The women brought down a rain of falling cones from above. Like meteors, they landed among the men, exploding into powerful saplings. The men flew about in the craters of terrible life, the plants cutting deep swaths in their ranks, grabbing them by the dozens.
Even bound, they hit and kicked, they bit the roots with their teeth; they tore the vines with their bare hands. They had no fear of death or pain. Undaunted, unstoppable, they broke free and pressed on, freeing their comrades as they went.
The thin line of women fell back in every direction. Like an unstoppable army of ants, the men pulled down the saplings sent against them by sheer numbers, climbing up and pulling free their branches, indignantly beating back the trees with their own severed limbs.
A dark shadow fell over the forest as the sun above eclipsed, bathing everything in a bloody red light.
The women grew up giant walls of thorns, the men climbed over them, their clothes and flesh torn and dripping with venom. As men passed out from the poison, those behind them climbed over them, each layer neutralizing the thorns with their own bodies. The walls became coated with a layer of unconscious flesh, and still the crowd pressed on, jumping over the top, hollering like wild animals. The more the women used their magic, the more enraged the men became.
At the gate, Privet drew his saber, his eyes cleanly fixed on Athel as she was dragged along with the retreating black guard. With every step, their attention was drawn more and more to the approaching wave of men. Solanum sang and cheered, shouting out orders to troops that didn’t exist and clapping her hands.
Talliun ran up alongside Privet, panting wildly.
“Ready?” Privet asked.
“Ready,” she affirmed.
Privet ran out into the plaza, jinking left to dodge a falling cone. Sensing him approach, the High Priestess gripped her staff and a hedgerow of stinging thistles grew up before him.
Talliun spun the tumbler in her arm, and locked the caster stone from Artice into place. She punched forward, and released a concussive silver blast of sonic energy. It sped past Privet and hit the wall, shattering the thistles and hitting Oleander, flipping her end over end into her guards.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Talliun smirked. She punched her brass arm behind her and released a second blast, this one rocketing her forward across the plaza.
Privet slid to the ground, rolling beneath a building-sized tree branch that slapped down at him from above, the leaves tearing off his vest as he rolled to his feet and kept running.
A black guard drew her pistol, but he threw a knife and knocked it out of her hand. She spun her staff and the ground opened up, a giant pitcher plant opening its acidic maw from below. He leapt over it, dodging its sizzling tongue as it snapped out for him. He came crashing down on top of her. Instinctively, she raised her staff to defend herself, realizing too late that it was a mistake. Privet slashed his saber, cutting her staff in half with an explosive crack of light, then gave her a swift kick to the throat.
The black guard fell over, clutching her neck as three more turned to attack him.
Talliun slammed into the lead one, planting her knee in the woman’s gut. Her armor bent and she folded in half, just as Talliun brought her elbow down, cracking the warrior on the back of the head.
The second punched at the former captain, hidden blades extending out of her gauntlet to skewer her. Talliun rolled sideways and grabbed the knives with her metal hand.
“That’s a new trick,” she praised.
The tumbler in her prosthetic arm spun to the Hazari stone and locked into place. Lightning poured out through her fist, traveling through the blades she gripped, and electrocuting the woman in her armor. The black guard screamed, her body contorting as the energies raked through her.
“But so is that.”
The third guard hit a rune on her staff, and a long blade slid out into place. She spun it around dramatically, but Privet wasn’t impressed. He kicked her feet out from under her and punched her in the face with his cross-guard. She was unconscious before she even hit the ground.
As Privet scooped up Athel, seven more black guards came at them. Talliun spun her tumbler to Iber, and released a gout of flame, pushing them back to avoid being burned.
She fanned it back and forth, forcing them to stay away as they made for the gates, carrying Athel.
The black guards grew a line of dragonflowers, which shot out their volatile seeds through the flames like bolts. Privet blocked the flaming shots away with his saber, Athel slung over his shoulder, while Talliun switched her arm to Sutor and created a shield of hard light, the bolts bouncing off harmlessly.
