Braskrakel
Elnamerrna crew and Harbinger crew
Midsummer 23rd, 2461
Ever afterward, Tyfelian remembered the crossing from the jungle line to the city walls as one of the most frightening experiences of his life. Hundreds of demons leered down at the area where he and his forces walked, looking for them—specifically!—and he remembered his own warning about the failure of the spells.
Tyfelian kept his feet working, bee lining for the wall, his heart hammering. With his atavistic terror, the demons—vrocks, hezrou, goristros, and others—standing watch all looked bigger than they should have.
Jalaysa and Alzja's powerful magic held steady, though, and they made the thankfully short transit to the walls without incident. Here, right up against the walls, too close for the fiendish sentries to see, the wizards cast the Portal Vortex spells that would take them behind some of the enemy defenses and closer to their goal.
As they walked out of the vortexes one by one, they eased down from their nervousness a bit. The place they found looked a little more normal than the wilderness of Yalthra'teyka. It appeared much like an oversized corridor in a castle, though filled with pools of a red liquid that could only have been blood, and with walls adorned with bas-relief depictions of creatures from nightmares.
Tyfelian looked at these curiously, even though he was revolted. They were formless tentacled creatures for the most part, not demons. He had never seen the like.
The wizards dismissed their various concealing magic spells for Trula's quick head count, and then they waited for Tyfelian's lead.
Jaclyn nodded slightly at a look from Tyfelian and sent her awareness through the castle. She quickly realized a few things about the structure.
"This castle doubles as a temple to Bri'kerzz," she noted. "There aren't too many demons in here, I don't think... I guess Bri'kerzz sent most of them outside."
"Which way to the throne room?"
Jaclyn pointed the appropriate direction, and they set off that way. They picked their way around the nearly omnipresent pools of blood, along corridors that had very uneven floors. Even the scro soldiers tried to ignore the decorations, but it was hard. After half an hour, even Wrackblood wore a stoic, almost blank expression.
By then, the path had taken them underground, despite the lack of any stairs or other means of vertical movement. The floors beneath their feet became less worked, until calling them "natural," at least for an Abyssal layer, was appropriate.
They entered a grand hall filled with the bones of huge Abyssal creatures, most of which none of them could even name. Tyfelian noticed nothing else special about it except a side corridor to his left.
"Just around corner, down hall, through doors," Jaclyn said in drow sign to Tyfelian. "That leads to anteroom of sorts. There is very large cavern after that. I believe throne room on other side."
"Almost there," Tyfelian hissed to all of them as loudly as he dared. "There's no place to sit down and rest, but stand along the walls for a quick breather."
Wrackblood seemed about to protest, but he thought better of it and leaned against a patch of wall that was solid stone. Here, the scro leader stole a couple moments for pre-battle meditation.
"Corellon, guide my swordplay to victory," Tyfelian prayed quietly. "Taronin, fortify my heart against the evil ones. Eelistraee of Realmspace, this one is for you, for Nauthe'hressishtel."
All seven—the last seven—Listraeeans gave him looks of appreciation at the last words.
Tyfelian smiled back with a confidence that he didn't feel fully. If Tash had been with them, the entire crusade would have been far easier. Braskrakel would be falling about now, he figured, and then perhaps they would be grimly embattled against Bri'kerzz and remnants of his army, up there among the ruins.
He closed his eyes to clear his mind, then marched down the hall, waving them all to follow him.
The half-drow walked right up to the closed doors at the entryway. Here, he was not at all prepared to see something rather familiar.
"A bas-relief map..." he marveled. "Of Embimura," he breathed. "Very accurate, but I can't read the labels."
"What would a tanar'ri lord want with that?" Jalaysa asked, puzzled. "He wants to destroy the place and kill everyone there—why commemorate it?"
At a loss, Tyfelian shook his head, then, dismissing the matter as trivial, he pushed the doors open.
There, he immediately went back on his heels. He saw a large chamber, filled with many decorations that referred to Embimura. Maps of the region adorned the left wall, he saw, and the remainder of the room bore bas-relief images of people.
"Figures from our history," Trula marveled as she walked into the antechamber. "Every king and queen who ever ruled Embimura, up to King Natheno," she pointed at a line of images of Embimura's rulers.
"And military leaders," Kiran added, pointing at another line. "That one ends with Admiral Mansen Handy," he pointed out. He stared at the lineup of well-known historical figures. "All of them cut off at about a hundred and fifty years ago."
Tyfelian looked into his heart, into the Dridercomp's enhancement of intuition, but he could not figure this one out at all.
"I feel like everything we've been through ties up right here, but for the life of me I can't figure out how the hell it comes together," he swore.
Confused, he looked hopefully at Jaclyn.
"Risk the trance of hypercognition," he asked of her. "We may all die here... I have to know what it's all about."
Jaclyn's face went blank for a moment, then she frowned.
"I can't get much here," she explained. "It has something to do with Vesgar's swor—I mean Kiran's sword, but I don't know what."
"I always wondered how my armor, sword, and shield got to Bala'bomen," Kiran said quietly. "The history here ends at about the same time as Vesgar and his party disappeared. Perhaps they were killed fighting Bri'kerzz and his henchmen. Perhaps they even imprisoned them."
"We might be able to ask Bri'kerzz over crossed blades," Wrackblood stated. His voice betrayed no impatience; on the contrary, he had been listening intently. "Perhaps we'll meet your historical heroes in person. Demons can keep prisoners alive for a very long time, I've heard."
"I'll have to try to ask," Tyfelian replied seriously. "If you're right, it would be wonderful to rescue them and bring them home. That still begs the question, though—why does Bri'kerzz have such interest in Embimura?"
Wrackblood shrugged and grunted by way of reply, and started off again.
"What is that?" Morkitar called, pointing at a curiosity. It sat to the left of the opposite doors against a protrusion in the wall, lit softly by enchanted rocks behind it. A small enclosure of glass, no more than five feet long by one foot wide, it was easy to miss at first glance, among the rest of the decorations.
"An aquarium?" Tyfelian asked as much as said. "I've heard of them, but I've never seen one. They're toys for the extremely rich, in Embimura."
The half-drow walked over to it curiously, though still with caution, and looked into it.
"Where are those bubbles coming from, before they squirt out of that rock?" Wrackblood frowned. He stepped over to where Tyfelian stood at the aquarium, all the while looking at it with more than a passing interest.
"I like glassware," Wrackblood said to Tyfelian's curious expression.
"It's a bubbling rock," Kiran stated from behind them. "They occur in nature on Engethi, but they're not common in or near Embimura. You have to have one to keep an aquarium. If you don't, the fish in it will make the water go stale, and they'll die."
