BECMI Chapter 384 – A Giant in Need…
Being so tall, it was quite simple to read her expression as I came swooping in. Uncertainty and wariness dominated her face. I couldn’t imagine why, sorceress in red and black with a bloody Mask swooping in on a monstrous Bat trailing blood-red streams of light behind him and playing about his claws. Nopers, I could not at all.
Still, she stood her ground, quite confident of her chances if things came down to hostility, which was also not surprising. With probably 96 Hit Die or something, she would be unbelievably tanky and durable, and was confident of smashing Duum out of sky and throttling him like a big crow or something.
Duum glided to a halt some two hundred feet from her, just at the edge of the stray cloud that was supporting her, and just hung there easily, tongue lolling, while she blinked at his natty Hat and Monocle. “Daughter of the Thunderborn,” I addressed her in her own tongue, immediately making her face light up. “You seem to be in an interesting situation. One doesn’t usually find a giant of the clouds sailing a cloud island about without a sail.”
Her answering look of consternation was quite obvious. I glanced at the Ring on her hand, raising an eyebrow at the band of mithral and diamonds.
It was emanating an Astral Ward at VIII. I couldn’t read her Aura, her mind and spirit protected from outside influence. That didn’t raise alarms, but her being out here alone at this time probably wasn’t a coincidence.
“It is all my fault,” she admitted in a thundering voice that was still properly feminine, sounding a bit aggrieved. “I fell asleep on the cloud close to the edge, and when I awoke, I was floating out in the void with no easy way back.”
I kind of looked at her. “You could have levitated out into the open air, then shaped the winds to blow you back home? You look old enough to have mastered such basics of the Thunderborn?” I asked leadingly.
She blushed again, glancing down at the chunk of solidified cloud beneath here. “If my father found out I lost a chunk of the island, he would be very angry with me.” She glanced behind me at the fleet, and her expression lit up. “With enough of your ships, you could tow it back for me?” she asked brightly.
“There is no need for me to divert my fleets for this purpose. You simply need a larger and stronger wind.” She struck me as intelligent and sincere, but quite naive nonetheless. Duum flapped his wings and drifted forward, and she politely gave him room to set down.
His wingspawn was wider than she was tall, but he himself only stood about twenty feet tall, not even reaching her waist once he landed.
But all he was doing was providing me a secure perch as I began to Upcast a Control Winds about this place.
My Caster Level crackled out and began to raise the speed of the winds. The cloud beneath us jerked as the first winds struck it, and slowly began to turn as the winds grew in force.
It was actually quite odd, first a breeze, then a strong wind, striving up towards gale intensity… and then it seemed to back off, yet the winds kept right on increasing in speed and force.
The giantess’s eyes were wide as she looked about in awe, because she could tell exactly how fast we were moving… only it was with the wind, so it felt almost motionless!
We were moving with a speed beyond hurricanes and well into tornado speed. I stood at the center of a raging vortex of wind that didn’t seem to be doing anything, because it was pushing us along as fast as it was moving, and it was moving damn fast!
Being able to concentrate the wind helped a lot. I couldn’t do this with a whole fleet.
“We should be at your home in about two hours, Thunderborn,” I indicated to the astonished giantess. “I am the Lady Edge, my Bat’s name is Duum.”
“How do you do?” Duum bowed courteously, making her blink again as a spectral hand doffed his Hat for her.
“Oh, I am Liisianali!” she replied proudly, hesitantly executing a short bow to me, wondering if she should do so to something so small… but so powerful, probably for the best. After only the slightest hesitation, she even repeated it for Duum, which pleased him greatly. “My father is the chieftain of the Thunderborn Tribe!”
I glanced at the Ring, then the necklace of platinum, pearls, and sapphires around her neck, and the dangling earrings of pearl and truesilver in her ears. Given her size, the jewelry was likewise large, and a human would have staggered under the weight of them.
A wealthy clan, which was anything but surprising, and she a favored daughter of them, most likely.
The Thunderborn were also supposedly created by the Delphan Emperors, and definitely one of their tools of war… until the Emperors started following Fire, and the former Cloud Giants decided they had better things to do.
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“Greetings, Liisianali,” I said gravely, my voice clearly audible to her despite my relative size, which probably interested her and made her even more cautious at the same time. “How long ago did you find yourself cut off from the island and set adrift?” At my silent direction, Duum ambled over to the edge of the cloud and began circumnavigating it, while I looked over the side with him.
She trudged carefully after us, wondering what we were doing and looking for. “It would have been about two days ago?” she said uncertainly. “I am not sure how long I slept?”
“Mmm. It’s just that I find the timing suspicious.” Duum trotted along with the ease of a Bat who was mostly hovering to take his weight, not even needing to go to all fours.
“Suspicious?” she asked in surprise, trailing after us as Duum trundled around the perimeter. “Why would my falling asleep be suspicious?”
