Fourteen Months Later
Dukagshspace, near the planet Dukagsh
Starship Elnamerrna, in battle with Dukagsh's defense forces
First Ice Month 12th, 2460 EY
The silver-colored triop smashed through the side of a scro mantis, blasting the insect-shaped enemy vessel in two in a matter of seconds. The ship arrowed through the debris and turned into a barrel roll, soaring toward another target, a scorpion ship.
The silver vessel, now with Elnamerrna, not "EINSFU 42," emblazoned on either side of the hull, easily caught up with the scorpion, but the pilot veered to its port side to hit from that angle.
Within the Elnamerrna, Tyfelian had the helm. He grimaced away the shock and pain that the helm transferred to his body from the impact and the flying scrap metal tearing at the rigging. He grunted and kept his concentration on the enemy vessels whirling all around his own ship.
Tyfelian's huge eyes glittered as he made the Elnamerrna blaze through space toward the target. The doomed scorpion ship tried to turn, but Tyfelian tracked perfectly, easing the helm to follow the movements, just slightly at first, and then yelling at his navigator for course corrections as he neared the victim ship.
The triop's ram hit the scorpion broadside, blasting a huge hole in its midsection and driving it off course. The scorpion, already heavily damaged, collapsed under the impact and fell apart. Tyfelian felt its debris clatter and ricochet off the Elnamerrna's hull. One claw from the scorpion crashed into the triop's tail and rolled away, bent nearly double.
Tyfelian eased back on the helm and called for a ninety-degree turn. The Elnamerrna slipped out of the debris field. Five elven man-o'-war ships passed nearby, pursuing a squadron of three boarships who were in full retreat.
Tyfelian watched this on the outeye with satisfaction, even smiling just slightly. Though he could see in all directions at once through the magic of the spelljammer helm, the wondrous chair that made the ship move, he liked being able to see outside with his own eyes. Tash and Alzja had without a doubt made his dream come true; the front one-quarter of the bridge, and indeed the rest of the vessel, seemed not to exist, showing them a view much like that they would see if those sections were in fact not there.
At the moment, he saw, with both his own eyes and the helm's, the last of the scorpion's spinning fragments slip by. Beyond lay Dukagsh and, tinyed by distance, several dozen ships, scro vessels and Elven Imperial Navy warships, exchanging magical attacks and missile shots.
Tyfelian willed the ship into faster movement and made way for the distant battle. He saw something odd that gave him pause, though. He spotted a very large chunk of rock, floating high above the planet's pole. He frowned at it puzzledly.
"Kershaya, how could that rock be there?" he queried the elf standing at his left elbow—he still did not have enough piloting experience to be comfortable at the helm without her supervision. "It isn't a moon, and I'd swear it isn't moving."
Kershaya peered at it for a moment, then her eyes went wide.
"I believe we've found Dukagsh's Tomb," she murmured quietly to Tyfelian. Her voice rose with excitement near the end of her sentence, as did her elvish accent. She even took a step forward with eagerness, hoping that Tyfelian would make it a target. Being on board the ship that destroyed the Tomb of Dukagsh would help her career as an Elven Imperial Navy officer, and she knew it.
Almost immediately after she told him that, though, another voice, accented differently, interrupted them. It came from, literally, right between them.
"Bridge, crow's nest."
The half-drow eyed the floating tomb as he touched a curious horn with a nut on the mouthpiece. It sat in a small rack on the left arm of the spelljammer helm. His supple fingers twisted the nut on the magical device and he spoke into it.
"Bridge, Tyfelian."
"The lead armada just flashed us a message," the voice continued from the horn. "Admiral Manirrith identifies the object ahead of us as the Tomb of Dukagsh. He orders us to destroy it, sir."
"Reply that we will, Hajri," Tyfelian said. He twisted the nut on the horn again.
"Weapon bays, bridge," he called. "Alzja, Tash, Jalaysa—move to the forward weapon bays. You'll see your target there in a few moments if you can't already. It's the Tomb of Dukagsh. When we're in range, destroy that thing. Wizards, weapon crews, that thing is solid stone, but unleash everything you've got."
"Understood," a female voice replied. Tyfelian recognized it as Jalaysa's.
The half-drow shut off the voice horn, and then glanced at Kershaya.
"Demoralize them?"
"Absolutely," she replied. "Dukagsh founded scro civilization. If we eliminate his tomb, they will lose heart."
Tyfelian looked at the Tomb in the outeye. Closer to it now, he could see more detail. It looked much like a miniature mountain, perhaps twice the size of the Elnamerrna. The chiseled stairs, landings, and small buildings made it look almost like dwarven work instead of scro, and it even had faces carved into it.
The faces of gods.
Tyfelian had no way of putting names to the stone faces, but that they were gods seemed obvious enough. Dukagsh's visage was probably among them, too, but he could not tell.
"Bridge, crow's nest, emergency," Hajri's voice called again.
"Bridge, Tyfelian."
"Sir, the scro must've seen Admiral Manirrith's message, too. At least fifteen ships have broken off from battle and are now headed our way."
"Disregard for now," Tyfelian replied. He kept the Elnamerrna on a beeline for Dukagsh's tomb. The craggy mountain loomed larger and larger in his sight. He got as close as he wished to an object that he wanted blown to bits, then twirled the triop in slow motion, so that all of his weapons, except the stingers, could get shots.
