Zuran and Kam followed behind Guy and eyed the death and destruction. Guy explored the remains of his now melted ship, the Blue Star; there was nothing salvageable on board. His laptop and porn were gone forever. Good thing I kept the book Henrietta lent me in my coat’s pocket.
A woman gasped, partway into Guy’s exploration of the razed city. Survivors. He turned, hoping to see Rachael. It wasn’t her, just soot-covered fae with horrified eyes.
“Autumnfall did not slay everyone, it seems,” Zuran said as he looked at the survivors. “I wonder why.”
Guy examined the survivors closer, narrowing his eyes to view their classes and levels. Nothing appeared over his vision. The survivors were normal fae. “They aren’t afflicted.”
“Is that true?” Kam asked the frightened fae. “Did the empire spare you because the affliction did not change you?”
One survivor, a woman with her hair a mess and face covered in dried gore, gave them a nod. “Yes . . . yes . . .” she said and coughed. “The empire only targeted the afflicted and spared us.”
“And where are their bodies?” Zuran asked. “I have seen none of the dead.”
Another had spoken up, a young man wearing burned clothes ready to fall apart and off his thin body. “Some turned into crystals that the imperials took. Others turned into those items, which they left behind.”
Guy followed the finger-pointing, then found and lowered himself to a pile of loot in the street. Kam and Zuran joined him, and the three examined it.
Greater HP Potion
Drink it to recover 200 HP.
Useable by: Land-dwellers
Greater MP Potion
Drink it to recover 200 MP.
Useable by: Land-dwellers
Useless to me, great for Kam and Zuran. “You two, divvy up these potions.”
Lesser Pendant of Protection: [Accessory]
Rank: C
Magic Defense: 10
Vitality +3 HP +10
Asteriarite Slot: [EMPTY]
Asteriarite Slot: [EMPTY]
Requires: 66 Vitality
I’ll take that. What else do we have?
Novice Caster’s Spellbook [Tome]
Rank: D
Magic Attack: 20
Intelligence +2
Asteriarite Slot: [EMPTY]
Requires: 66 Intelligence
“Yo, Zuran, this tome. It’s an upgrade for you, right?”
“It will be when I meet the intelligence requirements. Only got 58 right now.”
“Got some sigils here,” Kam said. “Sigil of Light and Sigil of Water.”
“Hmm, the fire sigil gave Zuran access to fire spells,” Guy said. “I guess light and water will add those respective elements to your abilities.”
“Eh,” Zuran drawled, then paused. “Kam, give me the light sigil, and you take the water one. I assume Spell Lancers will need elemental sigils.”
The rest of the loot wasn’t worth the inventory space. Guy stood up from the pile of loot and asked the survivors, “Has anyone touched these?”
“No. After what happened, we are staying away from objects tainted by the affliction. Those who touch them become corrupted.”
The woman added, “And get targeted for death by the empire.”
“The empire must really hate the afflicted,” Kam said. “Must see them as cursed people who must be killed to prevent it from spreading.”
Guy looked back at the loot, noting the crystals weren’t there. “The dead afflicted turned into crystals, which the empire took. They left this loot because it wasn’t what they wanted. Trash to them.”
“Useful for us though,” Zuran said, holding up his new tome.
Guy brought his left hand to his chin and stroked it. “Maybe this is like some kind of harvest. The empire came here to kill the afflicted, then loot the crystals that the dead turn into.”
“For what reason?” Kam asked. “Jewelry? I cannot see Emperor Autumnfall ordering the slaughter of thousands just to get his hands on some bloody jewels.”
“The emperor might not,” Zuran said, “but what about the sentinels? What do they get out of this?”
“Well, we’re in the perfect spot to ask them,” Guy pointed to the horizon and the sight of an incoming ship. “The sentinel ship got here a lot faster than I thought.”
Kam and Zuran joined Guy’s gaze. So did the survivors. The sight of the vessel caused them to scream, panic, and flee in terror.
“You brought them back!” the woman yelled at Guy. “How could you?! You are a Paladin, right? You are supposed to save us!”
