BECMI Chapter 383 – Immortals on the Winds
The impact was plenty loud, plenty dusty, and plenty lethal. Fascinated and completely distracted, the beholders were flattened under hundreds or thousands of tons of stone coming down upon them, with no chance to dodge.
Technically, this should have destroyed much of the salvage value of the corpses, but they were only squashed, water doesn’t compress easily, and Mending spells apply to everything that isn’t living, including beholder eyes, hides, brains, innards, and the like, while gathering up the gallons of ichor oozing out of them wasn’t that hard, either.
I’d have to run the blood through some filters to purify it, but given it was probably worth a hundred gold an ounce, and there were hundreds of gallons of it, that was certainly worth my time.
If the sky boiled in the distance, and the dark clouds manifesting there suddenly looked like a great horned demon raising his head and glaring ferociously at me across the many miles, I just ignored him as I turned his creations into spell components.
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I didn’t forget the fleets, of course. Spending Valences to project my voice above them far in the distance wasn’t too awful hard, kind of a reverse Scrying effect. They were waiting for word from me, and the building of those clouds rightly had them all on edge.
“To the fleet: up sails and head for the lee of the island with all speed! I will bend the winds to get you moving the quicker! Let the storm spend itself against the stones!”
Sails fairly exploded into view across the fleet, and the first ships were in motion almost as soon as I stopped speaking, whole teams hauling up the anchors as the ships got underway with all speed.
The Scampering Wave and fourteen other ships under Cloud Vessel immediately claimed the lead over the others, but all of the ships were rapidly in motion as the incoming crosswinds of the gale were bent and aligned, and sails snapped and surged as they drove the ships back towards and around the sides of the Eyeland that had no more Eyes.
Delphax was probably not happy when my Widened Control Weather rippled out, its incredible Caster Level and shadows of Immortal Power looking very, very much like a rival Immortal had boosted the spell far past mortal limits and was basically slapping His hand for acting like a spoiled brat.
If the thunder sounded like the petulant complaints of a whining bastard who’d watched His proud creations get stomped flat by the magnificent statue He’d made of himself three thousand years ago on his cowardly flight triumphant march out of the ruins of His homeworld and empire, well, they just made me smile as I continued my butchering and salvaging of goldweight.
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The storm raged for two whole days, smashing itself against the island first, then trying to wrap around it and drive the whole fleet against the stones. I was waiting and when the winds shifted, the fleet was already heading around to the opposite side, almost taunting the bastard to spend even more Immortal Power uselessly to go after them.
Also amusingly, the remaining flocks of sheep instinctively headed for their cave shelters against the storms, beholder shepherds present or no. A Teleportation Circle to those caves delivered whole crews of butchers into place to slaughter the herds and harvest them for meat and wool, all under the cover of the storm.
It wasn’t fun, by any means, but I could intensify my control of the weather and waves by greatly limiting the radius, so there was no chance of monstrous waves foundering the ships or driving them onto the rocks. The sea motion was constant and significant, and even the seasoned sailors were heartily sick of it by the time it was done, but not a single ship broke apart on the rocks or reefs as a result of the tantrum storm.
As for the Eye of the Tyrant and all its Immortal Power, it was shattered to dust under the falling statue, and Dread feasted upon it happily, while a few million in goldweight in comps joined their fellows in my Sanctum.
I imagined Delphax wasn’t too happy about all that, either. And if I spent a few Valences to Rock to Mud the entirety of His goddamn statue and turned His temple into a sunken, gloppy mess, hey, I’m sure the other Immortals watching were terribly amused at my cheek.
As for the forgotten titanic chest we found deep in one cave, filled to the brim with copper coins bearing the profile of ‘The Great Delphax XXII, Emperor of Delpha’, I had plans for them.
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“What do you think will happen here, Lady Edge?” Captain Sigmal asked, the sails snapping proudly as the fleet headed for the edge of the sea about the Eyeland. The trail led onward, no use fighting it, we had to be led by the nose by idiot Immortals to all their pet encounters.
“Another storm will start rolling up and drive us onward as soon as we clear the waters. Everyone can feel the weight of the eyes on us now. It is not fun, but if we want to get home, we have to follow like dogs and do what they want to get there. We’re probably being more efficient than some of them like, and I’m sure if I wasn’t blunting the power of the storms, a third to half of the armada would already be lost.”
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His silence showed tacit agreement with that. Immortals were tossing nasty weather at us, and I was smashing magic into them so mere mortals could survive. No reason for them to die for Immortal entertainment.
If I wasn’t here, going up onto the Eyeland would have been total suicide. If the beholders had gotten wind of us, the twenty of them could have ripped apart the entire fleet.
The fleet owed their lives to me, and they knew it. They also knew that Immortals were playing with them, and the resentment was starting to tower.
Tenya, Oroyosam, and Delphax definitely didn’t have any fans here, and the absolute failure of other Immortals to intervene and cut this game short wasn’t impressing even their priests, either.
