The repulsors screamed into a strain so violent that Ana felt it rattle through her teeth—not as a metaphor, but as a bone-deep vibration that threatened to shake her loose from the frame. She clung to the railing with white-knuckled desperation as the chute narrowed and the storm above finally swallowed the sky whole, blinding her with a sudden wall of spray. Thunder cracked with a force that felt as if the air itself had split open, and when Mistral shouted, she could only catch the jagged shape of his words over the mechanical roar.
"I hope so too!" she yelled back, her voice instantly devoured by the engine's high-pitched whine.
Then, the world simply dropped away.
The mountain pulled back from beneath them, and for a sickening half-second, there was no resistance, no current, and no gravity. There was only air. Her stomach lurched into her throat as they went weightless, her boots lifting from the deck despite her grip. Instinctively, she reached for anything: metal, fabric, the rough texture of Mistral's sleeve, just as a gust hit them broadside. The boat twisted mid-air, and then they were falling.
The impact with the mountainside hit like a punch from a giant. Rock exploded around them while something tore free from the hull with a shriek of rending metal. The deck pitched violently, slamming Ana hard into Mistral's side as the boat began to roll.
"This is the worst plan!" she managed to gasp before gravity reclaimed them completely.
They didn't so much descend as tumble. The boat skidded over jagged stone before breaking into the dense rainforest canopy, where branches snapped like kindling, and vines whipped across them. The hull finally plowed into thick mud at the edge of the slope, but the momentum didn't stop; the entire craft gave way to a massive mudslide, carried downward in a roaring slurry of rainwater and soil. Ana lost her footing entirely as the railing was ripped from her hands, and she and Mistral went over the side together.
The world dissolved into a chaotic blur of brown, green, and freezing rain. She hit the mud hard, sliding on her side before something solid crashed into her, tangling their limbs as they rolled together down the hill, breathless and battered. The slide finally slowed to a wet, sucking stop at the base of the slope, leaving a long, stunned silence filled only by the patter of rain against leaves and the distant, dying groan of abused metal.
Ana blinked mud from her eyes, slowly becoming acutely aware of two distinct things: she was completely soaked and coated in sludge from shoulder to boots, and Mistral's face was currently pressed directly into her groin.
"…If you are checking for internal injuries," she said at last, her voice maintaining a calm that suggested deep, hovering shock,
"I can confirm that is not where they are located."
She shifted slightly, trying to avoid sliding further into the muck, and braced one muddy hand against his shoulder to create some semblance of space.
"You're alive, I assume?"
Somewhere uphill, the storm continued to rage, indifferent to the fact that they had, technically, landed.
Mistral
Ana Rix
