Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Two — Befriend Them with Lasers
Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Two — Befriend Them with Lasers
“Can we expect them to be violent?” Bastion asked.“We suspect they will not stop themselves from acting violently against the little shard. They may even extend that violence to you, though they should refrain from killing you. The Crying Mountains have an amicable relationship with Wallwatch; we would not want to disrupt that over an internal matter.”I translated that for Bastion even as I ran over to the bed and tugged the sheet off the top. It was a bit raggedy, but not that bad. A big red blanket made of woven cloth. “Moonie, I’m going to cover you in this. Maybe if we’re lucky, they won’t notice that we’re carrying you.”Moonie bobbed up and down. “That seems amusing.”I grinned as I tossed the covers up and over the cry, then pulled them snug around them. It didn’t take long to tie it all up in a bow around Moonie’s side.“Good thinking,” Bastion said. “Mister... Blue, perhaps you should leave as soon as we’ve left. I’ll give you a signal. Try to keep them occupied for at least half a minute, that should be enough for us to get a good lead.”“We understand,” the larger cry said. They hovered over to the door, while Bastion beat his wings and climbed closer to the ceiling.“You might want to leave some silver behind, for the window,” Bastion said.“Huh, why?” I asked.“Close your eyes,” Bastion ordered.I ducked my head and squeezed my eyes shut a moment before the window above exploded and sheets of glass rained down onto the floor. A few pieces thumped against my captain’s hat and my ears, but I flicked them away with a twitch.“Let’s go!” Bastion called. He had his sword half unsheathed. I suspect he’d used the pommel to break the glass.I nodded, hugged Moonie close, then jumped up and out of the top.“Mister Blue, go!” Bastion said a moment before he flipped out of the room. The Walled Inn’s roof was all tin with windows cut into it for every room. I saw some flickering candle light from a few of them. They didn’t all get sunlight, not with another set of homes right above the inn.I glanced up at the huge iron struts keeping the floor above in place. “Which way?” I asked.Then something hummed behind me and I half-turned to see one of the cry floating up. It glowed, and before I could process, a scarlet laser fired out of it and right at me.It met a crystalline wall that snapped into existence right in front of me. It was like a huge, spiky snowflake that bounced the laser off and allowed it to cut a slice into the inn room some metres away.I gasped. That had been close. I could recall using Cleaning magic to kinda dissipate a laser before, in that Glass Dungeon, but this laser was faster... somehow, and I wasn’t expecting it at all.“We are afraid that we cannot allow you to harm the broken shard, nor the soft ones,” came Blue’s crystalline voice.“Let’s go!” Bastion said.The sylph took off, heading not in the direction of the docks, but right towards the huge wall.I eyed a few beams holding up the homes and structure above, then leapt out after him. “Bastion, the Beaver’s that way!” I said with a nod to the west end of the city.“We need to lose them first,” he said.Was it that bad?I jumped, aiming for the roof of what looked like a shop. I never made it since Bastion rammed me out of the air.I eeped, then gasped as a laser zipped by so close I felt my tail warming up. I pushed my cleaning aura out, hoping that it would at least dampen the attacks a little the next time they came so close.We fell down a level, narrowly avoiding a catwalk before crashing onto a busy road, right in front of a bunch of people who gasped and squawked at our landing before them.I rolled to my feet, ignoring the bit of discomfort from the rough landing. “You okay, Moonie?”“Yes!”“Come on!” Bastion said.I patted down my skirt with one hand, hugged Moonie closer to my side, then followed after Bastion as he cut into the crowd.It wasn’t really much of a crowd, which was unfortunate because I saw one of the cry flying closer, with a dozen snowflake disks around its middle that were glowing and sparking. It spotted us running a floor below, and dropped down to be on our level.“Duck!” I called out before a pair of reddish beams snapped out and burned some holes into the wooden walls of the buildings behind us.Most of the people on the street never even noticed, but some did, and they started to scream and run away, which got everyone else moving too.