A horizontal chasm widened ahead, and water rose from its depths to the surface, seeping across the near layer of ice, while the far layer tilted further skyward, like a ramp.
Pegasus wailed, and that sound collapsed into Mustang's detonations, their collective note escalating until both were indistinguishable.
I looked sideways at Medusa. She arched back, front lifting from nearly touching Pegasus's spine.
Violet magic circles spiralled to life across Mustang's tires first, silver threads tracing across them at the same time, rings and threads locking together, blazing in violet-silver radiance.
We held that silence.
Those circles climbed from tires to the bumper, then along the side doors and roof, engulfing our windshield and hood with interconnected chain of rings.
I gave her a nod.
She whipped her head forward, body dropping until her spine ran parallel to Pegasus's back, hands pulling on the reins.
Pegasus coiled unto itself, stance plunging low, wings pulled taut, feathers clenched—
A wing beat.
It ascended in a white streak of shifting shapes. A horse's silhouette with wings hammering in one breath, an outline of a cluster of snakes lunging skyward in the next, a serpent with wings in the third.
My knees were already folding, one foot skating sideways toward the roof's edge. Silver flashed across Mustang's side door, and it swung wide open. I slid down, boot planting on that doorframe, pushed off into the cabin, and folded onto the seat.
Hands closing around the steering, heel settling on the gas pedal, I punched it down.
450 mph.
Above, those lines had grown from needles to monoliths, each a pillar exceeding Excalibur's width, covering the sky in a dense rain of molten light.
For a breath, they froze in place, hanging overhead, heat lashing down from their tips, charring the ice sheet in stripes, ground now a tiger's hide, black stripes cutting through white.
And then they flickered: black, white, black, white. Until their boundaries collapsed into a single road of grey beneath us.
My hand shot from the steering, arm extending behind Artoria's head. Momentum shoved her skull back toward the headrest, my bicep catching her before impact.
Artoria twisted toward me, one hand curling into the seat for balance. "Master! Medusa jumped outside right after you moments ago."
"And I got the magic circles done, Master." Medea's voice came muffled, face half-buried into my seat. "What do I do now?"
"Artoria, use Mana Burst to its limit to reinforce Mustang at my signal." I said while glancing ahead.
The near edge loomed, but in my side mirror, that tsunami was consuming everything behind us, close enough that water originating from it had nearly risen to the car's exhaust.
"What about me, Master?" Medea asked, burying her face deeper into my seat, refusing to look back.
"Keep repairing the magic circles, whatever damage they suffer."
Medea pressed her palm into the seat, magic circles surfacing across it, chaining into the ones outside. "I'm on it."
"Your command for us?" Justeaze asked from the centre screen, blank eyes fixed on me.
"Catch and don't—" Mustang's tire gripped fractured ice for a second, the whole cabin trembling before settling. "—let go."
"Catch and don't let go what?" Irisviel asked, tilting her head, sweeping her gaze around.
"You'll know in a bit."
I swung the steering right, a geyser of boiling water blasting up across our path. Mustang's left flank skimmed past it by centimeters, heat carving a line from headlight to taillight.
500 mph.
Water curled around Mustang's nose, climbing along its hood before jetting across its sides, tearing an enormous V, shredding a path through the chasm water that kept rising. Friction on the front tires reached a threshold and ignited, any flame dying almost as it was born, snuffed by the vacuum our speed tore.
"Master, the ground runs out in 400 meters," Artoria said, hands clenching into fists, gauntlets groaning as she glanced between me and that chasm of ice ahead.
"I know," I replied.
510 mph.
"Izuru, what are you doing?" Irisviel asked, eyes narrowing on me.
520 mph.
Medea peeked from behind and clutched my seat even tighter. "Master, I don't want to feel my limbs turn to ice."
530 mph.
"50 meters of ground left," Justeaze informed.
540 mph.
My fingers closed around the gear shift.
550 mph.
"10 meters of ground—"
Crunk.
I pulled the shifter all the way back into first gear.
"Huh—" Irisviel's jaw hung open.
"Wait—" Artoria's pupils constricted.
Both of my feet floored the brake and accelerator together.
Mustang's wheels screeched, sparks showering from inside all four, RPMs climbing, brake holding, and the speedometer needle stayed dead still at 550.