The portside weapon, a catapult, let fly as the gunners shot. Their aim was true and the rock slammed into the tomb of Dukagsh with a mighty crash. The ballistae—top and lower—fired next as the Elnamerrna's nose pointed at the tomb. The huge, heavy arrows from the overgrown crossbows strafed the object, shattering its surface and ruining some of the carved faces.
The attack by the forward-pointing weapons coincided with the magical attacks. Fiery explosions rocked Dukagsh's tomb as the Elnamerrna wizards let the object have it—and hard. Large sections of the object melted into lava under the fierce spells.
Then the ship had turned a bit more, and the starboard catapult shot rang forth. The flying boulder hit the tomb dead center and broke apart upon impact. This caused part of the tomb to do the same.
Tyfelian, his steely gaze still fixed upon the target, made the ship turn around to face the tomb again. The wizards resumed their demolition work, slamming the tomb with fire and ice and lightning. The ballista gunners reloaded and fired again, as well.
When they were done, Tyfelian watched with great satisfaction as the legendary Tomb of Dukagsh exploded from within. Then Tash planted one last overpowered fireball into the debris and a great deal of it vaporized.
Thrilled, Tyfelian turned the nut on the voice horn again.
"Weapon bays, bridge," he called to them. "That was magnificent work!"
Even as he commended them, he made the ship move once more, realizing the danger. Destruction of the Tomb of Dukagsh was an action for which the scro would be unlikely to love the Elnamerrna.
Tyfelian pushed the ship to her best possible tactical speed, then made the slight steeling of his will that would make her accelerate to starspeed.
Dukagsh grew smaller in his wraparound view from the helm, but the approaching scro ships did not. They had been but moments away from firing range when the tomb had exploded, and now two boar-class battlewagons and three mantises strained to their limits to catch the swift-running Elnamerrna.
Tash cast another spell, Tyfelian noted, for the Elnamerrna blazed into faster movement. She shot away from Dukagsh and the five scro vessels at three times normal starspeed.
Tyfelian called to Hajri for bearings to the elven fleet. Normally, he would have asked the navigator that question rather than the lookout in the crow's nest, but Tash wasn't at her station, of course. She was needed as a weapon at the moment.
"Starboard one hundred forty degrees, twenty degrees down," Hajri called. "Range, five hundred thousand miles."
Tyfelian realized that he had randomly chosen a direction of escape that was taking the ship almost directly away from the friendly fleet.
"Sail crews, ready for turnabout," he called. "We're going the wrong way."
Kiran echoed that order to the steering crewmen.
"Now," Tyfelian ordered.
"Steering, turnabout!" Kiran relayed.
Tyfelian went with the movement and the Elnamerrna turned completely around, nearly in place. His expression went grim during the movement, though.
"Sluggish," he commented.
"What's wrong?" Kiran asked.
"Battle damage," the half-drow replied. "Probably the left spanker, by the feel of it."
Nevertheless, the triop tore across space toward the elven fleet. Tyfelian could not see them, but he trusted Hajri's bearings. Moments later, the Elnamerrna entered the battle zone again—just in time to see the surviving scro vessels turn and retreat.
"It worked," Tyfelian said softly, smiling triumphantly.
Watching the outeye closely, he noticed something else of interest. The scro navy wasn't just retreating.
His voice lowered to scarcely above a whisper with surprise and triumph.
"They're routing..."
He called to the crow's nest again.
"Report on the enemy," he ordered.
"All retreating, back toward Dukagsh...the elven ships are pursuing," the lookout's voice came back. Tyfelian started to give an order, but the lookout spoke again.
"More ships arriving!"
"More?"
"Yes, sir," the lookout stammered. Then, relief obvious in his voice, he cried, "Friendly! Elven armadas with several full task forces!"
Tyfelian's smile widened. Kiran, magnificent chain armor clanking, came up beside him and shared the smile—albeit a grim one from the human.
Tyfelian murmured "thank you" to the lookout and shut off the voice horn.
"Shall we, Kiran?"
"Let's finish the task," the human said, his lips straightening with resignation, but he called through the voice vents on either wall of the command area.
"Steering crews, set the sails for pursuit."
Tyfelian willed the ship toward the fleeing Unhuman ships and the massive elven task force in hot pursuit of them. The distant image of the planet Dukagsh began to swell in the outeye as the Elnamerrna surged to starspeed and barreled through space toward the enemy—and toward their allies, the Elven Imperial Navy.
It took only minutes to catch them, but Tyfelian saw that both forces ahead were slowing down rapidly. The Unhuman ships turned into orbit around Dukagsh, and the elven forces mirrored those movements, closing in for the kill. The enemy vessels joined up with more of their kind in orbit, but the elven forces still outnumbered them badly.
Tyfelian made the Elnamerrna follow suit, arrowing straight at another scorpion that had, for some reason, left formation. Tyfelian started to aim the entire ship to ram it, but then he changed his mind and lined up the scorpion for an attack pass with magic from his wizards and shots from the triop's catapults and ballistae.
"Kershaya, I'm feeling a kind of phantom pain from the helm," Tyfelian said to his engineer.
The elf lady nodded grimly.
"That means the Elnamerrna's starting to weaken," she advised her captain/inexperienced pilot. "We should not ram again."
Tyfelian stored this away into his memory, wishing that he had more experience with piloting a ship in space.
"Well, at least I can make a controlled landing now," he thought, remembering the rough landing on Bala'bomen over a year earlier.
Then the voice horn came alive, at the same time as Tyfelian and Kiran saw the historical event on the outeye even as Hajri called about it.
"Bridge, hold attack! White flags! The enemy raises white flags!"
