It was taking a lot longer to catch up to the Behemoth than Jadis thought it would. Having flown in the airship multiple times, she was well familiar with the upper speed capabilities of the ponderous magical vessel. Forty miles an hour should have been about as fast as the wagon-turned-dirigible was able to go on a clear night with little wind. However, despite how much faster she knew she was able to fly with her Succubus wings the Behemoth managed to keep its lead for a fair amount of time.
The feat would have impressed her if Jadis wasn’t too busy being worried about the ship blowing up.
Her Eyes of the Succubi spell allowed her to see all sorts of interesting aspects of the way magic interacted with the world, much of which was probably going to take her a long time to process and understand. What wasn’t hard to deduce though was that the increasing frequency of the magic explosions happening around the back end of the Behemoth was a bad thing. That was where the magic-fueled propeller engine was located on the retrofitted airship. It wasn’t the only enchantment that was responsible for speed and flight when it came to the vessel; in fact, most of the lift came from the balloon, but it was a major contributing factor to the overall movement capabilities of the vessel. Whatever was happening to the engine didn’t look good for its continued functionality.
“Sabina must have supercharged it somehow,” Dys grumbled under her breath. “And if she did, that probably means she’s on the ship. And if Sabina is on there, then Thea, Bridget, and Sorcha are, too. Shit in a handbag…”
“What was that?”
“Nothing!” Dys shouted over the wind so that Severina could hear her. “Get ready to dive!”
“I’m ready!”
Sev had latched onto Dys’ back, letting the double-sized Nephilim carry her along so that they could move at a faster speed. Now that they were approaching the airship, her Dys and Syd selves were going to dive low with Noll and Severina after the floundering Behemoth while her Jay self would circle high above with Alex and Hope. The Behemoth was still flying northwestward at a fast pace, but it had also fallen to the point where it was practically scraping the ground. That put the vessel well within the toxic miasma covering the region, and Jadis wasn’t going to risk bringing Hope into that dangerous fog.
Aside from the obvious issues with the magic engine on the airship, now that she was so much closer, Jadis could see a few more details. The biggest one was the flaming figure that was flying to the fore of the airship. Her unassisted eyes told her that the winged man with a burning sword had to be Aelius; that much was obvious. However, with the addition of her Succubus eyes, Jadis could see the Seraphim in a new light.
Aelius had a different magical profile from Severina, yet it was similar in a hard to define way. Severina’s magic shone like a golden sun on a summer’s day. Bright and beautiful, it also gave off a feeling power and leadership, so it was a natural extension of the holy light that she exhibited with her aura. Aelius’ magic, however, was more like the light of a candle. It was still bright; in some ways, it was even brighter than Severina’s magic, but it had that mellow warmth of an orange flame that was meant to make it easier to see in a dark place, rather than a blazing beacon in the sky.
There were other magic lights appearing occasionally around the sides of the Behemoth. She couldn’t immediately place all of them, but the one Jadis was certain of right away was the blue flame of Bridget’s lantern. The azure fire looked the same with her normal eyesight as it did with her magically enhanced vision, though she noted that the way the aether smoked and rippled around her flame was something she couldn’t see ordinarily.
Observations concerning the nature of magic and the aether flowing through the world had to be put aside, though. Jadis was finally directly above the Behemoth, so it was time to dive.
Dys and Syd’s plasma tendrils folded against her backs as those two of Jadis dropped out of the sky. With Noll on her back, Syd aimed for the front of the aircraft, while Dys aimed for right-hand side where the fold-open wall was situated. Severina broke off from Dys halfway through the dive and swooped in on the left side of the Behemoth while Dys pulled up out of the dive on the other side. As Syd leveled out in front of the airship, Noll jumped from her back and raced along the ground, easily keeping up with the speed they were flying at as he practically leapt from point to point in front of them.
Breaking through the cover of the miasma hit Jadis like a physical object. The foul fog burned her eyes and throat, and she could feel it eating away at her health pool, albeit very slowly. The discomfort was manageable, though, and it didn’t hinder her Dys self from sliding right up next to the window on the side door of the cockpit so she could peer inside.
“Good evening, Jadis!” Nevan startled her as he shouted through an open window hatch. “Immensely glad to see you are well! You’re looking especially colossal! Is Alex with you?”
“Yes!” Dys shouted back, taking only a heartbeat to adjust to the unexpected presence of the dapper gnome. “I’ve got her! Up above!”
“Wonderful!” Nevan beamed, though tears streamed from his eyes as the rancid mist burned him. “Wonderful news indeed! We’re all relieved!”
By all, Jadis was starting to understand that Nevan really meant “all” as she could hear a gaggle of familiar voices calling out from inside the wagon, both male and female.
“Now, while my fair lady is doing a spectacular job of piloting an airship for the first time,” Nevan continued, “we are in a small spot of trouble here. I believe Sabina said that the engine enchantments are overloading, and also that the balloon has ruptured due to the speed, so we have lost our ‘lift’ as she called it. Any chance you might be able to lend us one of your exceptionally large hands?”
Looking up at the nose of the hot air envelope, Dys saw what Nevan meant about rupture. While the solid wooden frame of the airship’s balloon was still intact, there were huge tears in the thick, alchemically treated cloth. The hot air that was normally contained within the vessel was escaping, which explained why the Behemoth was having so much trouble maintaining its altitude despite its drastically increased speed.
“Can’t you just slow down?” Dys called out as she examined the damage to the front of the airship.
“Unfortunately, no,” the gnome replied, his voice raised high over the rushing wind. “Despite my honey bird’s best efforts, the controls have become rather uncontrollable!”