"Where are the fish, then?" Wrackblood asked.
Tyfelian peered into the glass object intently.
"There's one—ahhhh..."
"What's wrong?" Kiran asked, gripping his sword more tightly.
"That," Tyfelian said, his voice shaking. "That fish..." he gulped.
Wrackblood looked, then straightened. Where Tyfelian had been unnerved and shaken, Wrackblood was merely exasperated, or so he let on.
"A triop," he snarled. He was just as taken aback by the type of fish as Tyfelian, but his crusty personality did not let him show it as much.
"Let's go," Tyfelian said through clenched teeth. He walked slowly, though, so that others could look at the triops. He knew that some might want to see them, and many crewmembers, from both ships, did look curiously into the aquarium.
"The Rada sure did a good job modeling the ships after the fishies," Fing commented after she had taken a long look. She said it to Tyfelian to steady the rattled leader, to link Bri'kerzz's malicious tease to something more understandable. She also aimed it at Wrackblood, however, since she could tell that the scro was more upset by the cheap shot than he wanted to admit.
It worked.
"They certainly did," Tyfelian agreed.
"Now, we have a smart-ass demon lord to kill," the kender reminded.
Tyfelian somehow put a wry smile on his face, answering Fing's.
"That is exactly right."
He turned away and went to the doors on the far side of the antechamber. His shoulder's firm push opened them to reveal the cavern that Jaclyn had described. Its walls were of a sullen, grayish-red color, and its walls and floor were completely natural.
Tyfelian and Wrackblood glanced right and left by reflex to look for guards, but since there were none, the opposite end of the large cavern captured their attention.
Tyfelian groaned with frustration.
"Bri'kerzz and company are right through those... doors," Jalaysa said, hesitating to call the gigantic entryway a door or double door. It more closely resembled the kind of entrance that a king's palace might have—a huge double door of burnished steel that opened at the center.
Except that these valves of steel stood at least fifty feet tall.
Tyfelian knew that there would be no opening these. The combined strength of a hundred humanoids would not move them, and Bri'kerzz's followers had three times demonstrated competence at making spells of opening ineffective. Here, spells of opening would not be the only magic rendered useless, he felt sure.
He stared at the huge doors and considered the problem at length, as did Wrackblood. Finally, his eyebrow lifted as an idea occurred to him, but he wondered about how practical it might be.
"Barol, how big is this cave?" he called over to the dwarf.
Barolcot looked around and shrugged.
"It ain't cut at all—all natural. Say, couple hundred feet wide and near that deep," he estimated and gave the answer automatically.
The others did not react, but Barolcot stiffened, realizing, and stomped over to Tyfelian.
"Now, Tyfelian, you're not thinkin' to—" he started to say, but the half-drow held up a hand to stay his protest.
"Oh, yes," Tyfelian said with a wicked grin. "Abt," he called, "bring me the Elnamerrna."
"I never thought we'd do anything like this," Tyfelian remarked as the minotaur set the Silver Triop in roughly the center of the cave.
"Expandin' 'er indoors," Barolcot shook his head. "It's insane, but it's ingene-ee-ous."
Tyfelian just laughed.
"Bri'kerzz will find out what 'insane' means."
Alzja touched the vessel amidships, then hurried away from the spot. The Elnamerrna grew, rapidly filling the confined space of the cavern, but Tyfelian noticed that she would still have a little room to move, as he had hoped.
"Captain," Tyfelian said to Wrackblood, "take your troops into the lower weapon deck. After we get through those doors, hold them back and spring into the fray at the right moment, or when I call to you."
"Why?" Wrackblood rumbled ominously.
"Because Bri'kerzz doesn't know you're here, as it was on the Itreyan Gateway," Tyfelian explained patiently. "He's expecting us, but not you and your men."
The scro captain considered this, then nodded agreement. He led his marines to the lower weapon deck, where Jalaysa helpfully used magic to bring a rope ladder down, since the gravity on that deck was upside down, held stable by the ship's magical belt. Every scro scrambled up the ladder to press up against the walls there, hiding, waiting for the order to jump. Wrackblood and one of his men pulled the ladder back inside the bay.
"I'll go to the cargo bay and open the door," Jalaysa said, preparing to teleport.
Tyfelian raised a hand to stop her.
"No," he corrected. "Lower a ladder from the topside weapon bay."
She did, and Tyfelian led his crew into the upper weapon bay. Here, he arrayed them against the walls, ready to run into battle.
"Alzja," he beckoned, and she followed him out of the bay and to the bridge.
"What are we doing, Tyfelian?" the Elnamerrna asked him the moment he arrived.
"We're going to ram those doors ahead," the half-drow replied smoothly.
"We are what?" the vessel asked incredulously.
Tyfelian determinedly began to warm up the helm, feeling relieved that it worked in this place.
"Bri'kerzz is right through there and we're going to get him," he explained briefly.
"What about the trap?"
"We'll wing it," Alzja assured the vessel. "If it looks like we're losin', I'll make sure that you don't survive to be captured."
"Are you sure you want to do this?" the Elnamerrna asked with trepidation as Tyfelian made her rise.
"There's no other way," the half-drow replied. "I may not be the best pilot around, but I can ram with the best of 'em—so we're going right through those doors."
Tyfelian normally appreciated the one-direction-at-a-time view of the outeye over the wraparound view provided by the helm, but now he embraced the wraparound view. He turned the Elnamerrna to face the doors squarely, damaging the crow's nest on the top of the ceiling and the tail on the wall.
He did not care about the minor damage. His focus was those doors and who was behind them.
Abt looked out of the forward ballista bay. The quick-thinking minotaur understood what Tyfelian was about to do, and his bestial eyes narrowed with a cunning thought.
He left his position and waggled his fingers around at his ballista crew to join him at their weapon. They hurriedly loaded up a bolt and cranked against the ballista's strong pull, readying it to fire.
Kiran and Sildara exchanged amused glances. It was highly unlikely that they would get a shot, any shot; the angle would almost certainly be too constricted, and shooting targets as small as even good-sized demons was hard. Still, getting the heavy bolt ready for any possible use was worth a try, so Kiran did not countermand.
"All hands, Tyfelian," the half-drow's voice called over the horns. "Brace yourselves and take cover. I'm going to fly right through those doors. Be ready."
Abt and his crew crouched behind the ballista.
Tyfelian's eyes, both the real ones and the wider ones given by the helm, fixed hard upon the doors, and he made the ship back up as far as she could go, dealing more damage to the tail.
Again, he ignored it...
... and willed a sudden burst of movement.
