Either the giant cosmic fungus had given an order, or the smaller ones had realised the threat she posed on their own. It didn’t matter. The half a dozen in pursuit of them had been joined by others, and what the eldritch abominations lacked in grace or agility, they made up for with impressive speed. The roc rider was forced to lead his bird through a series of seemingly impossible flips, turns, twists, and dives to outpace and outmanoeuvre their pursuers. The bolts of time-stopping power the cosmic fungi unleashed were soon joined by barbed darts, spiked tentacles, and what looked like strange, glowing acid. If Gerald had been with them, the paper pusher would have puked his guts out at least fifteen times, but Avraniel was made of sterner stuff. Honestly, the way this dwarf could fly, he and his roc might be able to give Spot a run for his money in the air, and that was saying something.
The whole time, Avraniel did her best to anticipate the crazy twists and turns as she fired off smaller attacks to pick off the pursuing fungi. The other roc riders had also noticed, and they swung around in formation and smashed headlong into the swarm of eldritch beings. One roc screeched, and the massive bird was suddenly locked in combat, its talons and beak ripping into the body of one fungus as the creature retaliated with its tentacles and clawed limbs. A bolt of time-stopping power halted the bird and its rider in mid-air, but another roc rider was there to strike before the cosmic fungus could seize the initiative. Its rider hurled his war hammer, and magic surrounded the weapon as it slammed into the abomination’s side.
It was chaos. The roc riders were badly outnumbered, but they were well trained, utterly determined, and used to fighting both as individuals and as a group. In contrast, the cosmic fungi seemed to care little for one another. Instead, they simply flooded forward, trying to overwhelm the roc riders with their numbers and eldritch powers. A trio of roc riders went down, birds and riders torn to shreds, but that only spurred the others to fight harder. Nothing hardened a dwarf’s resolve more than watching one of his fellows die, and it was often said that vengeful dwarves were the most dangerous dwarves. The roc riders must have agreed because for every one of them that fell, they made sure to take down at least two or three of the cosmic fungi. One of the riders even leapt off his mortally wounded bird and grabbed hold of one of the cosmic fungi before detonating all of his exploding crossbow bolts. Avraniel bared her teeth. She might not like dwarves much, but she could definitely respect these ones. They weren’t afraid of death, but they were determined to make whoever killed them pay as big a price as possible.
And then Spot was there.
The cosmic fungi had been so intent on killing her that they didn’t notice the dragon until he was suddenly diving down on them, unleashing a cloud of white flame. Some of them stopped time to survive whilst others accelerated their own time to give them the speed they needed to escape. The roc riders used the sudden onslaught to regroup, and they readied themselves for another charge.
“Good work, Spot!”
“He’s your dragon, isn’t he?” the dwarf chuckled. “Someone told me we’ve been stuck here for centuries. Do all elves have dragons now, or is it just you?”
“Just me.”
“Good! I’d hate for you tree huggers to have such a big advantage over us. Oh, don’t get me wrong. An elf with a bow on a giant eagle can be a nightmare to fight, but I’d favour a roc and an angry dwarf at close range any day. A dragon is a different story, though. Close range or long range it doesn’t matter. A dragon’s fire and a dragon’s claws will both make short work of anything they can reach.”
The dwarf laughed again as Spot fell into position beside them. The dragon unleashed more blasts of fire to force the cosmic fungi to use their powers, so he could close in and puts his teeth and claws to work. The roc riders took advantage of Spot’s fire as well. They’d realised that the eldritch creatures couldn’t use their powers too often. Whenever they were forced to use their ability to stop time defensively that meant there was a small window when they would be vulnerable, and the roc riders were more than good enough to take advantage of it. Now that Spot could turn intangible for short periods of time, he was even better at getting close. As strong as the cosmic fungi were – and a solid hit was enough to rattle even Spot’s teeth – the dragon’s claws and teeth were deadly, and with astral energy enhancing all of his blows, he was an absolute menace. One or two decent hits were usually all he needed to down one of the cosmic fungi.
