Just before I blasted them down into the ship I paused and sent out another scan. Feeling for the engine room, the heart of the destructive machine. I found it closer to the center than I thought it would be. A huge building-sized engine was chugging and throbbing, turning a drive rod the size of an old growth redwood tree, pushing the steam powered energy back toward the propellers that I hadn’t shattered.

There.

I flew higher up to give myself more time together speed, wanting the propellers to be moving as quickly as possible when they made impact. I looked at each of them in turn, hoping they were coated with the same material that protected the ribs of the ship. I grinned, finding that they were.

“Time to get fucked up by your own shit, boys,” I said with a smirk.

I was hovering high above the ship now. The flaming fields of wheat were burning below. The airship looking like a black fish swimming through hellfire. Reaching my hands up overhead I gripped two of the closest propeller blades, readying to throw them like the world’s hugest ninja stars. As I looked down at the huge airship I realized that parts of it might be useful for the plan I had. The one that had further solidified when I’d seen Tisha’s airship posters in her garage. I altered the aim on the first of my weapons, making sure that when I fired it, the blade would hit well before the other.

Then I slammed my hands down beside me, launching them at full speed with a spinning flick and using the same technique I had back when Jade had first gone down on me. When I’d launched the security shack at the mountain in sheer ecstasy. The memory gave me a thrill and seemed to impart more power on me.

Just as I’d launched the propellers at maximum speed—giving just a bit of a lead to make sure they found their target—I released the weightlessness spell. Adding gravity to the speed I’d already put into them. I felt a rush of relief as the spell broke away, as if I’d dropped a heavy set of weights.

The building-sized shurikens spun down and carved into their targets, slicing through the protective exterior armor with an ear-rending crunch. I’d managed to aim almost perfectly, but given the size of the target it would’ve been hard to miss. The first of my attacks chopped off much of the rear of the airship. The rockets and propellers sent the severed chunk veering fast and wild, shooting it away from the rest of the ship.

The second propeller shuriken slammed down and into the engine. The air began filling with a hiss like the world’s largest snake readying for a strike. An updraft of heat welled up beneath me. Followed by the roar of a powerful explosion.

“Fuck.”

I hurled myself to the right, moving so fast that I’d actually jumped off my shield in my haste. The explosion that roared up out of the struck zeppelin was a pillar of fire five stories tall. I’d managed to throw myself out of the way just in time. Using the mass of my armor as a propellant. I caught myself and hovered, watching the broken ship crack in two.

It creaked and groaned, producing a low and steady rumble that rocked me in the air and a percussive blast that sent waves down below through the flaming grain fields. Secondary and tertiary explosions rattled through the sundered monster, sending metal and canvas shooting off like shrapnel.

Through the chaos I heard the sharp blast of a horn. A distinct pattern of three short notes, followed by a long one. The pattern repeated two more times. The intentionality of it seemed significant, but I had no idea what it meant. I reached out for the propellers I’d yanked off, but felt nothing in the air were I’d left them. I looked up in shock and saw that they’d been obliterated by the pillar of fire that’d come out of the ship.

My jaw dropped open.

It had been close.

Another look showed that all of my defense of metal had been obliterated. Not just the propellers. The shields and spears I’d been hauling after me had also been melted away. “Okay,” I muttered, turning my gaze toward the leading airship. It was well ahead of me now, and was in the process of setting down in the fields just outside the town. I willed myself toward it, steering clear of the ship that was now a flaming wreck.

It blasted off one final set of notes.

Then it went almost nuclear.

I covered my eyes as the blinding flash hit me, flying by sheer instinct toward the other airship. A shock wave hit my body as the massive explosion rippled outward, sending me into a tumble. Heat flared over my body. Powerful and sizzling. I let the explosion rock me forward and drifted, knowing I was high enough in the sky not to hit anything. Nausea gripped me momentarily as I tumbled. Finally, after most of the momentum had bled off I slowly eased control of my armor back, opening my eyes and blinking through the afterimage of the white-hot explosion.

Only a flaming crater remained where the downed airship had crashed.

“Holy fuck,” I said, gulping and zipping backwards toward the other ship. Whatever that final explosion had been, we’d have to watch out for it. It could’ve been the ship’s main store of cyclicite finally detonating—or something else entirely. I shook my head and kept blinking, trying to clear my vision as it closed in on the next zeppelin.

The next airship had already completely landed by the time I made it back. I overshot the front end of it by about a mile and turned to put my back to the town, placing myself between it and whatever forces that would be attacking.

I kept pulling myself backward, putting my arms wide to stabilize as I did. Despite everything that’d happened I found myself thrilled and elated by the feeling of flight without a shield. In a way I was grateful that the fireball had forced my hand. Flying around like this was incredible.

