* * *

  As soon as her center of gravity was over the edge of the railing — as soon as she began to fall — Kera realized she wanted to live, instead.

  For the first few seconds in the kinetic motion of her sacrifice, in the blind panic of sudden weightlessness, she could think only of how she wished to turn back time. To stay on the catwalk, surrender herself, and forfeit all she’d worked for, if it would’ve meant her life. She reached out, flailing for a purchase that wasn’t there, for anything that would arrest her fall and reverse her choice.

  But she fell, instead. In the next few seconds more, gaining speed speed, she faced the world below, and realized the finality of her decision.

  And so the terror vanished. Driven from her at once, as if exorcised.

  An oceanic serenity took its place. She at last managed to breathe, even with the thin rushing past, fighting back against each gasp. The world dimmed, and every moment brought the earth below ever closer, and yet for it all she felt for it only calm.

  A thicker patch of cloud below swallowed her whole. Unconsciousness approached just as did the earth, as her lungs filled with water vapor with every strained gasp, and droplets condensed on her face to mix with her tears.

  Longer the seconds passed, as the world slowed. It was cold, and dark, and still yet darkening, and in that comfortable peace it was ever harder to resist her pleasant drift away.

  But then she reemerged from the bottom of the cloud, and her view cleared by degrees. Even with her vision still narrow and dimmed by hypoxia, the earth’s surface was there clearer to her than on the airship’s catwalks, where it had been occluded by the patchy cloud cover.

  There were lights, she saw.

  So many lights, spread uneven across the overcast twilight darkness of the battlefield below.

  Lights, as if stars of the night sky, dotting the earth instead. A rainbow of colored pinpoint fires, colliding together at times, orbiting or flashing alongside the flares of others streaking skyward.

  Her people, fighting. Each of those fires, a valiant warrior of Setet making their stand.

  Standing, and resisting, as she’d so pleaded with them to do.

  Airships were moored behind the battle, she saw, craning her neck against gravity and the wind. Transports facilitating the necessary retreat, behind a cordon of ranged vis wielders fending off the enemy’s swifter gunboats.

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  But they were fighting. Withdrawing, but fighting. Not surrendering, but fighting, as she’d known they must.

  Unable to escape that beautiful sight, as she fell toward it tears came to her in greater force. Tears of pride, as well as shame for how she’d wished to betray that beauty, just to survive, moments ago.

  The world faded in and out, as she watched dazzling colors on the dark canvas of the battlefield, and the whipping wind deafened all into something like silence.

  Semi-lucid, she wondered if there were any other final strategic considerations she might’ve otherwise valued. Perhaps she might hope to land near friendly forces, where the documents in their small capsule in her coat pocket could be recovered and deciphered. Even if she couldn’t manage that for them, though, what mattered was that they’d already decided to stand and fight. That was enough.

  But she was once more jolted back from the brink of complete unconsciousness.

  Even as still her thoughts grew murkier, deprived of oxygen by the thin, wet, and rushing air, she couldn’t help but recognize outlines of the battlefield below in finer detail. The ground held by Tanhkmet’s soldiers, and their tactical position.

  Between the shifting of those distant fires, and the bending, warping contours of their battle lines, and the intermittent rumble in the air around her — she could see that Tanhkmet’s forces were on the verge of collapse.

  The knowledge came to her first by reflex intuition, a certainty in but her preconscious awareness: that the evacuation and withdrawal were far from done, and yet, they would never be finished.

  Where all else had faded into dull gray indistinction, that most essential part of her remained. And to that last vestige of her still awake and alert, it was obvious, after just a single glance. A great concentration of the enemy was amassed to exploit the vulnerable flank on the Tanhkmet’s right, where the natural rocky formations provided sparser cover. They were poised to break through at any moment.

  Her calm, resigned acceptance vanished. Terror resurged, sharp and strangling, all while reinvigorating once more as well.

  It had all been for nothing.

  The withdrawal would be shattered, and those fighting would all be killed or captured. The information she’d gained would never reach the proper eyes. Even then, she saw the thin-stretched dotted line of lights waver on that right flank, as she fell toward them.

  She would fall, and her body would impact the ground, and she would die, all for nothing. Stuck in the air, she was powerless to stop any of it. Neither her fate, nor that of those beneath her.

  And so flared her rage, against that despair.

  Resenting, rejecting, raging against her powerlessness, as she plummeted.

  Brilliant blue-white lit the sky.

  Blue-white, all around her, flooding everywhere. Painting the distant earth beneath and the sky above.

  Blue-white fire, overpowering all else: the last of anything she saw before losing the battle with hypoxia, as she fell through the thin and rapid air, and fell finally as well into unconsciousness.

  And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

  Luke 10:18