Chapter Six Hundred and One

“What... what are we supposed to do?” I asked.

I looked towards Amaryllis. I wasn’t honestly sure if she knew the answer, but she was one of my smartest friends, and when it came to... many things, I would trust her more than anyone else.

Right then, standing atop the Black Avatar keep, a few paces away from the parked Beaver Cleaver, there were few people I’d want more by my side. Fortunately, all of the others I’d want nearby happened to be here, so that was nice. 

“I... don’t know,” Amaryllis said. She took a deep breath. “Bastion, have you ever seen something like that?”

Bastion’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he admitted. “Those are alive. I can see their levels.”

“Are they high?” I asked. I turned and fired off an Inspect onto the nearest of them, one of those that looked like a squid, then I winced and pressed a hand over my forehead as something like a flick hit me. The skill had just... failed? That hadn’t ever happened to me before.

He paused, then nodded. “The smaller ones are level twenty. That large one is thirty.”

So... two classes and three, assuming they were all at their level caps? Didn’t that mean that someone had dragged those things through a dungeon? How? They were huge! The largest of the living-airships dwarfed the Beaver. It could have swallowed my ship whole, maybe even literally. The smaller ships, which I counded five of, ranged from just a big smaller than the Beaver to a little longer, though they were definitely all thinner.

“They’re armed,” Awen said, her voice was low, but it carried anyway. 

I turned back around, squinting through the rain to see what she meant.

The smaller ship had long tentacles, sure, but at the end of those were long, metal sheathes. Someone had tipped them with metallic blades, each longer than I was tall, and barbed. 

I didn’t know how quickly they could move those, but the were already swaying about fairly rapidly. If one of those whipped out and struck a ship with any amount of force... let alone if they decided to attack a ship’s balloon.

“Right, this won’t do,” Guinevere said. “Tristain?”

The little rat-folk man nodded. He wasn’t quite the leader of the Black Avatars, but from everything I’d seen of him, he was at least one of their more respected, reasonable members. The kind of person the others turned to. 

“Nicholas, prepare the ship for launch. We don’t want it crashing into the castle. You, go with him,” Tristain said as he took charge, pointing to some of the other Avatars. “Guinivere, prepare something strong. I’m going to try and negotiate. Percival, anti-intruder contingencies.”

Percival thumped a fist to his chest, then took off at a sprint that I wouldn’t ever be able to catch up to. Guinevere, for her part, looked rather serious before she moved to the edge of the dock, then leapt off. 

I gasped, but then she did something and was soon bouncing off of nothing to land on one of the keep’s towers nearby. She immediately settled into place, her four fox tails swaying around her. Even from way off, I could feel powerful waves of mana washing off of her. It was like when Amaryllis was preparing one of her bigger lightning spells.

“What about us?” I asked him.

Tristain’s lips thinned, then he glanced at the Beaver. “Prepare your ship to leave,” he said. “If it comes to a fight, we’ll do what we can to cover you as you escape.”

“We don’t know how to push through the storm, not easily,” Amaryllis said.

“Fair point. But we might soon shut that magic off. It’s meant to keep us obscure and safe, and as it is doing neither at the moment, our efforts may be better spent elsewhere.”

That... sounded like things were bad. Which I supposed they were.

Looking back at the giant creatures slowly swimming through the air along a circular path that was approaching the keep, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were part of what Rainnewt was warning us about. 

No, this was definitely related, somehow. The living airships looked like the Evil Roots. The colour, the texture, they even seemed to be wooden.

One of them opened up along its ovular hull and a deep, bellowing horn-blast of a noise came out of it. It made every fine hair along my body rise. 

“I;ll help, with the negotiations,” I said. “But everyone, get the Beaver ready to launch. If it comes to it, uh... well, maybe we can fight better from the air?”

I didn’t like the idea of running away. I liked the idea of losing my friends and ship even less. 

Tristain and I moved to the edge of the docks, where we were standing right over the edge of the keep. I wasn’t sure how he planned to negotiate until he waved an arm though the air and constructed a complex spell by weaving mana around. 

When he next cleared his throat, the noise of it sounded like it was coming through a powerful loud-speaker. There was a small glowing sphere that he spoke into, it hovered at his head-height, so if I wanted to speak into it, I’d need to crouch a little.

“To the airships intruding into this airspace. Know that this is the Black Keep of the Black Avatars. We do not take kindly to aggressive foes. However, if your cause is just, and you come in peace, we are willing to be civil.”

Not exactly how I would have worded it, but I think it carried the right message.

Two of the five smaller ships spun through the air, moving with surprising grace. They weren’t that fast, but they turned faster than any airship I knew of could. 

Then they opened up, squid-like bodies splitting apart to reveal wide maws filled with meat and interconnected roots. It was like a curtain pealing back to reveal a thick, complicated jungle of foliage and flesh. 

“Shield!” Tristain barked.

Both of the squid-like monsters spat, one after the other.

The first’s attack crashed into a large, perfectly round shield of foot-thick stone summoned by one of the Black Avatars. Awen could summon glass, so doing the same with rock wasn’t too surprising. The amount of stone, however, was. That had to cost a lot of mana, and the speed of it! 

Right, these weren’t second-tier adventurers. They were several steps above that.

The second monster’s attack shot forwards and was struck in mid-air by a bolt fired from a bow one of the Black Avatars carried. 

The shot veered wildly off course, then exploded several hundred feet away. The explosion was less of a big boom, and more like a seed pod exploding apart. Tiny flecks of seed went everywhere, followed by a tangled mess of bright-green vines. They tumbled through the air and were soon swallowed by the storm.

“So much for that,” Tristain said. “Guinivere. Do what must be done.”

I couldn’t hear her response from so far away. I could, however, feel the power gathering around her. The air stilled, then all of the humidity, from the rain pouring down sporadically around us, drew away all at once.

I gasped, and the air I drew in was hot. 

Around Guinivere were three small suns, held in place in the spaces between her four splayed tails. The four suns were pouring a sort of liquid light into a spell construct. I actually recognized it.

The shape and form and most of the main bodies of the spell was just... firebolt. The very same spell that I had used hundreds of times myself. Only when I used it, the spell fit into the palm of my hand.

Guinevere’s Firebolt was larger than a bus. 

She launched, and I ducked down, until Tristain noticed and raised a hand. Something shielded us from the blast of heat that flew by. The firebolt accelerated, moving at about the speed of an airship with a decent tailwind, to bolting forwards so fast that it blurred.

The firebolt rammed into the nearest of the squid monsters, then exploded with a roar that had me stuffing my ears. The expanding ball of fiery gas could have engulfed an entire ship, and it did swallow the entire monster whole.

When it cleared, the squid-like monster was tumbling down, the ends of its root-tentacles ablaze and a trail of smoke following it down.

“We warned you,” Tristain said. “Please, leave this area and--”

The biggest of the monsters rumbled, then the split along its centre grew wider. I gasped a second time as a hundred plants poured out of the crack, grew until they were bloated up, and then spat bullet-shaped seeds at us, hundreds of them.

“This is proving to be an exercise in frustration,” Tristain said.

***