“Get inside.”
As they moved inside the gate, Privet pointed his saber at Tulip and Veronica. “Close the gate.”
“But…”
Talliun spun her tumbler. “Do you know what this one does?”
“Um, no.”
She pointed her brass fist at them. “Wanna find out?”
“No,” she squeaked.
“Then close the gate!”
As the black guard drew closer, the gates to the royal palace sealed shut, trapping them outside in the chaos as the men and women fought.
* * *
In the plaza, High Priestess Oleander was helped to her feet, shaking her head to realign her senses.
All around her there was fighting, screaming. A whirlwind of bodies and trees, of screaming Treesingers and hollering men. In some places, small groups of women were getting cut off, surrounded on all sides as they fought. The trees went wild, infected with the anger and hate of the Treesingers fighting beneath them. They swung wildly, thrashing about without thought or plan, occasionally clipping one of the Treesingers themselves as they bashed and smashed as many men as they possibly could. The song of the forest became a dark, thrombic cacophony. A war drum that beat hatefully against the red sky. The trees themselves began to squeal, half from anger, half from remorse. Some rebelled against the commands of the women, wrapping their branches around their neighbors to protect the men from attack. Others, too far from the fighting to contribute, uprooted large boulders and flung them thoughtlessly into the plaza, reducing the once beautiful gardens into a wasteland of rock and blood.
The royal tree swayed back and forth mournfully, weeping for the destruction wrought among her children.
The ground erupted upwards as Dahlia grew an enormous mushroom to her left, flinging a dozen men into the air. She grew a second one to her right, catapulting a dozen more. With a twist of her staff, the mushrooms exploded on the far side into a storm of barbs. Dozens of men fell to the ground, their skin growing purple and swollen where they had been stung.
“We’ve got to teach them a lesson,” she shouted, shouldering her staff and priming her rifle. “Switch to the lethal ammunition.”
“No, they’re valuable property,” Barberry argued, barely jumping away in time to avoid a boulder crashing to the ground where she had stood.
Dahlia leveled her rifle and looked for a target. “You’re wrong. Right now, they’re worthless.”
She found who she was looking for. Woad was atop a fallen Treesinger, binding her hands behind her with rope and kicking her staff away from her.
Dahlia grinned wickedly. “To be valuable, a stallion has to first be broken.”
She fired her rifle, hitting the man in the chest. He stood there, stunned for a moment, then stumbled forward, grabbing at the hole in his torso. He floundered through the fighting, past a giant flytrap being dragged down to the ground, past a struggling Treesinger trying to get three men off of her, past a marble fountain shattered to pieces by a falling cone.
Growing pale, he fell to his knees at her feet, and looked up at Dahlia, disbelieving. She looked at him smugly as she held up her smoking weapon.
“I…” he whispered.
“I forgive you,” he whispered, his eyes going blank as he died.
“Oh please,” she said, kicking his dead body away from her. “A woman cannot sin against a man.”
As her black guard created a rolling wave of pollen that forced the men near them to retreat, The High Priestess looked up. A mighty ironclad airship had undocked from the royal tree and was unfurling its sails, leaving to the west. Another unmoored itself, and then another. All over the island, six thousand airships were detaching themselves from the trees and leaving as fast as they could.
Oleander pointed at the gates. “We’ve got to retrieve Athel Forsythia!” she screamed over the roar of battle. “We can’t have her escape with the navy!”
* * *
Inside the gate, Athel slowly came to her senses as Privet and Talliun removed the collar from around her neck. She looked at Privet’s rippling muscles poking out through his torn shirt, and noticed the edges splattered with sap.
“Privet, I told you not to hurt the trees,” she said hazily.
Privet sheathed his saber. “You’re welcome.”
Talliun switched her tumbler and her prosthetic finger glowed red hot. She pulled it across the shackles around Athel’s wrists and cut them off.
