by Jez Cajiao
We’d find out soon enough.
Grizz and I emerged onto the deck and gazed around, seeing that the majority of the gnomes were still rushing about. Yen had organized a sling to get Lydia and Bane onto the ship’s deck and was giving orders about moving them below.
I looked out across the cavern, grateful that the barricade was still halfway concealing the ship, but I realized we were also trapped in here, before spotting a complex collection of pulleys and cables up high.
I pointed to them, and Grizz followed my finger and grunted.
“Looks like they weren’t always as crazy as they are now then.” Grizz said, indicating a pair of hinges on one wall that he’d spotted. “I’ll bet a cold beer that the barricade either opens out or folds back out of the way. They’d have wanted a quick way out…”
“Yeah, but after all this time?” I asked. “Look at the trees…” I pointed to a pair of trees that had rooted into a pile of collapsed rubble and were now growing tall and strong close to the hinges.
“They won’t let the damn thing fold back, and there was too much in front of the barricade for them to open outwards…” I paused, rubbing my chin in thought. “Hey, you!” I called, and Giint turned from where he’d been playing with something. He frantically stuffed it back into his bag and half grinned, half glared at me.
“Giiiiint?” he asked.
“Yeah, Giint,” I echoed, smiling, and knowing I’d found the perfect gnome for the job. “I’ve got something you can help me with… can Giint make something explode?” His jaw dropped open, before he remembered himself and nodded frantically.
“Giiint caaan make thiiiings go BAAANG!” he agreed hastily, wiping his clearly sweating palms on his pants, and managing to smear the filth in new and even more convoluted patterns.
“Okay, buddy, c’mere,” I said, leading him to the side of the ship. “You see the barricade?” He nodded definitively. “I want you to make it fall outwards; you understand? I want it to go that way!” I gestured enthusiastically, and he frowned for a few seconds.
“Giiiint neeeed morrrre…” he said sadly, pulling a part of one of the destroyed Badunkas out of his pouch. I hastily took a step back, seeing how worryingly it was flashing, and the way cold blue smoke was pouring out of it.
“You see all those parts?” I asked, gesturing to the pile of bits that the gnomes were trying to salvage below. “Is that enough?”
He squinted, then moved quickly, his habit of bolting from utter stillness to high speed, then slamming to a halt and looking at things intensely seeming reminiscent of a spider’s freaky movement and making me even more uncomfortable around the little bastard.
“Giiiiiint have thisss too?” he asked hopefully, pointing at the bits the gnomes had already salvaged. He grinned at me in what he clearly thought was a winning way, but as wide and crazed as it was, it just made me want to taser him on general principles.
I glanced down at the gear in the hold and shrugged. Some of it was also glowing alarmingly, and the less of it I had around me, the better.
“Sure; get the gnomes below to help you as well. Work very, very fast,” I said brightly, and Grizz piped up before Giint could run off.
“But carefully!” he interjected. “It needs to go off when we say, not before!”
Giiiint underrrrstand!” Giint nodded his head frantically, then tore off screaming at the top of his lungs at the gnomes below.
A few seconds of silence reigned as they listened to his practically incomprehensible screeching, followed by a chorus of cheering, and they all started swarming the ship, unloading again.
“What did you just do?” Yen asked me anxiously, hurrying over to stand by my side, where we watched the gnomes with a sense of fascinated horror.
“I asked them to make the barricade explode,” I said finally, wincing as Yen gaped at me in utter horror and betrayal.
“Jax, you… they… no… please, by all the gods, no…” She shuddered, clenching her eyes shut. Then she immediately turned and started shouting orders to the rest of the group.
Everyone started moving, dragging Lydia and Bane below decks, and gathering everything they could to cover the few windows.
