Listraeespace, near Nauthe'hressishtel
Elnamerrna, disabled and drifting
Greenmonth 26th, 2461
Tyfelian felt no surprise as the normal, mundane sounds around him resumed.
"Kiran, Sildara," he called to them, and they separated.
"Come on, I need you," he said to them solemnly. Then, he turned to the warrior-wizards at the table to the left of his chair.
"Snap out of it," he said as gently as he could. "We're going to need your help to get out of this," he explained, to give them a focus and make them think again.
"We have some help waiting in the wings, but I really would rather not use it," Tyfelian began. He told them of his prayers, ending with his curse-prayer to Lolth and the Spider Queen's tormenting response.
"... I foolishly prayed to her and challenged her to a fight," he whispered, to everyone's astonishment.
"She responded, though she did not take up the offer of a duel."
Looks of alarm crossed every face.
"The Spider Queen claims that she did not execute the setup that caused all this. For some reason I'm not sure of, I believe her, but if she didn't, who did?"
Jaclyn took a breath and narrowed her eyes. She slipped into a trance for several moments, then blinked out of it.
"She has no idea who it is—not exactly, not by a name," she advised Tyfelian, but then she frowned puzzledly. "She was hoping you knew, but you didn't, so she left us here to rot." Jaclyn scowled. "She wouldn't have told you that, of course."
Tyfelian swallowed a sigh. Jaclyn was correct in an imprecise way, nicely covering his omission of Lolth's proposed trade. He could not discern whether she knew about it and held back to let Tyfelian make the decision of whether to tell the Svart Alfar, or if she had missed it.
Tyfelian continued, deciding to reveal a bit more of the truth.
"She offered to rescue us, in return for our 'favor,'—he spat the word, unable to look at Sildara and her team—"but I'd rather we get out of this on our own. We can't use any wish spells, because this is her crystal shell now and she won't allow them."
Tyfelian couldn't bring himself to tell them that "all they had to do" was sacrifice Sildara, Menlina, and the five warrior-wizards, and Lolth would reward them with some form of rescue.
Tyfelian found his blood running cold at that, too. Even if he could bring himself to agree (or if the seven Listraeeans offered themselves up willingly, something Tyfelian feared), what exactly would Lolth do? What did the word rescue mean to the Spider Queen? Flick them to Quatha Vellar in Hearthspace? Repair the ship fully? Or would Lolth even honor her word? There was no possible way to know ahead of time...
... not with her.
"Suggestions?" Tyfelian asked everyone.
Kiran shook his head. "Barolcot is our only expert on ships. He's the one to ask."
"Get him."
Kiran bit his lip, then rose to leave and find the dwarf.
When Kiran returned, he was carrying Barolcot, who had suffered a blow to the head that had knocked him out cold.
"What happened to him?" one of the guards asked, taking up part of the dwarf's weight to assist Kiran.
"I'm not sure. Any of a number of things I saw in the cargo bay might've done it."
The guard shrugged as Alzja came up to them. A cleric's spells could make it completely irrelevant.
"Urrrr," the dwarf stammered when the healing spell awakened him. "What'n world hit me—Great Moradin!" he shouted, seeing the missing ceiling and the backdrop of Listraeespace beyond. His eyes had flown wide the instant he noticed it.
"What in blazes happened up here?" he cried as the paladin swung him down and on his feet. Kiran moved close to him and spoke quickly into Barolcot's ear, filling him in on the events he had not been able to see, including the Spider Queen's offer.
"Good gods, man," Barolcot said to Tyfelian. "How, by the Dark Realms, did you get us into a mess like this?"
"I'm not exactly sure," the half-drow replied, looking completely ashamed. "But right now, all we're concerned about is getting her back in shape to fly—the helm is down. If we can't, we'll have to ask someone we don't want to ask to pull our asses out of this fire."