“He’s a useful lad, isn’t he?” The captain gave an appreciative whistle as Spot twisted around the tentacles of an eldritch horror before dragging two of his claws along its side. White energy turned the shallow wounds into gaping injuries, and Spot’s next pass all but ripped the creature in half.
“He sure is.” Avraniel looked over. A zombie wyvern was flying toward the gigantic fungus with several large barrels strapped onto it. Right on cue, another salvo from the Sky City forced it to use its time-stopping shockwave or risk taking even more severe injuries. But that left the zombie wyvern with a perfect opportunity to strike. And unless she was mistaken, those were barrels the demolition rats had been working on. “Get us out of here!”
The dwarf looked over his shoulder and fired some lightning at a fifteen-feet-tall fungus that had almost managed to sneak up on them. “Why? We’re winning.”
“Do you see those barrels on the zombie wyvern?” Avraniel pointed before realising that the dwarf almost certainly couldn’t see them at this distance. They had to be at least half a mile away from the zombie wyvern. “We’ve got rats who specialise in making explosives, and they’ve had all day to work on those barrels.”
“Rats?” The roc rider stared. “You have rats who make explosives?”
“Yes, and they’re good at it. Trust me. We do not want to be this close when those barrels explode.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” The roc rider tugged on the reins again, and they changed direction to put some distance between them and the zombie wyvern. Spot was right beside them as the dwarf raised a horn to his lips and blew it. The remaining roc riders – at least a quarter of them had fallen in battle – began to wheel away as well, and it was a good thing they did.
The explosion the barrels made when the zombie wyvern rammed into the gigantic cosmic fungus almost knocked them out of the sky. She wasn’t sure how the demolition rats had managed to do it, but the explosion was almost as big as the one her attacks had caused. Sure, it didn’t have the same heat behind it, but it seemed to pack even more force. The massive fungus staggered, all but knocked to the ground, as a vast section of its cylindrical body was reduced to bloody pulp. It made her wonder why it didn’t fly. Was it unable to, or had they damaged it too badly for it to fly? As it continued to reel, glowing, viscous fluid pouring out of the ruined flesh, Avraniel unleashed another attack of dizzying power. The sky shook, and Avraniel grinned savagely as the gigantic creature wavered, its tentacles and limbs twitching erratically as an entire slab of its flesh broke off and hurtled toward the ground. A cheer went up from the dwarves, and the Sky City added its own weaponry to the assault. The gargantuan cosmic fungus tottered about drunkenly and then lunged at the Sky City.
“It’s getting desperate,” the dwarf observed. “We must really be hurting it.” His eyes widened as bells began to ring all through Skygarde. “I know that signal! The teleportation device must be almost ready.” He sounded his horn again. “Come on, lads! We’re getting out of this damn place! Back to the city! If you’re slow, you’re getting left behind!”
The titanic fungus seized the city, and everyone who could muster an attack blazed away at it. Bits of it, ranging from small pieces to chunks the size of hills, ripped off, but it refused to let go even as the teleportation device finally activated, dragging them out of the twisted dimension of the cosmic fungi and back into their own world.
Of course, they weren’t out of the woods yet.
Not even close.
* * *
If Timmy had been asked to come up
with the worst possible outcome of using the teleportation device, then having it fail as it shredded them into billions of tiny pieces and dumped them into an even worse dimension would have been right at the top of his list. Sam had told him about some of the places he’d been, and Timmy was not keen on visiting most of them. There were, apparently, places were giant hamsters and hedgehogs hunted humans for sport. Timmy had always thought Sam had been joking but after almost being murdered on multiple occasions by flying, time-stopping fungi, he wasn’t about to rule anything out.
One of his other fears was the teleportation device sending them right into a volcano. Spot and Avraniel would probably have been okay, but the rest of them would be dead. Well, maybe not Amanda. Lava was usually quite effective against vampires, but she was an ancient vampire. Ancient vampires were notorious for staying dead for about ten seconds before regenerating and murdering their would-be murderers.
