The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (31 page)

Gastropé tried to remember the names of the different worlds they were currently in: Astlan (obviously), Etterdam, Nysegard, Romdan, Avalon and Targella. Those were what they called the immediate localverse. Apparently, there some other worlds in the localverse, but the Grove was not connected directly to those. They key point of the localverse was that the rules of magic were the same in all of them. A wizard spell that worked in one of the worlds would work in any of the others. Typically, the exact same spells did not exist in each of the worlds, certainly not by the same name; however, there were analogues for many of them. Any spell Gastropé knew and had components for, he could cast on those worlds and get the same results.

Gastropé was trying to think how this must work when suddenly the room—the entire ship, in fact—rocked violently. The ship seemed to tilt aftward and to port briefly before righting itself. A klaxon sounded loudly and the mirror on the back wall suddenly started flashing: “Defensive Configuration 1.”

Trefalger ran over to the mirror and shouted at it, “Trefalger here, connect the bridge!” The image in the mirror suddenly shifted from the room to one of the mirrors on the bridge. There, several people were scrambling to clear the bridge through one door and others were running in through a second door.

In the lounge, Trevin rushed to stand next to Trefalger. “Status?” she asked.

A gnome that Gastropé did not recognize responded. “We’ve taken an aft hit from below off the port side. It appears to be an ice blast that momentarily destabilized that part of the cloud. We’ve gotten the temperatures back up above freezing now.”

On the mirror, another crewmember shouted, “Bringing generators to full. Lightning batteries will be ready in thirty seconds.”

Gastropé could hear a large humming sound; it seemed to permeate the ship. He suddenly realized that the walls of the room were getting very dark, like a storm cloud!

“Elemental water portals online!” someone on the bridge shouted.

“Elemental air portals also online, Captain!” a third person shouted.

“What hit us?” Trevin demanded.

Aêthêal appeared in the mirror, standing over the gnome. “Surveillance is detecting three storm liches on ice dragons aft and below port!” she said loudly.

Another voice shouted, “We’ve spotted two more coming up from starboard!”

“There!” Maelen shouted. Everyone in the lounge except for Trevin and Trefalger turned to look.

“Illiana protect us!” Jenn said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Gastropé felt the blood draining from his face. Down and aftward on the giant viewing lens, he could see two bluish-white dragons with riders in great black cloaks. They were distant, but approaching rapidly.

“Nysegard?” Trevin demanded of Aêthêal.

“Has to be. But we’ve never seen five of them ready to hit us, and at this altitude!” Aêthêal said.

“I thought this was too high to breathe?” Maelen asked.

Trefalger replied, “They are storm liches—being undead, they don’t breathe. The ice dragons can hold their breath for a very long time. Or so it seems; maybe they don’t breathe either. Whatever the case, they can and have attacked us this high. But never with this many.” Trefalger was shaking his head.

“Scramble carpets!” the captain shouted. “High altitude com circlets are a must!”

“We have another sighting directly ahead. Four more liches on ice dragons!” someone on the bridge shouted.

“Dungnation!” Trevin shouted. “This has to be a trap! They had to know we were coming out and the general vicinity!” She looked around.

“Gastropé!” She stared right at him, and he jumped. “We need all available hands. You were in Exador’s army, yes?”

Gastropé nodded, but he had no idea what he could do.

“Get your combat magic components and follow Zed here”—she tapped a satyr on the shoulder—“to the flight deck.”

“Uh…” Gastropé started to say as Zed came towards him. He felt the blood draining from his face. They wanted him, Gastropé, to fight liches mounted on dragons?

“Jenn, you are a thaumaturge. Not a lot of green or ground up here, but you can heal, right?” Jenn nodded. “Good, go with Talinea to the catcher carpet bay!” She gestured at a two-foot-high Sidhe of some sort. Jenn started making similar noises to those Gastropé had made. “Catcher carpets fly below and catch aetós and others that get knocked out of the sky, and heal them —or try,” Trevin explained, seeing Jenn’s confusion.

