Snippet #2566554

The morning after the festival, the crew and guild, in greater and lesser degrees of hungover from the previous evening’s activities, got themselves back onto the ship by whatever means necessary, and they set a course for the south. They didn’t really have a direction to go in, for the moment, but they did need to stay on the move to prevent the false king’s people from finding them before they were ready to be found, and they didn’t exactly blend with dwarves and river-traders, to be entirely frank about it.

It was on the second day of this that the captain noticed something irregular. Ahead of them loomed what appeared to be a rather large hill. They were flying at a somewhat lower altitude than usual, due to the desire to stay hidden from the imperial ships that may or may not be in standard airspace above them—there was a nice layer of clouds today perfect for that sort of concealment. But the topographical charts she had of this area indicated that it was supposed to be mostly flat; there wasn’t supposed to be anything in need of flying around for miles.

“Did I read the charts wrong?” Gwen’s question, directed mostly at herself, though she supposed Sven was right there and could answer if he wanted to, carried a touch of incredulity, and she thought that much was justified. She’d been navigating for years, but she supposed everyone made mistakes sometimes. “Hey Froggy, take the controls for a bit; try to steer us around real nice and gentle-like. I’m gonna go find those charts.” They were just in her cabin, which wasn’t far away—in fact, it was situated right above the engine room. She liked to hear the hum of it underneath her when she slept… if in fact she chose to sleep in a bed at all.

The Lieutenant pinched the bridge of his nose briefly before squinting through the window. No, she wasn't wrong. The hill that was steadily approaching wasn't supposed to be there. He remembered the charts clearly. He supposed he'd seen stranger things, but it didn't mean this was any less odd. He nodded and watched as Gwendolyn went off to fetch the charts and hunkered beside Frog.

Her progress to the cabin was, however, interrupted when she caught something out of the corner of her eye. Almost walking right past it, she registered it a moment later and did a double-take, leaning backwards to look out the porthole window at the hill. Only… could you call it a hill if it was growing bigger? This one looked as though it were swelling up, like some kind of rock-and-dirt pustule on the earth. Blinking several times, Gwen rubbed at her eyes. She’d slept in the last week, right? This wasn’t a dream or some kind of crazy hallucination?

She supposed, in the end, that she couldn’t be sure, so she turned right back around and ran for the top deck, booking it over to the rail and catching herself on it with both hands. “Uhh… does it look to anyone else like that hill is moving?”

"It... is moving," Percy answered. He was on deck, reading one of Gwen's books that she kept on board when the hill came into view. He'd seen it initially and thought nothing of it, at least not until they began to approach. It was something nagging him in the back of his head, like an itch he wasn't quite able to scratch. Another glance at the hill revealed a different view. It was almost like something was rising up from the ground, and that caught his attention. He'd pressed himself against the railing to get a better look when Gwen joined him. He spared her a single glance before returning gaze toward it.

His eyes remained on it only for a short while as he closed them and reached out with his druidic magic. He threw his consciousness all around him like a net, and he could feel every creature with a life force around him. He searched for anything that was near enough to tap into its consciousness to get a better understanding at what was happening. At least, that was his initial plan. As he reached further and further, closer to the hill, he felt a resistance grow. A bead of sweat formed at the corner of his temple as he focused. But there was no amount of focus that could've prepared him for what happened.

He felt a life force greater than anything before it, and nearly as ancient as the guardians. The immense amount of life radiating from it kicked him back into his own body hard enough to physically push him backward. His hands went to his face as a splitting headache racked his head. "Whatever it is..." he said slowly, "It's alive."

Mordecai, who had been on the other side of the deck, moved over to the port side as the commotion stirred, scanning over his memory for anything at all resembling this phenomenon. He came up with nothing at all. Percy seemed to think it was alive, something which seemed a decent conclusion from the fact that it was moving. “This unit has no data of relevance.” Given his general inability to understand fear, there was no trace of it in his tone.

