Caroline’s reactions were faster than Aubrey’s useless warning cry. She sheared and dropped the ornithopter to the port side – but it was too late.
Dr Tremaine’s magic stopped them, mid-dive, as quickly as running into an aerial brick wall. Amid the cacophony of shattering glass and tortured metal, the ornithopter buckled, metal falling away from it in shreds.
Trapped in the now-useless machine, they began to fall.
Wind screamed through the ruined craft, shrieking with delight at their predicament. Caroline wrenched at the controls. ‘I’ve lost everything!’ she cried, but she didn’t stop punching at switches, hammering at dials, dragging on the controls.
Far below, the sea was drawing nearer. Aubrey could see whitecaps and the tiny lifeboats, the survivors from the destruction of the weathership.
Aubrey closed his eyes and tried to ignore all distractions – especially the distraction of imminent death – and tried to remember the details of the only spell he knew that could save them. The only hope was a vastly more encompassing version of his levitation spell. It needed to include his friends and him, but also the ornithopter – it would be no use at all if their descent was arrested but they were still inside a plummeting machine. He barked the syllables, realised with a spurt of horror that he’d mangled the component for duration, backtracked and spat out a new version just in time for the ocean to rise and smash them.