(Prev)
We join Edward briefly. He is still in the bridge; he has locked the controls momentarily so he could get up and arm a number of traps throughout the room. This is what Conall and Whys were up to while the chase was going on, getting them out and setting them up, but the arming would have been unnecessary had the Farran escaped its pursuer. Other than this sort of independently-operated trap to protect a bridge and helmsman, the idea of airship security hasn't made any technological headway. That is to say, the only magic-powered thing on an airship is usually the engine core, which is used to move the ship forward. In other words, the dragon is currently in the one place she will be the most useful and the least trouble: hiding in the engine room.
The Shadow Fang has been sitting in the hallway, awaiting orders. The advantage of having a Fylenis on one's airship when it is under attack is inestimably high, since it provides a private channel of communication to coordinate defenses and relay orders. Once the pirate vessel crashes its legs through the sides of the Farran, Whys is immediately able to pick up the locations of the attackers. Verra, being only one-fourth Fylenis, is not powerful enough to shield more than herself and a few nearby persons from this kind of detection, but the leg she comes through is obviously the one that looks empty. Whys directs the Neshobe to that leg's location, and he is there before the pirates arrive.
The room happens to be a small cargo hold, and therefore completely empty. The Neshobe clicks a couple of times, and when someone comes close enough to 'see' in this manner he says only one word. "Halt."
"Oh, it's you." Predictably, Verra is in front. She draws her weapon, one of many things that anyone who's ever heard of her knows all about. It is the Ekim cutlass Hajran, which can also be a scimitar or a bow. You're probably wondering how that is; well, an Ekim weapon is not a weapon forged by an Ekim, or someone named Ekim. Rather, Ekim is the race from which those weapons originate, and the weapons themselves are literally Ekim souls. Suffice to say they are undoubtedly the most powerful weapons on Aranor, easily outranking the best dwarf-enchanted weapons, but access to one's full powers has the little condition that the person's consciousness, still in the soul, approves of whoever happens to be weilding it at the moment. Hajran was a pirate himself, the first mate of the man who half-raised Verra, so of course she has full access to his soul's powers.
Anyway, Verra readies the sword, which takes its scimitar form. "I have places to be, people to kill..but I guess I can save a little time for you," she says. "After all, you were the one who took a good crewmate from us.."
The Neshobe hasn't moved. "I won't belabor the terms. Just get on with it." Verra opens with a charge and slash, which he sidesteps, turning in towards her and kicking her left side. The attack misses by a hair or two, but the kick ends in planting his foot on the ground and pivoting, his right fist arcing with him, to face her new position while she's busy turning around. She blocks with the flat end of the blade, and he reflexively pulls his hand back. The sounds and smells did not make it immediately evident that the entire sword is sparking with magically-generated electricity. He recovers quickly enough to duck under a side-swipe with the blade, his ears just barely avoiding electrocution by flattening against his head, and kick straight up at her, forcing her to hop backwards.
He tries to press the advantage and charge at her, but the blade's reach is farther than that of fists, requiring him to dodge a vertical slice with a spinning motion. He doesn't stop spinning as he gets a little closer, and throws one leg out at the last second, channeling the momentum into a kick. He is just fast enough to catch Verra in the side, and the force behind the blow is enough to knock her over. She drops the sword and manages a cartwheel, landing on her feet and drawing the sword back into her hand from the floor (likely through some electromagnetic magic of her own) before he has time to attack again.
He clicks a couple of times with his mouth, gauging the height of the cargo room, and finding it sufficient, decides on a new strategy. He braces himself. When Verra comes with another series of slashes, he sidesteps the vertical ones, backs up from the diagonals, and then when she tries a horizontal strike he leaps straight around, balancing himself on the flat of the blade (and forcing himself to ignore the pain of the resulting shock). He doesn't stay there for more than a couple of milliseconds, flipping completely over Verra, who ducks reflexively, and in the same motion lands and grabs her tail with the hand that wasn't recently shocked.
Keeping hold of the tail with his healthy hand, he clenches the other one through the pain of its burns and aims straight at her back. She feels the full force of the hit, but doesn't seem to as much as lose her breath over it. She starts slashing back at him with the blade, forcing him to dodge around the constant swipes, while still trying to land another hit on a body that is now struggling to turn around and face him again. The struggle goes on like this for another several seconds, neither of them really accomplishing much besides making her tail sore, and then they are interrupted by one of Verra's crew entering on her mental command and throwing two knives straight at the Neshobe.
He dodges back, losing his grip on the tail, and Verra runs for the door to the hallway. The new opponent, an elf with five or six more knives on him (two in his hands), moves in between the Neshobe and her, requiring him to either go around or through--both too slow to catch up. So instead the Neshobe moves to the nearby wall and plucks a knife off of it with his good hand.
"So you're the blade-breaker, ey?"
"So some say. I am not above using them." He throws the knife at the elf, who parries with one of his own, and it sticks in the ground a few inches in front of its target. He takes the other knife off the wall and holds it in a defensive position. "Come on."
Whys, I hope you're listening. The spider got past me, and I have a pest to deal with here. If anyone's free, get them to stop her. I don't know where she's headed.
Will do.
(Next)
From: http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?42524-Airships-Over-Aranor-Prose
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