I had a momentary mental image of Gar standing at the bar, sobbing and chugging. “Oh, well, you know. Nothing reminds me of my first time like a guy crying.”
Suri laughed, snorted, laughed some more.
“I’m a terrible person, Suri,” I sighed, stretching out. Karalti and I had hooked our sleeping rolls together. It was warm and cosy and I really didn’t want to leave, but I had a feeling that duty was just about ready to call. “Any word from Rin?”
“Yeah. She said to call you and Special-K back to base. She was able to make the weapons we need. The ships are ready and are at the castle skyport, waiting for departure.
My eyelids fluttered open, as I suddenly thought back to Ororgael’s smug, sneering voice. You will have nothing, and you are – and always will be – too weak and stupid to catch up… There’s nothing you can do to stop what’s coming.
I also remembered what I’d said back to him. The fuck there isn’t.
“Give us an hour,” I said, shifting up to lean on my elbows. “Make sure everyone and everything is ready to go. We’ll leave as soon as Karalti and I return to base. It’s time to show these Void-bitten assholes what we’re made of.”
Chapter 57
The Bashir Desert: 4 Days Later
We saw the maelstrom as soon as we crossed the mountains.
The howling pillar of black sand was half a mile across, soaring into the otherwise-clear desert sky. The Stranged storm generated its own lightning, bursts of light snapping out like whips. From inside, we could hear the distorted, haunting roars of the Voidwyrm Empress.
I stood neck and neck with the Court Mage of Litvy, Szonja the Living Flame. She was a striking older woman in her sixties, with very long, lustrous grey hair and blue-violet eyes, elegantly attired in red and dark burnt orange robes. Her name had less to do with her appearance, and more to do with her ability. She was an Arch Elementalist, a graduate of Jeun’s magical college, and her specializations were fire and air magic.
“There is a tear in the fabric of reality. That is what is causing the storm.” The sorceress lowered her spyglass, lips pursed. “Whatever foul magic Hyland used to create this rift, he cast it from a single point. Do you see the terminus of the cloud?”
I opened my eyes wide, zooming my vision to look at the top of the whirling tempest. There was, in fact, a single point of origin there. “Sure do.”
“To permanently stop this storm, we must repair that singularity.” She stowed the glass in her Inventory and nodded. “This is a job for multiple Aetheric specialists.”
“You can’t fix it?” I asked.
“Not without cooking my brains like a boiled pudding, no.” The woman dropped her hands. She wore two magic channeling gauntlets. One was sleeker and more streamlined; the other heavier, with large banded reservoirs for mana. “What I can do is create a counter-storm. The counter-storm will temporarily abate the Weirding we see before us. But I will not be able to hold it for long.”
I narrowed my eyes, squinting at the horizon. “How long?”
She sighed. “Perhaps ten minutes. Fifteen, if I don’t run out of mana or sheer physical energy.”
“Then ten minutes is what we’ve got. All we really have to do is get her out of there.” I rolled my neck, glancing back to the armada. We had twelve ships: my pair of Bathory-class, the Lockhart and the Campbell; two new Destroyers, the Salamander and the Gae Bolg, plus Lord Soma’s personal fleet. Mounted underneath us on the keel of the Salamander was a huge brass contraption that resembled a cross between a church organ and a missile battery. Large thin-walled pipes flowed up and around a graceful feminine torso, the housing for the mana that fueled Archemi’s first [Symphonic Array]. Rin had shown me a recording of it effortlessly demolishing a derelict building. Now, we were going to see if it was capable of demolishing the world record holder for ‘Biggest Maggot’ on Archemi. Both the Gae Bolg and Soma’s flagship, the Aspern, had similar weapons equipped. All the ships were loaded with cannons and mortars, and as much ammunition as we could carry. The crews were lean, with no other troops on board. There was a good chance we would lose several ships.
“Eight hundred yards!” The ship’s watchstanders bellowed back to the rest of the crew. “Ease to hover!”
“It is time, my lord. Go to your dragon and prepare.” Szonja straightened, looking steadily out across the shimmering desert. “When you see the storm abate, move as fast as you can. I will give everything I have for king and country, but I am only one woman, and this is a powerful force we are seeing here.”
