Chapter Thirty-Four

The sudden brightness made him blink, his eyes watering. He kept forgetting that the Beaconites kept their lights uncommonly low, even indoors.

At first, the landscape ahead looked like a mess of undulating oranges and yellows—an abstract painting, like the Nalthians loved. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he made out the nuances. Most of the burning portions were below, but swirling whirlwinds of flame rose from the ground in churning, fiery vortexes. The light glowed primarily from the center of these cyclones, but where each hit the clouds, bright bursts set the very sky afire.

"It's on fire?" Nomad said. "Why is it on fire?"

"It's the great maelstrom beyond sunset!" Zeal said, crowding up into the cabin beside him. "You said you'd been in one before."

"Storms shouldn't be on fire!" Nomad exclaimed. "They're wet! Full of wind and rain."

"You suggested this plan," Rebeke said, frowning, "and you didn't know it would be on fire?"

He gaped at the inferno. They were still on the dark side of the planet, in night, but dangerously close to the day—now just on this side of sunset. Maybe that should have told him what he'd find, but storms. He'd heard tens of different descriptions of hell from tens of different cultures and lores. His own planet's Damnation was a cold place, but so many others talked of eternal fire. A place where flames lashed the soul and heat melted the very fat under the flesh.

He'd never thought he'd look upon such a place. The ship turned and curved along the perimeter, flying at a slight angle to trail the storm—which retreated before them, chasing the setting sun. At least, at ground level, there didn't seem to be many open magma vents. Indeed, he noticed something. The ground grew cool with unusual speed. Almost like…

"Something is drawing the heat away," he whispered. "Like your bodies can draw it from one another…"

They gave him blank stares, but this seemed a likely explanation. Something about the core of the planet was odd. It created far more gravity than it should have for its size—so either it was incredibly dense or incredibly Invested. He suspected the latter. And now that core was drawing out that heat, cooling the ground.

That unnaturally fast cooling cracked and shattered the landscape. Releasing…

"Gases," he guessed. "Flammable gases, as a by-product of the sun blasting the landscape. But how… Normally methane is released by decomposition, which certainly isn't happening here…"

"We're getting close to the border of the corridor," Rebeke said, tapping a few dials that were tracking their progress. "We made good time. Beacon has maybe an hour and forty-five minutes until sunlight reaches it."

Nomad nodded, checking the time.

"We'll soon encounter the Cinder King's scouts," she continued, "unless we duck into the storm. You sure you want to do that?"

"Can this ship handle it?" he asked as a cyclone of fire sprang up beside them—a whirlwind of smoke and ash snaking down from above, then bursting aflame.

"Maybe?" Zeal said. "It has as much insulation as we could stuff in it, and some cooling mechanisms as well. That, plus the armor…well, maybe?"

"The clock is ticking," Nomad said, and Zeal nodded. The clock, for Nomad, was always ticking. "Take us in."

Rebeke flicked a switch—bringing up the thick blast shield to protect the windshield. She flew them in via instruments, something Nomad had never been good at doing. He much preferred flying with his hair in the wind, throttle in his fingers.

He'd foolishly anticipated a storm like at home. A darkness thick with chaos, occasionally sliced by lightning. He'd anticipated rain—which always reminded him of Roshar in the best ways. There was something comforting about the sound of water on metal or stone; it had a primal, rhythmic quality. The sound of a world's heartbeat, racing fast with excitement.

His friends from back then had loved the wind, and he couldn't blame them. But for Nomad, the rain had become his favorite manifestation of a storm. He loved stepping out in it, feeling it wash him clean.

He'd assumed, if it was raining, he could survive any storm. But here he experienced something different. The ship was buffeted and tossed, but without that comforting sound of water on the roof. This maelstrom was wrong. Like a breakdown with no tears, where you curled in the corner and struggled to contain your emotions, but somehow—despite the pain filling you to bursting—couldn't get any of it to come out.

