Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Sixty Seven, City of the moon:C.

-Airship Mauled, Kuril-

“So, did it actually work?” I queried my daughter with a hint of amusement.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Jaded was smiling wryly.

“Did what work? Jade still hasn’t actually explained what the plan is and…” Fizzle paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. She went wide eye a moment later because she was smart enough to figure out what Jade did. “Did that actually work?!”

“Like, you wouldn’t believe.” Jaded said again nodding.

“Please continue, we want to hear how this went.” It seemed Maria had picked up on it and so had her sisters.

“What are all of you picking up on that we aren’t?” A muffin nibbling Pom quietly mumbled.

“I believe it might involve the cities location my dear friend.” Oleander suddenly stated looking lightly intrigued, she picked up on it too. “While Jade can’t do the math, she can apparently apply science well enough.”

“Give my mare a cookie, I ALSO WOULDN’T MIND A SNACK… so long as it’s from Kuril.” We all rolled our eyes at Fred.

“Mom has now officially corrupted a demon with her cooking. Now we need to be associated with a… no wait, she already got figurative and literal angels too. Not to mention several gods, what hasn’t she gotten at this rate?” Jade snickered and looked to me, I felt my cheeks heating up slightly in embarrassment. “Anyway, we eventually reached the ‘city of the moon’ after some trying times... with everything I asked for present and ready for the big event. It would take seven days to deal with the walls though.”

-Day one, several thousand years ago, a fair distance outside the ‘City of the moon’, Jade-

“Let’s play some Tetris…” I muttered as I looked over the city, and the vast surrounding wall between us and it. I was laying on a dune with a griffon mask looking at the wall.

“What?” Asked Baast curiously.

I got up and moved down the dune to our campsite.

“Nothing… just hoping that the pieces all fall in line. Okay everyone, the plan is simple for the next six days. We’re going to do one thing and one thing only while trying not to draw to much ire from the guards on that wall or in the city proper.” The wall was fairly intimidating and large, it wouldn’t be as intimidating soon enough. I was speaking to a small smattering of flail-tails, jackals and my six chosen priestesses that have assisted me with the set up for this. “We’re going to march around the wall once a day for the next six days.”

I picked up the flag with Bastet’s symbol and visage on it, Baast just quirked an annoyed eye at me.

“I’ll be taking the lead, I’ll set the pace and the rhythm of our march. We need to do this at some time between sunrise and sunset on each day, we are not to attack the walls. We are not to fight back against the possessed jackals. We are just going to march, defend ourselves or avoid whatever thrown at us. If they come out to chase us, we leave. We will have to come back and continue on from the point we left off on, we absolutely need to finish a full lap around the city every day.” I looked over the various anugyptians before me, both male and female, jackal, trident tailed cats, ponies and even cows. “If these next six days seem strange or easy to you, wait until the thing we have to do on the seventh day! If any of you have your misgivings about this, voice them now before I organize our marching column!”

“Lady Jaded, what will this ultimately lead to or accomplish?” The first male anugytian flail-tail I rescued spoke up, his name was Fez and he’s been a good sport about joining us on this merry adventure for the last few months of this jackal jacking journey.

“The walls falling of course. We’re not even going to touch or do anything to them personally, but I assure you this is a very special ritual that requires seven priestesses to do!” Looking about, the anugpytians seemed confused about my plan or how it was going to work. “Each day our numbers will increase until the seventh day, if Bright organized things correctly that is. So on the sixth day I will inform everybody what we’re doing for the seventh after finishing that day. We need to look like we’re increasingly adding pressure.”

“Well of course I organized things correctly, they’ll all even be bringing extra supplies in every day like you…!” Bright seemed hurt by the idea that she didn’t do what I needed until she froze up, I think she just realized something. “Oh… so that’s why our groups are coming in a staggered manner, I think I get it now! We’re going to draw all the attacks with our smaller numbers while the jackals are still brave until they run out of or are low on ammunition to launch at us in these first three or so days aren’t we?”