“Understood. And if you feel like you’re about to blow a gasket, stop immediately and we’ll call a retreat. I’m not about to lose one of the best mages in Myszno to an overgrown caterpillar.” I gave her a brisk nod, checked all my battle operation windows, and opened up the group chat with Suri, Rin and Gar. “Salamander to all stations, Szonja is about to work her magic. All ships ready to flank. We have to hit this bitch where it hurts and we have to get it on the first try. The Voidwyrm won’t give us a second chance.”
“Roger that, Aspern on standby,” Suri replied crisply. “Our Symphonic Array is all warmed up and ready to fire.”
“Copy that, Gae Bolg armed and in position, standing by.” Gar’s radio voice was as clear and calm as Suri’s.
“Yeah! We’re down here with the Symphonic Array, and it’s looking great! Aboard the Salamander, I mean. Copy?” Rin stammered, her voice bubbly and nervous all at once.
“We’re really gonna have to teach you how to do battlefield comms someday, Rin.” Suri’s tone warmed with gentle humor. “Good luck, Hector. Try not to kill yourself.”
“No guarantees,” I replied. “I’ll bring you back a souvenir if I end up buying a farm.”
Gar let out a harsh chuckle. “Hah! Go get ‘em, ace.”
The three of us were spread over the largest ships in the fleet—the ships leading the maneuvers that would partly encircle the sandworm and start firing on her once Karalti and I led her from the storm into the open battlefield. Assuming we weren’t eaten.
“Okay, Tidbit. We’re up.” I jogged back down the ship’s deck toward my dragon. “You ready?”
“Sure am.” Karalti unfolded from her dragonloaf position, getting to her feet. She linked her fingers and stretched her wings out, casting the entire stern into shadow before she beat them stiffly against her ribs. “A boss that’s a hundred and two levels higher than me? No sweat.”
“A hundred levels higher than you, but the same level as our armada if we all work together.” I bounded up to her back and swung myself down into a kneel between her shoulders. We were full up on potions. I had healing and stamina draughts brewed for Karalti as well, three 1-gallon jars of each stowed on her saddle. There was little question that we were not a high enough level for this boss fight, and if we got caught on our own against the sandworm, we were dead. I had vivid, unpleasant memories of watching its laser beam cut Karalti’s shadow copy in half. “I saw what the Symphonic Array did to that building in Litvy, though. Blew it fucking sky-high. We’ve got this.”
“Yeah! Team Karalti! Now with extra singing!” Karalti reared her head and roared, her voice blasting through the air like a clarion. It was a signal to the ships—and to Szonja, who rooted herself in her magic circle at the front of the ship, and began to cast her spell.
Karalti bellowed again as she launched from the stern, swooping into the hot desert air. She barrel-rolled under the Salamander, beating her wings only once she had the room to wheel and stretch out. I checked over my shoulder to make sure we were below the level of the ships—and out of the line of fire of the Symphonic Array. The way the pipes were arranged, they projected sound in a very narrow band. Unless you were in its line of fire, you heard nothing but a faint HMMMMM. If you were in its line of fire, well… you probably heard that, but louder, as the weapon turned you into a fine pink mist.
“Let’s run over this one last time. We get in there, we bait the worm, we get out.”
I worked my fingers on the saddle grips. “We’re nothing but bait until the ships make contact. No attacking, no nothing. I don’t know if dragons bound to Starborn can come back from the dead, and I really don’t want to learn.”
“Me either. Knowing my luck, I’ll respawn in the Eyrie.” Karalti groaned telepathically. Physically, she was focused—pacing herself as the cyclical wind of the storm drove the air up under her wings. She let it guide her course, blowing her up and around the edge of the funnel.
The bow of the Salamander was glowing. Szonja’s circle of power, anchored between three pylons that fed mana into the enchantment, danced and crackled with electricity. The sorceress raised her arms as the power built into a miniature version of the black maelstrom, but spinning in reverse. Karalti banked around the pillar of hissing black sand, navigating the turbulence with grim determination.
There was a deep rumble from the earth as red sand lifted and rose into the air. I could smell ozone—and then an awful, earsplitting shriek tore through the sky. It was like two pieces of rusty metal being scraped slowly across one another, dialed to max volume. There was a clap, a flash, and then a roar as the maelstrom collapsed under the weight of the sorceress’s magic. The wind chopped every which way, blowing Karalti up like a piece of dandelion fluff in a stiff breeze.
