Nik still couldn’t believe that he was flying.
It was hard not to constantly stare out the window, even with the setting sun’s light shining in his eyes. The world passing below the wonderous “airship” was so strange. Or maybe it was just the perspective making it strange. He wasn’t sure, but either way, it was amazing. Even though he knew it was wrong, Nik had prayed to the gods a few times, asking them why they had let the demonic invasion happen before he was even old enough to do anything about it. The timing had always felt like an injustice. Either wait until he could unlock his primary class, or do it before he was ever born. However, after riding the Leviathan, Nik decided he would need to thank the gods during his next prayer for giving him the opportunity to experience such a marvel. Maybe he wouldn’t have ever had the chance if the invasion had come earlier or later. For him, the timing turned out to be just perfect.
A groan from further down the airship cabin acted as a bucket of water to douse his excited thoughts. Nik tore his eyes away from the window to look at where the sounds of pain were coming from. The back of the cabin was a stark reminder of all the horrors that the demonic invasion had brought upon the world. Shivering, Nik decided to add his thanks that he would no longer be in a frontline city anymore, as well.
Glancing around, Nik saw that his parents were still sitting with their hands clasped together, nervous looks on their faces. They didn’t seem to like the airship as much as he did. Probably because they were old, which wasn’t their fault. At least the rest of the uninjured passengers looked like they were having a better time.
Most of the others sitting in the seats in the middle of the cabin were younger than his parents, though not by much. Nik didn’t know any of them, but he figured they all had to be important like his mother and father were if they were being flown out of the city on the same ship as the badly hurt soldiers. They were all pretty excited, just the same as he was, constantly staring out of the windows. Even the Dryad man sitting near the soldiers looked as excited as Nik felt as he stared out the window. The only three who weren’t looking outside were the pregnant woman and the two men sitting in the seats next to and across from her. The woman looked like she had fallen asleep while the two men looked sort of queasy and were keeping their eyes away from the windows and the door leading outside that they were next to. Nik was pretty sure both men were human, but they were starting to look as green as orcs.
Just as he was looking at the two men, the door leading to the balcony outside opened, letting in a gust of cold air. The tall therion woman with the huge bow came inside, not bothering to even excuse herself as she pushed past the three and headed to the front of the ship. Nik felt like the woman’s parents had probably never taught her proper manners like his parents had, but he wasn’t about to say anything to her about it. If the archer was strong enough to use a metal bow, he didn’t want to get on her bad side. And she looked plenty angry to begin with.
“We’re an hour away from Fort Constance,” Nik overheard the angry therion woman proclaim as she spoke to someone further to the front of the cabin. “The sun is setting! What the fuck is taking so long?”
“Kerr, please lower your voice,” a kind female voice chided.
“The headwind caused some delays,” a different female voice replied in a calmer tone. “We aren’t making quite the same time as before.”
“That’s not what I meant and—”
The two voices were cut off as a door shut. Nik didn’t get what was upsetting the therion so much, but he hoped it didn’t mean that the amazing airship was going to run out of magic or something like that. Surely, a wonder like the airship took a lot of magic to keep in the air.
“Excuse me,” a polite voice said from much closer than the other two voices had been.
“Ah, yes, pardon me,” Nik’s father replied.
Looking away from the window again, Nik saw that the beautiful Seraphim who had been sitting near the front of the cabin all trip thus far was pushing past their seats. His father had been in the way, as had a few other passengers leaning into the aisle, and she was politely making her way back. Much nicer than the therion had been. Nik didn’t know who the therion was, but the Seraphim he knew was Severina of House Lumen. She was a paladin from the capital, so of course he had heard of her. He kind of wanted to speak to her, but at the same time, he didn’t have a clue what he would say, so he kept his mouth shut. Besides, someone who was that powerful and well known was sort of intimidating.
The paladin made her way to where the archer had come from, exiting out the door to the windy balcony. This time, as the cold air blew into the cabin, the pregnant woman was awoken from her sleep. As she stirred, the queasy man who had been sitting near her whispered into her ear, then got up and headed for the back of the cabin.
Nik didn’t give them any more thought as he kept trying to look out his window, though by that point the sun was shining right in his eyes, making it difficult to see anything. Glancing around, he saw that there was an empty seat on the other side of aisle, so he got up to take it and see if he could get a better view from the window there.
“Ah! Gods, we need a healer! A healer, please!”