Bri'kerzz's throne room
Elnamerrna crew and Harbinger crew
Midsummer 23rd, 2461
Lord Bri'kerzz turned from conversing with Ladthiac.
"Dretch! Come h—" he started to say, but the abrupt bursting of his supposedly impenetrable doors cut him off in mid-word.
The Elnamerrna's ram, designed for much heavier demolition than this, blew the doors aside and tore them right off of their hinges. Magic sizzled over the sundered doors in white flashes of light—sealing magic overridden and shoved aside by sheer might.
The five demon princes with Dretch looked incredulously at the starship's ram nosing into the throne room like the head of a catfish seeking prey in a river cave.
How Bri'kerzz roared at the sight of his worst nightmare come to visit! He had believed that a confrontation with that ship's crew was all but inevitable, but he had never expected to see the Silver Triop in person.
The whizzing hiss of a ballista bolt sounded in the room. Those in the weapon bay close enough to see it cheered even as they leaped out onto the cargo bay door, for the bolt shot across the room to pierce the black robes of the prince who was most obviously a wizard. The head of the ballista bolt went right through him, but the fletching caught against his chest and the bolt sailed on. It loosely nailed Ladthiac to the far wall.
Tyfelian and Alzja saw it happen too, just as Tyfelian was about to rise from the helm. They marveled at the sight.
"Abt? Jekrelt?" Alzja cried, delighted.
"Nobody else I know could've made that shot!" Tyfelian exclaimed. Had he been standing at that weapons post himself, Tyfelian would not have fired, would have judged the target too small and the field of fire too restrictive. He rose from the helm and waited for Alzja to cast the spell to get them into the battle.
The Elnamerrna crew ran across the cargo bay door, and leaped down to the floor of the throne room with the assistance of magic that made them fall slowly. One crewmember flew out of the weapon bay—Jaclyn, in her dragon shape, this time with wings.
A portal vortex opened near the Elnamerrna's lower weapon bay to her portside and Alzja leaped out of it, followed closely by Tyfelian.
Tyfelian eyed Bri'kerzz closely as he and four other unique demons squared off against him and his crew. He noticed Krynderyl lying on the floor near the grotesque throne, securely chained down to the stone. He guessed that he had interrupted a torture session whose subject had been the drawbacks of failure.
"Tyfelian," Bri'kerzz breathed with flaming hatred.
"Yes, that would be me," the half-drow replied flippantly.
"I should have killed you on the spot on the dead moon," Bri'kerzz growled, "but no... I had to play into Lolth's ideas and let her setup try to get you out of the way."
"You're assuming you could have killed us," Tyfelian said, edging away from the Elnamerrna's bow and to the right, Kiran at his side. It appeared that he was inviting Bri'kerzz to a two-on-one fight, but that was not his intention. He knew that he and Kiran were perhaps physically capable of defeating Bri'kerzz by themselves, especially if the tanar'ri lord did not attempt any magical attacks, but he did not intend to try it. He did want to keep the tanar'ri lord away from his wizards, and he preferred to draw this enemy away from the ship. He did not relish the thought of battling Bri'kerzz right in front of the Elnamerrna.
Bri'kerzz paced them, swords in hands and Dretch following. Bri'kerzz discounted Dretch's combat abilities and paid no mind to it, apparently willing to go for a two-on-one a short distance from everyone else; the rest of Tyfelian's crew spread out across the throne room to engage the other demon princes.
When they had made it to near the right-hand wall, Bri'kerzz's snake-like head bared its fangs.
"This time, I won't make the same mistake," Bri'kerzz said grimly. He glanced at Krynderyl and the chains released the prisoner, seemingly of their own volition.
Bri'kerzz hesitated no longer than that. In an instant, he was on Tyfelian and Kiran, swords flashing and fangs striking out at the Elnamerrna leader.
Tyfelian batted the teeth away and hammered at the swords. Bri'kerzz whirled and kicked the half-drow in the chest, but the mortal, equally skilled, rolled with the strike and stayed on his feet. Then he came back with a blindingly fast whirl of his swords that slipped past Bri'kerzz's defenses and scored a minor hit on his shoulder.
A sound that was some weird cross between a yelp and a roar came from Bri'kerzz—the powerful swords had hurt. Stunned, the Abyssal Lord missed any opportunity that may have been there to attack, and Tyfelian buried his swords to their hilts in his gut.
Kiran's holy avenger sword whirred toward Dretch. The sub-demon sidestepped with an agility that Kiran found simply not believable for such a minor Abyssal creature, but he compensated fast enough that the sword point still struck, causing Dretch to cry out in agony.
A deft twitch of Kiran's right shoulder muscles sent his shield right into the small tanar'ri. Dretch went flying and crashed into Bri'kerzz's back.
Bri'kerzz, no mortal, had not been killed by Tyfelian's double attack on his belly, but even an Abyssal Lord could not retain his balance when stabbed with two wicked blades from in front and hit by a flying servant from behind. He fell over, and Tyfelian kicked Dretch aside to continue his attacks.
The Elnamerrna wizards had spent the first few moments moving to advantageous positions, and now a bewildering array of spells appeared—black tentacles writhing right out of the floor, balls of super-cold ice rolling around, tangling webs appearing from thin air, and others that Kiran could not even name.
He ignored them all and moved toward Dretch, Bri'kerzz, and Tyfelian. He was not far from them, but two of the other unique demons intercepted him and attacked. One of them, which appeared much like a gigantic wasp, tried to slap Kiran with its wing, an obvious attempt to keep him away from Bri'kerzz.
The paladin merely lopped part of that wing right off with his sword.
"My name is Hlack," the wasp-demon stated, speaking through its weaving, ominous proboscis. It did not appear particularly concerned about the damage to its wing, but Kiran did not find that too unusual, not for a powerful demon.
He did frown at the oddity of a demon introducing itself, but more because that statement, the sentence itself, had a strangely familiar ring to it. He could not place the memory in the middle of a fight, but he knew he had heard or read those words before—something historical.
The other prince, a frightening creature with the head of a wolverine and the body of a double-sized orangutan, pointed at Kiran and blew off a ball of ice that shattered all around the paladin.
Kiran had never felt such cold. His lungs froze, but he managed a return swing at the wolverine-orangutan even at that. His sword did little more than scratch down along its belly, but it screamed with agony anyway as the blade touched it.
The damage was done, however; Kiran froze, both literally and figuratively. His blade stopped moving, stock-still, before he could finish the swing, and he stood unmoving.
Tyfelian and Bri'kerzz glared at each other over their crossed blades.
