The Heavenly Host

Elrose nodded. “I’ll grab my stuff from my room and head to the flight deck. We are in my element up here!” Trevin smiled and nodded.

Gastropé could hear no more, as Zed was physically dragging him from the room. The ship lurched as it took another hit. Gastropé was more than a bit concerned; they were presumably at full defense now. That must have been a nasty hit.

∼

“This way!” Zed instructed Gastropé. They had retrieved the bag he had prepared for combat magic back in the Grove, and now Zed led him quickly aftward along the cloudship. By this point, the walls of the cloud were darkly mottled black and gray with flashes of lightning coruscating through the walls and the parts of the floor not covered in carpet. The whine of the generators was now loud enough that they had to shout to be heard.

“Storm liches are a real pain! They are the biggest pain we typically face,” Zed shouted as he led the way. “Being liches, they are quite resistant to lightning, which is the ship’s primary ranged weapon system. The ice dragons do take some damage from lightning, mostly impact related. At least it slows them down.”

“What about fire?” Gastropé was trying to remember some of the more esoteric things he had learned. He had never in a million years expected to have to fight liches or dragons. That was not something normal people did! That was the stuff of bards’ tales and legends!

Zed shook his head. “Ice dragons take some damage from fire — it can melt their armor — but it’s gotta be hot! The liches are so cold that they can typically shield the dragons. Really hot fire can in theory damage them, but their intense coldness acts like very good armor. So they might as well be immune to it.”

“Crap!” Gastropé yelled as they headed up a spiral staircase to the top floor. His only real attack spells were fire and lightning based. So what was he going to do other than be dragon fodder? As they reached the top floor, he realized it was a different top floor than he had seen before. This was a good-sized room with people scrambling about readying carpets.

Zed led them to a gnome who was handing out various pieces of equipment. Zed gestured to the gnome with two raised fingers and was promptly handed two circlets. “Here, put this around your neck! Pull it apart in the back.”

Gastropé took the circlet — really, a solid neckband that was open at the back, but which appeared to have some sort of clasping mechanism. It was made out of gold and silver-colored metal with various rings of different colored stones embedded in the band. It was a tight fit, but he got it around his neck.

Zed had his on already. He came up to Gastropé and snapped the back into place so it was locked. He began twisting the colored gem bands on the circlet. “There, I’ve tuned it to the same linkage that we will use on our carpet.”

“What is this?” Gastropé asked.

“It serves two purposes: first, it’s a life support system. It will keep you warm and supplied with air on the carpet. We are way too high up to breathe otherwise, and it’s colder than a lich’s teat out there. Or almost.” Zed shrugged, realizing they would soon have to fight liches and discover how cold that might be. “It also has links to allow us to send and receive communications with others. I just set the default link to the one we’ll be using on Peter’s carpet.” He added, “There is also the general command frequency that we can all hear messages on. We try to not use it except for priority orders and instructions.”

Zed was now leading them over towards a carpet where the human boy, Peter, was adjusting straps and talking to others about to board. Peter was the combat pilot they had met on the trip up to the carpet.

“Understand,” said Zed, looking Gastropé in the eye, “this is going to be trial by fire for you — or rather, freezing in this case. Normally, we don’t fight at this altitude. Storm liches and ice dragons are about the only thing that can attack us this high. It is just below freezing out there, and the air is too thin for even the aetós to fly. Spell casting is going to be very tricky and dangerous. They appear to have sent almost all the storm liches against us; they had to know we were leaving about now and where we were going and therefore exiting.” He shook his head. “That’s why we are sending everyone, including new people, out to fight.”

Gastropé swallowed hard and nodded, knowing his face had to be showing his terror. He had to try to suck it up. Be brave and not look like a complete imbecile. They were counting on him. He only hoped he could count on himself.

“Gastropé!” Peter called with a smile. “In the fight! Hah! No better way to learn than to jump into the nastiest battle we’ve had in centuries!”

“You are nuts, Peter!” a young woman in an extremely tight-fitting suit of stretchy material said. She glanced at Gastropé. “I am Penelope and yes, I am a nymph and yes, I can do something besides make wild passionate love for hours on end.”