Chapter Thirteen
They tabled the conversation and rewatched the pilot of Battlestar Galactica.
Reve shifted to sit next to Vester, and the pair ended up binging episodes of the show for about two hours before the movements of the airship began to change.
Something was causing the vessel to tilt, so Reve excused herself to go up to the upper deck to investigate.
Vester had just risen and begun moving back to check on the others when the entire ship bucked.
His feet left the ground, and if his dexterity hadn’t been so high he’d have landed flat on his back.
Instead, he twisted in midair and tapped his cane off a crate corner to come down on both feet, brushing himself off before he registered the shouts and yells from above.
His Party came charging up the hold’s walkways and Vester joined them in the rush to exit the chamber and race up the ladder to reach the deck. What he found caused him to blink rapidly in surprise.
Is that a titanbat? He stared at the huge form that was gliding away from the airship.
The beast had large holes in its wings, like the membranes were made of cobwebs, and when it curved back around to move in their direction he saw one of its eyes was missing.
A glowing green flame filled the empty socket, and more eldritch flames crackled within its maw when it opened its jaws and flew toward them once more.
Blood elflings were running around the deck, arming themselves, taking stations in the riggings, and preparing for the beast’s return. Vester saw no sign of cannons, though a huge crossbow was being ratcheted around on the bow and the captain was loading a thick, iron spear into its slot.
“There’s someone on its back,” Li Ra said. The oni had her rifle out and was aiming toward the creature. Squinting, she shifted her position until she was kneeling, then she braced her rifle on the railing. “It’s humanoid, glowing eyes, medium armor. Can’t tell what species it is.”
Reve came back to join them from where she’d been near the captain. “The monster is undead,” the Avatar of Life reported. “They’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What’s the average level of a titanbat?
” Kora asked. She shifted her tower shield out of her inventory and steadied it onto her arm, then checked her sword.
Krysta was standing behind Kora, and the Hospitality Mage helped the kitsune adjust her heavy breastplate over the chain covering her body. “And what are their usual weaknesses?”
Skylar circled out from behind Krysta to stand by Vester. She gestured, and Dent appeared on the deck in front of them. The iron golem caused the airship to tremble when it took a step, and then Ripper was prowling about as Skylar called it forth as well.
“Titanbats hunt by sound, mostly. Their eyesight is not particularly impressive. They almost never land, and it’s known that their strength and constitutions are massive.
I am unsure about this floor’s average, but the ones I ran into were almost always level 50,” Reve said, report quick and clear.
“They’re rarely hunted, because it takes so much work to put them down. ”
“You said most which died choked to death,” Krysta reminded everyone. “Is the throat a weakness?”
“Technically,” Reve admitted, “but generally only if you have a way of shoving something incredibly dense into their mouths and ensuring it won’t get crushed in their throats. I wouldn’t recommend doing it with anything you want to get back.”
Vester grimaced. “If this one is undead it won’t choke to death,” he pointed out. “And it can’t be poisoned or suffocated, it might also be immune to my illusions. You said they hunt by sound?” When she nodded, Vester narrowed his eyes. “I have an idea, though it might not work.”
He gathered himself, wrapped his hands around Trickster’s Cane, and then summoned a memory to transmit into the air around him.
Music began rise. It began with electric guitar chords being strummed in a rhythmic pattern, gradually squealing as the notes were drawn out.
Then heavy bass notes, percussion, and cymbals were layered in.
All the while, the volume kept ramping upward.
Putting his entire Freeform Illusion skill behind volume and clarity, he had every other sound soon obliterated under the pounding beat of the Pacific Rim soundtrack.
When the horns in the song triggered, the air shook like the gods were screaming.
Dimly, Vester was aware of his Party pulling wax out of their inventories and stuffing their ears.
Kora passed some to Reve, who appeared to be in genuine pain.
They’d used this tactic before, but only rarely, because no one enjoyed fighting deaf. But never before had it been so effective. The titanbat swerved like it had been slugged in the head, and Vester saw other winged forms burst away from pillars all around them—smaller bats scattering in panic.
