//------------------------------// // Chapter fifty six, Huoshan Hellfire: Lighter. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -The Volcano, wall between lower and middle tier, Paprika- I grappled a family of flightless longma and hauled them up to the middle tier and dropped them off gently… after getting in a small hug of course! I really needed a hug right now and my wives were a bit too busy fighting, and not with each other this time. So I took them where I could get them. I didn’t like the shadow horde at all, they didn’t hug very well or seem to understand the conceptual joy therein. Hugs were for everyone, kisses are for my wives… they insisted on that thoroughly. Right now, I couldn’t do much of either and needed to concentrate on helping people. I could do so by stopping the mean metal wyvern coming right for me after I dropped off that family. I jumped away from the wall before its claws could grab me and held out my right hoof and curled it against my leg to fire out a thick strand of fur that connected to a nearby building. I quickly swung away before the metal thing could hug me with its feet. It still followed after me as I swung downwards, I pulled with my hoof as I reached the bottom of my swing and gained enough momentum to launch upwards as I released my furs grip on the building and flipped through the air. With a twist, I reoriented myself to face towards it. I put both my hooves together and took aim to fire some ‘impact fur’ right into one of its big fans. The end result of my wad of fur getting sucked into the fan was quite impressive, given that my fur expanded upon impact and the machine was quickly torn in half by the very pretty explosion that followed. Launching a wad of fur towards the nearby building with my left hoof I swung back towards the lower half of the falling machine and fired a wad from my right leg to catch it and swung upwards. I also got back my wad of now slightly blown up fur from the wreckage, my impact wad survived the explosion pretty well. Heaving with my right leg forward, I gave momentum to the large chunk of metal and sent it sailing right at another one of these metal dragon things. The tail from my chunk of metal destroyed it when it got caught in that one’s fan, but the body stayed mostly intact. Once it started falling I passed by it, spun around and grappled it with fur from my left hoof while swinging towards the stairs leading up to the middle tier of the city with my right. I launched the metal mass into the side of Mr. Clockwork’s ship and it destroyed one of those cannons shooting at my floofy wife. Releasing my furs grip on the building it was attached to this time, I launched myself into a high arc over Velvet’s head and waved to her, then I performed a flip before launching a strand randomly at the tall buildings to continue swinging. I needed to go make sure I didn’t miss helping anyone before I moved on to helping the hospital, they looked like they were getting attacked a lot. Also yay, I’m the Snuggly Spider Paca! With great fluff, comes great hugging ability! I’m going need a bright grey and blue uniform, not necessarily spandex, with a spider alpaca symbol and everything else before I can call myself that. I think I’m mild mannered enough to pass as Sweetie Snarker. It’ll be a little difficult to quip with just saying ‘meep’, but I think I can do it. I wonder if my wives would be willing to dress up as Mistress Mare-velous and Radiance. -Staircase to Middle Tier, Velvet- I seriously have no idea what goes on in Paprika’s head sometimes, but I really needed the help and I wasn’t looking that gifted Paca in the mouth. Though I might kiss it later for that. Everyone else was too busy with everything else that was going on the city, on top of the huge wave of shadows that just resumed climbing up the base of the mountain after Vixen’s avalanche. I iced the stairs as I backed up them and continued to put up snowflake barriers to block the cannon fire, there was one less cannon focused on me thanks to Paprika. One of the large pony like legs from the airship suddenly extended spikes from its hoof and stomped down on the frozen steps. Okay, Teatime was getting quite annoying, he couldn’t possibly have an answer for absolutely everything I could think of to use against him! I’ve already tried freezing the turret cannons, only to learn that they had flamethrowers built in and that I shouldn’t stand so close to the large airship sized golem. I’ve tried hitting the ship with ice pillars and did some minimal damage there, he’s built the whole cylindrical thing out of relatively tough materials and ice is not exactly the strongest material unless compacted thoroughly into something like Pykrete. I was not good at mass form of ice magic, so my pillars of ice were relatively hollow if given a lot of force when I make them. Puncturing the armor on a walking party tank was not something I’m good at, I could really use a longma for some hot and cold action. If that doesn’t work, and provided that the longma in question isn’t swatted out of the air by those two tentacles, then I might have a plan of action. The entire airship seems designed with melee fighters in mind, longma were notoriously known for being dangerous when it came to fighting them up close combat. If I could get some time to build up for it, like what Arizona afforded me during our fight in the coliseum, then I might be able to form my ice statue of beauty, grace and gorgeousness. It would look like me after all, so of course it would be all those things. The only flaw is that it wasn’t me and it was quite slow to move, but it could do damage and had quite a bit of mass despite being hollow everywhere except the heart. I would have to be relatively close when forming it to get in a few good damaging hits before I tire of holding it. I may have pushed myself well beyond my previous limit with Arizona, I should be running a terrible fever right now after that fight. Instead, I’m still fighting fit and pacing myself, because I couldn’t afford to waste more of my magic on anything but defense and a good damaging attack when the opportunity presents itself. A bolt of black slammed into the airship and sent it sliding backwards down the stairs fifty or so feet. It seems Oleander found some time to charge up another attack. I swung my hoof and a snowflake barrier deflected a cannon ball into the air. When the cannonball came down I stomped the ground and a pillar of ice launched the cannonball forward at the barrel of one of the five remaining cannons. The barrel was dented badly by the impact of the cannonball and it soon exploded the next time the front leftmost cannon fired. I almost cheered, almost, the broken cannon shot a blast of barely evaded fire towards me. Apparently it can still double as a flamethrower. From my position I could see the shadows starting to flood the lower tier of the city from the gates. I deflected several more cannonballs, when a smaller one came at me from my right that I almost