As the door opens, I can make the leading edge of it out a bit better because it’s a bit more in the light. There seems to be a band of metal riveted to the edge of the rather thick wooden door. On the reverse side of the door is a heavy sliding bar that was used to keep it shut. What really has my attention though is the group of men who’ve just bustled into the room through the now-open door. There appear to be four of them and the next to last one in is the crazy-haired gnome guy with the contraption on his eye. Why do I have a distinct dislike for that guy?
The tallest guy is about two and a quarter times as tall as the gnome guy. He has on a brown leather jacket with scorch marks on it in several places. Aside from that, he’s wearing a gun belt with a gun that looks a bit weird but it’s still so far away that it’s hard to make out. His shirt is indistinct but looks to be a green color and his pants are black. Aside from that the only other part of him I can see is his messy, short brown hair.
Currently, he’s talking to the gnome guy and the other two guys who are more in the shadowy distant part of the room and also hidden partly behind the big guy. I hate this! I can’t even make out what’s on the other side of the damn room! Why do I have to be a baby?
Also, Why do I have to be a girl? Who decided that was a good idea? Wait, That means that I’m sitting here naked while these guys are over there discussing whatever. Maybe I can make it over to the towel or blanket or whatever before they come this way.
Suddenly there is an earsplitting whistle from the corner of the room that makes a quickly dissipating white steam cloud. I was about to try covering my ears but it was over so quickly that I didn’t even have a chance to move. As the cloud dissipated, I saw that all the men were looking at the whistle with concern written on their features, the faint white cloud working to illuminate them all briefly.
The men turn animatedly to the wall under the whistle and the tall guy runs over to a tube that I hadn’t noticed there. The odd brass tube ends in a flared-out part like a weird trumpet or something with a metal lid over it. In one smooth motion, the guy flips the lid open with his right hand, grabs the tube with his left hand, and leans over the tube where he begins shouting down it. After a second of shouting in some language that I don’t recognize at all, the guy turns his head to the side and listens to the end of the pipe.
This happens three or four times in quick repetition, he yells into the pipe then leans over and listens to it. With him leaning over listening, I can see his face and he appears to be a gruff, tanned, white guy with a heavy double chin covered in a short stubbly beard and a big scar running up from the right side of his chin across his right eye. It’s not until this point that I noticed the patch over the guy’s right eye making him look like some kind of pirate or some adventure-seeking archeologist.
Realizing that I’m still sitting here naked I turn to crawl back to the towel. Suddenly, I hear the guys all hurriedly walking over to where I am. I look back over my shoulder with effort and see the gnome step deliberately on something on the floor. All at once, the bars of the prison crib lower in a smooth quick motion. The tall guy reaches over my head and grabs the towel I was heading for.
The next moment I feel the towel draped over me and then I feel hands through it. In rapid succession, I’m picked up, bundled up in the towel again, and shoved gently under the tall guy’s right arm looking down at the floor with a slight upward angle. Then we’re off and I can hear all of the footsteps of the four three other guys behind the tall guy.
The four of them seem to be in a big rush and are practically running down the hall. If I could focus better, it might not be such a blur of motion, but not only is it all going by so quickly that it’s a blur of brown but I’m being rocked back and forth with the motion of the guy’s carrying hold of me. Then I notice that there is one thing I can see fairly clearly from my current vantage, his gun!
It’s one of the strangest guns I have ever seen! The grip is pretty normal except that it’s made of wood with plates of brass holding it on from the sides. The body or whatever the main part of the gun is called is mostly made of brass but there are other metals there too. The back end of the gun has some kind of copper coil embedded in it and as far as I can see from my vantage point, the end of this weird pistol looks to be made of glass!
I can see a pretty good bit of the gun’s side in line but it’s too hard to make out any details because I’m being lugged right above it. Also, it’s dark and the gun is strapped to his leg and he’s jogging down this hall. I can tell that it’s not in a normal holster though but some contraption that holds it from the bottom of the barrel thing.
Having lost interest in the gun that, infuriatingly enough, I can’t get a clear look at, I look back at the hallway in front of us. The action of holding my head up is too hard so I’m just about to look back down when something explodes ahead!
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The tall guy and the others come to a skidding halt as the flash happens. There is a lot of rock in the wooden hall now and some of the chunks are pretty big taking up almost a quarter of the hallway itself. There is also a slowly dissipating cloud of dust in the flickering light of the hallway ahead. Then I hear the noise, like when I have to take out the bag of cans for recycling but really loud!
Through the light haze of dust left in the hallway, I can get a brief glimpse of what was making all the racket. A guy clambers through the new hole in the side of the hallway and in that brief glimpse I am terrified! The guy in front of us is wearing a suit that looks like some unholy bastardization of a knight and a WWII German soldier in a gas mask.
