Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (92)
We watch the approaching dwarves. They are
somewhat ahead of us, so it's hard to tell how fast they are coming.
I'll climb a little to above their height.
Visibility is low, so I can't get too high and still keep them in
sight. It's now clear that there are even more of them, and that
this 15 is only the first wave of many. As they approach, even
more come out of the clouds. There is a vast number of them.
I prepare to dive at any sign of hostilities, about
50 yards up. I can't see any weapons from up here.
The first three are now getting close. Now
it's clear that they are headed over the ship. As they sweep
over, Hosei steers the ship to the side as the dwarves toss a bomb over
the side. A sudden gust of wind, probably from Rabena, blows it
over the side.
Suddenly Ashu throws a ball of fire at them.
Hostilities are clearly under way. The burning gyrocopters go
into a dive and explode.
I dive fast at the lead of the first one of the next
three. I head straight at him in a battle of nerves to get him to
yield aside, but he doesn't yield and I smash into him. I take a
horrible blow, but the dwarf is unconscious and his machine dives out
of control. I bounce off, and would have broken free, but I catch
my hand in the cockpit and it slows me down. I try to grab two of
his bombs and launch free. The gyrocopters carry the mark of the
Brotherhood of Memory.
The gyrocopter scrapes along the bottom of the hull
of the leatherhawk, scraping off the blades and falling fast. The
other two come in for a bomb run. Baraku throws a stick at the
rotor of one of them, while Rabena starts a tornado some distance off
the ship aiming to take out the back one and then the middle one of the
wave. Ashu prepares to shoot a fireball at one as soon as it
passes.
Rabena's tornado wreaks havoc, while Ashu shoots up
a wall of flame to intercept the incoming enemies.
Now a new threat appears, demons that ride like the
one I fought before, nine of them.
I am not a good distraction to take enemies away
from the ship, but it works the other way around. I fly towards
the hole as fast as I can with the support of the sokin roku.
Perhaps I can get there and summon it to throw it through.
((The tornado does work against the demons, but not
as well as against the gyrocopters. The latter are recovering
from their disrupted flight and are starting to come back up again.
Ashu is expanding his wall of fire to more like a
sphere to protect the ship.
Suddenly it becomes apparent that the demons are
attacking the dwarves too. Miyara commands that any of them who
are fighting each other are to be left alone, concentrating only on the
ones fighting us.
Unfortunately the wall of flame is making things
hotter, which is beginning to scorch the ship. He drops the wall
of flame and goes back to fireballs.
Once Ashu drops the wall, it's then clear that the
gyrocopters are fleeing. As soon as they do that, the remaining
four demon/shark pairs turn back to concentrate on the ship.
Baraku tries to ice spike them, Ashu tries to
fireball them, while Rabena uses elementals to keep the demons busy but
doesn't hurt them.
Hosei suggest that Rabena use air elementals to make
them go faster. She asks a couple to start pushing the ship.
As the demons start to get close, it's clear that
what they're trying to do is hack the ship apart, not the people on
it. That makes it hard for Ashu to target them with fireballs,
but he tightens them down and that works better.
After about ten minutes, the ship is in bad shape
but propped up by air elementals. The demons, however, puff out
of existence as they die.
Hosei passes the wheel to Carimera, telling her to
hold it still. He casts Mend on the wings, which will fix them
until the next sunrise; unfortunately he doesn't actually know the
spell, and it doesn't work. He goes back to ask Sun how much fuel
they have, and he says there is still plenty -- the guage has hardly
moved. He returns to take the wheel.
From the air elementals, it's clear that the ship is
still capable of flying, but it's very close to not working.
There is extra leather to repair the wings here, but it will take a
leatherworker -- like Baraku. Rabena gives him an air elemental
to carry him out to the wings to repair them while they fly.
Soon after he gets started, there is the sound of an
incoming gyrocopter. It's ahead of them, and coming up from the
ground, climbing steeply to intercept the also climbing
leatherhawk. Hosei keeps the ship climbing over the approaching
machine, and believes they will just miss each other.
That's not the case, however. It catches the
underside of the ship at the bow, flips over, and starts sliding upside
down along the deck towards the pilot house. Air pushes from
several of the crew shove it to a stop.
The pilot comes tumbling out of it, screaming with
rage, whips out her weapons. It's Mahtilde. Miyara launches
herself into combat. As they line up to face off, Slurk leaps
from lying up against the gunwhale and hits Mahtilde from the side,
screaming all the way. The two go over the side of the ship and
fall, she in the beastman's tight grasp.
Rabena tells an elemental to rescue Slurk and let
Mahtilde fall. It has to hit Mahtilde several times to break them
apart, but does indeed bring Slurk back to the deck. He thanks
Rabena heartily.
Baraku does an excellent job under the
circumstances. It looks ugly but seems to be working much
better. The air elementals are pushing the ship forward and up,
but Rabena believes the ship will indeed fly now, although it would
obviously slow down. She goes back to Sun, asking him to speed up
the engine to see if it can sustain them without elemental help.
As the engines speed up, Rabena backs off the elementals -- the ship
slows down and doesn't climb as well, but it does continue to
fly. She dismisses the elementals for the time.
Hosei levels off the flight of the ship.
After 30 minutes, they begin to sense that they are
approaching the center of the storm.))
I begin to sense that I'm approaching the center of
the storm, and the sogin roku is unwilling to help. I slow down
dramatically and fly on.
Ahead of me, I see the hole. I see a vision.
