The severed glass conservatory careened through the blood-red air like a child’s discarded toy. After hanging frozen above the abyss, the invisible fist of Xarvosh’s sorcery loosened, dropping them straight into empty space. Ouzira’s stomach leaped into her throat. The cedar bench flung her upward before the violent downdraft slammed her against his chest once more. Pillars of leaded glass shrieked under the shearing air. “We’re falling!” Muzhari shrieked, devoid of her customary courtly poise. She scrambled, a blur of expensive silks, attempting to grab onto a sturdy vine of sun-drenched liana, only for it to snap under her grip. Porcelain pots, heavy with their exotic cargo, shattered against the floor, spraying dirt and delicate petals. Arghus’s grip tightened around Ouzira, an anchor in the chaos. His skin, already bark-like, seemed to harden further, protecting her from the swirling debris. His eyes, typically placid and devoted, fixed on her with lethal concentration. “Hold on,” he rumbled, his voice a low thrum against her ear, entirely inadequate against the howling wind tearing through the splintering roof. Ouzira didn’t need to be told. Her ribs ached beneath the gale. This was no petty inconvenience. This was the end. Her hard-won lethargy evaporated into sharp panic. She couldn’t nap her way out of this. She couldn’t bribe the sky. She had to *do* something. The thought was so alien, so exhausting, that it momentarily stunned her. Wind whipped her locks across her teeth as the rust-colored desert surged upward. “The—the silk-leaf vines!” she gasped, twisting in his grip toward the wall of broad, glossy foliage lining the northern frame. The court wove the fibrous stalks into luxury sashes. Arghus, surprisingly, understood. He loosened his hold just enough for her to squirm, but didn’t let go. “What do you need?” he asked, his voice rough with urgency. “Weave them!” she yelled over the wind, already reaching for the nearest vine. Her pampered palms tore at the woody stalks, peeling them free. A faint emerald pulse flared across her knuckles as she called upon the dormant root-magic she routinely ignored. The stems extended, flattening their leaves into wide, leathery mats. “A canopy!” Muzhari cried, her petty airs dissolving into frantic speed. She grabbed a handful of the rapidly growing leaves, her fingers surprisingly nimble as she began knotting them together. “Quickly, before we become a very expensive, very flattened tea party!” Ouzira threw all her strength into the charm, recalling dusty lectures from her estate botanists. The plants coiled into an enormous web of jade and silver fiber. It billowed like a sail as Arghus hauled away an entire bronze skylight, pitching the braided green shield straight into the gale. Just as a fragile hope began to bloom in Ouzira’s chest, a shadow fell over them, deeper than the red sky. A familiar, irritating voice cut through the din. “Look what the storm dragged in! Trying to escape your rightful judgment, Ouzira?” Shavara, astride a magnificent flying carpet woven with iridescent threads, hovered just above them, a sneer twisting her delicate features. Her eyes, narrowed to slits, fixed on Arghus. She raised a palm, stirring the air into a haze. A splintering fork of charged sap shot toward the woven canopy, meant to tear it apart. Before Ouzira could even register the danger, Muzhari shrieked, a sound of pure, unadulterated fury. “Shavara! You *dare*? I have all fifty-three volumes of your adolescent poetry! The one about the ‘sensitive’ beetle and the ‘lonely’ moonflower! I will publish every last, simpering verse in the *Khursheda Chronicle*! Your reputation will be buried deeper than a forgotten root-seed!” Shavara’s face, which had been alight with malicious triumph, went utterly blank. Her hand wavered, the spark of sap fizzling into vapor. “You wouldn’t!” she gasped, her voice shrill with genuine horror. “Those were private! My soul’s outpouring!” “Oh, I would!” Muzhari screeched, shaking a fist at her. “And I’d add a commentary on your atrocious rhyming scheme! Imagine, ‘Shavara’s Lament for a Deceased Dust Mite: A Tragedy in Three Acts’!” Shavara let out a strangled, utterly un-heroine-like wail of pure mortification. The flying carpet, destabilized by her flailing, bucked violently. With a yelp, Shavara tumbled off, plunging downward. She crashed with a muffled *thwack* and a cloud of yellow dust into an enormous bed of spine-crusted Zaffar cactuses below. “Good riddance,” Muzhari huffed, dusting off her hands, a triumphant glint in her eyes. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Avoiding a messy demise.” Their reprieve was short-lived. The crimson sky tore open as Grand Vizier Xarvosh dropped through the haze, cloaked in violet shadow. Dense pressure rippled about his shoulders. The conservatory’s dive, checked by Ouzira’s woven canopy, quickened again under his downward glare. “Ouzira Baqshi,” Xarvosh’s voice boomed, resonating with the very force of the air around them. “Your defiance ends now. Your warlock will be sacrificed.” He raised an open palm, twisting the air into a jagged spike of compressed downward force. It hummed with lethal intent, aimed directly at Ouzira. She saw it coming, a silent, inevitable strike that would obliterate her. A silent, helpless gasp escaped her lips. Arghus threw Ouzira behind his back. The compressed lance struck him squarely, shattering his bark-crusted shoulder and carving into his ribs. A crack like splitting slate cracked through the ruined pavilion. Arghus staggered, his massive frame folding under the blow. Blood, dark and viscous, welled from the gaping wound, staining his emerald gardener’s tunic a horrifying black-red. He swayed, his eyes, still fixed on Ouzira, glazing over. Then, with a slow, agonizing slide, he collapsed, his body crumpling against the broken soil of a moon-orchid planter. His blood seeped into the dark earth, a macabre offering. “Arghus!” Ouzira screamed, stumbling onto the pavers beside him. She fell to her knees beside him, her hands hovering over the gushing wound, useless. She felt the warmth of his blood on her skin, saw it bloom across the soil. The soil of the moon-orchid planter, already saturated with the essence of life and death, greedily drank the offering. And then, impossibly, it began to move. The delicate, pale moon-orchids, known for their shy, nocturnal blooms, trembled. Their stalks thickened, elongated, their petals unfurled into grotesque, blood-red flagella. Veins, pulsing with a vibrant, malevolent crimson, snaked across their surfaces. They swelled in massive, wild surges. Roots thick as ship cables burst from the cedar boxes, shattering tiles and splintering the frame. The falling structure groaned as the overgrown limbs spread outward like timbered ribs, catching the updraft. The tangled canopy struck the dunes with a dull shock, dampening the fall beneath a mountain of twisted foliage. But the roots didn't stop. They surged outward, a writhing, crimson tide, seeking. Seeking what, Ouzira didn't know, until she saw Xarvosh. The Grand Vizier, still hovering in the air, his face a mask of shocked fury, was suddenly ensnared. The crimson tendrils shot upward, wrapping his ankles, ribs, and forearms in an iron lattice. He shouted as his pressure aura flared, but the bark soaked up the spell, cinching tighter until the tendrils hauled him violently from the air, dragging him deep beneath the churned red soil.

The Falling Sky