The Way of the Clan 9

by Dem Mikhaylov

  “My God …” I breathed, lifting both hands into my hair. “Lord …”

  “CLOUD! This is Desert Fleet!”

  A new enemy blow fell from heaven like the wrath of God.

  The black clouds evaporated, and a wide column of buzzing red fire struck the agonizing flagship.

  “Look what the bitches did! Look what did they did!” said the gnome standing nearby He clung so tightly to the wooden railing that it creaked plaintively under his grip. “Look! Jackals! Afraid to jump on the lioness alone, the smutty ghouls!”

  The magic flame did not even spare the stone that flowed and became soft, red hot, almost turning into lava.

  “Order! All away from the flagship! Immediately!”

  I did not had time to comprehend this order, as a new one arrived.

  “Fulfill the fire protocol! Shoot it with water!”

  “Hit!”

  This time we were the first to “pour” a couple of “buckets” of water onto the buzzing flames. Two powerful arrow-throwers sent two water charges into the furnace, which instantly evaporated, giving rise to a cloud of steam that disappeared quickly. But this was only the beginning. A minute later the all of the armada’s ships hit the flagship, sending tons of water at the burning stone. Then the ocean rose, and two tsunamis struck the flagship as hands beat down the mosquito — on both sides. The roaring column of the fiery CLOUD hissed, but it resisted. Still, it was weakened noticeably. The Queen collapsed into the ocean almost completely, drowning the uppermost deck. And the ocean around the Queen simply disappeared — it turned into steam, you could say. The stone island almost hovered in a steam-filled bowl of salt water. The hiss of the evaporating water was replaced by the whistle of a boiling, gigantic teapot. It was the same as throwing a white-hot cobblestone into a bucket of water.

  Raising my mouth in amazement, I watched — like the rest. The enemy phoenixes flew up. They did not mind flame. But there was the water vapor … the phoenixes fell into the ocean as wretched blackened lumps, leaving behind a smoky trace — like planes falling from the sky. The same fate befell all other winged creatures. Scalded dragons and birds fell down like rain.

  The wild howl of an unfortunate dinosaur nearly ripped our eardrums. The incredibly large body of the dinosaur lurched up, continuing to roar, and slowly fell backwards, falling behind the stern of the dreadnought, still holding in his mouth the flashing plasma ball. He was still alive, but already uncontrollable. It was hard to follow someone’s orders if you’d turned into a steamed dish. And a wonderful dish. Dice three tons of dill, two teaspoons of chopped black pepper — and you could serve it to the table!

  “Navigator to return! Transfer all skills to the Baroness!”

  “Done!” I answered shortly, pulling away from the railing and jumping to the local teleport.

  I was on the flagship. With feverish haste I transferred control over navigational abilities to the Baroness, and just as quickly stomped into my corner, where the wide wooden bench had vanished without a trace. People were running, someone was shouting something, giving orders, steam and smoke all around me. It seemed that I found myself inside a charred stove.

  “Here!” I said loudly. Without need — I thought the head of the Sleepless had already seen the messages of the system. But it was better to report.

  “Welcome back, Navigator! Five mass levitation spells under the carcass of this lobster! Now!”

  “It is done!”

  “Good! Come on! We are diving! Malice! Come on!”

  “Ay-ay!” The wheezing otherworldly cry did not resemble the voice of Malice in the least.

  The deck disappeared again from under my feet.

  “Deeper! Deeper! Malice! Take us to the very bottom!”

  “Overload! Pressure!”

  “Fie on overload! To hell with pressure! Dive joyfully into the abyss!”

  “Ay-ay, cap!”

  With the sound of the evaporating water, the dreadnought was enveloped in a steam cloud and literally dove to the bottom. Mysterious underwater creatures passed by us, glowing and huge eyed, frightened. The darkness thickened, and the red-hot stone slowly turned black and cooled. The huge stone ship shook.