Kethyrian was feeling a little more urgency. “How about we stop speculating about what it is and get the fuck out of its way?”

Theon came up from below the top deck, while Dio had been hanging out near the automaton, and both turned to examine the bulging hill that wasn't a hill. Theon wondered if there was anything farsight would be able to quickly do here, but decided there wasn't time, and he wouldn't be able to concentrate enough regardless. Dio didn't say anything, but she was silently agreeing with Kethyrian's line of thought.

“Okay… not a bad plan.” Gwen could admit that she didn’t exactly like the idea of flying right into the thing, after all, but it was huge, and seemed to be growing larger, and she wasn’t exactly sure they’d be able to avoid it.

No sooner had she taken several steps towards the cockpit door than a large hand came down on her shoulder. Lohengrin, looking unusually sober, shook his head. “It’s not going to help. It knows we’re here; that’s why it moved at all.” He dropped his hand back to his side, a frown etched deeply into his features. He stared at the creature—for indeed, it was beginning to dig itself out of the ground, showing a construction that resembled some kind of quadrupedal… thing—with what looked like a mixture of anger, revulsion, and, Gwen could swear, fear. Maybe not an unwise reaction, considering.

But it was not a fear of the unknown at all, but rather quite the opposite. “You’re looking at a colossus. It’s alive, but only in a sense. Animated by very old magic, and usually inactive. Deer-boy can look it up later. All you need to know is that the spell holding it together and letting it move is physically grounded in a sigil somewhere in its surface… and that unless it’s given a bigger, more interesting target, it will probably smash this tin trap right out of the sky.”

Apprehension twisted his features as he moved to the place on the railing Gwen had occupied just a moment before. “Find the sigil, and then destroy it. Or turn tail, I guess.” Gwen watched with evident confusion as Lohengrin jumped up onto the rail of the ship, bracing himself with hands and bare feet in a crouch, tilting his head as though he were gauging a distance.

“So, pardon the silly question, Strawberry, but while we’re doing that, what exactly will you be doing?” Flippancy was the best antidote to hysteria, at least as far as Gwen was concerned. It was, after all, a hill with legs that liked to kill people. It was one or the other here.

“I told you. Bigger, more interesting target.” There was a wry twist to his lips, and then he removed one hand from the railing to snap a lazy salute, before tipping forward and propelling himself away from the ship. Gwen, wide-eyed, ran to the edge and looked down to where, limbs spread, Lohengrin was falling… until he wasn’t.

He disappeared for a moment under the ship, and then, even over the rush of the wind as Gorlak tried to pilot them to safety and the rumbling, grinding sound of the colossus’s movement, an earsplitting sound, halfway between a roar and a shriek, rent the air, and she was forced to clap her hands against her ears. “What the…?” Was that the colossus?

The question was answered most effectively by the sudden change in her visual field. Still looking down, Gwen was most definitely surprised to note the appearance of a very large, reptilian head, followed shortly thereafter by a spiked neck, pair of leathery wings, and a long, rudderlike tail. The beast glimmered an almost incandescent red, individual scales catching the sunlight beating down on them and reflecting it back. The Elysium was not the largest class of ship Albion had to offer, but the dragon—what else could it be?—had to be the size of an imperial dreadnought at least, which made him half again the size of her airship, and he made a beeline for the colossus, which was still considerably bigger again.

“Strawberry?”

Theon needed a moment just to remember how to function again, and when he did, he blinked several times at the red dragon flying off in the direction of the colossus. Two things he never expected to see in his lifetime, and two things he had entirely too little understanding of. Currently, he felt as though he was about to witness a battle of two titans, which was not inaccurate. Both combatants easily dwarfed the size of their entire ship.