Before Nik had even crossed the aisle, panicked shouts came from the rear of the cabin. Standing in place, not sure what to do, he stared in confusion at the source of the commotion. One of the less wounded soldiers was calling out, waving his one remaining arm. Another soldier was lying on the ground where the queasy man was kneeling over him. Even from a distance, Nik could see the pool of blood spreading across the floor. The soldiers were growing alarmed, and from the looks of things, the queasy man was also shouting in panic. Maybe he was trying to staunch the bleeding? Nik couldn’t tell as people were getting up and blocking his view.
Moving a little further into the aisle, Nik felt a presence move close behind him, so he quickly got out of the way. The figure pushing past him with a hurried apology turned out to be the gorgeous elf priestess he had caught glimpses of earlier. He’d only seen her a few times, since she had spent almost the whole flight in the little room with the pilot, but he couldn’t help but stare every time. She was the most beautiful elf he had ever seen, maybe even the most beautiful person, though it was hard to say that when he had seen the three Nephilim giants when he was boarding the airship.
The elf’s beauty was only a temporary distraction. The disturbance at the other end of the cabin was growing and the shouts were increasing in both urgency and volume. The elf priestess was trying to get past the crowd of passengers who were now filling the aisle, but the space had become far more crowded than a moment before and her progress was slowed as different people tried to get out of the way and ended up running into each other. Even the heavily pregnant woman had stood up and was unintentionally making the jam worse by knocking into some of the soldiers between her and the elf.
The airship’s quiet and tranquil flight had turned into panic, bordering on pandemonium. Nik still wasn’t sure what was going on or what had caused the disturbance initially, but as he watched the soldiers and passengers shout and shove at each other to try and get out of the way of the priestess, he knew he had to do something. He had to help. He had to do what he had boarded the airship to do in the first place.
He pulled out the knife hidden under his shirt.
Nik slid between the passengers in his way, stalking with speed but not rushing. Pushing too hard or going too fast would draw attention away from the commotion and onto himself, which was far from the goal. Instead, he kept his hands at his sides and his head held high, but he refused to meet anyone’s gaze. Slipping past another man who was partially blocking the aisle, Nikanor came up behind the priestess whose progress had been stymied by a crush of several soldiers who were struggling to get out of the elf’s way. She was right at the wide point where the doors to the balcony were located. Nik could see the priestess was talking to the pregnant woman who was only an arm’s length away, but his vision was suddenly blocked by the back of the man who had been sitting across from that woman.
Stepping up behind the slightly taller man, Nik silently slid his dagger into the small of his back, a few inches above the hips. As the man let out a shocked gasp of pain, Nikanor twisted the blade inside him, then roughly shoved him to the left and out of the way. The time for subtlety was evaporating like water on a summer’s day. There was no time left.
Raising his hand high, Nik took a wide step forward. The pregnant woman’s eyes went wide, seeing his approach. The priestess jolted, seeing the change in the other woman’s expression, and she began to turn. But it was too late. Nik was already on top of her. Without a word, Nikanor plunged the dagger down.
Straight into the heart of the pregnant woman.
Nik’s world lurched as he was violently tossed to the side by a pair of hands wrapped around his neck and shoulder. He managed to hold onto the dagger, pulling the glowing orange blade out of the gasping woman he had stabbed as he was sent slamming into a hard surface. The jarring collision with the closed airship door was rough enough that Nik dropped the blade and it clattered to the floor at his feet.
“You fucking trash,” the man that Nik had stabbed snarled as he choked the boy with his left hand while holding his other arm out of the way with his right. “I’m going to feed your eyes to the Demons!”
“You can try,” Nik responded, not bothered at all by having his nonexistent windpipe strangled. “But I don’t really have those.”
Nik immediately shifted his right leg into the shape of a long arm and picked the malediction dagger up in one smooth motion. Using as much force as he could muster, Nik shoved the dagger into the man’s crotch, dragging it around in a pattern that would have turned his dick and balls into a shredded mess if the enchanted blade didn’t pass through all flesh like it was intangible. The pain wasn’t by any means lessened, if the man’s high-pitched screams were anything to go by.
With his free hand, Nik yanked on the latch to the door while shoving the man slightly away to make room. When the screaming man pushed back, Nik let himself and the assailant tumble out into the cold wind through the now open door. In the same instant, his body shifted and his neck and head turned to a slippery mush, allowing him to pull free from the man’s grasp. Rolling with the fall, Nik’s body was already mostly back to the new normal by the time she was in a kneeling position.