I only get a brief glimpse of the guy because as he turns his metal mask with the trailing tube in our direction, the Tall guy thrusts me bodily into the hands of one of the other guys. As the other guy turns around and starts running the other way, I can see what’s happening behind him. A tall guy hides behind the biggest rock and pulls out his pistol. As another of the metal guys crawls through the hole, the tall pirate guy leans out from his cover and fires a freaking lightning bolt at the first guy!
My eyes are momentarily blinded by the light of the shot from tall guy’s lightning pistol! I can feel the group turning a couple of corners while my eyes recover. Instead, I concentrate on the sounds around me and to my amazement, I can hear the sounds of battles going on all around us in different directions. I hear swords ringing as they hit hard surfaces. I hear people yelling and screaming in rage, terror, and pain! I can also hear a bunch of guns and other things less identifiable.
My vision clears after a bit but all I can see is the floor rushing past as the other guy roughly carries me under his arm. I am starting to feel sick from the back-and-forth swinging motion of the guy carrying me in his armpit. I can’t help it; I vomit all over the floor as it passes under me.
A few moments after that the elf woman from before comes skidding into the hallway behind us from a side passageway. She sees me and for a brief moment, I could swear I can see the relief on her face before she starts yelling at the guys. The three of them stop and turn around and I lose view of her.
After another brief bout of yelling by the woman, the guy holding me turns me around and now he’s holding me like people normally hold a baby. There is a brief exchange between the woman and the gnome with her looking back and forth between him and me the whole time. Suddenly he snaps off a scathing reply and she turns to look down the hallway behind us. She turns back with a pained look in her eyes and looks back down the hall again.
When the beautiful elf woman turns to look back, she has tears running down her cheeks and she only has eyes for me. She rushes up and brushes a kiss on my forehead before backing away and whispering softly to me in that unknown language of theirs. Then she pulls off a weirdly braided gold necklace with a pale sapphire-looking gem in it and carefully pulls it over my horns and down over my head. After looking at me for perhaps another heartbeat with tears streaming down her face, she turns and runs down the hallway in the opposite direction.
I don’t know who the woman was but for some reason, I feel like I just met, and lost, my mother in this world! I can’t figure out why but as the guy turns around and starts running again, I start crying. I’m not sure what’s going on, I’m scared that I’m going to die, and I’m pretty sure my mother just said her last goodbye to me. So yeah, I break down in a sobbing fit. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have cried before I was turned into a baby but I just can’t be bothered to care right now.
After a short bit more running, the trio makes it to a door in front of us and throws the sliding bolt open. The guy holding me rushes through and I get to take in a truly breathtaking view! That’s before taking into account that it’s bitterly cold.
In front of me is a railing of steel pipe and beyond that is an open sky as far as I can see. Sitting amid that vast expanse in front of us is a huge airship of some kind. There seems to be a shelf of rock overhead and the airship is tied to it by ropes hanging down from above. There is a railing running around it with several doors leading inside. It’s not a zeppelin though, there isn’t any big bag of air above it or anything. It’s festooned with propellers and pipes over a wooden hull. Honestly, it looks a lot like one of the airships from that movie about moving towns that eat each other!
While the gnome and the guy holding me are discussing something, the third guy is cranking some kind of huge wheel on the wall. I’m starting to see what he’s doing as a metal walkway with rope rails starts coming into view from the far left of the grated walk we were on. With every revolution, the guy turns the wheel, and the walkway makes it that much closer to where we are. Finally, it reaches a spot near us with no railing and stops there. He begins turning a second smaller wheel on the first one and the walkway starts extending toward the airship.
Suddenly I’m distracted by something beyond the airship. Floating in the distance is an island in the sky! I could see the clouds all around us and at first, I just figured that the thing I saw in the distance was the tip of a mountain but then I realized that there is nothing around it but a clear blue sky! Where the hell am I? What kind of world has floating islands?
Because I’m looking in that direction, I’m the first one to see what’s happening in the distance. There is another airship coming around the far side of the island in the distance. This one looks to be even bigger than the one near me but I can’t really see all that well. I can see a lot better out here in the brighter conditions but between my eyes, the frigid cold, and a crisp wind I can’t make much out. Well, except for the blast of fire I just saw from the other airship!
I can hear the warbling sound of something whistling through the air toward us. Oh crap! I think they just shot at us! I want to yell at the guys but I can tell from the look on the gnome’s face that it’s too late. Suddenly, there is a bright flash and the sound of an explosion! I feel a bit of pain before fading back into darkness.