The Disproportionate Retribution listed heavily as it dumped energy from its weapons array to reinforce the patchwork of barriers further and alleviate the strain on its emergency crews. The grateful barrier team collapsed heavily the moment they felt the barriers begin to sustain themselves and were quickly drug to safety by attending medical magus’.

What had begun as an emergency response had become a fight for survival shortly after Master White had retreated to the airship rather than remain aground. Their barrier was breached early in the operation by something moving too fast to to track with the naked eye, and they had lost an enormous amount of personnel within minutes of it gaining access to the lower decks. Almost the entire gunnery crew had been slaughtered before the Councilman’s puppets had managed to contain it in the aft section of the lower decks and the few surviving members sprinted between mana cannons at the direction of the frantic spotters still above deck.

The creature on the battlefield below was seemingly inexhaustible, continuing to evade or deflect the shots from the oversized cannons while returning fire with focused, economical maneuvers. It never just dodged, there was always some attack, obvious or not, woven in between the motions. Worse than that, it was somehow experienced in fighting airships alone, quickly darting into blindspots and staying there unless driven out by exhausting spells with large areas of effect. Still, they fought on gamely, both above and below decks. Entire mana canons had fallen loose of the vessel as Master White desperately prevented the creature onboard from reaching the pilots, ‘noncritical’ sections of the ship sacrificed to prevent total loss.

All of this would have been manageable, even within parameters, if not for the enormous portal that had opened above Verren. Though it had been laughably small upon creation it slowly grew in size with each passing breath, soon dwarfing the size of the Disproportionate Retribution itself. Uncountable hordes of batlike demons had emerged to swarm into the air, spiraling in an ever-growing vortex of hateful screeching and gnashing fangs. Their numbers quite literally darkened the sky as the cloud descended on the airship in oddly coordinated flocks, flitting about like schools of fish. They slammed against the barriers, clawing frantically and trying to break through with the sheer weight of numbers as tight volleys of offensive magic leaped up from the defenders to slaughter them by the thousands. Burning bodies dissolved into black mist as the slain demons fell away from the ship like a waterfall of gore, breaking like waves on the sea as the airship purposely plowed into the densest sections as necessary.

It still wasn’t enough.

The swarm continued to grow, and the columns of black flame fired by the creature on the ground began to shatter large holes in their defenses as the battle wore on. The Captain had requested permission to withdraw, even going so far as to charge the emergency Gate Generator before being denied, the homing spell cutting off with an almost audible click. It was too risky to allow whatever it was onboard to learn the location of the Shipyard, especially as it seemed to be quite capable of fighting one of the Twelve to a standstill despite Master White’s best efforts to exterminate it. The decision was quickly made to gain altitude, overcharge the shields, and attempt to take them down with their own tonnage. If they were dead either way, they agreed, that it was best to die fighting.

____________________________________________________________________________

Master White slammed mana into a barrier that expanded to fill the hallway before him as he detected a slight shift in the pattern of the wood ahead of him. Without a second to spare, a large clawed wingtip blasted into the barrier, the redistributed force of the blow shattering the wood in a perfect circle everywhere the barrier touched the structure. Another followed close behind, swinging upwards from the floor and throwing up a cloud of magical sparks as it attempted to eviscerate him in a quick combo before the creature sprang backward. White had a vague impression of hateful, slitted yellow eyes before it melted into the background and exploded away down an adjacent hallway, again heading straight for the pilots.

White cursed, realizing that he had left the area vulnerable by retracting his shield to stop the blow, whirled on his heel, and began to sprint down the hallway to head the beast off at the next intersection. He willed the puppets he’d left in front of the heavily armored door to assume a defensive formation and gave them instructions to attack anything that moved even if it was the wall. He glanced at the wall, looking for the signage that indicated exactly where he was in the huge vessel to ensure he wouldn’t have to go straight through a set of walls to arrive in time.

He barely caught the shadow of something surging up the hallway behind him in time to save his own life.

The attacks scythed in from both directions, diving in towards the back of his neck in a vicious pincer attack intended to cleanly behead him. White threw himself forward, spinning in the air and rifling a handful of flechettes straight down the middle of the hallway directly at the creature. His eyes bulged as he finally got a good look at what it was he’d been fighting the entire time before the thing simply blew through the attack, taking the damage with a hideous gleam of victory in its reptilian eyes.