Another horrible possibility was teleporting next to an imperial naval base. But what were the odds of that? There weren’t that many imperial naval bases, and the world was a big place. In fact, there were actually more active volcanoes in the world than imperial naval bases, so they were more likely to meet their ends after being dunked in lava than at the cannons of the imperial navy.
As luck would have it, the teleportation device managed to avoid two of Timmy’s worst fears. It teleported them into the sky over the ocean of their world, and all of them appeared to be in one piece. Sadly, though, that was where their luck ended because they hadn’t appeared over an empty patch of ocean in the middle of nowhere. No. They’d appeared over a patch of the ocean that was right next to an imperial naval base.
And things were about to get worse because of course they were.
“The engines have gone dead. We’re barely airborne!” a dwarf screamed. “We’ve lost power too! The city’s power source has gone completely silent. We must have either overloaded it or damaged it while teleporting.”
And to make matters worse, they hadn’t teleported alone. Indeed, their passenger was probably why the city’s power source had malfunctioned. The giant cosmic fungus, the one that had frozen the Sky City in time for centuries, the same creature they had done their best to kill or escape, that same eldritch monstrosity had hitched a ride. It was right next to them, and it did not look happy.
“We’re dead in the water,” another dwarf growled. “Weapons aren’t responding either.”
“Don’t you mean dead in the sky?” a third dwarf shouted.
“Does it matter?” the other dwarf yelled back. “The point is that we’re not going anywhere, and we can’t defend ourselves.” He clutched at his beard as the angry ringing of alarms filled the air. “We’re running on emergency power only, and our barriers are barely operational.” He paused and then stared as some of the surveillance magic they still had operating projected an image into the middle of the chamber that served as the command centre of the Sky City. “And is that an imperial naval base down there because it sure looks like one, and I swear that’s the imperial flag flying on the fleet down there too?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” Timmy fought the urge to scream. How had they escaped a world full of killer cosmic fungi only to find themselves in an even worse situation? The door to the command centre practically burst off its hinges as King Barin stomped in with Daerin right behind him. “Your Majesty, we have problem.”
The king growled. “Aye. That damn giant fungus managed to come along for the ride, and we’re right next to an entire naval base full of imperial troops – and they’ve got a damn fleet anchored in the harbour too.” The king snarled. “And now I’m being told that we can’t move or fire our weapons.” A massive blast of flame from Avraniel shook the city, and the titanic cosmic fungus flopped back. It must have been weaker in this world than its own because it toppled back and smashed half a dozen ships to kindling before it fell into the ocean. “The imperials haven’t done anything yet, but that’s only because they must be as shocked as we are. In a few minutes – at the most – they’ll hit us with everything they’ve got. We can either try to hold our ground, or we can try and make repairs and run for it. Does anyone actually know where we are?”
“Not too far from help, now that you mention it.” Timmy recognised the naval base beside them. He’d learned as much about the empire’s naval bases as he could prior to their previous mission, and the general shape of the island was familiar to him. “This is one of the empire’s forward naval bases. It’s a few hours by air from a friendly nation, maybe less if they use magic to enhance their speed.”
“That’s some good news at least.” The king took a deep breath and then nodded firmly. “I’ll start preparing for boarders. The Sky City is far too valuable a prize for them to overlook. They’ll try to kill us all and take it for themselves. It’s what I would do. But we didn’t come this far just to hand it over to the empire. We’ll hold them back, one way or another. Contact whomever you can for help, and see if you can’t get the engines and weapons working again. You and my brother did great work with Marden to get us this far, but I’ll need you and the rest of the engineers to work a few more miracles. Even if we could move, we wouldn’t be able to retreat quickly enough to avoid taking a few hits, but I’ll take a slow retreat over being stuck here in range of their –”
BOOM.
The Sky City’s barrier flared to life, and the whole city shuddered. A deep, bass rumble echoed up from beneath them, and frantic voices began to yell out damage reports as more alarms rang out and the runes and seals spread throughout the city reported the damage – and there was a lot of damage to report.