"Why are Hearthspace and Embimura of such interest to you?" Tyfelian asked, just loud enough for Bri'kerzz to hear him over the din. "And, did you ever meet Vesgar Longhart and his party?"
The pressure on Tyfelian's swords lessened for a heartbeat at the first question, and the half-drow twisted his blades around Bri'kerzz's so fast that even the demon could not follow them. The magically keen blades sliced deeply into Bri'kerzz's arms. A humanoid, even one as large as Bri'kerzz, might have lost the use of its arms for a moment and dropped the weapons after such an attack, but the vicious blows only made Bri'kerzz angrier than ever.
"Because that's where I'm from, you idiot!" Bri'kerzz snarled right back as the sword hilt in his right hand scored a glancing blow on Tyfelian's temple. "As to that miserable Longhart, yes, I did know him, long ago. What about him?"
"That makes a lot of sense," Tyfelian replied sarcastically. "Demons aren't native to the Prime Material Plane. That's a contradiction in terms." He made no comment regarding Bri'kerzz's answer about Vesgar Longhart; he sensed the holding back, but he found that he believed it. His heart warmed a bit with the thought of actually meeting Longhart and his team, or even finding their bodies and taking them home for proper burial, but he had no time to ponder the idea.
"You must have an apple for a brain," Bri'kerzz insulted him, making a playful swat for Tyfelian's side with the point of his sword. "Don't you know who I am?"
"You look familiar, somehow," Tyfelian replied, arcing his swords for a double-shot attempt to behead Bri'kerzz. The demon lord narrowly avoided that fate, as his own swords just barely blocked. "I saw you in the ice prison on Bala'bomen."
"You did see me there," Bri'kerzz replied easily, jabbing both of his swords at Tyfelian's eyes. A whoosh of the mortal's blades sent the demon's flying wide. "But where else have you seen me?"
The Elnamerrna crew spread out through the chamber, attempting to swarm and surround the demon princes, but these monsters were far too clever for that to work. They ignored the ice-imprisoned paladin and engaged the fifty fighters, eagerly going claw against sword. Abt and Kreg moved fast and drove the strange wolverine-headed demon away from Tyfelian, Bri'kerzz, and helpless Kiran, but it counterattacked and they were scrambling to avoid its claws.
The crew fought back grimly, and though their weapons individually were not powerful enough to inflict any severe wounds on demons so powerful, the combined effect was considerable.
Hargis rammed his blade into the huge wasp's head. Nonplussed, the oversized insectoid belted him in the face with one of its legs, smashing his nose halfway into his skull. Amid his screams, Clasto and Sildara leaped to block the tanar'ri prince's advance for the kill. Hargis collapsed in a heap behind them, but they could not turn to help him, for they quickly found themselves fighting for their lives against a proboscis dripping with acid and four super-fast, deadly claws.
Anna spared a worried glance at the prince who had not done anything yet—the black-robed, hooded figure, who had survived the ballista strike and now worked to free himself—and gripped her sword to strike. Her swing sent the blade against the wasp's head from the side. Its small, oddly elven ear exploded and vanished in a spray of ichor, but it barely noticed. The proboscis lashed over and impaled Anna through the heart. She died in a convulsion of agony as her heart dissolved in acid and the wasp casually threw her at the comrades protecting Hargis, though it glanced at him with disdain. He was dead, too.
"As you should have died on Krynn," said a voice from the proboscis, speaking to Anna.
"That sounded like an elvish accent," Clasto said as he parried a claw attack and countered, sticking the point of his sword into the base of the proboscis.
"I thought so, too," Sildara, beside him, replied, with a downward swing of her swords that amputated one of the creature's legs.
"That's because it was elvish," the proboscis voice said again.
Sildara ignored the comment and slashed her blades along her foe's underside.
The black-robed figure finally worked his way off the ballista bolt. Ladthiac walked away from the wall, muttering curses. When he had found an advantageous spot, his arms with their skeletal hands spread wide as he murmured the words of a spell.
Instantly, every Elnamerrna crewman was on fire, except for the wizards, whose defensive magic kept it from happening. Their screams echoed loudly in the throne room, horrifying Tyfelian and the others of the command crew.
Tyfelian, not too much affected because of the Dridercomp's protection, let Bri'kerzz step back and take pleasure in watching the half-drow burn. Grimacing away the pain, Tyfelian pretended that it was a lot worse than it was and let out a fake wail of agony.
Bri'kerzz began to laugh.
"Don't you know who I am?" he roared again at Tyfelian. He stepped forward to grab his opponent by the Dridercomp's collar. The Abyssal Lord lifted Tyfelian over his head, shaking him hard to prevent the mortal from swinging his blades.
"Who do you think made the artifact that is keeping you alive right now?" he laughed, right in Tyfelian's face. "I created the Dridercomp!" he snarled. "Trizfastell died a drider! You are the drider that I created it for!"
His evil eye glared into Tyfelian's hate-filled visage.
"How do you think you found a set of seven artifacts so perfectly suited to yourself and the others—and that made sure that you would find the Svart Alfar?"
Laughing long and loud, Bri'kerzz hurled Tyfelian against the wall.
His laughter choked off a moment later, however, as the fires killing the crews suddenly vanished.
Jalaysa's antimagic spell, overlapping three others, swept the room and extinguished the fires. She noted, however, to her dismay, that the demonfire had killed over half the crew and all of the others were badly hurt, including herself and the rest of the command crew. Without the resisting spells that the wizards had cast before the battle started, all of them would have died.
She shot off a spell at the black-robed figure that had cast the fiery spell. The spell did not detonate as flame, but as ice, much like the spell that had immobilized, perhaps killed, Kiran.
Ladthiac clearly had resisting spells of his own in effect, for he seemed only slightly hurt. He didn't have a chance to cast an answering spell, however, for more attacks swarmed in to stop him. Magic missile spells, the energy darts, slammed the figure, thwarting its spellcasting.
Tyfelian dragged himself up from the floor, where he had ended up after sliding down the wall from Bri'kerzz's throw. His battered body protested every move—he felt sure that he had spinal injuries along with any number of other broken bones—but he could make his body move.
The half-drow slumped a bit, making himself appear more hurt than he really was. He looked up at Bri'kerzz and saw that the Abyssal Lord was buying it.
"I'll still kill you," he said to Bri'kerzz, but he spoke in a lower voice than he would have liked to have—his drooping posture was not entirely an act. He added broken ribs and punctured lungs to his mental list of injuries. In his beaten condition, he was no longer sure that he could fight Bri'kerzz, so he kept up the deception.