"Then you'd best be askin' 'er, sorry," Barolcot told him. "However they done it, they wasn't gentle in rippin' the deck off. Look—" he pointed at the walls of the bridge. "The mirror-frame's twisted and bent all t'hell, and with the deck actually tore off, there's nothin' to build on and twist it back. No way to fix it, not unless we're docked. No way'n the world. We'd need the leverage an' support of a drydock, or scaffoldin' at least."
"What about using the non-magical engines to go back to Nauthe'hressishtel?" Tash offered. "Their facilities are good."
"But no longer there," Sildara said sadly.
"It'd take days to get back there usin' those thingamaboogers, anyhow," Barolcot muttered into his beard, stating the obvious—non-magical engines were achingly slow. "An' we mightn't make it. The way she is now, you move this girl and she might break up all 'round us."
"What about magic?" Tyfelian queried. "Our wizards know spells that might help you with some repairs. Like, say, a magically-created drydock."
Barolcot just shook his head. "Wouldn't last long 'nough to do squat. Tash, what say you just wish the ship back in perfect condition."
"We can't... not here," Tash groaned.
"I truly don't want to ask for outside help here," he told Barolcot. "She's playing with us somehow," he explained vaguely. He would have told Barolcot what Lolth wanted, but he could not—not in front of the Listraeeans.
Barolcot looked doubtfully at the broken mirror-frame and hull, but the prospect of having to ask the drow deity for help spurred him to use his imagination.
His expression brightened as he hit on something.
"There's somethin' we might try..." he stated, turning to Tyfelian with a gleam in his eyes.
"You want me to do what?" Jaclyn cried.
She had come into the bridge at Tyfelian's call, carrying the limp form of Trula with her. The human lookout had suffered a hard slam into the mainmast, but nothing that a little of Alzja's healing couldn't handle.
After Alzja had attended to Trula's injuries, Tyfelian had explained Barolcot's admittedly farfetched idea.
"You want me to hold the ship together while we sail back to the city?" the psion asked incredulously.
"Yes. Hold her tightly together, just enough for the helm to work. We'll be back fast enough."
Jaclyn pursed her lips. A true psychokineticist could probably do as Tyfelian asked of her, perhaps even repair the ship, over a long period of time. However, Jaclyn could not perform sophisticated tricks and difficult tasks with her telekinesis—such powers would certainly be developed by a psychokineticist, but not her—at least not soon.
Jaclyn tossed the idea around in her head, and then started thinking out loud, as she often did.
"I can probably use telekinesis to force some parts of the ship together," she murmured, "and I can call forth the power more than once at a given time. I figure that might let me do what's needed.
"But psychokinesis isn't my strongest suit. I'd need more... um... specific powers than I've got to hold this wreck together for long."
"And the drain on your mental strength will be dreadful," Tash commented softly.
"Yeah," Jaclyn affirmed grimly.
"Still... it's worth a try," she granted. "Barolcot," she said thoughtfully, "you're the authority. When the Elendrans took the deck, what exactly did it do that made the helm go down?"
"Well..." the dwarf rambled. "You can see for yerself, the mirror-frame is all one piece, kinda, all bolted together," he pointed at an exposed part. "See, the mirror-frame's mostly triangles of steel bars, and when you bolt 'em together an' put braces on, why, then it's all one object so far as the helm cares. The outer hull, the inside bulkheads, the 'frame, the whole works—all just one object.
"But here—" he went on, pointing at another spot, this one above the starboard door. "Lookee where it's all bent and twisted. You can bet the whole mirror-frame's a little bent outta shape," he said, missing his own unintentional pun.
"Now, when that happened, it loosened most every bolt in this girl," he went on. "Bent 'em, too, 'specially in the upper half. The mirror-frame's ain't just one object no more—more like tree hundred or so. That's why the helm lost it. Ain't enough there in one piece for the helm to get a bite on."
"Couldn't you and the crew just remove all the bolts and tighten them down again, and put in some braces?" Jaclyn asked uncertainly.
