The Heavenly Host

Gastropé grinned despite himself. The crew of the Nimbus might travel the localverse and the Planes of Men with barely a thought, but he and Jenn (okay, and Maelen) had been to the Abyss and returned. Multiple times, in fact! Of course, the interesting thing now was that they were actually on several planes at once. He did have to admit that was pretty exciting.

Gastropé tried to remember the names of the different worlds they were currently in: Astlan (obviously), Etterdam, Nysegard, Romdan, Avalon and Targella. Those were what they called the immediate localverse. Apparently, there some other worlds in the localverse, but the Grove was not connected directly to those. They key point of the localverse was that the rules of magic were the same in all of them. A wizard spell that worked in one of the worlds would work in any of the others. Typically, the exact same spells did not exist in each of the worlds, certainly not by the same name; however, there were analogues for many of them. Any spell Gastropé knew and had components for, he could cast on those worlds and get the same results.

Gastropé was trying to think how this must work when suddenly the room — the entire ship, in fact — rocked violently. The ship seemed to tilt aftward and to port briefly before righting itself. A klaxon sounded loudly and the mirror on the back wall suddenly started flashing: “Defensive Configuration 1.”

Trefalger ran over to the mirror and shouted at it, “Trefalger here, connect the bridge!” The image in the mirror suddenly shifted from the room to one of the mirrors on the bridge. There, several people were scrambling to clear the bridge through one door and others were running in through a second door.

In the lounge, Trevin rushed to stand next to Trefalger. “Status?” she asked.

A gnome that Gastropé did not recognize responded. “We’ve taken an aft hit from below off the port side. It appears to be an ice blast that momentarily destabilized that part of the cloud. We’ve gotten the temperatures back up above freezing now.”

On the mirror, another crewmember shouted, “Bringing generators to full. Lightning batteries will be ready in thirty seconds.”

Gastropé could hear a large humming sound; it seemed to permeate the ship. He suddenly realized that the walls of the room were getting very dark, like a storm cloud!

“Elemental water portals online!” someone on the bridge shouted.

“Elemental air portals also online, Captain!” a third person shouted.

“What hit us?” Trevin demanded.

Aêthêal appeared in the mirror, standing over the gnome. “Surveillance is detecting three storm liches on ice dragons aft and below port!” she said loudly.

Another voice shouted, “We’ve spotted two more coming up from starboard!”

“There!” Maelen shouted. Everyone in the lounge except for Trevin and Trefalger turned to look.

“Illiana protect us!” Jenn said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Gastropé felt the blood draining from his face. Down and aftward on the giant viewing lens, he could see two bluish-white dragons with riders in great black cloaks. They were distant, but approaching rapidly.

“Nysegard?” Trevin demanded of Aêthêal.

“Has to be. But we’ve never seen five of them ready to hit us, and at this altitude!” Aêthêal said.

“I thought this was too high to breathe?” Maelen asked.

Trefalger replied, “They are storm liches — being undead, they don’t breathe. The ice dragons can hold their breath for a very long time. Or so it seems; maybe they don’t breathe either. Whatever the case, they can and have attacked us this high. But never with this many.” Trefalger was shaking his head.

“Scramble carpets!” the captain shouted. “High altitude com circlets are a must!”

“We have another sighting directly ahead. Four more liches on ice dragons!” someone on the bridge shouted.

“Dungnation!” Trevin shouted. “This has to be a trap! They had to know we were coming out and the general vicinity!” She looked around.

“Gastropé!” She stared right at him, and he jumped. “We need all available hands. You were in Exador’s army, yes?”

Gastropé nodded, but he had no idea what he could do.

“Get your combat magic components and follow Zed here” — she tapped a satyr on the shoulder — “to the flight deck.”

“Uh...” Gastropé started to say as Zed came towards him. He felt the blood draining from his face. They wanted him, Gastropé, to fight liches mounted on dragons?

“Jenn, you are a thaumaturge. Not a lot of green or ground up here, but you can heal, right?” Jenn nodded. “Good, go with Talinea to the catcher carpet bay!” She gestured at a two-foot-high Sidhe of some sort. Jenn started making similar noises to those Gastropé had made. “Catcher carpets fly below and catch aetós and others that get knocked out of the sky, and heal them — or try,” Trevin explained, seeing Jenn’s confusion.

“Maelen, we’ll need you on the flight deck with a com-link to the bridge for Seeing. Be ready to heal our wounded that can’t be dealt with by the catcher carpet teams.”

“Elrose...” Trevin turned to the wizard.