Chapter Six Hundred and Two – Danger Close

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Chapter Six Hundred and Two - Danger Close

With deceptive gentleness, hundreds of massive seeds arced toward us like a cloud of artillery shells.

There were only seconds to react.

The archer started firing again, and as the seeds got closer, other Avatars added long-range spells to the defense, shooting down seeds by the dozens.

But most of the salvo made it through.

That giant floating stone disk swept out, and its owner clenched his fist. The disk exploded, shrapnel scything through a third of the seeds in one go. Multiple barriers flared brilliantly as seeds crashed into them or skipped off, each impact as loud as a thunderclap.

Something loomed directly in front of me.

Before I knew what was happening, Tristain had whipped one arm up and back, and without touching the seed, he wrenched it off of its ballistic arc and sent it hurtling over our shoulders.

I gasped, slapping a hand to my heart.

Around me, a handful of seeds made it all the way to the Keep, exploding against the black stonework and sending red and orange light racing along the seams between the blocks. Some kind of defensive ward?

Each explosion left behind clouds of thick greenish dust and slithering tendrils that immediately started digging at the stone.

"Burn that!" Tristain called out, and at once, several different colors of fire baked the walls.

Out over the sea, I could see the artillery-bulbs of the split-seed-ship starting to bloat up again, like they were preparing for another barrage.

I felt a hand on my wrist and looked down. Tristain was touching me. "Get to your ship," he said. "Head out."

"What? Wait, what about you?"

"We'll be fine," he replied. "You and your friends may not be. Get aboard your vessel and leave. The storm is abbatting. We'll keep them back for now. If we win, then feel free to return."

"And if you don't?" I asked.

Tristain's lips were a thin line. "Then you'll know the face of the enemy, and the defense of the World will fall to you," he said.

I swallowed. A big part of me wanted to stay, to help.

Guinevere fired another spell, a beam of fire wider than I was tall that whipped across the side of one of the smaller ship-things, vaporizing anything that stuck out of its hull and blackening the rest.

That kind of spell was way, way beyond anything I could manage. Probably past anything my close friends could manage too. We had to get out of here, and we had to get the Beaver away too, because a single hit from one of those seeds would probably blow my poor ship in half.

"Okay," I said.

It made my tummy feel all sorts of awful, but I wasn't sure I could actually help. If I couldn't help, then I could at least get out of the way.

I bobbed my head to Tristain, then turned to sprint toward the Beaver, just as another blast of sound hammered the battlefield.

The wooden dock shuddered beneath me, and my vision momentarily doubled.

You have heard the roar of a monstrous being! Your existence is battered.

All I could hear was a high-pitched ringing, but I somehow kept my balance as I flung myself up the gangplank.

Bastion caught me and forced a healing potion into my hand. I swallowed it in one gulp.

Grabbing the rigging for support, I pulled myself upright and shook my head to clear it.

"Everyone! Emergency take off! Scallywags, cast off all but two mooring lines. Clive! Man the helm. Awen? Where's Awen?"

"Belowdecks," Amaryllis said. "Prepping for launch."

Okay. Good. "Calamity! Help we with the gang--"

"INCOMING!" yelled Sally.

My gaze snapped back toward the monster-ships. Another volley of seeds were streaking toward us, even as scores of them were shot out of the sky by the Avatars.

A huge stone disk whooshed over the top of our balloon like a passing UFO, then swept along the Beaver's side, cutting off my view of the battle. A split second later, several terrific bangs resounded through the stone as multiple seeds impacted it.

Other seeds crashed into the keep, sending orange and yellow light flaring along the seams in the stonework. Again, the Avatars incinerated the dust and plant matter left behind.

"Desiree!" I shouted as the disk sped off to a new task, leaving greenish powder drifting through the air. "Burn that dust!"

"By your command!" she answered, stretching out her hands. Points of fire bloomed through the cloud, and then the whole thing went up with a whoomp.

I turned back to Calamity, who was already working on the gangplank. Together, we hauled it aboard.

I took a deep breath, then spun, doing a quick head-count as I moved towards the rear deck. Three harpy crewmates, all three Scallywags, Bastion and Caprica, and Calamity was right next to me. Amaryllis was ducking into the captain's quarters and... ah, Desiree was stomping towards the second deck, glaring at the big seed monsters. Was that everyone? No, wait... I gasped in relief as I caught Orange hissing at that slowly-approaching monsters.

"Is everything secured?" I asked.

"Not yet," Steve grunted, throwing a coil of line over his shoulder. "There's still a lot of material out on the lower deck."

"How long would it take to stow everything?" I asked.

"Ten minutes if we cut corners."

I chewed on my lip. "Nevermind, then. We'll pick up after ourselves as soon as we're clear. We'll just have to live with things being knocked around." The engine started with a loud bark and a puff of brackish smoke that was projected out of the back from a muffler. The propellers started to spin lazily, slowly gaining speed.

I sprinted up to the helm, switching to my Captain's hat and tugging it on tighter onto my head as I joined Clive next to the ship's wheel. He gestured for me to take it, but I shook my head. "You're a better pilot," I said. I moved over and pushed more power into the gravity engine and felt a familiar thrum run through me. "Cut the mooring lines! As soon as we're clear, I want all sails deployed, we need--"

I finched, ducking down as a spectacularly loud boom crashed over me, the pressure wave sweeping my hair and ears to the side.