"Sure," the dwarf said. "Give us..." he worked the math in his head, mustache twitching. "Give us abou' two and a half years, 'cause we'd have t'get 'em straightened out, too, one bolt at a time. Don't help none 'at we ain't got n'more new braces, 'cept the ones we just got, an' they're best for the tail.
"An' ya'd have to do it one at a time—if you just tighten the bolts, sooner or later you'll tighten the wrong one and the ship'll break up all 'round ya.
"But t'answer your question, the whole ship's twisted up a bit—kinda like a dead body might have its arm or leg in a position that ain't natural, couldn't happen if it was alive. That's kinda the problem we got goin' here.
"Now, if you can shake 'er up a bit without breakin', twist her back more like the way she oughtta be, and get everythin' joined up again, the helm'll come back up, for sure."
"Warn me about things I need to be careful of," Jaclyn said to him.
"Oh, watch out for the latches an' braces along the gravity line—they're the weakest, so's if she gets rammed from aside hard 'nough to bust her, she'll split in two along th'mirror-frame's joinin's, 'stead o' bust apart," Barolcot said with a shrug. "And the fringes of what got took off—all that could come down, too."
Chalizon gently shouldered his way down the steps and into the conversation. "What about reinforcing the ship with walls of iron? That might make it easier on Jaclyn," he suggested, giving the human a nod for speaking of her in the third person right in front of her.
Barolcot's eyes glittered. "Hey yeah—that ain't bad. That ain't bad at all." He thought. "Yeah! Put the iron walls up against the ceilings, mostly. Collapses'll mostly be down toward the gravity line, both ways." His critical eye glanced up at the missing ceiling again. "Just a temporary fix, but it'll work 'til we can get t'Quatha Vellar."
The dwarf rubbed his large, calloused hands together eagerly. "We'll go back to the nice drow city an' get 'er to a drydock. Hell, we'll build mm-drydock if we got to."
"I should prepare," Jaclyn added. "Feel the ship out and learn best how to keep it all together." She glanced around at the ship's interior, and then moved to the back of the bridge, where she sat cross-legged to meditate.
Kiran took his seat. "All wizards with Barolcot," he told them, his tone once more that of command. He addressed the dwarf directly. "Engineer—show them the key places to put walls of iron."
Barolcot hustled off with the warrior-wizards.
Trula climbed back up to the crow's nest hurriedly. When she made it back, the human glared at the mainmast with which her head had had a disagreement, and then grabbed up the spyglass to look at Nauthe'hressishtel.
Nothing doing. The unfortunate asteroid city was lost to view in Listraeespace's drifting boulders. She could tell where it was by the occasional flashes of light—attack magic from the Elendran fleet, more than likely—but she couldn't really see it.
Trula made a full sweep with her eyes, and checked with the spyglass, but the Elnamerrna was alone in the rocks.
After a glance down, she felt grateful for finding no other ships nearby. Despite being in the crow's nest, she could still see her leader, talking with Kiran.
The Elnamerrna had seen better days. Trula could not look at the once strong, proud ship for more than a moment.
"Barolcot, how're you doing?" Tyfelian said into the voice horn.
"We got the cracks boarded up... kinda," the dwarf replied. He stood in the lower weapon bay, watching three of the Listraeean warrior-wizards finish up placing magical walls of iron against the Elnamerrna's inner hull. "We'll have the for'ard parts fixed up in a short bit."
"Thank you," Tyfelian said. Then he rose and looked up, shutting off the horn as he did.
During the extraction of the upper weapon deck, some parts of the upper hull had stayed behind and had not fallen—yet. Even to Tyfelian's untrained eye, the area above the bridge—what little was left—looked extremely unstable.
But that was exactly what he had Tash and Kiran working on. The paladin pushed himself out of a network of ripped hull, grunting as he cut himself on something, then slid down. He grasped the lip of the opening, swung down, and dropped.
