Chapter 258 - Bottom of the Sky IV

Claire silenced a yawn as she crossed her legs and leaned forward in her invisible seat, her wings drooping in the air behind her and a bloody but equally bored Boris curled up in her lap. One of her hands held her chin while the other choked a dying lizardman with an awfully crocodilian face. His limbs were still intact, for the most part, but he lacked the strength to flail or break free. He was barely conscious. The light was fading from his eyes as quickly as the blood was pouring from the holes in his gut. He was desperate, his mind filled with rage and regret. But he was helpless. There wasn't a speck of strength left in his frame and his allies were already involved in losing battles of their own.

"There's nothing for me to do."

The horizontally gifted moose muttered to no one in particular as she watched the cat mow through the crowd.

"I'd say that's a good thing," said the mantis floating beside her. His mount cwooned as well, as if to express her agreement.

"And you'd be wrong." She snapped the lizardman's neck with another light squeeze and threw his lifeless corpse into the water. Their duel had not been nearly as exciting as Natalya's. From start to finish, it had hardly spanned half a minute.

It was not so much a difference in strength that drove the results, but rather a reluctance to use it. The cat was being cautious as ever, drawing out only enough power to best whatever foe she faced. Claire, on the other hand, hadn’t shown the slightest bit of restraint. She spent a hundred thousand points of mana to paralyze the crocodile before grabbing him by the throat and stabbing him until his body gave out. Essencethief was active all the while, but she was unable to recoup her investment. As a pure warrior, he had only a few drops of magic at his disposal and all of them had been drained in the first few seconds of contact.

"You could always check on the princess," suggested the knight, "and perhaps lend a hand as well, while you're at it?"

"If you want to help her so badly, do it yourself."

"She'd strangle me," said Matthias. The mantis chuckled as he watched the ripple in the pool beneath them. "Thanks to whatever silly idea you put in her head."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Shrugging off his unhappy glare, the lyrkress drifted out the way she came. It was a calm, gradual ascent, completely unsuited to the battlefield that the castle had become.

She was an obvious white splotch in the darkness, but her escape did not disturb the enemy troops. They were too busy with the catgirl to give her anything more than a passing glance. Marcelle and Matthias were ignored as well, even as the trio ventured out into the clear night sky. It was the dungeon's fault. The storm winds had stolen all the nearby mist and smog when it passed through the area and deleted it upon its demise. The moon was glimmering, shining down on the seaside city with its ever-brilliant light.

It was often said that the moon could predict the tides, with some of her more fervent worshippers claiming that she was powerful enough to see the future as well. The goddess herself neither confirmed nor denied the claims, but whatever the case, it was clear that she was not entirely devoid of insight. Her usual soft smile was twisted into a confident grin.

The duel between the squid and the leech had yet to begin. They were still standing their ground, expressing their contempt and squabbling over some detail or other. Having no interest in the discussion, Claire turned her eyes downwards and scrutinized the chaotic mess below.

It was hard to describe it as a battlefield. She could barely tell where one army ended and the other began. It was a problem that resulted in part from the identical banners; both parties proudly flew the royal, Vel’khanese standard. The much smaller flags with the noble crests were the only distinguishing factors, and while Claire recognized them, after seeing them briefly in the squid’s documents, she found that they were often difficult to distinguish at a glance. Too many took pieces from the others, and to further worsen the confusion, many families had members on both sides of the conflict. It was only the outsiders, like the pirates, the erdbrechers, and the Cadrians that could easily be picked out.

Pollux’s troops, for one, drew attention like beacons of light. Their strategy was based almost entirely around the warship. The carrier was moving around the castle’s grounds, depositing troops to reinforce wherever they were needed. Its cannons were roaring as well, raining hell down the enemy lines with physical and magical projectiles in kind.

As it so happened, the queen’s men weren’t exactly fond of the battleship. They bombarded it with spells of their own, but they were unable to get through its barrier. The defensive mechanism held strong, for it was a newer model of the device installed in the Vel’khanese castle, backed with a few hundred years of ingenuity and iteration.

Case in point, it had no need for a battery. It was supported instead by a built-in generator no different from the engine that drove the ship’s flight. Several older models had connected the two circuits and used the very same power source to fuel both capabilities, but the practice had been phased out over time. By modern standards, two engines were the norm, such that the shield could be kept completely independent from the remaining functions.

It was a decision that had resulted not from theory, but practice. When the two were combined, the captains had often ordered their artificers to override the system’s limiters to fully empower a specific function, and it was only in rare circumstances that such an event did not lead to catastrophic failure—the amount of power required to stay afloat varied with the extent of the ship’s damage, and it was difficult if not impossible for the associated values to be calculated in real time. Even in the rare case that the ship did survive, its internals were sure to be completely fried. The cost of ripping everything out and installing a brand new magic circuit was far greater than building a new ship from scratch, but the captains always insisted, stating that they could not simply abandon a vessel with which they shared such a dastardly experience.

Thus, in the interest of preserving their own lives, the artificers divorced the two systems. The split raised the initial cost but came with the benefit of improving the ships’ longevity. It was far easier to maintain the circuits and generators if they could be fully shut off, and each enabled precisely that of the other.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But even with the carrier drawing so much of the enemy fire, Arciel’s men struggled to press forward. To everyone’s surprise, it was not the erdbrechers keeping them at bay. The mercenaries had certainly cost the queen a pretty penny—the national treasury was missing something in the realm of fifteen thousand gold coins—but there had only ever been roughly a thousand of them to begin with. And given everything that the lyrkress’ party had done over the past months, she would have been quite surprised if she found there to be more than half their number remaining.