Tyfelian grabbed the voice horn at the same time as he turned the ship aside from attack posture. He hastily turned the nut three clicks and called into it urgently.
"Weapon crews! Wizards! Hold your fire! Repeat, hold!"
The Elnamerrna blazed past the scorpion without firing a shot or unleashing a single attack spell. Tyfelian brought her to a full relative stop. He hurriedly raised a hand to the outeye and pointed left. The view obediently turned to portside; Tyfelian stopped it when he could see the nearby scorpion ship and other Unhuman vessels behind it.
"I thought it had to be a dream," Kiran marveled, but his eyes deceived him not. He felt a mountain roll off of his heart, relief unbelievable, as the Unhuman fleet raised the white flags of surrender, with the thin white clouds of Dukagsh's upper atmosphere making a fitting backdrop.
"I see a lantern light from the lead scro ship," Hajri continued. "He's signaling the lead armada." A pause. Tyfelian and Kiran both held their breaths.
"He verifies surrender to the lead armada!" the lookout cried. "To the lead elven vessel," the lookout translated the flashes of the lantern, "Upon the abdication and flight of the Almighty Leader, I present you the planet Dukagsh and all vessels and stations thereof, and request leniency to the people of Dukagsh."
Tyfelian straightened triumphantly and reached over to Kiran. The human clasped his wrist in a victorious warrior's grip.
A flurry of movement in the corner of Tyfelian's eye broke the moment. A lady kender with long black hair ran around the helm, babbling and yelling joyfully.
"YEEEEAAAAAAH!!" the kender screamed. "We did it! We DID it!"
The kender giggled uncontrollably for a few seconds, then leaped up to Tyfelian's lap and wrapped him in a tight bear hug. While Kiran released the half-drow's wrist and chuckled, Tyfelian's face showed only irritation. He tried to disengage the kender, but she squeezed him tightly, then abruptly let go and kissed the half-drow full on the lips before Tyfelian could turn away and prevent it.
A bit stronger than the typical female kender, she was impossible to stop gently. Tyfelian pushed her away by the shoulders, but she resisted successfully for a moment, to the great amusement of Kiran and others on the bridge. Finally, she eased back and let Tyfelian set her down on her feet.
"Fing!" Tyfelian growled. "I told you not to do that!"
His words came out only half-hearted at best—not because he enjoyed Fing's kiss, never that—but because he knew he had just wasted his breath. The kender was madly in love with him and he knew it. Despite all of Tyfelian's warnings (and even Kiran's, on Tyfelian's behalf), that was simply the way things were.
Fing only grinned and looked at Tyfelian adoringly for a moment, then dashed over to Kiran, leaped, and hugged him close, though without the passion with which she had held Tyfelian.
Kiran returned the hug better than the half-drow had, though he knew that half his weapons and maybe his belt pouch would be missing when he let her go. Sure enough, when he put her down, he had to perform some "pick pocketing" of his own to retrieve some of his belongings.
Kiran's laughter drowned out Fing's innocent questions and stock-response excuses for her handling of his items. He swiftly and efficiently relieved her of his property, though he wondered uneasily if she were simply "handling" more items as fast as he retrieved them.
Tyfelian gave Fing a sour glance and a shake of his head, slipped a hand to her belt to get back one of his daggers, then returned his attention to the situation at hand as she left the bridge.
He watched through the outeye as an elven ship sent a boarding party aboard the nearby scro scorpion and took the crew into custody. Tyfelian wondered what the elves would do with the ships they got and with the scro themselves. He found no answers from within his own thoughts, so he pushed the matter aside. He didn't feel it was his concern, and even if it were, very little the elves could do would be serious enough punishment.
That left himself and his ship on the sidelines, though. He began to feel like an extra pulley in the sails, so he reached for the voice horn.
"Crow's nest, report on the lead elven ship, please."
Hajri replied, "Holding on our port quarter, sir. Stationary."
"Flash them a message, please. Simply request instructions."
"Aye, sir."
Tyfelian waited the couple minutes required for relay, then the lookout's voice resumed.
"Admiral Manirrith wishes to come aboard, sir."
"Answer yes," Tyfelian ordered, then shut the horn off once more.
"He'll just want to know what we're planning on doing now," Alzja commented. She was stepping over from the portside door to the bridge and closing it behind her.
"Which is a good question, anyway, Alzja," Kiran glanced at her. "Any ideas?"
Alzja shook her head, just once.
"I'd like to go home, to Erilonia," Tyfelian told them. "Just a visit," he quickly added, knowing that his command crew liked shipboard life and desired no changes, at least not at the present.
"That's fine," Kiran noted. "But it'll take time to get there."
Alzja just shrugged, a twinkle in her amber eye above her maddening smirk.
"Where exactly are we, anyway?" Tyfelian asked Alzja. "How long to Hearthspace?"
"I'm... not sure," Alzja said with another shrug. "You'll need to ask Tash—ah, there you are," she flashed a grin at the other female drow, entering the bridge from the same door as Alzja had.
"Later," Tash flashed to them in drow sign language. "Admiral Manirrith to see you," she said to Tyfelian.
The elven admiral glided through the doorway and onto the bridge. Tyfelian looked at him with a smile.
"Admiral. Welcome to the Elnamerrna."
"Tyfelian!" the elf replied. He moved in front of the spelljammer helm to take Tyfelian's hand and pump it hard.
"Marvelous work at the tomb of Dukagsh. Well done! After you finished, they started to crumble before us fast."
