by Jeff Sabean
Nodding his head in complete understanding, Heishi smiled and slapped his friend on the shoulder.
“Just let me know if I need to come back for any more important, uh, ceremonies.”
The party lasted late into the night, but and finally the humans were able to spend a restful night in real beds without worrying about being attacked while they slept.
◆◆◆
As the members of Ronin Team walked out of the castle the next morning, the sun was rising in the sky, and the destruction of the city became more obvious. Huge portions of the walls had been knocked down in the assault, and the fires were still being extinguished across the city.
“We have had a pretty productive time in this world,” Aki mused as they walked toward the docks. “Between the four of us, this makes three cities we have laid waste to in the past month. That has to be a record of some type considering we have limited close air support.”
“Limited?” Heishi asked, cocking an eyebrow at his friend.
“Yeah, limited,” he answered, nodding his head toward the golden dragon floating casually over the city, keeping everyone beneath on friendly terms with each other.
“Fair enough. Should we see if we can find somewhere new to destroy?”
“I’ve always wanted to sail with pirates,” Zatus replied, looking wistfully at the Slip Away as they approached the docks.
“Gentleman Adventurers,” Heishi and Tiane stated simultaneously, causing the whole group to break out in laughter.
“Either way, do you think he will take us with him?”
“I don’t see why not. He has been well paid already, and besides, we are a lot of fun to have around,” Heishi replied, drawing skeptical glances from his team. “What? We have destroyed three cities in less than a month: tell me a ‘gentleman adventurer’ doesn’t consider that fun!”
The banter continued between the four as they turned onto the dock, then stopped abruptly as they saw a blonde-haired woman hastily loading gear onto another ship at the end of the dock.
“That can’t be...” Aki started to say, then stopped, his breath caught in his chest.
“Couldn’t be...” Heishi began to say.
“Didn’t we see her die?” Tiane put into words what they were all thinking.
“Doppelganger?” Aki threw out to the group.
“Only one way to find out,” Heishi stated, walking again toward the end of the dock. “Captain Aldith, I presume?” he called out as they closed the distance with the woman.
Whirling around, the woman pulled a pistol from a holster on her hip and pointed it toward the group.
“Not exactly the type of welcome we would have expected,” Aki quipped, reaching for his pistol.
“I know you are all very good, but you’re not that good, Sergeant” she stated, pointing her pistol at his head.
“But we saw you die,” began Tiane, staring hard at the woman they all had assumed dead until this moment.
“No, silly boy, you saw someone die. I had already shifted through the planes before that body hit the ground.”
“So, you are the ‘other-worlder' we heard the elves talking about who can open portals to other planes of existence?” Heishi asked, causing her to level the pistol on him as he spoke.
“Hurry up and load this gear,” Aldith called over her shoulder to the crew of the ship, her eyes never leaving the team in front of her. “You could say that, Master Sergeant,” she answered as the crew members scurried down the gang plank to load the last few cases.
“I’m not entirely sure I understand why you have a pistol pointed at us, Captain,” he replied, staring into her eyes. “If you can open portals, why not just send us home if you don’t want us following you?”
“If it were that easy, Master Sergeant, I would have done it already. Unfortunately, I have yet to perfect the process and cannot guarantee what plane the portal will shift the traveler to. The last one was only supposed to be your team going through, but it opened early and caught me with it.”
“And why would you want to send us through a portal?”
“As I am sure Zatus has confirmed for you by now, when one goes through the portal another is brought back through to take your place. I have been experimenting with the portals for several years now and have been fine-tuning them based on the beings that are deposited into my plane after the shift,” she stopped, looking exasperated.
“So, you were going to send my team through and see what came out. No wonder you have a gun pointed at us,” Heishi replied icily. “I would recommend for you to not blink, because if you do, I will kill you myself.”
“I am the only hope you have of ever getting back to Earth,” she replied as the crew took the last of her boxes on board and she began to step backward onto the gang plank. “Killing me would simply strand you here in Kartos indefinitely, and while you seem to be fitting in quite well, I assume you would like to go home eventually. If you are lucky, I will send you back once I perfect my device, but in the meantime,” she paused long enough to shoot the ground between his feet, causing the team to back up a few steps, “I expect you will not stop my departure.”
With that, she turned and ran the rest of the way up the plank as archers appeared on either side, bows pointed at the four men on the dock. The ship began to pull away, leaving the team watching helplessly as their only hope of returning to earth sailed out of the harbor.
“We’ll see each other again, Captain,” Heishi called out loudly. “You can count on that.”
Di’eslo
Shifting Planes Series: Book 4
Copyright © 2020 Jeff Sabean
All rights reserved.
Prologue
The sun was setting as the Slip Away, the ship belonging to the notorious gentleman adventurer Tylo the Blue, cut through the waves in pursuit of the pirate ship ahead. At one time, Tylo had been considered a pirate himself, but he had never liked that term: too commonplace, and he considered himself anything but common.
Several months ago, Tylo and his crew had been involved in the assault of the elvish city of Harmonui, and as part of his reward the new queen had officially granted him the title of “Gentleman Adventurer,” along with letters of marque to hunt pirates in the seas surrounding her kingdom.
