Death From the Sky

Elliv, Maris, and Lein press deeper into the forest, with three sentinels on their heels. Maris drops another smoke bomb. Elliv points to a more clear path, and the others follow him, gaining a little ground from their disoriented pursuers.

“We could be rid of them if you’d let me throw a proper grenade!” Maris says.

“No explosives in the forest!” Elliv says.

They push through a dense bush and find themselves surrounded by death--a pine grove completely overtaken by the blight. Their bark and their needles run black. Even the soil itself is black. In between, mushrooms half the height of people grow from black fibers that reach out of the trees.

Elliv pulls his bandana up over his nose. “Blightshrooms! Careful you don’t breathe in the spores.” The other two follow suit.

He hears the sents coming through the bushes, and signs for his comrades to find cover. They duck behind the blackened remains of a huge tree trunk. The sentinels cautiously step through the blighted grove.

Elliv looks over at Maris and signs, “Okay, you can use a bomb here. But then we have to run, fast.”

Maris rips a ceramic grenade from his bandolier and strikes a match. He jumps out from cover and throws it. It bounces off of a blighted tree and lands near the left of the sents. They see its sparks flying and run for cover. Two of them make it behind trees, but one takes the full blast of ceramic shrapnel and falls to the ground a bloody mess.

The bomb hit more than the sent, though. In the shockwave, the whole grove of blightshrooms bursts with a black clouds of spores. It’s upon the enemy before they can flee. The two remaining sentinels gasp and choke for breath as their lungs burn. In seconds, they collapse.

Elliv pulls the other two away from the spectacle and they flee deeper into the forest and out of the blighted grove.

“That’s that for them,” Elliv says. “If they survive, the spores are gonna make their way to their brain. Their black tendrils will grow deep inside, and they won’t care about being sentinels anymore. They will only have the overwhelming desire to crawl to a nice, fertile place, as black spikes start to grow out of their ears and eyes. Then they’ll finally lay down, kept alive as their bodies are eaten from the inside out.”

“Well fuck,” Maris says.

“Anyway, we can rest a little now, I think we’ve lost them completely,” Elliv says.

“Just hope we kept ‘em busy long enough for Ketha to pull off some bullshit,” Maris says.

Elliv’s eyes suddenly look up as he hears a familiar sound. “Quiet.” He stands up, looking around through gaps in the treetops.

“What?” Maris says.

“Don’t you hear it?” Elliv says. “Shii Ha’ll-Dai.”

“Huh?”

“It’s what the Sabakuans call an airship. Roughly, ‘death from the sky.’”

“Oh, I hear it now,” Maris says.

“From the sound of it, a Wyvern-class light assault ship, wouldn’t you say Lein?”

Lein nods. He’s doing the same as Elliv, looking around for the source of the noise. He points through an opening. There, the massive ship passes above, a few hundred Length off the ground.

All they can make out through the branches is the silver gleam of its metal hull and the black iron plating of the gondola below it. A strong wind rushes through the woods in its wake. The birds flee from their shelters in the trees as the sound of the engine and the propellers and the wind all blends together like thunder.

“A Wyvern class?” Maris says.

Elliv calls back to long-past trainings and briefings. “The Wyvern is light and maneuverable, with four electric propeller nacelles powered by a single discordium reactor. It carries eight light cannons, mounted four on each side, with hundreds of cannonballs and shells. It is flown by a crew of sixteen, and additionally can carry a complement of fifteen airborne assault troops. A light, versatile craft, used for reconnaissance, targeted strikes, and as an escort for a larger ship.” He clutches his left arm, where under his jacket he is branded with the same insignia that would be found on the hull of that ship. “And its large bomb bay can be stocked with as many as twenty bombs.”

“What do you think they’re doing out here?” Maris says.

“Probably looking for us. Better stay out of sight, and hope Ketha and the medics do too,” Elliv says.