Finally, after a many a great spell, long for the godlings thus far. There were another two. Fraternal Twins. One was sturdy, unshakeable. A very stoic fellow from inception and was wise in many ways. On the other hand, his sister was rather temperamental; her wrath knew no bounds. Often, there was a bit of tussle between these two but it was in their nature and perhaps no other pair of siblings were suited for one another than these two. Their coexistence was equal parts creation and destruction. However, it was in their Form’s essence to be the way they were and those before them did not belabor their conduct; it was then that this last pair of twins came to be known as Eog and Ustrina. Excerpt from The Book of Realms: The Age of Elder Gods, Church of Thea.

It was foolish of them to turn their stern to the deep wurm when the thing was writhing with fury a few ship-lengths away , but it seemed like they’d encountered enough of them to be confident about it. That they lived in mountains and underground cities, it was the most plausible explanation.

No sooner had the Stormbreaker began its approach than things started to heat up. The Ikaros switched things up before Arthur even had the chance to repeat his warning and they brought the big cannons.

Even as they watched, harpoon shooting arbalests pivoted on their hammerhead shaped bow, steam belched out from the Ikaros’ vents as more cannons swiveled into their direction. Most of all the fast reaction time caught Arthur off-guard.

In hindsight, he shouldn't have been overly optimistic as he was then. Somehow skills also evolved to include the use of hot weapons. The sailors were also seasoned and hardened by the encounters they'd lived through. They'd weathered mana storms, tussled with cutthroat air pirates, fought whole weyrs of wyverns and lived to tell the tale.

It was the synth's split-casion reactions that saved them from becoming a fire-ball on their first encounter. Of course there was no escaping the near-whiplash changes in inertia that came with it.

While more powerful ordinance had been deployed to occupy the deep wurm for a few pars, including what was unmistakably a sort of monster lure, the majority of their armaments had tracked them with tenacious precision.

A hailstorm of arcane artillery erupted from every direction at once like tracer rounds, painting the vicinity with streamers of colors. Only Danger Sense told them that it was anything but aesthetic pyrotechnics.

“Arcis!” Arthur yelled in alarm. Nora gasped in horror.

“I see 'em” the synth yelped. “Hold on to something!”. She twisted the steering yoke hard to starboard. The aership banked violently , doing a rudder roll— a battery of arcane and mundane missiles made the air in its vicinity scream, inducing turbulence in its flight path.

Arthur almost felt his shoulders groan from the sudden abuse of inertial changes as his vision flipped upside down before reverting. At around the same time, the two aerships passed by one another, one above one below.

When the Stormbreaker finally leveled out, most of the volley had been avoided by a hair's breadth. However, a few shrapnel had peppered the vessel's underside. Some of it got lodged in the nozzles of the ventral thrusters, putting them out of commission as a result. The main engine's inlet fortunately was left unscathed.

That would have been all for the bombardment but Mana Seekers had already locked onto their engine's arcane source.

“I can't shake 'em!” Arcis cried out, eyes darting to their drop point. The deep wurm was just off their port bow and while her reflexes were the best of them all, they would still come up short if she had to plot an optimal course . Her [Scan] was already straining from tracking the half a dozen tails trailing after their engine; she was at her wits end.

Arthur must have intimated her predicament; they really were in the thick of things—what was planned rarely survived contact with the enemy. “Nora, with me!” Arthur said. “Arcis, keep the hail open, we'll use the that for the countdown.”

“Aye aye,” Arcis yelled back

As they left Nora sent a mental prompt to her bond. The grimalkin suddenly materialized on the cockpit, claws extended for grip on the deck. It was a failsafe incase the aership got caught up in anything, Umbra would shadow port the synth out.

The aership continued to rock from evasive maneuvers while Arthur and Nora staggered, occasionally flailing for support on the bulkheads. They slid down the step ladder to the main deck , then again to the engine deck. There, they made for the bow end of the ship where a hatch with a spring release lay.

“Arcis!” Arthur called out over an open [Far Speak] connection. The two port windows on the lowest deck accorded them a front seat view of the approaching monstrosity. Seeing it up close was daunting.

The heroic plan Arthur had in his head had downscaled the enormity of the task; there was no pulling back now. Arthur pushed down the bubbling feeling of anxiety as that threatened to come out his throat.

There was no embarrassment in quailing before a monstrosity the size of a building as it ever so slowly turned to regard the two nuisances within its reach. Even then, his inherent pride as a dragon-touched flared up in defiance, and Arthur bit his cheek to shake off the feeling of paralysis.

Arthur saw its voracious maw, cavernous and dark up close for the first time. It was full of several iterations of teeth rotating around its oral disc like the world's biggest insikerator™. He felt what the sailors in Homer's Odyssey must have encountered when they saw their ship teetering close to the edge of Charybdis.