Dials on the dash went wild. Zeal pointed out two heat gauges—one indicating the temperature of the hull and a smaller one indicating the temperature inside of the ship. Both were rising steadily.

"We're going to need to be quick," Rebeke said.

"I wish we could see out there," Nomad replied, leaning low as a whirlwind shook the ship. "We could dodge the firespouts."

"Instruments are better," Rebeke said. "I'm cutting us right into the Cinder King's corridor—and the line he always makes Union follow. I'll get us to the proper longitude, then we can use the prospector to search the region until we find something. Hopefully we can do all that before we cook ourselves."

Nomad nodded, finding the sudden scents of scorched stone and ashen brimstone overpowering. Along with Zeal and the rest of his crew, though, he could only stand there, anxiously watching the dials rise as Rebeke flew them farther and farther into the terrible firestorm.

"Into hell itself," he whispered.

"Hell is a forest," Zeal mumbled back. "Full of quiet trees and unquiet dead."

By the time Rebeke reached the proper location, the chamber was hot enough that even Nomad started to feel uncomfortable. The others must have found it torturous. Still, none of them complained. Rebeke swung low, using radar to judge the landscape and keep them from crashing. She skimmed the newborn ground with the prospecting gear—like a metal detector on the bottom of the ship, designed to find Investiture—hunting for sunhearts hidden in the earth.

At least in this case, she could avoid the worst of the cracked portions of the ground—as manifested on the radar screen. That might let them avoid the worst of the gas emissions. What if those were toxic? Nomad, with an abundance of caution, stopped breathing—but the others wouldn't have that luxury.

There, Auxiliary said. A ping just came from the prospector controls.

"Go back," Nomad said, trusting in Auxiliary. Even though he used Nomad's ears, he used them better. "Rebeke? Turn back. I heard something."

She glanced at him, face pouring with sweat, then nodded. Nomad glanced at the heat dials. All well into the red. Storms. She'd probably been retreating as fast as she could toward the cooler air of the shadow. Mission, in the sudden suffocating heat, forgotten.

Still, she swerved the ship back.

As they hovered over a certain spot, the faintest of pings came from the dash—nearly inaudible over the sounds of the tempest outside and the groaning of the ship's hull.

"Shades," Zeal said. "How did you hear that?"

Nomad ignored him, rushing to the door. "I'm going out. Stay close." He steeled himself, then opened the door and slipped out, slamming it shut behind him.

The sudden light of the burning sky blinded him. Fortunately no spiraling infernos were directly nearby, but his skin—despite his body's protections—immediately started to burn. And it hurt. Damnation!

Auxiliary forming as a spade in his hand, Nomad leaped free of the deck and toward the ground below. He hit hard, falling to his knees in what appeared to be loamy earth—but his eyes just saw a vague brownness as the heat dried them out. He glanced upward as a gust of flaming wind blew across him. He managed to blink his eyes once, and the ship was gone.

What had happened to the ship? Had it landed? Flown away? Swept farther into the storm? He couldn't tell, because right then, everything went black—his eyes failing.

Storms, Nomad. This heat is using up your strength with extreme speed. We're dropping Investiture at a frantic rate. Below five percent Skip capacity already.

Nomad grunted and started digging, pushing through the pain—which proved easier once it started to fade. That was a bad sign. It meant his skin had been burned deeply enough that the nerves were giving out. His body would draw upon its stored Investiture to stay alive—but in the face of the terrible damage being done, it focused on preserving his core systems and had given up on less essential things like nerve endings and sight.

I think, the hero says softly, this was a really, really bad idea.

Still, the ground seemed cooler than the air. Nomad gave up hunting for the sunhearts, deciding he just needed to get down and protect himself. He felt his skin flaking off, his hair burning away again.

He got down as low as he could manage, then formed Auxiliary as a large shield and positioned it between him and the sky. It was hard to tell without nerves, but he hoped that the damage to his body had been stopped. Hoped that he was no longer being actively burned to death. As long as his core organs and brain were able to keep going…

Under three percent Skip capacity.

