“Got it,” I said, getting on the rope ladder and climbing up the thing.
I felt a little nervous as I climbed up that ladder, though. Because there were mages and archers in the crowd down there, and I couldn’t shake the thought that I was presenting a nice easy target for anyone down there who wanted to put a hole in my ass.
Thankfully I got to the top without anyone putting any new holes in my ass. The one was just fine, thank you very much. Though to hear Kris tell it sometimes I had another asshole just below my nose, but I didn’t want an arrow there either.
I reached the top and Korsob and several other goblins helped pull me over the edge. I looked at the fully staffe airship that was ready to do some damage in amazement.
“How did you manage to pull this off so quickly?” I asked.
“Quickly?” Korsob laughed, looking out over the battle. “Are you insane? We’ve been working like madgoblins ever since you told us to get to work making sure this was ready as soon as we got enough goblinsteel!”
“The stuff we sent back to the Underground,” I said. “I was worried you wouldn’t get enough in time.”
“Oh we got enough to get these beauties running, all right,” Korsob said, patting the deck. “So what are your orders?”
I looked over to the mine entrance and then to my tactical display that showed me a large group of Horizon Dawn people gathering there before they came back into the raid dungeon. I was pretty sure I knew what they were doing out there, and I wanted to give them the surprise of their life.
“Can we hit a gathering spot on the other side of the entrance?” I asked.
“We can,” Korsob said, grinning like a maniac.
The ship turned ever so slightly as Korsob barked out orders, and it moved out over the entrance. I looked down and, sure enough, Horizon Dawn had set up a makeshift staging area where people were dumping gear on the ground and people were picking it up on their way from the graveyard to the raging battle.
“We need to take out that staging area and do what we can to disperse them,” I said. “They’re gearing up in there and if we don’t stop them they’re going to turn the tide eventually with the way they’re respawning.”
“On it,” Korsob said, bellowing more orders.
I shifted my feet as the ship turned under me. In a moment the cannons along one side were pointed down at the staging area, and a moment later the whole thing turned into a series of explosions like footage from one of the wars in Russia or China as the forested area was converted into a massive fireball.
I watched, awed, as it happened. I was willing to be that no one had faced warfare like this in the game yet, and it was a horrible thing I was visiting on the fantasy world.
I didn’t think it was any less horrible than players trying to subjugate and kill an entire race within the game, mind you, but it was still horrible to watch it happening.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“That should disrupt them for a little bit, don’t you think?” Korsob asked.
“That it should,” I said, looking at the tactical display and the stream of red dots flowing from the graveyard to the front entrance. They were going to have a rude surprise when they got there and found their resupply depot gone.
“Can you signal one of the other ships to take care of keeping them from gathering too much in one area and passing out gear?” I asked. “I want to get a look at the battle as it is.”
“On it,” Korsob said.
Flags ran up a pole on the deck. Presumably they were signalling other ships in the armada to tell them what to do. It occurred to me that ships like this should have a better way to communicate with one another, and I wondered if that was something I could work on with spellcrafted gems.
Not the time or the place, though. I should be happy with being able to break the game to the point that I had an army and three airships at my disposal, after all.
“Right,” I said. “Let’s get back over that battle and make Horizon Dawn regret the day they ever decided to fuck with me or the goblins!”
That resulted in a cheer from the goblins all around me. Oh yeah, they were enjoying finally being able to give as good as they’d been getting from Horizon Dawn.
Better, to be honest. They’d brought a bit of modern warfare to some idiot players who thought they were going to roll through like they always had in a high fantasy setting!
78
Into the Air
Goblins all around me whooped in delight as they infused water gems with fire spells, fire gems with water spells, and lightning gems with fire or water spells, then sent them tumbling over the edge and into the Horizon Dawn crowds below.
Meanwhile the cannons thundered and fired exploding fireballs into the crowds below over and over, sending Horizon Dawn people scattering wherever they landed.
The water gems that were infused improperly blew up nice and good. The fire gems that were infused with water created a sort of steam explosion that scalded anyone unlucky enough to get within range. The lightning gems were the most interesting, turning to blasts of ice shards or tines of flame lightning that reached out and killed anything unfortunate enough to be within range when they were infused improperly
All things we’d worked on down in the Underground through a crash course of experimentation, and all things that were paying deadly dividends now.
The confusion was even worse. The Horizon assholes down there had goblins hitting them hard, and airships floating above raining down death and destruction from on high. Not to mention the ones who died were no doubt having trouble getting resupplied since one of the airships was on patrol with orders to blast the shit out of anyone caught gathering in large groups down there.
All in all it had turned into a pretty bad day for any poor bastard who was stuck down there in the middle of it. I almost felt bad for them. Almost, but then I remembered they were the assholes killing goblins and working on behalf of the corporation who’d killed my sister.
Yeah, those assholes deserved everything they were getting.
