“Got the fucker!” Kerr shouted with a flash of her fangs.
Jay saw a winged figure tumble out of the sky in accompaniment to Kerr’s exclamation. It was still a little too far for her to make out what the creature was, but what she could see was that there were a lot more of the things, whatever they were. Forty or more, by her best guess.
Kerr let out another cry of triumph as she let loose a second arrow and another flying creature fell out of the sky.
“What are they?” Jay shouted over the wind.
“Stymphalia!” Kerr called back before releasing another deadly arrow. “Man-eating birds!”
“Watch the talons,” Noll advised. “They’re venomous.”
In the next moment, the old wolf hurled one of his javelins towards the pack of possessed monster birds. Jay tracked the weapon as it flew through the air and struck one of the beasts in the lead. The javelin went straight through the creature, messily decapitating the bird as its neck was essentially ripped apart by the power of the attack.
By that point, Jadis could better see the stymphalia and could get a good look at what they were dealing with.
The birds were huge, each one around the same size as the wyvern Jadis had slain back in Weigrun during the battle for the Dryad’s grove. The feathers of their bodies and wings were a mix of black and brown, but the feathered crests on their heads were bright red with white accents. Their long, curved beaks were a vibrant orange color, and as the fastest of the magic beasts drew close, Jadis could see their yellow eyes filled with malicious intent.
In unified action, both her Jay and Syd selves hurled the crossbow bolts they had in hand. Due to the size of the slender ammunition, her grips were a little awkward. However, the bolts flew with deadly force, both striking the chest of one of the Stymphalia at the same time.
“Got one!” Jay and Syd shouted in unison as the bird’s chest was torn to pieces by the conjoined attack.
“Only one?” Kerr laughed as she shot her bow again. “I’m on five already! Get your pale asses in gear!”
As both Kerr and Jadis’ two selves launched their attacks on the stymphalia, a clear, almost invisible ball of arcane energy shot out from behind them both. The sphere flew nearly three hundred feet forward before striking a giant bird that was in the lead of a clustered pack of the beasts. The moment the spell struck, an explosion without smoke or fire tore the Stymphalia to pieces, along with several of the other birds that were nearest to it.
“I believe that puts me at six,” Aila stated calmly, though there was a twinkle of amusement hiding in her blue eyes.
“Fuck off,” Kerr cursed with a challenging grin. “I’m winning this one!”
“Talk later,” Noll shouted. “Fight now!”
As usual, the experienced veteran was right. There was no more time for playful banter as the Stymphalia had reached the airships.
The possessed monsters flew with incredible speed as they darted around the airships like fighter jets made of feathers and flesh. Jadis didn’t notice any obvious signs of magic being used by the beasts, but she didn’t discount the possibility. The birds might not have natural magic attacks, but the Demons possessing them could. With the creatures coming close to attack those who were within reach on the railed platforms, Jadis was able to take swings at the Stymphalia.
Blood and feathers were splattered across the deck as Syd sliced an attacking giant bird in half. Her sword staff made quick work of the flying beast, cleanly slicing the creature in two pieces. As the monster’s bisected body tumbled off into the dark below, she spotted twisted remains of a possession Demon curled up inside of the Stymphalia’s hollowed-out torso. Jadis didn’t need to check the notifications that were appearing in the corner of her vision to know that her assumptions concerning the nature of the possessed beasts were correct.
The next minute quickly devolved into a flurry of weapons and wings as Jadis and her companions defended against the possessed Stymphalia. The huge birds swooped past the airship, bodily crashing into everyone they could while trying to grab hold of their targets with their wicked talons. Most of the beasts attacked the starboard side of the Leviathan, where the majority of the defenders were located, but several of them struck at the port side where Dys and Meli were as well.
“D dammit!” Dys cursed when one of the birds latched onto her back and tried to lift off with her.
She already had her axe in the body of another Stymphalia that was still flapping its huge wings in her face, making it a struggle to see what she was doing. Having both of the huge beasts piling on her was a dangerous distraction. Pulling her axe from the one Stymphalia, she grabbed at the struggling monster and tried to finish it off by breaking its neck so she could then focus on the beast on her back.
Half a second after she got her gauntleted hand around the neck of the Demon possessed creature, she felt the Stymphalia clawing at her shoulders abruptly stop its struggles and fall limply to her side. Without its distracting attack, she was able to focus on the bird in front of her. She choked up her grip on her battleaxe and hacked at the Stymphalia twice, chopping its body in two before tossing it over the edge of the platform. Turning to see what had happened to the other beast, she saw Meli standing on its back, her claws dripping with blood from where she had literally ripped her way through the creature’s flesh to get at the possession Demon inside.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” Meli said through clenched teeth. “I am being forced to kill these beautiful beasts because they have been possessed by the mad spawn of Samleos!”