One of the Black Avatars had used a powerful skill, or something. I wasn't sure. The monsters were much closer now, the squid-like ones that remained having opened themselves up to spit more seeds our way while the big guy was still spilling out flowers and growths and vines. Many of those glowed, and I was horrified to see that the glows tracing through the air were taking on the shapes of spells.

They could use magic?

That... well, I supposed it wasn't impossible, but the implications weren't good.

"Bastion, Caprica... where's Amaryllis? Ah! Get to the edge, you to, Calamity! Stop them if you can!" I shouted.

No time to lose. We cut our last two mooring lines (I mentally apologized for cutting up good rope; we needed every second we could get). The Beaver lurched to the side, and two of the crew used a long pole to push us further away from the docks.

I gripped the bannister, closing my eyes for just a moment and feeling the Beaver and his crew. He was fine. A little grumpy, insofar as the ship had feelings at all, about being awakened so quickly, but things were okay overall. Everyone was in a bit of a panic, but action was keeping that at bay.

"Scallywags, below decks! Secure everything in the cargo holds first. Help Awen if she--"

A scream, from Caprica, alerted me to trouble.

I barely had time to turn and look towards the monsters before I gasped as something shot past my head so fast it was a blur.

A long, red-hot line of pain seared itself across my cheek.

I touched my face, then looked at my palm. A bit of blood? Reflexively, I flushed Cleaning magic through the wound. What had that even been?

"Captain!" Bastion called out. "Caprica, bring him below decks."

I looked over, then gasped. Thorns as long as my forearm littered the deck, stabbed into the wood like arrows. More importantly, one of those thorns was nailed through the back of Calamity's leg.

"Calamity! Are you okay? Uh, I mean! Uh!"

"It's fine, capt'n!" Calamity called back. "I've had worse tumbling off a horse."

I nodded, then frantically scanning the deck for more injured. I didn't see any.

"Captain!" Clive shouted. "The balloon!"

I followed the old harpy's pointing finger. There were dozens of thorns jammed into the sides of the Beaver's balloon. Some of them were loose, and judging by some of the holes, others had punched all the way into the balloon. There were even a few poking out from the far side.

I swallowed. Suddenly, I really just wanted to go downstairs and crawl into my bed.

But no.

"Full ahead, Clive!" I said. "Caprica, can you take care of Calamity?"

Caprica nodded, barely sparing me the time to give me a thumb's up while removing her belt. She wrapped it around Calamity's leg and tightened it. I left her to it. I had to trust my friends, now more than ever.

Amaryllis came out, a wand-dagger in hand and a scowl on her face. She moved to the side and immediately started casting.

I turned to the crew. "Alright. Get the patches and tar out! We're going to have to repair it on the move."

I was going to join them, obviously. I had good skills for jumping up to the holes that were further up, but for now, I judged it to not be that bad. We were losing gas, sure, but we were probably going to be losing a lot more if we stayed here.

Turning, I tried to take in the fight even as we slowly started to pull away. I couldn't understand half of it.

The Black Avatars were flinging around high-level skills and powerful spells. I expected them to work as a well-coordinated machine, but while there were a few that did time their attacks and moves, some of the others were acting like they were fighting alone, throwing out attacks as best they could. Some of the damage I saw atop the keep seemed self-inflicted.

Even so, it was working. Two more of the squids were bleeding altitude and dropping out of the sky. That bigger one, though, was still in the fight, and almost on top of them. Nothing was slowing it down, and even as I watched, some of the bigger tentacles sprouting out from behind it were reaching around and out and were almost grasping at the Black Keep.

Tristain completed some kind of spell, and a a whirling swarm of glassy, near-invisible triangles spun up before him, whipping around into a cyclone that crashed into the big monster and started battering chunks off of it. There was a sound like the world's biggest woodchipper, and the wind howled as it was dragged into the vortex.

I was starting to wonder if we really had to run after all.

Coconut-brown fragments pinwheeled through the air, and everywhere the triangles dug into the shell, they left behind streaks of eerie, shimmering light -- but the gigantic seed didn't relent. It heaved forwards, seemingly trying to overcome Tristain's spell by sheer mass.

The flowering vines spooled out farther. Guinevere sliced off two of them off with a blinding bar of flame, and other Avatars added their own attacks to the bombardment, but it hardly seemed to notice. Parts of the shell cracked open like jaws, and it bellowed once more.

The Beaver wasn't in the path of the roar this time, but the deck still creaked under me, and I felt the vibration in my eyeballs.

You have heard the roar of a monstrous being! Your existence is stunned.

No bleeding this time. I bit my lip and narrowed my eyes.

Tristain's spell had taken the brunt of the sound. The glassy triangles stuttered, and the big seed surged forward, straining closer to the keep. Stone pillars slammed into the seed like battering rams, but it wasn't enough. Four of its flowering tentacles stretched out in an X-shape and huge blossoms glowed a violent shade of magenta. Spellwork solidified into giant concentric squares and diamonds.

It cast something.

Along the base of the Black Keep, I saw light flash across the stonework, brightening from red to orange, then yellow, then green, cyan, blue, violet--

The bottom of the Black Keep exploded, stones and rocks blasted out of the island, followed by a powerful wave of magical energy.

Then roots. Massive growths that surged out and started to climb up the sides of the keep, seeking any crack or crevice to grab onto.

I couldn't breathe.

The Evil Roots were in the keep.

Quest Updated!

Evil Roots

An evil root has grown into the world.

Destroy it.

***