  Was it possible? Now we were almost at the bottom, and the paralyzed giant with a bomb in its mouth was on the surface, forcibly held there by the powerful magic of levitation. Without any order from the BB, independent and well-trained mages gathered in the stern, and united in large groups. A pearly glow streamed from their hands. Magic protection for the coming explosion.

  An unexpected push knocked me off my feet, and I put my face against the railing. In the real world, such a blow would stun me, not to mention give me a broken nose and lips. But Valdira was more merciful than the real world. I stayed lying down — the push was repeated. In front, where my father was on the bridge, a huge red flower of light was blossoming. We fell directly into him, right into the embrace of the ghostly petals of the unknown flower.

  “This is a teleporter!” Came a cry from the screen. There was an alarm. “This was a teleporter! Divine underwater magic! They want to move you, BB! Rise! Rise!”

  “Malice! Forward!” the cry of the Baroness was very different from the cry of the analyst. There was fury in it. “Up! Up!”

  “Up,” I whispered, pressing myself against the corner of the huge rocky island that was sinking to the bottom. “It is not so easy to turn now…”

  “Up! Malice!”

  “Already doing it! BB! We do not have time!”

  “Lift us up! Raise us! Come on! Damn it! We are beaten!” The Baroness’s fury splashed out into the underwater twilight like the hot lava. “Overplayed! Overslept! They knew we were going to dive! Knew it! So they struck with the fiery CLOUD — for a greater guarantee that we would decide to go! Raise us, Malice!”

  “I am doing what I can!”

  “Everyone get ready!” I heard the Baroness’s sharply reassuring voice. “Turn off all protective magic— the divine forces will take away any magical cover anyway. Cut off all the artifacts. Deactivate equipment! And keep your fingers on activation runes! — as soon as they teleport us, immediately turn them up to full power! Mages of protection— protect only the vital parts of the hull! Battle mages and shooters— hit as hard as you can as soon as you see the enemy! Nekros — it is time! Shamans — same! Get your ghosts, rip the tops off from the coffins, split the stone sarcophagi!”

  “Ay-ay!”

  “Yes ma’am!”

  “Give them heat!”

  The red underwater flower took us in very close, and then sharply closed its petals. The bud closed. Together with us. The world became visible through a purple filter.

  “Oh,” exhaled Klest. “Oh … give us a chance … a chance for the Queen ...”

  Flash…

  The swirling spiral of red and green sent us into the other world, overflowing with writhing bodies of deep-sea creatures with many glowing eyes endowed with toothy mouths, long spines, and bizarre colorings. The panic messages of the system notified us that we were being carried far away, and that the destination was unknown …

  “A Chance for the Queen,” Klest repeated hoarsely, clutching a huge gun with its barrel buried in the mast- the magic that alleviated his weight was not working now. “A chance for ...”

  Flash…

  The greenish underwater dusk disappeared. Bright sunlight struck us. And then there was zero gravity …

  “We’re falling! We are falling!”

  We again dove — but this time from the air, not in the water.

  “Where are we?” Spat the BB.

  “There’s a sea under you! And a reef! A reef! Around is empty! I see the ships far away! Oh! We fly straight to the reef! Straight to the reef!”

  “No!” Klest’s cry merged with the cry of the Bloopy the Wise. “No!”

  I grabbed the railing with a dead man’s grip, and made an effort not to close my eyes.

  Hit…

  The terrible r
umbling, the crackling of the stone, the cries of the players, the roar of the beasts — all merged into one. To this was added the noise of seawater. I was dragged along the deck, and the Baroness flew past, someone screamed. Baroness was lying on her back, her fingers constantly moving — she was firing off some commands, obviously no longer relying on her voice. Having released one hand, I grabbed her by the shoulder and held her. She did not pay the least attention to me, noticing nothing and no one — she furiously fought for the salvation of the flagship. And I was afraid to even look at it. There was a crack on the bridge which opened so suddenly it had swallowed three players at once.

  “Bitches!” wheezed Klest, furiously activating runes. “Assholes! I hate them! Come on, my dear, come on, open your eyes ...”