"What sigil?" he asked, feeling the need to shout from the sudden roar of the dragon. "What does it look like? Where is it? How big is it? Asshole couldn't have told us any of this before jumping ship?" Obviously they'd all been lied to the whole time, as he could tell by the looks of surprise all around. Still, he didn't feel inclined to just abandon him and run away. The guy was a dragon. For once, the scryer found himself intellectually intrigued. There was a healthy fear of the giant mountain monster, of course, but Lohengrin wouldn't have attacked it if he didn't think they could kill it. He wasn't the suicidal type, at least from what Theon could tell.

Dio, on the other hand, was largely overwhelmed by all of this, and felt entirely out of her element. Her own powers were no doubt worthless against such a massive thing, and the battle itself seemed enormously foolish to her. "We should run. All of us! It can't be that fast... can it?" It was a mountain, for goodness' sake. Couldn't they all just get away without a fight through the air?

This was some kind of cosmic fucking joke.

The worst part of all was, it kind of made sense. The scales, the vaguely-smoky breath… that asshole was a goddamn dragon. No wonder she couldn’t kill him. Actually, scratch that. The worst part was definitely that he was actually doing all of this shit to save their sorry hides, and he’d talked about it like he expected them to just abandon him, which was indeed her immediate thought. She could see how it would have been difficult to bypass a creature of that size, this close to the ground, if it was focused on them. But it wasn’t, anymore, and if they started swinging wide now, they should be able to go around without a scrape, assuming it ignored them in favor of the giant fucking dragon that was flying right towards it.

That moron. They were doing such a bang-up job of hating each others’ rotten guts and then he had to pull some stupid sacrificial bullshit and make her feel like an even worse person for having the instinct to leave him behind. Well, what the hell did she care? Moral superiority was not something Kethyrian had ever claimed for herself, and in this instance, tucking tail and running was the thing most likely to keep them alive.

But…

Her eyes flickered over the others, resting last of all on Vivi, whose response to the whole thing was so obvious Kethy need not even observe it to know how it would go. Is it really living if all you’re doing is staying alive? The more generalized point that underscored her friend’s every action. And damn her if she wasn’t starting to wonder the same thing. In the end, she could muster nothing to say. If they tried to do as Lohengrin suggested, they had little chance of survival; she was a pragmatist and she knew that. On the other hand… if they just ran from this… could she just turn her back on someone taking this big a risk for their sake? Sure, he was a massive flying lizard, but that colossus was even bigger. She didn’t like his chances, either.

And what the hell was so precious about her damn life that she’d sink so low just to keep it?

“Magical sigils are usually proportionally sized to the thing they animate,” Mordecai contributed. This, at least, was something he knew about, though never in this context. “Accurate estimates of this being’s size are difficult, but this unit suspects it would be at least seven feet in diameter, and likely at least faintly luminous. Perhaps Master Theon could ascertain its location?” He didn’t seem to be considering the possibility of a tactical retreat, though whether that was just a function of his programming or something else, Kethyrian was certainly in no position to be speculating on.

"Seven feet, huh?" Theon echoed, eyeing the toaster skeptically. "Well, that should be easy to find." It was only a mountain, after all. As much as he wished it were otherwise, his farsight wasn't exactly set up for quickly locating very specific objects in a very large space. It required time, and a place to focus, where he wouldn't be disturbed. Neither of which seemed all that available to him. Still, it was better than anything his arms and weapons could do to the thing, and no one else could do what he could.

"I'll be below deck until I can find it. I need to focus." If shooting and smashing started, that didn't seem likely, but he would try all the same. "Try not to let anything explode while I'm out. It'll only take longer." Not that Gwen or any of the others needed encouragement to keep them from getting smashed by a mountain-creature. With the point made, the scryer turned and disappeared below deck, to find somewhere quiet.

Sven still hadn't moved from Gorlak's side. He'd witnessed everything from his hunched vantage point. Lips pulled into a tight, incredulous line. From the mountain slowly unfurling into some type of horrible, craggy beast pulling its limbs out from the ground as if they'd stepped on a cats tail—to the swooping hell-of-a-breeze shaking the entire ship, only to a reveal a damn dragon spiraling towards the death-mountain-creature. Never in all of his days had he expected to see any of those things in the span of one day. He'd never seen a dragon; nor talking statues, or per-destined pedestals. Never been a part of a crew that made him twist with duty and responsibility and maternal annoyances. Might as well add this to a growing list of things he wouldn't believe if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes.