The elf man released the half-drow's hand and stood up straight.
"I heard that you request instructions. I don't have any for you anymore; the war is over." A smile spread on the middle-aged elf's face.
"What will you do now?" he asked the half-drow.
Tyfelian shared a flashed smile of his own with Kiran. "We haven't decided yet. We want to visit our home world and go from there."
"Very well," the elf said, his teeth still showing. "You have done very, very well during the War. You deserve a visit home. Your reward, by the way, is being loaded into your cargo bay as we speak."
Alzja shifted on her feet. "There goes the crew."
"Hm?" Kiran looked at her puzzledly.
"They'll take it and retire."
Kiran chuckled, while Manirrith just smiled and murmured "Humans," very softly, but Tyfelian just looked resigned to it.
"I should've expected that. It's a mercenary crew. Well... we'll just have to find others, who want a more personal commitment to a ship."
"The same thought occurred to me," Manirrith said. He pulled a folded sheet of papyrus out of his belt pouch and held it out to Tyfelian. "I wrote down some places I happen to know of where you'll find people like what you need."
Tyfelian smiled at him warmly. "Thank you. I really appreciate it."
"I take my leave," the admiral stated. He extended his hand to Tyfelian once more. "May we meet again."
Tyfelian shook the hand firmly, and then Manirrith shook hands all around and left the bridge.
Tyfelian handed the papyrus to Tash.
"Tash," he began, an ironic smile forming. "Um... talk to the crew and find out where they all want to go. Then plot a course that'll take us to all of those places, or where passage can be arranged, whatever..." he pointed at the papyrus, "and plot it so we can drop by these places to find new crewmen."
Tash raised a golden eyebrow. Even before she started to open the folded papyrus to read the list, Tyfelian started his apology.
"Sorry... I know I just handed you a navigator's nightmare."
Tash read the writing on the papyrus.
"Yes, you did," she deadpanned, but Tyfelian saw the spark in the powerful wizard's eye. She could do as he asked.
The Rainbow Ocean
The Elnamerrna, leaving the Inner Prime
Rainmonth 14th, 2461
Tyfelian knew, somewhere deep in the darkest parts of his mind, that he was dreaming, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to care. This was not the elven reverie that he so enjoyed; it was an unsettling human-style dream, a remembrance dream. He remembered the events he was reliving quite well, and fondly, and yet it felt like a human... nightmare.
Everything the same as he remembered, but not exactly. Things at his peripheral sight looked blurry and even that which he looked upon directly seemed... out of whack.
Kiran moved to his side, standing upon the graving docks at the Crestloom Shipyards, a Mercane base. The Elnamerrna sat within a huge drydock, though he could barely see her through all the scaffolding. Only the crow's nest showed unobscured, atop the ship's mainmast. Even though there was no one in it, to Tyfelian it looked... watchful, like the eye of a wise old falcon.
He knew that the Elnamerrna was watching him.
Ridiculous, of course. How could a starship with no crew on board watch anyone?
He looked to his right, at his paladin friend. Sure enough, Kiran was dressed in his full battle array. His armor gleamed brightly under the tunic. That tunic, and the paladin's shield both, were emblazoned with the silver falcon coat-of-arms of Embimura.
Kiran's native home country, Tyfelian's adopted.
The silver falcon. Tyfelian's eyes seemed drawn to it.
"She must be painted before the christening," Kiran told him. "If not, it will make her a jinxed ship for all her days. Forever unlucky. Embimuran tradition."
Tyfelian could smell the paint. He marveled at how much paint it would take to make the triop fully... silver. The color that would, later on, earn the Elnamerrna the nickname "the Silver Triop."
Silver. A silver falcon. Ever alert, ever scrutinizing all in view.
Tyfelian still wanted to see the new vessel, but he could not. Too much scaffolding blocked his view.
A new design, a new ship. Conceived by the Rada, built in a different version by the Mercane, here at the Crestloom Shipyards... for him. Custom-built. Larger than the standard triop, with mostly heavy weapons instead of light ones. Still, she was a triop. Just a triop... could that ship be anything but a triop-class variant? Tyfelian knew that it couldn't be. Couldn't be!
Yet, he wondered. In the strange state of mind of one dreaming, he thought about it from both the past and present perspectives.
What was the Elnamerrna, in truth?
A starship? Just a starship? Or something else altogether? He remembered hearing from more than one shipwright that no two ships, whether sailing on blue seas or flying through unlit wildspace, could ever be exactly alike.
He couldn't shake the feeling that the Elnamerrna watched him—though with affection or reproach, he couldn't say.
Then a slight gap in the scaffolding caught his eye. Through it, he could see part of a guide-arm for the lateral sails on the starboard side... and a portion of the hull near the catapult bay!
That area had been painted. Tyfelian's eyes caught the attractive silver color that he and his command crew had chosen - or it should have been. The color didn't look quite right. It looked... not silvery enough, as though the paint had faded or a very thin layer of soot covered it.
Silver. Comforting and unnerving all at once.
The dream-scene dissolved to another place entirely, the docks at Quatha Vellar's edges. With the passive reactions of a dreamer, Tyfelian thought nothing of the change of scene.
A team of dockworkers sailed the magnificent silver starship to the pier upon which Tyfelian and his entire command crew stood. Tyfelian watched all of them file out of the ship through the portside catapult bay as soon as the ship moored.
Tyfelian glanced at the crow's nest, and the Elnamerrna looked back at him.
A shiver ran down Tyfelian's spine.