“No Talliun, you can’t help me. You’ll be branded a heretic too.”
She threw the chains away and began working on the ankles. “I’m already a heretic. Besides, the last queen was crazy and I served her. If I can put up with her insanity, then I figure I can tolerate yours as well.”
Athel managed a regretful smile. “I suppose it runs in the family.”
“It would seem so.”
* * *
In her cave, Queen Sotol watched as the airship fleet sailed away from the forest, and over open water. Tigera ignored it, absorbed in his next move as he looked over the chessboard.
“Something’s not right here,” she noted. “Athel knows we can ground the airships.”
“It’s a huge problem,” Ryberts yelled. “Our transports are still more than an hour away. We need to ground their fleet now or we’ll lose them.”
She held up her sharpened fingernails. “Calm down. We need to find out what’s going on.” She waved her hand over the crystal array, and it began glowing with black light.
“There’s no time!” he yelled, sweat dripping down his face. “We know they had access to a Senndesian, they could have a gate prepared, ready in waiting to take them here. The whole fleet could be on top of us any moment!”
“Wait. I need more information,” she said calmly, tapping the runes.
“No, we need to act now!”
“Dev’in, silence your dog, his yapping distracts me.”
Blair laughed at that one.
Ryberts began shaking. “D-dog?”
Queen Sotol tapped the activation rune, and the array hummed to life.
* * *
In the bowls of the ironclad Intrepid, behind layers of magical barriers, the vessel’s keystone began humming erratically, alerting the attention of the ship’s Stonemaster engineer, Kyba.
“Ascend to five thousand feet,” came Captain Sykes’ voice through the call tube.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kyba grunted, scratching his dirty pants as he tapped the reflective crystals hovering in the air. The keystone hummed again, and this time spat out black fire which took on the face of the Queen.
“Engineer, I need you to go check upstairs,” Queen Sotol said.
“Upstairs?”
“Yes, something’s not right here, and I need eyes on the inside. Go up to the bridge and see what’s going on.”
Kyba snickered. “Look, lady, I ain’t taking one step outside this field,” he said, trying to pick an elusive bit of wax from his ear.
“Very well, enjoy swimming.”
“What what?”
“If you don’t do it, one of my associates is threatening to shut down your part of the flight web.”
“Are you…crazy?”
“No, but he is, now hop along, little pawn, there’s not much time.”
* * *
Queen Sotol sat back in her stone throne. Tigera looked worriedly at the chess board.
“Look Dev’in, you may trust her, but I don’t,” Ryberts said, his jowls quivering. “I’m going to power down the nodes east of Wysteria while we still have the chance.”
A new droplet of black tar rose up, this one containing the image of Koriar, King of Boeth. “You cannot turn off the flight web,” he stated firmly. Each one of those ships has a Stonemaster engineer onboard. My people, people who have loyally served you. Do you mean to murder six thousand of our own?”
Queen Sotol moved her pawn. “Certainly not, they are a significant asset.”
“A-asset?”
“We’re running out of time!” Ryberts argued.
“I must admit, I concur with Ryberts,” Jennat insisted.
“She says wait, so we wait,” Dev’in said, picking at his skin.
All the other Kabal leaders prickled at the notion.
“Do we take orders from her now?”
* * *
Inside the Intrepid, Kyba furtively crept up the ladder and looked around. The crew quarters were completely vacant. Empty hammocks swung lazily as the ship rocked in the skies. Foot lockers stood open and empty. The galley sat beyond, barren and unstocked.
“Ishi’s hammer!” he swore, pulling himself up.
He moved faster now. Looking out the porthole, he could see the shores of Wysteria disappearing behind them. The ship was moving at a good clip, but was eerily devoid of life and crew. He took a chance, poking his head out. The guns were gone, having been replaced with lengths of wood painted to look black. From a distance it would be quite convincing, but up close they were most obviously fake. The stacks of cannonballs beside them were painted coconuts. Around him was a huge formation of ships, but he could see no crew on any of them. In fact, those close by appeared to have fake guns as well.
