Chapter Fourteen
Spiderweb parachutes began deploying in midair, the blood elflings abandoning ship.
I really hope Kora and the others were able to grab a few of those, Vester thought, feeling desperate.
He didn’t think there was a damned thing he could do to stop that airship crashing into the dungeon floor.
Trickster’s Cane always came back to him, so he knew it would return in moments, but even with the reduction in energy it provided there was no way he could stop that much weight.
As the shadow began expanding over him, he realized he had another problem. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Vester glanced from side to side, trying to find the best route to climb along the stone to get out from under the impending collision.
The airship, still listing in the air, was being shoved by the undead titanbat, and while the beast appeared to be moving it toward the column Vester was hanging off on accident, that didn’t mean he’d wind up any less crushed.
The wall of stone he was clinging to was the size of a small skyscraper, so moving along its face wouldn’t be fast, even with his dexterity.
Unfortunately, the stone surface also didn’t appear to have any openings for him to try and crawl inside.
He tilted his neck to look down toward the ground.
“No point in dropping. If I do, then the airship would just flatten me when it finally hits the bottom,” he muttered.
He lifted one hand and cast Decoy Swap, teleporting along the stone to the farthest extent of the skill’s reach.
It took a moment to orient and grab the new rockface, but he managed it—and to make things better, Trickster’s Cane chose that moment to reappear in his hand.
He gave thanks to his reaction time, because having the round shaft materialize under his palm while he was trying to hold onto a crack of stone would have made him drop everything back on Earth.
He shot another paranoid look at the falling airship, and then began using Fantastic Reality to create stone steps against the pillar so he could start running down them.
With the illusion anchored to the column, Trickster’s Cane providing a discount, and only having to craft two or three stairs at a time for himself; Vester was able to make good time, but running down and around the circumference of the stone pillar felt like it was taking forever.
Or maybe that was just the looming pressure of a chitinous ship growing ever closer.
The frame was coming apart, and the sound of splintering had started to fill the air.
Vester could also hear the snap of cables, some kind of electric discharges, and what had to be falling crates shattering whenever they hit something.
I am not going to die because I couldn’t resist my own morbid curiosity, he vowed to himself.
Now keep running and do not look back, you fucking idiot!
Because despite knowing a ship was hanging over his head, Vester was still tempted to look back and see the action.
Definitely not the time or place—especially when you don’t know if your Party is okay!
He had faith in the others. He was clinging to that faith through sheer force of will, because if he let himself be consumed with worry, he wouldn’t be able to function.
They’re going to be fine. The elflings were using parachutes—I am sure my team was able to grab some and they’ve abandoned ship with everyone else.
There’s no way Li Ra and Kora wouldn’t do everything necessary to save them, and they’d never leave Krysta or Skylar behind.
Reve’s fighting the bat. It’ll work out.
He might have been babbling a little to himself, he knew that, but it gave him something to distract himself from the growing cacophony of shattering chitin above and behind him.
A horrible scraping sound had begun, and the stone column he was running along was trembling violently.
When he registered the dust and small stones that had begun pattering against his head and shoulders, Vester just knew the ship was starting to grind against the column.
Then came the true impact and the world seemed to explode around him.
The huge stone pillar he’d been trying to race down lurched and the rock came apart like it were made of sand. Stone fragments detonated in every direction as the column fractured. Vester was hit in the ribs with a boulder the size of a trash can and felt most of the bones break.
Worse, he was flung out and away from the stairs he’d been creating and sent tumbling through the air.
Gravity took hold, so he channeled mana through his focus in an attempt to conjure a parachute.
He’d just gotten the fabric to spread wide above him when yet more stones came tearing through it and a large piece clipped his head.
Vester’s damaged vision went dark. He felt blood dripping along his face while his body twisted in midair—and then his awareness was reduced to the pain of numerous bones fracturing.
He bounced off objects he couldn’t see, then a heavy weight crashed down on top of him.
The impact with the ground was almost a relief because it meant he’d finally come to a complete stop.
