Soleil barely stayed in her seat, bashing into Titania as the air carriage rocked. There was a hiss that sounded like a wail of pain, the chain bowed and they bobbed in the air for a moment. Titania grabbed onto her, while she grabbed onto the back of her seat. Her eyes leapt to the roof of the Air Carriage, the smaller crystal windows in the ceiling were harder to see through, but there was no sign of the creature. Just the contraption letting out wails and blasts of steam in equal measure. Slowly, as if afraid of another attack, the contraption started to move once more, though the grinding noise had a sharper sound that set her teeth on edge.

  One hip ached and her head spun, but she knew there was no time for that. She pulled herself to her feet, using the chairs that were bolted to the floor to steady herself. She looked round deep into the fog, desperately trying to spot where the creature was. But it had taken advantage of the moments of confusion to disappear.

  "What in all the hells just happened?" The conductor asked, he had been sat facing the direction they were going, he had not seen it.

  "Some sort of creature, out in the mist!" Titania cried.

  "We are hundreds of metres up in the air, how could there possibly be something able to attack us up here?" The girl dressed in the colours of a doomed rebellion asked, her face was as white as a sheet and she was half crouched behind the row of chairs in front of her.

  "Clearly," said the Reader, putting her book carefully into her satchel and standing up, "it can fly." She looked at Titania, "Did you get a good look at it?"

  “It moved so fast,” Titania said, twisting her hands in front of her. Taking a deep breath she closed her eyes, her forehead wrinkling as she did her best to remember. “It was dark, long, with a tail. The wings were lighter, and looked like those of a bird but on massive scale.”

  She opened them and nodded, "That is all I can recall. It moved so fast!"

  The Reader nodded, "Well I've never heard of anything like that before," the other girl scoffed so she spoke more loudly, forcing her words into the tense air, "But I have also never heard of the Air Carriages being attacked. Have you, conductor?"

  "No," He said, peering out into the fog, "The air carriage is warded to Hell and back, if you'll pardon my language, nothing should be able to attack it."

  "Nothing with a Name, anyway," Soleil said nervously. Creatures that had been Named were the recognised monsters that people had fought before, well, fought before and lived to tell the tale. With sufficient identification and study, wards and spells could be made to specifically target them, it was one of the legitimate trades for Adventurers who wanted more from life than looting. It made the world safer for everyone, as long as the bestiaries were close to complete.

  His head snapped in her direction. His mouth twisted like he had tasted something sour, "Indeed."

  "It's there, it's there!" Shrieked the Unfortunately Dressed Young Lady. She pointed out from the front of the air carriage deep into the fog, where a dark shadow grew out of it faster than anyone could react.

  Huge claws gripped onto the side of the air carriage, a shriek of metal twisting, and then the creature was gone again. The air carriage shook, waving in the air, sending the mortals to the ground.

  Soleil pulled herself out of Titania's grip and ducked around the seats. "Did anyone get a better look at it this time?" Soleil shouted, running to the side of the air carriage that had been scraped. Two of the windows were shattered, crystal crunched under her shoes, and the bronze was pushed in and bent. "Do we know what it is? What weaknesses it might have?"

  "That wasn't-" Titania started to say.

  "It was some kind of dragon, not a bird at all!" The Unfortunately Dressed Young Lady crowed, apparently enjoying the chance to correct someone. "It had huge bat-like wings, no feathers, and the claws were like those of a hunting bird."

  "The lack of feathers and draconic looks suggest that fire spells will be useless against it," The reader said, "Does anyone have anything else?"

  They shook their heads.

  "Damn, I have some Ice blasts, but that is the best I can do. And flying creatures usually have some kind of defence against the cold, or else they wouldn't be able to survive in the higher-"

  "You're not listening, that wasn't-" Titania tried again.

  "With the windows broken I can try and use my sword, if I could get close enough-"

  "Why are you trying to fight it, shouldn't we be getting word to Glayth so they can send someone to save us?"

  "That is the correct protocol, however we cannot just hang here waiting for it to attack again," The conductor said to the Unfortunately Dressed Young Lady.

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  "Well do it then, and then protect us, isn't it your job?" She hissed, red creeping up her neck as she rounded on the conductor.

  "I've been a little bit distracted," He said, eyebrows raised as he gestured to the well, the everything that was happening. Then he took a deep breath and became remarkably calm for someone in his situation. But apparently the obnoxious passenger had reset him to a more comfortable rhythm. "I will attempt to do so at the first opportunity, rest assured, Miss."

  A blur outside the windows to the port side.

  "It's coming again!" Soleil cried. At first there was little more than a swipe, a buffering like a strong wind, then there was a screech as the metal underneath their feet this time started to buckle.

  A straining warble came from the metal as just beneath where the floor was attached to the wall section on the port side, a tiny gap started to appear.

