The Worldeater Saga, Part XXVI: The Dragon’s Fury

Upon the three-hundred-and-seventh day of the Creators’ Monomachy, the northern theocracy embarked upon a clandestine operation to board the vessel Drakkenmont had left within Sapience’s airspace.

After two weeks of dedicated scouting, Spinesreach’s institute had devised a plan with the help of Legyn, Evlentesh, and Nawan. With their combined genius, the city utilised the Archivium’s geometric mastery to divine the exact spatial position of the sleek Dreikathi getaway craft and then impressed this information within the minds of a circle of magi. These Sciomancers employed a theoretical arcane glyph that they had formulated after a brief consultation with the enchanters of Mournhold, with a particular focus upon the changing nature of their target destination’s variable distance.

After several difficult moments, the plan bore fruit: soon, a trembling portal burst open with their tundral launch site. Gathering her comrades into an efficient squad of unstoppable northern violence, Regent Sheryni led a team consisting of Alukhar, Ansoti, Virelen, Oridez, Legyn, Tina, Tillian, Irra, Mileta, Rhyot, Jondyrr, Kagura, Aeryx, Wjoltyr, Rad, Nawan, Seurimas, Aliyah, Gunnar, the Caentoi wanderer known as Tepevra and the renegade Akkari known as Amyie, through the shuddering gateway. Upon its other side, they found a Drakkenmont crew out of sorts. Possessed of vicious, unreasonable malice and uncontrollable rage, the airship’s gun operators and technicians immediately put up a valiant (but ultimately futile) fight.

As brutal chaos ensued, the ship’s captain emerged from the hold and began to attack Spirean operatives with the same savage, single-minded intent as his crew. Fighting through the mysterious crimson haze limning every inch of the ship, the Dragon’s warriors confronted the captain and beat him into submission sufficient enough to render him pliable to hypnosis. Capitalising on his weakened state, the shadowy Sciomancers set to work intensifying his delirium with shadow magic, rendering him further susceptible to suggestion. Numerous Syssin agents joined in with the coercive magic until the vessel’s leader mutely marched towards the engine room and began to remove layers of security from its access door.

With half the door’s defenses breached, the Archivium set themselves to the task of unlocking the remaining wards upon the door. As they conducted numerological tampering, however, they found themselves beset by pairs of magitechnical security drones that were swiftly disabled and disassembled for future inspection by the Spirean Institute. While some of the Dragon’s warriors busied themselves with clearing up the deck, the rest of the party moved forward as the engine room’s doors swung open.

Though the North had seized control of the engine room, a terrible revelation awaited them: this airship had been the one to house the Demon Blade. Worse yet, some fool had thrust it through the airship’s engine, granting it control of the vessel’s flight systems.

The Theocracy immediately searched the ship top to bottom in hopes of finding a way to take full control of the ship and take it into their custody, but found that the wheel of the helm was entirely locked by a mysterious force. Those that made attempts to interact with the Blade found themselves reduced to ash by its malicious sorcery, and members of the Archivium soon heard it vocalise a demand with their collective psyche. Impressing upon them that it desired a prisoner, the Demon Blade soon steered the airship towards the eastern seaboard and set a course for the Emerald Ocean.

With no choice but to crash the airship lest the Demon Blade slip out of their care once more, Director Seurimas suggested that the city ground the airship via catastrophic malfunction. Together with Tepevra, he analysed the engine and found weak points that would bring about critical failure if capitalised upon. With varied techniques involving elicitation, gravitational magic, destructive runes, crackling lightning, and plain old percussive maintenance via a spanner, the city thrashed the engines and promptly proceeded to plan their escape from the faltering vessel.

Deploying special technology made from gamzafar, most of the Spirean agents leapt off the deck and found their way to the ground below with the help of the North’s myriad dragonlings. The inharmonious, metallic din of some distant destruction rang out through the realm as the airship’s engines faltered, coupled with the percussive thud of disastrous explosions. Grinding screeches pierced mortal hearing alongside the groan of a massive disturbance within Sapience’s embattled skies, akin to the gnashing of mechanical teeth.

Bleeding smoke and prismatic fire, airship’s sleek silhouette thundered downward from the upper reaches of the sky’s metaphysical concaves.

As the stricken vessel carved through the air towards terrestrial collision, it cast a lurid film over the tumultuous projection of the Monomachy. Primordial possibility set the duel’s frightful violence into confusing discolouration, bringing discord to an already nigh incomprehensible scene. The airship’s direction wavered and shifted as it speared downward. Its propellers turned in vain against the wind as the engine suffered a catastrophic meltdown. The contents of its hold and deck alike toppled into a free fall within the welkin blue, individual pieces of its body stripped away to fall alongside its greater mass as its whole structure unravelled.

Trailing irradiated ylemnic smog, Drakkenmont’s surveillance craft hurtled towards a devastating crash course with the dreary town of Mournhold. As it neared the ground, the airship scraped against the roofs of nearby homes, its collision obliterating anything unfortunate enough to rest beneath its colossal bulk. A thunderous roar rolled throughout Sapience as the imperial interloper met its end, shaking the foundations of the eastern seaboard with the seismic disturbance of a catastrophic landing. Villagers fled in a panic as more structures came toppling down amidst this sudden, quaking disturbance, livelihood and dwelling both brutally swept aside by the unexpected arrival of a fallen aerial craft. Enchanters emerged from individual residences to assist with countercharms and mystical contrivances, smothering isolated disasters with desperate haste.

A crimson haze leaked from the remnants of the vessel as the smoking detritus settled, its inexorable crawl cut short by a flash of brilliant, ylemnic radiation. Cataclysmic incandescence surged forth from the heart of the Dreikathi scrap, bringing with it another explosive column of energy that seared shadows into every surrounding surface with its blistering heat. Those who had remained behind upon the deck met a conflagrant end, all trace of their remains scattered by the scorching ruin of a devastating airship collision.

Even as the dreaded Demon Blade settled into its new home, a lone figure surveyed the shores of the Green Lake…

Penned by my hand on Quensday, the 6th of Chakros, in the year 512 MA.