"What do you want?" he mentally called to the new ship, but the Elnamerrna made no answer, just floated at the pier, watching him.
Tyfelian's engineer, the young lady elf officer named Kershaya Abrondall, handed him a large bottle of vintage Embimuran wine. Even without reading it, Tyfelian knew it was old—dust covered the top and shoulders of the bottle. Not just a little dust, either, the half-drow noticed.
"It's traditional that the captain do it," she said as she handed it over.
Tyfelian glanced at the bottle.
Very high quality wine. Extremely old. Vintage 2154 E.Y.
"A fine year," Kiran told him after a glance. "That's the year of the founding of the Kingdom of Embimura."
A small papyrus note dangled from it by a string.
'Courtesy of the Elven Imperial Navy and King Allenvar of Embimura,' it read.
"Keep this on it?" he asked Kershaya.
"Absolutely," she replied.
Tyfelian looked at the crow's nest again. The Elnamerrna watched him still, but he gave her a hell-bent-for-leather grin and hurled the bottle at the ship's bow—the ram.
"I christen you the Starship Elnamerrna, which means 'fighting chance'!" Tyfelian cried at the ship. The ritual words they might have been, but Tyfelian actually spoke to the vessel, addressing it as he would another person.
The bottle spun in a tight circle as it flew, then hit the Elnamerrna squarely on the bow, right in front and center. It shattered into dozens of pieces of glass, mixed with whirling white wine, which sparkled and bounced up and down through the vessel's gravity line like the blinding flashes of a glitterdust spell.
A great cheer went up all around Tyfelian. He smiled at the Elnamerrna, and he could have sworn that the great vessel smiled back—but then his blood ran cold.
Because the triop's smile seemed more like Alzja's arrogant smirk than a friendly look from a trusted comrade...
"Tyfelian! Wake up!"
The half-drow jerked awake—but his mind failed to notice it, so he looked at his friend and yelled, "What are you? What are you looking at me like that for?"
Alzja grabbed Tyfelian's elbows and pinned him. She could not hold him for more than a moment—his physical strength was far greater—but she bought him some time to realize that he had just awakened from an uncomfortable dream.
"Oh, Alzja. Sorry," he said to her. A distracted apology, for sure, but he did mean it.
Then his eye caught the fact that the deadbolt that secured his quarters had been thrown.
"You used magic to get in here," he accused her.
"Why do you deadbolt your door?" Alzja shot back to him.
"So Fing doesn't come in here and try to seduce me," Tyfelian replied without missing a beat.
"A normal lock on the handle should do quite nicely," Alzja pointed out.
Tyfelian laughed, though with little humor.
"In your dreams only would it hold against a kender," he stated. "Fing can pick locks better than I can, and I'm no slouch."
The female drow released his arms, but she did not straighten, and her constant smirk returned in full. Tyfelian doubted that her smirk had slipped much. He couldn't be sure, though, for his eyes had been only partly open until now, and therefore he hadn't seen all of her movements and expressions.
"A human would ask, 'bad dream'?" Alzja murmured with a lift of her eyebrows, paying no further heed to his comment about her means of entry and returning to the original subject.
"A strange one," Tyfelian replied. He forced himself to relax down and stretch out on his bed.
Alzja nodded. "Want to talk about it?"
Tyfelian looked at the ceiling, sighing, wanting to forget the dream, but then he told her anyway.
"I relived the christening of the Elna, but it wasn't the same. The ship was watching me."
"Watching you?"
"Yes, as though it was alive. I didn't feel that way when I actually christened the ship."
Alzja's eyebrow arched again.
"It might mean something. Here lately, your intuition is better than ever," she commented. Her eyes pointed out the fabulously crafted drow armor that Tyfelian never removed except to bathe, the Dridercomp.
"The Elendran Seven, yeah," Tyfelian smiled slightly, touching his armor and looking at Alzja's cloak, and the scepter tucked into her belt. "Perhaps they do have something to do with it. Have you found out more about them?"
"Nothing new," Alzja replied, her smirk slipping a little. "We've tried everything, but our best spells didn't tell us much more than we already knew. Their names, the names of who created 'em, and that they're damn near as powerful as artifacts. They are artifacts, in one way. There's no destroying them except by one way... and we'd be better off not knowing what that is."
"They're the most worthwhile things we found in Elendraspace," Tyfelian said slowly. "Well, there's Kiran's armor and shield, and that drow chain Jaclyn bribed that duergar to make..." Tyfelian trailed off, smiling slightly at the last words. Jaclyn had paid dearly to get that armor, since Elendran law forbade its manufacture for any non-Elendran, and she'd had to put up with a little flirting from the armorer, he recalled.
"You haven't always had that kind o' intuition," Alzja said, ignoring his last statement and prompting him back to their original subject.
"I've had... flashes of insight all of my adult life," Tyfelian replied, "but nothing like the Dridercomp has given me."
"I've been paying attention to that," Alzja replied thoughtfully. "Real close. You've got a kind o' savoir-faire now, that... I don't know how to describe it," she trailed off, shaking her head slightly.
"Tash says that it lets me see a few moments into the future and avoid danger."
"That might be," Alzja allowed. "Did you have such insight as a child?"
"I don't remember," Tyfelian replied. "I was a very different person then. I think the Dridercomp has just enhanced a raw ability. But I've never had prophetic dreams, nor dreams with symbolic meanings."
"It's trying to tell you something."
Tyfelian looked at her thoughtfully.