It was tall, androgynous, spindle-thin, and covered in hard black scales, its arms and legs oddly disjointed and far too long. Long curving talons tipped each digit on its oversized hands, armored legs terminating in cloven hooves rusted the deck where they made contact. Huge batlike wings sporting wicked claws flared out from behind it, reaching in tandem with the creature's claws, intent on tearing him apart. Master White maintained eye contact with it while the world seemed to slow down as the nightmare descended on him from every direction at once, its inhuman serpentlike face splitting almost in half in preparation to bite. He triggered a swap without any hesitation, hard-earned reflexes winning out as he felt the puppet he had switched with immediately be torn to shreds. An almost womanlike shriek of rage sounded from somewhere in the maze of metal hallways as the thing realized what had happened.

White sucked in huge gasps of air as he conjured another puppet to replace the one that had been destroyed, the shining magical armor igniting its mana blades and joining the others to stand before him. The Councilman pressed his back against the armored door that led to the heart of the vessel itself as sweat began to pour into his eyes and he sucked in huge gasps of air to keep from vomiting.

“Dvallin you lying bastard, everything the Warlock said about you is true, and worse.”, White swore, rubbing his hands to stop them from shaking.

He had gotten lucky there and he knew it, Seed or no Seed. It didn't matter if he’d been born with enough magical power to blast a hole in the side of a castle if he couldn’t even see what was trying to kill him. This thing made no noise, left no tracks, and didn’t have any sort of aura signature. It didn’t even seem to have mana and hadn’t used a single spell, instead choosing to simply tear its targets apart. It was fast, clever, exceedingly lethal, and didn’t fall for the same trick or distraction more than once. It had essentially triple-bluffed him just then, and he fell for it. That wasn’t something summons were capable of, and White knew almost everything about them being a summoner himself.

“What the fuck even is it?!”, White snarled in frustration as he directed one of the puppets out into the mazelike underbelly of the airship before swapping positions with it.

The world smeared slightly before solidifying into a section of the gun deck, mostly destroyed. Corpses lay in disorganized piles mostly grouped around the doorways, killed as much by the bottleneck as the creature that had torn them apart. White grimaced at the stench of blood that was almost as thick in the air as it was on the ground, and he left bloody footprints as he quickly crossed the deck towards the bow, stumbling slightly as the recoil hammered out through the floor from one of the few remaining canons. Within moments he reached the small fortified area where the remaining gunnery crew had been at work suppressing the Warlock on the ground.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

White paused outside the layers of barriers he had spent long minutes burning into the very metal of the ship itself to prevent the Warlock’s creature from gaining access to the last undestroyed shipborne weapons still connected to the arrays.

“Fuck.”

While the barriers had remained operational they had only served to trap the remaining crew inside. White stared in awe at the narrow hole torn into the floor where the damned thing had simply burrowed in, long silvery claw marks glittering prettily along the deck plates in the light of the mana lamps. Blood was still visibly spreading under some of the corpses and he understood suddenly that he had been only moments too late, the time he had taken to get a grip on himself after evading the creature's attack costing the crew their lives. He readied another swap when the realization the creature was likely already heading to the pilots hit him, certain that it had quadruple-bluffed him somehow. After almost an entire minute he had a sinking feeling as the assault never happened.

“You’re behind me, aren’t you”, the forced calmness and civility in his voice was almost convincing.

“Since you transposed with that coward's toy at the end of the deck, yes.”

White began to sweat again as a sweet and bubbly woman’s voice replied from a few inches behind his ear, breath hot on his neck. The hair on his arms rose at the stench of blood it carried with it and he tried very hard not to remember exactly what the thing had looked like as it had nearly savaged him only a few minutes prior.

“Why didn’t you just kill me then? Like to play with your food?”

“No. It’s because I hate you. I want you to have to look at every single ally you have dead upon the ground with your own eyes. I need you to understand, completely, that you never had any chance of success.”, the young woman's voice replied in the same tone someone might use to discuss an upcoming festival they particularly enjoy, “After that, I’ll rip that crutch off your neck, present it to the Master, and drag you off somewhere. Then you’ll tell me where that traitorous coward Dvallin is hiding, oh yesss....”

It took everything White had in him not to simply trigger a swap when the creature had ceased disguising its voice, the almost flirty girlish tone replaced by something malevolent and guttural as he replied quickly, “I’ll save you both the trouble then. At this point, I’ll tell you where the bastard is if you’ll spare us. I should have never trusted him. The collar will take my head off if I even try to remove it, just fair warning if you wanted to do all that in a particular order.”

“...you’re no fun at all. You’re lucky I hate him more than I hate you.”