“Demons don’t eat anyway, moron,” Maeve grunted with disdain.
Since she didn’t have eyes, for purposes of seeing at any rate, the no-longer-disguised Fetch was able to see multiple things at once. The first being that the man she had stabbed twice with the enchanted dagger Aila had given her was still not dead. He was obviously in a lot of pain, and his gait was shaky as he struggled to his feet, but he was alive. His bulk was also increasing in size, over-extended muscles ripping through his clothes. Likely he was using some kind of Eldritch-based body enhancement skill or spell. He would absolutely be able to crush her in a fair fight if that was the case, since Maeve’s classes were not geared towards combat at all. Not that she was interested in giving him a fair fight, but the assessment stood.
Inside the Leviathan, Maeve could also see the pregnant woman, Liane, was clutching at her chest. The shapeshifter was less interested in her and more focused on the package she had hidden inside her belly. Already Maeve could see the writhing, stretching motion of something inside working to get out. She didn’t have any idea what the thing inside Liane might be able to do, but Maeve wasn’t eager to find out.
“I’ll kill you, you bitch!” the swelling muscle cultist raged behind her as he got a hand around her ankle.
Letting the limb turn limp as a wet noodle, Maeve used one of her skills to coat that part of her body in a slick, oily substance that made it nigh on impossible to maintain a grip. She didn’t even bother pulling away from him. There was no need. The bright light of divine retribution streaking through the sky beyond the cultist would handle the movement for her.
The bulky man let out another scream of pain as Severina’s shining blade pierced into him from behind. Maeve was certain that the piercing blow had been empowered by a smite, so she was doubly impressed that the man was somehow still standing. Still, he wasn’t standing for long. Severina used the leverage having her sword stuck through the man’s torso gave her and pulled him over the edge of the railing, consigning the man to a screaming death a few hundred feet below.
“I know what that’s like,” Maeve muttered as she rushed through the open door.
Back inside, she could see that Eir was trying to put some distance between herself and Liane, but she hadn’t used the force push enchantment in her robes yet. It was fucking stupid, but Maeve immediately realized why. The elf was too kindhearted, so she didn’t want to risk hurting the already wounded soldiers nearby.
“Use the fucking push!” Maeve shouted at the elf.
Eir could always heal anyone she injured after the fact. Whatever Liane was trying to do would be a lot worse than a forceful shove. Maeve could see a foaming green substance pouring out of the woman’s mouth, and her stomach was rippling like a stormy sea. Reaching forward, the Fetch tried to grab the crazed woman from behind and pull her away from Eir. Before she could, the priestess took her shouted advice and activated the force push spell sewn into her robes.
Everyone around Eir was sent flying away from her, including Maeve. She landed hard on her back, which was fine, except that another heavy weight had landed on top of her as well. Liane writhed and twisted around, hands grasping at whatever part of the shapeshifter she could reach. As she struggled, she let out a terrible gurgling cry that made even Maeve shudder in revulsion.
Some of the green foam bubbling out of the woman’s mouth dripped onto Maeve as the two tumbled together for a few seconds. The Fetch recoiled, the sharp sting of a powerful acid eating away at her orange flesh. She didn’t have defenses like Jadis or Thea, so she could only take so much damage from shit like acid before it would do her in. She just needed to keep from getting melted for a few seconds, though, as she was certain that Severina would be putting an end to Liane. Imminently.
Just as predicted, the golden glow of the blonde Seraphim appeared above their two struggling forms. However, just as the paladin was approaching to strike, the unexpected occurred. Liane’s stomach burst open like an overripened melon. There was no blood or gore to go with the small explosion. Not even the more horrifying option of what might have been inside. Instead, a large Demon with a gold eye leapt out from within the woman.
The Demon was overly large, many times the size of a typical Demon, and its tentacles glowed with an ethereal light. Maeve had no more than a second to observe the assailant, as it rapidly wrapped its magically enhanced tentacles around Severina. In immediate reaction, the paladin leapt up into the air and away from the Leviathan, her sword glowing as she struggled to get an angle on the monstrous Demon attacking her.
Maeve couldn’t spare any time on thoughts of Severina’s safety. She had her own attacker to worry about.
