The Larenfall Cycle, Episode 6:

The Bad King

by

Jeff Draper

I

The bellowing voice from above shouted, “We’re going down!” about the same time Miah Larenfall slammed into a bulkhead.  She looked up, blinking in the shifting light.  A putrid green hand was wrenching a skyshard out of its casing and pulling it outside the ship.  Miah couldn’t get her bearings and it took a second to realize it was because the whole skyship was canting forward and twisting.  She grabbed a post to steady herself and felt her whole body lighten as the ship started dropping. 

Across the cabin, her brother Isiah was holding on to a crate of supplies while stabbing at a different putrid green hand with his shortsword.  There was a screech from outside the ship and the hand pulled the skyshard back through a rotten and withered hole in the planks.

“We’ve got to get topside!” shouted Miah.  “Use our belts!”

Isiah nodded.  “I agree!”  He pulled himself around towards the stern and started running up the tilting deck.  Miah was right behind him.  They’d gotten halfway there when the bow bucked upward, or rather the stern started falling faster.  Around them and above them came the clash and clatter of combat along with the screams of the dying.

At the stairwell they saw a dead sailor sprawled on the floorboards after having fallen down from the top deck.  His skin was withered and sickly grey with a blackened hand print around his neck.  Isiah and Miah both leapt over him and climbed up the stairs.

Above and in front of them, on top of the stern cabin and standing at the wheel, was Cley Alexandros, a SkyKnight Paladin.  He stood tall with shining half plate, tan and blue cloak flying back like a flag, longsword at his hip.  In the fight he had lost his helmet and his sweaty blonde hair streamed behind him in the wind.  The wheel didn’t want to cooperate and his gauntleted hands fought against the rudderfan’s desire to keel over as the ship lost more skyshards.  He looked down at them.  “Level the sidesails!”

Isiah leapt up on the banister beside him and jumped for the upper deck.  Miah ran around and up a set of stairs on the side.  Isiah landed beside the starboard capstan and started turning it; she reached the port capstan and grabbed at the handles.  The capstans turned the rigging for the sidesails, which could be pulled in vertical for speed or leveled flat to maneuver.

Miah turned the handles while looking down out at the clipper’s deck.  It was a two masted vessel that could sail both sky and sea.  However, right now it was surrounded by a whirling, flapping horde of small demons, viciously misshapen and violently tempered.  They screeched and hissed while darting about like a swarm of hornets.  Two of them grabbed and lifted off a screaming crewmember.  The sailor kicked and struggled while a cluster of demons quickly encased him and dragged him down out of sight beneath the skyship.  His screaming soon stopped.  

The Larenfalls’ adventuring companions were the only ones left alive on deck.  Caelian, a cleric of Ayanwu, and Kaspar, a large fighter from Northmark, were attacking where they could but the demons were now keeping their distance.  Caelian had her Mace of Holy Light in one hand but could not get a demon close enough to strike.  She was instead casting her holy fire cantrip at anything greyish-green, putrid, and flying far enough away from the sails.  Her shield was nowhere to be seen.  Kaspar had both his shortsword and his longsword out but could only bat them around like useless flyswatters.  Human and demon blood stains were all over the deck.  Out beyond the bow, many miles away in the hazy distance, was the sky island they had been sailing towards when the attack occurred.  

They weren’t going to make it there.

In all the screaming, demonic chaos the thing that really caught Miah’s attention was the cloudtops of the Shattered Sea rising up to meet them.  They were about to go Under.  She looked over at her brother and could not keep the terror off her face.

Isiah turned the capstan and tilted the starboard sidesail level.  “Where’s the crew?” he shouted.

Cley leaned to one side, still fighting to keep the ship flying.  “Overboard!”

Isiah saw the cloud deck getting closer.  “We’ve all got shardbelts!  We have to jump.”

“That’s what the crew tried,” yelled Cley, nodding at the whirling demons.  “Didn’t last long!  No, there’s an island just ahead and below.  We land there and stand our ground.”

Isiah couldn’t quite make out what the paladin was seeing.  “The island’s gone Under?”

“Yes, but not too far!”

Isiah looked ahead of them and saw the first mists of the Shattered Sea curl up over the bow.  Yellowish and clumpy, Isiah had never seen them up close before.  They looked less like spun-sugar candy and more like pus boiling up out of a wound.  A huge wave of cloud cover followed and with a last glance at the morning sun Isiah watched the whole skyship go Under.  Seconds later the keel struck rock and knocked them all to one side.

Cley fell away from the wheel as the rudderfan splintered into a thousand pieces and ripped away from its mount.  Cloud and mist whirled around them as they bounced up off the deck.  Another collision tipped them on their other side and they all rolled up against the starboard rail.  The deck bucked up again with a loud crashing of shattered wood.  Huge pieces of the hull flipped up in the air over their heads.  The skyship went through a series of hard bumps as it slid down a hillside like a giantkin child had gotten tired with its toy.

What was left of the ship came to rest, tilted over on its starboard side.  The five of them were wedged against the railing and the deck, groaning and trying to get themselves righted.  Around them, the demons continued to swarm.  Isiah rolled himself over the rail and stood up on damp rock that was covered in grey lichen and torn rigging.  He had no idea where his bow was so he drew his shortsword.

Towards the front of the wreckage, Kaspar leapt up and skewered a demon with both his swords.  It dropped the stolen skyshard, which clattered across the stones only to be picked up by another demon that winged away before Kaspar could strike again.

Cley jumped out of the ship and landed next to Isiah, sword in hand.  Caelian and Miah were pushing themselves to standing about fifteen feet away.

Cley watched the demons flying away with skyshards in their hands.  “They’re stranding us here.”

Isiah took a few steps towards his sister but stopped when he noticed that the demon swarm was receding, heading out through the mists to the edge of the island and disappearing.  “Well... shit.”