White almost had time to scream as the wings closed around him.

____________________________________________________________________________

Kallio observed the swarm of mindless ones idly as he allowed the Oversoul to dissipate, staff reappearing in his hand before being planted firmly into the scorched and smoking earth underfoot. Virax raged against the weapon, desperate to exact vengeance upon the enemy personally from the moment they had separated from the fusion. Kallio kept the demon in check, much to its disapproval as it directed its cold wrath toward the massive airship. The massive guns had ceased firing some time ago, and the ship had begun to list much more severely as it drifted in rough circles. The defensive volleys from the deck grew less and less dense as more of the Mindless Ones began to slip through the cracks and weaknesses in the failing defense barriers.

With great satisfaction, he felt both the Seed the councilman had worn and Mirriana begin to drop free of the ship before he saw them. The succubus’ dark wings snapped open only seconds before she sheared through the barrier and rocketed through the swarm of lesser demons, the lesser creatures instinctually clearing her path with haste. She powered glided almost lazily through the air until she was only a few hundred yards away, and Kallio noted with interest she had reverted entirely to her natural form, devoid of all glamor. The last time he saw her like this had been…well, a thousand years ago at the end of the world. He’d have smiled if he was capable of it when she dropped an unconscious Master White in a heap at his feet. Kallio poked him with the end of his staff as Mirriana slowly began to look increasingly human as she spoke.

“He agreed to betray the betrayer if we spare him and what’s left of the airship.”, the succubus snarled greedily as she fixed an unblinking stare on the back of the man's neck.

“I doubt it’s possible to destroy the swarm before they destroy Dvallins toy, Mirri. There is still the matter of– Ah, for once I think someone has taken the ‘nice’ option.”

Kallio turned away, the rising sun at his back to observe the imp darting towards him across the broken ground with his blade tightly bound to him by a runic tether. Zeptik skidded to a halt before the Warlock and did a jig of glee as he pointed enthusiastically at the cloud of demons driving the airship away. His hoots of laughter could be heard even over the cacophony from the battle high above as Kallio and Mirriana simply stared down at him, unsurprised at his lack of haste. Faced with two sets of deadpan stares the demon threw his hands up in disgust, allowing the Blade to float free of its orbit around him and drift towards Kallio.

The Warlock stepped forward and grasped the blade by the hilt, extending his arm outwards in a salute before crossing it with his staff as the fel runes carved into the hellsteel surged with power and the ground began to rot and wither around him. Mirriana snatched the unconscious Master White up and threw him over her shoulder a hairsbreadth ahead of the wave of decay that swept outwards from Kallio’s feet as he communed with the demon sealed inside the weapon. He held the pose for a long time before pointing the blade suddenly at Zeptik, who froze mid-cheer as another wave of Mindless Ones broke on the Disproportionate Retributions defensive barriers.

“Would they have reached me before dawn?”

The imp scowled in thought, brow wrinkling as he made a great show of wracking his brain over the question. Kallio could almost see a thousand schemes falling out of the demon's ears as he considered every possible permutation of his answer and the profit it might gain him. The Warlock sighed internally before deciding to clarify.

“Yes or no.”, Kallio commanded evenly, “No fucking around.”

“…Yeah, the old fart would have made it.”, Zeptik finally groused.

Kallio nodded, raising the Blade of Barthalas into the air above him, emerald flame surging down the blade before firing a bright beam of fel energy into the sky. Within moments the swarm became disjointed, moving without as much coordination as the countless demons fell silent. A faint green glow began to emanate from the eyes of the Mindless Ones as Barthalas exerted his will on them, and they fell by the thousands under his control. The green glow spread, fast and faster, traveling through the spiraling arms of the enormous flock of demons until it reached the enormous vortex over Verren itself. In mere moments, all was silent as the mindless demons simply hovered, limbs dangling limply, jaws slackened. As one, they turned and began to fly back to the portal, the vortex thinning and dwindling visibly with each passing second.

Zeptik snapped his fingers, releasing the runework on the towers and allowing the gateway to collapse as the final demons glided back through.

With that Kallio touched the Darkstaff to the Blade, coating the weapon in black fire before simply slashing a large gap through reality and standing aside. Mirriana pranced through, maintaining her death grip on Master White and humming happily without a backward glance. Zeptik hopped over and quickly took up his position on Kallio’s left shoulder, immediately beginning to chatter about the processes he’d used to create the Hell Gate from scratch.

And then they were gone, the Rift sealing with a splutter of black sparks that vanished before they hit the ground.