A Matter of Elf Control (2/2)

Threadbare: Where's Midian?

Renny: What?

The little fox looked to the empty leash and harness.

Renny: Oh no!

Glub: Check it out man! Over by the 'horns.

And there she was, just behind where the gasserhorns were slowly getting themselves turned around, struggling against the air currents of the slope and getting reoriented for another attack run. The elf stood their cheerfully with her hands clasped behind her back, ears twitching as she tilted her head from one side to the other.

“Oh bother,” Threadbare breathed, and headed toward the side of the deck.

He almost made it to the rope ladder down when he heard a series of thumps next to him, and looked over to see Anne straightening up from where she'd leaped to intercept him. “Nay,” Anne said. “Ye can go below, but ye'll not be leaving us now.”

“She's alone out there,” Threadbare said.

“By choice, by the looks of it. Nay, leave her. The gods touched her with madness, the gods will look after her. And besides,” Anne said, motioning Threadbare back toward the center of the deck with one pistol, “I want to see what she can do. I want to see what I'm bringin' into me home.”

Threadbare frowned. “All right. But if she falls I'm going to go and try to save her.”

Anne grinned a lazy golden grin. “That'll be an interesting day,” she said, tapping her pistol against what she thought was Cecelia's head, as the phantom sound of metal rapping porcelain rang out.

Threadbare went back to the center of the deck, and waited.

He didn't have long to wait. As the cannons roared and sent lead into and around the gasserhorns they finished their turn and started bounding back toward the ship...

...until a flash of blue light split the sky.

A wall appeared right in front of the lead gasserhorn, and it slammed into the unmoving plane of force with a THUD that made all of the crew wince.

“Wizardry!” Anne said, approvingly.

The other two hastily paddled their legs in midair, one managing to only clip the side of the wall of force, the other just dodging under it.

Another flash of blue licked out, and popped that one in the nose. It bellowed, and arrowed downward, straight toward Midian.

“Cannon are reloaded and shifted forward mom,” Stormanorm barked. “Just say the word!”

“Wait for it...” Anne said, eyes fixed on the elven mage.

The Gasserhorn opened its mouth and vapor spewed out, and Threadbare expected to see Midian's broken body flung off the slope and falling into the valley below...

...but instead she simply wasn't there.

Threadbare looked around frantically, but the gasserhorn's Loudcloud skill washed over the slope, and the bellow shook the earth so hard the Cotton Tale shifted on its ledge. The pirates clung for dear life, and Threadbare used the distraction to whisper to his party.

Threadbare: Did anyone see where she went?

After a second, came the reply he'd been hoping for.

Glub: I see her! On your left, towards that rock that looks like a dwarf.

By the time Threadbare found her, she was sitting on the rock, kicking her feet back and forth. He couldn't make out her face at this distance, but her body language showed a total lack of concern for the rising, angry, and battered gasserhorns that had completely lost interest in the Cotton Tale, and were now circling above her like sharks eyeing a treat in the deeper waters.

“We'll never have a clearer shot, Captain!” Stormanorm called, holding the rope of one of the cannons.

“Not yet,” said Anne, unlimbering a spyglass and setting it to her eye, tracing runes on the side that lit it up with a strange green glow. “Wait for it...”

Gasserhorns weren't normally herd animals.

They weren't even predators, when you got down to it. They drifted in the high places of the world, bounding from peak to peak to hunt for the lichens they liked to feast upon, and staying in places where their mobility, immunity to the harshness of gravity, and devastating wind attacks could best protect them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

They were not used to being among other gasserhorns, let alone coordinating their attacks.

But when the first one bellowed its rage and dropped like a stone toward the thing that had offended it, the second one followed its instincts and its companion down, and the third one blasted Midian with a gale-force wind, they did a credible job of teamwork quite by accident.

Threadbare feared the worst. He looked away; he couldn't watch.

As he did so, his button gaze fell on Anne.

Anne, who had her eye glued to the spyglass.

Anne, whose mouth was open in shock.

Anne, who for a second, for a brief second that Threadbare wouldn't have caught if he hadn't been staring straight at her, shook with fear.

The second passed.

The explosion of wind and the two charging gasserhorns hit the slope so hard that stone and ice and snow bloomed upward in a peeling cloud.

And Anne folded the spyglass with an audible snap, turned to Stormanorm, and said “As soon as ye get a clear shot, fire the cannon.”

“We don't have eyes on the elf, captain. Ye want her to be collateral?”

“She won't be,”Anne said, simply. “It's over. Lady Cecelia, if you'd be so kind as to start rebuilding me engines?”

Threadbare collected the bag of engine parts from the pirate who'd been tasked to carry it, but as he went the cannons belched fire and shot, and he couldn't help but spare a glance back.

The gasserhorns were in full retreat now, leaving only a crater in the center of things.

And to the side of the crater, walking calmly away with her hands in the pockets of her robes, Midian strode toward the ship without a care in the world.