“I’m going to guess that the empire has begun to open fire with their ground-based weapons.” Timmy sighed. “And, of course, they’ve got a lot of them. This is a damn naval base, after all.”
“We dwarves are not known for our luck.” The king hefted his axe. It was covered in the strange, phosphorescent fluid that passed for blood amongst the cosmic fungi. “But I’m hoping one of those imperial commanders is foolish enough to hit the giant fungus. Hopefully, they can get the damn thing mad at them. It’ll be nice to see someone else have to deal with it for a while.” He turned to Daerin. “Help the necromancer and the others, brother. It won’t be long before the imperials start trying to board the city. I’m going to prepare a suitable welcome for them.”
As the king rushed off with some of his elites, Timmy and the others went looking for Gerald. He found the bureaucrat huddled behind a sturdy wall as another blast rocked the city. He grimaced and helped Gerald back to his feet. It was hard to blame the older man. The wall put Gerald within easy reach of the healers who were using some of his supplies while also keeping him relatively safe. This wasn’t something he’d trained for, and the stress of days spent only moments from death was beginning to show. It was a miracle he hadn’t cracked yet.
“Get on your scrying sphere,” he ordered Gerald. “I need to speak to Vicky right now!”
It only took a moment for Vicky to answer. She was in a nightgown since it was only an hour or so past down, and she did like to sleep in when she could. “Gerald? Timmy? What’s going on? We’ve been looking everywhere for you and the others, but the Hearthgate has been completely unresponsive. What happened?”
Timmy took a deep breath. The frantic screaming and cursing coming from the dwarves as they ran around trying to repair as much damage as they could was not doing good things for his peace of mind. He already knew the situation was bad. Knowing that one of the primary magic conduits to the weapons had ruptured in four different places turned the situation from bad to apocalyptic. “Okay, long story short because we’re really in a bit of pinch, but we found Skygarde. It was in another dimension. We got dragged there after eldritch fungi activated the Hearthgate. However, we were able to get back, but we’re now floating next to an imperial naval base about three or four hours flight by wyvern from the Shimmering Isles. It’s the base codenamed Near Strike on the
maps you sent me. We also have an absolutely gigantic fungus monster to deal with because it hitched a ride back with us when we teleported out of its dimension. We need you and the Shimmering Isles to send everybody – as in everybody and their dog, their cat, and even their pet turtle – to help us because we’re currently under attack, and it’s only going to get worse. I give it a few minutes at the most before the giant fungus monster recovers, and the empire has already begun its bombardment. They should have the first wave of boarders up here any second now.”
Vicky blinked. Anyone else might have panicked, and most other people would have pressed to know about what had happened with the Hearthgate and in the other dimension. However, Vicky was very good at prioritising. Those things could wait till later. Right now, they had a Sky City to save.
“I see.” There was a flash of light, and she was suddenly bathed in the brilliant glow of her magic. “I will contact the Shimmering Isles immediately and rally our forces. Expect help as soon as possible. I will be coming in person with whatever forces I can muster on such short notice. I’m not too far. I left the Shimmering Isles yesterday to help the dwarves search for you and the others.”
That was good news. If Vicky could get here with some forces from Everton and the Shimmering Isles, they should be able to survive. However, there was still the not-so-small matter of needing to hold off an entire naval base until they arrived. His lips twitched. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d take probable death over certain death every day of the week. “Right. We’ll hold them off as long as we can. Don’t be late.”
Vicky’s gaze sobered. “Timmy… be careful. We’ll get there as quickly as we can. Just hold on.”
As the scrying sphere fell silent, Timmy gestured for Gerald to follow him and Daerin. They arrived in the engineering section of the city to find Marden, the chief engineer, deep in conversation with his colleagues. From the looks on their faces, the news was far from good.
Two Necromancers, a Dwarf Kingdom, and a Sky City Page 51