The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Forty-One

The dark skies above Peravendath's skyline were at war with the relative calmness of the planet's seasonal climate. The normally placid, brisk seaside night that fell during this time of the solar year had been replaced with a darkfall that resembled a raging beast. Lashed with wind and lightning, eruptions of eerie yellow-white brilliance peppered the vast billowing cloud bank as the atmosphere resounded with a rolling barrage of pounding thunder.

The dark that enwrapped the turbulent coast and the city-fortress dominating its shoreline and the archipelago stretching out from it, was the kind of a night that teased at the mythology of a cataclysmic battle between primal, angry gods, hinting at the arrival of a great and bloody armageddon.

It was not the type of a sky where any aviator or sky sailor would or could feel safe riding the rushing, dynamic currents of the inky air.

"I've picked up a blurt-broadcast, looks like it is some kind of Aerial Position Indicator Emergency Beacon."

"A distress call? In the middle of this mess? Really? Put it on-screen..."

They had barely missed colliding with the huge, rectilinear skyship by only a little over the breadth of a jousting stadium. The ship had suddenly loomed into view, running counter to the spin of the massive waterspout, from out the foggy curtain of whirling ocean spray surrounding the vortex just as the jetellin's engines had pulled the rigid airship out from the grasp of tractor winds emanating from the storm.

The cigar-shaped, multi-level skyship had emitted a banshee-like shriek as it had flown by the jetellin.

Through a ribboning cascade of black smoke trailing from the ship's nose cone, they could see that its whole port side above the fifth deck had been ripped apart, splayed open, and it appeared that had happened from inside the craft, as if there'd been some manner of explosion that had run the length of the vessel from bow to stern.

From her position at the navigational console, Ryonne peered intently at the image dominating the panoramic master viewscreen and exclaimed, "Whyelle-dur, that ship, do you recognize what kind of vessel that is? It appears to be some kind of a warship, but I've never seen a design configuration matching anything like it...!"

Under his voluminous crimson hood, Adam Wilder's dark face involuntarily wrinkled into a grim mask that was equal parts apprehension and rancor. The sight of the damaged skyship had awakened a stream of bitter memories from his past and, while he fought to keep directional control as he piloted the jetellin through the storm, the gradual realization of what he was looking at further darkened his mood.

"That design is rare. There aren't very many ships of that kind in existence here, so far as I know. It's a relic from Teshiwahur's more technological age, back before the decline of the Emperium. I didn't think that any were left operational. At least that's what the people who took me in told me a long time ago. But if it's the ship I think it is, I know that ship and I know its crew..."

"You do?"

"I think it's the Aerieakon. A large part of me doesn't want to believe that, but I'm pretty sure that is indeed the ship I'm seeing. And if that's so, then that's the ship I was forced to serve on, first as a prisoner in chains, then as a crew-hand, and later as a freebooter, when I was first marooned here in the Withered Land."

Ryonne drew in a slow shuddery breath and looked away from the image to fix Wilder with a hard stare.

"That ship is under the command of the pirate Captain Rae'vynn Wyyng, isn't it? Your former teacher. The one who betrayed you and abandoned you to die as a gladiatorial slave..."