“Yep, Bright Beam is a smart kitty. Anyone else? No? Good!” Nobody had any more questions, but they seemed wary about my plan. “I’ll in be the front. Baast has agreed to give up a special thing for the ‘ark of the testimony’, after much harassment on my part for which I apologize for the necessity of. The carriers of that will be directly behind me. It must not be damaged at all or at the very least the damage must be kept to a minimum, which is why several jackals with shields will be covering it for us! Baast will be behind and following her will be the chosen priestesses I’ve trained…”

“Uh, you haven’t actually trained us to do anything special!” Brash pointed out with a paw.

“Around the drum that will be playing our beat to march to. Cheerful can play the drum if she wants, but she better keep it in line with a steady beat as needed. I want us all walking unison and the only reason you would break formation is to avoid getting hit by projectiles.” I ignored Brash pointing out the fact that I hadn’t done more than told them to do a few relatively hard tasks for me and with each other. In fact, I have managed to make them good friends with one another with mutual confusion over my seeming lack of training, they all had that in common. “I’m sorry that we don’t have enough shields for everyone, not that flail-tails can carry heavy shields anyway. You guys are able to at least dodge things easily because you are much faster than the jackals are.”

“Not that we really needed the heavy shields much in the first place for anything… well at least until now where they will be quite useful against the stone and bola slingers.” An excited Sandy exclaimed as she came to stand right next to me.

“Since Bright brought it up, we’re going to need some guys to bury rocks and steal the used up bolas in the night. If jackals are sent out to pick them up, we can set up ambushes to prevent them from getting their ammunition back and increase our forces using their numbers by freeing more of the possessed. We’ll need volunteers to deny them their projectiles and for night time captures, said things will get easier as we go along and more reinforcements come in.” They were quite a few smatterings of discussion over who would be doing that. “I trust Baast to oversee that and maybe even a few of the flail-tails can learn to launch bolas using their tails. Now everyone prepare for the first march, we will need to do so in the form on a large line behind my initial stated starting positions. Any other positions in the line doesn’t matter nearly as much, but we still need everyone to march and we will always need carriers for the ark of the testimony if current ones are injured. Our marching column should be kept relatively thin in width.”

Watching as everyone scattered to hash out their positions in the marching line, I eventually looked to Baast when she garnered my attention by tugging at my ragged cloak with her split tails.

“What are we really doing here?” It seems the goddess was a little disbelieving of my methods to bring down the walls.

“Exactly like I said, we’re bringing down the walls without touching them or attacking them personally.” I smiled to Baast. “Have a little faith that things are going to go exactly the way I think they will, provided that we’re all not heavily concussed by the seventh day.”

“Faith… you do realize who you’re saying that to right?” Of course I do Baast, but it’s funny that you’re currently acting like the skeptical one when you’re the goddess among mortals. Not only that, you were quite heroic for helping us mortals as much as you have thus far. It’s kind of sad to learn why Sekhet couldn’t interfere in this for two reasons, knowing I was one of them when it came to avoiding paradoxes. “I’m supposed to place my faith… in your strange plan… that those impassable walls will fall all by themselves?”

“Yep.” As monosyllabic as I could make my response as I slowly lifted up the flag and made my way to the front of the pack.

“I simply cannot wait to see how such a strange mortal as yourself is going to pull this off.” Baast smiled as she followed me to her position. “You’ve done quite well with assisting us thus far, but this seems a little above your capabilities.”

I didn’t respond and started marching us to the left of the gates to the city, we’d move across the gates and then again to complete the singular needed lap. Hopefully the possessed jackals on the wall would be aggressive enough to waste projectiles on us.

-Break-

“It figures you would be the one to make my sister eat her own words.” Sekhet chuckled with amusement.

“Yeah, the first day didn’t go so badly because we weren’t aggressively attacking the walls, but they still launched quite a few stones our way.” Leaning against the center of Maries’ chest, Jade nuzzled her face into Mara’s neck. “How I’ve missed the comfort of a killing machine’s warm body, those cold desert nights while we were traveling happened to be fairly brutal to me.”

“Drastic changes in temperature is quite horrible to those that are not used to it.” Dr. Bones chimed in. “Older people tend to die from such drastic changes, because their bodies can’t cope with it.”