Nomad sent a sense of quietude to Auxiliary, an indication to leave it be. He didn't need reports. Either he would live or he wouldn't.

The wind grew stronger, and he felt dirt and soil hitting his shield from above. His mind grew fuzzy, his thoughts rambling. The endless fatigue of never sleeping, of running just in front of his problems—which prowled behind him, always on the hunt and smelling blood. Exhaustion threatened to send him into a thoughtless abyss that—in his current state—might be the end.

He fought it by forcing himself to analyze the land around him. He focused, thinking, not letting himself fade away. As always, that questioning brain—that mind that had driven him to always ask, that cursed part of him that had led him to become Hoid's apprentice in the first place—wondered.

The ground was drawing in the heat. He was sure of it, as with the last flutters of his nerves, he could feel…something trying to draw his Investiture away into the depths of the planet. It couldn't claim his, but it tried.

The core of the planet fed on Investiture like he did. Was that a clue to how all of this worked? It helped explain how the dark side of the planet could exist. The weather patterns he'd expected to consume everything were somehow quieted and stilled by this rapid cooling, creating a barrier between the dark side and the light…maybe?

But why was the sunlight so hot, and yet he'd been able to step into it on the deck of Beacon?

Was…was Nomad what they thought he was?

Storms? Was he…somehow…

No. He was no mythological hero. He'd failed these people by bullishly going forward with this plan to enter the maelstrom. The signs had been there. Auxiliary's hesitance, the others' overeager deference to his ideas. He'd already done something they'd considered impossible in cresting the mountains. But there, he'd taken the time to get the facts, the science, the data. He'd tested their engines; he'd flown a scouting mission; he'd used the knowledge of the engineers.

That plan had been hasty, but double-checked and based on a solid scientific foundation. This time, he'd picked a direction, spouted off an idea, and started running.

That had been his problem for a while. He was the man who ran. Now entombed in rock, with no way to run from himself, he confronted it. He had failed. Experience, in this case, had served him poorly.

He'd learned from wise battle commanders that in times of tension, someone making any decision was often better than standing around. But there was a caveat to that lesson. Pithy though it sounded, the leaders who said it were the ones who had lived long enough to pass it on. They were the ones, in the heated moments, who didn't just make decisions. They made the right decisions.

Their advice was good, assuming you were the type of person who judged wisely in tense situations. He did sometimes. This time, he'd jumped in too quickly. And he'd led the Beaconites to destruction.

He tried to feel shame at that. He really did. Instead he simply felt…numb. As if…as if he'd known this was coming, and a part of him had accepted long ago that his failures would finally catch up to him.

Pain started to prickle across his arms and legs. He was so low on Investiture, it took longer than normal to heal. Fortunately these were the easy kind of wounds to survive with his particular talents. Terrible burns didn't directly impact his core organs or his skeletal structure. The body knew what to do, and his warped soul—for all he hated the part that prevented him from defending himself—fed on Investiture to restore him, bit by bit.

His master, who had held the Dawnshard far longer, could never die. Nomad was far from that level. But today, despite excruciating pain, his body healed the burns. And as the pain receded—and he blinked restored eyes in the darkness—he realized he could hear the rain.

Honor Almighty. He could hear the rain.

"Aux?" he managed to say. "Time?"

You've been buried for around fifteen minutes. There is just under an hour and a half until Beacon falls. Nomad…you have essentially no Investiture left. Maybe I can use the dregs to transform, but you have no more healing, no enhancements.

Yes, but he was back in the shadow. The planet had rotated. And the Cinder King's forces would soon arrive to harvest their sunhearts. They would bring ships he could steal. They would find the power sources, and he could take them.

He could still save Beacon. Assuming he could get back to them before the sunrise.

The race was not finished. He wasn't done running yet.

Nomad shifted, heaving upward on the shield, and broke out of the earth—healed, naked, determined.