Chapter 242: Stalemate

“They can keep firing as much as they want - these artillery attacks don’t do enough damage to players to threaten us.” Aegis shouted reassuringly to his party. He’d re-mounted Ren and was flying around the hull of the ship, using his shield and guard skill to protect the Sky Darling from being hit by any attacks.

Their airship was continuing to sail smoothly through the sky in the direction of Kalmoore, with the four pirate ships following them from far below, just above the black myst of the abyss. Trellin, too, was still visibly circling the skies nearby atop his wyvern, but was keeping a safe distance. Both Aegis and Herilon eyed Trellin curiously in between their attacks.

“They’re still planning something.” Herilon announced. A few moments later, from atop the deck of one of their four ships, a spell was cast from a player. A burst of foggy clouds erupted from the player, shrouding the four airships completely in the gray magical smog. It made it impossible for Aegis and the others to see the ships, but it was still possible for him to react fast enough and block the artillery strikes against the Sky Darling for a few more shots.

Then, suddenly, mixed in with the continuous fire, there was a strange screeching boom that was heard four times, coming from the airships below. Following this, out of the smoke shot four large ballistae-like projectiles with incredible speed.

Ren and Aegis reacted quickly, soaring towards them. Ren was able to position Aegis under the hull of the ship in time to block one shot with his shield, whilst Aegis blocked two others with shield projections, but unfortunately the fourth shot made it through and pierced through the underside of the Sky Darling.

It was after it connected that Aegis saw the shot was trailing a thick iron chain, its links extending down into the fog cloud. The instant it connected, the chain went taut and began retracting, as if attempting to reel in the sky darling.

“Not good. Aegis, that’s an anchor shot.” Leonard shouted anxiously from the top of the ship. “I’m unable to move further away from the source of the shot, only closer. As long as it's connected, that is.”

“Can you break us loose, Herilon and Trexon?” Aegis called out to them.

“On it.” Herilon replied before running to the lower deck to get inside the ship, Trexon following behind him. In the meantime, the four ships below stopped moving forward, which in turn prevented the Sky Darling from moving forward as well, and the fog that shrouded their ships began to clear. The artillery bombardment continued, however, forcing Aegis and Ren to continue maneuvering around the sky to protect the Sky Darling from further damage.

“Uh, this thing ain't budging. Lodged into the hull with hooks.” Herilon said through the party interface after a few moments.

“They’ve got anti-magic enchantment stones on it. They’re prepared.” Trexon added.

Aegis briefly glanced at the chain and the bottom end of the thick projectile shaft protruding out of the hull of the ship, trying to consider his options. He wasn’t given much time, though, as the fog surrounding the ships below suddenly cleared out and were replaced by a gigantic red ball of flame, like a miniature sun that expanded well beyond the size of the four ships, and slowly it began soaring up towards them through the sky.

“Uh, what pray tell is that big red glowing light coming from below?” Leonard asked anxiously.

“Oh shit. Don’t tell me they’ve had an invisible wizard channeling a pyroclasm since the fight started?” Trexonn answered, peering through a small hole in the hull left by the anchoring shot.

“Pyroclasm…” Aegis mumbled to himself, trying to recall the spell. He knew that it was one Pyri had - and as that thought came to him, the other details of the spell filled themselves out quickly. A fireball spell that gets stronger the longer you channel it, but it’s slow moving and easy to dodge, and damage to the caster interrupts it. “How much damage would a pyroclasm of that size deal?”

“Let me put it this way. If it hits the Sky Darling? No more sky darling.” Trexon explained.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere with that anchoring shot.” Leonard replied. Aegis let out a long drawn out sigh of frustration, trying to quickly think of a solution. Several came to mind, but none seemed too plausible. At the very least, he was given a reprieve from blocking artillery shots now that there was a giant ball of fire soaring towards them.

“We can’t break free, we can’t dodge, we can’t escape, so long as they’re holding us here and attacking us. Even if we break this anchor shot, it’s only a matter of time before they hit us with another one. We're still too far away from Kalmoore…” Aegis mumbled out loud, his voice traveling to the others through the party interface.

“So, what do we do?” Trexon asked.

“I’m down for one of your signature Aegis strategies.” Herilon added.

“Do whatever you need to to save my ship.” Leonard said.