“Gnomes like three things, Jax…” Yen said through gritted teeth, when I grabbed her arm and demanded an explanation. “They like speed, drugs, and things that explode. They have it reinforced over and over from an incredibly early age that, to make anything explode, anything at all, they have to have permission. Like the way we teach kids that shitting in their pants is wrong, gnomes start teaching their kids explosions are naughty at that level. They are fascinated by fire and combustibles and would burn the world if it didn’t mean they couldn’t play with it later. They have no sense of self preservation, so when someone in a position of authority tells them to blow something up?!?” She pinched the bridge of her nose, exasperated. “Honestly, Jax, I hope I’m wrong, I really, REALLY do, but we need to get this ship ready to go, and fast!”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said, nodding towards the wheelhouse. “Frederikk is in there trying to get the ship ready to take off; he’s given a few of the other, more sensible gnomes jobs to do, but the SporeMothers probably know where we are, so we need to be able to open the barricade up as soon as we’re ready, and fucking escape. Get everyone ready in there; make Jian take the pilot’s console, then get your ass out here and get ready.”
Yen paused, then nodded firmly, clearly deciding that it made sense. All of a sudden, I had a thought and shouted to send Jian to come here first, and I reached into my bag, pulling the Core free.
“What do you think you’re doing!” the wisp hissed at me, glaring as I held the core in my hand and she reformed.
“I think I’m trying to get my people to safety, and I’m making sure you, and by extension, the Prax, can’t be taken by the enemy!” I snapped back at her, meeting her anger with my own as she swelled to a foot tall, hovering in the air over my palm, hands on her hips.
“I have survived hundreds of years in perfect safety…” she started, and I cut her off.
“Until you stupidly let a lunatic into the Vault and he almost took command, after which, he managed to use one of the artifacts you’re supposed to guard to change himself into a fucking Lich!” I snarled at her, before calming myself and huffing out a long breath.
“You know who I am, and what I am,” I said slowly, fighting to keep an even tone. “Your attitude isn’t helping, so let’s make this simple. You are required to aid me, to serve me, as part and property of the Empire, correct?” I asked her, hating that I was having to go down this route, but not having time to do anything else.
“That is correct,” she confirmed flatly, and I was struck by the attitude difference from Oracle to Seneschal and Hephaestus to her.
“Good; we’ll sort this shit out later, you and I, but for now? You are to help Jian, here,” I lifted her to see him as he approached, “to fly this ship and get us out of here. I know it’s smaller than your Prax, but you controlled that, at least in part, so you should be able to do something here. You are to give him, and me, the most aid you can. You are to help to carry out my plans and schemes, and you are to do all of this to the letter and spirit of these orders. Do you understand?” I asked, staring her down and hating that I’d had to enforce my position of authority to get her to comply. It felt like I was using slavery; honestly, in my eyes, I was, but right now, I didn’t have a choice.
The excuse of tyrants and assholes through the ages… My mind informed me.
I squashed that little voice down and ignored the sense of confusion and approval emanating from Amon. God, it was getting crowded in my head these days, I reflected, as I handed the Core over to Jian.
“Jian, I know you have little more experience than anyone else here. I know you don’t know what you’re doing, and I know that you accidentally started a war with a god last time you flew a ship…” He flinched at that last one, and I grinned amiably at
him and nodded towards the Core. “… but despite all of that, I still trust you, and I believe in you. This wisp will help you; she can advise you and possibly even help steer the ship? Hell if I know, but she will help, and you CAN do this.”
I broke off as a new sound started up in the distance, and I turned my gaze upward, seeing the light filtering down momentarily cut off as something, and then several more somethings, passed overhead. Seconds later, we heard the engines of an Airship firing, and the tell-tale hummm of engines as ships lowered into the cavern beyond the barricade.
We might be out of sight for now, but that wouldn’t be the case for long, I knew.
“Jian,” I said, turning from him and looking towards the hole in the barricade. “Go, now. Do whatever you have to, but get us up and out of here,” I ordered as I started walking forward. The final battle for the fallen Prax, ‘Glorious Retribution,’ was about to begin.