Only no sooner had we started raining death from above than something new started happening in the melee down below. At first I thought they might be trying to send out some sort of distress signal. It looked for all the world like a bunch of mages casting fireball spells that were supposed to be flares of some sort what with the way they went arcing through the sky.
Only that made no sense. They didn’t need to send up flares because they had instantaneous party, raid, and guild chat.
So why would they need to send a flare? It made no sense in any…
Then one of those fireballs slammed into the ship flying next to us sending it tilting wildly, and a cold fear seized me as I realized exactly what they were doing.
The fireball didn’t do much damage to the structure, but as soon as one fireball slammed into the ship it encouraged other mages to throw everything they could at us.
“Hold onto your butts!” Korsob shouted as the skies around us lit up.
We were buffeted from the bottom by lightning, fire, ice, and anything else that the casters down there could send up at us. The ship next to us moved higher and off over the rock walls where it wouldn’t be as easy for them to be targeted.
“Shit,” I said. “We need to get some more elevation on this thing! They have a maximum range on those spells they’re tossing around and…”
Only before we could react the deck heaved under us and explosions ripped through. The ship listed to the side, and then went almost horizontal.
“They’re targeting the crystal pylons!” Korsob shouted.
“Damn it!” I shouted.
The ship shuddered again as some of the crystals holding it in the air were separated from the ship by the sheer force of the attack. It seemed like the mages down below realized shooting at those crystals was doing something.
“This isn’t good!” Korsob shouted as he grabbed the railing.
My stomach shifted as
the world tilted around me. On the one hand I knew this all wasn’t real. That everything was happening on a server somewhere. That I wasn’t really hanging on an airship crewed by goblins who were rapidly falling out of the damned thing to their deaths. That if I fell I would simply wind up at the resurrection spot nearby where I’d enjoy a little torture between friends from Horizon Dawn.
Still, it was one thing to know that none of this was real and a very different thing to try telling that to my brain that was responding in the way a monkey brain that didn’t understand virtual reality on an instinctive level would respond when stuck in this situation.
So I held onto the gunwale for dear life as the ship pitched and then righted itself after doing a barrel role that I miraculously survived.
The ship looked like it was about to pitch again, and somehow I managed to overcome my fear of going over the edge as I ran to take control of the helm. Korsob was close to it, but he couldn’t get to it because he was too busy desperately hanging onto the ship as it spun this way and that.
Sure there probably wasn’t much I could do, but I’d read something about pilots once upon a time that seemed like it applied to this situation.
“Fly until you hit the ground, because you never know when you might regain control.”
I grabbed the wheel that looked like something out of an old movie about the golden age of piracy that could move forwards and backwards as well as spinning around to accommodate the y-axis that was necessary in a ship like this, and the world stopped spinning quite as much.
I felt a momentary pang of regret for the goblins who’d gone over the edge. Even if they did manage to make to the ground in one piece, which might be possible considering they were smaller and terminal velocity wasn’t quite the same for them as it was to me, they’d be torn to pieces by Horizon.
I held on for dear life as the ship went into another roll. For a moment I was floating in the air, then I was down again as gravity reasserted itself. I was definitely going to look into whether or not they could get some of the antigrav spell infused stones they were using to lift the ships and put them on people so the next time I was on a ship like this I could jump and float down rather than taking this wild ride.
“Nice flying kid!” Korsob shouted.
“Thanks! Would you believe its my first time?” I shouted back.
“Conlan!” Keia shouted into part ychat, panic touching her voice. “Are you up there? What’s happening?”
I tried to imagine what this must look like from her point of view. One moment I was flying along in a ship seemingly safe from attack from below, and the next moment she’d watched a bunch of figures falling from the ship to their doom.
“A little busy right now,” I said, gritting my teeth as the world spun around me.
“What are you doing?”
“I think he’s trying to fly that crashing ship in,” Kris said. “Son of a bitch is gonna do it too!”
“Yeah, you’ll have to excuse me but I need to get back to flying this wreck,” I said.
At least Horizon had started firing at the other ship again, though it was out of range which meant they might return their attention to me at any moment.
I looked around the ship and finally saw what the problem was. One of the six maneuvering crystal pylons had been blown clean off, and another crystal on that side had been cracked and it was leaking puffs of spell infusion.
I frowned. I didn’t think that could mean anything good. That also explained the ship spiraling even though I was desperately pulling at the controls. You couldn’t control a ship that had half its control crystals missing on one side.
Keia was screaming in my ear, but I was having trouble paying attention to anything she was saying. Nothing she could say would be helpful to the current situation, after all. She wasn’t up here helping me steer this thing down to the ground, and I was glad for that.
It was bad enough trying to keep track of myself as I tried to maneuver this thing without dying. It would be even tougher if Keia was up here and I had to worry about her too.