“Alright.” Aegis let out a long sigh, “Meet on the deck.” Aegis instructed, and Ren gave several giant flaps of his wings to take himself and Aegis onto the deck of the ship. There, Herilon, Trexon, Gregory and Leonard had all moved to stand around the mass, waiting for him.

“I estimate based on that pyroclasm’s travel speed, it’ll hit us in about five minutes. So…” Aegis glanced between each of them, briefly meeting their expectant stares before landing on Herilon. “I think we oughta go down there and ask them nicely to let us go.” He said with a giant grin growing on his face, one that Herilon matched. Aegis then quickly hit the mute button on his stream, and the moment he did, Shinji edited the view to not show his mouth so that no one would hear or be able to predict what Aegis would say next.

“Here, Trexon,” Aegis started by opening up a trade window with Trexon. Within the trade, Aegis quickly offered several large, salamander scale sacks filled with unknown items.

“What are these?” Trexon asked.

“Accept the trade and you’ll be able to look at the contents of the bags.” Aegis replied hastily. Trexon did exactly that, taking 6 of the bags from Aegis’ inventory. “I brought them just in case, they saved me once before. They might save us here.”

Trexon went into his inventory after the trade had gone through, inspecting the bags contents. The moment he saw what was inside, his eyes went wide with disbelief.

“How the hell did you get this many?”

“I needed to level herbalism.” Aegis shrugged back. “Can you use fly and invisibility to plant those on their ships?”

“Yeah, I can manage that…” Trexon said as he pulled out from his inventory a bottle of clear liquid.

“Good. We’ll provide a distraction. Go for the caster of this pyroclasm, and the masts of their ships.” Aegis turned to Herilon and Ren.

“You realize those ships are crewed by a lot more than just a dozen mounted fighters, right? They’ve got not just players, but hireling NPCs aboard. All likely well skilled in this sort of combat.” Leonard warned Aegis.

“Yep.” Aegis unmuted his stream, “We’ll take them all on.” he replied as he motioned Herilon to get on Ren’s back.

“How are you planning to get down? Jumping?” Gregory raised his eyebrows at Aegis, but Aegis smiled back briefly before running to the edge of the ship. Ren did the same with Herilon on his back, followed by Trexon who cast fly on himself, then drank the potion in his hand to turn himself invisible.

“Give us a single once you’ve put a bag on each ship, make sure the bag is left open and is hidden.” Aegis said.

“Got it.” Trexon replied.

“Let’s show them what happens when you mess with Kalmoore.” Aegis said proudly before jumping off the side of the ship. Ren launched himself off with several heavy flaps of his wings, then Trexon flew off in an unknown direction, completely invisible to the others.

Aegis caught himself with a shield projection, and utilized the advanced guard skill to pre-emptively recast new ones in order to create a strange, wide staircase of shield projections, allowing him to slowly make his way down towards the four ships below, around the giant pyroclasm spell that was slowly soaring up towards them.

Ren flew alongside Aegis, waiting for him to keep up, until finally the three had reached the side of the ball of flames and were able to feel its intense heat as they dropped down below it. The moment they had, the four enemy airships came into view, and several of the players on the decks spotted them out, pointing up and shouting at them.

“Hah, really?” Trellin shouted from atop his wyvern as he circled the ships below. “You’re going to board us, with an assault crew of three players?” He spoke in a mocking town. “C’mon, Herilon, even for you that’s a bit much. There’s got to be a limit to your ego.”

Both Herilon and Aegis ignored him, instead Aegis pointing out a lizardfolk spellcaster atop one of the two center ships. He was standing on the upper deck, focused on maintaining his pyroclasm spell with his head tilted up and looking towards it with a strained expression, [Paulo - Level 150] sitting above his head. The moment Aegis pointed it out, Ren went into a dive towards the wizard.

“Oh I don’t think so.” Trellin saw it and quickly yanked the reins on his wyvern to move it into a quick dash, flying to intercept Ren and Herilon. The wyvern was able to grab onto Ren, but Ren pecked and clawed into its underside and talons as Herilon leapt from the back of Ren with incredible strength, launching himself through the air to land atop the lower deck of the ship with Paulo on it.

Trellin saw this, and he too launched himself off of his mount to land in front of Herilon, standing between him and the wizard. At the same time, Aegis made several large strides on his shield projections to land beside Herilon, and dozens of players and NPCs atop the ships all stopped what they were doing to nock arrows, prepare spells, and draw their blades.