“Because you should have noticed the change in winds and scents immediately, the change in motion when it separated, and you didn’t wake up. You are born of the clouds. Don’t you find it strange you slept through such an alarming event?”
Liisianali halted for a second, confused. “I-I thought I was just careless…” she whispered as loudly as a bullhorn.
“No. You probably are woken up by any change of the wind or scents normally, or at least are aware of them. Instead you were asleep so soundly you drifted off into the void, something your instincts should have screamed at you to wake up during?”
Her face changed as she started to process that, and remember other things, comparing them. “You… you think I was ensorcelled?!” she asked hesitantly.
“That is the logical result, yes… “ Duum paused, and then shuffled out over the edge to give me a better view. “Ah, this is the part of the cloud island that was connected to the greater mass. It was severed.”
The appalled surprise on her face was complete. “Severed? I was cut away while I slept?” Liisianali blurted out in astonishment and growing anger.
“Examine the edge here. Use Levitation. You can clearly see the primary cumulus fibers that bind the cloud are fraying and have clearly been severed. They did not rip or evaporate or fail.”
She did just that, hopping over the side and lowering herself down, keeping an easy grip on the spongy, yet very solid material of the cloud island.
Liisianali’s face as she took in the misting area that used to be connected slowly settled into a grimmer expression. She reached out to touch some of the concentrated cords and bundles that held the cloud island together, frowning deeply. “These, these have indeed been cut, but not by a weapon…”
Unless that weapon was a goddamn hundred feet long or something…
“Disintegration beam, artfully applied, possibly.” She likely didn’t know anything of spellcraft, so it was plausible. A Rock to Mud variant for clouds in a narrow band, like Cloudstuff to Vapor or something, could have done the same thing, and was actually more likely, as Disintegration beams didn’t usually cut in narrow strips ala Saber Beams, they took out blocks of material wholesale.
But it was possible, certainly, for an Immortal with endless amounts of power to practice with, who’d been an Overmagus in his mortal life.
“Who would do this, Lady Edge?” the young giantess asked, hauling herself back over the ledge and letting her Levitation fade as she stood back up, towering over us, stray breezes swirling her stormy hair. She looked both angry and frightened that something like that could be done to her.
“If I had to guess, the Immortal Delphax.” I waved my hand at her left hand. “That Ring on your finger Wards your mind from Enchantment spells. Are all members of your clan so protected?”
Liisianali instinctively clasped what would be a crown or torc, at least, on a normal human. “This, this was my mother’s! It was passed on to me when she died! There are no others like it in the clan!” she exclaimed rather desperately.
“You seem like a decent person, which leads me to believe you are of the Clouds and Thunder philosophy, not the Storm and Wrath,” I went on, noting the major philosophical divide of the cloud giants, to which she nodded quickly. “This is a direct contravention of the beliefs of Delphax XXII, the last Emperor, and now Immortal of Entropy. I think making tools of you, as the Emperors of Delpha did of old, was a thought that would please His arseholeness immensely, and that Ring prevented him from doing it to you. So He set you out there as a bait and lure.
“I have a bad feeling that your kinsmen are being used as tools in an Immortal game. We shall see if I can free them from it, if it is true.”
“Delphax XXII! The Fool Emperor still lives?” Liisianali snorted in contempt, clenching a monstrous fist taller than I was, and certainly much heavier.
I had to deliberately not laugh at such a fine appellation for the man. “He’s an Immortal now. You’d do well to only curse Him in your thoughts, as He might pay attention to you more in the future, now that He’s found something useful to play with and destroy,” I warned her, studying the island ahead of us, which we were being blown closer to at well over three hundred miles an hour, while feeling as if we were barely moving.
The ivory white of her skin actually thickened in response, and Liisianali nodded urgently. “You are correct, it is not wise to speak ill of any Immortals. The tales all paint them as unduly proud of themselves, and uncaring of mortals who cross them…” she remembered quickly.
“A wise decision, Thunderborn,” I said to her. “For this reason, I ask that you conceal my presence until you know they are free of influence. I will see if they have been Enchanted, and if not… exactly who cut you free, why they did so, and how they managed to make you sleep through it.”
They were all important factors she had no reasonable answer for. Certainly no members of her tribe could have done so, nor were there any monstrous beings around with the power to subdue her so easily.
“Why did they just not kill me?” Liisianali wondered aloud, visibly worried about her kin now.
“Smell. Surely you remember the scent when a Thunderborn dies and their soul disperses into the winds. They would not have been able to conceal that, and your whole clan would have been instantly alerted of a ruthless intruder coming after you, no doubt enough to shake off any spells upon them.”
“Yes, I remember when my mother died. The air was so heavy and seemed to be mourning her…” Liisianali breathed out, likely the only member of her clan she had ever felt die. I didn’t know the reason why, as there was precious little that could possibly have threatened such titanic jotuns, but obviously something had in the past… and certainly an Immortal could do so!