BECMI Chapter 355 – A Wing and a Castle
“This is Commander Briggs of Eismoor,” he stated in Warlord’s Voice, carrying very clearly to the flights of pegataurs starting to gather up for an attack run at them. “You are in complete violation of Eismark airspace and are about to be grounded. You have one minute to return to your landing or start a dive to the ground below before we lock this airspace and you fall out of the sky.
“If you dare to attack us, we initiate Stillflight immediately. Begin countdown.”
“Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight,” the pleasant voice of Shelsi Nunnflowers, the hyn dispatcher, began counting down on the megaphones, which carried clearly out to the pegataurs.
If they didn’t know of the air defenses around the cities of the Eismark Federation, they were fools and idiots, not flying spellcasters. There was a reason the Eismarch wasn’t worried about the airships of Siricil and Delpha.
There was some confusion and uncertainty over there, which made him frown. It appeared a couple of the pegataurs were either desperate or really arrogant, maybe both.
“Cannon two. One thundershot to the castle foundation to dissuade any idiocy,” he ordered calmly.
The aforementioned battery dropped its aim slightly, and there was a CRACK as the shot went off.
It wasn’t precisely a railgun, but Cyclonic was pretty close, eliminating all air resistance and range penalties. The propelling force of smoke and powder, instead of forming a great cloud in front of the muzzle of the cannon, formed a long line following the explosive round sent hurtling out faster than the speed of sound.
It blew past the flights of pegataurs, slamming full into the stony base of the castle in an instant… and utterly tore out one side of the magically reinforced stone instantly, while the Cyclonic effect dropped and the airblast tracking it blew in every direction, sending pegataurs tumbling tails over pinfeathers from the shock and spreading stinking gunsmoke in every direction, too.
“Forty-five seconds. Get to ground or splat against it, your call,” he stated grimly and with complete confidence that was exactly what was going to happen.
Shocked and demoralized, most of the pegataurs broke for the castle’s landing with speed and grace, not having any wish to deal with a weapon that could blow away tons of stone at that speed.
Which was good. He didn’t want to unleash the point defenses on them, and they would have been VERY unhappy to see the Globe of Invulnerability at VIII that Warded the entire ship activate, effectively nullifying all their standard magical ability.
He hadn’t seen any of them with the accoutrements of an elven Wizard or anything, that is. They looked like fair-skinned, silver or golden-haired elven torsos atop finely-boned, rather smaller pegasi bodies. They were smaller than rote centaurs, but gave no indication of being weaker, and actually were closer to human size in scale than to the elven.
“Window motion!” a spotter called out, and beams of light reached across the distance to fix on the individual who had appeared in the window. He jerked back instinctively out of sight, which interrupted the shimmers of his spellcasting and probably kept him alive as the crack of triple long rifles blew across the distance and smashed into the stone wall behind there with very loud and very dangerous impacts.
“One! Stillflight in effect!” Dispatcher Nunnflowers called out, and the Stillflight Field activated as the Venture veered in closer to the much slower flying castle. Props shifted to the vertical with smooth inclinations of Artifice at work, and the whole ship lurched as all aeromancy and gravity-defying alterations of reality ceased to work.
Except that which was sealed inside Null Copper and not extending outside of the spheres containing the mechanically-aligned gravity spheres that counteracted the weight of the Venture.
Of course, the airship would handle like a beached whale without any inertia-offsets to help it out, but all that meant was that it was best to slowly descend until outside of the Stillflight Field.
“Venture, I’ve got a humanoid form falling from the far side of the Castle from you,” Airman Quartzcutter, Wing Two, relayed over the radio. He had already heeled over and was diving after the falling figure as it fell into the clouds, far more quickly than the Sky Castle, which had lurched and was now dropping rapidly as the magicks on it tried and failed to keep it aloft.
Briggs was not amused as he watched the dark figure flailing wildly as it failed to fly away. The Gunwing would also make sure he didn’t Teleport or Dimension Door away once out of range. “Let him fall, Wing Two. We’ll interrogate his skull. If he pops a Featherweight, shoot him out of the air.”
“Copy that, Commander,” the level voice of the pilot replied without hesitation, disappearing down into the clouds in pursuit. Wing One stayed on station directly above the Castle, dropping straight down after it as his props kept him aloft above it, balancing the updraft with the touch of an Artificer at one with his ride.
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The sky castle wasn’t plummeting, per se, still generating enough internal lift to not be in free fall, but it was definitely out of control and had no way to recover. Briggs watched from the prow as the Venture also plunged into the clouds, dropping swiftly after it, and emerged a few breaths later, the castle well below them and pulling away.
They couldn’t get out and away in time. The helmsman increased their fall speed to make sure the Castle stayed inside the two fields.
“Be advised, residents of the intruding Sky Castle, that your levitation effects will strengthen as the earth becomes more proximate. I advise you not bailing out unless you’ve been trained in parachuting techniques and have available gear. You will be perfectly fine and not crash.