"See what that did, Tash," Kiran said to the archmage hopefully.
Tash cast a spell—an illusion of a wall of iron spell, which would help her find out exactly where to place a real wall of iron, to protect the bridge against fragments that would surely fall, and also to strengthen the hull.
"Yes, I believe that did it," she said, her soft voice a sharp contrast to the determination on her face.
Tyfelian had no idea what they were talking about, but he waited patiently. His crew would get the Elnamerrna moving again if it could be done at all.
"Krendren, that brace's fractured clear through," Barolcot said to the Listraeean. "There any way you can beef it up? I'd pull it and put in another'n, but we ain't got no more."
Krendren looked at the brace in question curiously. It looked perfectly fine to him, but he didn't question the greater experience of the dwarf. Like the others, aside from the engineer himself, he had little knowledge of ship design, except for the living ships used by drow and other elves.
Krendren thought.
"Have you any stone on board? A large rock would be enough, say, two pounds."
"Yeah, in my quarters. I'll go get it."
Krendren stood there and waited for Barolcot to return. He thought about the predicament of the ship he stood on, to keep his mind off of his home's awful fate.
The plan to use walls of iron and a psion's telekinesis was risky, he felt, but it had a chance to work, and if it did, they could return to Nauthe'hressishtel.
Krendren frowned. That was the problem. They could get this ship moving, perhaps, but what then? Returning to Nauthe'hressishtel didn't seem like a good idea...
... but then again, there was no choice. The patchwork repairs, depending on walls of iron and telekinesis, would last less than an hour, and then the Elnamerrna would likely fall apart entirely.
They could prevent that if they could get the ship docked, but Krendren knew that they'd have to fight their way to a dock at Nauthe'hressishtel... and then keep fighting, unable to perform repairs.
Krendren thought the Elnamerrna crew was inventive, but reckless, and that they would be killed when they did this. Still, it would be better to die quickly, he felt, in battle, than to stay put, drifting forever in space with no hope of rescue.
He barely thought about the movements when Barolcot returned and handed him the rock. He cast a spell that encased the fractured brace in strong stone, making it immovable.
"Ah," Barolcot said approvingly, and they went on their way.
"We've shored up the hull here, here, here, and here," Barolcot said to Tyfelian, pointing two stubby fingers at a drawing of the Elnamerrna. His fingertips indicated various high-damage places on either side of the outer hull and some interior locations, roughly symmetrical.
"Now, in these here spots," he pointed at the juncture of the Silver Triop's tail and its forward portion, "the wizards'll cast iron walls t'keep anythin' from movin' around."
He switched to a different drawing, a perspective view of the Silver Triop. It offered a fine look at the ship's frame, and Sildara looked at it with more than a passing interest. One term that Barolcot had used, "mirror-frame," had confused her, but the diagram explained it. The topside and lower side of the Elnamerrna were virtually identical, just upside down with respect to each other.
"The rest o' the iron walls'll be vertical, to keep her steady. Without 'em, I'd bet my beard the whole upper half would come tumblin' down. Now—when Jaclyn uses her telly-ken-issus t'squeeze the hull, it's gonna groan an' creak and make a devil's worth o' noise, but I think we've covered everything so the ceilings won't fall down here.
"Most o' the crew's on the lower deck now, even the dogs, but not all of 'em. We might get boarded, so I've spread 'em out over this deck, too. I've told 'em to fall back toward the accesses if'n they need to."
"Very good," Tyfelian said.
Barolcot started to leave.
"Barol?"
The dwarf turned. "Yeah?"
"How did this happen? I mean... how could we get our mirror-frame all twisted up like this without the ship breaking up?"
Barolcot sighed, not from impatience, but in that way that hints that someone has just asked a question whose answer is not at all easy to explain. He thought for a moment, then tried to put it into words.