I am blind. Everything is dark. I am
liquid, the thoughts of Tzeentch. There is no-one left to drink
me. I drip down the walls of the chaos place. They are
coming to kill me. The dwarves and their bombs mean to destroy
me, and have another enemy to come too. They think I'm important,
but I'm not. Kyosuke part will die, but the Tzeentch part will
not, it will live forever. Their actions will seal the victory of
Tzeentch, and the 40 century plan will be completed. I drip down
the walls of the cave where the GM lived. I was bubbling in his
cave, the essence of Tzeentch, splattered on the walls of the cave by
the bombs on the ropes.
Somewhere along the flight I dropped the bombs, I
don't remember when.
It is a terrible sight. I pass out.
I wake up still in the air, much closer to the hole
than I have ever been. I summon the sogin roku, but it doesn't
come. I can sense it, but it isn't coming. I turn and dive
away from the hole, flying as hard as I can in the direction of the
sogin roku. I am still losing ground.
I am slipping into the hole. I cry out to
everything to get me to the ship. For a while, I make ground
again. I have managed to pull myself back to where I woke up, I
think but I'm still being pulled and I am getting tired.
I keep struggling, and finally start to hurt as I
pour my whole being into it.
I am almost fainting from lack of strength, but pull
back to where I can fly. The elementals can't help me here.
I head for the ground. Finally I get an elemental to take me to
the ground and lower me gently.
I am too injured to know where I am, from pure
exhaustion. I have no option but to make myself comfortable and
rest, knowing I will pass out soon.
There are large rocks, big terracotta rocks around
me, like giant shards of pottery. That's all I see before I do
pass out.
((The ship is geting closer, to where they can see
the hole now. All have visions, the end of their first visions,
leaving them in various states.
Miyara runs over to Hosei and attacks him, trying to
kill him.
Baraku calls for full speed from Sun, who is shaken
but otherwise ok. He brings the engine to full power, and the
ship lurches foward.
Baraku and Rabena each summon the sogin roku, both
believing they must throw the rock through. It heads straight to
Rabena, who runs to the bow ready to throw it into the rapidly
approaching hole.
Miyara hacks into the unresisting Hosei.
Baraku goes up behind Rabena, thinking she can't
throw as well as he can. If she pulls her arm back to throw too
easily, he'll grab it and do it himself.
Ashu shoves himself between Miyara and Hosei and
tries to parry. She attacks him too, striking hard. He
parries the next stroke, however, and she drops her wakizashi.
Again she strikes him hard, while he parries the next blow. She
keeps up the relentless attack on the crude barbarian with the axe.
Meanwhile, the hole comes ever closer. Baraku
asks Rabena if he can throw it, and she passes it to him because
although her vision shows her throwing it, it shows her failing.
He first throws his throwing stick to check the range, planning on
waiting until he has a certain shot with the rock. His stick
heads straight into the hole. He still doesn't feel a stronger
pull on himself or the rock, just the ship is flying into the hole, so
he waits longer.
Hosei stands still at the while, bleeding while
blades and axes whirl around him.
Miyara and Ashu continue to fight.
An air elemental delivers Kyosuke to the ship.))
I wake on the ship, recovered from my.fatigue
Miyara and Ashu are fighting. I want to help her, but she will
clearly win soon. I must continue my original plan.
I run up to Baraku, yelling to him to give it to
me. I try to grab it and will it to me, but we are
balanced. I yell to Rabena to tell him to give it to me, I will
fly it in and close the hole so they will live. She says
something to him in a barbarian. I tell her to tell him I'll try
to throw it, but it has to go in ahead of the ship. Baraku gives
it to me.
I take off and fly as hard as I can at the hole.
Meanwhile, Hosei faints.
Miyara and Ashu continue their fight, Ashu parrying
surprisingly well.
I gain five yards on the ship. It's slow
progress.
Baraku tells Rabena to take over the wheel, and runs
over behind Miyara. Rabena stands at the bow watching me, ready
to summon it back if I don't get it through.
Miyara continues to slice away at Ashu, but with
barbarian stubborness he refuses to yield to his wounds.
I am ten yards from the ship, holding the sogin roku
out in my left hand. I will throw it through if I can see where
the boundary is; if not my outstretched arm will go through first and
with luck the hole will close and merely sever my arm.
Baraku swings at Miyara from behind, trying to knock
her out. He hits her extremely hard over the back of the
head. She staggers and collapses, stunned, dropping her katana.
I think I can see the boundary. I am close
enough to throw, maybe. I try to throw it from about 5 yards
away. The hole is a sphere the size of a house.
I throw the rock. It goes in, in slow motion,
sliding through the hole.
There is suddenly a huge sucking. It sucks
into itself and vanishes, while we are sucked towards it very hard but
not into it.
We go flying on past at very high speed.
The hole it gone. The rock is gone. The
clouds are still here, but the sucking has gone. I still have my
wings, out ahead of the ship, and it is headed down with Baraku trying
to get it under control, using all his strength to get it level.
Ashu is now sitting on Miyara, burning her, on
fire. Her urge to kill is gone, but she remembers it all.
She shouts to Ashu to get off him. Baraku asks if she's going to
keep attacking. She says no, while Rabena comes over to see who's
worst off. Baraku screams to wake Hosei first. She does
that, despite Ashu's vicious injuries.
I am feeling very light-headed. I try to fly
back to the deck of the ship. ((Rabena is light-headed too.
Baraku is feeling very strange in his bowels. Ashu is starting to
feel the effects of his burning.))
Rabena gets Hosei up, although not fully healed from
Miyara's expert blows.
I get back on the ship. I see Miyara is
standing up and has picked up her weapons.
Seriously light-headed now, I suddenly POOF! and
become dust, blowing away in the wind. So does Rabena. Ashu
ignites and burns him instantly into a greasy smoking spot.
Hosei takes over the wheel from Baraku.
Torrents of bodily fluids rush out from Baraku under
pressure, eyes popping out, leaving only the skin lying on the floor in
a large sticky puddle.