“Jesus-!” I clung on at the last second as my dragon yelped, tumbling wildly. I lost direction for a moment as Karalti intentionally stalled, rolled over to her back, and twisted into a controlled dive against the blasts of air that had propelled us up. Clinging to her back like a possum, I looked past her neck and oriented on the scene ahead: Withering Rose, half buried, and the worm coiling over and through the wreckage like the world-eating serpent out of Norse mythology, Jörmungandr.
“AIIIIIEEEEE” The Voidwyrm Empress reared its sightless head, slithering over the half-buried Warsinger. Its maw unfurled like a gruesome blossom of black spines, the sensory tentacles emerging to taste the air as Karalti flew straight toward it. I got back up into my combat kneel, teeth clenched, and concentrated on my vision.
“Hey! Do you like snacks! Look at me!” Karalti bellowed wordlessly aloud as she broadcast her telepathic speech. “Tasty, tasty dragon! Get it while its hot!”
The Voidwyrm swung unerringly toward us, tentacles lashing. I tensed as its throat opened, revealing a fathomless black tunnel. The creature’s neck-hole was at least four times wider than the spine-lined gauntlet of Lahati’s Tomb. Six lines of traffic could have driven side by side down it, like the worst freeway tunnel in the world. She let out a piercing cry toward the sky, then plunged her head into the sand. The earth shook as she burrowed down, smashing through the brittle glass spires that surrounded the corpse of Withering Rose. As she did, her HP ring appeared.
“Get ready to teleport.” I tracked it as it wove under the surface of the desert. Karalti couldn’t easily look down—the shape of her muzzle gave her blind spots in the places that the sandworm was targeting with predatory precision. I stared as the bulging earth swelled like water far below. “Wait for it... wait for it... NOW!”
The mana in Karalti’s body surged, and she teleported about five hundred feet up as the sandworm burst from underneath us, tentacles reaching forward.
I leaned with my dragon as she rolled out of the way. “Suri, Rin, Gar: can you get a bead on her?”
“We need her further out from the storm!” Suri said, her voice tense. “Lure her toward the fleet!”
“I really don’t know if that’s a good idea!” I clung on as Karalti triggered Split Turn and darted away from the Voidwyrm as she rose like a cresting whale before sliding back into sands.
“We have to! The Symphonic Array doesn’t have as much range as the cannons!” Rin added. “You need to be within two hundred yards!”
“Okay, then I’m going down!” The dragon winged over into a spiraling dive. “Keep spotting for me, Hector! I have to know where the ships are!”
I replied by focusing, holding onto the saddle like a windsurfer. I tracked the ships—and then the worm, glancing wildly behind us as the Empress surged through the sand behind us. “Worm is below us on our five o’clock.”
Karalti’s shadow raced along the ground, the rippling hump of sand gaining closer every passing second. I began to silently urge Karalti up: but she ignored me, pulling her wings in and streamlining into the dive. My dragon was fast—the Empress was faster. I watched in horror as the titanic head of the thing rose up, throat gaping, tentacles the size of subway trains writhing out of its maw toward us.
“Brace for gravity!” Karalti snarled with effort, and Split Turned straight up into the air.
The maneuver was so hard and so sharp that it drove the wind out of my lungs. My vision throbbed, greying around the edges, but the Gs were just within range of my mutations. Heat turned to cold as Karalti reached the end of the boost and teleported vertically, reappearing high above the Voidwyrm Empress as it dove for us. The colossal creature slammed its belly into the ground, thrashing and whirling back around. It let out an unearthly shriek and drove itself up to snatch us from the sky—standing upright in the killzone formed by the airships.
The Symphonic Arrays charged with a high ringing sound, gathering a nimbus of golden light centered on the figureheads. Light bled from their eyes, mouths, and expanding seams on their skin as the devices reached full charge, then fired.
We couldn’t hear them – but we felt them, as Karalti see-sawed with the expanding shockwave that exploded from the sonic harpoons. The Sandworm Empress wailed as they struck her, sending molten cracks through her black carapace.
[Siren Array deals 57,481 damage to Voidwyrm Empress!]
[Voidwyrm Empress HP: 982,519/1,040,000]
“Thank goodness! They work!” Rin cried excitedly.
“What do you mean ‘Thank goodness’? Didn’t you test these?” Gar snapped.