“Almost there!”

”Nora, grab onto me!” Arthur said, holding out a hand to the dhampir who also looked no less resolved. Uneasily, they stepped over the hatch. The spring release was designed to slide the two doors apart using a lever and all Arthur had to do was step on it and the two hatch doors open from underneath.

Nora latched onto him as if her life depended on it.

Arthur felt like saying something heroic as he felt her lethargic heartbeat, against his chest. Her eyes were scrunched closed, and breath was almost laborious as she waited for the next part of the plan. He felt sorry for putting her up to it; maybe after that—

‘No. No need to jinx it, we'll cross there when we came to it’

Then Arcis began to countdown,”Activating tellusphere—”Arthur watched the other side port, catching a glimpse of the Ikaros banking about for another volley.

Arthur suddenly felt exposed with what they were going to do but his thoughts were suddenly cut out by Arcis' skill activation— ” …[Gestalt]!...”

The world suddenly went white as one powerful mana pulse tore through them at the speed it took to blink. Everything seemed to crawl grindingly slow.

Vision became tunneled, Arcis' voice sounded off pitch and disjointed,” ...eep...urm....ttention...been…..rawn!”

For a fleeting moment his marrow felt raw and glacial like the last time he'd borne the brunt of the tellusphere's mana outburst . Only Nora's grasp brought him to himself just in time to hear Arcis shout, ” Now!”—fugue was shaken off as Arthur stepped on the lever with the heel of his boot. Their footing dropped out from them with a stomach lurching motion.

In the time between, Arcis had taken the Stormbreaker for a steep climb, the mana seekers had been knocked out by the equivalent of a magical emp blast—the deep wurm? It was screeching, maw wide open, some distance below, looking unmistakably small. The dwarven aership wasn't even worth mentioning.

The entangled pair of sky divers cut through the squall unhindered with one thing and only one thing in mind. Whatever would happen, Arthur once again trusted that the synth would stick to the plan and deliver.

They plummeted, wind snatching the sound of their screams of bravado away from them. Arthur went through all the things that could go wrong. What if their cobbled together missile failed to detonate? He'd barely had time to appraise it. All doubt was clouded out by adrenaline and the bite of cold air at the tip of his nose and ears.

‘Cloak...cloak. Stupid,’ Arthur thought as he wrapped both of them in the Nightstalker's cloak. The wearable artifact still had some mana left in its reserves and he damn well wanted to use every edge they would have to get to their target. 'Honestly though, these dwarves have their priorities upside down,' he mused while internally screaming.

Nora opened her eyes and met his own; they were practically nose to nose. Their breaths came in unison, misting as they met the frigid air. Arthur had never thought Nora could be that warm before; in fact he'd never thought she could be warm at all—a throwback to when they were sheltering away from the rain after crossing the Hunchback Ridges. Her scent reminded Arthur of cinnamon and roses.

He felt a flush creeping up his cheeks and quickly broke eye contact. Their target was approaching—Arthur imbued the cloak with mana and willed it to hide them. Against a cloud cast sky, the two disappeared into a hazy blur.

Doladraen Blackbeard was his father’s son through and through. He had an uncanny skill with the wheel, like his father before he lost his arm to the petrifying poison of a terra scorpion. The Underneath had truly no shortage of peril that would make any dwarf without a pair shed their beard.

Yet the deep wurm did not rank highly on the list of those perils that were the stuff of nightmares; not the juvenile they were fighting. They had more encounters with the creatures than they could count.

Ordinarily deep wurms were docile creatures, feeding on old things lost to the light of day, bones and vegetation growing in their subterranean world. There were whole biomes of fungi forests that those who dwelt on the top would scant believe. However, there were also things that went bump in the Underneath that were better left buried.

Anyway, back to the deep wurm, something must have occurred to make it go into a frenzy. You would have found it hard to believe that some dwarven cities used the same creature to tunnel under the mountains. They made very efficient excavators and rarely left any debris in their wake; in fact, whatever metals they encountered were immediately discharged free of the detritus that would be an itch in the beard to remove.

Also, their solid excretions that had the consistency of peat could under the right conditions, be used as fuel for some of the steam contraptions. It was essentially smokeless. Were it possible, the Ikaros would be running on the stuff, but it was simply not worth the weight, no—the aership run on the cleaner hussle free firestone.