Now panicking, he ran to the bridge, and found no guard there. He kicked in the door, and found the wheel under the control of a clockwork mannequin.
“By the chains…what is this?”
* * *
Inside the royal tree, Athel and Privet looked on as Elisa Hackenvaughn stood there, connected to a room full of generators. On her arms, she wore her clockwork gauntlets, the vacuum tubes humming with energy as she reached out, as if gripping an invisible ship’s wheel. On her head she wore multi-lensed goggles that let her see out from the mannequin’s eyes.
Athel glanced out the window at the airship fleet, moving in perfect formation.
Nikki stood there, watching them carefully with her spyglass. “They’ve cleared our airspace,” she reported.
“Have the fleet turn south by southwest,” Athel commanded.
“Aye,” Elisa said excitedly. Carefully, she moved her hands as if spinning a ship’s wheel, and all the airships turned in perfect unison, now heading directly for Boeth.
“Maintain this altitude,” Captain Sykes ordered into the mounted crystal, his voice carrying through to each vessel.
Elisa giggled delightfully. “Who says Almany magic is only good for making clocks? He he he!”
* * *
The crystal array went wild as Kyba yelled back into it, huffing and puffing so hard he was barely audible.
“Be quiet, everyone!” Queen Sotol said, holding up her hand to the floating orbs.
“My Queen, there’s no one on the ships,” Kyba said again.
Queen Sotol stood up. “What?”
“There’s no sailors. They’re all empty. All of them. They’re being piloted by some sort of machine puppets.”
Alarm passed over her face. She turned back to Rybert’s orb,
but no image was there.
“Where’s Ryberts?” she asked.
“He’s left his post,” Blair noted.
“Someone stop him! NOW!”
* * *
Ryberts ducked under a dripping stalactite, and entered a room of carved obsidian, ghostly faces trailing along the walls and gathering at the center of the ceiling, where it dripped down onto the dark crystal floating there.
Grabbing the pair of tongs, he reached in and snatched the crystal. The stream resisted him, voices and faces wailing in ghastly voices. He pulled with all his strength, and the crystal broke free. The stream evaporated, and the faces leapt away, circling in the air before boiling away into fume. Slowly, the whole room went dark.
* * *
Five thousand feet above the west sea, Kyba ran along the deck towards the lifeboats, when he suddenly lifted up off the deck. It was such a strange sensation of being weightless. He was floating. His chubby legs kicked helplessly as he lazily spun in the air, and a part of him almost enjoyed it, until he saw a cloud whip past him. And then another.
He wasn’t flying, he was falling.
Six thousand airships were falling in unison down towards the thirsting oceans below. He managed to grip onto the gunwhale and pull himself over, just in time to see the broiling seas rushing up towards him.
“Well, this is crap.”
The Intrepid slapped into the water, its frame compressing and buckling, the shockwave pushing the seas out like a bowl. For one agonizing heartbeat, it sat there, the displaced water rising up around it, then the waters snapped back into place. The ocean squealed in delight, tearing away armor plates, reaching inside portholes, wrapping long transparent tentacles around it in a deadly embrace. Everywhere the water touched, the materials sizzled and boiled.
The ironclad warship Intrepid imploded in on itself, its various components dissolving away. All around it, the same process was being repeated, six thousand times over, as the largest naval fleet in the world was shredded to pieces in a matter of seconds.
The shrieks of joy could be heard for hundreds of leagues in every direction.
* * *
In the cave, Queen Sotol slammed her fist down into the stone arm of her throne. “Ryberts, you bug-licker! Now we can’t send our own ships to or from Boeth either! You’ve trapped us here!”
Isle of Wysteria: The Monolith Crumbles Page 51