“You’ve still got a chance to get out of this unscathed.” Trellin smirked as he saw the hesitation on Herilon and Aegis’ faces. “Hand over that essence you got under the ocean, and we’ll let you all go, including your airship.” Trellin replied confidently.

“You seem to be mistaken.” Aegis replied with equal confidence, still brimming with light due to his Avatar of Eirene spell being active. “You’re the one who is being given the last chance here. Let us go, or you’ll lose all of these ships and your entire crew.” He said as he held his shield up with his left hand, claw on the right hand at the ready.

“Hah. You’re threatening us?” Treillin asked, followed by a loud laugh that the other nearby players joined in with. As he laughed, the sky around the airships began to populate by the mounted players that had been left behind during the airburst. Minus the cleric player they’d knocked off, and Trellin, there were still 10 of them. “You must have misspoke. You must have meant to say, ‘I surrender the essence, thank you for being so merciful’.” Trellin smiled playfully.

“I don’t think I stuttered.” Aegis replied coldly, with a devilish glare. Following this, Herilon broke into a charge, spinning his sword in a wide arc and releasing a huge blast of blue energy that cut across the deck of the Shattered Pirate’s airship. Several players got hit and took massive damage, while others including Trellin were able to dodge the strike.

What followed was nothing short of abrupt chaos - arrows and spells from the decks of all four ships and the mounted players were fired at Aegis and Herilon from all directions. They had high level gear, but they were vastly outnumbered and quickly began to take massive amounts of damage.

Any damage Herilon managed to deal was quickly healed up by the Shattered Pirate healers, of which Herilon had no hopes of reaching. Aegis had no time to join Herilon on the offensive as he was forced into purely defensive actions. He repeatedly used shield projections, guards, heals and healing winds to prevent himself, Herilon, and Ren, from dying to the onslaught of attacks. Ren was doing his best to interrupt the attacks from the mounted players, going after their mounts and drawing their attacks onto himself of which he was managing to dodge many.

Eventually, with Trellin engaged in combat with Herilon, Aegis was forced to eating steaks and drinking whatever elixir consumables he could find in his inventory to just keep them both standing.

“You’re holding up well, I’ll give you that, but you can’t do this dance forever.” Trellin called out in between his attacks on Herilon. He briefly motioned up towards the giant pyroclasm spell that was still inching closer and closer to towards the Sky Darling above.

“I’m done.” Trexon called out, before breaking his invisibility spell next to Herilon and Aegis and quickly waving his hands to cast a grand shell around them, giving Aegis a brief reprieve.

“Alright. Times up for you pirates.” Aegis shouted, using the shells brief protection to pull his final red, salamander leather bag out of his inventory and hold it up into the air. “Release the anchoring shot, cancel the Pyroclasm spell, or I blow up all of your boats.” Aegis yelled so that he could be heard over the sound of all of the attacks.

“What the hell is in that bag?” Trellin asked from the otherside of the shell as it absorbed so many hits that Trexon’s mana supply went nearly empty in seconds. Aegis tilted the bag downwards and opened it, revealing the contents inside to be brightly glowing red flaming blast petals, all stuffed in together tightly.

“STOP ATTACKS!” STOP ATTACKING RIGHT NOW!” Trellin shouted frantically at his crew. They listened, but there were enough projectiles flying through the air at this time already to break Trexon’s grand shell, knocking his mana down to 0. As a result, Trellin was forced to quickly react with his battlemaster skills to deflect the last few arrows and spells to prevent them from hitting Aegis.

Once the ceasefire had settled in, Ren landed calmly beside the others. Suddenly, it became tensely quiet atop the deck of the ship as Trellin nervously glanced around, making sure no other attacks were headed towards the bag in Aegis’ hands.

“You realize, if you blow up that bag of petals, you’ll only take out this ship, right? You’ll still lose your sky darling, and your essence.” Trellin said as he held his right hand out towards Aegis, palm forward as he attempted to calm Aegis down with his words. “We’ll still get what we want.”

“Nah. You won’t.” Aegis shook his head. “Trexon here just hid a few more of these bags on your other airships, and opened the tops. The explosion from this bag will trigger a chain reaction and blow up all four of your airships.” Aegis replied. Trellin took time to eye Aegis carefully, glancing between him and Trexon as if trying to read for a bluff, but he saw none.