The weight crushing down on him, however, put a significant damper on any real relief.
He felt his body mending, but without healing magic it wasn’t a fast process, and the drop had given him so many injuries he couldn’t really track where he was hurt—or rather, where he wasn’t.
A general sense of pain radiated through his entire body, though his head was bizarrely numb.
Really… getting… tired… of… this, he groaned while working to focus his thoughts.
The sluggish nature of his consciousness made it clear he had some kind of severe head injury, which didn’t surprise him.
He was almost more concerned with the fact his dominant emotion was annoyance—he didn’t want to start treating major injuries as mundane. Okay, now how do I get out of here?
He tried shifting his arms and legs, finding that they worked so long as he ignored the feeling of broken glass trapped inside his muscles. He assumed those were broken bones, so he tried to focus on something else. Miraculously, Vester still had Trickster’s Cane in his hand.
Let’s… see. It can become any tool I need…. He shrank the artifact down to a stylus, painstakingly turned his hand to point it up and down, then braced one end on whatever was beneath him. I need a staff. A really, really tall staff, he thought, his head full of static.
Trickster’s Cane expanded until his hand couldn’t wrap around it, and while it grew thicker, the divine tool stretched upward.
Vester heard the sound of groaning, cracking, and then numerous things crashing all around him.
A few objects bounced off him, but Vester considered it an overall improvement to his condition.
The air moving over his body had returned, and there was no further pressure trying to grind his body into paste.
Yeah… I’ll take this as a win, he concluded.
Careful experimentation with his arms and legs led him to believe he should be able to drag himself out from under the wreck—except he couldn’t see, which meant he had no idea where he should go.
Vester waited, both for his head to continue healing and for the sounds around him to calm.
He was hoping he might hear something that gave him an idea of which way he should move, even if he couldn’t see it himself.
Guess it takes a while for shit to stop breaking when an airship crashes, he mused after a few minutes of lying there waiting.
The hissing sound that accompanied the bubbling that had begun on his left convinced him to start crawling right now.
Vester had no idea what was producing the noise, but it didn’t sound healthy and his imagination supplied him with the image of dripping acid—more than enough motivation to stop lingering.
Come on, Vester, feel the burn, he grumbled sarcastically, dragging himself over what felt like stone.
The pain of his limbs wasn’t pleasant, but it was better than being crushed or melted.
He’d had to abandon Trickster’s Cane to start moving, but that wasn’t a concern since the divine tool would return to his hand soon.
Hopefully just not before I’m out from under this. I don’t need it landing on me again.
Because he really didn’t want to get halfway out while crawling blind only to have the airship fall on him—again.
“Ves—” he heard dimly, though the sound cut off with a strange echo. He thought he was moving toward it, but he wasn’t sure. “t-t-t-ter?” concluded the bouncing call, and he recognized Krysta’s voice.
“Glag!” he tried to yell back, though all that came out was a gurgling cough that terminated in something wet splattering over his chin. Ugh, gross. I must look like a horror victim. Between the head wound that had blinded him and whatever he’d just spewed out, Vester’s face was disgustingly sticky.
“Vester!” Krysta yelled again, her voice now clearer. She must have moved, because it wasn’t echoing the way it had been before.
“Over here!” Vester projected through his Freeform Illusions, glad he’d used this trick before when his face was ruined.
“I think I’m under the ship!” He didn’t really want Krysta climbing in under all of this, but he wasn’t stupid.
Vester knew that if his Party was calling for him, it meant they were healthy enough to get his broken body out faster than he could manage on his own.
They played a painful game of Marco Polo, with Vester doing his best to lead the searchers to his position. He gave thanks when he heard Skylar’s voice, then Li Ra’s, and then he cursed in pain when armored hands lifted him off the ground.
“You look terrible,” Kora observed in a neutral tone.
“Love you too,” he replied, this time managing to use his own mouth.
He’d also begun blinking and found that he could dimly see her, though things were still blurry.