  The reader hissed out a swear, one that had a tenor more like a magical curse, and she shoved her hand against the hole and flexed like she was pushing something through. A flash of light disappeared under her fingers, and an answering call came back, magnified as it came roaring out of the throat of the monster on the other side of the metal.

  "Nicely done!" Soleil called.

  More angered than defeated, the creature started crawling up the side of the air carriage, every time its claws sank into the crystal there was a shower of shattered glass. Each step was slow and dragging, but the bursts of glass shards acted like a shield to keep the fighters in the air carriage from getting close.

  Except for Soleil.

  She barrelled through, her sword finally in her hand where it felt best. She leapt the last few steps, jumping up to catch a hold of a window outline, and swinging herself up to be in line with the creature as it crawled over a large space of broken open windows. Gilded hilt of her sword in hand, she plunged her arm out of the window, reaching for the creature's belly. She slashed twice, the first time missing entirely, the second hitting the shining scales that covered the expanse. It was not as unprotected as it seemed however, and the blade slid across the pearlescent scale. The force seemed to be enough to clue the creature in to the fact that there was something attacking it, It let out a massive bellow, the noise so loud that it made Soleil’s ears pop and the passengers beneath her covered there's with their hands.

  It's huge wings started to flap, for a second Soleil thought it was going to leave, but instead it used the momentum of the wing's movements to shake the air carriage. Like a horse trying to shake off a fly, it was trying to dislodge her from her grip on the window surround.

  She gritted her teeth and snarled back at it. "Not a chance!"

  Twisting her hold on her hilt from the usual for a sword to something more like she would hold a dagger, she pushed as much as she was able out through the window and plunged her sword forth. This time she knew better than to aim for a scale, instead, she aimed for the softer skin that surrounded them.

  Red blood in a faint spray across her right arm, her shoulder and one side of her face was her reward. It was warm, and it stung slightly where it fell. As if even the blood of the creature was determined to do as much damage as it could.

  The oily feeling of the blood ran up her hand and down her sleeve, the creature let loose another roar and shook the air carriage again.

  Soleil was shook free for a moment, but pulled herself up on the window once more, reaching up and stabbing again with the sword. This time she managed to only strike a shallow blow, giving more of a slice between the scales than a stab. Her hand was sliding around on the hilt now, she didn't have the grip that she needed to keep hold of it. Knowing in her gut that trying again would just mean the certain loss of her sword, she ducked back through the window and let herself fall back to the floor.

  "Right someone else can have a go!" She said, wiping blood from her face the best she could. The brim of her hat had kept it from reaching her eyes, but it had still speckled the lower parts of her face, like her jaw and lips.

  Titania came rushing over, "Are you alright? That blood-"

  "It's not mine," Soleil assured her, "But don't touch it, it seems to sting a little. There might be magic in it, or acid."

  She frowned and pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket. Soleil took it gratefully and rubbed what blood remained from her face. Her glove and outer coat sleeve were soaked with it, but she was able to get the handkerchief wrapped around her wrist so that no more would leak up there. There were worse things in the world than liquids seeping up through your sleeve towards your arm pit, but she would still rather avoid them. "Thank you."

  Titania nodded, "But I've been trying to say -"

  The air carriage swung violently as the creature pulled to and fro at it, it seemed determined to tear it off the chain entirely. Something that chilled Soleil. Gravity couldn't kill her. She was a god, maybe a low powered one without a proper claimed domain or any acolytes to empower her, but still a god. It would take a huge amount of magic, either holy or unholy, to rip her from the weave of the world. But everyone else in the air carriage was mortal.

  Just as she was certain the air carriage was going to be ripped off the chain and thrown down into the chasm that separated the Island of Glayth Skerry and the mainland, a huge wind picked up. It was like a split moment of a hurricane, something she had never seen but heard about plenty from her older brother Maven. The wind screamed through the gaps in the windows, the cracks in the few that had survived so far deepened and chunks flew out.

  The creature was torn from the side of the air carriage, pulled even as it shrieked and tried to grab a better purchase on the cracking glass. More glass broke and fell into the carriage, more windows opened up into the vast void of the sky. All the passengers were shaken off their feet, falling onto the buckled floor that had more and more gaps appearing around the edges where the join between wall and floor was failing.

  But.

  But eventually, the creature could not hold on any longer and was thrown into the sky.

  Soleil could have cried. She looked around for the source of the wind, and found the Reader lying on the floor a few feet away. She was gasping, runes in the creature's blood dried on the floor around her. She looked half dead with magical exhaustion, there were new bags under her eyes and her skin looked washed out, but also deeply satisfied.

  "You did it!" Soleil said wonderingly.

  "We did it." She said. Smiling, she waved a hand, "Zlatica Vrabec."

  "Soleil Lightly, nice to meet you," she said with a laugh. That seemed to break the tense silence in the moment, as everyone else let loose shouts in relief. Or at least mostly everyone.

  "Will all of you be quiet!" Titania screamed, "I've been trying to say that that was not the same one that was attacking us earlier!"