Chapter Thirty
I strode to the side of the ship, gazing down towards the barrier, then scanning around, working the place out in my mind.
The ship was around sixty meters in length, and maybe ten across at the widest point, coming in at twenty meters high, with the small decks above the wheelhouse and bridge, another five meters above that. The shattered half of the building which the ship had been hidden in was taller and wider, but not by much, and the heavily overgrown final level that rose above it had hidden most of the ship entirely from outside sight.
The cavern we were frantically organizing in was mostly hidden from sight by the surrounding walls and overhanging ceiling of the floor above; whatever this section of the Prax had looked like originally, there had been dozens of huge buildings.
Between the buildings that had collapsed, the sagging ceiling, and the centuries of storm damage and ‘garden level’ overgrowth, it now resembled a dark scar in the land from above, with trees and overhanging buildings sheltering it.
Inside the sheltering structures and plants was a deep cavern, with sections that dove back under the overhangs. I doubted the sun ever reached many of the corners. Instead, there was a constant low-level internecine war going on between the forces of foliage and the ever-present fungus.
The occasional holes and shattered remnants that let light in from directly above the ship and across the rest of the area created a dappled light source, one that would have almost been soothing, especially with the tropical breeze and pleasant temperature, if not for the very visual reminders that we were essentially squatting atop a corpse of the old Empire. A corpse that we had stirred to a semblance of life, and as that life fled again, more of the structure collapsed.
As a crash and boom in the distance echoed around the cavern, and the screech of escaping seabirds rose, I wondered honestly if there would be anything left to recover later.
I contemplated the thick trees, vines, and general foliage, and I was gloomily certain that we could have hidden for hours at least before the SporeMothers would have found us, if not far longer.
If I’d not sent up a damn dinner bell for them, anyway.
The barricade which the gnomes had built to conceal and protect the ship long ago was now, in part, holding the building up, and the greater area beyond it, where the ships were slowly lowering into, judging from the sound, was a far bigger chamber than the one we were in now.
That cavern had been formed by dozens of larger buildings collapsing. Some were now rubble strewn across the floor, while others had fallen into each other, creating lean-tos and more or less solid structures, especially now that vines and trees had secured them together.
The growth of hundreds of years had spread over them, and the slow sagging of the final upper floor into this one had created an area that was almost inaccessible by land above, yet open in parts to the sky, making it a perfect place to dock and hide an Airship.
I looked over to the rest of my small team, regretting bitterly the loss of Lydia and Bane. They were, between them, my rock. I literally relied on them, and Oracle, to keep me sane and safe.
I shook my head and exhaled, forcing the gloom and jitters away as I acknowledged that this time, I’d be keeping them safe.
Grizz stepped over to me and pulled something out of his bag, making me grimace uncomfortably.
It was my arm from earlier, or at least, what was left of it. The armor was fine, beyond the gash that had cut through the top layer like butter, but the flesh inside of it… it had decayed into a black, pungent mush that was dripping out of the gauntlet and stinking up the deck.
“Dude, why?” I asked him, frowning into his eyes questioningly.
“Old Legion trick for when you need to look like you’re stronger than you are,” he said simply, unhinging the gauntlet and separating it from the Vambrace, making a face at the rotting mush that fell out along with the blackened bones.
“Errr, didn’t think about this before…” I said, looking down. “But… could you pass me the rings?” Grizz snorted and plucked them out, dumping them to one side, where I summoned a fountain of water to clean them off. He quickly sluiced out the armor for me, then reassembled it so it looked complete and intact, pulling up small hooks that I’d never noticed before and locking them into place. Then he stepped in and latched it all back together, attaching it to the dangling section of my elbow joint.
“What…?” I stammered, but he just grinned and kept working. Finally, I realized what he was doing as he attached his own secondary shield to me. It was smaller than my normal Tower shield, whose twin Lydia carried, but it was locked in place and reasonably light enough that I could maneuver it around with only half an arm.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was a damn sight better than not having any shield at all.
