The Companions of Tartiël (34 page)

Finally, Dingo sighed. “All right. I get your point, and you’re right that I didn’t give you guys copies of my called-shot charts. I’m going to look at them and see if they’re in need of revision, and I’ll get them to you, or I’ll just scrap that house rule altogether. But I’m going to leave this last attack as it is. Fair?”

Xavier nodded. “Sure.”

I exhaled, cooling my nerves. “Yeah, that’s fine. Sorry, I don’t usually get worked up over stuff like this…” Xavier shot me a meaningful look. “Okay, so I
do
usually get worked up over stuff like this. I just take great exception to things that don’t make sense or aren’t fair.” Xavier nodded at me, satisfied with my admission, and I chuckled.

“So, about that D&D game we were playing,” Matt said, but we were still cooling off, and other conversations sprang up between us.

“On another note,” Dingo told me, “those disarm attempts were phenomenal. I did
not
see that coming at all.”

I laughed, the last bits of the past few minutes’ tension leaving my body and mind. “I know. I didn’t expect them to work, either. Sayel missed three attacks of opportunity on me, which is hilarious, and then, even with that massive bonus for being two-handed
and
her astronomical attack bonus, she still lost that greatsword.” I shook my head and pulled out the (in)famous aqua d20 that had let me pull off such a stunt, giving it a good-luck kiss. “Of course, it also helped that I rolled high while your die gave you nothing better than a four.”

“True, true.” He paused and looked around the room, sensing that we had all put the argument behind us. “Shall we get back to the game now?”

“Is your mother a whore?” Matt said in the same accent he had used to deliver Wild’s taunt earlier. Xavier and I nodded.

“Well, Kaiyr, you’re up,” said the DM.

I put my hand on the pewter figurine I was using to represent my character on the battle grid. “Well, after seeing Caineye stumble back, I’m going to turn on a bit of my Combat Expertise and…”

*

Kaiyr struck a heavy blow against Sayel’s armor, denting one pauldron and forcing the winged creature to give ground as he pressed the attack. “Master Caineye?” he asked as Vinto, angered at the injury to his master, jumped back into the fray. Wild, too, danced nimbly into the combat, taking up a position on the opposite side of their foe as the blademaster and wolf.

“I’m fine, for now,” the druid coughed before calling upon another healing spell. The flow of blood from his chest slowed to a crawl as his magic sealed the wound, repairing the worst of the damage to his flesh and his heart. Blood trickled from his chin, and he wiped it off. “Good one, bitch,” he growled at Sayel, who suddenly found herself hard-pressed to keep the combination of blademaster, halfling, and wolf from striking her dead.

The battle raged as Sayel found herself pressed up against the
Flaring Nebula
’s mainmast. She dealt some more superficial wounds to all three of them, but none of them was wearing down as fast as she was. Kaiyr’s soulblade had left its mark on her armor, which barely clung to her form, and a gash on her forehead, again from the blademaster’s spiritual weapon, threatened to blind her. The halfling rogue behind Sayel had kept her on her toes and had sunk his daggers repeatedly into vital areas; she knew her kidneys would fail without extensive magical healing, and her legs threatened to give way under the loss of blood. Then there was the wolf, single-mindedly avenging her grievous wound to his master, foiling her attacks and ruining her bracers before his teeth began to tear at the muscles and tendons in her arms.

Kaiyr knew the group’s victory was nigh when Sayel, the green light of power gone from her eyes, glanced over at the retreating lifeboat the Lillik brothers had stolen, then back at Kaiyr. When her eyes met his, she could read that her judgment had already been passed; she would find no mercy here.

With a panicked shout, she shook Vinto from her forearm and jumped into the air, beating her gray-feathered wings. The sudden retreat cost her the defensive posture she had taken, and in unison, Kaiyr, Vinto, and Wild each launched a final strike at the retreating Sayel. Wild leaped up and severed her lower spine with a dagger. Then Vinto grabbed a hold of her boot, dragging her back down to the deck. Finally, Kaiyr’s soulblade found its way through her rent armor and into her heart. Her last thought, as blood bubbled from her lips and she sagged to the ground, was that she wished his weapon did not slide back out, because the hole it left was so very, very cold.