"If you created the Dridercomp, how did the Svart Alfar know about it?" he demanded, making himself wheeze, distracting Bri'kerzz and making him overconfident.
Bri'kerzz laughed again, though his too-human-for-a-reptile eyes kept flicking over to keep an eye on the dangerous Elnamerrna wizards.
"He made the original armor, rattle-brain," Bri'kerzz explained, relishing his apparent victory. "I modified it." The Abyssal Lord chuckled again. "But you don't know anything about driders from the planet Midgard, do you?" he laughed. "Your crew is half gone, your top team depleted and weakening fast. You're no match for us. You never were! No one compares to us—especially not anyone from Embimura. That country will never again match us, nor what we did."
Clearly finished with what he considered idle chatter, Bri'kerzz crouched a little, ready to dart in for the kill.
Tyfelian frowned puzzledly despite his suffering.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he muttered. "No—don't answer that."
As Bri'kerzz looked at him rather angrily, Tyfelian took a deep breath. His lungs protested that as a couple of snapped ribs dug deeper into them, but he ignored it and yelled out to his ally.
"CAPTAIN!" he roared at the top limit of his voice volume.
That was not very loud. Tyfelian felt his lungs collapsing, and darkness began to creep in on the edges of his vision. He feared that he would die, choking on his own blood, before Bri'kerzz even hit him again, so he snaked his fingers into his belt pouch for a healing potion. He uncorked one during Bri'kerzz's reaction, his thankfully long fingers twisting on the vial around the handgrip of his left-hand sword's hilt. He could withstand the pain, but the thought of drowning as his lungs filled with blood impelled him to get the potion.
Bri'kerzz's smile and mirth vanished in the wink of an eye as a counterweighted rope ladder dropped from the Elnamerrna's lower weapon bay. Wrackblood, Morkitar, and fifty scro marines scrambled down the ladder, each one lightning fast, and ran into the room.
Fing and Alzja hurried among the fallen, casting enlivening spells in rapid succession to help the fallen crewmembers. They healed those still alive first, but they had started in with reviving dead crewmen when the entire face of the battle shifted, as Tyfelian played his high card.
Alzja helped Hargis to his feet, but she held him still for a moment as the Harbinger crew ran past them at full tilt. Wrackblood and Morkitar beelined for Lord Bri'kerzz, while the scro marines charged at the lesser princes and started hacking away at them with help from the remaining Elnamerrna crew.
Ladthiac slicked out a spell out during a momentary lull in the attacks from the Elnamerrna wizards. His fireball exploded on the Elnamerrna's bow, but its effect was greatly dulled by the runes, Alzja's runes, on the hull. The scro marines who were still on the rope ladder and inside the lower weapon bay—whom Ladthiac had intended to kill outright—virtually ignored the flames and kept climbing.
The crackling of a lightning bolt from Morkitar led the charge from Tyfelian, Wrackblood, and the war priest himself at Bri'kerzz. Tyfelian, not nearly as badly hurt as he had let on, snapped the now-open potion vial between his teeth and hammered his swords into the demon's massive body. Wrackblood's sword hacked into Bri'kerzz's right arm just above the elbow, nearly severing it. That sword fell from twitching fingers.
Bri'kerzz heaved about with his left arm and tried to attack Wrackblood. The scro stood much too close to him for a sword slash or stab to be effective, but he tried to clobber the captain with his sword's hilt. Wrackblood saw it coming and ducked, taking only a bonk on his helmet.
Up came Wrackblood's left arm, and the two dagger blades that capped that stump. The blades smashed through Bri'kerzz's hide and dug deeply—deeply enough to prick the heart, only just.
Tyfelian spat out the potion vial, swallowing its contents even as his blades went for Bri'kerzz's throat. Bri'kerzz tried to block, but he was only partially successful, and the left side of his neck sprayed ichor all over the half-drow.
Ignoring this, Bri'kerzz tried once again to clobber Wrackblood, and he nailed the scro this time, right between the eyes.
Wrackblood felt his eyes cross, but he returned the attack with a slash of his sword that shattered the lower vertebrae of Bri'kerzz's spine.
Jalaysa picked a spot and unleashed a fiery spell in modified form. A huge slurp heralded her acid ball, which exploded behind the black-robed demon, centered there. Her aim had been true; the acid made a thin hissing sound as it appeared in midair and dropped—right onto the enemy wizard. She watched with satisfaction as the demon wizard fell, his robes melting away under the acid.
Under the hood, however, she was astonished to see, not a demon's face, but a skull.
"A lich!" she shouted, realizing the danger.
The wasp demon and its wolverine-headed companion started to move toward Bri'kerzz and his attackers, but they got an unpleasant surprise. The Elnamerrna fighters that they had killed earlier hurried to cut them off from that course.
Hargis, now fully healed, whirred his sword into the wasp's neck. Anna impaled the wolverine-headed demon through the back, and then more Elnamerrna fighters and some scro marines joined in the fray. The two demon princes went down in moments under the onslaught.
Jaclyn lashed out with her tail to knock the demon wizard to the floor. She turned away, confident that the others could deal with the thing after that, so she could study the battle between Tyfelian, Wrackblood, and Morkitar, against Bri'kerzz.
Worried that they could not annihilate him even if they won, for the divine might granted to both Tyfelian and Kiran was needed for that, she tapped Chalizon's shoulder with her tail to get his attention. When he turned, she pointed at Kiran, asking Chalizon to free him.
Then her attention went back to the fight.
Bri'kerzz was defending himself ably, she saw, but it was only a matter of time before they nailed him. When he died, the answers to many mysteries would die with him unless she learned them first.
She had to risk a mind probe. Such a telepathic contact was unwise to perform on any demon, but there were still too many unknowns, too many questions. It was the only way to find out the multitude of things that she and her friends did not, could not, know.
She mentally reached for the psychic fortitude to withstand performing a mind probe on a demon, and then her consciousness touched Bri'kerzz's.
She gasped, eyes going wide, not with horror, but with utter astonishment.
Krynderyl's mouth opened wide and his gold dragon head blasted the scro marines with fire. It hurt them, but they took it and reached him in seconds. His claws scratched and batted at them, but it was no good; he fell, ripped to shreds, amid flashing swords and the punishing cold of well-targeted icy spells.
Truly destroyed now, since he was in his native plane, Krynderyl's mouth puffed a gout of flame at nothing and he went limp, his left arm and right leg twisted the wrong ways, even for an insect body.
The scro marines and Listraeean warrior-wizards who had downed him turned to find another opponent. They charged the apparent lich, swiftly closing upon it to strike while it was down, thinking to take away its advantage of spellcasting.