  “Loo-oo-ook!” The cry of the same nameless analyst made my hair stand on end. I collected all my frail strength, pulled myself up on one arm, and stood up, lifting the limply hanging Baroness, who continued to give orders in all the ways available to her.

  Twisting my head, I quickly found a new flash far away from us. A teleport. And there it was — a huge plasma ball, no longer gray, but of a bright red color, plunged onto the water.

  “Busya,” I said in the girl’s ear, squeezing her shoulder. “Look there ...”

  “Huh? What was it, Ros ?!”

  “There … yes, you see ...”

  The head of the Sleepless looked in the direction indicated by me and froze, hanging in my arms like a rag doll.

  The atomic mine was not submerged. It swayed mockingly on the waves, shining with a promising nuclear grin.

  “It is …” the BB began.

  Flash…

  At first, all the sounds were drowned in the red glow that swept over us. And then the whole world disappeared ….

  Chapter Twenty-Eight.

  Above the wreckage flying flag …

  We survived.

  Some of us.

  The rest had to fly to rebirth and then immediately return here.

  But most importantly, the Black Queen survived the terrible blow of the magical energy.

  We were rescued by a handful of well-trained heroes who, in the chaos that had happened and at the threat that arose, were thinking not of themselves, but of the clan. It was they who saved the flagship from total destruction, although they could not protect it from the damage.

  As I understood from scraps of other people’s words, when the flagship fell on the reef, many of the guardian magicians were thrown overboard. They flew in different directions like peas from a broken pod. Although a better comparison was possible — like dry beans from a broken glass jar. In addition to them, players from other classes were left behind, but they remained in the role of spectators, and the spectacle lasted until they were destroyed. The mages floundering in the water, who found themselves between the flagship and the plasma ball dropped from the teleport, quickly realized what was happening and did not try to request an order — they began to act. There were seven thin, magical shields between the ship and the bomb. Three of them like the wall of a soap bubble. Four of them, created by the joint efforts of several mages, were more powerful. The explosion tore all seven magical walls into tatters, killed the mages, and killed those who were next to them and helped the wizards stay on the surface of the water. Then a deadly wave rolled onto the flagship itself, where it struck the eighth shield, the penultimate one. It also tore the eighth shield, and then joyfully evaporated a huge part of the side of the ship, a few warehouses, and part of the holds. Not to mention the decks, which simply disappeared on one side of the stone island. And then Malice upped the power of internal defense. This saved us.

  But the damage was terrible.

  I stood by the railing and looked down. There was the scorched, melted, shredded side of the dreadnought. A third of the ship was cut off! There was no longer a question of fixing it. The size of the largest hole was about three hundred meters in length. And tons of ocean water poured into this ragged wound. We were getting heavier every minute. The deck tilted steeply — I could not even stand. I had to lie on the railing.

  On the bridge there were only two players other than me. All the rest were downstairs, on the decks. Somewhere among them rushed the wounded tigress the BB. All of them were trying to do something … but what? What could be done with such destruction?

  “Signal received! From the Archs!” One of the magic screens announced. “They are coming at us at full speed! They pass a message!”

  “What is it?” Asked one of the men left on watch.

  “Let Navigator come to us. And the Black Queen will not be finished.”

  “Bullshit!” I involuntarily grunted.“A distraction!”

  “Surely,” the screen agreed with me at once. “They seek to divert mental focus from the main problem. This would disrupt us…”

  “You guys … you guys are morons! No offense! But you are absolute morons!” I shook my head. “To hell with it. I am on deck! I will help where I can! I will be back on demand.

  “Ok … be careful…”

  I did not listen. Jumping off the bridge, I fell onto the deck. And I picked up a small barrel with the inscription “triple-peeling butter.” An important thing, I think. Not cheap. I am afraid to think about its origin. I was going to tie it to the deck with a scrap of rope … and then move on.

