Chapter 25
Levi wasn’t sure what he was expecting… but the glorified bronze rowboat that fell out of the ship wasn’t it. The boat deployed a pair of wings from the side which splayed forward like the wings of a bird of prey, but that wasn’t what stopped it from crashing to the ground below. When the keel shifted as it began to curve in its descent, Levi could see that it had a sleek balloon attached to the top and a propeller on the back. “It’s a smaller airship?” he asked in surprise.
“Sure, that one probably only has a single reinforced balloon, so it’s a skiff. Depending on if it is armed or not, it might hold up to twenty people… well, human-sized people,” Glint amended. “The difference is that the skiff is probably fueled by compressed vapor chambers drained from the bigger ship’s engines, making them short range. They’d use something else for longer-range travel, either a true airship or gliders.”
Darren had apparently finally found his voice, since he turned to look at Glint with a frown of disgust and said, “How do you know all this shit about another dimension?” Contempt dripped from his voice. Levi let his grip shift on the knob of his cane, ready to change his hold. If he had to stop Darren from doing something stupid, he could reverse his grip on the cane and wield it like a sword. Darren seemed more interested in questioning Glint’s knowledge than physical violence at the moment though. “Everyone knows worthless moss foot fuckers like you never get accepted to the airship schools,” he continued.
Glint’s ears shot out to either side, and then flapped back against his head as he let his lips peel back to reveal his shark-like teeth. His huge eyes narrowed within the goggles, and he tightened his grip around his fighting staff. “Because we build airships for half a dozen dimensions, you speciest asshole. Just because your dumbass people pushed mine out of our homes didn’t mean we didn’t expand. The biggest airship factory on Kontesh is run by my family!” Glint yelled in Darren’s face. Well, more like he yelled at Darren’s abdomen, but the thought was there.
Levi put a hand on Glint’s shoulder to calm his small friend. He took a few calming breaths as he watched Darren struggle to think of a response. He saw glints of red light reflecting on the inside of his glasses, and he raised his hand to push them up the center of his nose. The anger coiling in him wasn’t going to help them at the moment.
“This is stupid. Darren, you know as well as I do that swamp imps have a solid reputation for vapor engineering. The Costilian Empire is known to use many races in the creation of their fleets, and Scrim is a mana-construct student, all of which makes attacking his knowledge base a flawed strategy. We’re wasting time, and this bickering is distracting us from our duty: watching the fleet to ensure nothing attacks the Academy,” Elizabeth recited in a cold, quiet voice. She wasn’t looking at any of them—she was recording notes in a journal she’d taken from somewhere and her long white hair was blowing around as the wind picked up.
Levi shook his head, still unable to determine if she was a bitch or just… trapped. He did take a moment to breathe, however, releasing the anger that was empowering his eyes. “She’s right, let’s just do what we’re out here to do and call it good,” he said, careful not to look at the woman. He had a feeling Darren was the type of asshole to turn that into some dominance shit… and Levi was pretty sure he’d get in trouble for blowing an upperclassman off the wall in the face of an enemy.
It would feel so good though.
The red-skinned fish guy wasn’t saying anything; he just stared unblinking at the skiff as it made its way down toward the main courtyard of the Academy. Levi would have sworn the ship was not going to fit, but at the last minute the wings collapsed back against the sides and its course changed until the keel sank straight down to land on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, at that point they could no longer see it from where they were standing.
Darren had started pacing and it was getting on Levi’s nerves, but he tried to dismiss the irritation. He opened a pouch on his stasis baldric and started feeding Flix pieces of meat. The dragonet was watching everything, and Levi could sense tension coiled in her. Zuzan chittered on his head and he let out a laugh. “No, I haven’t forgotten you, just give me a second to feed Flix first,” he informed the protesting squirrel.