“Maelen, we’ll need you on the flight deck with a com-link to the bridge for Seeing. Be ready to heal our wounded that can’t be dealt with by the catcher carpet teams.”

“Elrose…” Trevin turned to the wizard.

Elrose nodded. “I’ll grab my stuff from my room and head to the flight deck. We are in my element up here!” Trevin smiled and nodded.

Gastropé could hear no more, as Zed was physically dragging him from the room. The ship lurched as it took another hit. Gastropé was more than a bit concerned; they were presumably at full defense now. That must have been a nasty hit.

~

“This way!” Zed instructed Gastropé. They had retrieved the bag he had prepared for combat magic back in the Grove, and now Zed led him quickly aftward along the cloudship. By this point, the walls of the cloud were darkly mottled black and gray with flashes of lightning coruscating through the walls and the parts of the floor not covered in carpet. The whine of the generators was now loud enough that they had to shout to be heard.

“Storm liches are a real pain! They are the biggest pain we typically face,” Zed shouted as he led the way. “Being liches, they are quite resistant to lightning, which is the ship’s primary ranged weapon system. The ice dragons do take some damage from lightning, mostly impact related. At least it slows them down.”

“What about fire?” Gastropé was trying to remember some of the more esoteric things he had learned. He had never in a million years expected to have to fight liches
or
dragons. That was not something normal people did! That was the stuff of bards’ tales and legends!

Zed shook his head. “Ice dragons take some damage from fire—it can melt their armor—but it’s gotta be hot! The liches are so cold that they can typically shield the dragons. Really hot fire can in theory damage them, but their intense coldness acts like very good armor. So they might as well be immune to it.”

“Crap!” Gastropé yelled as they headed up a spiral staircase to the top floor. His only real attack spells were fire and lightning based. So what was he going to do other than be dragon fodder? As they reached the top floor, he realized it was a different top floor than he had seen before. This was a good-sized room with people scrambling about readying carpets.

Zed led them to a gnome who was handing out various pieces of equipment. Zed gestured to the gnome with two raised fingers and was promptly handed two circlets. “Here, put this around your neck! Pull it apart in the back.”

Gastropé took the circlet—really, a solid neckband that was open at the back, but which appeared to have some sort of clasping mechanism. It was made out of gold and silver-colored metal with various rings of different colored stones embedded in the band. It was a tight fit, but he got it around his neck.

Zed had his on already. He came up to Gastropé and snapped the back into place so it was locked. He began twisting the colored gem bands on the circlet. “There, I’ve tuned it to the same linkage that we will use on our carpet.”

“What is this?” Gastropé asked.

“It serves two purposes: first, it’s a life support system. It will keep you warm and supplied with air on the carpet. We are way too high up to breathe otherwise, and it’s colder than a lich’s teat out there. Or almost.” Zed shrugged, realizing they would soon have to fight liches and discover how cold that might be. “It also has links to allow us to send and receive communications with others. I just set the default link to the one we’ll be using on Peter’s carpet.” He added, “There is also the general command frequency that we can all hear messages on. We try to not use it except for priority orders and instructions.”

Zed was now leading them over towards a carpet where the human boy, Peter, was adjusting straps and talking to others about to board. Peter was the combat pilot they had met on the trip up to the carpet.

“Understand,” said Zed, looking Gastropé in the eye, “this is going to be trial by fire for you—or rather, freezing in this case.  Normally, we don’t fight at this altitude. Storm liches and ice dragons are about the only thing that can attack us this high. It is just below freezing out there, and the air is too thin for even the aetós to fly. Spell casting is going to be very tricky and dangerous. They appear to have sent almost all the storm liches against us; they had to know we were leaving about now and where we were going and therefore exiting.” He shook his head. “That’s why we are sending everyone, including new people, out to fight.”

Gastropé swallowed hard and nodded, knowing his face had to be showing his terror. He had to try to suck it up. Be brave and not look like a complete imbecile. They were counting on him. He only hoped he could count on himself.