“Up!” Bastion said. He pointed to some carts ahead with little tin roofs over them. They were selling bolts of cloth and some tools and all sorts of knick-knacks.I jumped after him, running across the top of the carts, then Bastion leapt onto the roof of a nearby shop and I followed after him. The cry swooped down after us, but Bastion dropped down the opposite side of the roof and I followed him before I could get lasered.There wasn’t much of a road here, just a narrow catwalk, a grated floor and some wooden rails overlooking the next couple of levels down the city.“Faster,” Bastion said.I took a few big gulps of air. I was in better shape than I’d ever been before, but this was still a lot of excitement for me.Bastion pointed up a level once we were behind a fairly tall building. “That strut, then up there,” he said.I squinted up, and saw the strut he was talking about. A big metal X that repeated over and over down the length of the city. Above that was another road, with a much nicer rail around it.Bastion took off and flew straight up, sword coming out of his sheath.I hopped up onto the rail, bunched my legs under me with a hefty chunk of stamina, then shot up to the strut above.My shoe gripped onto the edge of the beam and I immediately launched myself up a level.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.A glance back revealed Bastion flying in a quick loop around a reddish beam sent his way by the cry. Then he sliced a laser beam apart with a swipe of his sword.I blinked.That... wasn’t possible, was it?“Go! I’ll catch up!” Bastion said.I nodded and took off running.The big advantage of Wallwatch was that there was always an easy way to know which direction was which. The huge wall was kind of impossible to miss, and it was more or less to the north of the city.“Are you okay?” I asked Moonie as I ran ahead.“Yes! This is exciting, if a little dark.”“Oh right, sorry,” I said. I tugged at the blanket, at least until I uncovered the top of Moonie’s... body. “Uh, where are your eyes?”“Cry have no eyes.”“Okay then,” I said. “Can you see now?”“Yes.”That was good enough for me. I could ask a whole bunch of questions once we were safer. I found a stairwell and then raced up to the top until we broke out onto the topmost floor of Wallwatch. “There!” I said as I saw the Beaver sitting pretty in the docks; the ship’s bright blue balloon was impossible to miss.I skipped from roof to roof, then leapt down onto the wooden pier and landed with a heavy thump next to some sailors who recoiled in surprise. I called out my apologies as I sprinted for the Beaver.Amaryllis saw me coming, and looked terribly unamused as I jumped up and landed in the middle of the port deck. “Now what?” she asked.“We...” I took a moment to gulp in some air. “We need to run, a little. Fast?”Amaryllis rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “The World hates me,” she said. “Awen!”Awen’s head popped out of the hole at the back of the other deck. She had grease stains on her nose and looked a bit confused. “Yes?” she called back.“Get everything ready! We’re heading out! Clive! Get everyone in position; we’re leaving right away. Broccoli, where’s Bastion?”“Uh,” I said.Looking up, I noticed a few red flashes in the air, and if I squinted I could make out Bastion weaving and diving in the air while a cry followed him, firing lasers that Bastion kept dancing around.“Right there,” I said as I pointed.“Oh, for the love of... put whatever that is away then get to helping. You’re the captain, you should be acting like it!”“Yes, ma’am!” I said before darting to the back of the ship. “Hey, Moonie, I’m going to put you in my room for a bit. There’s a nice view out the window. Uh, try not to get into too much trouble, alright?”“Understood,” the cry said as I practically stumbled my way down to the lower deck and squeezed past two of the Scallywags who were moving up.“Trouble above!” I said. “All hands on deck!”I stuffed Moonie in my room. It was a little rude not to give the cry the full tour, but there wasn’t any time for all that.“I’ll be back once things quiet down,” I said.Moonie bobbed up and down, which served to get that blanket to drop. “Thank you.”I grinned, then clicked the door shut before racing back out onto the main deck. Everyone was running around, unmooring the Beaver and prepping him to take off. I saw Steve struggling with one of the ropes and rushed over to help.The Beaver’s engine roared to life, and I saw Clive pulling on a few levers to keep us steady as we undid the last of the ropes holding us in place.