Fiction: Death on Dark Wings pt8

Lekahn, on the other hand, had regained his footing.  He took quick
appraisal of the situation, and threw out his wand gauntlet, shouting the
command word.  With a visible and violent shimmering in the air, the
marauder on Gahn was thrown across the room back into the cupboard it had
hidden within, smashing it into so much tinder.  At the same time, the two
marauders left standing rushed forward, swinging their blade arms at Durren,
who did not even flinch at their approach.



Maybe it had not been such a waste of magic for the archmagi to cast a
protective spell.



Durren threw his hands out again, this time a ball of light forming between
them and flashing out in an instant.  It slammed a marauder in the chest,
and instantly the beast turned into a pillar of stone.  The terrifying
instinct of the other marauder tipped it off to Durren's magical protection,
and so instead of continuing to hack uselessly at him it leapt into the air,
doing a somersault, and landing on top of the mage, slamming him winded on
his back.  Lekahn dared not use his gauntlet again, to risk a spell on a
marine was one thing, but never upon an archmage, and ran up, shouldering
into the marauder.  He felt his shoulder dislocate on one of the slightly
jagged protrusions of the beasts chitinous hide, but was rewarded when he
and the beast rolled off the archmage and tumbled through debris.  His head
slammed into an iron pot, sending a ringing through the room and his head,
and for seconds all he could do was hold his sword out as he lay on the
ground, unable to see, too stunned to act.  His eyes and his head snapping
back together he saw the marauder standing over him, and bellowed a feral
roar, lancing his longsword up into its stomach as it would bring its blade
down upon him.



His blade hit it at the wrong, and deflected, his doom seemed imminent.



Until he realized the beast was not moving.



Pushing backwards he stood to see Durren place his mana crystal on the chain
around his neck back under his robe, the warpriest pleased that he had
stoned the last marauder.  Lekahn walked over to the other beast in the
cupboard ruins, finding it utterly motionless, a large and very jaggedly
snapped wooden bulkhead growing out of its chest.  Unfortunately, Gahn was
as still as fungus, and Lekahn's ungauntleted hand felt for a pulse but
found none.  Shaking his head at Durren, the archmage simply turned and
seemed not to care, approaching once more the stairwell up.









Korgesh sat at a table, this made of the carapace of an elven spirit
warrior, eating a dinner of venison with the rich black gravy only his cook
seemed to be able to achieve.  His hands held the large knife and fork
gently, and the whole scene would make any elf commander laugh heartily at
first sight, but watching the scro gently carve the meat and sip his wine
and the intense look on his face as he watched the circling wyverns out the
window would quickly change their mind.  Thumbing the dent in the side of
his goblet, caused when most of the roof of his inner sanctum aboard gamaro
base had been destroyed by a crashing man-o-war, he smiled at the thought of
Lekahn finding several nice elven commanders, and perhaps even a few of
those battlewizard bitches.



A small speck on the gravity plane of the armada, some thousand yards away,
caught his attention.  Lowering his meat-laden fork and goblet, he wiped his
muzzle on a nearby towel and strode to the window.  Raising the gold gilded
spyglass from his belt, he slowly homed in on the object, his muzzle
twisting in a snarl.  The body of the archmagi Durren was bobbing up and
down in the gravity, drifting leaving a trail of blood behind it.  This
meant two things - firstly, there were elves left aboard of sufficient power
to take out the warpriest, and secondly, that they had the staunch to taunt
him by throwing the body outside, hence the blood trail behind it instead of
away.  Having cut the throats of many elven commanders and thrown them
overboard, Korgesh knew for a fact that the blood and lighter fluids always
seemed to drift out faster, and had Durren simply fallen accidentally, or
even pushed Lekahn far enough for the captain to kill him, the trail would
not be as it was.



Then with an even harder snarl, he noticed the other object.  Calling upon
the magic within the spyglass, as it was too small to determine specifics
without it, Korgesh took in the sight of his captain, and friend's head,
floating decapitated shortly behind the archmagi.



With a roar the spyglass flew across the room, smashing glass and twisted
metal all that remained as it dropped to the floor.



The scro stormed out of the room, barking orders to the scampering goblin
aide following.  The captains of the other three units aboard the
battlewagon snapped to attention, leaping back from the table they were
studying the armada's refit plans upon.  "Lekahn and Durren are dead.  There
are elves, possibly many, get your men together at once, the missions
objective has been superceded by that of intense, violent bloodshed.  No
Quarter!"



The three saluting in unison and shouting the pledge long ago begun by
Dukgash, they spun and stalked from the room not unlike Korgesh, the only
difference their quiet commands to their sergeants who sat playing cards at
a table in the room outside.  Within but a quarter of an hour the unit was
primed and ready for boarding, their engineers equipment replaced with that
of war - axes, swords, and spears.  Their black studded leathers showed
signs of great care as the three units lined up in front of the docking
boats in the battlewagons hold, their sergeants preparing the boats for
launch while the captains went over the plan with Korgesh.



"Attention" came the cry from one of the warriors, as the four commanding
scro stormed into the room.  Each warrior could almost feel the rage and
anger coming from their Admiral, and all knew that the captain and he had
been long standing friends.  The long depth of their relationship was not
know, but that they sparred together on several occasions was more than
enough to show Korgesh's respect for his friend.  His now dead friend.



Korgesh himself stalked straight to one of the boarding boats, snapping his
fingers and bringing his goblin aide scurrying out of the shadows of the
room to follow.  The three captains stopped in front of the group of
warriors and ordered each unit to take another craft, the 001st to split
itself half between Korgesh's vessel and the one normally allocated to them.
No questions were asked, and no answers were given, but like a machine the
three units moved, boots stamping in unison, grabbing weapons from the
nearby readied racks that had earlier held tools.  Weapons of destruction in
favour of tools of construction, it took but five minutes for the craft to
be loaded and ready for takeoff.  The 002nd and 003rd left first, heading
out along a wide trajectory, their sails and rudders locked into positions
while magic items within placed globes of darkness around them to conceal
their prescence.  Korgesh, piloting his own craft he had fashioned himself,
saw the stars flicker as the two now cloaked units made their approach, and
sent his own craft, following the other in front, toward the armada.



Tilaurin
tilaurin@?????????????????.com
http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/atreus/index.html
"Dying Swans/Twisted Wings,
Bring This Savage Back Home"
- Brave New World, Iron Maiden