Murking the steam drivers free of wurm coal was not something he’d be doing, not even skunked on cheese rum. Also, handled carelessly, poorly done wurm coal and the sludge could turn into a disaster. For that was the stuff an agitated deep wurm regurgitated through its spiracles, it could kill plants, choke the soil and foul the water. They had to put the damn thing down,

“ [Artillery Skill: Expeditious Reload]! [Unwavering Aim]!” Doladraen bellowed, turning the wheel hard to the right for another pass. Steam belched as the cannoneers released another volley, they had to wear down the behemoth.

They had gold and diamonds riding on the thing. Yes, diamonds! If they could just kill it they could maybe find some of the precious crystals in the thing’s gizzard. Unlike arcane crystals, diamond could hold mana of any affinity without degrading over time; only the best artificers and runesmith could make the best use of them. It was such a pity the largest were only the size of a fist.

Nonetheless, running a mercenary company was as expensive as royal’s arse; whoever came up with that saying? Doladraen knew that was the reason they were being rather frugal with their arcane weaponry . They played the long game and saved their coffers in the long run.

“Hey, watch it! —[Swift Winds]!” the dwarven [Captain] yelled, turning the ship hard to port to avoid another spurt of the wurm discharge. That would take a nundine to clean, even with [Deep Cleanse] spells. The carronade strafed the same gouges they’d made in the first fly-by. They were right on track; their bottomline was safe. A toothy smirk played on his lips, as he turned the Ikaros about for another run.

Notwithstanding the message from a certain Lezbhan which he had immediately dispatched to his father, everything seemed to be going well. He’d barely used a single mithril tipped ballista, those were for fire drakes; tough bastards the lot of them.

Runeheads had also not been touched; not one—they took time to make and you had to use Pyrtherite in crafting. Of course they used sanctioned quantities, dwarves literally wrote the rules on it—too many genocidal pyromaniacs around these days. As for the Grounding Harpoons, those were used if they wanted something alive when some eccentric personages somewhere needed an exotic wyvern.

But then something changed when another message came through and he had to stop and reread it to ensure he was seeing things right. The same [Message] had been routed to his father without his knowledge; one could imagine the fury of the elder Blackbeard. There, thoughts of cost-saving went up in smoke, they had to break the armory. All that was thanks to some unknown flier; the very same that had Lezbhan spitting blood.

Then they saw it, the vessel, streaking across the sky; no flag, no livery, only audacity as it headed towards their ship. One warning they said, the gall of whoever sent that [Message]. Unfortunately they didn't have a [Scrying Mage] otherwise they would have retraced it back to its origin and unveiled who the sender was.

To think they purported to have an arsenal which could fell a behemoth in one shot, just how high in their arses did they shove— there was no dithering. Doladraen promptly fired off a litany of skills as soon as they spotted the peculiar vessel.

[Artillery Skill: Rapid Armament Conversion]!, [Mark Target]!”Skills took hold and the Ikaros brought the might of Dwarven artillery to bear.

Doladraen grinned as the [canoneers] called the shots immediately after and a fusillade of arcane missiles blotted out their view of the approaching vessel. Yet it performed an impossible maneuver at a speed that would break a non-dwarven neck. Most of the volley was evaded but the ones that got there peppered the underside of the hull and got into some openings.

However the helmsman's attention was taken by the thought that someone could execute such beautiful movements. The strange ship had the grace of a swallowtail faerie wyvern in the air; why would his father want to blow the thing to cinders? But father's orders were law; The mana seekers would do the rest or so they thought.

The strange vessel zoomed past the Ikaros and as Doladraen scrambled to bring her about, they'd already reached the deep wurm. There was no artillery spellcraft unleashed whatsoever, instead it climbed abruptly that he almost got whiplash from the sudden change in trajectory.

Then it happened—a mana pulse unlike any other washed over the ship catching the crew off guard. To their surprise, their mana seekers seemed to have been disrupted mid-air simply disintegrating into motes of unspent magic.

That was not the only change however. The deep wurm seemed to have taken off its stupor from the last volley. The behemoth was suddenly seen lifting its front bulk to screech at the sky where the strange craft had gone.

Then the ship performed a dead stall, something seemed to have dropped out from its underside and disappeared such that even their [Sighter] could not spot it—Doladraen remembered the message's warning—that there won't be another. He clenched his fists till the wooden wheel creaked and hastily diverted the Ikaros from the vicinity of the deep wurm.

Something in his beer gut told him that if the strange vessel possessed such an artifact that could draw the deep wurm's attention and move that fast, it was a no-brainer that they were an unknown quantity. There was danger in unknown quantities. And not a moment too soon because Danger Sense blared warningly.