The thing stabilized as I leaned the helm into those busted crystals. I couldn’t keep the thing aloft, but I could control it to some degree now that I knew where the problem was. Now that I could steer I figured I could do some damage with this thing. So rather than pointing the ship towards a soft landing, I turned and pointed it towards the center mass of the Horizon army.
The ground soldiers were still in a desperate fight with my goblins down below. The mages were still trying to bring the other two ships down, both the one they’d fired on first and the one keeping them from setting up a new supply depot, even though both were well out of range.
Horizon Dawn had created a bulge in my goblin lines that they were pushing back now that they didn’t have close air support backing them up. I could also still see a stream from the entrance, though there weren’t as many newly resurrected soldiers moving in now as before.
We were stemming the tide, whether that was from lack of materials, lack of fighting spirit from people getting killed repeatedly, or because some of them were getting yelled at to get up and get ready for school.
The practical upshot was none of them were paying attention to the one airship that was within range. The one they should be trying to blow out of the sky before it had a chance to do the same to them.
“What are you doing?” Korsob shouted, coming up to stand next to me.
“They wanted to bring down an airship,” I yelled. “And I’m gonna give them what they want!”
Korsob threw his head back and laughed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously!” I shouted, surprised at how good this felt. I had enough altitude that I could sail this thing right over the goblin lines and into Horizon Dawn.
Maybe. I hoped.
“In that case abandon ship!” he shouted as he started twisting and turning dials next to the helm.
“What are you doing with that?” I asked as goblins streamed out of the ship and onto the back. We were close to the ground now, and I could see a few Horizon Dawn people looking up and seeing what was coming.
“Creating a surprise for our friends!” Korsob said. “We might want to join everyone!”
Goblins were streaming out of the ship, and most of them had oversized packs strapped to their backs that contained small glowing crystals. They streamed off the back of the ship, and as they fell gravity seemed to disappear as they floated.
I blinked. Okay then. Maybe they did have gems that could help them escape, but they were too bulky to keep on during normal operations or something. I’d have to ask Korsob about that.
Assuming we both survived this.
“I have to bring this in!” I said.
“Your funeral!” Korsob said, taking two of the float gems. He strapped one to himself and handed me the other. “I know you travelers don’t exactly die, but you’ll excuse me for wanting to get out of here while I can!”
“Go!” I shouted, turning back to the Horizon army that was staring at me now to the point that all but the very front lines were ignoring the fight with the goblins.
“You’re gonna want to get off this thing before it hits,” Korsob said, pausing on the gunwale. “Because I just overloaded those crystals, and it’s gonna be a way bigger boom than the little firecrackers you like throwing around!”
I looked back to the crystals as I edged the nose of the ship down just a little. Just enough that I figured I’d plow into those assholes nice and good. The crystals were almost blinding in their brightness, and in my experience blinding light coming from spell infused crystals was never good.
Especially with big motherfuckers like these!
“What the hell are you doing?” Keia asked.
“Taking care of this army with the one attack I have available,” I growled.
This would be the ultimate extension of my little trick of throwing overloaded spell infused gems at Horizon people, with a little assist from Korsob. Onl
y this time I was throwing a whole ship at them, and it was filled with gems that were designed to defy gravity and not merely a crafting fail state. I figured the explosion was going to be spectacular.
At the last moment I turned and let go of the wheel. I figured I was close enough that it probably wasn’t going to matter if the thing landed right on top of them or landed a little ways ahead of the army and then sent the fireball into their ranks. I ran for the back and jumped at the last moment, clutching the crystal pack that was too small for me since it was made for a goblin.
Was it stupid waiting until the last minute? Definitely. Was it the kind of thing that never would’ve worked in the real world? Of course. Was it the kind of thing that just might give me a chance of surviving this so I could see the results of my handiwork?
I figured my odds weren’t great, but any odds were better than the zero odds of survival I’d have if I stayed on that airship.
I watched my hit bar as the ground came up to meet me. It became immediately clear that an antigrav crystal designed for a goblin wasn’t going to keep my ass floating as nicely as they were. So the ground was rushing up to meet me, but not as fast as it would’ve under normal circumstances.
I landed with a jolt and rolled on the rocky quarry floor as the game only took about half of my hit points instead of all of them.
I turned just in time to see the ship plow into Horizon. Bodies flew everywhere even without the crystals going up. I frowned and ducked behind a rock, putting my hands against my ears and waiting for the explosion. I figured when that thing went up I wanted something big to hide behind.
Only nothing happened. I stared at Korsob standing between me and the entrance to the raid dungeon proper. He shrugged and held his hands out as though to say “I have no clue.”
I peered around the edge. Sure there was a giant path right through the middle of the Horizon people, stopping well short of my goblins which I hoped would keep them safe, but there’d been no earth shattering kaboom like what I’d been hoping for.
Spellcraft Page 62