The blood elflings crouched like they thought the cave ceiling was going to collapse down onto them.
It was only when Li Ra’s first blast of emerald energy flashed past them to lance out at the titanbat’s rider that they realized the music was meant to aid them.
They were still glancing around in panic, but after a few gestures from the captain, they began firing bows at the monster bat.
Vester’s vision was much improved by Trickster’s Cunning boosting his wisdom, yet even with it he could barely make out the figure on the bat’s back. He vaguely saw a tiny form rock from Li’s shot. Then the rider seemed to just vanish.
“Beware Stealth,” wrote itself in the sky before his Party members at his prompting; the elegant letters were formed in dim light and then faded. None of them could really talk to each other with how loud the music was, but almost all of them had fought like this before.
Skylar had Dent and Ripper begin patrolling around the group, while Kora and Krysta took up positions at Vester’s back to guard him. Skylar herself slapped her heavy wrench against her palm. She stood behind Li Ra, protecting the oni from anyone sneaking up on her.
Li Ra continued firing shots, peppering the titanbat’s skull with blasts of acid, but Vester could tell she wasn’t happy with the damage—her frustration was written across her face.
He watched while she activated her flurry skill to overcharge the rifle until it was streaming bolts like a machinegun.
The weapon’s crystals began glowing red and the barrel smoked, so she had to lower it and allow the rifle to cool down before she could fire once more, and during that period, the titanbat attacked the ship.
There was nothing fancy about the maneuver.
The beast simply glided through the arrows, crossbow bolts, and the ballista spear and rammed into the airship.
Its jaws tore balloons from the mesh webbing beneath the outspread spider-legs, and the entire ship lurched for a second time.
Chitin, wood, and metal screamed and shattered, and several blood elflings vanished, falling over the side.
But in response, hatches along the sides of the airship opened and scorpions began leaping from the airship to the titanbat.
The giant insects went skittering across the undead monster’s body.
Vester saw them stinging over and over, though he knew that wouldn’t accomplish anything.
Their claws couldn’t seem to penetrate the bat’s hide, so he wasn’t sure how useful the scorpions would be.
The cavalry had also begun firing their strange firearms—bolts of crimson flame striking along the giant bat’s sides.
Reve suddenly leaped into the sky and spread her wings; she dove, vanishing from sight, and when she looped up and around the other side of their attacker, Vester saw she’d torn several heavy stones free of the ground.
Telekinesis turned those misshapen boulders into hammers, and then the Avatar of Life went to work trying to pound the bat’s wings to splinters.
The music around them provided an eerie accompaniment to the battle, though Vester wished he had something more useful he could do.
The titanbat was flapping away from them, but its navigation appeared off.
The thing collided into a huge pillar of stone and Vester felt a flash of hope—right until the pillar exploded into fragments and collapsed across the monster’s back.
Scorpions splattered and were forced off from the rocks pummeling the monster, yet the titanbat continued to fly.
Reve’s attacks had broken its wings in several places, but that didn’t seem to be doing much to ground the beast. With the huge tears he could see in its wing membranes, Vester wasn’t even sure what was keeping it aloft in the first place.
Whatever had guided the bat toward the ship for their collision didn’t seem to be working. The thing moved through the air like a drunk and collided with another pillar. Reve continued battering it with her stones, but the Party on the deck found themselves facing a different problem.
A tall, skull-headed figure appeared in a cloud of smoke right next to them and drove two daggers into Vester’s chest, one arm coming at him from either side.
Flaming eyes stared into his, and the bony jaw moved up and down, yet Vester’s illusion was so loud he had no idea what the thing was saying.
He was also a bit preoccupied with the blades attempting to kiss somewhere in the middle of his torso.
He gagged, blood spraying from his mouth, and focused on Decoy Swap.
A snap of his fingers let him teleport off the weapons to reappear on Dent’s shoulder.
The illusion left between the skeletal knight’s knives immediately vanished.