Incredibly fast, even prone, the lich cast an emanation of searing flames, scorching them further, but then they were upon him and took him down with reasonable quickness.
Then, the marines and the warrior-wizards spun as one man to find yet another victim, just as Kiran, coughing and wheezing, fell to his knees when Chalizon's magic got rid of his ice prison and Fing rushed to heal him.
The only victim left was Bri'kerzz, who used the butt of his sword to shove Wrackblood aside to get to Morkitar. Already on his knees, Wrackblood fell over, stricken senseless by that hit.
Nevertheless, it was only for a moment. The scro sprang back into action only a moment later.
Bri'kerzz blasted Morkitar with a spell that wrapped the war priest in a shimmering globe of rainbow color. This would immobilize Morkitar for a while, but Tyfelian was on him in a heartbeat, swords stabbing.
Bri'kerzz whirled, but Tyfelian went with him and the Abyssal Lord found that he faced eight scro marines.
Tyfelian's swords pierced into Bri'kerzz's back once again, more deeply. The half-drow felt total surprise, as the sensation he got from that was nearly identical to what he would feel if his swords broke through heavy armor on a large man.
Not questioning good fortune, he twisted and shoved the blades as he would to kill an armored human. The tanar'ri lord slumped to his knees.
Bri'kerzz screamed in agony, shaking the entire throne chamber. He tried to crawl away, but the scro marines bore down on him and their swords began to methodically hack him to bits. He fell, swatting blindly at the skilled scro, unable to see all of them and failing to effectively defend himself.
Kiran came up to them then. The half-drow and the Embimuran paladin released the divine energy that they had been given in all-out thrusts. Tyfelian skewered Bri'kerzz through the heart while Kiran drove his sword through the neck of the demon lord.
Bri'kerzz rolled onto his back, dying. He glared up at Tyfelian and muttered, "Embimuran! I curse you! You will fall!"
Tyfelian shook his head.
"I deny your curse. Long live the Kingdom of Embimura."
"Ladthiac and I made all of the artifacts you found. May you choke on them..." Bri'kerzz's voice trailed off as he went limp. He managed to keep talking, though it clearly hurt.
"Enjoy being free of the drider curse, Embimuran. Remember what it cost the Svart Alfar..." Bri'kerzz's mouth tried to form more words, but it went completely slack. The too-human eyes went dark, staring at the ceiling, at nothing.
Tyfelian stared hard at Bri'kerzz's corpse for a moment, but then his quivering upper lip firmed.
"No," he said to Bri'kerzz's death grimace. "I will not accept the guilt for what you and Crilsteroy did." He was not sure that Bri'kerzz had heard him, but both drowic and Embimuran legend held that dying was like falling asleep in at least one way—hearing was the last sense to go.
He turned away resolutely, and his quick eyes started to take in the situation in the chamber. Alzja had revived some of the fallen crewmen, and they staggered over to the walls, weak but alive—in some cases, alive again.
Fing had made it to the throne. There, she noticed the writhing, agonized forms in it and doused the seat with holy water, trying to free them.
"Fing?" Kiran called over curiously.
"They're probably evil, so we'll have to kill them, but it's wrong to just leave them like this," she noted. She dumped another flask of holy water on the throne and it fell apart.
Fing was already showering the unfortunate souls with even more holy water, destroying them, but the palace-temple started shaking at that moment. Tyfelian and the others had half-expected that to happen anyway, but Tyfelian felt sure that it had occurred as a direct result of Fing's destruction of Bri'kerzz's throne!
"Damn it!" Tyfelian roared. "Fing!"
The kender gasped, unable to understand, but Alzja screamed, "That thing was holding the whole place together!"
Tyfelian started to call for a hasty retreat, but a swirling vortex of energy appeared near Fing. "That's Taronin's
rescue attempt," Tyfelian yelled. "Everybody out!" He gave Fing a warning look that he could not maintain, then watched the crews move toward safety. Both crews made to run, but there were over a hundred people in the chamber. It would take time, and they knew it.
Jalaysa swiftly cast a spell, and Alzja followed suit. Morkitar and the others joined in, and various spells appeared—or did not appear, the crews noted, for in some places on the ceiling and walls, collapsing debris crashed against nothing, or so it looked.
"Get out, fast! Those spells won't hold!" Wrackblood roared, but he did not move. Neither did Tyfelian, waiting with him. Neither captain would precede crewmen to safety.
Alzja stepped quickly over to the ruined entryway and cast her magic upon the Elnamerrna. Curiously, Jalaysa ran past the ship as she shrank. Tyfelian wondered what she was doing, but moments later the triop aquarium appeared, floating into the throne room, water sloshing, held aloft by magic. On a whim, she was taking it.
Tyfelian managed a smile at that, while Wrackblood looked at her askance.
"No reason for these fish to die before their time," she noted.
Tyfelian laughed softly. Wrackblood shrugged her off with tense, amused forbearance. Alzja picked up the Elnamerrna and hurried for the vortex.
Finally, the last of the crew walked into the vortex. They were dragging the bodies of those who had been slain and not yet raised—too many, both Tyfelian and Wrackblood thought, watching grimly.
Jalaysa left, still using her magic to make the aquarium float. Tyfelian and Wrackblood started to move to either side of the energy vortex to see the last of them through, but Jaclyn stopped them.
"Take them with us," she bade them, indicating the demon lords.
"What for?" Wrackblood asked incredulously.
"No time," Jaclyn replied. "Drag them along."
Tyfelian and Wrackblood grabbed Bri'kerzz's body by the armpits and lugged him toward the vortex
Tyfelian's injuries flared with pain at the exertion. Despite the strong potion he had knocked back, he felt blood rising in his lungs again and feared that he would drown, but there was neither time to drink another nor call for a cleric.
Kiran and Kreg distastefully grabbed Krynderyl, while Abt and Hargis picked up the wolverine-headed demon. Trula and Morkitar dragged the wasp, and Fing grasped the breastbone of the skeletal wizard, dragging it along with Jaclyn's help.
"The dretch!" Jaclyn called as the last of them were about to leave.
Tyfelian glanced over at the small blobby corpse. It was ripped to shreds and it appeared that Fing or Alzja had poured holy water on it, for it bubbled as if from being drenched in acid.
Tyfelian shook his head grimly and coughed out more than a mouthful of blood so he could speak.
"Leave it!"
Jaclyn, Tyfelian and Wrackblood were the last in the chamber. Tyfelian waved Jaclyn to go. Even as she vanished into the portal vortex, a mass of stone burst through some of the defensive walls and hit the souls that had formed the throne, smashing them into a gruesome heap of bones and cursed flesh seared by holy water.
