They climbed until the air grew thin, until Ash's wings beat desperately against the lack of atmosphere, until Kaelen's vision blurred and his lungs burned.
The bomber grew closer. Closer.
Almost there.
A warning light on the bomber's hull flashed. They had been spotted. Turrets swiveled, tracking—
Ash took a hit.
The ikran screamed—a sound of pure agony—and Kaelen felt it in his own chest, his own soul. They tumbled through the sky, spinning, falling, the world a blur of blue and brown and fire.
Not like this, Kaelen thought. Not after everything.
He reached out with his mind, with his heart, with the bond that connected him to Ash, to Seri, to Eywa itself.
Help us.
The answer came not in words, but in feeling. A warmth. A presence. A million voices speaking as one.
And then the strangest thing happened.
The bomber stopped.
Not crashed—stopped. Halted in mid-air, its engines screaming, its hull groaning, held by something invisible and vast. Vines, Kaelen realized. Thousands of vines, rising from the mountains below, wrapping around the bomber's wings, its fuselage, its weapons. Eywa had reached up and caught it like a child catching a falling insect.
The bomber hung there for a long moment, suspended between sky and earth.
Then the vines tightened.