"If the Dridercomp's trying to tell me something, it escapes me," Tyfelian stated, "but now that you mention it," he added with a thoughtful look, "I'm sure it is."
"It's not a living thing," Alzja told him. "It only reacts to you."
"Helping me sort things out? Realize things before they come?"
"Yes," Alzja replied, for once with a serious look on her face. "You could put it that way."
"But why would I dream about the Elna's christening? And why would it be a nightmare?"
Alzja's smirk returned.
"It would be a nightmare because it was a warning o' what's to come. As to why it was about when we got the Elnamerrna... who could say?"
"A new beginning, perhaps?" Tyfelian mused.
"Perhaps," Alzja winked at him.
"Something's about to change?"
"Always," Alzja giggled.
Tyfelian abruptly changed his mindset.
"What time's it?"
"Twelve bells," Alzja replied. "You have two hours 'til you relieve me on watch. I was on break... and I heard you mumbling, as I passed by, so I came in here. But you said something about the ship... watching you?"
Tyfelian nodded. "I felt like the Elnamerrna was looking at me."
"You mean, someone on board who shouldn't've been, watching you from somewhere you couldn't see?"
"No," Tyfelian shook his head. "I felt like the ship itself was looking at me." He raised a hand. "I know, I know—the ship isn't alive."
"You never know," Alzja smirked, but the flat look in her eye told Tyfelian that she was not kidding.
Tyfelian watched her curiously.
"It's been known to happen," Alzja explained. "One in a few million ships have had a spirit to them. They're alive. They just can't talk because ships don't have mouths."
Tyfelian chuckled.
"Sure it's unlikely, but we should check it out sometime," Alzja scolded.
"If... you... want to," Tyfelian said slowly.
Alzja nodded, still grinning, then turned to leave Tyfelian's quarters.
"Alzja?" Tyfelian called to her as she neared the door.
"Yes?" the drow woman asked, turning. She was surprised to find Tyfelian not only on his feet but also right behind her.
"He's so quick and so quiet," Alzja reflected.
Tyfelian started to say something, holding his hands out to her as he did, but then he let his hands drop and shook his head.
"Nothing," he murmured, turning away from her.
"Hey," Alzja said, stopping him in his turn at the halfway point. "What is it?"
Tyfelian shook his head, irresolute.
"You were going to say something. Say," Alzja pressed.
In answer, Tyfelian moved, and Alzja was surprised to feel his embrace.
Alzja hugged him back. A tingle rose between them, an aura of tangible magic created as the Dridercomp reacted to being in physical contact with the Regalia of the Gonn, Alzja's Elendran artifacts, the cloak and the scepter.
Tyfelian ignored it and whispered in Alzja's ear.
"I was just thinking how much I love you all."
Tyfelian felt her freeze in his arms for an instant, surprised by his words, then she gently shoved him away and moved away toward the door. She did make eye contact with him for a fleeting moment as she turned away, and smiled warmly, but then her expression was briefly one of alarm. Tyfelian also saw, before she had fully turned away, a look of astonishment, mixed with a troubled expression, warring on her face.
Alzja softly, but quickly, closed the half-open door behind her, leaving Tyfelian with the floating webs of his dream haunting him...
... but they seemed a little less disturbing to him now.
Tyfelian busied himself with his usual morning routines and then hit his record keeping papyrus stacks before he went to the bridge. Unable (or perhaps unwilling) to go back to sleep, he actually finished his records up to date—the names, and brief histories, of the crew, even the old mercenary crew—and still came onto the bridge fifteen minutes early.
Alzja glanced at him from the captain's chair on the raised platform at the aft end of the bridge, and then smirked widely. She had obviously been more or less expecting him to show up before he had to.
"Begin Day Watch," Tyfelian said by rote as Kiran, Jaclyn, and Tash came through the portside door, the other side from whence Tyfelian had entered. Jalaysa stood from the spelljammer helm while keeping a hand on it, surrendering it to Tash with a smile, the kind of approving smile one gives to a relief worker at the end of a shift. The guards on duty at the doors gave similar reactions to their own reliefs as they left to find rest.
Tyfelian resolved to eliminate things like the formality of announcing the change of watch when he had fully rebuilt his crew. For now, some of them were still mercenaries, remnants of the original crew, and accustomed to the military way of doing things.
Alzja waited until Kiran and Tash settled into their stations and were therefore not looking, then surreptitiously hooked Tyfelian's finger to quietly get his attention. Through her forever-smirk, she gave Tyfelian a secret look of tenderness that told him that all was well despite their odd conversation earlier.
Tyfelian smiled back at her, but then he slipped his hand away from hers. His sensitive ears had caught a very soft laugh from Kiran. The sharp-eyed human had caught the movement despite Alzja's good timing.
Tyfelian and Alzja exchanged an ironic look. Rumor would no doubt have it that they were lovers now...
Then both Tyfelian and Alzja relaxed, realizing. Kiran was no gossiper. He might get the wrong idea, but he would not share his insight with others.
Tyfelian didn't even want to think about Fing's reaction to such a rumor.
"Report," he said to Alzja, to divert Kiran's thoughts.
"No change," Alzja replied as she stood, giving the chair to Tyfelian. "We're making progress. One strange thing, though, I noticed on navigation. We haven't seen any elven ships on their usual patrol routes. Not in all this time since the end o' the War."
Tyfelian took a breath as he considered this. He shared a long look with Kiran, who raised an eyebrow.
"Maybe they got hurt by the scro worse than they want to let on," the paladin guessed.