“You’re serious.” Trellin shook his head in disbelief. “You’re really going to blow yourself up with all of our ships? You do that, no one wins. The essence will drop into the abyss below.” Trellin said.

“Haven’t you heard?” Aegis grinned once more. “I’m the spiteful healer. I don’t care if I win. I’m happy as long as anyone who comes after me and my friends suffers for it. Pirates, abysslings, dark harbingers, or fake streamers. I’ll take them all out.” Aegis roared back at him as he took a threatening step forward with the bag. With these words, Aegis’ viewership, which had been holding steady, began to climb once more.

“I think he’s serious.” Paulo said from the upper deck.

“No shit he’s serious.” Trellin sighed in frustration.

“So, what’s it going to be? Are you willing to lose all your ships for this mission? Or are you ready to give up and let us go.” Aegis said impatiently, his eyes briefly glancing up at the pyroclasm spell still traveling up towards their ship. During this time, Herilon, Trexon and Ren all anxiously stood off with the weapon-wielding crew members that surrounded them atop the deck of the Shattered Pirate ship.

Trellin didn’t answer instantly, and Aegis could see his pride battling with his logic in his eyes, but eventually, Trellin let out an annoyed sigh.

“Cancel the pyroclasm spell. Release the anchor shot.” Trellin reluctantly ordered. Within an instant, Paulo ended the spell and the giant ball of red flame that was illuminating the nearby skies in red disappeared. Following that, the anchor shot that was binding the Sky Darling in place was released, and the chain began reeling back into its harness on one of the neighboring airships. “There. You’re free to go. Where’s the bags of blast petals you put on our ships?” Trellin turned to Trexon.

“Nah. Not like that.” Aegis shook his head. “Get all of your buddies…” Aegis motioned to the mounted players still flying around them. “And then airburst away from us, in the opposite direction of Kalmoore. We’ll then airburst towards Kalmoore. Once we’re that nice, snug distance from one another, Herilon will tell you where the blast petal bags are hidden. Got it?” Aegis instructed Trellin, and saw further hesitation in his eyes.

“Tch.” Eventually he sucked his teeth and rolled his head. “Good, go then, get the fuck off my ship.” Trellin waved dismissively at Aegis and the others. Aegis then slowly and cautiously tightened the rope at the top of the bag in his hands before adding it back into his inventory, then climbed atop Ren alongside Herilon, whilst Trexon cast fly on himself.

Just as they were lifting off, Aegis saw the mounted pirates landing their winged beasts atop the decks of the four ships.

“You know we’re not gonna forget this, right?” Trellin called up at them threateningly.

“Neither will I.” Aegis shouted back. A few moments later, Aegis and the others reached the deck of the Sky Darling. “You good to sail us out of here?” Aegis asked Leonard the moment he hopped off of Ren’s back and onto the deck of their ship. As he did, he looked over the side of the Sky Darling’s railing to see the four Shattered Pirate airships airbursting away, just as Aegis had instructed them.

“She’s a little banged up, but she’ll be fine.”

“Good. Airburst us and get us going full speed back to Kalmoore. I’ll try to repair the damage to the ship as we fly.” Aegis answered.

“Aye.” Leonard nodded, rushing back up to the stern and waving his fingers around. After a few moments, the Sky Darling shot forward through the skies away from the pirates at incredible speed. “Okay, tell them where you hid the bags.” Aegis motioned to Trexon.

“Well, you see, that’s just the thing…” Trexon hesitated for a moment, an awkward toothy lizard grin growing across his face. “They had some anti-magic defenses around their ships, so I couldn’t get below deck without risking being seen. Before I could find a way around it, I saw you all running low on resources…” Trexon spoke slowly.

“You still have all of the bags on you?” Aegis said with wide-eyed disbelief, to which Trexon shrugged back. Hearing this, Herilon glanced towards Aegis’ live streaming icon, then back to Aegis.

“Oh man.” Herilon shook his head and began to chuckle. “Not only did you make him fail his mission, you did it by making a fool out of him in front of his crew. He’s really going to be pissed.”

“Eh…” Aegis shrugged, holding back a smile as Ren shifted back into his humanoid form and began bursting with laughter. “Let’s just airburst on cooldown back to Kalmoore, and they won’t be able to catch up with us.”

“Way ahead of you on that.” Leonard replied with a nod.