“Okay, well, we’ll pay him back for that,” Dys said as she turned her attention towards another Stymphalia that was diving at them. “For now, just watch my back!”
“I am!”
“Thank you!”
“You are welcome!”
On the right side of the ship, Jay threw another bolt at a passing possessed beast, catching it in the side though not killing it. The Stymphalia that were left were circling the two airships, diving at them in coordinated attacks. Jadis found that while the confined space of the deck restricted what she was able to do, she was still more than capable of cutting down any of the Stymphalia that came near. Kerr’s arrows and Aila’s force bolts were also cutting down the flying beasts with ease, so they were able to kill the enemy even at a distance. The problem was, even though Jadis had seen only around forty of the creatures flying at them earlier, it didn’t look like their numbers were diminishing. No matter how many they killed, more showed up to perform their flyby attacks on the airship.
“Look!” Bridget shouted from where she stood near Syd. “Past the Behemoth!”
By that point, the two airships had floated within the airspace above Glanum. The shining light that had been cast high above the central tower of the city provided more than enough illumination for Jadis to see by. Looking across the short distance of open air between the Leviathan and the smaller airship, Jadis saw that Severina was acting as the Behemoth’s protector. The flying wagon had not been designed for aerial battles, and besides not having open decks to fight from, it didn’t even have port holes on its left side. The Behemoth needed to land as soon as possible, as it was far too vulnerable in the air compared to the Leviathan.
Severina was circling the smaller airship, striking at any of the Stymphalia that came close. Her aerial acrobatics showed how skilled she was in flight, as none of the large avians were able to catch her with their claws or beaks. The paladin twisted in midflight, slashing her shining sword as one beast dove by her. A spray of rancid blood disappeared into the black cloth of the Behemoth as the wounded Stymphalia fell out of the sky, its right wing having been severed.
The Seraphim’s graceful defense of the airship wasn’t what Bridget had pointed to, though. Looking beyond the frenetic dogfight, Syd spied more winged creatures crashing into each other in the air. There were dozens more of the Stymphalia, all flying in a chaotic cluster in the skies on the northeast side of the city. What exactly they were fighting wasn’t immediately obvious to Jadis, as it all just looked like a whole lot of shadows and wings. Then, a sword made of fire with a blade that elongated to at least twenty feet cut through the air and sliced a possessed beast in half, lighting both pieces of dead bird up in a bright blaze of holy light.
“Ten oaks says that guy is Aelius,” Syd said as she pointed the tip of her sword staff at the shining, armored figure wielding the flaming greatsword.
“No bet,” Bridget shouted as she struck a Stymphalia that came close enough for her to hit with her flail. The bird went up in blue flames, marking it as a target for extra damage.
Jay hurled a bolt at the marked beast and the combined damage of her attack and Bridget’s skill sent the unfortunate avian to its doom. When another Stymphalia swooped in towards her, she tossed two more bolts in rapid succession. However, her aim was off and she didn’t strike center mass. The huge beast slammed against her, its claws scrabbling against her thick armor as it pecked its beak at her and buffeted her with its powerful wings.
Abruptly, the creature seized up, all movement ceasing as it turned as still as a feathered statue. Jay didn’t need to turn her head to see that Sorcha had frozen the Stymphalia with her paralyzing wand, though she still glanced over her shoulder to see the goblin standing in the doorway to the exterior platform, wand in hand.
Thea, who was staying near the entrance to the airship as well, stepped forward and jabbed her poisoned spear into the heart of the giant avian, hopefully catching the Demon inside with the attack. When she withdrew her spear tip, Jay pushed the paralyzed beast over the edge to send it falling below. Jadis figured the Demon had a chance to unfreeze before hitting the ground hundreds of feet below, but even if gravity didn’t finish the job, the poison coursing through it would.
Looking below them, Jay saw that the airships had floated in close to the central tower of the city. The top of the tall structure was perhaps a hundred feet below them, which meant she was able to get a better view of the building, if only for a moment. It looked like the top was mostly flat, with columns ringing the outer edge and what looked like a hole in the center of the roof. She could see what she guessed were soldiers running around on top of the tower, some of which were pointing at the Behemoth, though more looked like they were busy dealing with their own stymphalia attacking them.
As she watched, Jay saw two armored men get grabbed by one of the huge avians. The creature took off towards the north and, when it was a good distance away from the tower, dropped the unfortunate souls to their deaths in the second tier of the city far, far below.