“I will devour you, Fetch,” Liane hissed in an unnatural voice as she rolled over on top of Maeve. “Your life will fuel decay, as it was always meant to.”
Maeve couldn’t be bothered to come up with some kind of witty response to the gloating words. She was far too busy trying to find a way to get away from the foaming madwoman before any more of her body melted. While the muscled cultist had been easy to slip away from, Liane was proving to be far more difficult. Her hands were sticking to her despite the oil the Fetch was producing. Some kind of skill at work, Maeve guessed. She was just glad Eir had avoided being touched by the cultist before she had been blasted away.
Maeve couldn’t stand the thought of how Jadis would react if anything happened to Eir. That emotion pulled at the Fetch, threatening to tear her away from the here and now. But she held on. Being in immediate mortal danger was an oddly big help in keeping her unwieldly emotions in line.
“Fuck!” Maeve screamed in pain as more of the bubbling bile splattered across her face and chest. “Get off me!”
Slamming the malediction dagger into Liane produced more screams of pain, but that wasn’t exactly helping Maeve’s situation. The screams were just producing more acid, and while the cultist was clearly in pain from the malediction wounds, she wasn’t dying from them, so that was a major frustration.
“Help!”
Maeve didn’t have much hope that her cry for aid would be responded to by anyone inside the Leviathan. She could both hear and see that a great flurry of violent activity was still happening inside the cabin. Fortunately, those inside the airship were not the full extent of her allies.
A man catcher polearm slipped around Liane’s waist. With a twist and a hard pull, the screeching cultist was ripped away from Maeve. Though the action resulted in more of her body being torn off than the Fetch would have preferred, it was better to lose a little pseudo flesh than her whole damn life. Bounding to her feet, Maeve watched as her savior went to work.
Noct used her polearm to maneuver and slam the struggling Liane against the side of the airship. While the cultist had some tricks up her sleeves, she clearly wasn’t physically stronger than the Seraphim. With a horrid gurgling noise, the woman projectile vomited a stream of acid at Noct, which was blocked by the Seraphim’s black wings closing around her protectively. The smell of burning feathers filled the air, though the wind blew most of it away from Maeve. As soon as the vomit paused, Noct opened her wings wide and, in a move Maeve remembered well from her last encounter with the silent Seraphim, activated her restraints.
Dozens of straps, belts, ropes, and chains launched off from where they had been wrapped around Noct’s body. The restraints, powered by magic, wrapped around the writhing woman, covering up much of her form so that she was completely wrapped in them. Even her mouth and eyes were wrapped up, leaving only a flaring nose visible between a gap in the leather. Maeve knew the restraints weren’t just mundane material, either. Noct’s magic made them supernaturally strong and resistant to damage. It would take someone with extreme levels of strength to break out of those bindings.
“You’re going to need some healing,” Maeve pointed at Noct’s severely damage right wing.
“Yes,” the dark Seraphim agreed in the same tone she would use when asked if she wanted eggs for breakfast.
“Let’s make sure our healer is okay then, huh?”
Maeve rushed back through the open cabin door once again, this time taking a second to scan the full breadth of the airship interior.
Eir was alive and well. In fact, she was doing her utmost to pump healing magic into all the various soldiers and passengers near her, as they were all choking and gagging on a noxious red gas that was streaming out from the figure of the third cultist who had started the distraction. Considering how much was spewing out of the man, the whole cabin should have been filled with the deadly toxin. However, it looked like Tegwyn had punched out a window in the back of the airship, so combined with the open cabin door, most of the red cloud was being blown out of the Leviathan.
Speaking of Tegwyn, Maeve could see the Dryad wrestling with the third cultist. At least, she assumed it was Tegwyn, since she was pretty sure he was the only creature made of living wood on the airship. The Dryad was several feet taller than his usual height, with overly broad shoulders and bulging muscles. While he still looked mostly like a Dryad, his feet had turned into hooves and his head had morphed into the appearance of a goat. It was quite a striking look, and as a professional shapeshifter, Maeve wanted to explore the interesting appearance in further detail. She had to shake that feeling aside, though, since such emotions were hardly useful in the current situation.
“Get down!” Maeve shouted at a few of the other passengers who were still dodging around the interior like drunken idiots. “Get down, now!”