"My thoughts exactly," Tyfelian said, biting his lip thoughtfully.
Alzja stepped to a position between Tyfelian's chair and that of the first officer, so she could talk to both in quiet tones. "An Inner Prime without those elves has... some... appealing aspects," she smirked, "but..." her smirk faded and a concerned look grew in her eye.
"Who'll fill the gap?" she asked.
"Hopefully no one," Kiran stated. "But I'm thinking that the beholders, or illithids, or any number of others might want to make a move, with this power vacuum. And the Elendrans might be the worst of all."
Tyfelian grunted his agreement. The tone of his grunt indicated that while agreed with Kiran's assessment, he did not like it.
"Opportunists," he spat.
"Exactly," Alzja nodded.
"What about a new crew?" Tyfelian asked Kiran, changing the subject. "How goes the recruiting?"
"Not bad," the human shrugged. "Every stop during the last four months has gotten us at least one new crewman. Still, the work is far from done. The gunnery crews are almost finished, but almost half the sailing crew are still mercenaries who don't want to stay."
"How many to go?"
"Fifteen to twenty," Kiran replied. "We could dismiss them now, but if we did, there's no way I could write four-watch-per-day duty schedules."
"Then we'll have to try Quatha Vellar when we get there, and hope for the best," Tyfelian said, managing to keep his tone optimistic.
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Bridge, crow's nest," the voice horn called in Trula's voice.
Tyfelian picked up the horn on the small table between his and Kiran's chairs and twisted its nut two notches.
"Bridge, Tyfelian," he called back to the lookout.
Tyfelian thought he heard Trula start to say something, but a dizziness came over him and he swooned, nearly fainting. He put his head between his knees and wrapped his arms around them to keep from sliding out of his chair.
Alzja fell to her knees, her hands grasping the small table, while Kiran pressed his hands to his head and let out an agonized moan. Jaclyn coughed loudly and shook her head, then, oddly enough, sneezed.
The Elnamerrna slowed to drifting speed as Tash lost her link with the helm. The blond drow pressed her hands to her temples, screaming. Some detached part of her mind was puzzled by the fact that the ship slowed to phlogiston drift speed instead of nearly full tactical speed, but she could not maintain that thought—nor any others, for that matter.
Tyfelian groaned, then made a violent inner effort to clear his thinking, mentally reaching out to the Dridercomp to help him.
The Dridercomp reached back, but the half-drow knew, almost right away, that the Elendran artifact was overmatched. Something burned right past the Dridercomp and entered Tyfelian's mind.
Jaclyn fought back with her telepathic abilities, but she, too, quickly found that she could not stop the mental intrusion.
"Perhaps a true telepath could," Jaclyn thought. Telepathy was not foremost among her mental powers, not by far. She easily resisted the physical discomfort, but the telepathic blast was beyond her ability to block. She tried valiantly, but succeeded only in retreating into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
"An illithid ship?!" Alzja screamed as she herself passed out.
Tyfelian shuddered despite his agony—he thought it to be an ignominious fate, after their successes in the Second Unhuman War, for he and his crew to live out their lives as mind-dead slaves of the evil mind flayers.
The half-drow drooped, his arms dangling past his knees, and darkness took him.
Tyfelian opened his eyes to behold the Rainbow Ocean.
He drifted in its infinite expanse of all-colored fog. He could not see the Elnamerrna, and he knew in his heart that the triop was not near him.
"An hour and a half of air, perhaps, around me, then a slow fading into the blackness of death," he thought, "unless I'm already dead, or imagining this."
Tyfelian looked around, hoping to see something that might at least tell him why he would die, some purpose. Perhaps no one else would ever know, but that was all right as far as Tyfelian was concerned. He always took comfort in things that made some sense.
He turned his head, wondering why he had to point his finger to do so, but his view unerringly followed his finger's movements. He lost the thought in seconds, though. Whether the cause of that loss lay in being unconscious, dead, or delusional, he could not have known, even had he thought to ponder the question.
Behind him, he saw a crystal shell. Its orb looked no different from any others he had seen, except that it was a rogue, a shell with no flowrivers attached, so it told him nothing.
Tyfelian knew that the ship's course would not have taken it near any known crystal shells in the general area, so it had to be an uncharted one.
Tyfelian jerked to awareness. He saw that he was not floating in the Rainbow Ocean after all. He lay on the Elnamerrna bridge in front of the outeye. It did show him a view of the Flow, however, and in the center, he saw the dark orb of a nearby crystal shell.
"Tash made the true-illusion image a little too good," Tyfelian thought. It had fooled him, when he could feel nothing, into thinking he really was free-floating out there. But even now he could barely move his finger to rotate the outeye's view; he could not turn his head at all...
... but he saw, out of the corner of his left eye, the ceiling of the bridge. His vision to the left seemed strangely blurred, as though his eye had been injured. He did not remember being in a fight, but he knew that he had been hurt somehow.
He grimaced with puzzlement as he tried to remember. Naught but fuzzy, half-recalled, dream-like images flitted through his mind, but he thought he had seen a female crew member point at a yardarm, which had then swung around at her command to strike him on the left temple.
That horrible mental blast hit him again, and he slumped back into the blackness.
He felt so horrible that he... welcomed it.
Tash dragged herself up from her sideways slump, even as Tyfelian rose from his prone position, which was, oddly enough, in front of the outeye. She heard the others stirring, too. Some of them coughed; Jaclyn, however, kept sneezing violently.
