<u>15</u>


    He was <u>many</u> things, but none of them stupid. None of them weak, or prone to yield under threat of destruction. He was on trial in absentia for losing the fleet and igniting a war with Averna? So be it. Let Milardin fall into the sea. Easy enough for an earthmover; a powerful elf-lord blazing with hatred and wrath. Let a great wave be triggered from under the water, scrubbing Milardin right down to the bedrock, and let cursed Shanella be blamed for the deed.


    As for his other trap, the bait was already dangling, soon to be taken. All that he needed to do was corrupt most of Karellon''s portals. Rig them to send their travelers where he intended, or nowhere at all. That hundreds of thousands of innocent people would perish meant nothing but good to Lord Arvendahl. Their manna and deaths would fuel his own aims, making certain the <u>rest</u> of his plan.


    “The wretch has allies,” mused Falco, drumming the fingers of his spell-hand against the scarred wooden table where… in better days… he’d feasted and studied with mighty Sherazedan. “Time and again, that lick-spittle pair have provided comfort and aid to their warg-son companion.”


    The stronghold shifted around him, seeming filled with the whispers and laughter of spirits. Bound in ethereal chains by the greatest of wizards, they perhaps sensed a less-worthy hand at the wheel… but that would soon change. They could laugh all they wanted, so long as they did as he bade them; achieving first vengeance, then freedom for one who mattered more than his heart’s blood and life-breath. Escape for one he’d trade everything else in the world to bring back.


    Shaking emotion away, Arvendahl called on the power of every demon and djinn who haunted the place. Saw in his mind’s eye the allies, tabaxi and wood-elf; luck-wielder, tree-lover. Reaching out through the ether, he made ready to snatch them away from their doings in Freeport. Away from the Sword and its witless guardians.


    Not enough to just shunt the allies aside, nor could he slay them. Not even with one-sided gates. Like the traitor himself (that offspring of fallen princes and whoring gods), they’d been fate-shielded. He had other means to be rid of them, though. Easier methods, and far more amusing.


    Arvendahl traced a sign in the air, drawing power from twelve-hundred corrupted portals and thousands of sudden small deaths. Next, he reached through space to seize the tabaxi and wood-elf. One heartbeat passed, two, and they formed in the air before him, wide-eyed, silenced and writhing. Arvendahl strode to the place where they hovered, pinned by the stronghold’s unbreakable magic. Stared for a moment at a grubby druid and puff-tailed tabaxi, then shook his head.


    “Away with you,” commanded Lord Arvendahl. “Be altered in semblance, stripped of your past and cast off through time! Let us see how much good you are to the warg-pile when scattered like ash.”


    He completed his spell with a flourish, watching as the imprisoned druid and rogue began changing forms, then vanished entirely. They were somebody else’s problem now, leaving the traitor alone and near friendless. Freeing his lordship to hunt.


    “Skyland!” he thundered. “To me!”


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    Something was wrong with the gate. Rather than bring him directly to Filimar and Vikran, it smeared into sudden dense mist. To a half-place of terrified shrieks and weird echoes. He could sense Arvendahl’s hand in all this. Started to ready his last-magic, but… there was a strong draining current at work. An implacable tug on his power. Try as he might, he could not form a spell without losing manna.


    Then, somehow, Lerendar turned up with Pretty One. Just standing nearby, at first, then reaching into Val''s faerie pockets. They took something… the gifts of Burrough… leaving a bottle of potion in its place. His brother’s presence grounded Valerian, calming wrath, bringing safety. More than that, in this place of no where and all whens, he could sense that his brother was seeking him.


    “Karellon, Low Town,” he managed to say, as Lerendar reached out to grip him. A bit of power flared through that misty contact.


    “I’m coming,” he heard. Then the portal wrenched itself open, thrusting Valerian onward.


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


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    The Dark Cloud’s perpetual motion machines needed a great deal of work, but Erron (through Miche) got all three of them sorted. First, he cleansed and oiled the wheels, their azits and pendulum bars, then rotated those nested gears through all five dimensions, unjamming their many teeth. A few very strange things had been caught in there, not all of them peaceful or dead.


    Anyhow, he got the job done, warded all the while by a glowering, axe-wielding orc. Satisfied, the elf-lord sat back and glanced at her briefly, saying,


    “Watch this.”


    All it took was a quick, light tap to each cross-planar mainspring, and the machines whirred to life; frictionless, glittering, beautiful. The heart and soul of Dark Cloud. Marget leaned over his shoulder to watch as the elf cut on that quiescent transfer globe.


    “The machines will now run until stopped,” he told her. “But they lack the strength to power a ship of this size. The transfer globe amplifies output to charge up the manna tanks, running the drive system, too.”