I gulped as I watched the front end of the airship open up, the nose splitting into four corners and opening out like a piece of metal origami. Then a long ramp eased out of the machine’s interior. Part of me wanted to go toward it and force the mechanisms shut—even from my current position I could tell that they were ten times the size of the propellers I’d had trouble manipulating.

I put my hand on my dagger instinctively. Then I felt the potential energy I’d been storing in it over the last week. The bonus sex magic I’d been locking into it was like a magic battery. I hadn’t been sure what I’d been saving the energy for at the time, but there was no time like the present.

There’d been times in videogames when I’d saved all my single-use items for a final boss, only to find that I didn’t even need it when I got there. That might not have been the case here—with me having no idea what Lord Manageer was capable of—but saving what I’d put into the dagger made no sense.

If the full force of the ship unloaded, then we might all die today.

I gripped the dagger by the hilt and started to draw on it. Reversing the process that I’d been mastering when I created the charms like Jade and Evelyn’s. I’d never tried it before. The rush of energy flowing into me was pleasant at first, and then highly energetic, hitting me like I’d plugged my body into a wall socket. Pure potential was flooding every inch of my body, urging me to move.

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I started floating forward and reached out with my left hand, trying to get a grip on the opening bay doors of the airship even from this great distance. I felt just the slightest purchase as I caught the tips of the four pieces of metal. Then I drew hard on the dagger, letting the full force of all the stored magic flow into me. For a moment it felt like a stupid thing to do.

After all, I had no idea how any of the magic in this world worked.

What I did know was that waiting any longer would put us in grave danger.

The magic coursed through me. Vibrating my body. Filling my vision with new kinds of smaller sparks. They danced at the edges of my focus, but instead of signifying a loss of consciousness, they seemed to imply the opposite.

I barreled toward the airship as fireballs arced toward me. I effortlessly ducked under and over each volley, feeling as weightless as a feather and as maneuverable as the beam of a laser pointer. Turning and dodging each of the attacks, even as my close approach brought them in faster and faster waves.

I was close enough now to see the interior of the huge ship as the doors ground to a halt under the strength of my magical grip. I could hear the screaming of the strained metal and the grown of hinges and motors pressed to their mechanical limits. Something started to pour out of the small opening that I hadn’t been able to close yet. I’d expected a horde of orc troops, but I was way off.

I recoiled in horror as I closed in on the bay doors, my body shivering in revulsion, reacting instinctively to what I was seeing, without fully knowing what was. A dark stream of something shiny and wriggling was spewing out of the opening of the ship. Spilling down the ramp and into the fields with tiny impacts like the sound of a million insect legs.

Spiders.

Tens of thousands of dog-sized spiders.

Bursting from the opening of the ship like a creeping and crawling black wave. Their eyes shining in the sunlight and glare of the pyromancers flames. A shudder ran through me. Deep and primal. It became more pronounced as I saw monstrous creatures more than my size skittering out of the hole. Folding and pulling themselves out. The gray and silver hairs on their black legs looking wet and slick.

Fire.

Kill it with fire.

The old Internet joke tumbled through my mind, and I finally remembered that I still had access to some of Evelyn’s abilities because of our coupling. I reached within myself and shifted some of the dagger’s power, making room for whatever I could muster.

I hadn’t had much training in pyromancy, and the biggest spell I’d attempted had been a candle-sized flame to augment a dumb joke I’d made. Jade and Evelyn had given me a few training sessions. Evelyn had explained that a lot of pyromancers relied on strong emotions to summon their magic: anger, hatred, or even love. She hadn’t explained what hers was. I’d managed a few smaller fireballs, but nothing like what she could control. Jade’s shapeshifting instructions had gone much better. It seemed to come much more naturally to me, and I was able to mimic any humanoid creature that I could lay my hands on.

I wished that I had that same natural talent for shooting out fire, but I just didn’t have the hate in me. Or the rage. I knew I had plenty of love, but that didn’t seem to spark the flames. Evelyn said I needed something personal to me. I just needed to find it.

Still, I had to try.

With my right hand helping me visualize a palm crushing the doors together, I brought my left hand next to my waist. Palm open and fingernails down as if I was lobbing a grenade underhand at the opening. A weak fireball the size of a car tire lobbed toward the hole and splashed into the outpour of spiders, burning them and stemming the tide momentarily.

I kept closing in, trying to get close enough to jam the airship bay doors closed completely. I hadn’t quite managed it yet, and waves of the horrible little creatures were skidding out through the cracks. More and more volleys of fireballs flew toward me. A few of them were actually making impact on me before I could fully dodge. The flames were scalding and horrifically painful, breaking my focus for a moment and allowing the bay doors to open further.