Tyfelian and Wrackblood pulled on Bri'kerzz's heavy body and walked through the portal. A flying rock struck Tyfelian's face, destroying his eyes and wrenching a low-volume but full-throated scream out of him. Blinded and knocked almost senseless, he stumbled through Taronin's portal. Wrackblood suffered a wallop on his shoulder, though it did not hurt much through his armor.
Falling rock battered Bri'kerzz's body as well, and Wrackblood looked at it curiously, as some of the damage looked very, very strange.
Then they made it...
Divine Appler
Elnamerrna crew and Harbinger crew
Midsummer 23rd, 2461
Tyfelian and Wrackblood staggered out of the vortex, and some of their crewmen took up the load of the body they had.
Tyfelian felt strength return the moment he breathed the sweet air of the Grand Hearth. The intense pain of the injuries Bri'kerzz had inflicted washed away like the memory of a nightmare. His lungs cleared, his eyesight returned, his faltering steps firmed up well. Like nearly all of the others, he now wore little more than rags, but he was alive.
His eyes found Taronin, who was finishing the task of raising the dead crewmen back to life. It had apparently taken a few minutes, even for a god, for the casualty count was appalling. Fifteen to twenty of the Harbinger crew had fallen in the battle, and nearly half of the Elnamerrna crew had been killed despite Fing's best work and Alzja's lackluster efforts. All but nine of Tyfelian's sailors, in fact, had died, but Alzja and Fing had revived many.
He looked at those nine; the differences were as obvious as day and night. They still wore armor. Those who had fallen had lost their armor as well as much of their clothing—it was ripped to scrap metal. In some cases, they had lost their weapons as well.
Tyfelian swallowed, his throat choking up with gratitude to Kiran for his odd act of calling on their old enemy for assistance. Tyfelian's estimate of power versus power had been perfectly correct—he knew that now. Without their numbers swelled by the fifty scro marines, they would not have won out without Tash and her beyond-mortal-ability attack magic. Re-figuring it now with the benefit of hindsight, Tyfelian realized that the whole endeavor would have been suicidal without Wrackblood and his men.
Beaming at all of them as they stood up, Taronin willed each dead Elnamerrna or Harbinger crewman back to life without regard for the moral differences.
Tyfelian was glad of that. He left Wrackblood, and Bri'kerzz's body, behind and approached the god, smiling.
Taronin spotted him before he even turned, and regarded him closely.
"Well done!" he roared at the half-drow. He noticed the five mangled corpses near where the vortex had been and frowned puzzledly until he read Tyfelian's mind... and then Jaclyn's, for Tyfelian did not know why Jaclyn had asked them to bring the defeated enemies along to see Taronin.
"It wasn't..."
Incredibly, Taronin cut himself off in mid-sentence, confused until he read Jaclyn's mind a second time.
"For the love of goodness, how?" the god blurted, aghast.
"Don't know," Jaclyn gasped. "I took in a lot of his knowledge," she stated, glancing at Bri'kerzz's body, "but I'll need a minute to sort any of it out."
Taronin nodded and did not read her mind again; she was only mortal and not a true telepath. The answers were in her mind, but scrambled.
Jaclyn closed her eyes for many moments, concentrating on the multitude of scattered memories. Then she turned to Tyfelian.
"Tyfelian, we're not finished here."
"Hm?"
"These demons and that lich aren't who they look to be. I got their names from Bri'kerzz's mind before he died—Krynderyl, whom we know, Flal-ta,"—she continued, pointing at the weird wolverine/orangutan—"Hlack, that giant wasp, Ladthiac the wizard—he isn't a lich—and Dretch, who we had to leave behind," she finished.
"What about them?" Tyfelian asked, genuinely curious. Jaclyn had asked them to risk their lives dragging dead bodies; he wanted to know why.
"I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll let you find out." Jaclyn pointed at Bri'kerzz's torn and battered body. "He isn't a demon prince, at least not any usual type. He's human. The others are people, too. That face is a graft of demon flesh."
"Graft?" Tyfelian frowned. "You mean, these people are half-golems?"
"Almost. It's the same thing, except that the grafts they got weren't golem parts. Demon flesh instead."
"I see," Tyfelian replied. He looked to Taronin, but he found no answers there. Taronin's face was marred with sadness and disbelief.
"There's more... and this is what I don't know how to tell you." She glanced at Bri'kerzz.
"Reach down and peel off his facial graft. You'll see what I mean right away, I think."
Tyfelian gingerly moved over to Bri'kerzz and examined his face, trying to see the human man underneath it. He reached down and used the enhanced strength of his fingers to break the graft apart and peel it off and out of the way. It took a couple moments, for Tyfelian occasionally had to stop and crush some parts of the graft to remove them.
Finally, he was ready and he removed the remainder of the facial graft like a mask. He glanced at it curiously.
"It looks almost like a costume... but it was part of him," Kiran observed.
"Demon flesh instead of golem parts... only the Solancii can do that, right?" Jalaysa asked Alzja.
"Far as I know," Alzja replied. She looked closely at the augmented bodies—other crewmen had torn off parts of the grafts, and she noted two humans, two half-elves, and an elf—but then she shook her head.
"I can't say for sure, but it could very well be Solancii body magic," she replied with a shudder of revulsion.
"It is," Wrackblood interjected.
"Hm?" Kiran asked him curiously.
Wrackblood's eyes blazed with hatred, and he pulled up the left sleeve of his tunic above the twin daggers capping it.
The others looked at the graft in astonishment. The dagger blades were not implements stuck into a cap. They were part of him; they had clearly grown straight out of the bones in the upper part of his left forearm.
"Their work," Wrackblood snarled.
"Who are the Solancii?" Sildara asked Wrackblood gently.
The scro could not answer, just bowed his head, looking thoroughly sickened.
"A sinister race from beyond time and beyond sanity," Taronin supplied.
"Good gods," Tyfelian breathed. He realized what he'd said and smiled sheepishly at Taronin, but then he resumed his examination of Bri'kerzz's heretofore hidden human face.
The damaged face Tyfelian found under the "mask" looked to be in its late thirties, strong, handsome, now at peace in death. The missing skin made it hard to see the whole face for what it was, but Tyfelian looked it over closely. He was about to give up and ask Jaclyn to simply tell him when he realized just who Bri'kerzz had been.
"Oh..." he moaned sadly. "By the gods..."
"Who is it, Ty?" Sildara asked, coming up near him.
