“Going in.”
The last Delphan marine had just raced up the stairs from below, the vast majority of them pouring out of the hold to get on the ground, while crossbowmen stayed up high on the deck. They were looking out there for targets, trying to keep their strings dry, while doubtless the Siricilans just brought out dry strings and stayed under the trees for now.
They were good, too. The Delphans were lit up by their own torches, couldn’t see shit in the rain, and made targets of themselves.
I was inside and flowing down the stairs in silence before the first one dropped and the rest realized they were being idiots and they needed better spotter lights.
Down the stairs, fast look into the corridor, off to the left, turn right…
Hey, there were two guards in front of a metal door in front of me, looking rather surprised as an elf all in tight not-quite-black was suddenly in front of them.
Lasa Spina flicked on, no zuumm sound this time, trailing vines and petals as hard light sliced across and took both men through the throat, barely slowing in the slightest as it did so. My hair caught my dropped Saber as I grabbed their corpses, their eyes still wide and watching as I lowered them down so there’d be no extra sounds, blood just starting to flow out the perfect cuts through their necks before carotid pressure really got a crimson flow started.
Spina flipped back into my hand, then crimson and black sliced through the metal lock, which I opened up and barreled through.
The ship’s engineer was right there at three o’clock around the massive crystalline sphere that was the heart of the drive system for the airship. I absolutely ignored him as he blinked and stared at me. Delphan Ship’s Engineers were mages and he was essentially a non-combatant at this point. I leapt to the railing as I reached over my back, pulled out the explosive charge, and then slammed it against the sphere with my weight, smacking it into place.
A twist and I pushed back, spinning around, and sprinted right back out the door as the mage gawked.
10 clicked over to 9 on the display. The engineer took a couple seconds to figure out what was going on, then he panicked and screamed, bolting for the door as he realized what was about to happen.
I didn’t bother to go up the stairs, because that meant I would have to jump from the top deck, which was dumb. Nope, Arcane Fist meant my lightfoot was as good as a monk of equal level, so I just ran down the main hall of the ship as the screams of the engineer chased me, right for the main hold where the Delphan crew turned to look curiously as I burst out of the hallway, ran right past the men being held in reserve there, down the ramp, and was out into the night before they could do much more than shout after me.
There was a distant boom. I turned my head sideways and smirked as Nysha’s explosion went off first, a writhing ball of multi-colored arcane energies going up and blowing the Delphan airship in half from within. There were some severe protections on the walls of that room… the floor and ceiling, not so much.
Mine followed a second later, looking quite coordinated, but more an accident of timing than anything. I was out into the forest, ignoring the fighting on the north side, more fighting starting on the south side, and more men racing after the archers who’d snuck in, while wondering if they should try to chase after us as well, though we were long lost to sight.
“Got me a captain in me sights,” Ilkers spoke up on coms, even as I shifted my racing feet and pulled a Necklace with small, bright rubies hanging from it. Vroom vroom! My nightsight was naturally excellent, even if I had my Mask turned off as something recognizable I didn’t want to be identified by.
My hair grabbed the rubies, I pulled and yanked all of them off the Necklace, the golden links evaporating in my hand as they went active.
“Formation about to go down!” I hissed.
No non-humans on the Delphan crew. So sad. A rakasta really would have helped their night vision out…
Their attention was mostly towards the cavalry pushing into their infantry line, both sides going at it energetically, the Delphans plainly not having a lot of experience at the task, but at least some of them were using spears. The Siricilan riders were using lances and sabers energetically, plainly quite used to this, and it was getting bloody.
I came out of the night, jump-dove right over the top of the guard in front of me as he swung instinctively, landed behind him without really slowing down, grabbed my hair and flicked it upwards as I came into the clearing, letting go of the gems.
Bright red stones caught the firelight as I ran through the Formation they were making, drawing a lot of attention as they were whipped sixty feet up, and then came falling back down to the carefully cleared and packed earth there.
No Magic didn’t apply to everything, and that included impact-triggered magical grenades.
Eight different Fireballs, in four different colors for their intensities, detonated behind me and really lit up the night. Flattened into hemispheres against the ground, they expanded for thirty feet in all directions from their blast points, really messed up that Formation they were making, and sent burning corpses flying in all directions.
Lasa Spina flicked on and off as I ran right past an arrogant fellow in ornate robes bearing a big staff. He looked rather amazed at the spectacle of so many Fireballs going off in front of him, thinking that was impossible.
Lasa Spina swept across his throat as he blinked at the blur of black attire, crimson-and-black light snapped on and off, and then I was away and between his bodyguards as they screamed and clutched at the stumps of their arms, their swords falling away as I was heading into the woods and Spina was stowed again.
Shouts in the distance went up that Captain Rallovod was down.