The group that caused the most trouble was one made entirely of natives. It was a unit of elves with no particular banner, marching across the battlefield shrouded in a veil of vines. The emerald green structure was a mobile fortress. It repelled any attacks that came their way while its occupants launched their own spells from the inside out. Though the greenery used in the bunker’s construction was by no means special, it easily resisted the flaming arrows that pelted it, refusing to catch fire regardless of the amount of oil or gunpowder employed. It was a telltale sign of a high elf’s presence; they were the only ones that could simply order plants not to burn and see their commands obeyed.

Made practically immortal by their shield, the elves were free to focus on devastating magical attacks. They only opened holes in their defenses when they were ready to unleash their carefully crafted spells.

“Calm down.” Claire spoke the words to the mantis, who reacted with a start. “Don’t forget. We’re standing by.”

“I know,” he said, with a sour clack. “But you can at least let me imagine what it’d be like to fight them, can’t you?”

“No. You’d be too inclined to follow through.”

“In my defence, it’s not like there’s anything for us to do.” He pointed towards the sky, where a trio of erdbrechers was in the middle of climbing towards the princess.

The elephant people were flying by flapping their ears, which though fleshy and muscular, were obviously too small to carry their weight. Though the flapping certainly contributed, it was not only through the application of physics that the desert people flew. They used magic to supplement their weakness, lifting themselves further off the ground by manipulating the winds. Matthias’ assignment was to intercept them; he was the final line of defense responsible for ensuring the duel’s integrity. But with a certain flaming bird flying right at them, he may as well have been completely out of a job. Her talismans swallowed everything that dared approach, scorching and burning and burning and scorching until not even ash remained.

“Then maybe we do fight the elves,” muttered Claire. “It’s better than being a waste of space.”

“Y’know what? Fuck it!” he shouted, as his mount dove towards the ground. “Just remember! If anyone asks, it was your idea!”

The mounted soldier was not the only one to have identified the knife-eared problem, nor the only one headed in the elves’ direction. He met up with three allies along the way, one the peculiar maid that served as the admiral’s personal guard, and the other two centaurs galloping across the sky.

It was not with any difficulty or inconvenience that their paths converged. All three groups had identified the bunker’s weakness; the elves were skilled at repelling foes that approached their fortress head-on, but they never checked the space directly above them.

“Got any plans?” he asked, as he joined the group.

“Hit ‘em hard and fast,” said Fausta. “I’ll try and break through the shield. If we can’t wipe ‘em all out right away, we fall back on the kid. He’s got a trick for times like these.”

“I will be remaining on standby,” said the maid. “To ensure that they are captured.”

“Then I’ll join the initial assault. I bet I can break through.” The mantis brandished his scythes with a clack of the jaws. He was confident in his power, especially following his recent ascension, but the tiny centaur dismissed the offer with a grin.

“Sorry mate, but I’ve already called dibs.”

She leapt off the magical platform underfoot before he could protest the decision and accelerated towards the ground with her disproportionate shieldlance at the ready. The weapon began to glow; its circuits lit up with bright red streaks of mana as she descended upon the pillbox like a speeding boulder. There was a massive, crimson flash, bright enough to light up the sky as the pure arcane energy was rammed into the reinforced shell.

The plants almost seemed to flinch, to recoil in pain as the vines nearest the point of impact shied away from the blast. That was when the mantis acted. Mount and all, he dove into the bunker and slashed at the men inside. They blocked his scythes with their blades and retaliated in kind, holding their own even as the pony joined the fray.

He could feel his mandibles clacking uncontrollably as joy washed over every fibre of his being. All seven of the men in the bunker were high elves, royal allies whose presence had not been made known. He would not be able to defeat them easily—it would take luck to emerge from the engagement alive. His adrenaline rush only intensified as the vines closed over his head and sealed them in again. He traded blows, over and over, losing blood and guts and guts and blood as his two hearts beat in tandem. But then it all came to an end, as he heard the ringing of bells.

The elves collapsed when the centaur’s song filtered through their ears. Their hands grasped their chests, and their mouths leaked foam. Their breaths were short and rapid, but the air almost seemed to refuse to enter their bodies. The tips of their fingers turned pale then blue as they fell onto their knees and then their faces.

Matthias begrudgingly moved to execute them, thanks to a habit developed at a certain bizarre chimera’s insistence, but the maid, who he had almost forgotten, appeared in front of him and grabbed him by the wrist, stopping his scythe midswing.

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t kill them. They’re not the queen’s men.”

The chimera in question, watching from the sky above, flicked her tongue through the air with an annoyed hiss. She was tempted to chuck a few icy spears into the ring and finish them off herself, but she stopped short when she heard her name called.

“Claire? Hellloooooooo? Are you in there?”

A phantom projection appeared in the space in front of her. It was still faintly orange, like its progenitor, but the fur was mostly see-through.

“Claire! Come on! Say something! I don’t actually know if this works!”

The lyrkress reached for the ghost’s cheeks and tried to pinch them, but found her fingers lonely and disappointed.

“Claire!”

“What?” she grumbled.

“I think you’re gonna wanna fly over. There’s a bunch of those erdawhatever guys itching for a fight, and there’s too many of them for Melly to handle alone.”

“Fine.”

With a flap of the wings, the lyrkress detached herself from her chair and prepared to harvest another batch of fools.