A dark-winged figure flashed by the side of the Leviathan, pulling Jay’s attention back to the battle closer to her rather than what was happening elsewhere.
It took a second of searching, but Jadis caught sight of the creature that had flown by her Jay self. At first, she thought that it had been Severina, since it was smaller than the stymphalia. However, Syd had a good bead on Sev’s position as the paladin circled around the rear of the Behemoth. No, the winged figure was someone else entirely, and by the lack of flaming sword, she didn’t think they were the Seraphim Aelius that she had spotted in the distance.
When another stymphalia came close to the aft of the airship, Syd launched another bolt at the attacking creature to keep it from reaching Alex who was in the middle of repelling the attack of a different blighted beast. When the bolt struck, the possessed bird veered towards her, talons stretched forward in a grasping motion. Syd tossed aside her borrowed bolts and moved towards the stymphalia, ready to meet the avian head on. Before it reached her, though, the same winged figure as before dove by and caught the beast in the head with a strange weapon.
The figure wielded a polearm of some kind that Jadis at first thought had to be a halberd. However, the head of the polearm wasn’t an axe or blade but was instead what looked like a hollow metal ring. When the winged warrior passed by, it caught the bird with the ring slipped over its head. When it continued its flight past at literally break-neck speeds, it wrenched the stymphalia’s head to the side with an audible cracking sound, carrying the creature away from the airship.
“The fuck was that!?” Syd cursed in surprise.
“Bridget?” Kerr shouted at the orc who was busy brandishing her flail at another attacking stymphalia.
“Focus!” Aila shouted at them both. “There are more—”
Just then, the Leviathan shuddered under their feet as three of the huge stymphalia crashed into the side of the airship. One of the creatures hit the cabin just in front of the railed platform, while the other two smashed headfirst into the side of the fuselage above them. While the one who had hit the front of the ship did minimal damage thanks to the sturdy, reinforced hull, Jay could see the beasts above tearing great holes in the cloth of the balloon.
“Watch your heads!” Jay called out as she leapt up to grab hold of the flailing stymphalia closest to her.
Noll, a little further to the fore of the ship, did the same to the possessed avian closer to him. With his long, curved sword, he sliced the beast open, causing its demon-filled guts to spill out across the deck in a slick mess of black blood and gore. Jay didn’t have any weapon but the bolts at hand, so she simply grabbed hold of the stymphalia and pulled it down with her great weight.
Her plan was to bring the creature into range of her Syd self, who was already stepping closer to spear the creature with her sword staff. However, as she landed on the blood-slicked deck, her boots slipped and she fell backwards and knocked against the platform railing. Jay’s momentary stumble gave the stymphalia enough room to flail wildly with little to impede its motions. Its massive wings batted against the sides of the airship as well as everyone else on the deck.
“Merde!” Kerr cursed as the possessed bird’s wing smacked into her back and pushed her over the edge of the rail.
Jadis’ hearts leapt into her throats at the thought of Kerr going over the side of the airship. A fall from their current height would be lethal for anyone without some form of flight, except for maybe Jadis herself considering her prodigious health pool. Even that was an iffy proposition, since she had never tested how far she could safely fall without taking significant damage.
Jay moved in tandem with her Syd self, whirling to toss the flailing stymphalia over the edge of the ship so she could rush to catch hold of Kerr as quickly as possible. Syd, in the same instant, darted forward to spear the bird through the chest to make sure the Demon inside was dead. As Jay hurled the beast away, one of its huge wings smacked Syd across the head, obscuring her vision for just a moment, even if it did nothing to stop her blade from piercing its chest.
Already turning away from the stymphalia, Jay saw that her panic for Kerr had been unwarranted. The therion archer had been standing with one foot on the top of the rail. Even though she had been knocked forward she was still standing on the rail, only at a bizarre ninety-degree angle. Jadis had forgotten all about Kerr’s magic boots that allowed her to stick to surfaces. Kerr, while obviously pissed about half of her arrows spilling out of her partially upturned quiver, was fine.
The second of relief Jadis felt at seeing her lover safe was broken by a terrified scream piercing the air.
Syd’s vision, momentarily impeded by the feathered wing of the monster bird, cleared just in time to see an impossible sight. One of the stymphalia’s huge talons had caught hold of a small figure in white and red robes. Jadis watched in stunned horror as the power of her own other self’s throw propelled the dying beast away from the airship, along with the elven woman who had been caught in the creature’s clutches.
Eir had fallen over the side of the airship.
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