A face appeared behind Nevan for a second before the small man was pushed out of the way. Gazing at her with a wild-eyed expression, Bridget reached out with one hand and dragged Dys closer to the side of the wagon-turned-aircraft.
“Don’t run off without us like that again,” Bridget snarled before roughly kissing Dys on the lips. When she pulled away, she continued with a rapid dissemination of information. “Sabina says she can’t stop the engine without breaking it, and also that breaking it might cause it to explode. Also, if she does stop it, she thinks we’ll drop out of the sky because of momentum or some shite like that.”
“Is the engine going to explode if she doesn’t shut it down?” Dys asked, her expression turned to steely seriousness.
“She doesn’t know,” Bridget shrugged. “Not immediately. It might just burn out. Or not.”
That would be better than a boom, but Jadis knew that relying on a maybe was a bad idea, especially when it came to explosions in small spaces.
“How many people are in there?”
“Uh, everyone,” the orc woman shrugged again. “Everyone who isn’t on the Leviathan, anyway. Oh, and Thais is here, too. She and Cora are keeping us healed from this bloody fog.”
Well, that crossed out Jadis’ first idea, which had been to pull whoever was in the Behemoth out and carrying them away. She could carry a lot, especially with her increased size, but that many people would strain her capacity. Not because of weight, but because of space. She wouldn’t be able to hold onto them all and falling off while flying at the height and speed that she moved at would be… a problem.
It would be safer for everyone if they stayed in the airship. The problem with that, though, was the engine. Leaving the engine in the Behemoth when it could turn into a magical fireball at any moment wasn’t an option, not if all passengers were staying on board. The magical machine would need to go. But if it was removed, the only form of propulsion that the airship would have would be what Jadis could do under her own power. And since the balloon envelope was damaged, that job was going to be a lot harder.
“Do we have any repair cloth in the wagon?” Dys asked as the resolution of what had to be done settled onto her.
Bridget called out behind her, repeating the question. After a few seconds, the answer came back that yes, there was some spare cloth intended for minor repairs on board. Nodding at the information, Dys gave her lover a grim smile.
“This is going to suck, but I’ve got a plan. Also, do me a favor, and get ready for some fighting. We’re about to fly right through a pack of Demons.”
While her Dys self had been talking with Nevan and Bridget, Jadis’ Syd self had been flying ahead of the ship where Aelius was. A gasping, out of breath old Seraphim had explained that he had been doing his best to keep the Behemoth safe by fighting anything capable of flight that had appeared ahead of the airship. A job which had become increasingly difficult as the flying wagon’s speed had increased with time. Now they were moving at the limit of what Aelius was capable of, and he was running himself ragged just to keep up.
“Fall back and hold onto the side of the airship,” Syd told him over the noise of their fast flight. “Noll, Severina, and I can handle the enemies!”
“I can still fight,” Aelius replied, though Jadis could hear the strain in his voice from beyond the echoes of his helmet. “I have Valtar’s strength within me!”
“I know you do!” Syd shouted back. “But I’ll need your help on the front of the airship! Please!”
Aelius turned his head to look back once before nodding.
“Very well!”
Without further argument, Aelius slowed his flight just enough so that he landed against the front side of the Behemoth, hanging on with one arm through the left side cockpit window hatch. The maneuver was just in time, too, as Syd couldn’t afford to focus on the older Seraphim any longer. Due to the speed that they were still flying at, they had traveled back into the range of the Demons who had been pursuing Jadis.
Possibly. Jadis couldn’t be sure if the Demons she was seeing with her enhanced vision were the same creatures that had been after her and Severina earlier, but regardless, there were a lot of them. More importantly, she could see twisted, unwholesome magics forming around scores of powerful Demons scattered across the landscape ahead of them. An aura of malicious rot radiated from many of the magic sources she could see, and while she was no expert, she had no doubts that some, if not all, of those magic spells being prepared were going to be ranged attacks in nature.
“Severina!” Syd called out to the justicar as she angled closer. “Clear the way with Noll!”
“Where are you going?” She called back as Syd fell away from her.
“First things first! I’ve got to turn the airship!”
Letting herself slip backwards though the air, Syd maneuvered so that she ended up on the left underside of the Behemoth, between the massive wooden wheels. Dys had already moved so that she was on the opposite side as well. With both of her selves in position, the two of Jadis took hold of the airship and, through an effort of will that strained both her mind and her body, she forcefully shifted the Behemoth’s flight path.
The move was slow, and the aircraft resisted her efforts. It was like trying to drag a two hundred pound bag of sand through shallow water. She could do it, but it wasn’t easy. But as her muscles bulged and the light of her wings flared, Jadis felt the Behemoth’s direction shift.
From above, Jay watched as the airship which contained so many of the people she cared about angled away from the worst of the danger. Ahead, she saw the flash and glow of Severina and Noll as they charged into the gathering force of Demons like a pair of wrecking balls. Their efforts were a help, but even two warriors as powerful as them couldn’t be everywhere at once. They wouldn’t be able to stop all the attacks that could be aimed at the airship, especially when the Behemoth made such a large target.
So, Jadis turned the floundering airship, forcing it to change course. Maybe with enough effort, she could have turned the thing fully around and just pointed it back to Glanum. But she didn’t trust that the mini-explosions of magic coming from the Behemoth’s magic engine weren’t soon going to turn into one big explosion. So, once she had the airship angled away so that it wasn’t barreling headlong into the worst of the danger she could see, Jadis moved onto step two of her plan.
“Time to rip out an engine.”
213