  That is what I was doing in the next five minutes — saving cargo and dropping overboard all the rubbish. We kept the useful stuff, and threw out unnecessary things. Lighter for the ship.

  I understood that I was engaged in complete nonsense. Right now, we had to do something completely different — it was time to declare the “emergency evacuation” command, to open the mass teleports on stable sections of the deck if they reach the allied ships.

  There was no other option!

  We were among the enemy lines. Without the help of binoculars, I could see the alien ships approaching us. They were coming from all sides. We were surrounded. Most likely, at the cost of a monstrous amount of divine energy, we had been transferred to the enemy’s rear. They had been smart. At the bottom of the sea, the flagship’s maneuverability was zero…

  The ship was dropped directly on the reef. This had a very bad effect on our already terrible overall strength. Then the explosion. It consumed a third of us. The ship would not sail! That was it! The Black Queen had come to an end. And to be honest, I was surprised now only at one thing — why had not we pulled the reef out from under us? Why had we not notice the unnatural formation when we passed it hours ago?

  “The reef has started to move!” A shrill scream was heard.

  Exhaling, I paused for a moment, and then continued to pull a cage with a pensively hushed black fanged piglet in it from the crevice. A silent animal. I thought about the future …

  “The reef is falling!”

  “That’s it,” I muttered, rising. “Really. Unless there is a miracle ...”

  “Prepare for the evacuation!” The voice of the Baroness was almost unrecognizable. “Open teleports! Select points on the rear allied ships. If we do not reach them — release into the open sea, with boats and rafts. Hurry. Soon they will cover us with a field of magical impenetrability. We must leave before the block! And before we drown!

  The orders were clear. Perfect. But some did not heed them.

  “BB! Do not!” This was the cry belonging to Klest. “Let us stay! We can patch the baby! BB! We could!”

  “Start the evacuation!” The Baroness did not listen to Klest. I could see Bloopy clinging to his shoulder, looking at the head of the Sleepless with a sullen, hopeless face. “Navigator! Ros!”

  “Aye!”

  “You leave first. Load as much as lifting capacity allows and take it with you. We could not save the pie — try to save at least some of the crumbs. Damn … Damn ...”

  That’s right … it seemed the Baroness, this invincible iron lady with diamond hardness of character, was about to cry like an ordinary little girl
.

  “I understand,” I said, lifting a barrel with viper oil onto my shoulder, and picking up the cage with the pig with my other hand. “One of the first ones in the teleport. Then wait for instructions.”

  “Begin! Begin! Begin!” This was the roar of the Scarlet Baron, who stood up in the middle of the deck, spread his legs wide, furiously waving his arms towards the turquoise cloud of the mass teleport. “Forward! Gunners first! Go! Go! Enough clinging to the wreckage and weeping! Time to fight for the other ships! We had a lot of them! Move!”

  And the hesitant players were reluctant to move. One by one they jumped into the portal and disappeared.

  “I stay,” Klest said firmly, as I passed behind him.

  “And I,” Bloopy supported him. “We stay.”

  The menacing rumble from below was a harbinger of a new push. The ship tipped even harder, and I almost fell. The reef was disappearing. We were about to sink to the bottom.

  “Stay,” the Baroness said quietly. “The Queen must not die alone. Tell the crew — I will understand if they die and lose a level. I will understand ...”

  “Come on,” I said, gesturing to the Baroness, holding the cage with the piglet. “Let us go, BB. Time to leave the burning house. Klest, Bloopy— good luck to you, guys! Wishing you a good death at the bottom! Or in battle!”

  “Good luck to you too! See you soon!” Nodded Bloopy.

  And it did not sound simulated. We all understood that their virtual death meant little. But this was a tribute to the dying stone giant, who fought for us until the very end.

  “Faster! Faster!” Roared the Baron, his assistants supporting him with screams from other portals that opened on the decks of the Black Queen. The teleports were also in the underwater part of the ship. Everyone was in a hurry to leave before the final death. And before the magic block.