Kaiyr flicked the blood from his soulblade and turned to regard the shrinking dot on the horizon that was the Lillik brothers’ boat. He registered that chase in his mind as futile and mentally released his soulblade. It disappeared as though it had never been there as he turned to face his comrades—and Astra.

He would later regret that he did not pay any attention to Caineye as he knelt on all fours on the ground, too weakened by Sayel’s initial attack against him to even stand. The druid had one hand on Vinto, who was licking his master’s face in the hopes that his human friend would be all right. Wild leaned over Sayel’s form, divesting her body of anything and everything of value.

The elf, however, only had eyes for the blackened and twisted form still held cruelly to the wooden cross by scorched iron spikes. The cross had somehow been affixed to the deck of the ship, almost as though it had been driven right into the ship itself.

As his companions caught their breaths and collected trinkets behind him, Kaiyr strode angrily to the cross. There, in two swift motions, he manifested his soulblade, slashed at the cross’s base and severed it completely, and then gently caught the rest of it as it toppled to the ground.

Caineye found the strength to rise upon seeing the elf laying Astra and the cross on the ground, and he came over as Kaiyr began prying the nails from her burned flesh. The body was barely recognizable as having once belonged to the beautiful Astra. The Lillik brother’s
fireball
had incinerated her hair and melted away her features in the blast. But the one thing that seemed to remain, despite the grotesque manner of her death, was a serene smile on her charred lips. The companions could not know what had given her cause to smile so—perhaps because she knew she would be avenged, or perhaps because she died saving the companions who had aided her so often in the past.

In silence, as storm clouds began to gather around the uncontrolled airship, Caineye and Wild helped Kaiyr carry Astra’s body back to the cabin where she had slept for the past week. There, the three of them wrapped her in makeshift funeral wrappings made of bedsheets. Sensing that Kaiyr, who had had a somewhat closer bond with and better understanding of Astra, would want some time alone with her remains, Caineye and Wild departed to their own rooms to recuperate, not even having the energy to search the ship and gather survivors.

When the two of them left, Kaiyr dropped onto his rump in a manner he knew, but did not care, would have earned him a sharp reprimand from his father and master, Sorosomir. He buried his face in his robes but could not find the strength to shed tears at his second failing as a blademaster in so short a time.

“Gods damn it all,” he sobbed into his sleeve, his voice cracking. “Why can I not even protect those people I have sworn to watch over? First, those children in Andorra, and now this? What is it this world wants me to experience, if I must endure these tragedies and carry them on my shoulders?” He threw back his head, finally feeling the release of tears as he shouted to the ceiling and the heavens beyond, “
What is it you expect of me?
”

The world deigned to respond only with a resounding clash of thunder. Kaiyr stared at the ceiling for several long minutes before his head slowly dropped to look at the white sheets hiding Astra’s destroyed body.

A patter of frantic feet gave him only a few moments’ warning before his door burst open, and the anguished blademaster turned slowly to see who dared disturb him. What he saw, for some reason, did not surprise him. “Lady Luna,” he said gloomily.

The Nemesis grasped the door frame for support, gasping for breath. “Kaiyr! You… you have to help me! My body, it just… suddenly started falling apart! What’s happening to me? I’m scared!”

Not caring how she had found him, Kaiyr noted quietly that Luna’s body was indeed rapidly degenerating. Her skin peeled off in flakes and fell into the air, where it disappeared into nothingness. Some of her veins had already been breached, and red blood slowly trickled from her arms, also floating in the air until it vanished a foot from where it exited.

Kaiyr merely turned back to stare at the enshrouded form on his bed. “Why should I deign to aid you, Lady Luna? You have proven only that you are as cunning, wicked, and treacherous as we once thought you innocent.”

Luna floundered, desperate to reverse whatever process had her body in its grasp. “I… I know I’ve not been fair to you. But… please, I beg of you. Find some way to help me!” Then she noticed the form lying on his bed. “What is that?”

“It is Lady Astra,” Kaiyr replied, monotone.

“What?”

His patience already having worn through, Kaiyr rose and pulled back part of the sheet so Luna could see what had become of her original. “I
said
,” he shouted, “it is Lady Astra! Lady Astra is
dead
! Now leave me in peace, demon! I care nothing for your plight!” He moved to stand before her defiantly, as though to push her from his room. But the pained look on Luna’s face stopped him.

