Three of the Rocket-Ship-looking craft were cruising slowly over the sea. One slowed and stopped, then began nosing at the downed, burning wreck. A burst of pink flame and fragments showered the water; something inside the crash had exploded.

I stood on my beach, in front of my observatory. I waved. “Go away,” I called to the machines. Two of them kept coming.

“Radio, do they speak a language? Can you translate for me?”

“Owen was assured he could speak to them and be understood, translated by the helpful Green Radio.”

What to say…I didn’t have a fiery speech ready. “Okay, please translate the following.” I cleared my throat and said as loudly and clearly as I could: “We don’t abduct people, guys. And the ones I brought home are now under my protection. Hit the road, Jack.”

The two machines were getting closer. The Radio made a series of ghastly gargling and whistling noises, all using that Announcer voice. The invaders kept up their stately approach. They dropped a little in altitude, and were cruising just above the water surface. A sound came from them like perpetually tearing cloth. Engines?

Magic engines. Everything here was magic and I had no idea how magic worked.

No response to my announcement., just the continuing approach. They were loud, and emitted a lot of heat. A strong aroma of cinnamon was carried by the wind.

Schmendrick took fifty damn years from my life by scrambling up my leg, along my back and perching on my shoulder.

“Jesus Schmendrick, you scared the crap outta me–” And the Radio translated it, of course, so the Conclave ships could understand.

Schmendrick was snarling, ears back. “Kill more monster,” she said. The Radio helpfully fed her threat to the Conclave ships. It didn’t stop them.

The vessels were close enough to land. I didn’t back away. Schmendrick stayed on my shoulder, a vicous pirate parrot, claws digging but not breaking the skin. We watched as ornate landing gear, three for each vessel, slowly unfurled from the undersides of the things with jets of steam.

“Last chance,” I said. The Radio translated, horribly, with gargling and spitting.

Schmendrick starting winding up one of her destruction word things; I could tell. That bonus content purple swirled around us, setting my hair to standing on end. Her fangs were out. She hissed and screamed in her language.

Nothing happened. The invaders weren’t wreathed in explosive flame, as I’d seen with Schmendrick’s magic over by the wreck. Nothing. She looked confused. Ears up, fangs put away. She looked at me in doggy dinosaur dismay.

“Fill her in, Radio.”

“Security measures allowed no external cantrip, augur, enchantment or curse,” It said. “No magic aside from what the Steward permitted.”

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With menacing grace, the two ships passed over the waterline. Their metal ornamentation gleamed, the black hulls polished and beautiful. The moon cast their shadows on the white sand.

Then the noses of the things collapsed and fell to the sand, leaving gaping cross-sections that revealed ornate silver intricacy within.

They kept coming forward, and as they did, more leading slices of their structure groaned and fell, landing with a clang and crash in the sand. My sand.

The effect was as if they were being pushed into an invisible cheese grater. The ships started slowing, but it was too late: pops of lightning flared within the machines, more and more of the craft fell inert to the sand as it passed over the Obervatory’s invisible border. Flames began raging in the huge dark interior of one of them.

“Radio, allow Schmendrick and her guys to do their stuff, okay? And now please translate.” I cleared my throat. “I warned you, dumbasses.”

As the radio relayed this helpful information, the two ships finally found a way to start backing up. Something that might have been an alarm started blooping and hooting.

But it was too late. First one, then the other of the ships shuddered in the air and splashed into the shallows near my beach. They both shed plenty of parts; it was like watching a steel onion get julienned right in front of me.

With a loud gonging clang, they collapsed. Whatever had been holding them together had been lost. Metal panels, girders and the frilly decorations all tumbled to bits.

Schmendrick screamed something. Her pack was instantly at my feet. She made a horrific sound, a snarling hiss…

And all of the Hunt vanished. No: not vanished; the air around them flickered with a nightmarish distortion. But it was enough. I still felt Schmendrick on my shoulder, then she jumped.

The pack, what I could see of it, charged into the wreckage. They fanned out into the surf; I could tell by the splashes their feet made.

The Radio boomed from the forest. “The 101st Celestial Ascendancy Division offers you the option to surrender.”

“I regretfully decline.”

Hair-raising whispers filled the air. It was familiar, a little yappy. It must have been Schmendrick and her pack, communicating while in inviso-murder mode.

Another sound: a lowing mooing thing. It howled and, weirdly, squealed like a pig. I couldn’t really see what was making the noise.

Ah, there. A humped mass of something, lurching hugely in the surf, crawling from the wreckage of its ship. It was covered by the leaping, flickering mass of the Hunt. The big thing rolled and staggered into deeper water, where the pack of Schmendrick’s people dismounted because they couldn’t swim well, or at all. I wanted to get a better look at it their victim, but it was already fleeing, wallowing for the third undamaged ship, the one that had wisely remained at a distance.

I glimpsed the other pilot as well, already halfway out of town, on the way to rescue by the remaining craft.

The final flying machine cruised over and scooped up one, then the other of the Iron Conclave pilots. It stopped in midair facing the Observatory.

“Something to say?” I called. The Hunt flickered into visibility again at the edge of the water, all at once. They began barking and yowling at the ship.

The Iron Conclave craft slowly turned and began flying off towards the horizon. I couldn’t think of a funny line or taunt, and that’s probably for the best.

The day still wasn’t over. I had guests.