The others looked at him for a moment, then they realized he was conversing with his companions. On Earth he’d have looked like a lunatic—here, none of them really seemed to think it odd at all. They all turned back to their own thoughts as he scooped a handful of nuts free of the pouch and let Zuzan jump down to start stuffing her face. Her teeth produced a crunching sound as she made sure to nibble several of the nuts to death before storing others for later. Levi had to work to keep a poker face as her squeaks made some unflattering comments regarding Darren and his friend. Oddly, Zuzan left Elizabeth out of her mockery. Maybe she’s a better judge of character than I am, he thought.
Levi checked his emblem for an update, but nothing had been added to their orders. He took a waterskin from his satchel and filled a bowl for his companions to drink from, then he settled in to wait. He had no idea how long they might be standing up on this wall and it was already getting hot.
Several hours passed in disgruntled silence. Any time a conversation started, Darren’s incessant attitude squashed it flat. Even Darren’s three-eyed friend was looking at him with annoyance after a time. Levi wasn’t the only one who had brought provisions, and when the sun started to tilt toward the horizon, they took turns eating. Crane House shared food exclusively between each other, but Levi wasn’t shocked at the snub to Glint and himself. Glint didn’t seem to care, and when Levi saw the jiggling cubes he had stuffed in his sack, Levi knew why. He resolutely looked away from the crunching and grinned to himself when he saw Darren twitch at each bite.
The sun dropped toward the horizon, which is when things started to change. Taryl’s night sky was amazing, a river of stars and even a few whisps of galactic cloud, which made it strange to Levi that the stars seemed… red. “Anyone notice something strange about the stars?” he asked finally.
Glint looked up and used a clawed finger to adjust his goggles through a variety of lenses. Levi saw Elizabeth, Darren, and the other guy tilt their heads as well. Darren let out a snort and shook his head. Elizabeth frowned, and when she looked over at Levi, she shook her head and offered a slight shrug. Glint’s ears sagged and he looked at Levi without anything to offer.
“No, he’s right. There’s a crimson shadow across the stars. It’s subtle, but I can see it clearly,” said the Crane student whose name Levi still didn’t know. The three-eyed fishman turned to look at his housemates, and then he pointed toward one of the dustings of stars that were surrounded in astral clouds. “It is thickest in that direction, like something is occluding the starlight coming to Taryl.”
The others stared where the man pointed, so Levi turned his focus there as well. To him, it was like a pool of blood had spilled in front of the white glow, tainting it. He felt a cold chill run down his spine and his eyes narrowed as he fixed his glasses. “Something is coming,” he said quietly.
The others looked at him like he was mad, but Levi shrugged. He couldn’t shake the sensation, and while he had no proof, he wasn’t going to back down. Elizabeth began to whisper words under her breath and Levi saw her take out a slim stick of chalk. The chalk shimmered a crystal blue as the half-fae started to draw on the air. She formed three circles set in a triangular pattern and filled them in with small glyphs and symbols. The others backed up and the wind around her started to shift and spin as she wrote.
Levi wasn’t sure what she was doing, but the circles glimmered with energy, and when they spread out the triangle in between them was magnified. His eyes widened and he looked at Glint. “Horrors, different from the ones we ran into before. How do we sound the alarm?” he asked his friend.
Glint looked suitably alarmed, his hand rising to twist several knobs on his staff while he tried to get a clear glimpse of what Levi was looking at. His goggles whirred, shifting on their own, and suddenly, he let out a squeal in his own language. The green catalyst in his lantern began to churn and bubble, and that glowing field he had used to burn the Horrors before blossomed around him. This time it looked much stronger and Darren and his friend spun to look at him.
“The hell are you doing, imp! The Empire is going to think you’re casting attack spells!” Darren roared. He raised his fists and looked like he was about to charge when Levi’s cane tip poked him in the throat.