Tyfelian shuddered, and went to his knees beside Bri'kerzz. His expression displayed not only sadness but also total disbelief, mirroring Taronin's reaction very well. He had not been so unable to deal with something he was seeing since the Elendran spies had made their move and he had seen them fighting his crew. His breathing became labored, and he shook his head with astonishment.
"It's Vesgar Longhart," he stammered out between gasps.
"Vesgar!" Kiran exclaimed. "That's... not possible!"
Sildara gazed unseeing at Bri'kerzz's—at Vesgar Longhart's—corpse.
"You told me he was perhaps the greatest Embimuran paladin who ever lived," she said to Tyfelian.
"He was," the half-drow replied, raising his eyebrows. "Lord Longhart may have been the greatest paladin, but he was the greatest exploration leader ever."
He looked over the surgically mutilated—enhanced—bodies.
"It seems that they explored some 'place that they really shouldn't have," he commented with bitter regret. "What a waste."
Kiran looked over at the wasp demon.
"'My name is Hlack'," the paladin murmured, quoting the creature. He took a breath as he tried to remember.
"'My name is Tack,'" he exclaimed.
Tyfelian glanced up at him, his expression perfectly miserable.
"Tack said that to his enemies whenever he could," Tyfelian remembered. A very faint smile touched his lips. "No one ever figured out why."
"What a miserable end for them," Kiran growled. "Turned into demons!"
Tyfelian finally stood. He sought out Jaclyn.
"What else did you learn?"
"Bri'kerzz is dead... he's been gone for thousands of years. Vesgar and his team found a strange underground cyst somewhere under the Eastern Reaches of Engethi. It made them go insane."
Taronin closed his eyes in deep sadness. "That is what happened to them, one hundred and seventy-two years ago. To my perceptions, they simply disappeared."
"When they left that cyst, they weren't the same people at all," Jaclyn added. "They went off into space looking for ways to conquer everything—literally." She paused. "But the Elendrans put an end to that by imprisoning them under Bala'bomen's ice."
Jaclyn's face twisted. She appeared as though she would be sick.
"Or, I should say, Trizfastell and his friends did that. Bri'kerzz and company woke up with the conjunction in Elendraspace a few years ago."
Sildara gasped, and the other six Svart Alfar looked at her puzzledly.
"But you found their bodies... just skeletons..." she trailed off, not understanding. "The times are off. Trizfastell and the others died over three hundred years ago."
Looking even more mortified, Jaclyn shook her head, holding down her rising gorge with an effort.
"No..." she choked out. "Bri'kerzz and his buddies killed them right after we set them free."
Sildara's eyes went wide.
"It was all a trick! Right from the start!" the Svart Alfar railed. "He tricked you with bait you couldn't refuse, and then..." she swallowed. "He knew the equipment you carried would see to it that you found Listraeespace!"
Sildara's eyes looked not daggers, but long swords, at the dead demon/fallen paladin.
Jaclyn nodded, turning green from the sheer malicious evil of Bri'kerzz's plan.
Taronin sighed.
"Revenge on Trizfastell first. He thought Vesgar was the real Bri'kerzz, and imprisoned him those many years ago. After you pointed the way to Listraeespace, he was only interested in you because he knew you might be able to stop him in his larger plan."
"Yes," Jaclyn replied, "and the fact that we're from Embimura didn't help his attitude any."
"How tragic," Taronin said unhappily. "But legions of my angels are decimating the Sweep legions as we speak, and you have averted the danger permanently." His widening smile enthralled all of them there, even Wrackblood and his marines. A strange easing of mind and body filled them, and then the paladin god waved them away, literally.
"Live well," Taronin said warmly, and with that, all of them were abruptly somewhere else.
Tyfelian's vision blurred. Divine Appler, with all of its mountain-sized buildings, in the planar ocean of Thalasia, vanished, replaced by...
"Quatha Vellar," Tyfelian said with a relieved slump of his shoulders as he looked around at the dockyards. He tried to ignore the puzzled looks of passing aarakocra, looking with alarm at the one hundred-odd people, half of them scro marines, wearing severely damaged clothing and armor, who had appeared out of nowhere. He knew that they had to be a very odd sight, especially with an aquarium full of water and upset triop fish sitting among them.
Tyfelian noticed that several interesting-looking items that had belonged to Vesgar and his companions also lay around, but he ignored those as well. He turned around to see Wrackblood.
"Mission accomplished," the scro rumbled.
An expression touched Wrackblood's eyes, one that Tyfelian had never seen before. He had seen Wrackblood insanely furious, alarmed, jealous, and resentful—only every time that he and Kiran had tried to kill the captain during the Second Unhuman War.
Now, it took him a moment to recognize a smile on Pelias Wrackblood's face—a face so very different from that of Kerliak—and a faint glimmer of sincere admiration in his eyes, peeking through the veneer of hatred, envy, and fear.
For those few seconds, the two men were not the champions of good and evil who had tried, so many times, to kill each other during the War.
They were instead, two warriors who had fought on opposite sides of a conflict, and each had been fortunate enough to live through it—and then fortunate enough to survive Bri'kerzz and his Sweep legions.
Tyfelian recalled the parting words of the Elendrans after they had crippled the Elnamerrna in Listraeespace, and he used them now to put his inner torment to rest, for good.
"Thank you for your help," he said to Wrackblood.
"You surprised even me, Tyfelian," Wrackblood noted. "I'll fight with or against you any time."
Tyfelian didn't answer with words, didn't really know what to say anyway, so he just let his widening smile say it all for him.
Quatha Vellar
Elnamerrna, docked
Midsummer 24th, 2461
Tyfelian murmured a few final orders to the dockworkers in the cargo bay, and then moved over to the entrance to join his friends.
The entire crew stood there. Some stood outside the ship, but many were within, leaning against the walls. The command crew stood apart, though, watching Tyfelian.
As the half-drow skipped over to join them all, Kiran spoke to him.
"The ship's complement," the paladin stated, "have a question for you, Ty."
Tyfelian glanced around at all of them, curious.
Anna shouldered forward from behind the command crew.
"Where to next, Fearless Leader?"
"We're staying with the ship," Sildara advised him. "All of us—not just my people and me. None of us are going to retire."
Tyfelian took a breath, eyes filled with wonder.
"Where to? It's always about that, isn't it? And I think that's wonderful."
He took a few steps over to the lip of the cargo bay.
"To... everywhere we can," he answered their question. His eyes rose to see the brilliant stars of Hearthspace, and the crew understood.
Anna's voice caught.
"That long exploration mission you mentioned..." she said with delight.
A smile lit Tyfelian's face, as bright as Hearthspace's stars. He took a breath to use his command voice, mixed with excitement and confidence.
"Let us begin!"