“I got thrown off an airship, hit by a boulder, then had the same airship land on me… I think I’m doing pretty good all things considered.”
A soft kiss was placed on his forehead. “You are,” Kora assured him gently. “Now let’s get you out from under the portside deck. I have no idea what’s holding it up, but you’re lucky it didn’t come down flush with the floor.”
“It did,” he said, “I turned Trickster’s Cane into a pole to shove it up, so running would be good.”
He squinted, looking around, but it didn’t seem like Kora had let any of the others come into the wreckage with her.
That made sense since she was the toughest member of the Party; Kora and Reve were the only ones who had the right skills to survive something like this.
The kitsune didn’t delay—she broke into a run that jostled Vester’s broken bones. She was cradling him to her chest, and he was glad to trade pain for speed. The shadow hanging over him had made him acutely aware of how tenuous the ship’s broken remains sat, so he wanted away.
Vester sensed the border of Krysta’s Sanctuary skill envelop him before Kora came to a stop. The temporary Safe Zone immediately began boosting his recovery rate, and he felt his wounds starting to mend. The best part was that his vision cleared rapidly, which allowed him to see his Party.
Li Ra had something wrapped around the right side of her face, and Vester was grateful it wasn’t covering her eye.
The way she was touching her right horn worried him though.
Next to the oni sat Skylar, and the djinn had an arm cradled to her side.
Vester wasn’t sure if the arm itself was hurt or if she was protecting her ribs.
Krysta was kneeling next to her and channeling energy into Skylar’s side.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked. “Where’s Reve?”
“Above you,” she replied, perched on a smaller pillar of stone. The Avatar of Life looked exhausted, and Vester saw slashes across the membranes of her wings that appeared to be sealing up slowly. “And I am alright,” she added.
“Skylar broke four ribs and her arm,” Krysta said without looking over at him. “I think something inside got bruised, though not badly enough to be a real danger. Li Ra lost consciousness when the mast broke and hit her on the head.”
“Loosened my horn,” Li slurred, uncharacteristically emotional. The head injury left her sounding drunk—and Vester didn’t want to imagine what a loose horn felt like.
“Will that heal?” he asked, not sure if that was something Krysta could fix or not. He’d honestly never really thought about whether Li Ra’s horns were bone, ivory, or something else. What are rhino horns made of… keratin and hair? Wait, is hair keratin already? Fuck, I don’t know.
“I’ll be fine,” the oni replied with a grunt. “It’s just going to ache until Krysta has time to heal it. I’m lucky oni have hard heads.” When Krysta stared over at her, Li Ra grimaced and dutifully lifted a cup off her lap to take a sip from it.
That was when Vester realized that they’d already gotten a campfire going, with one of Krysta’s fast stews bubbling in the pot. The health boost from eating her cooking would benefit everyone, though Vester’s stomach churned at the idea of keeping anything down.
“Li Ra, Dent, and Ripper cleared a path to the escape harnesses up on the ship,” Kora explained quietly while she settled him on a softened boulder.
The cushion cradled his body, and Vester bit off a groan at how good it supported his aching frame.
“Krysta turned into a panda, and that let us get enough for everyone to make it off the ship.”
“What happened to the golems?” Vester asked, because he wasn’t sure if Skylar could handle losing more of her creations.
“I got them into storage,” Skylar said. She offered him a smile, looking grateful that he’d asked about her puppets. “That skeleton thing got away, but Reve killed the titanbat.”
“You killed that thing?” Vester repeated, surprised. When he glanced up at Reve, she nodded her head in confirmation. The woman seemed tired, and he didn’t blame her.
“I lured the beast around the airship, and when the pillar broke a large piece fell onto the behemoth’s back. The impact with the ground and the crushing weight were enough to end the creature.” She looked proud of herself. Vester thought that was pretty justified.
“Do we even know what the hell that skeleton was?” he asked. When they all shook their heads, Vester grimaced. “I have a bad feeling we’re going to be seeing it again.”