“Astra’s… dead? Can’t you find some way to… bring her back? Bring her back! Yes, that might restore my body. It would save me, Kaiyr!” Her silver eyes besought him, but her pleas met only an icy wall.

“Hm,” he grunted, whirling from her to pace the room. “And what would you do, were I to raise the funds to return the Lady Astra to life?”

Luna gave him a puzzled look. “I’d would kill her, of course. It’s what I have to do.”

The blademaster just shook his head slightly in exasperation. “If that is the case, then you have my blessing to perish with her. And may you never be seen again,” he uttered quietly, but Luna was no longer listening. She had entered the room and now stood over Astra’s charred remains. Tenderly, the winged Nemesis reached out and touched what had once been Astra’s lovely, tan cheek.

“I’m almost sorry I—aah!” her gentle murmur turned into a shriek of pain as the hand touching Astra suddenly crumbled into dust, the particles swirling in the air and whipping up a windstorm in the room that tossed Kaiyr’s hair and robes about violently.

“What have you done?” he demanded, barely managing to rise against the gale, shielding his face with both sleeves as he strained to reach his bed. He could not get there in time, he knew, as Luna’s body suddenly underwent a rapid decay, her arm quickly eaten away by whatever force had caused her hand to be subsumed into Astra’s corpse.

“No,” Luna said, “I—” but then her chin and face cracked and dispersed into particles that joined the growing vortex as it swirled around the point where Luna had touched Astra.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Kaiyr lowered his arms from his face to find the room utterly devoid of any sign that Luna had even been there, except for where objects caught in the tornado had been tossed around.

“What’s going on?” Caineye asked, appearing in the doorway behind the blademaster.

But Kaiyr could not respond, for at that moment, the woman on the bed stirred, her eyes fluttering open. Where there had once been scorched flesh, there was pale, smooth skin. A slender hand trailed a lump up the sheets until it appeared at the top, where she pushed down the cover as if rising from a gentle slumber.

Tentatively taking one step forward, and then another, Kaiyr moved to stand over her. “Lady Astra?” he asked, then shook himself, a smile growing on his features. “Lady Astra!” he laughed.

The woman frowned. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know anyone named Astra. I think you have me mistaken for someone else; I’m Solaria.”

*

Matt, Xavier, and I stared agape at Dingo at the twist he had just thrown into the game’s plot. “It is then that you notice she is indeed not Astra,” he went on, ignoring our shock. “Instead of black hair like Astra, or even gray like Luna, Solaria has long, straight hair of a pale blue sheen. Her eyes are violet, like Astra’s, and she is otherwise the spitting image of the other nymph, though Solaria’s skin is much paler than Astra’s sun-bronzed tone.”

I shook my head, eyebrows raised. “I completely despair and run from the room,” I said with a helpless gesture. “It’s all I can do.”

Dingo nodded. “All right. That, however, is where we are going to end tonight,” he said to a small chorus of boos. “Yeah, yeah. Shut up, it’s already three, and I have some work to do before I hit the sack. I want all of you to level up, so I guess that makes you level six. That was an amazing job you all did on Sayel back there. I haven’t seen that much teamwork in many other groups.”

Matt replied, “Well, it was sort of natural. I needed to get into a flanking position, and what better way to do it than to go opposite Kaiyr and Vinto?”

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, things fit naturally, and Vinto and I made a great wall to keep Sayel away from Caineye while he was busy stuffing his lungs back into his chest.” I turned to Xavier, knocking on his TV between us with my knuckles. “How’s that Con damage treating you, ol’ buddy?”

“Ouch,” was all he said in reply.

I just shrugged. “Well, it’ll either heal in four days, or we’ll get you patched up once we reach Is’thiel.”

The three of us rolled our hit points where Dingo could watch. Kaiyr ended up just shy of 60 hit points, which, for having only a +1-per-level bonus from his so-so Constitution score, was pretty phenomenal. Then again, since Dingo had adopted my non-standard method of rolling for hit points, we tended to have better than average health, anyway.

A short while later, Matt and our DM packed up and rolled out, heading back to their respective rooms amid much banter containing many renditions of, “Why is your mother a whore?” and “No dice!” among other (in)famous phrases we had coined.