She felt the anger in her building as she plunged the dagger deep into his body repeatedly, and still the damned thing would not die. He thrashed against her, wriggling his head in a vain effort to tear loose from her stranglehold. He managed to bring her around in front.
Cwelanas then kicked out hard and connected a powerful knee into his belly. The air blew out of him, and as he was momentarily stunned, she slipped the dagger under his spiderlike legs and plunged it up into his heart. His blood spurted onto her like hot oil, and she pulled out the blade and drove it straight into one of his black, undead eyes.
He squealed like a fiend from the Abyss. His head thrashed madly, and with both hands she thrust the dagger deeper into the eye socket, then heaved until she felt the steel crack through bone and plunge directly into the reptile's soft, unliving brain.
The neogi jerked once, spasmodically, then Coh slid limp to her feet. His jaws snapped once in an involuntary effort to close around his quarry's flesh. His head fell back, onto the ground, the hilt of the dagger deep in his eye socket. Blood oozed from between his dead lips.
Cwelanas put her arm to her stomach, suddenly nauseated. The world spun around her. She put out an arm to maintain her balance, but her feet would not move properly. The small-jammer loomed ahead in the trees, but she realized that she was not moving. Somewhere she heard claws scraping through the leaves of the gardens. From somewhere, a dim thought came to her: B'Laath'a.
Her shoulder burned, flaring bright with pain, and B'Laath'a attacked from the side, throwing himself upon her and snapping with his dripping teeth.
She held back his slithering head with her good arm. It was all too much, the killing, the ceaseless attacks by Teldin's enemies. She felt her anger burning hot inside her, building like a furnace, then she realized that it was her vest of chain mail that seemed to burn, emanating with power.
It is more than a helm, she realized. It has the powers of Teldin's cloak!
She relaxed inside, still keeping the vengeful neogi at bay, and concentrated on the blossom of heat that she felt pulsing in her heart. B'Laath'a stopped his attack and stared at her, then his eyes widened, and she clasped him to her in an embrace from which he could not escape.
Power coursed through her with the heat of molten steel. The chain mail glowed, and in a burst of energy, B'Laath'a was flung away with the force of a ballista and sent hurtling into the light panels in the ceiling high above.
The neogi crashed into a crystal panel. Cwelanas dimly heard his bones crack upon impact. Then the mage fell from the ceiling and landed with a dull, sickening crunch near the smalljammer. Blood oozed from a score of breaks and lacerations across his body. His eyes, empty, devoid of their innate, Unhuman evil, stared blankly at her.
The elf tried to stand, then fell to the ground, her side aching with cold fire from the undead neogi's bite. She thought she heard a cry, but the world was nothing but a blur around her, and she let herself fall deep into the sweet sleep of unconsciousness.
Chapter Thirty-Six
"… No warrior stands alone, least of all he chosen by fate to deliver some higher meaning to his actions. "Each champion who has come here has had two things in common: a blind drive to succeed at his individual goals, and a charisma that pulls to him warriors who will stand ready to see his destiny through. "In so doing, these warriors may find their own wondrous destinies…"
The rainbow lights of the phlogiston glittered off the Broken Sphere's cracked shell, flickering as though to the beat of some secret symphony. The sphere seemed less the shattered remnant of an eons-old disaster than a giant backdrop, an empty theater where an act of the second Unhuman War was being played out for the ghosts of the dead.
From port came an elven armada, the largest ship of the elven fleet. With a wingspan of three hundred feet, the armada was a hundred tons of death bearing a hundred elves, fourteen heavy weapons, and three explosive bombards. As the Cloakmaster watched through the eyes of the Spelljammer, hatches opened on the sides and belly of the butterfly-shaped armada, and a swarm of smaller attack flitters was deployed, buzzing speedily toward the Spelljammer.
From the bow came the smallest of the attacking vessels. A sleek scro battlewagon, shaped like an attacking wild boar, hurtled toward the Spelljammer. One hundred and fifty feet long, the battlewagon, proudly christened Eviscerator, seemed almost as dangerous as the armada, for it carried fourteen medium weapons, a ram, and four bombards. In addition, it was equipped with a wildfire projector, which could spew a highly pressurized stream of fire, the way fountains spewed water. The ship was crewed by 160 ferocious scro fighters, reared, like their ancestors, the ores, on a diet of hatred and blood.
From starboard came a Shou tsunami, second only to the Spelljammer in length. Like an impossible centipede, the massive vessel squirmed through space as if it were alive, three times the length of the armada's wingspan. Its segmented hull held two hundred Shou warriors, and its powerful defenses consisted of twenty-two heavy weapons, six bombards, and three jettisons. Hatches above each of the ship's legs held individual locust ships, which, when released en masse, would create a swarm that could wreak destruction on their enemies. The locusts were each equipped with a single light weapon, but were more often used in suicide dives against other craft and were sometimes filled with smoke powder, in order to blow the enemy into the gods' embrace.
The scro warriors upon the flat, outer decks of the battlewagon were engaged in small arms combat with the armada, the ship of their most hated enemies, the elves. Arrows from the scro archers arced through the flow in showers, skewering the elves unlucky enough to pull duty on unprotected decks. Three elves manning a ballista fell under the scro onslaught, one elf tumbling over a rail to fall into the phlogiston like a limp doll.
As the Spelljammer increased its speed and the fleets of its enemies followed toward the gap in the Broken Sphere, the scro halted their battle with the elves and turned to concentrate on the great ship bearing down on them.
The Cloakmaster watched as the scro scrambled across the decks of the battlewagon to prepare for the attack, then the first wave of flitters from the elven armada penetrated the Spelljammer's air envelope and buzzed the decks. Archers hidden inside each flitter aimed their bows and crossbows toward the emplacements in the Spelljammer's towers. The elves shot on sight, killing a dwarf who was notching a crossbow on the Chalice tower and injuring eight other warriors on the Tower of Thought and the wing batteries.
The Spelljammer shook as a trio of boulders crashed into the roof of the ship's stores and into the open market, now abandoned. The battlewagon had loaded its eight catapults and was already sending two more heavy shots toward the Spelljammer. Dust and rubble slammed into the streets as boulders tore through the walls of the council chambers. A load of iron shot hurtled over the towers in an ever-spreading cone, weakening battlements as they crashed into stone and crushing the skulls and bones of warriors under their weight.
Pain erupted throughout the Cloakmaster's body as each new injury wounded the Spelljammer. He winced as flitters shot arrows toward the ship's great eyes. He screamed as a heavy ballista bolt shot from the armada and the steel-tipped missile pierced the roof of the Armory. He felt himself weakening, the Spelljammer slowing as the Broken Sphere grew larger in his eyes.