“Thank you, man,” I said to him, genuinely grateful at the thought, and Grizz shrugged as though embarrassed.
“It’s an old trick; means that the injured and crippled can be put on horses and make us still look like we’re at full strength,” he said quietly.
“It also means that when a Legionnaire is in a bad way, such as a particularly bad night on the sauce, he can lock the armor and keep upright while he sleeps…” Tang added in a stage whisper from the other side, and I laughed, having a mental image of them doing exactly that when standing at attention on parade or something.
“I should have known,” Yen said, shaking her head as she watched the hole in the barricade, and I heard the shock in Tang’s voice as he asked if she’d really never done it.
There was silence for several seconds before she shrugged and admitted that ‘maybe’ she’d done it… once.
We grinned at each other, and I noted that the majority of the gnomes were flooding back to the ship now, so I took the time to direct them to strip the remaining debris off, including the dead vines and trees, as Arrin approached us slowly.
He looked exhausted, but he’d managed to burn his way through the vast majority of the entrapping plants in the time that we’d done the rest of the jobs, and as Stephanos and Miren joined us, getting their bows ready, and Tang checked his, we all met each other’s eyes, getting grim smiles all around.
SporeMothers were known to be horrific enemies, and they were all aware this fight could be a terrible one, so I took the time to speak up, noting that the gnomes were clearing as fast as they could, while shooting fearful glances at the barricade and hopeful ones at the deck hatches leading below. There was obviously little help coming from that quarter, and it was down to us now.
I passed out the last of the healing potions and mana and stood, waiting until Arrin came to us and sat down heavily on an old box.
“I’ll… be… okay…” he panted, his pale face and red-rimmed eyes showing the drain from working through his Stamina and Mana so fast.
“Rest, mate,” I said firmly. “Drink your potions, catch your breath, and recover. You can join in when they start to break through.”
“You think they’ll break through?” Tang asked me, and I nodded soberly.
> “They’re sneaky bastards, but it depends on what’s controlling them. If Arrin never needs to do anything in this fight, I’ll be over the fucking moon,” I said truthfully, peering over the side to where the last of the gnomes were backing away from the pile of fiercely glowing things scattered around the bottom and sides of the barricade.
I waited as the last of them, Giint, predictably, broke away and ran full speed for the side of the ship. Even as he scampered, shadows fell across the hole and the sunlight seemed to dim, a weak haze growing over the far side of the cavern.
A slow darkening of the area was followed by a greater shadow, as a battered old hull slowly descended, blocking out the light for several seconds. It was turned away from us, not able to see the barricade properly as it entered the cavern, and it slowly moved away, circling, and searching.
As it passed, shadows fell across it from above, dappling what little light filtered down now.
Seconds passed as we watched in silence, while Giint gibbered and grunted, hauling himself rapidly up the side of the ship, clearly terrified.
When the little gnome reached the top of the ladder, Grizz reached down and bodily hauled him up over the edge and dumped him onto the deck.
“What did you see, Giint?” I asked him, and he searched around frantically, spotting the rest of his people hiding below decks or in the wheelhouse, watching fearfully out of portholes. He shook his head frantically.
“Not seeeee! Feeeel! Feeeels dark, nastyyyy evilllls!” he gibbered out, then he nodded towards the pulsing, glowing explosives he’d rigged. “Goooo bang nowww?” he asked hopefully.
“No, not yet,” I said, shaking my head. “We need the ship ready to go, and you’re not to fuck with it, understand? Unless Frederikk says you can, no playing with anything on this goddamn ship!” I said quickly, pointing at him and glaring until I was sure he understood.
“Giiiiint be gooood,” he muttered, then started to slink away, clearly wanting to be off the deck and out of sight when the ‘evil’ arrived.