"I'd bet my beard on this, too. The Rada didn't think this could happen, an' neither'd the Mercane when they cooked up their take on this design. Ships get shot at all the damn time, but how often does one get a whole deck just—tore clean off? That wasn't no attack, n' really. It was surg'ry, if I ever seen it. But the knife was dull."
Barolcot lifted up a brace from the floor and showed it to Tyfelian.
Tyfelian looked at it. He didn't react, but it was the same one that had fallen on his arm earlier. His mind had only vaguely registered it at the time, but he knew the brace.
"Them 'lendrans... they tried usin' a spell of opening or somethin' like, t'pop the bolts out o' the frame afore they lifted the deck. Lookee," he added, pointing at an undamaged bolt with the bent brace. "That there torque-bolt came outta the stern part o' the deck. They popped 'em out, but the rest o' the bolts—" he pointed to the sides and forward, "them bolts got melted, fused to the frame when the fireballs went off up 'ere. So them coal-brained wizards had t'tear the durned deck off by force."
The engineer lifted the ruined brace again for inspection.
"See this?" Barolcot said as he turned the bent brace around. "There's plenty others just like this'n up there," he glanced up into the twisted wreckage. "If I took me a good brace like this'n and put it in my vice, it'd be real hard for me to bend it like this. Gotta give them Rada that much—they drew up one helluva strong ship.
"But, they didn't see somethin' like this comin', so there's no...I dunno... nothin' about the ship that can help the crew deal with it, no proceeeeedure," he slurred the difficult word, "no backup plan."
"You made one up," Tyfelian said resolutely.
The dwarf shook his fist at the half-drow and flashed his rare, hearty smile.
"Yeah. Now let's see if it'll really work."
Trula started at the occurrence of a flash of light to the Elnamerrna's starboard side. She had seen only a reflection—the source of the light had been behind an asteroid. Still, she trained her spyglass in that direction, frowning worriedly.
"This'd be a damn bad time to come under attack," the human lady muttered under her breath, but looking that way, she saw nothing.
Puzzled, she murmured "five times in an hour." The strange sights of Listraeespace had been merely odd while in flight, but when standing watch for a completely disabled vessel, they became much more alarming.
"Someone stalkin' us?" Trula breathed fearfully, still thinking out loud.
"Nah," she scoffed at her own ideas.
"The Elendrans could have finished us off, but for their own reasons, they didn't..." Trula thought silently. "Meanness was the main reason—they used us, then left us where no one would ever find us. There can't be anyone out there."
Still the feeling persisted. Deep in her gut, Trula just knew that someone was watching the crippled Elnamerrna—and she kept hard watch out into the debris fields to see who it was, even though logic told her that there couldn't be anyone there.
She ran the reason through her mind again, trying to convince herself, but the feeling of being watched would not go away. She nearly called down to the bridge more than once before Tyfelian ordered her out of the crow's nest, but she never spotted anything definite enough for her to sound the alert (especially since it would have done so little good), so she kept quiet to the end.
"All wizards, take your positions. Trula, out of the crow's nest until we get moving. All hands, take cover," Tyfelian said into the voice horn, set to Shipwide.
"Ready," Jaclyn said to him.
"Wizards... cast!" Tyfelian called.
He watched Tash cast her wall of iron, gave the others a long moment to finish in case they were slower, then nodded to Jaclyn.
The Elnamerrna creaked alarmingly when Jaclyn concentrated and sent her will into the ship's structure. Tyfelian heard a loud bang from the starboard side, then a crash from above as the upper part of the hull caved in fully. Several hundred pounds of debris collapsed, most of it falling straight for the bridge—
—to stop against Tash's wall of iron. Loud clattering sounds signaled the total collapse of what was left of the upper areas. Tyfelian felt glad that the magical wall was permanent, at least until they wanted to be rid of it.
A deafening, wrenching sound roared through the ship, and the entire vessel shuddered.
"Barol was right. Say what you like about his language skills," Tyfelian yelled over the din, "but he knows ships, even this one."
