Marked From Birth
requiring a level of timing that the manual dynamos could barely sustain.
The balloon, glowing like a second sun, hit the upper ash-clouds at a thousand miles per hour. The magnetic harpoon acted as a "Brake," but the friction was immense. The "Tallow-Wraps" on the hull ignited, turning the craft into a streaking fireball. Audrey watched from the Spire, her heart in her throat, as the "Aethel-Dawn II" finally splashed down into the newly-thawed sapphire seas, three hundred miles from the city. They were home, but the impact had revealed a new secret beneath the waves.