“No! I mean, yes, kind of! I mean, we didn’t get to test them on sandworms!”
“This is an experiment!?” Gar snarled something in Spanish. I only recognized one word, and yes, it was puta.
“This thing has over a million HP!?” Karalti yelped. “Hector-!”
“Hold steady! That one barrage chopped nearly four percent off the fucking thing! Hit it again! I roared over comms, tensing with excitement. “We can do this!”
The sandworm did not like losing that much HP in one single attack. She forgot us, pivoting her mouth toward the ships. My eyes widened as I saw a familiar ball of vantablack darkness build up within her jaws, gathering with coils of energy. Karalti read my mind as I sighted down, diving for the Empress at top speed. The dragon’s lungs filled, her jaws gaped, and she sprayed a plume of fire right along the back of one writhing tentacle.
[Ghost Fire deals 1124 damage!]
Our puny attack was enough to distract the Voidwyrm just slightly, allowing the ships to peel away from the shrill beam of void energy that tore through the air. All but one of the freighters managed to get away as the beam slashed from the earth to the heavens, tracking Karalti as she tilted her wings. The freighter’s engines whined as it careened, smoking, toward the sands. It was the Lockhart.
“Fuck!” I hissed.
Karalti heaved for breath, blinking out of existence and reappearing high over the ships and the Empress herself. The great worm twisted, surging up underneath us, only to be struck from all sides by blasts from the Symphonic Arrays. It let out a warbling, ear-splitting roar as sections of its black chitin armor shattered, and knobby protrusions all over the worm’s body flared open, exposing simmering orange ichor.
“It’s catching its breath through those spiracles!” Gar’s voice crackled over PM. “Get the artillery on ‘em while the Launchers cool down!”
The ships, already to either side of the writhing worm, opened fire on his command. Cannons boomed, mortars whined, and the voidwyrm began to let out piercing, squealing cries loud enough to make my eardrums pulse. The notifications from the artillery
were not measured in individual attacks: instead, Navigail gave me a Mass Combat DPS reading: we were hitting the Voidwyrm for 1041 points per second of constant fire, but when the Symphonic Arrays went off, it jumped to over 50K. At this rate, we were picking off 1% of its HP per minute.
“Give me one of those stamina potions! While we have the chance!” Karalti wheeled up higher, her wings rippling.
“Right.” I took one out of her inventory and crawled up along her neck to her head. Gripping one of her horns, I leaned out and jammed the neck of the clay bottle into her jaws. She tilted her body to the left and climbed, letting physics do the work of dumping the potion down her throat. When she leveled out, she spat out the flask. I clambered back down, and watched the bombardment continue.
The noise coming from all sides fouled the creature’s tremorsense: it lashed its head, the petals of its mouth furling back, then swung out blindly to try and strike the airships. They were far enough away that it missed, but the turbulence threw the cannons off. I heard a shell whiff past us and winced.
[Voidwyrm Empress HP: 862,641/1,040,000]
The spiracles closed as the worm cottoned on to what was happening. Bellowing, it drew back into the earth, burying itself. I searched the ground as the earth shook... but unlike last time, the Empress wasn’t snaking close to the surface, but deeper in the earth.
“Split up those ships! Now!” I barked. “Karalti!”
“Here we go again!” Karalti tucked her wings in and dived.
Bent low over the saddle, ass in the air, I fixated on the ground. Now and then, I thought I saw the sand stir, but nothing came to the surface.
“Did we drive it off?” Rin asked, after nearly a minute had passed with no signs of life.
“No. Don’t count on it.” Eyes darting, I scanned for signs of movement—and saw them, as sand began to collapse in a circle right under the Aspern. “Suri! It’s targeting you!”
“Of course it fuckin’ is.” Suri cut off to sound the alarm—and Lord Soma’s ship veered sharply starboard, its engines flaring as he gunned it to full speed. The sand around the Voidwyrm’s buried mouth sucked down into the monster’s gullet, and a bone-deep vibration rolled through the air. A whirlwind began to form—then a full-blown tornado, sand whipping in a funnel that grew wider and wider and began to suck in everything around it. The wreckage of the Lockhart slid into its jaws, crushed into kindling. Any people who hadn’t fled out into the desert were pulled in, their screams drowned by the howl of the wind. The ships were far enough away to avoid being sucked in—but we were not.
Spear of Destiny Page 52