“Meep!” When a slightly upset Paprika said that, we saw her pointing to Velvet.

“She’ll be fine lass, reindeer like her are made of sterner stuff. Though hotter temperatures are definitely not their thing. Don’t let Velvet burn herself out too frequently or get too many fevers, else it is liable become another serious health issue that I’ll have to deal with.” Dr. Bones pointed to a bandage covered Jacky with her arm in a sling, Paprika nodded in understanding. “Like I don’t have enough from having this disaster magnet around!”

“I resemble that remark.” As she said this, Jacky cuddled her son Gavin to her chest. “Also, can I clock in an appointment with Escargot when my arm is better? I can’t even get a break while sitting still, well at least not the kind I’d appreciate anyway, while listening to what my sister has done in the distant past.”

“I was going to do that anyway.” Crossing her arms with a huff, Dr. Bones just shook her head and turned to Jade. “Continue on, I want to hear this is going.”

-End Break. Day six, outside the city of the moon, Baast-

Over the last five days, we’ve taken bolas, spears, rocks and various other things the jackals could literally throw at us. They were running out of weapons to hurl at our ever growing marching line and we just finished our sixth day of marching.

Quite a number of allied jackals, ponies and cows that have come in to aid us were all wrapped in cloth to cover their bruises and cut flesh. We were doing fairly well in supplies, I’d say we even have a decent surplus to last us two weeks.

From what Jade has told me, we wouldn’t need all these supplies for ourselves. We’d need them for the people we were rescuing in the city of the moon. If her word holds true, then tomorrow we’d witness the impossible.

Those walls were fairly sturdy and well structured, with at least three tiers of them. They were more than twice as tall as they were thick… to the average flail-tail they loomed over us all. There was even said to be housing in the walls and those inside were safe from our moderately poor siege.

Even Jade herself has taken an injury or two, but she still insisted we had to do this, I have yet to figure out why she was so insistent on it. At least she hadn’t garnered an injury that prevented her from marching as she said all seven priestesses were needed for the end of this tomorrow.

Even if we do get by the outer wall, then the retaining wall would still be around unless this plan accounts for both walls. Jade knew I was a goddess, yet she didn’t ask me if it would be within my power to assist. My answer would have been, varied depending on what she asked of me.

I was not the only one confused. Every other flail-tail was just as equally confused, but we had been burying the weapons we couldn’t use and captured multiple jackal retrieval teams sneaking out with successful ambushes. Even then they still had the gates to the city too well defended to surpass while open.

The news I was receiving from northern and southern forces in anugypt was promising, given that Anubis was cut off from reinforcement.

King Anubis even once taunted us on the fourth day that we could never make the city fall, as we apparently didn’t have the power to do so. Jade just told him that we’d be coming for him on the seventh day and that he can’t hide in the city forever.

“If I take another rock to the body or shoulder...” I turned to the green haired Abyssinian, she had long since improved her hygiene since meeting me. Trimmed her claws, cut her long green hair to above her shoulders and performed the classic bathing of oneself with her tongue after washing off in a river. Despite that, she was still relatively bland for an exotic looking being to most of our male flail-tails who thought highly of her. “Okay guys, since tomorrow is officially the seventh day of our march, things will be slightly different! First of all, we are not going around the wall once this time. In fact, we are going around it seven times tomorrow and we are going to be creating a marching spiral around the city if we have enough people for it. Upon finishing those laps, the walls will come down!”

Jade cared not one wit about looking beautiful, but even then she was fairly charismatic as the people started cheering and many believed in her.

Author's Note:

Imagine a wall four stories high and six feet thick surrounding a fairly large city on slightly hilly badland style terrain.

That's what we're dealing with here.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

For those playing at home, Jade is re-enacting the Battle of Jericho, with the Ark of the Covenant being replaced by a Peanuts-reference-shaped alchemical explosive and genocide replaced by the Elements of Harmony.

Also, that's a pretty clever explanation of the tactical value of Joshua's apparent faffing about.

[Booster Spice]

The players are all in place, and Jade is winding up for the pitch.