Physically tackling two of the panicked idiots to the ground, Maeve managed to get them out of the way just in time. Half a second later, the twang of Kerr’s bow echoed and the rush of wind that followed one of her arrows passed over the Fetch’s head. Maeve didn’t need to look up to see the results, but she did anyway, since those sorts of motions helped establish how her humanoid form was supposed to act.
Tegwyn stood at the back of the cabin, his arms still holding the cultist’s arms. The previously struggling man was instead dangling like a dead fish, which made sense, since a large arrow was skewered through his head. The red fog that had been pouring out of him had ceased, and the air was rapidly clearing out with the source cut off. Turning to look towards Maeve and Kerr, Tegwyn gave them a raised fist of triumph.
A much more obvious sign of approval than Jadis’ misunderstanding with thumbs.
“Everyone stay down,” Kerr commanded as she stalked forward, another arrow nocked on her bowstring. “Don’t get up until we tell you to.”
“Do you think that is all of them?” Eir asked with a shaky voice as she looked over at them from where she was kneeling over an injured soldier.
“Maybe…” Kerr murmured as she scanned the cabin.
“Nope,” Maeve shouted a moment later as she pointed towards the front of the airship.
A man with a long stiletto had slipped forward, crawling low as he tried to enter the pilot’s cockpit. At the sound of her voice, he lunged forward, no doubt intent on putting his blade into Aila to deliver a poison of some kind. Before he could move even a foot further ahead, Kerr’s arrow pierced his left thigh and pinned him to the floor. In almost the same second, a spectral lance of immense Arcane power shot out from inside the cockpit, skewering the man’s chest and utterly obliterating any organs that once resided within.
A moment later the arcane lance dissipated, and the dead cultists slumped onto the floor in a pool of blood and viscera. Walking out from the open door, Aila stared down at the body before raising her blue eyes to scowl at Kerr.
“Please do not shoot your arrows into the deck of my airship. We will have to replace that board now.”
“Oh, what are you complaining about,” Kerr waved the concern away. “Look at all that fucking blood. We’ll have to replace more than one board to get rid of those stains.”
Taking a step towards Aila, Maeve examined the corpse of the most recently deceased cultist.
“That’s all then, I think. Four total.”
“Five,” Kerr corrected her, causing Maeve to turn back to the therion in surprise.
“Really? Where?”
“There,” Kerr pointed at a seat to Maeve’s right.
Indeed, there was a fifth corpse, this one a woman. Her head was crushed and her right arm broken, though a wickedly curved blade was still clutched in her hand. Maeve could see the black toxin still dripping from the knife. Not that it had done her any good. Not when Kerr was more than capable of crushing most anyone’s bones if they got within melee range of her.
The archer wasn’t only dangerous from a distance.
“Damn. I didn’t notice her,” Maeve shook her head. “Or the weasel with the stiletto.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why we let this shit play out,” Kerr murmured as she used a booted toe to kick the blade away from the dead woman’s hand. “Had to catch them all.”
“Are we missing anyone? Are we sure all the assassins have been accounted for?” Aila asked, her voice carrying throughout the cabin so that even Tegwyn in the back could hear her.
“Oh, shit,” Meave cursed. “Severina—”
“Is well,” the blonde Seraphim called out as she stepped through the open door. “Tacitus was able to help me with the Demon.”
Apparently so. Maeve eyed the dead creature as it dangled limply from the paladin’s grasp.
“Where is he?” Maeve asked.
“Tacitus is chasing down the cultist I threw over the edge,” Severina answered. “To be certain he is dead. In the meantime, I believe Noct requires some extensive healing, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course,” Eir said as she headed for the balcony. “Right away.”
“Here, we will likely need to turn this one over to the emperor’s guard for study,” the blonde paladin passed the dead Demon that had been hiding inside Liane to Kerr. “Keep it with the other bodies. Noct will need some help with securing her prisoner as well.”
“Where are you going?” Kerr asked as Severina walked back to the open door as soon as she had passed over her burden.
“Back to Glanum. Jadis will need to know our ruse was successful.”
“Just make sure you aren’t seen as you approach,” Maeve cautioned before the Seraphim could take flight. “If there are any cultists in Glanum still, we don’t want them to be frightened off. Otherwise, this shit will have been for nothing.”
“Assuming they are foolish enough to try and approach Jadis in the first place,” Severina said with a frown.
“Of course they are,” Maeve grinned wryly at the paladin. “Those types love to gloat. You can trust me on that one.”
244