“Sounds like you got a fan club,” Zuran snorted to Guy.
Yeah, a fan club missing the one person who should be a member, Rachael. Guy approached the woman who had turned to run with the others. “Wait!” he called out, but she kept running. “Wait! Hey, have you seen my friend, Rachael? She’s a star-fae.”
“The star-fae.” The woman stopped and looked at him. “Why yes, I remember her. She stayed to mend our wounds.”
Progress at last. Guy sighed in relief and asked, “Where is she?!”
The woman faced down at the devastation, shaking her head. “I am afraid she’s—”
A volley of pulse cannon fire interrupted the woman, triggering her to flee with the survivors. The sentinel ship had entered weapons range, opened its gun ports, and aimed at Zuran, Guy, and Kam, who had stood in the open.
The pulse cannons blazed again, sending the trio scrambling for cover and struggling to stay on their feet when the vibrations of the explosive blasts hit the ground.
Over the comms, Ulysses transmitted, “Okay, I’m pulling the plug!”
Guy didn’t protest. Dodging pulse cannon blasts from above was not his expertise, and he doubted his armor and stats could withstand it. Maybe at higher levels, definitely not now. The three ran back to the docks with pulse energy shots hitting the ground behind, shooting up debris and stone from the explosions. The sentinel’s aim was improving.
Guy leaped across the gap first, landing inside the Seraphim and its protective deflectors. The deflectors pulsed with light, appearing as a barrier around the Seraphim. The sentinels were aiming for Guy and not Kam and Zuran. How nice of them. He held his hand out of the open entrance, and waited for his two land-dweller friends to leap aboard. Zuran jumped first, and if it weren’t for Guy grabbing his hand, he would have plunged to the water below. He pulled the Mage up and inside, then repeated the action by catching Kam and yanking him aboard, and then he shut the doors.
Back on the bridge, Guy approached Ulysses, sighing.
“All aboard?” Ulysses asked.
He looked into the corridors. Zuran and Kam followed, but not Rachael. “No, but . . .”
“But we’re leaving!” Ulysses took the controls, pulled the Seraphim away from Muruai’s harbor, then brought the ship into the skies. Behind, the sentinel ship turned to chase as its twin pulse cannons blasted the Seraphim’s deflectors.
Through the windshield, Guy saw light from the twin stars hit the clouds as they traveled above. The skies gradually shifted from blue to black, speckled with stars. The Seraphim was in space now, moving to break orbit as its aft deflectors flashed with each hit from the pursuing ship. The sentinels weren’t going to make their escape easy.
“Damn, that thing packs a punch!” Ulysses bellowed.
Arn operated his computer station. “Aft deflectors failing.”
Guy stood behind the two, one hand placed at the back of Arn’s chair, the other on Ulysses’s chair. He glanced over the shoulders of the star-druid and star-elf, eyeing their flight and combat data.
“I have a stupid question,” Guy said.
“There’s no such thing as stupid questions, mon ami.”
“Just stupid people,” Arn added.
“Fuck you, Arn. So, Ulysses, you guys have any weapons on this ship?”
Ulysses grinned. “Well.”
“Not officially,” Arn finished for him.
/> “But after Arn and I ran into pirates in orbit of Felous V . . . well . . .”
“You two had something illegally installed, right?”
“Arn, show it to ‘em.”
Arn leaped from his seat and left the bridge, waving for Guy to follow. The star-druid led Guy down the corridors, his fox headdress’s ends waving during the sprint. They ventured up to the ship’s top deck, walked to the aft section, then to a sliding door requiring Arn to input a four-digit pin code. The doors slid open, unveiling a gunnery room with two chairs to control gun turrets.
Arn took a seat on one turret. “Pulse turrets.”
Guy sat on the other, flipped its power on, and grabbed the controls. “You got a license for this?”
That triggered a sly grin from Arn. “We can’t operate them from the bridge since we had them jury-rigged into the ship.”
The weapons powered on and the targeting computers activated, displaying footage from the Seraphim’s aft cameras, which revealed the sentinel ship unleashing its fury and the flickers of the deflectors—and boy, the sentinel ship was huge.