“Everyone out as you can. Burn a Potion if you have to. Back to the rendezvous and leave this mess to them now.”
Clicks copied back to me. Sips were made of Potions of Invisibility, only ten minutes of being unseen plenty of time to get everyone out of the threat zone.
I was fairly sure the last captain wasn’t going to last the night with other skulkers moving through the woods here, but we’d see.
I was confident I was the last one out, hanging back in case someone called for help on coms, but nobody did. The zumm of Lasa Spina announced me to the waiting circle, a headcount indicated everyone was there, and I just pointed and led the way, having the best night-vision in this group by a significant margin.
There were cavalry outside the forest here, looking wet and nervous and mean at having to be out here in the rain, but competence didn’t come with sitting horseback. In this area, it usually meant you were a mage, or your family had money.
If you were a mage, we definitely weren’t scared of you, and everyone had rifles out, with the colors turned up into the UV so as not to be visible to just about anything. It wasn’t a sustainable thing, burning out the focusing filter fast and necessitating a replacement after only a dozen shots because of how UV degraded the lens, but it worked for snipers and if you really didn’t want them to see where you were firing from.
Of course, if they had ultravision, UV gave position away as easily as using a visible laser, but that was fairly rare, and weren’t nobody using magical beasts right now unless it was required.
Also, Duum had ambled out of his cover and was only a quarter-mile away. If things went crunk, he could be here in seconds and make this place really messy, really fast.
I heard horns blowing, and knew an Argencal cavalry troop had just taken the Siricilans from the north. More local troops were likely converging on the fighting after the big fireballs went up hundreds of feet in the air and announced something was going on.
Wasn’t our problem at the moment.
We threaded our way past the sentries, Nysha and Reed covering our tracks at the flank, and extracted ourselves from the conflict.
Duum was plenty strong, but he couldn’t carry all ten of us, so we had a lot of hoofing to do to get to a clear space where the Swanwing could wing in, pick us up, and we could get out of here.
It was fine. Just another stroll in the dark and the rain as Siricilans and Delphans killed one another on a different battlefield.
“It was a master’s class in doublespeak. Apparently some Delphan airships had managed to conceal themselves only miles from Skyhill, doubtless with the intent to take over the city with the help of traitors from within, and had even managed to recruit a large local force of mercenaries to them.
“It was a hard-fought battle when they were discovered, but the Skyhill garrison and its noble warriors managed to defeat them all, and even managed to cripple and burn the Delphan Airships during the fighting. The bodies are all right there, but they are being burned soon to prevent disease, of course. Plenty of observers saw them, and strangely enough, all of the mercenaries were indeed without identification.”
I was enjoying a hot bath at the moment, as were the rest of the team, as we’d really stunk after miles of running wet and being packed into a swanship. Still, hadn’t removed my Earring-com.
“And Prince Guilimani can’t claim otherwise without admitting he invaded Iendyl and had the Siricilan mercenaries there to do it,” I nodded to the air, wonderfully stupid Zanzyran rights of Princes having their day again. “Any Delphan survivors Argencal will just recruit into his own forces to cover his losses, they aren’t going anywhere.”
It was the fourth day of No Magic, totally unprecedented in any history, making many wizards very nervous that it might just last forever. Many elves weren’t much more confident. I imagined whole nations of them were feeling pretty damn crippled right now, including Sidheduiche.
They didn’t have Pyramids helping protect them, after all.
“I imagine the Bleaklanders are harrying the northern reaches of the Relarin right now, and the Sidhe are barely able to harry them in return,” I inquired of Princess Brittabelle. Since she was Wish-Perfected, she had much less trouble moving around than most elves did right now, and that held true for her personal guards, too. Among other things, that meant she was still visible now, whereas the Colorajo had all retreated to their towers and mansions and guards. The fact was making quite an impression… particularly since her noble human peers were totally unable to take her in a martial fight, either, giving her quite the intimidating presence right now.
Yes, the elves of Erendyl were indeed not like other elves. I patted myself on the back smugly.
“That is correct. They are springing a lot of tricks and traps, annoying them and slowing them down, but nifloids are moving further into the Relarin than they’ve managed to in decades.” Traditional elven superiority relying on familiarity with the forest, archery, camouflage, and magic was naturally hampered by no spellcasting and a forty percent loss of muscle power. Only the toughest and strongest elves could move around with anything approaching speed, and they’d likely had to swap a great many of their bows for those of younger or weaker elves so they could draw them readily!
Sidheduiche wanted nothing to do with science weapons, and we weren’t going to press them on it. The Shaden, however, were making some inquiries about them, in both defiance of their ancestors and rough acknowledgment that their god had been exposing them to technology for millennia, which was extremely ironic.
Plus, watching some Rangers and dwarves being able to shoot stuff down with rays of light was pretty cool, and they were already rebels against their past, what was one more thing?