Tylo looked down at the sword strapped to his hip and grinned. The other part of his reward was this sword and the shield slung across his back, which had previously belonged to the tyrant ruler of Terminus, Big Jim. The four-foot-long blade would have been a problem for a normal man, but the chondri captain of the Slip Away was not normal.
He slid the silver colored blade from its scabbard and stared once again at the blood red cutting edge. He had wielded the sword for months now, and still could not help but marvel at its design and that it never seemed to dull.
A grin spread across his face, the rows of deadly teeth jutting from his mouth and his black eyes focusing again on the pirate ship as his crew expertly closed the gap between them. He reached back and unslung his shield as a fire arrow from the pirates flew high and landed in the water ahead of his ship, gauging the distance between them. The gold shark teeth running along the edge of the shield reflected the setting sun, which would have been a magnificent sight if the shark god emblazoned on the center of the shield in gold, its ruby eyes giving off a light of their own, did not dull the reflection of the sun.
“Aye, this be a good day after all,” the captain stated quietly to himself as the ship in front of him attempted to run to shallower water.
“They no doubt do not want to risk being caught in the water with an enraged chondri captain,” Heishi said from beside him, causing Tylo to jump a bit as he had not seen the human approach.
Heishi was the leader of a team that had come through a portal from another plane of existence almost a year ago. It was he who had removed the tyrant Big Jim from Terminus, retrieving the sword and shield that Tylo now carried. He had proven to be a fierce warrior, and had set the Slip Away
on its current quest to track down the other-worlder who was responsible for opening the portals.
“Shallow er deep, won’t be mattering,” grinned Tylo, showing off his teeth again. “I’ll be killin’ ever’ one of them pirates.”
“Isn’t that a little hypocritical?” Heishi asked, hiding his smirk.
“No, human, ‘tis not. In me pirating days, we ne’er killed innocents. Did I steal from merchant ships? A sad pirate I’d a been if I hadn’t! But me crew an me only targeted the evil ‘uns. We made markets safer fer good people then, an we make the waters safer fer honest merchants now.”
“And keeping whatever loot you find never hurts either,” Heishi grinned back at his companion.
Tylo faked offense, then laughed as he couldn’t hold the shocked pose for long. “You would fault me fer providin’ fer me crew and their families?”
“Of course not. You are a gentleman as always,” Heishi laughed as another fire arrow launched from the rear of the other ship. This time it thunked into the bow of the Slip Away, signaling that the ships were close enough for the battle to begin.
“All hands, prepare to open fire!” Tylo shouted. “Drop to battle-sails, we can’t be riskin’ lettin’ ‘em set fire to our sails and getting' away!”
As the Slip Away steadily closed on the rear of the pirate vessel, Tylo watched from the bow of his ship, judging the distance. When he was close enough, he raised the wicked shield on his left arm and aimed the shark god’s ruby eyes at the sails of the other vessel.
In a brilliant flash of light, twin bolts of flame shot from the eyes of the shark god, incinerating everything in their path. The sails of the pirate ship lit up as he worked the flames from the bottom to the top, effectively stopping the propulsion of the ship.
“Boarding party ready! Go!” he shouted, and the fifteen chondri members of his crew dove over the side of the ship, growling as they dropped into the waves.
Heishi called to his team, and the four members of Ronin team watched together in awe as once again the shark-men virtually flew through the water in the gap between the ships.
“I would kill to swim like that,” Aki said, the spectacle never losing its effect on the humans.
“Yeah, you say that every time old man,” Tiane chuckled as he leaned against the rail of the ship, taking aim with his sniper rifle and beginning to clear the deck of other ship to make way for the boarding party. Zatus, the gnome tech genius of the team, had outdone himself with the latest ammunition he had created for the sniper, and the rounds exploded into brilliant blasts of electricity and fireballs as they impacted with the pirates. Each time Tiane squeezed his trigger, chaos broke out on the other deck, and his smile grew wider.
“That’s nothing, watch this!” Zatus laughed as he made eye contact with the pirate captain. A vivid flash of multi-colored light surrounded the man, who stood stupidly for a moment before turning and attacking his own crew!
“That’s cheating,” Aki grumbled, watching Zatus control the pirate captain, but the grumbling couldn’t contain the humor in his eyes.
“Lock it up, guys, we’re almost close enough to board,” Heishi commanded, and the team prepared to follow the chondri boarding crew, who had already climbed the side of the ship and were carving a hole in the defenses as the sails burned above them.
Tiane slung his rifle across his back and pulled the handles for his kamas from their leather holsters on his hips. With a thought, the blades popped from the handles and burst into green flames, his eyes shining in anticipation of the coming melee in the light of his weapons.
“Show off,” Aki said, pulling out his tonfa, the shadows curling around the weapons and masking his movements as he swung them back and forth a few times to loosen up his arms.
