The landing wasn’t soft, but nothing ever was in the shrouded ruins of the ancient earth. Marwina’s boots crunched through what was once someone's attic, now crumbled into a garden of vines that thrived in eerie symbiosis with rusted metal and fractured glass. Her crimson cloak provided a sliver of visibility for her four-person team, the material designed to shimmer faintly in the storm-choked light.
“Captain, incoming data from the sonar pods,” one of her scouts, Neema, said, her voice modulated through their comm-links. “The water’s down there, but so is… something else.” Neema’s dark eyes, framed by her translucent visor, were wrinkled with concern beneath her breeze-plated hood. “The seismic readings show movement.”
Marwina checked her handheld analyzer. The signals were chaotic, erratic, like no human artifact or machine she’d ever seen. “Could just be tremors,” she said, though her gut told her otherwise. “We proceed, but quietly.”
The Beast Beneath
It wasn’t quiet for long. Upon breaching the water cache, a bone-rattling roar tore through the ruins, sending tidal waves of debris crashing around them. The ground quaked, as though the ancient earth itself had woken from slumber.
“Retreat!” Marwina shouted, her breath hitching as she glimpsed the silhouette of their foe. Rising from the depths was a mass of sinew and shadow—its form undefined, its movement fluid like a living cyclone. Tendrils of stormcloud whipped outwards, each edged with electricity as though the storm itself had taken a grotesque physical shape.
“Captain!” Rylin’s panicked voice cried through the comm-link. “This thing—its pressure waves are destabilizing the zeppelin! We can’t hold position much longer!”
“Hold your altitude!” Marwina barked, the winds around her whipping into a terrifying crescendo. She raised her harvester lance, the long, spearlike tool humming with crimson electrolight. “Neema, flank left! Rhinnah, get below the debris field. I’ll draw it toward me!”
The storm-beast lunged, a guttural roar shaking the air. Marwina threw herself sideways, her boots skidding across metal beams as she drove the lance into its mass. A blinding shockwave erupted from the impact, and for the briefest moment, she could see veins of pure lightning coursing through the creature—its insides alive, seething energy made flesh.
The Fallout
Hours later, the extraction was complete. The creature was gone—dissipated back into the storm from which it was born—but its wail still lingered in Marwina’s ears. The harvest, though smaller than expected, would allow Wind Harbor to persist above the storms for another three seasons. For now, that was enough.
Back onboard, Marwina gazed out of her quarters’ narrow porthole. Below, the Stormwall still raged, an eternal reminder of humanity’s hubris. She traced the glass mindlessly, her heart heavy yet resolute. Despite the uncertainty of their existence—life suspended above a broken world—she would not falter. The storms had taken so much from them, but they had also shaped them into survivors.
One day, she thought, pressing a gloved hand to her chest, humanity will thrive again. Until then, they would endure, wind-tossed but unbroken.
As she closed her eyes, her scarlet cloak hung on its peg by the wall, a beacon of defiance against the storm-torn skies beyond.
The Source...check out the article that inspired this amazing short story: Urgent weather warning to eight US states as bomb cyclone is expected to cause hurricane-like conditions
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