With a growl I brought my right hand into a tighter fist and pulled it closed, bringing full focus to the motion. Now that I was closer I was better able to grip the bay doors. They snapped fully shut with a huge ear-splitting clank that seemed bigger than the entire world. The spiders still escaping were caught mid-pinch and a great squelch filled the air. The sound of a hundred boots squishing ten times as many spiders. I locked the metal in place with a gasp and turned my attention to the incoming flames just as the biggest volley I’d seen yet approached me.

I released all of my focus from everything except my flight and tried to gather up the fire like I would with metal. Finding it surprisingly easy to manipulate once it was already brought into life, I brought it into a tight cone in front of me and then focused it like a laser. I pushed my hands out with my wrists touching, pointing my palms forward like a Dragon Ball Z character. I left just enough intention around me to absorb any new incoming fireballs. The volleys came as I expected and only added to my power.

My vision swam again and the effort of controlling all the magic at once threatened to knock me unconscious.

Then I drew again on my dagger. Pulling magic out of it without making contact and finding it actually easier to do that way. Pouring out everything I had left in storage into me.

The world expanded again into a bright and open vista. One full of potential. I burned the glowing lance of flame vertically down the bay doors, and then in a horizontal slash. Welding them shut and leaving the strong metal bubbling and boiling.

Then I turned my back to the ship and set my blazing sights on the waves of spiders approaching the town. Roving it back and forth like an eraser. Obliterating as much of the infestation as I could. Easily taking out three quarters of the attacking monstrosities.

In the distance I could see the townspeople lining up near my RV. Volleys of flames were launching out toward the incoming spiders. It looked like Evelyn and Jade had rallied the town for defense.

My flame sputtered out and then fully died. I turned slowly and regarded the ruined front end of the airship. All of the pyromancers standing in the bunker under the melted bay doors looked up at me in horror. They’d all figured out that feeding me the flames wasn’t helping them. I extended my arms wide and coasted down, putting on a forced smile to help intimidate them further.

Before they could fully turn and run, I whipped up pieces of the metal bunker around them and cut them to pieces. I brought myself toward what I thought would be the captain’s cabin, which was centered between the two pyromancer bunkers. Now it was touching the ground. It was partially obscured by the ramp that the spiders had been crawling down, so I grabbed the ramp and ripped it off with a flick of a hand, exposing the crew behind it.

I dove forward and bent the metal before me into an opening and stepped inside. That surprised the six men and women operating dozens of complex flashing panels. They all turned and looked at me in shock. They all wore longsleeve shirts and khaki pants. The same stupid uniform that Lord Manageer apparently had all of his forces in. Except these were a nautical blue with big shining buttons. Some great machine at the back of the cabin comprised of hundreds of interlocking gears turned and churned, accomplishing a purpose I couldn’t begin to understand.

Three of the occupants raised their hands to launch flames at me, and I raised my own. I absorbed the fire magic and then grabbed their control consoles and crushed them to death with the bulk of their own instruments.

“Surrender your vessel,” I ordered, throwing a bit of Jade’s illusion magic around me and creating rippling flames of hellfire and streaks of void-black darkness. “Or die.”

The surviving crew members all looked back at a graying fox-man standing behind an oversized steering wheel. His face was stern, and an eyepatch ran down one side of it. On his head was a flat hat that I associated with the navy. Or a captain’s hat. “It’s been an honor,” he said to the remaining crew. Who were mostly grays. “Serving with you.”

“Sir, no,” the gray closest to me said. “There’s—” but his words were interrupted by the blast of a horn. It was triggered by the captain pressing something on the other side of the wheel. Three short notes followed by a long one. Two of the soldiers stiffened and threw a salute at the captain. The one closest to me sprinted out the door with a scream, launching himself off what was a five-story drop to the ground.

I processed all of it slowly, not understanding what was happening. Focusing all my senses and abilities on the captain and thinking that he’d be casting some kind of spell. My wizard’s sight—what I was calling my magical sensing abilities I’d gotten from Jade—didn’t show him casting anything at all. In fact, all I managed to catch as I locked onto him was the release of a spell. As if he’d been holding focus on something and finally relaxing.

A flow of magic going into him. Like when I’d gotten my own mana back from dropping control of the propellers I sent into the other airship. He locked eyes with me and grinned. It was a grin of mostly fear, but also one of triumph. “This monster will never gain control of the ship.”

“Fuck it!” another of the grays yelled, bolting from the command deck for the hole I’d punched into it. He threw himself out, surely leaping to his doom. I backpedaled slowly at first, realizing what was happening, then jumping backward and launching myself at max speed. Almost making myself sick with acceleration. As I cleared the cabin I peeled off a massive hunk of the exterior wall and held it before me like a shield.

Then the world exploded.