Guy lined his crosshairs up with the sentinel ship and held the trigger. Multiple spheres of purple light soared from this turret, some of it impacting the sentinel’s deflectors, most of it going out into space. Ulysses’s evasive control of the ship threw off Guy’s aim, same with Arn when he made his turret blaze. And with the twin pulse turrets mounted in a fixed place on the back of the Seraphim, they could only shoot when the sentinel ship entered their line of sight.
A dazzling light show ensued in the orbit of the fae planet.
“Can’t break through their deflectors,” Guy said, frustration in his voice. “And it looks like we’ve just about lost ours.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Arn tapped his computer screen. “Seems like they’re slowing down.”
“I wonder why.” Guy enhanced the zoom of the exterior camera, making it focus in on the side of the sentinel ship as it came in range. Its airlock doors opened in unison, deploying dozens of sentinels. The powered armored men flew from their vessel like angry bees, their jetpacks sending them toward the Seraphim. “Oh, shit.”
Arn looked at Guy’s screen. His raised eyebrow vanished behind his fox headdress. “Uh, heads up, Captain. Lots and lots of sentinels coming.”
Ulysses's voice played over the speakers. “Odd, why don’t they shoot us down? We’ve lost the aft deflectors.”
The sentinel ship had stopped firing when the Seraphim’s aft deflectors collapsed, then slowed to dispatch sentinel units. That means they only shot at us to weaken our defense. They don’t want the Seraphim destroyed . . . why? Guy scratched the back of his head and stopped when his hand touched the hilt of Asteria’s Sword. That’s it, my sword! Wylume made a big deal about it too, and wanted to know how I got it. “They want my sword. They’ll lose it if they destroy the ship.”
“Great . . .” Ulysses transmitted again from the bridge. “So they’re going to board us now?”
“If that’s all they want, Captain, I say we just push Guy out the airlock now and be done with it.”
“I like your thinking, Arn.”
Guy shook his head. “I don’t!”
“Without deflectors, they’ll board us with ease,” Arn said. “And flying through hyperspace without them is dangerous.”
“We’re far enough from Faeheim to avoid damaging its atmosphere from hyperspace radiation,” Guy said. “Just make the jump, and we’ll figure things out from there.”
He heard Ulysses sigh over the speakers. “Am I the captain, or is he?”
“He’s right, Ulysses,” Arn said. “Honestly, there’s no guarantee they’ll let us live once they get the sword.”
Another sigh on the speakers above. “Fine. Jumping to hyperspace, I hope you don’t mind the extra radiation exposure due to no aft deflectors!”
Guy and Arn returned to the bridge, where Ulysses operated the ship alone. The computer screens and holograms still mesmerized Zuran and Kam. At least they had something to take their mind off the dire situation. A flash of light brightened the bridge, and the blackness of space turned into the surreal colors of hyperspace.
“How long can this ship stay in hyperspace without full shields?” Guy asked.
“Not long, in fact.” Ulysses tapped the dashboard ahead while Arn returned to his station beside him. “In fact, we have to slip out now. A nasty dose of radiation is about to enter.”
“How far are we from the planet Mennaze?”
Arn fiddled with his navigation computer and read the data scrolling across it. “Not far.”
“Want to drop out there?” Ulysses asked Guy.
“Please,” Guy said. “I made a lot of trade runs on Mennaze, mostly tools. Might be able to get some repairs done there.”
“Good,” Ulysses said, and maintained the controls, “because we took a few dings back there.”
A dazzling surge of light flung Seraphim into normal space, its engines propelling it through a star system a few light years away from Faeheim. Ahead was the planet Mennaze, the planet on which Guy last saw his uncle and first touched Asteria’s Sword.
He stood with crossed arms behind Arn’s and Ulysses’s chairs, watching through the windshield as they approached the planet.
“Mennaze,” Guy mumbled to himself. “Where it all started.”
Arn looked up, one eyebrow raised. “Where what started?”