Tash, standing near the starboard wall, raised her eyebrows in agreement. The Elnamerrna was responding just about as Barolcot had predicted.
Jaclyn felt the shifting, unstable mess that was the Silver Triop all around her, felt the weak spots and compensated.
With a suddenness nearly as deafening as the noise had been, the sounds stopped.
"Helm's coming up!" Fing cried gleefully. "Yay, Jaclyn!"
Jaclyn sneaked a smile at the kender on the spelljammer helm, but she was all seriousness as she turned to Tyfelian.
"Hurry," she told him. "We don't have a lot of time."
"Navigator," Tyfelian said, and the word almost tasted good, "take us back to Nauthe'hressishtel."
Tash couldn't suppress a smile as she called the cues to Fing. "Helmsman, bring us about. Fifty degrees to port, fifteen degrees minus relative."
Fing, thrilled to obey, turned the ship around. She was seldom allowed to spelljam except on extended journeys, when the ship stayed at starspeed for days. Getting to be the helmsman under combat conditions was a special treat, to a kender's mind.
Spinning boulders passed the outeye's view as the vessel crept to the left—an extremely sluggish, clumsy movement since the Elnamerrna had no sails and no yardarms to speak of—but the ship was moving.
Fing eased the broken vessel through the drifting boulders of Listraeespace, and presently the Listraeean city came back into view.
Tyfelian turned the nut of the voice horn.
"Crow's nest, bridge. Trula, are you back there yet?"
"Crow's nest, Trula," the lookout's voice responded.
"Examine Nauthe'hressishtel carefully. What does the city look like now?"
"I see no fires," Trula said, peering at Nauthe'hressishtel with her spyglass. "I guess the Elendrans put them out. All o' the faerie fire is gone, too. Other'n that, I see a few ships flying and more docked. I think they're all Elendran, but I can't say for sure. They all look alike."
"They're going to occupy!" Tash exclaimed.
"I was half-expecting this. They can plan all they want—not under my watch," Tyfelian stated. "It is not revenge," he added, addressing Kiran. "We're too close to Hearthspace to let them stay here."
"How can we stop them?" Kiran asked, mildly incredulously. "One lucky shot from a ballista could take us down right now. We're holding this baby together on imagination."
"Not ship to ship. On foot. On Nauthe'hressishtel."
"With the Elendrans still there, how can we even get back to the docks?" Sildara asked.
Tyfelian smirked—a rare event for him to look somewhat like Alzja.
"That's why Fing is at the helm."
"What?" the kender asked, turning to face them from around the spelljammer helm, which was bigger than she was.
The Elnamerrna, with no sails to control direction, immediately veered off course—to the left, the same direction Fing had turned. The view in the outeye showed that very clearly.
A floating rock scraped the hull with a thud.
Alzja grasped Fing's shoulders, to turn her to face the front.
"Mind your helm, Fing!" Alzja scolded.
Tyfelian continued, chuckling. He pointed to the outeye. "See what just happened? That's why I chose our kender cleric to spelljam right now. Fing is not a good tactical helmsman—except at evasive movement. You just watch—she can get us to the same dock we left without the Elendrans getting a single shot at us."
"Then what?" Menlina frowned puzzledly.
"Then we destroy the Elendrans," Tyfelian said flatly.
Listraeespace
Elnamerrna, approaching Nauthe'hressishtel
Greenmonth 26th, 2461
"Hard over, Fing!" Tyfelian roared.
The Elnamerrna creaked to starboard and "down," according to the perspective of those on board.
Above the triop, two Elendran gypsy moths collided hard.
Fing's erratic movements and unpredictable evasive moves confused the Elendrans and had already resulted in three of them firing upon each other. One such errant strike had been a spell attack that showered targets with flying ice boulders. This had injured a weapon crew on one moth.