“Can we make it home?” he asked softly, eyeing the nearest crew, all at stations as the ripping edge of the sea rapidly approached, readying the wingmasts to deploy. Even with Cloud Vessel allowing the Wave to skim above the waters, the additional wingsails helped with maneuverability and speed.
“I know I can.” I reached up to stroke Dread’s head meaningfully, and he sighed in relief and nodded. “Getting the rest of you there is going to require more work, and faith in me. I will do my best, but I am not an Immortal. These stops along the way are dangerous, but I’ve successfully been diverting the attention of the inhabitants enough that the fleets remain intact.”
“This Curse of the yyota fruit?” he asked acidly. The inability of the Clerics to help with the food supply was annoying everyone, and another reason faith in the Immortals to help us was suffering.
“It’s pettiness at this point. The only way they can make it haunt us is blowing us off-course and giving us weeks between supply stops… but there’s too many skylands we can stop at to resupply, which is frustrating them. If they up their game by transforming our food into yyotas, then we have a real problem.”
Not me, of course, Sustained and all as I was. And I could help with the food supply problem, but keeping the entire armada fed would take a lot of Valences I didn’t really want to spend on something so mundane… but I could.
Every bit of asshattery was just something else to put in the bunker against the day of reckoning.
Captain Sigmal made a circle to ward off the evil eye automatically at my words, hoping they wouldn’t come true.
We watched silently as the edge of the Eyeland’s sea came up, and then we were breaking free of it, the sky changing from somber blue and yellow sun to the white point of the center of the rainbow bands of greater Meandral.
Wingsails and tailmasts bloomed with additional sails, a lot of thread and Mending spells being spent to recover, maintain, and with Creation spells add to our supplies of cloth. White wings of cloth and wood sprouted from the rickety, thrown-together wingmasts as the armada entered the greater airspace. They oriented on the blinking light and streaming red wake of the Scampering Wave as the course was set for another skyland we could barely see in the distance, and the fleets moved into three-dimensional formation slowly to get under way.
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“Captain, we’ve got a drifting cloud at eleven o’clock low… and I think there’s someone marooned on it!” called out the lookout up in the crow’s nest, which position I’d gifted a Permanent Eagle Eyes effect with called out. All the Cloud Vessel ships had the same, which gave us a really nice edge in avoiding scattered ice clouds, drifting rock hunks sweeping across our course, and the like.
The alert drew me out of meditation in the door set off the side of the captain’s own cabin, which led to my Sanctum. Duum usually kept the lookouts company up there in his small form, if he wasn’t winging about the whole of the fleet keeping an eye on stuff, and idly snatching up scavvers sneaking in among the ships.
He flapped down to my shoulder automatically as I walked up to the prow, the crew swiftly moving out of my way. My magic was a bit creepy, sure, but I’d saved their lives repeatedly, used magic without stinting, and never used it on them for random malicious effects. If some whispered things about witchcraft and necromancy and dead things and unclean arts, the others shut them up with curses or sometimes hard fists.
I knew a few fanatics had also been tossed overboard or knifed over this issue, much to their surprise. Everyone wanted to go home, after all, and I was their best chance to do so.
I put on my Mask and my vision leapt forward over the miles. The unnaturally clear air helped visibility tremendously… and so did the size of what I was looking.
It looked like… a chunk of solid cloud, maybe a hundred meters across, was just drifting through the sky. It roiled a little bit, but maintained its shape despite physics… and there was something standing upon it.
Someone, who had noticed us, and was standing and waving enthusiastically in our direction.
Skin as white as ivory, long hair a flowing gray reminiscent of a spring storm, and dressed in a clan white toga-esque short gown, the tusks protruding from her lower lip didn’t detract from her remarkably balanced build and a figure worth some knuckle-biting.
She also happened to be sixty feet tall, as tall as the Scampering Wave’s main mast if she was standing on the deck.
“That is a Thunderborn giantess,” I remarked, frowning as I studied her. I shifted my eyes to study the sky ahead of us, looking for… ah. “There’s a cloud island to the left at nine o’clock. Winds indicate she was probably blown off from the greater mass, perhaps by the passing storms aimed at us.”
“Divert to rescue her?” Captain Sigmal asked quickly.
“There’s no need to divert the fleet. Stay on course. Duum and I can handle this.”
“Yes, my Lady,” he half-bowed to me. I vaulted over the side of the ship as Duum erupted out to full size, landing smoothly in his saddle as I did so. I was aware of a lot of watching eyes as Duum beat his wings twice, but they were expecting the flitter-quick speed of him now. He outpaced the Scampering Wave in mere seconds, especially as Primus began to wrap the following winds around him for more speed, and the streaks of crimson trailing behind him grew ever longer as he swept into a glorious arc on his path.
“Lady Edge to the armada: Going to rescue a trapped giantess. Stay on course for the next skyland. I will return shortly.”
There were answering flags and flashing lights, and the fleets sailed on.