“We’re free!” Gordon called.A building nearby exploded, and we all glanced over in time to see Bastion flying out of the fire on a direct path for the Beaver. He landed on the deck, boots skidding across the wood until he came to a full stop and panted. “We should go,” he said, calmly.“Clive! Full reverse! Get us some height!” I didn’t know how high the cry could fly. Hopefully not as high as the wall, but I sorta doubted that.“Aye, aye!” Clive called a moment before we started to pull out of our mooring.“I’m going to go prepare the ballistae!” Awen said before she darted away.I blinked after her, but decided we had bigger concerns.Bastion swiped his sword along the length of his sleeve to clean it, then slid it back into its sheath. He looked uninjured, though his pant-legs were a bit singed here and there from what had to be near-misses. “That was some good practice,” he said.“I hope the rest of us don’t need to practice that much,” I said.The cry that had been after Bastion appeared by the docks, but we were already backing out pretty quickly, and there was a good hundred or so metres between us. Surely they wouldn’t...I ducked as a red beam flashed out and cut a black line against the side of the Beaver’s hull. “Oh, shoot!”Lasers didn’t have a range.“Amaryllis! Can you do magic to protect us?” I asked.She eyed the cry, then grinned. “Sure,” she said.I had a bad feeling in my tummy a moment before she pulled her knife-wand out and pointed it ahead.I wanted a shield. Instead Amaryllis fired a thick bolt of lightning that snapped out with a boom so loud and strong my ears flipped back and I was pretty sure she gave the Beaver a bit of a speed boost.“Amy!”“It’s proactive protection!” she said.The dust around the dock cleared, revealing another crystalline snowflake shield. It dropped, and a red beam snapped out and punched a fist-sized hole into our balloon.“Oh no,” I said. “Steve, Gordon! Get to that. Clive, more speed! Amaryllis, be a bit more proactive!”Amaryllis cackled.“But-but not too proactive!” I said.The Beaver tipped backwards, rear pointing towards the ground a moment before the engine burped, stopped, then sent the propeller spinning in the other direction.Amaryllis leaned off the side and flung magic back at the docks, enough to keep the cry busy shielding itself.I couldn’t help but laugh as we took off and shot into the sky as fast as our little ship could manage. Not the ideal start to an adventure, but certainly an exciting one!
Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Three — Warning: Rocket Launch Detected
Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Three — Warning: Rocket Launch Detected The Beaver Cleaver leapt over the Grey Wall, all sails out to full and engine roaring to help us defy gravity just a bit faster.I clung onto my captain’s hat and stood with my legs spread out for maximum balance. The entire ship was aimed skyward, so that we’d gain as much altitude as we could. We’d made an escape. And in doing so, had left Blue behind. I felt a little bad about that, but I think the cry would have been happy with us getting their charge out of the clutches of those other cry.They could fly too, so it wasn’t impossible that they’d be able to catch up, or at least meet up with Moonie on the Lonely island.“Captain, he’s starting to struggle,” Clive said, cutting through my introspection.“Struggle how?” I returned.“Not enough thrust to keep it at this sort of pitch,” was the quick reply.I nodded. “Level us off!” I said before I jumped to help. With Steve and Gordon both hanging onto the balloon to patch it up, that left our crew two bodies short for doing things like adjusting the sails.We tilted a bit to one side as the sails on the opposite side were adjusted first, but soon the Beaver was returning to an even flight across the skies. It was pretty cloudy at our altitude, with big puffy balls of white cotton floating past us. That was great; it would make it harder for anyone to track us, though the engine did leave a faint black trail in the sky behind us.Maybe I could spray some Cleaning magic on the exhaust to mask our trail?“Captain, permission to slow us down? I don’t want to tax the engine,” Clive asked.“Granted!”We slowed down, and the wind didn't tug at us quite so much and it became a lot easier to move about. I saw Steve and Gordon climb down the front of the balloon, then rush across the ship to get to the opposite end, where the exit hole still needed patching.