The Heavenly Host

“...eratos notros morphum!” Elrose finished his chant and directed his staff directly at the ice dragon. The dragon shook hard and was suddenly quite a bit smaller. Argh! That was annoying. Once more! Elrose blasted a second phase change spell at the dragon.

The dragon screeched loudly as it turned completely to water. “Now!” Elrose shouted and followed with a third, yet different phase change spell. Water could easily become ice once again; steam would take more work! Elrose chanted and released the spell.

Even as small crystals of ice began reforming above the now-falling lich, those crystals suddenly turned to steam. Now for his second area of study: enchantment. Using his staff instead of the material components, Elrose cast a spell to create a high-pressure region in the middle of the dragon steam and let it dissipate into the surrounding low-pressure region, sending dragon steam far and wide! The ice dragon would eventually reform, but it would be a while. Quite a while. For now, it was just the lich.

Elrose glanced down at the lich, which had regained its composure and was now flying on its own, heading towards Elrose. Elrose grinned — he loved sorcery.

He chanted a quick spell of true aim, relying on sorcery’s seeing powers, and quickly lobbed a vial at the lich. The potion bottle arced perfectly through the air. As it reached the lich, Elrose gestured with his staff, exploding the bottle, which contained only simple water. The staff’s spell simply used the water as a material component to open a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water.

The portal would not stay open for long, but it would be long enough for several thousand gallons of water to flow through, surrounding the lich in the freezing atmosphere. A more mundane phase change then occurred as the several thousand gallons of water surrounding the lich froze into a solid, giant block of ice. Thank you, Mr. Lich, Elrose murmured.

The lich-cube began plummeting to the ground. Elrose doubted the lich would be able to free himself before it hit the ground. He grinned and turned his attention to the next dragon and lich pair.

∼

Jenn worked feverishly on the pilot’s burns. She was still on a massive adrenaline rush; the chase to catch the fallen pilot had gotten her blood racing. They had maneuvered under the falling pilot and Paulinas had been able to use aeromancy to slow the pilot’s fall.

The pilot had landed in one of the nets and Jorg, the large fellow, had hauled her in. Jenn had then quickly set about working on treating her burns. They were very nasty electrical burns; a bit out of her normal range, but something she was trained to deal with.

No, she could deal with the burns, particularly with some added help from Paulinas; what was really keeping her adrenaline up was seeing Gastropé on another nearby carpet. This could easily have been Gastropé. That bothered her greatly for some reason. She knew it was irrational; they had been in combat together before, and with each other. They both knew the risks, so why was she suddenly so concerned for him?

∼

This was definitely not going well, Gastropé thought. Their partner carpet was back online, but was in a dangerous state with a missing pilot, given that it was a larger, six-person carpet. According to Peter, the big carpets were less maneuverable with only one pilot. The smaller carpets like theirs were more maneuverable and could get by with one really good pilot, but the larger ones generally needed both pilots to keep things steady in combat flight and allow the spell casters to work.

That meant that Gastropé’s group’s carpet was doing much of the work. At least, all of the sweeping attacks. The other carpet worked as a mobile platform, but its lower mobility meant that it was easier for the lich or dragon to hit. Thus, the casters had to work more defensively, and the attacks were easier for the lich to avoid.

ZZzzssstttt! Another quiet lightning bolt shot by to their left. It missed.

They had made several more passes at the lich, but the results were not much better than before. They were keeping the lich and dragon from the Nimbus, but that was about it. They needed to shake things up; they needed another weapon. The tools they had were not sufficient.

A loud explosion came from their port direction. Gastropé glanced to see another carpet working a different lich spiraling down with a large cloud of black smoke trailing it. His vision was not good enough to see, but it looked like many of the carpet riders were bent over or lying down.

This was not good. Gastropé looked at the lich with his wizard sight. It was so disturbing, that oily black cloud of foulness, but he had to find some advantage. There was no obvious answer and he was getting tired, as was Penelope. He hung his head for a moment as they began banking for another turn.