The fall seemed to stretch for eternity, a lifetime existing within a couple of heartbeats. Cold, wet air was in his face, beneath him someone held tight trusting that he always had his plan in hand. The deep wurm's screeches were an afterthought, everything else was shunted away from his mind. It was time—

Was it too big to miss?At first glance one would say that; but even a novice archer would tell you something about the air was always bound to throw your aim off. That is why they'd gone with this plan; otherwise they'd have thrown it off the Stormbreaker and gotten done with it.

Perhaps they would, if they had the luxury of having several weapons at their disposal, as it was the Stormbreaker was not complete, only flightworthy. There was a long road to its completion ahead of them.

So, course corrections were done, then he materialized the weapon—just a couple of explosives strapped onto the hoverboard. With a prod of his foot, the Aertherite crystal slotted in and the Mark One flared, almost wanting to careening from its unfettered power. It was unruly and he had to struggle just to keep it in check.

Then the wurm was right in their faces. Several things happened in that split-casion. He shoved the hoverboard underneath, assured that it could make the rest of the distance— then they shadow ported—

Before they even hit the deck; before Arthur could give the green light, Arcis had already pulled away. Even from where they lay, they could hear the Aertherite-Pyrtherite fusion thrumming through the engine nacelles.

They scrambled up the ladder step—a slight inclination of the bow almost knocked them down, somehow they made it to the bridge. Arthur had the barest glimpse of the thaumometer needle in the red zone before the graycast sky suddenly brightened as if the sun had risen right behind their ship.

Then the shockwave came.

Arcis had no Danger Sense—she didn't need it. Not many things posed a danger to her. But even she didn't let her virtually indestructible existence fill her with hubris.

So when she felt Arthur and Nora reach the engine deck within her [Scan] she'd gunned the Mark Three for all its worth. They hadn't tested its tolerances yet and so it seemed it would have a trial instead; a trial by fire.

While pushing the tellusphere for that pulse had given her the equivalent of a synth migraine, she still had the awareness to realize that they wouldn't have made it. Explosions travelled the speed of well...explosions. instead of making for the sky, she made for the ground. There was a deep wurm sized hole there—they hadn't managed to lure it that far as per the plan.

The first shock wave hit their stern. Even with the Aertherite crystal close to an overdraw and the thaumometer needle rattling way beyond the radial scale the Stormbreaker was still caught up in the ensuing blast of air displacement.

The air brakes failed to deploy due to shrapnel in the joints; ventral thrusters sputtered in starts as she tried to use them to reverse momentum— some of them had locked up. There was only one eventuality left for them—crashing deck first to the sides of the deep wurm's excavated walls.

’Not if I can help it!'

That would have happened, if the synth didn't have a vague recollection of the alterations made to the ship. With her quick reflexes, she levered herself over the control station, going for the spot that she'd purportedly added to the blueprint schematics. It was a conduit switch for what purpose they would soon find out.

“Arcis! What are you doing?!” Her adopted father called out in a horror-stricken expression. No one was at the controls; even so, her father scrambled with jerks and starts to reach it.

“Trust me Papa!”

Her jump carried her into a slide over a seemingly unassuming deck panel. Without sparing a glance over her shoulders at the incoming wall of bored dirt, she rapped the deck with her fist in quick succession.

The deck panel popped out and there was a lever switch. She almost seemed to take a breath before she slammed it down—the world stopped; hell passed right over their heads.

From atop the battlements, the dwarf and the dragonkin watched a gigantic orange flower unfurl its fiery petals towards the sky. The air quaked as a tidal heat haze rolled towards the town blazing hot like the sun at its apex. Sod, trees and all manner of charred debris were hauled into the sky, mingling with the pieces of the deep wurm that had been blasted off its head, including its black spiky teeth that had survived the explosion. Another tremor reverberated through the earth and up the walls causing them to groan ominously and then the aftershock travelling at the speed of sound roared over the battlements.

Orhill put up another barrier, but for all his efforts he might have been a child swimming against an ocean wave. Buffeted by the rapid displacement of hot air, even his footing failed to find purchase on wet brick as all the rainwater that drenched the battlements hissed and evaporated in a cloud of steam.

The dwarf put up his own arcane aegis by shaping enchanted stone in a dome but that too got so hot it almost glazed over. By the time it had passed, the two found themselves pushed back until they were bracing the opposite crenelations.

Skyward, plumes of smoke billowed from the remainder of the deep wurm’s maw like a volcanic cone belching ashen clouds. Some way or other, the deep wurm remained in its defiant challenge against the sky to its last breath, adding a new feature to the Aldmoorian landscape. Everything around had already been turned into ash, the forest sheared off its canopy and the rest of the tree stumps that had survived were smoldering cinder. Even the mana storm’s crawling mist had been promptly dispelled and the sun shone unhindered once more.

“By Eog’s pendulous jewels, “ Dasnoir swore as he took in the devastation.