Tash frowned puzzledly as her stomach rumbled, but had no chance to think about it, for Tyfelian barked several hoarse coughs, and then wheezed, "Helm status, Tash?"
"Coming back up," she gasped, then her eyes went wide as she looked at the side of Tyfelian's head.
"Tyfelian!" Tash cried.
The half-drow gingerly touched the left side of his head at the temple, where Tash saw an alarmingly large lump that she didn't like the looks of at all.
Tyfelian winced, and then stumbled toward the back of the bridge. Tash had no need of telepathy to realize that the bridge was spinning in his sight.
"Alzja," he tried to call out, but it came out as naught but a whisper.
Alzja tried to walk down the steps from the command platform, but she stumbled and fell. The drow lady tried to go into a roll, but she had not the strength; she tumbled down the steps in a heap and crashed into the back of the spelljammer helm.
Alzja muttered a word in Drowic that, if translated to Embimuran, Kiran would never in a thousand years have admitted to even knowing. Then she pushed herself up to her knees. She cast a healing spell on herself and her coughing went away immediately. Stronger, she rose and cast again upon Tyfelian.
The big, ugly lump shrank and vanished. Tyfelian stood and looked around; seeing the others also not doing well, he motioned Alzja to heal them. Then he turned to the helm and picked up the voice horn there. Twisting its nut all the way over—the full seven notches—he spoke into it.
"Fing and Melanerra—wake up if you haven't. Attend the crew."
He shut the horn off.
Kiran hauled himself into his chair as Alzja got to him.
"What in the name of the gods was that?"
Tyfelian grimaced and shook his head—carefully.
"I thought I was floating out there in the Flow," the half-drow gulped, "but I was right there, in front of the outeye... I just didn't know it. I turned the view and saw a crystal shell nearby."
That got everyone's attention.
"Rogue shell?" Tash asked with a raised eyebrow.
Tyfelian just nodded once, slowly, still mindful of the pain that might strike him like lightning, after having a severe head wound healed.
Kiran grabbed the voice horn and clicked it.
"Crow's nest, bridge. Can you hear me, Trula?"
No answer came forth.
"Alzja," Tyfelian said, and the lady drow scurried out of the bridge.
Tyfelian sat down in his chair heavily. He squirmed in his seat, face tightening with puzzlement. His expression cleared almost immediately, though, as he caught the smell that emanated from him and the others. They had been unconscious for some considerable time, and would definitely have to clean themselves up in short order!
More important matters called at the moment, though.
"Before I was at the outeye... I remember thinking something about the ship," Tyfelian frowned, trying to bring his shattered thought processes back in order. "There's something wrong with the ship or the crew, I'm sure of it."
"I'll get a head count later, after everyone's awake," Kiran assured him, "and then I'll set up teams to look for stowaways... and I'll tell Barol to inspect the entire ship for trouble," he added, referring to the dwarf, Barolcot Hammerhandle, Kershaya's replacement as engineer.
Tyfelian nodded, but then Alzja's voice rose from the horn.
"Bridge, crow's nest. Trula's still out, but I'll rouse her."
Kiran twisted the nut of the voice horn by his chair.
"Do you see a crystal shell anywhere near?" he queried.
"Nope," Alzja replied.
Trula felt Alzja's gentle shaking and murmured requests to wake up, then her eyes flew open wide.
She grasped Alzja's offered hand to help her stand, but then immediately reached out for the voice horn.
"She's awake," Alzja said to the horn, and then handed it over to the human.
Seeing that it was already clicked for the bridge, Trula spoke into it.
"Tyfelian! I saw me a crystal shell above and to starboard before that... that... whatever that was... hit us," she told him.
"I'll look below us with the outeye," Tyfelian's voice said in reply. "Have a good look around in all other directions for a crystal shell, Trula. Alzja, check the Elna. How do we look from up there?"
Alzja peered over the lip of the crow's nest and looked down upon the Elnamerrna.
Her eyes scoured the vessel, then her gaze fixed upon the mainsail.
Then the lateral sails.
Then the aft sail.
Tied up tight to each other. Multiple lengths of rope held the sails still and held fast to each other to keep them from moving. The rigging looked like a spider had been at work with ropes to set it in a specific layout.
"I see no damage to the hull, except what we've taken in battle, but the sails are tied off and locked into forward," Alzja reported as Trula handed the voice horn back to her. "The mainsail is piled on full."
"What?!" she heard Kiran's voice ask incredulously.
"Yep. The sails are lashed on forward drift and fully set for best speed. We're moving straight forward with the flow winds at full sail."
Alzja's face screwed up with puzzlement at her own words.
Tyfelian shared a disbelieving look with Kiran.
The paladin turned and called through the voice vents at the back of the bridge.
"Sail crews, go outside the ship and free the sails," he ordered.
"Tying off the sails in exactly the right arrangement to move straight forward with no steering crew... that'd take hours!" Jaclyn burst out suddenly.
"Well, we've been out for quite some time," Tyfelian muttered through clenched teeth, trying not to smell himself.
Kiran glanced at the mechanical clock and calendar on the starboard side of the command platform, a wondrous device given to the Elnamerrna seniors by a crew of dwarves they had once rescued from a disabled citadel. The fabulous machine kept time much more accurately than a water clock—its design and construction were both great tributes to dwarven ingenuity and skill with mechanical things. This particular one showed the year in several different calendars, but the month and date only in the E.Y. calendar.
Kiran's eyes widened as he read it.
4 4 2461 Engethi Years.