    “Hunh,” Marget grunted. “This bucket of ghosts will now fly?” she demanded, poking a sausage-like finger at one of those whirling and chiming machines.


    Erron finished tinkering with the spell-globe, then got to his feet. Spell-cleansed and dusted himself, shaking his head.


    “Not yet,” he admitted, finding a tiny sliver of smile. “The Cloud is too badly drained. We’ll need to wait at least…”


    That’s when it hit him, like a fist to the stomach or a stomping boot to the kidneys. The sudden cold sense that Firelord… that the missing small god was in terrible pain and grave danger. Miche swayed and started to fall, catching himself on a section of drive-cowling. As Marget reached over to seize him, the elf heard a cold, distant voice; taunting, threatening.


    A gate split the air directly in front of him. It wavered and danced, weirdly misty and edged in dark fire, just wide enough for one person. Through it he saw a high cliff… and the witch. Worse, in one gnarled hand, that hag clutched a flickering globe of red light. She laughed aloud, pointing to the ground at her feet. Though her speech was tainted and garbled like everything else in this place, her meaning was clear: Come to me now, or he dies.


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    Through that tomb-silent orbital station went V47 Pilot, the rescued cartridge and memory stick safe in his trans-dimensional pockets. He could not port himself or commandeer any hover-carts. Frozen time locked everything else but the pilot, and he couldn’t move very quickly. Battling air like hot mud was a struggle. On the bright side, he had all the time in the cosmos… so long as that ‘spell’ kept OS1210 in stasis.


    He ran into the frequent pulses of thicker air that were sound waves, hearing bytes and tatters of noise as he pushed his way out of Recycling. Stopped several times for food-stock and water (which would not flow but had to be bitten and swallowed in rubbery chunks).


    At last… taking no time at all for the station, near three standard days for Pilot… he came to the hangar. Next had to choose and climb into a battle-mech shell. There were hundreds of thousands moth-balled and ready in back, stowed away from the time when there had been more than just Gold, Blue and Red Flights… a time when pilots had numbered over a hundred-and-fifty thousand. Not just as assets, either. <u>People</u>.


    V47 Pilot shook his head, wandering the miles-long boarding gantry that spanned OS1210’s back-hangar ‘boneyard’. Made his decision at last. Settled on a Mark-12 Titan, because it could seat two (Pilot himself and Foryu, whom he very much wanted to see). Also, because it was massive and very well armed. What Ace called “a crowd pleaser”, meant for pitched battle on actual dirt, down-planet-side.


    The Titan was a very tall, blocky and old-fashioned mech, but it would do. V47 Pilot looked longingly at the immobile gantry elevator, sighed, and then started his climb through dense, scorching air. Two food stops later, he got to the cockpit and U-coded in, using: OPENUPACCESSOS1210.


    The cowling unlocked and creaked slightly open. Then its motion stopped, balked by that file-not-found Sleeping Beauty Spell. V47 Pilot grunted in weary frustration but got straight to work, hooking meat-fingers in through a very slight gap, then straining like fury to widen it. That took another food break plus a short, restless power-down. He eventually levered the cowling up far enough to squirm through, with a flurry of show-vid cursing and badly scraped, soft, worthless flesh. <u>Why</u>, in the name of all Base Code, had he wanted a non-cyborg body?! And… what would Foryu think of his change?


    Hadn’t an answer for either question, so shoved them into a junk-file for ‘never’. Next dropped into the Titan’s cockpit which… delivered a pleasant surprise. There were two actual seats, he noticed, both having safety restraints and padded headrests. No contact plates or nerve-probes, but genuine instrument readouts and haptic controls.


    V47 Pilot smiled, placing a hand on the Titan’s wraparound instrument panel. Everything, all of it, he knew from the show. From Ravn, who’d lost his entire unit on Vernax-3, fighting the Draugr, but had never given up Speedy, his Mark-12 Battleoid.


    “I can do this,” whispered the pilot. “<u>We</u> can do this.”


    The Titan’s cartridge-slot was there, just to the right of its twin control sticks, exactly as modeled in Rogue Flight. Nodding, Pilot drew V47’s AI cartridge out of storage, then pushed it into the waiting receiver. Had to fight frozen time, and didn’t get instant results because… well, nothing could happen for anyone else but <u>him</u>, so long as that spell was in place. Right.


    He took a very deep, difficult breath and said,


    “I… do not know if there is anyone who will receive this, or who cares for the fate of an asset… but I need help. Please. I cannot fully install my partner without letting time flow, and… and I am afraid. I fear that we will be detected and killed before we can launch. Please… I have something very important to do. Not just for me, but for everyone else who is trapped here. Let this work. Let us get out.”


    And then, finger over the upload button, V47 Pilot dropped his spell and re-started time.