“Touch him and you’re off this wall. There are Horrors coming, so help or get out of the way. We need to alert the school,” Levi said in a cold voice he almost didn’t recognize. He couldn’t see how brightly his own eyes glowed red, but he realized his cane was wrapped in the crimson-and-black energy he had used against Darren before. His entire body was illuminated as the power flared around him in a threatening aura—Darren’s friend backed up with a look of fear on his face.
“Darren, he is right. My sensory spell is clearly showing that an incursion is forming in the sky to the east. Please send the alert to house mistress Shade,” Elizabeth said. There was a frosty, analytical quality to her voice—almost like she’d completely detached from what was going on around her. Her spell hung open in front of her like a round window; Darren’s friend looked into it, turning to face the canid and nodding.
Darren’s expression immediately changed, and he took a gold fob watch from his pocket. When he clicked the lid open, the ticking clock face had a silver-blue crane engraved beneath the hands. He aimed the green crystal inside the cover plate at himself and pressed in the watch button. “Darren of Crane House issuing a report. Four of five watchers on the southern face of the outer wall are reporting a red haze over the sky, sensory spells seem to indicate a possible incursion of Horrors. Upperclassman cannot confirm,” he said, though he’d almost growled the final sentence.
The crystal lit up and then went dull. Darren seemed to understand what it was doing, since he closed it and looked at the others in Crane House expectantly. They just nodded to him, and then he turned to look at Levi with rage on his face. “If this turns out to be some kind of prank, I swear you’ll pay for it,” he spat.
Levi was confident in what he saw, so he chose not to respond to the threat—he was far more concerned with the dark spots forming in the red. There were lights appearing on the sides of the hovering airships, and several loud clanks sounded in the still night air.
“That sounds like they’re opening their ports,” Glint whispered. Levi glanced at him and saw his friend squatting down, almost like he was trying to make himself smaller. His glowing barrier was covering all of them now, and then he twisted his staff so it would stand on its own. Unlike last time, Glint didn’t seem content sitting on defense. His hands were shaking, but he was drawing parts from his various pockets and starting to assemble them into something that looked like an old-fashioned pistol.
Levi looked back at the sky. “Nobody works with the Horrors, right?” he asked, hoping he was just being paranoid.
“Of course not! You can’t reason with them—they’re mindless, twisted abominations that lurk in the outer voids. They break into the dimensions and feast on the mana. They’re like locusts or a flood, destroying everything in their path, and no one can communicate with them,” stated Darren’s friend. Levi noted that he seemed genuinely horrified at the suggestion, so he filed that away.
Darren just snorted in disgust, and even Elizabeth shot Levi a look that implied he had said something fairly dumb. Levi took a moment to make sure he could speak calmly, then asked, “If that is the case, does that mean those airships need to be warned that the swarm I see coming is heading right for them?”
Darren’s eyes bulged and he swung his arm up to start talking rapidly into his pocket watch again. Glint let out another shocked squeal, then quickly finished putting together the projectile weapon. It looked like a fat-bellied revolver, but Levi saw the five chambers were filled with vapor vials. It had a grip that looked uncomfortable to hold, but Glint didn’t have human hands, Levi knew he had an extra knuckle near his claws. The mouth of the barrel flared out like a bell, though Levi had no idea what the weapon fired. He did notice that it had a small crystal on the tip of what he would have called a hammer on a human gun.
Flix kept flexing her wings and hissing, her tail lashing behind her as she struggled with the desire to fly. Levi scratched the back of her head soothingly and listened to Zuzan chirp and chitter to his dragonet. He found his attention kept turning back toward the ships in the sky and the dark shadows he saw in the sky above them. He tried to focus on the visualization he had been working on with Nox, gathering his thoughts on how he’d use his power. He needed a clear image of what he wanted, and it would also help if he could find the words to direct his power efficiently.
He quietly began reciting the elven words she’d taught him, assessing how he could cast the incantations to make his power last as long as possible. His red eyes snapped shut when a sudden blast of flame and debris spread across the night sky.
One of the imperial airships had exploded.
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