“Hey, Clive?” I asked as I got closer to the harpy. “Are those two holes going to be a problem?”I couldn’t entirely see the patch the two harpy crewmates had made, but it looked pretty good to my untrained eye. A green square about two handspans wide that clashed a bit with the bright blue of our balloon.“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Clive said. “We have some compressed gas in the hold to replace what was lost.”“The holes are patched!” someone squeaked. I turned and blinked up at Steve who was giving us a wave. “We shouldn’t be losing any more!” he squealed.I smacked a hand over my mouth. “Do... do we use helium in that balloon?” I asked.“Yes,” Clive said. “It’s the safest gas to use for airships. Cheap too, if you know a good alchemist.”“Oh, cool!” I said.“Broccoli,” Amaryllis said. “Do you hear that?”I titled my head to the side, bun ears twitching this way and that to better make out any noise. It didn’t take much to hear what Amaryllis was talking about. A sort of hissing roar, like a gas burner that was lit one room over. It came from somewhere behind us, in the direction of the Grey Wall.I ran to the Beaver’s side and leaned over the rails, one hand holding my captain’s hat in place so that it wouldn’t get whipped away by the wind.My eyes narrowed, searching the clouds for whatever was making that noise. The wall was already quite a ways behind us, though it still loomed huge, hiding the horizon behind its bulk. The lowest of the clouds hovered just below the top of the wall. That’s where I saw the first glimpse of whatever was following us.It was a plane.Not like any plane I’d seen back on Earth, not unless Da Vinci sketches counted.The machine looked like it was made of wood and cloth, with big, bat-like wings swept back around a light frame that had a pair of rockets strapped to it. I could make out the bright blue of a cry strapped into the middle of it.A plume of thick black smoke poured out of the back, providing the plane with plenty of thrust.“Uh oh,” I said. “Clive! Full speed ahead! Everyone, get ready to fight! They have a plane!”The hissing roar grew clearer, and I turned back to see three dark shapes swooping over the wall and through the clouds to join the first. They were gaining on us, but we still had a minute or two... I hoped.“Are those rocket planes?” Amaryllis asked, disbelief colouring her voice. “Are they insane?”“Maybe it’s safer for them?” I asked. “Or they don’t care. They can already fly. Why are they using the planes?”“Speed,” Bastion said as he came to stand in the middle of the deck. “Their flight speed seems limited. I think any fit sylph could run circles around them. Even a harpy could outpace them by gliding.”Amaryllis harrumphed. “Yes, well, they are slow, but they have lift, and they seem steadier than some hair-brained sylph zipping around.”“Steady isn’t fast enough to catch up to a ship like the Beaver,” Bastion said.“So they get awesome rocket planes,” I finished the thought. “So cool!”Amaryllis whapped me with a wing. “No, you idiot, now they get terrifying rocket planes and the ability to catch up with us. They’ve already poked a hole in our balloon. That means the bladders inside it will all need to be patched once we’re not running for our lives. A few dozen more and we might be in actual trouble.”I winced. I could gush over the coolness of the rocket planes later. “Right, you’re right. I think we might have to fight them off. Amaryllis, you’re good with ranged things, but you’re just the one harpy. Awen... wait, where’s Awen?”Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.Something clunked, and we all turned to stare as part of the Beaver’s deck rose, then shifted to the side on a set of rails.A dome, made of dozens of square glass panels, lifted up out of the hold with a constant click-click, like a bicycle’s wheel being spun. The machine rose some more, revealing Awen sitting on a little bench, legs pumping around a pedal while she huffed and puffed.The front of the machine had four openings with long stalks sticking out of them, each with a set of curved metal plates and what looked like wire under heavy tension.It was like Awen’s repeating crossbow, but... bigger, and there were four of them all linked together to a complicated set of controls.The whole thing stopped with a heavy thump, then locked in place as Awen pulled a few levers. She started to spin a wheel, and with each turn the machine spun around a few degrees until it was pointing all four of its bows off the side.