The Elnamerrna's depleted condition only helped the wild kender; without sails for steering, the ship never responded exactly as Fing wished, making her evasion even more effective. Under normal battle conditions, that would have been a huge disadvantage. Without sails, and a crew to work them, no helmsman could have guided a ship accurately enough to let the gunners and wizards attack coherently.
At the moment, though, attack was not on the agenda.
Tyfelian narrowed his eyes with approval. He had every confidence that the lunatic kender could get them to Nauthe'hressishtel, but he was more worried about Jaclyn. She had moved to the stairs up to the command platform to sit on the steps, and now rubbed her temples as an exhausted runner might rub aching legs.
Fing—having a great time—laughed hysterically as she "saw," with the helm's wraparound view, not two but five Elendran moths crash into each other. The kender seemed able and willing to play the game all day, but Tyfelian knew that Jaclyn would lose all mental strength soon—at which time they would lose the Elnamerrna or at least be stopped again.
"Fing," he called to get her attention. "Nauthe'hressishtel is right over to portside and up a little. Take us there."
Disappointed that she could not continue her game with the cruel drow, Fing pouted.
"Fing," Alzja said tiredly, "Jaclyn can't hold the ship together much longer. We need to land."
"Mmmm...okay," Fing said, perking up a little. She willed the Silver Triop to a different course.
"The Elendrans might get wise to Fing's antics and start anticipating her," Kiran remarked to Tyfelian quietly.
Tyfelian just smirked again.
"Even if that's true, it isn't very relevant," he said with amusement. "Jaclyn's strength of mind will give out long before those miserable idiots figure out how to keep up with Fing."
The Elnamerrna arced around Nauthe'hressishtel, passed within sight of the eight strange dimensional doors—Tash frowned worriedly at the fact that those were still there—then Fing angled the ship toward the very same pier that they'd landed on before.
"No," Barolcot said.
"No?" Fing and Tyfelian asked as one.
"No. Take us over 'ere to the left, Fing. Land us right between them tree palaces, with the connectin' bridges still standin'."
"Belay that," Tyfelian said. "Land us where we docked before, Fing." He turned to Barolcot. "I see what you have in mind, but we'll do it later. Trust me on this."
Barolcot grunted assent.
The Elnamerrna landed clumsily, like a catfish hopping out of water, weaving back and forth erratically. The ship fell more than landed, then skidded forward and to the left about thirty feet. The vessel came to rest, though, still together, and more or less right back where she'd started.
"Good work, Fing," Tyfelian complimented her before his better sense could stop him. Complimenting someone with a mad crush on the speaker could be unwise in the extreme.
Sure enough, Fing glanced over her shoulder at him with that adoring look that would have warmed another kender's heart but only made Tyfelian feel sad.
"Helm down," Tyfelian quickly added to try to gloss it over a little. He grabbed the voice horn and twisted its nut to Shipwide.
"All hands, abandon ship. Everybody out, and hurry!"
"There are moths coming in behind us," Jaclyn pointed out, peering through a gap between the rear bulkhead and the wall of iron that was the new ceiling of the bridge. "They'll be here in minutes."
"Never mind them. We won't be here."
"What about the Elnamerrna?" Sildara asked as she followed Tyfelian and the others out of the bridge. "Are we leaving her to be destroyed?"
Tyfelian smiled and shook his head, but Tash jumped in.
"Don't worry about the Elna. I'll take care of the Elna," the archmage said, not arrogantly like Alzja might have, but with serenity.
Sildara didn't understand, but she didn't press the matter.
"And, after this, we're to destroy my homeland and kill all the Elendrans in it?"
"That's right," Tyfelian replied, all confidence, though he didn't look happy about it. "Barring something unforeseen, that's exactly what we have to do."
"All of you here are insane, you know that, do you not?" Chalizon said to Tyfelian and Kiran.
"Yep," was all Tyfelian cared to reply to that remark.