The Slip Away was now close enough for the team to run down the head of the ship and leap across the gap between two ships, landing more or less gracefully in the cleared area of the quarterdeck of the pirate vessel. Tylo kept his ship to the rear, waiting for the boarding party to call that the cannons had been disabled. This tactic had worked well on dozens of pirates over the past months, resulting in little to no damage taken by the gentleman adventurers’ ship in each encounter.
As Heishi landed on the quarterdeck and rolled, he slid his katana from its saya, its sheath, and ignited the blade with a thought. The green lightning sparked from the blade as he used it to slice through the wheel of the ship in one graceful swing, disabling the steering mechanism and leaving the ship floating helplessly in the waves. He turned to follow his team as they rushed the main deck of the ship, cutting down the defenders as they ran.
“Take out them guns!” they heard Tylo bellow from his own ship, itching to join the fight but not wanting to risk repairs to his own vessel unnecessarily.
The chondri boarding crew had effectively neutralized countless pirate ships, and knew exactly where to focus their attack; they had left defenders behind on the deck and headed straight for the cannons. As Heishi and his team methodically dispatched the pirates on deck, they heard the screams from below indicating that the cannon rooms had been overrun and secured by the boarding party. When the cannons were taken out, Tylo immediately pulled alongside the pirate ship, the crew tossing grappling hooks across to connect the two ships. He then led the remainder of his crew in leaping across the gap between the vessels and storming the deck of the ship.
“Save me one to tell the tale,” Tylo called to his men as he cut his way through the pirates on the deck, his gigantic silver blade sparkling in the setting sun.
“You may have the captain when I am done with him,” Zatus called as he mentally commanded the pirate captain to attack another group of his own crew who were holding the far end of the deck.
“Bah, then don’t be killin him, ye pint sized runt!”
The pirate captain stalked into the center of his crew who had hunkered down in a defensive position in the corner of the deck, and the moment he was behind them he began to hack them apart. It was over before it had even truly begun, as the crew couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that their own captain would betray them.
As the sound of fighting slowed to a halt from below deck, the boarding party circled around the captain and Tylo nodded to Zatus, indicating he should break his hold on the pirate captain. The captain’s eyes blinked rapidly a few times as the colored lights disappeared from them, and the confusion was obvious as he realized that somehow he was alone and surrounded on the deck of his own ship, having missed the entire fight.
“And now ye’ll be surrendering, and me boys’ll drop ye off in a dinghy to tell the tale of losing yer ship to Tylo the Blue, Gentleman Adventurer,” Tylo explained as the captain focused on him.
“I’ll die out here in a dinghy. Take me to a port,” the defiant pirate demanded with a huff.
“Nah, ye’ll be fine, I ain’t gonna be givin’ no pirate free rides to port.”
“How about if I trade information for a ride to port rather than being left stranded in a dinghy?”
Tylo paused, the tip of his blade on the deck between himself and the pirate captain.
“If the information be good, we’ll drop ye in Eskanda.”
The pirate captain considered for a moment, then grinned, his rotten teeth making the grin look devious.
“You were involved in the battle of Harmonui, yes?” he asked, a mischievous look on his face.
“Aye, them humans n’ the gnome led that fight. What of it?”
“What if I told you the leader of the shadow elf army, the one presumed dead, was alive and is being held captive?” the pirate asked, smirking at his captors.
“Then I would say you had better start talking immediately, if this information has any truth to it,” Heishi interjected.
“There is a human woman, an other-worlder, who was doing unholy things in Harmonui before it fell. They say she was opening portals to other dimensions, if such things can be believed...”
“You’d be surprised wha
t we would believe, keep talking, scum,” Heishi’s eyes flared as his patience ran low with the pirate.
“As I heard it, this woman found the leader of the shadow elf army, he goes by the name of Fion, as she was sailing away. She has him as a prisoner in Rattanda, and rumor has it she is using him for her unholy experiments,” the pirate captain finished. Seeing the effect his words had on the group, he grinned through his rotten teeth again. “Does that get me a ride to port?”
Chapter 1 – The Call
Di’eslo sat on the balcony of his room in the Harmonui castle, staring at the moon in silence. He had lived on the surface for some time, but his shadow elf eyes still preferred the darkness of night. He allowed his thoughts to drift, trying to figure out how he had gotten to this place in his life: living in the castle of a surface elf queen as the ambassador for his people.
It had been six months since the battle of Harmonui, and Di’eslo hated to admit it but he was thoroughly enjoying his time with the surface elves. After millennia of hatred between these elves and their subterranean-dwelling shadow elf kin, the broken relationships were slowly being mended. This was in no small part due to the efforts of Di’eslo and the new queen of Harmonui, Gabrielle Anaoilin, whom he had rescued from certain death at the hands of an orc king.
At first, she had despised him for no reason other than the color of his skin and the shadows that encircled him, attempting to block out sunlight and hide his body. He had even healed her, bringing her back from almost certain death, and yet she had hated him.
That was ok, he had grown used to such prejudice in the five years he had lived above ground. As a matter of fact, he had come to the surface world specifically to scout locations for his people to begin a war: they had been attacked and killed for centuries, and it had been time to fight back. Harmonui had become the target of the coming war, and if it had not been for Gabrielle the city would have been destroyed.