Free Falling
"Ready?" Cait asked.
"I'm too old for this shit," Garrett said, the sentence going well with the suit he pilfered from Fate. "But I'm ready."
"I'm ready," Fate replied.
"Alright, then. On my mark."
They stood at the door, forcefield still up and allowing them to watch the clouds drift below them. Each of them held a Stratosphere in their hands, and Cait held the keys to her ship in her off-hand, on which was the button to lock and unlock the spacecraft.
Having jury-rigged as Fate took charge of dodging the lumbering palace golem's swings, she could now use it to remotely activate the ship's warp drive.
"Three, two, one… MARK!"
They jumped out, Garrett screaming wildly with excitement and fear as they all switched on their Stratospheres. Their descent slowed to a feather fall, and they turned in the air to watch the ship, which was going at a low speed straight for the golem's head.
They had had to make a distance of several hundred miles between themselves to assure themselves they would be safe from the blast, a surprisingly easy job as the palace seemed rooted to the spot it was in, possibly due to the dungeons below ground. As it was, their Shadow Jumper wouldn't collide with the thing for at least ten minutes.
And then Cait pressed her key's button.
Instantly, the thing flashed, disappearing so quickly that not even an afterimage was left. In less than a moment, it smashed into the golem, and the payload they had rigged detonated.
A catastrophic explosion burst out, with the golem's torso as the epicenter. They had decided to try to take out as much of it as possible, having deduced that it probably wouldn't matter if they got rid of the head. The whole thing was alive.
Smoke and fire engulfed the golem, a visible shockwave spreading out and flattening trees, hills, and grass in its path. When it washed over them, their Stratospheres temporarily short-circuited as they were sent flying back, Garrett's screams accompanying them the whole way.
When their Stratospheres kicked in once more, their backward momentum drained until they were once more drifting down at an unhurried speed.
Garrett panted, eyes flashing with fear and a grimace tightening his jaw as he took his Stratosphere in a death grip. "I fucking hate flying," he decided.
"You get used to it," Cait and Fate said at the same time, eyes focused on the mountain of smoke in the distance. Their breaths caught when a gentle breeze blew the smoke away, their dread surpassed only by their curiosity.
Fate heaved a sigh of relief and delight as he turned his gaze to the sky, panting. Beside him, Cait smiled tightly and Garrett grinned as if he had just told his grandson a corny joke.
The palace golem, previously standing at almost a thousand miles tall, was now a pile of rubble that extended for half that distance along the ground. It looked like a god had smashed a mountain with a mountain-sized sledgehammer repeatedly in a fit of anger, the chunks of rock ranging from house-sized all the way to dust.
Many of them had smooth surfaces, having been melted by the fire and then cooled. The eyes all over the rock were dull and lifeless, many bloody and popped, their stony protections doing nothing in the face of sheer firepower.
Around the mound of stones, the grass and trees for dozens of miles were reduced to ash and soot, the lack of a crater made up for by the flattened ground as every hill in the area was brought low.
Smoke rose from thousands of spots, staining the sky with waterless gray clouds that did not bring rain, only death. The explosion had truly destroyed a vast swath of land, a calamity Fate was doubtful nature could recover from.
Dull roars came from behind the trio. They turned to find the village they had seen on the way, its inhabitants raising their arms in the air or hugging each other as they observed the smoke rising from the distance.
Due to the explosion, the ground was perfectly flat between the explosion and Fate and full of slight bumps here and there between him and the village, meaning they could see the ruins with little effort, especially when taking into account the size of what used to be the palace.
"Looks like we changed some lives," Fate said to the others.
Cait's chest swelled with pride and Garrett's goofy grin widened. Cait jiggled her Stratosphere's controls to move closer to Fate, leaning forward.
"Thanks for trusting me," she whispered.
"Thanks for talking me into it," he replied with a grin.
"YOU PEASANTS!" a voice rang out like a thunderclap to their backs.
They turned to find a black dot on top of the tallest boulder of the palace's remains, making grand gestures as some of the rocks floated upwards. They felt a surge of Divine Energy rush out, crushing the Stratospheres in their hands and dragging them down to the ground.
They didn't fall for miles, the three working together to break the Divine Reach's hold. When that failed, Fate tossed his dashed Stratosphere to the side and swam through the air towards the other two, grabbing each by the arm tightly.
"Hang on tight!" He yelled over the rushing wind. "I'm going to try to turn you two intangible! Do me a favor and don't fight it!" The other two nodded, grasping onto Fate's arms with both hands.
He activated his Manifest Power, spreading his aura out over the two and coating them with his Divine Reach, having had no prior practice in turning other things incorporeal and doing nothing but guesswork, hoping for the best.
He ignored the concerned stares of the other two, a vein bulging on his forehead as fought desperately against the foreign Divine Reach's attempts to break his hold. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to whatever force governed the laws of Manifestations that this worked as the ground grew closer and closer.