They ran out through the cargo bay door after Barolcot and some crewmen had raised it a little. The entire remaining crew—twenty-nine people, plus the Listraeeans—now stood outside the ship.
Tash began a long chant, murmuring it softly under her breath. Tyfelian paid it no mind, instead looking at the Elnamerrna.
She was indeed a sorry mess. The upper weapon deck and part of the hull connected to it, near the cargo bay, was gone, and cracks ran through a good deal of the forward and upper part of the hull. The rest of the ship had its share of cracks, too, and the fireballs of the Elendran wizards had totally burned away the sails. Most of the yardarms, the long wooden beams that the sails hung from, had been burned to uselessness, too, or were even missing.
Tash completed her chant and touched the Elnamerrna's bow.
The vessel started to shrink.
Sildara glanced at her six comrades in amazement.
The Silver Triop got smaller and smaller, until she stretched only about a foot in length.
Tash picked up the shrunken ship. She turned to Abt, who had come to her with a strange-looking box in his hands—well made, with strong latches and covered with magical symbols. Abt started to put it down, and it seemed that Tash would put the Elnamerrna into the box, but Tyfelian stopped them.
"No time," he stated, noting the incoming gypsy moths. "Everyone run for cover!"
They did, Tyfelian leading. Tash tucked the burned and broken Elnamerrna under her arm and ran.
Along their way, they passed the wreck of the Reztyngra. Sildara grimaced; her old command was completely demolished. Clearly, the Reztyngra had never undocked and moved to fight. Sildara thought about her third in command, a relatively weak-willed female with no ambition worth mentioning. With her in command, it was no surprise to Sildara that the Reztyngra had not moved.
Sildara turned away, resolute, and kept pace with the remnants of the Elnamerrna crew.
Tyfelian led them into the ruined, darkened city—into the ghastly smells of burned bodies, incinerated buildings, and the bitter reek of sulfur. He ignored his grief at seeing the remains of what, so short a time ago, had been a bustling and beautiful asteroid city and just kept looking for a place to hide.
They ducked around a large palace—one of the "tree" palaces Barolcot had suggested landing between—and found cover behind a wall that still stood intact.
They could see the other two of "Barolcot's" palaces from where they were, but not the gypsy moths nor other Elendran drow.
Tyfelian nodded to Tash, who carried the Elnamerrna still. She walked over to Abt.
Abt put the box down and opened it. Tash once more started to place the ship into the box, but again someone stopped her.
Barolcot softly slapped her wrist to keep her from putting it in, and examined the shrunken ship.
He looked right through the gaping hole in the upper hull and saw the bridge—the top of the outeye, which looked like a tiny rainbow, the wall of iron ceiling, all of it, and some of the surrounding hallways as well. He sighed.
"Gods," he muttered. "I'll have my work cut out for me. Argh." He walked away.
Tash placed the Elnamerrna into the box. Abt closed it and slammed its latches into place, then turned his back to Tash.
"I'm a bit short to put it in your backpack," Tash stated with a smile. The minotaur stood well over a foot taller than she.
Abt did a deep knee-bend, his animalistic face showing his version of a smile, too. Tash unfastened the backpack, lifted the box and put it into the minotaur's backpack, then refastened it.
"Elnamerrna secure, Tyfelian," Abt reported.
Tash gave Sildara a meaningful look, thinking about what she'd meant when she'd said she'd "take care of" the Elnamerrna, but the Listraeean captain just raised her eyebrows with appreciation and smiled.
"Tash, keep us from being magically tracked," Tyfelian told her. "Sildara?" he then called.
"Yes?"
"Another evaluation—where do you think they are? Where would they go in Nauthe'hressishtel if they planned to stay and make a sister city here?"
"I'd expect them to be everywhere, exploring, but there can only be so many... some of the crews of the ships that came."
She thought.
"They'd go first to fleet headquarters and secure it," she said confidently.
"Lead us there," Tyfelian told her.
