Chapter 61: Chapter 60: The Glass Ocean

Time Remaining: 36 Days, 15 Hours, 30 Minutes. (Status: On the ground. Bruised. Sand acquired. The Wyrm is hunting.) Location: Sector 3 – The Glass Plains (Base of the Fallen Tower).

The silence following the crash was deafening.

The airship Icarus had hit the glass plains with the force of a falling skyscraper. It hadn’t exploded—there was no fuel left—but it had shattered. The massive steel skeleton of the hull lay twisted on the ground, a ruin of canvas and iron. Dust and sand hung in the air like a gold fog.

Arthur coughed, spitting grit. He rolled over onto his back, staring up at the empty sky where the tower used to be. “Ribs check,” he groaned.

Vivian sat up next to him. She looked like a sugar cookie, completely coated in sand. She shook her head, sending a spray of grit everywhere. “I am alive,” she announced, sounding surprised. “That was… statistically unlikely.”

“Physics,” Arthur wheezed, sitting up. “Displacement. The sand acted as a fluid buffer. Also, we got lucky.”

He checked the iScroll. Time Remaining: 36 Days, 15 Hours.

“We lost an hour and a half on the climb,” Arthur noted grimly. “We need to move.”

“Arthur!” Julian’s voice rang out.

Arthur turned. The Iron Horse was parked about fifty yards away, tucked behind a piece of airship debris. Julian and Zack were waving frantically.

“The sand!” Zack yelled, pointing at the dune Arthur and Vivian had landed in. “It’s sinking!”

Arthur looked down. The massive pile of golden sand—the ballast they had risked their lives for—was shifting. The glass floor beneath the dune was cracking under the weight. But worse, the sand was vibrating.

Rumble…

“The Wyrm,” Arthur realized, scrambling to his feet. “It feels the vibration of the crash. It’s coming to investigate the dinner bell.”

“We need that sand!” Arthur yelled, sprinting toward the train. “Vivian, grab the shovels! Zack, back the truck up!”

“Back it up?” Zack panicked. “The tires are melted!”

“They still turn!” Arthur shouted. “Reverse into the pile! We have five minutes before that snake realizes we aren’t debris!”

They treated it like a Formula One pit stop in Hell.

Zack redlined the engine, forcing the sticky, half-melted tires to turn. The Iron Horse groaned, reversing until the rear bed was jammed into the base of the sand dune.

“Load it!” Arthur commanded.

Vivian grabbed a shovel (a flat piece of scrap metal from the crash) and started shoveling with superhuman speed. Scoop. Throw. Scoop. Throw. She was tossing fifty pounds of sand per second.

Arthur grabbed the Traction-Box Hoses. These were intake tubes running from the truck bed to the wheel wells. He disconnected the clogged filters and jammed the hoses directly into the sand pile. “Direct feed!” Arthur yelled. “Forget the metering valve! We need max grit!”

“The ground!” Julian warned, pointing his staff at the glass.

Ten yards away, the surface was bulging. The glass wasn’t cracking; it was melting. A glowing orange hump was rising from the floor. The Wyrm was surfacing.

“Faster!” Arthur grabbed a bucket.

“Tires!” Zack yelled from the cab. “Arthur, the front left is bubbling! It’s going to blow!”

Arthur dropped the bucket. He ran to the front tire. It wasn’t just soft; it was blistering. The sidewall was bulging out like a tumor. The heat of the glass was boiling the air inside the tire.

“We need a patch!” Arthur scanned the ground. He saw the Drag-Chute—the heavy canvas they had used to survive the fall. He ripped a strip of canvas off. “Julian! Freeze gel!”

“Again?” Julian complained. “I am low on mana!”

“Just a dab!”

Julian fired a glob of blue frost-magic onto the canvas strip. Arthur slapped the frozen canvas directly onto the bubbling tire. The cold contracted the rubber, and the canvas acted as a girdle, holding the blowout in. He duct-taped it instantly.

“It’s a band-aid on a bullet wound!” Arthur yelled. “It won’t hold for long!”

CRASH.

The Wyrm breached. It exploded out of the glass just twenty feet away. Up close, it was terrifying. A fifty-foot tube of living crystal with internal organs that glowed like magma. Its mouth was a circular saw of diamond teeth.

It roared—a sonic vibration that shattered the windows of the cockpit.