didn’t see coming. Only it was deflected by Skelly’s axe as she arrived to help me. Her adorable skeletal visage was a sight for sore eyes. The clockwork golem on the nearby building that fire upon my person was soon ripped apart by a thin beam of dark magic, Oleander certainly has impeccable timing and could have done that sooner. Skelly turned her head towards me and pointed towards the top of the stairs and idly deflected a cannonball without looking in the direction of the cannon that fired it. I nodded and started to retreat much faster while firing several shards of ice to cover Skelly as she charged forward, dodging the cannon fire and leapt onto the front left leg of the airship golem. Skelly started to do a one legged climb, all while avoiding or knocking back the two large metal tentacles as they swept around and tried to get her off of the leg she was climbing deftly. She’d soon be on the airship itself. I have an idea as to what she was doing, but it was going to be quite difficult to get inside without a fight and if she could do so then more power to her. I turned around and darted up the stairs. I was getting quite exhausted, a break would be helpful so I can recover a little before getting back into the thick of it. At the top of the stairs there were ongoing skirmishes with various clockwork golems being teleported in to assault everyone. I ducked a small cannonball and lunged forward to thrust my hoof straight into the offending golems head and then I turned and side bucked it in the neck taking its head off, it’s body stumble about randomly afterwards. I noted that aside from their mouth cannons, their hooves were now armed with retractable shovel like blades in all their legs. They weren’t very effective with them, but they were still causing injuries for the unwary. After taking down the blade flailing headless golem, I heard someone call my name. “Velvet, did Skelly make it onboard?” A curious question to ask when we were under attack Gene. I turned to him as his spear tore through a golem with two twirls and then he rolled to the side as one of those metal wyverns tried to come down on top of him. “Yes, but there are a lot of clockwork golems that will prevent her entry. The entrance is clearly sealed and I can see why we would want to get someone inside.” We all heard a noise and turned to the airship and saw that one of its rear legs was flailing sporadically. “What do you suppose is going on there?” I ducked at a clockwork golem and formed an edge of ice along my left leg and slashed it upwards sharply through the golem, a second later it split into two halves vertically. Gene twirled his spear deflecting a small cannonball and then lunged forward to thrust it straight through the golem. The golem tried to stab at Gene with both its forelegs, only to be ripped apart pulling his spear free as he leapt backwards towards me. The golems destroyed parts soon teleported away to be fixed like all the other golems we’ve been dealing with. “Nefer tripped a teleportation trap for me and Jacky, apparently he wasn’t captured and is in there causing trouble judging by the fact that both the rear legs on that thing are malfunctioning.” The metal wyvern swooped down and we both focused on it as it tried snap at my head with its jaws and then it had the gall to try and blast me with a powerful burst of air. “Skelly is going in to try and find the master rune or get Nefer out there before the shadow horde hits the airship. The longma are planning to hold the shadows monsters at the middle tier wall and the top of these steps, they are going to let the shadows swarm Clockwork’s machine. Can you put more pressure on it?” I stole the wind attack and twisted it back around while adding a bit of moisture to it to produce a long spike of ice that was immediately flung back into one of the wyverns fans damaging it moderately. Not nearly enough to leave it inoperable, I must be losing my touch with how tired I am. I could use some tough cow love and encouragement right about now. I rolled out of the way of the wyvern’s claws as it leapt forward and tried to smear me into the pavement, I fire another shard of ice at the wyvern’s other fan. It proved to be much tougher than the cheap golems that can almost be rebuilt in less than a minute’s time. As it swept its bladed metal tail around to impale me I leapt up and hit the tail with a small chunk of ice to lower it and then I froze it to the ground where its momentum stopped entirely. Gene took advantage of the situation and flashed by it ripped half the tail off with a broad swing. Clockwork couldn’t have more one or two hundred pony golems running around at once, it was just that they kept getting teleported back into the fight constantly that they were any problem at all. These wired wyverns and the airship itself were bigger problems. Biggest was the shadow horde hooves down. “No, I’m running ragged here, I need a break to prevent a fever. Can someone else do it?” I asked before a large mass of dark energy sailed overhead and knocked Clockwork’s large golem backwards again. A series of cannonballs from above followed, striking the front end of Clockwork’s ship doing quite a bit of damage to it and front right cannon. “Head for the hospital, it’s becoming a rallying point to get some rest and we’re going to soon move all the injured to the upper tier.” Gene then leapt up and with a flap of his wings he twisted around and knocked the metal menaces head to the side. Following that, the bizarre squid costume wearing longma came in on flaming wings to smash its head completely off with his saxophone. The Saxophone didn’t even get a dent from that, what was that thing made of? The longma quickly darted to the side to avoid the headless body’s metal talons and he started to play the saxophone while shifting his hips. He twisted around another attempt by the other set of talons to rip him to shreds to end up breaking the joints on that leg. “Oh just die already!” I shouted. Despite all the damage, the machine was still putting up a struggle by hopping around wildly on one leg and flailing the broken one around. Until I finished it off with a veritable hailstorm of small ice shards through its back and legs. “Go on Velvet, I’ll try to stall The Grand Time myself.” Gene swept towards a strong monstrous looking dog and tore through it to reveal that it was another kind of Teatime’s golems. “Hurry up and get back on your hooves, those shadow monsters have already flooded half the lower tier and they’ll be on us all soon. I don’t think Clockwork has even noticed them.” Gene performed a barrel roll through a series of cannonballs and flew off towards the menacing machine still climbing the stairs on its other four legs as the rear two seem completely inoperable. I took off towards the hospital at a quick pace, while dodging around groups of fighters and longma dealing with a sudden surge of what could only be clockwork dogs. This tier's walls quickly became engulfed in flames as if covered with oil.