War - The Afterlife Series V by Mur Lafferty

Author:Mur Lafferty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: hell, gods, steampunk, battles, heaven, steampunk adventure
Published: 2020-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

Professor Burns removed his top hat and mopped his forehead in cool afternoon air. Daniel cocked his eyebrow.

“You doing okay, professor?”

“Certainly,” the man stammered, not looking at him. “While where I’m going isn’t the safest place ever, the company that I keep is unparalleled, so my safety is nigh insured, correct?”

Daniel thought of the various ways he and Kate had been kept from their power; power that had once grown worlds from nothing but blood and emotion.

“Absolutely,” he said, clapping Professor Burns’s shoulder.

Kate, Daniel, Professor Burns, Gamma, and Fabrique waved at Alicia and the sulking Prosper to go below deck to a small doorway. It opened to the hanging sub, and Daniel reached out and unscrewed the hatch. He climbed from the door through the hatch, calling behind him, “Don’t look down!”

Kate snorted at him and followed, then helped Professor Burns in. They settled into small seats bolted to the floor, Fabrique taking the controls.

“Strap yourselves in,” she said, flipping switches and squinting at gauges.

“All of us?” Daniel asked.

“Even you, trickster god,” she said. “You should know by now that you don’t really know what is going to happen around here, even if you are a god. And seatbelts are just a wise idea. What if you smash into poor Professor Burns here?”

The professor’s dark face had paled to an unsettling gray color and he gripped the edge of his seat as the sub lurched. They started to descend toward the water.

They bumped gently as they hit the water, and Fabrique lifted a lever that disengaged the sub from the airship. “And we’re away. I figure maybe ten minutes till we reach Leviathan City.”

The interior of the hatch grew dark as the only lights came from the console and the reflection of the headlamps of the sub as they submerged.

“Fabrique, you know the most about this energy that people use to trap gods. What can you tell me about it?” Kate asked.

“It’s the only kind of energy I can’t actively manipulate,” the goddess said, staring out the porthole in front of her. “I have to treat it as if I were an ordinary tinker. I always thought it kept me honest, making me work harder to make things.”

“And you never thought about why you, the goddess of devices, couldn’t master it?”

Fabrique glared over her shoulder momentarily. “Of course I did. But as I said, being trapped inside a house didn’t give me much ability to go out and research. And since my freedom I’ve been a little busy with other people’s projects to work on my own.”

Kate flushed and looked away from the irritated goddess. “I’m sorry. You’re just the most likely person to understand it. It’s dangerous and I want to know what it is.”

Fabrique shrugged. “It’s chaos energy, its origination is The Dark, what you call the Wasteland. It’s what makes the area around Meridian and Lathe so volatile.”

Daniel frowned as something teased his memory, something so large it was hard to fathom. He couldn’t grasp it.

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