“GO!” Arthur dove into the passenger seat.

Zack slammed the throttle. The wheels spun. SCREEEEEE.

But this time, sand poured from the nozzles. The golden grit sprayed under the tires. The rubber bit into the sand. The sand bit into the glass. Traction.

The Iron Horse launched forward. It didn’t slide. It gripped. They shot away from the dune just as the Wyrm lunged, its jaws snapping shut on empty air (and a mouthful of sand).

“It works!” Vivian cheered from the back, watching the Wyrm recede. “We have grip!”

“Don’t celebrate yet!” Arthur watched the mirror. The Wyrm didn’t give up. It dove back into the ground. A moment later, a ridge of molten glass appeared behind them, moving at 60 mph. It was chasing them. And it was faster than the train.

“It’s gaining!” Julian noted, looking at the rear periscope. “It swims faster than we drive!”

“We can’t outrun it!” Arthur checked the map. “We have to outsmart it!”

He looked at the terrain ahead. The Glass Plains were ending. In the distance, the smooth, flat glass began to break up. It turned into jagged shards, then into rock.

“Five miles to the rock!” Arthur calculated. “The Wyrm can’t swim in rock! We just have to survive five miles!”

“It’s going to catch us in two!” Zack screamed. “It’s right under us!”

Arthur felt the floor vibrate. The Wyrm was swimming directly beneath the chassis. It was going to breach upward, tearing the train in half.

“It’s targeting the engine heat!” Arthur realized. “It’s a heat-seeker!”

He looked at the dashboard. He looked at the Flare Gun (empty). He looked at Julian (exhausted). He looked at the Thermos of coffee on the dash. It was cold.

“We need a decoy!” Arthur yelled. “We need something hotter than the engine!”

“We don’t have anything hot!” Vivian yelled. “Everything is broken!”

Arthur’s eyes fell on the Emergency Nitrous Canister (empty). Then he looked at the Coal Hopper. “The Coal!” Arthur yelled. “Vivian! Light a shovel of coal on fire and throw it out the back!”

“What?”

“Do it! Make a thermal flare!”

Vivian grabbed a shovel of black coal. “Julian! Spark!” Julian snapped his fingers. A tiny spark hit the coal. It smoldered.

“Not enough!” Arthur reached for a bottle of Cleaning Alcohol under the seat. He splashed it onto the coal. WHOOSH

. The shovel erupted into flames.

“Throw it!”

Vivian leaned out the back window and hurled the burning pile of coal onto the glass track behind them.

The Wyrm was surging upward, ready to strike the train. But as it sensed the intense, concentrated heat of the burning chemical-coal flare on the ground, its instincts took over. The heat signature was hotter than the train.

CRASH. The Wyrm breached early. It erupted from the ground ten yards behind the train, swallowing the burning coal pile in one gulp.

“It ate it!” Vivian yelled.

The Wyrm paused. It thrashed. The chemical fire was burning inside it. It screeched in confusion, diving back down to cool off.

“It bought us time!” Arthur shouted. “Zack, redline it! Get to the rocks!”

They hit the edge of the Glass Plains at 90 mph. The smooth glass shattered into jagged basalt. The ride went from “gliding” to “earthquake.” The tires slammed into solid rock.

Arthur watched the rear view. The ridge of molten glass stopped at the edge of the plains. The Wyrm breached one last time, screaming at them from the edge of its territory. It couldn’t follow. It was a shark, and they had just reached the beach.

“Sector 4,” Arthur exhaled, slumping back in his seat.

The landscape had changed completely. Gone was the flat, white glass. Ahead of them rose a maze of towering red sandstone cliffs, narrow slot canyons, and twisting dry riverbeds.

Arthur checked the tires. Front Left: The canvas patch was shredded, but the rubber held. Traction Box: 50% Sand remaining.

He checked the iScroll. Time Remaining: 36 Days, 15 Hours.

“We’re halfway,” Arthur said. “But now we have to navigate the maze.”

“And Arthur,” Zack pointed at the dashboard. “We have a new problem.”

“What?”

“The Fuel Gauge,” Zack tapped it. “We burned half the coal in the tunnel. We just threw a shovel out the window. We’re on empty.”

Arthur looked at the red needle resting on ’E.’. “Of course we are,” he sighed. “Because why would anything be easy?”

End of Chapter 60

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