“Gastropé!” Peter called with a smile. “In the fight! Hah! No better way to learn than to jump into the nastiest battle we’ve had in centuries!”

“You are nuts, Peter!” a young woman in an extremely tight-fitting suit of stretchy material said. She glanced at Gastropé. “I am Penelope and yes, I am a nymph and yes, I can do something besides make wild passionate love for hours on end.”

“But she’s very good at that!” Zed exclaimed with a leer. She glared at the satyr. “She’s also a combat geomancer, which is something we are going to really need today!”

“Why? We are so high up that—” Gastropé began.

“Gravity sucks!” Penelope shouted and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. She then strode to a cushion on the carpet and began strapping herself in.

“She’s right. The force of gravity is still quite potent up here, and neither liches nor dragons have any real defense against it.” Peter smiled as he pointed to a cushion for Gastropé.

Zed took the very back center cushion; Peter moved towards the front center cushion. He and Penelope were in the two side-by-side cushions. “This is one of the older, smaller carpets. We are using nearly everyone today, so we’ve put some heavy hitters that don’t normally fly combat on the newer six-person carpets,” Zed told him. That explained why it had fewer seats.

“On the bright side,” Peter said, grinning as he strapped himself in, “this is the carpet I used to set my speed record. It’s a lean, mean flying machine!”

Gastropé got himself situated and strapped in; Zed double-checked from behind him. “Strapped in!” the satyr called.

Gastropé quickly began trying to shove his component bag into the pouch before him. He wished he had been able to wizardize his staff; that would have been really useful. As it was, he had a wand of fire bolts he had been barely able to afford in Freehold. It was one that was wizard-powered, meaning it had no mana of its own, but worked as a catalyst so he didn’t need the regular material components. Just some key phrases, will power and mana. Unfortunately, he hadn’t realized he’d be fighting creatures nearly impervious to fire, or he might have gotten something else. Nevertheless, what did he have that might be useful? He could do lightning bolts, but that would have to be done the traditional way and on a high-speed carpet, he’d likely fumble the spell and kill them all.

The carpet seemed to lurch as it came alive. Peter grinned. “We all good?” Everyone nodded. He smiled and turned around. “Up, up and away!”

The carpet began moving upward rapidly. Gastropé looked up to see the stormy cloud ceiling approaching quickly. He was sure they were going to crash into the roof when the clouds suddenly parted and they were up and out.

“Peter on carpet 69, we are cloud free!” Peter shouted. The link channel to the command center came online as someone, Gastropé could not tell whom, gave Peter some instructions. Gastropé, however, was lost staring up above them. The observation deck and view lenses had mainly been looking down or to the sides. He could now stare straight up into the darkest blue-black that he could imagine.

Nearly overhead and a bit to the east, mighty Fierd was a giant, angry ball of fire. However, off beside Fierd the sky was not the normal blue, but rather the inky blackness of the night sky. Only as one’s eyes dove towards the horizon did the sky turn blue. Gastropé gulped at the overwhelming majesty of the sight.

“We have our target!” Peter shouted as the carpet banked heavily to starboard. Gastropé grabbed onto the rope handle beside his seat as the carpet tilted. He had never felt this degree of motion on a carpet before.

They came out of the bank and raced over the roiling, angry cloudship, then suddenly there was open air below them, and they were diving at a terrifying speed. Up ahead he could see the small forms of the dragon-borne liches towards which they raced, below and aft of the ship.

Gastropé furrowed his brow as he watched the rapidly approaching dragons. “Zed, you said that the air was too thin for the aetós to fly?”

“Yep,” came the satyr’s reply over the linked circlets.

“So how are the ice dragons able to fly up here?” Gastropé asked.

ZZzzssstttt!
Gastropé jumped as a giant bolt of lightning arced overhead towards the lich and dragon. It appeared to only briefly hit the dragon’s wing, but he could not be sure. The odd part was that the thunder was very mild and subdued compared to the size and proximity of the bolt. Clearly the air was too thin for loud thunder, just a zapping noise.