“On the other hand, if you want to initiate armed resistance after you have touched down, my cannon are going to blow that keep and tower all over the hills, and then we’ll start working on the foundation. So, if you’ve a deathwish, by all means, this is your chance to die spectacularly.”
Tellingly, there was no more motion at the windows, and even the nervous pegataurs moving near the landing didn’t try to throw themselves out of it and fly… because they couldn’t. Some were hopping up and down, beating their wings, and looking both shocked and frightened when they slammed right back down to the ground.
Normal reactions of creatures that thought they could fly, when actually they could Fly, and Stillflight shut them down completely...
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The floating Castle’s elongated boulder-mound of stone, some sixty feet long itself even after a few tons were clipped off the side of it, hit the ground heavily and bone-jarringly, about a hundred yards from where the crushed corpse of a man fallen from the sky was spreadeagled on a stone outcropping to the north.
Pegataurs were ready to jump off the landing, but even the most cursory test made it plain they still could not fly, and so they did not dare to jump and attempt to glide down, as it was fairly obvious they’d break their legs or worse upon landing, just like any fool taking an eighty-foot and more swan dive.
The Venture came down right next to the Castle, with a lot of strange tubes glowing with strange lights, emitting odd smokes, and humming in unnerving tunes all pointed right their way. The pegasus-elves backed away from the landing as a section of the Venture’s hull lifted up and folded out accordion-style, coming down on the landing with a heavy crunch and fixing itself there.
Briggs, Greathammer in hand, armor on to look even bigger than he was, and his visor up to really give the dichotomy of his appearance that special kick, strode down the ramp. Every footstep was absolutely, ominously quiet, and every footstep rang against their hooves, prompting the pegataurs to back up instinctively.
Behind him was a line of heavily-armed and armored men and women whose Weapons were also glowing with multi-colored lights and humming strangely. Their cadence matched his, and as a result, the pegataurs felt like their hooves were being pushed off the floor with every step.
“I am Commander Briggs, and I am taking control of this tower. Get out of the way.”
The two pegataurs with the finest sets of Armor blinked in disbelief at him as he hit the landing, and the sensation actually made the teeth of some of them clatter as he did so. Briggs met their eyes, and they saw death looking back at them.
The pegataurs backed up to allow the marines access to the doorway out of their chambers. The Daisho teams and Rangers streamed past them smoothly, their eyes shining with Detects and enough magic awash around them that the pegataurs felt physically pushed back by the threat they represented. Used to thinking of themselves as powerful elites, they could only look on in astonishment as the marines moved past them with grace, speed, and hints of a level of teamwork that they could only dream of imitating.
“I’m going to assume the two of you are in charge of this bunch of tauren,” Briggs stated in his best completely unimpressed voice, which was enough to make the pegataurs wince and almost shrink in upon themselves as he raked them with a glance and dismissed them as threats.
As the two senior pegataurs, a male and female who were probably mated the way they looked at one another, came forward, he went on, “Tauren, in my experience, have a big chip on their shoulders, because they are born faster, stronger, tougher, have animalistic senses, or have numerous other advantages of both sides of their ancestry. That leads to having attitudes.”
They stopped in front of him, and found themselves literally eye to eye with him, taller than almost all humans, and a wee bit unsettled that they couldn’t look down on him.
“My normal reaction to things that are rude and arrogant to me is to hit them with my Hammer.”
The CRUNCH almost threw them backward in reflexive retreat from the threat. The speed his Hammer moved at! The force and the shockwave as the stone wall two feet thick leading outside blew apart under the impact of what looked to be no more than a flick of his wrist was enough to make their faces pale and their blood run cold!
Briggs paused for just a moment with artful skill and awareness of the impression he was making, a few late fragments of stone clattering to the ground behind him. Then he pulled back Endure, grounding his very sizable Hammer and its slow, deadly beat, so much like a heart of immense size keeping time, in front of him.
“I generally only hit them once, because there’s nothing much left to be rude to me afterwards. Its a pricey lesson to a lot of people. I trust I’m not going to have to administer that lesson to any of you?”
He didn’t bother trying to keep the expectation out of his voice. The problem with being a Chief Warlord and everything was that he didn’t get to fight personally as often as he liked to. He wasn’t afraid of their magic, their bows weren’t going to get through his Armor, and in melee combat he was going to crush them, their piddly swords, and they were all going to die.
They almost wilted in front of him. He could definitely see legs trembling and tails swishing nervously as they stared at him, very much not used to being frightened of a humanoid enemy.
“Now, introduce yourselves, and stay civil,” he growled in disappointment, an eager light in his eyes promising exactly what was going to happen to them if they were not.
There was a lot more deference in their posture as the two came warily forward again, visibly adjusting their posture and preparing their words for him. He nodded inside, pleased he wasn’t going to have to kill one of the haughty bastards to make an example for the others to follow.