Guy tugged Asteria’s Sword off his back and brought the stylishly shaped blue blade to his face. “This sword and its power.” Four blank stares hit him. “Right! We didn’t get to that part of our story.” The blank stares remained. “Okay, let me take it from the top.”
Ulysses crossed his arms. “Please.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!”
South Town’s tavern was lively, considering what had transpired hours earlier. Xanthe nursed her ale, paid with the denars she looted from the evaporated remains of imperials in the streets. Drunken roars and cheering bellowed. The poor lad had accepted the chug challenge, emptying his ale into his mouth without stopping to come up for air.
It did not seem like any of the imperials who saw Xanthe with Averyl lived long enough to report what she had done. If so, another death squad would have shown up by now to end her life. She was safe for now. Only the star-dwellers knew her secret. Xanthe hoped the pursuing sentinel ship did not capture the star-dweller ship Averyl boarded, though from what she saw, the sentinels had flown to chase the Seraphim. Averyl was long gone on the other ship that left after the sentinels did.
As she nursed her drink, Xanthe noticed the increasing presence of fae wearing tattered clothes, their faces covered in soot. Hour after hour, more and more fae like that had entered the establishment. A man was seated next to Xanthe at the bar, his eyes gazing at the rugged-looking fae, slowly trickling in and seeking shelter in the Inn rooms down the hall.
“Where are they comin’ from?” said the man who sat beside her.
The barkeep wiped a glass clean while facing the newly arrived fae. “Boat that just docked. They are survivors from Muruai, I hear.”
“Muruai?” The man looked shocked. “Egad, there’re more?”
“There was a second ship that fled Muruai,” said the barkeep. “Lost at sea for the past week, it seems. Been giving them free shelter for now until they get themselves sorted out.”
Xanthe held her glass and brought it to her lips to mask the fact that she had been listening to the men chat.
“Ain’t the imperials lookin’ for ‘em?”
“Look at what the empire did to our city, mate. Fuck Autumnfall. I am not turning me back on innocent fae.”
Xanthe tipped her glass back to empty its contents into her mouth. Nothing came out. The glass was empty. She sighed and spun around to study the survivors from Muruai, bunching their shivering bodies together to keep warm. Standing among them was a fae woman with long hair. An odd sig
ht, as land-fae women always kept their hair short. Star-fae women did whatever they wanted with their hair and wore strange clothing, just like the fae woman she was looking at. The woman was a star-fae.
A woman holding a child approached the star-fae. “Thank you, Rachael. May you and your Paladin friend receive unlimited blessings from Asteria.”
The star-fae shrugged. “Yeah, uh, thanks.”
And her accent was that of the star-dwellers. And her name is Rachael, a bizarre name, indeed. There is no doubt about it, Rachael is from the stars . . . Hmm, Guy mentioned someone named Rachael in his life. I wonder if this is her . . .
“Can I get you a refill?” the barkeep asked Xanthe.
She shook her head no and paid the man five denars for her last drink. “I shall be fine, thank you.”
Xanthe stood behind Rachael and studied her strange attire, exposing the whole shape of her back for her fae wings to be free . . . and the glowing symbol of a sigil on her lower back. Staring at Rachael for another second caused information about her to appear in Xanthe’s vision.
Rachael (Medic) | LVL: 7 | Rank: D
Like Guy, Rachael suffered from the affliction. She wondered if there were other star-dwellers like them. “Rachael, is it?”
Rachael gasped and spun to meet Xanthe’s devious smirk. “Who the hell are you?”
“A messenger of bad news, I am afraid,” Xanthe said. “There are no starships currently on this planet. Well, not to my knowledge.”
Rachael crossed her arms, bringing Xanthe’s attention to her chest. She had never seen a fae woman with a shapely chest like that. It made her wonder what the star-fae ate. “What makes you think I’m interested in that?”
“You are a star-fae, dear. And you have clearly gotten yourself into trouble with no means of returning home.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“Oh?” She chuckled and stepped closer to Rachael. “Planning on living with us land-dwellers?”
Star Paladin: A LitRPG Space Fantasy (Sword of Asteria Book 1) Page 26