“Whoa,” I said.It looked like one of those turrets stuck on the back of those World War two bombers, only a bit more anachronistic.“That’s really cool!” I cheered as I leapt over the divide between the Beaver’s two hulls and landed next to Awen’s contraption. “How does it work?” I asked Awen.She wiped the back of her hand across her brow. “Poorly.” She blinked. “Ah! I mean, this is just the prototype! I wanted a version that could slide out of the side of the Beaver. This one has awful traversing, and it turns too slowly. I haven’t even zeroed in the bows yet, and it takes a lot of concentration to reload one of them while firing the others. It’s all really inefficient.”“But it looks so cool!” I cheered. There were brass doodads, and metal knobs, and little gears and all sorts of pulleys, the entire thing covered in layers of glass. A wire at the front was bent into a circle, holding a piece of glass that had an ‘X’ cut into it.Awen flushed. “It’s just a prototype!” She wiggled her hands around, gesturing to the bows and the levers next to them. “The bows have a draw weight of around a hundred kilos, which is good because they fire these.” She tugged a long bolt from a rack and displayed it for me.It was entirely made of glass, with a bulb at the end that looked like it was filled with something. It took some squinting to notice the mechanism at the very end of the bolt. “What’s that?”“It’s a flint striker. The bulb is filled with fuel. It’s the only thing I had on hand that explodes well. But the bolts are heavy, which means I need the entire lever system to reduce the amount of strength I need to reload the bows.”“Awen, did you make an explosive, repeating AA ballista without anyone knowing?” I asked.She looked away, cheeks still burning. “No one asked.”“Awen, you are awesome.”I felt Amaryllis crowd in next to me to inspect Awen’s machine. “That looks like something I’d see in a report with the word ‘disaster’ in its title,” she said. “Well, as long as the disaster is on the side of the things bothering us.”“Does it have a non-lethal setting?” I asked.Awen and Amaryllis stared at me.“Uh, nevermind.”“Captain! They’re gaining on us,” Clive called back.I ran up the steps at the rear of the ship so that I could see out over the back. The three planes were getting much closer. I could even make out the bright blue of the crystals tucked into the middle of the frames.They were still a little ways away, but that wouldn’t last.I bit my lower lip and considered things. They were faster than us on the straight-away, but they were planes, they’d need to turn and circle around a bunch.“Clive, evasive maneuvers! Everyone else, get ready to fight!”“Awa! I have my crossbow in the hold,” Awen said.Bastion nodded and dove down, returning a moment later with Awen’s crossbow. That made two crewmates with ranged options, not including Amaryllis and myself with our magic.“I’m going to try and create a barrier with Cleaning magic,” I said as I jumped back down. “But I don’t expect it to work that well.”“Don’t worry, we’ll make the fool regret tangling with us,” Amaryllis said.“Hang on!” Clive called out a moment before throwing the wheel around and tugging a few of the control levers back. I felt it when the gravity engine shifted down and weakened its field.The Beaver shifted to the side and started to swing around with the slow ponderous motions of a whale turning in the ocean.The planes came into view over the starboard side, the three in a loose arrowhead formation.Awen’s turret spun, then locked into place. I saw her grin as she aimed down her sights.The turret fired. Four shots with a quick tack tack tack tack, beat, and as many shiny blurs zipped out towards the planes.It was clear right away that Awen had undershot by a bit; maybe she’d underestimated the weight of her bolts since they flew well under the planes.And then two of them exploded out some three hundred metres away, bright bursts of fire that filled the air with a sprinkling of glass.“Reloading!” Awen screamed as she started tugging on levers.I snapped out of it, then started to push as much Cleaning magic as I could out. If I could interfere with the magic creating the lasers, maybe I could save us some repairs later.This was turning out to be a lot more exciting than I thought it would be. Who knew accepting a passenger could be so much work?
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