Free The Fifth Dawn by Cory Herndon

whole world. Makes it so you can stand on the inside and fall ‘down’ toward the surface, or—”
    “Stand on surface and fall just plain down, huh?” Slobad said. They were drifting like feathers now, almost floating. The wreckage above them had become a slow-moving chaotic swirl, like a handful of sand released underwater. But these grains of sand were jagged, twisted, and occasionally burning. Even if everything dropping down the lacuna came to a stop in midair, which was looking inevitable, it would still leave them floating in a deadly mess of metal with very sharp edges.
    “Slobad, we have to get to the wall.”
    “How?” Slobad asked. “Can’t swim through air, huh?”
    “If we get there, we can stand. Remember the last lacuna?”
    “Right, we run down inside. Been trying to forget that,” Slobad said.
    “Well, if we can’t outrun that falling metal, you’re going to forget everything you ever knew, and so am I.” Glissa flapped her arms and kicked her legs, trying to get closer to the side of the tube. Slobad yelped and finally let go of her leg. Flare, why had she kicked out to the center in the first place?
    Glissa’s efforts didn’t help much. She got a few inches closer, but it was slow going. She needed a push, but the far side of the lacuna had to be half a mile away.
    “Hey, have idea, huh?” Slobad said, floating alongside.“Watch.” He reached up at the nearest hunk of shattered leveler, and pulled himself closer to the wall. Then he caught another piece, carefully, and pushed himself closer, repeating the process. Glissa thought he looked like a bottom-feeding scavenger fish pulling itself along a silvery river bottom. Glissa reached up and grabbed her own hunk of leveler, careful to avoid the sharpest parts, and pushed off, floating after her goblin friend.
    “Slobad, your gift for finding obvious solutions is vastly underrated,” she said.
    As soon as she made contact with the lacuna wall, Glissa felt gravity shift again, this time becoming stronger and pulling her upright—with her feet flat on the wall. A chunk of construct smacked her in the back of the head. “Ow!”
    “Duck,” Slobad said, a little too late.
    “Thanks.”
    Slobad extended his hands. The left contained a small, sharp piece of metal that looked like a leveler mandible yanked out at the root. In his right he held, point down, a blade that Glissa knew had recently been attached to the forearm of one of the deadly constructs. “Which one you want?” Slobad asked, though Glissa could see his right arm was drooping under the weight of the severed scythe blade.
    “The big one, I think.” Glissa said diplomatically, and took the proffered weapon. It was a little off balance, but felt surprisingly good in her hand. The blade had not broken off, but had been severed—by what, Glissa couldn’t say, but she suspected it had been a piece of fellow leveler—just below the joint of where it had been affixed to the construct’s limb, leaving just enough metal to form a hilt. Not perfect by any means, but better than nothing. It would go through Memnarch’s chest, and that was the important thing.
    “Better do this if we’re gonna do it, huh?” Slobad said,tucking his improvised dagger into his belt and marching off toward the far end of the tunnel. The goblin was going to waste no time getting clear of the remaining leveler wreckage. Glissa set off after him before another of her fallen enemies could get posthumous revenge.
    They made good time down the long, cavernous lacuna, though the walk was long. Unlike the older tunnel under Lumengrid, this one was fresh and free of moisture and muck. Glissa was surprised to see wiry mosses and flaky copper lichens growing bountifully on the lacuna walls, and patches of soft Tangle grass sprang up every few feet.
    “Glissa?”
    “Yeah?”
    “How you going to kill Memnarch, huh?”
    Such a simple question, and one she was going to have to answer soon. For now, she