed at once, chests heaving, exhaustion crushing their shoulders.

Florence and Will crumpled to the floor. Cvareh gingerly laid a moaning Helen next to them. He squinted into the blackness beyond their tiny fragments of light.