"... 1 meter of ground."
The front tires slid off solid surface and sank, our car's nose diving into ice-water.
All of them locked their gazes on me.
I answered by releasing the brake.
A tremendous amount of torque, strangled behind the brake, broke loose all at once. It exploded forward through the rear wheels, along the chassis, and slammed into us.
Water burst around Mustang's nose in waves, and it tilted.
Up.
Rearing on its back tires.
Between one blink and the next, our windshield went from grey road to open sky. The hood ascended, front tires spinning against nothing, slinging ropes of ice-water across any leftover clouds.
The exhaust dipped into water, evaporating a wide area of it into steam from heat alone.
Something fell out of the sky.
Chain links grinding on chain links, stake-chain plummeting until it was meters away from Mustang's nose.
"Irisviel, Justeaze—now."
Both of them already had their hands thrust forward, silver light pouring from their fingertips, through the dashboard, and from Mustang's nose, threads unfurled.
Hundreds of them, whipping outward, wrapping the stake-chain in one tight cluster, metal bound to metal, the whole knot sealing.
Above, Medusa heaved.
That chain snapped taut with a single tug, and Mustang was torn off its rear tires, off the ice, into the sky.
Gravity swung our cabin like a pendulum. Ahead became up, behind arced away, directions losing all meaning.
Medea screamed something into my seat. Artoria threw an arm over her own head.
And for one long second, we were riding in a flying car towed by a mythical horse.
"Far edge: thirty meters." Justeaze's voice stayed flat. "Twenty. Ten."
Ahead, that tilted ice sheet waited, the skyward-slanting far slab, a ramp of white laid out exactly for this.
With a final heave, Medusa hurled Mustang forward, chassis arcing, carving open a corridor of displaced air along our path.
"Artoria—now."
Gold blasted through the frame, axles, and suspension, flooding every bolt in Mustang until the whole car became nothing but radiance.
All four tires struck the ramp.
A thunderclap of steel on ice punched through the chassis, along my ribs, into my skull. The whole car's frame bent in a shudder, front folding inward, back folding inward.
Gold refused.
Everywhere the impact traveled, reinforcement had already arrived, panels, welds, bolts, all hardened beyond their limits, force bleeding off them like vapour.
Magic circles and silver threads took the rest. Violet rings shattering in sheets, strings tearing in clusters.
Medea's chanting speed blurred, circles re-forming faster than they could break.
Artoria's breath came ragged beside me, arms braced against her side door, light pouring continuously off her hands into the car. "It will hold, Master."
All tires bit, and Mustang lunged up the ramp, the stake-chain pulling us up alongside the engine.
Second gear. Third. Fifth.
Water spiked vertically right on our tail, and the first drops of that tsunami arrived as rainfall, slanting down across the stretch of ramp we still had left to cover.
The ramp went grey. Then glossy. A film of water crawled across ice, filling the grooves our tires were carving and sealing them shut.
Dry ice bites. Wet ice slips.
Mustang's rear skidded outward on its own, half a meter of sideways drift with nothing but ocean below the rear bumper's edge.
I swung the steering into the drift, countersteering.
Mustang gathered itself back into a line. But the speedometer needle told a different story.
585 mph.
580 mph.
575 mph.
Falling.
For the first time since we'd touched ice. Our exhaust screamed, the chain hauled, and still those number drained, tires spinning faster than we were moving, burning ice to steam for nothing.
Wheelspin.
"The stake is holding, the threads are holding—" Irisviel's hands stayed thrust forward. "It's the ground that's giving out."
Rain hit our windshield, and each drop was a mortar at this speed, magic circles deflecting them, Mana Burst barely holding on.
"Master." Artoria's forehead dripped with sweat. "Allow me to use Excalibur to try cleaving through this disaster."
I didn't answer.
Chain links sang louder and Pegasus's wing beats deepened, hauling us upward like a horse dragging a cart through mud.
The film beneath us thickened into a current, water streaming down its incline, past our windows, back into the chasm.
We were driving up a waterfall.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Sorry for the delay, I was having some problems at home and didn't have any time to write. Even replying to comments had to be done when I was eating or wasn't tending to others. But its almost wrapped up now, so no more hitches from here, hopefully.
Take care, and have a wonderful day.