Lizard—it was strange to recognize someone without having ever seen him transform. Or however he managed to magic himself into a dragon. Who else could it be? Unless a dragon coincidentally swooped in to attack the only thing that stood between them and their destination. He never believed in coincidences, anyhow. Pinching the bridge of his nose again, in a half-hearted attempt to dissuade the ale-inflicted headache from thundering as loudly as the dragon's roar, Sven's meaty mitt fell onto Gorlak's shoulder. No words needed to be said, in his opinion. The ship was in his care, as well as all of its inhabitants. He hardly trusted anyone else to steer them out of harms way.

Resurfacing onto the decks where everyone was gathered, Sven stomped closer to the railing and twisted his gaze back to the others; almost as if accusing that they'd been the ones who had poked the monster awake. Either that, or his face was perpetually stuck like that. From his peripherals, he spotted Theon slipping away below-decks. His eyebrows settled back down. Deducing what was going on, when bewilderment danced in equal measures on each of their faces, seemed pointless. “There is plan,” he prompted gruffly, flicking his hand towards the phenomenal battle down below, “vhile Vunderboy is gone?” Standing idle was against every fibre of his being—but if something could be done against such a large foe, he too was at a loss of strategy.

While Artorias would much prefer to have a fleet of dreadnoughts come in and bombard the massive... Thing with as much firepower as they could muster, they were only one ship, and even then, no where near big enough to take it on directly. He'd also seen how Lohengrin turned out to be a dragon of all things, but there was little time for him to stare on in slack-jawed awe, they were in danger, and they needed to act. "A tactical retreat is the most logical one, but we can't leave him," He said, gesturing toward the crimson dragon, "Behind." Though he knew nothing about the man, maybe even less than nothing, since that man turned out to be a dragon, Artorias was loath to leave a man behind, even if he wasn't one of his soldiers.

Running a hand through his hair, his brows furrowed in thought before turning to Gwen, "Go to the cockpit and get as far away from that thing as possible. We have no idea what it can do, and I'd rather not find out. But keep up close enough so that the scryer can find whatever the hell we're looking for. Prepare for--" He was interrupted by a shattering gunshot next to him. He quickly turned with his hands balled into a fist in case the shot was hostile. It was not, as it turned out, as Vivi stood beside him with a smoking rifle pointed toward the colossus. "What?" She asked innocently, "We have to do something."

A knot formed in between Artorias's brows as he glared at her, before snatching the rifle out of her hand and turning back to Gwen. "Prepare for evasive maneuvers. When the scryer finds the sigil, we'll get in close and destroy it with the cannons. Everyone understand?" It was a fine line between far away and close enough, but if anyone can straddle it in an airship, it'd be Gwen.

"I'll help... With the search. The birds in the sky and the animals on its back can help look for this sigil," Percy said, pushing himself backward toward the mast, where he closed his eyes again.

Gwen wasn’t so sure this would work, but it was definitely better than the plan she had, which was to say no plan at all, so with a terse nod and a quick scan of the horizon—it seemed Lohengrin had reached the colossus and the two behemoths were now focused solely on one another—she ducked belowdecks. Her aim had to be twofold—fly tricky to prevent them from being hit by any afterthought attack, and fly smooth so that Theon could actually have a chance at seeing what was going on with the sigil or whatever it was.

“I don’t feel good about this.” She muttered it only to herself, though, because there was enough raging skepticism to go around without her contribution to it. Reaching the cockpit, she told Gorlak to jump into the copilot spot and keep an eye on all the readouts and instruments—this was going to be one hell of a ride. Securing herself into the pilot seat, she took firm hold of the controls and set course… right for the giant living hunk of stone.

She really didn’t feel good about this.