Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Seven, Shrew-d Operators: Escape plans.

-Jacky-

“Captain, how do we take care of that guard?” That guy in the wooden chair was an armored pig, the smallest pigs were between two and four feet tall. I can handle that easily. This guy was more in the range of four to six, while being much more physically inclined that Captain La Perm was.

“It’s times like this that having a knife as my primary weapon doesn’t help me in the slightest.” You could say that again Captain. “Tarsus any ideas.”

“I want to save my magic for something really important, I’m also not magically gifted and anything that I can think to shapeshift into would be of limited help here.” Well its little wonder why you needed us here to help you, I’m sure Captain will come up with something. “He’s not currently wearing his helmet, if only we could hit him hard enough in the head with something heavy.”

“Well I’ve got nothing.” So much for my belief in you Captain. “Still, if he’s not wearing his helmet then where is it?”

Not much here aside from some chairs a desk and a circular shield hanging high on the wall.

“Say Captain, could we use that shield?” I watched as Captain smiled and quietly moved a wooden chair underneath the shield. She got up on the chair to pry the metal buckler off the wall and then strapped it to her back.

“We can use it later Jacky, but for now I think a simple solution will save us some trouble.” What simple solution? “Jacky, Tarsus, grab a chair and get on both sides of the corridor. Be prepared to swing with all your worth, aim for his exposed head. If he doesn’t go down to whatever we can throw at him, then we’re going to be in trouble.”

“Captain, please tell me you’re not going to do something stupid.” Given how she avoided looking in my direction, she was going to do something like that.

-Jade-

“Ready, good, wait until you can get him from behind. Hey, fatso, your mother was so pretty she won a miss congeniality contest!” I had definitely earned the pigs attention. He was immediately up and staring in my direction.

“Hey, take that back, my mother is ugly as Tartarus and her attitude matches!” I blinked confusedly at his statement, I thought I was the one that was supposed to be confusing him here! “Wait, how did you even get down here, the boss doesn’t like intruders in his dungeon.”

The pig charged for me pulling out his sword, he swung for me and I leapt backwards. That’s when Tarsus decided to slam the chair he was levitating into the right side of the pigs head.

The chair broke into pieces against the pig’s skull. He continued standing there rubbing at his head looking aggravated.

“You think that’ll take me down? I’m the prison guard down here for a reason!” The gruff voiced guard turned to Tarsus, that’s when Jacky made her move and leapt for his back. She put her full weight into the downwards swing, the guard simply turned around after that chair broke upon his skull. “More of you guys? Do you runts seriously think you can handle me?”

Tarsus levitated another chair and swung for the left side of his head while he was paying attention to Jacky. He turned around and charged forward to grab Tarsus by the throat.

While the thickheaded guard was busy threatening Tarsus with his sword and choking the life out of him, I motioned to Jacky that I needed her and moved towards the desk. Jacky immediately joined me knowing where I was going with this.

“Would you stop that please? My head is much too hard to be taken down by something so…” I and Jack heaved the desk for the back of his skull and he finally went down while releasing Tarsus. “Small…”

The guard fell to the floor with a loud thud, his red armor was making quite a racket. Tarsus, who had been released upon the desks impact, scrambled away from the guard taking in several deep breaths of life giving air.

“By the sun, how can someone take three chairs to the head and still be well enough afterwards to nearly choke the life out of someone!” I wanted to rant about this, because usually big guys like that are supposed to go down on the first hit. “If this is just one of the guards, what’s their boss even like?”

“Is someone there… what happened to the guard?” At the sound of that voice Tarsus took off running down the hallway.

“Jacky watch the guard.” I followed Tarsus, let’s see who Tarsus has been kicking up all this fuss about.

“Merriami, are you alright?” Tarsus was looking into the window into the cell.

“Tarsus?! How did you survive the guard?” Her voice sounded alright, now to finally see what we were rescuing. “You’re like wet tissue paper when it comes to a direct confrontation, then again that’s a generally assumed fact about your species.”

“Well gee, tell me how you really feel about me coming to rescue you.” Tarsus certainly had a reason to be sarcastic.

“Look, I’m sorry Tarsus, but I wasn’t exactly expecting you to come to my rescue.” I looked into the window Tarsus was peering through while wagging his tail and saw his belle, what I saw wasn’t what I expected. “I was actually kind of losing hope for any kind of rescue at all. How did you get the keys off of Gonnan?”

Inside the cell was… a rather plain looking shrew girl with light brown fur, she had a thick metal collar around her neck which was chained to the wall. I was expecting something more along the lines of completely ugly or at least a tarnished ravishing beauty to look at, one that could do much better than Tarsus.

Merriami looked weak and was wearing a tattered skirt, the only bit of dignity the pigs left her with, and not much else. Her appearance was… underwhelming really. She looked nice, but not in an extravagant way. She seemed quite thin, probably malnourished by her stay in casa de porky. In all, she would be ridiculously average looking if not for her current state.

“We didn’t, we just happen to have a very good skeleton key.” Thank you for recognizing my major talent as a rogue Tarsus.

“Can you get me out of here?” She was giving us a pitiful soulful glance with her dark blue eyes.

“Could you take care of this door please?” The way Tarsus was pleading with his eyes made me roll my own.

Well of course I would, I didn’t come all this way just to set up something that might not even happen later. You and Merriami better get together after all this Tarsus.

I swear, if you ended up friend zoning each other, I will do something very unpleasant to the both of you with a cupcake!

I stepped forward, did a partial cast of the door and released the door off to the side. These thick door casts were getting rather tiring.

Tarsus immediately ran into the room to hug the shrew girl and she hugged him back, well they definitely liked one another. Good enough for me.

“So… you and him.” The shrew just blushed and looked at me while holding Tarsus close to herself. “Would you say that you’re in love?”

“Yes. I would say that, but I don’t think my father would approve of him.” She started to pet Tarsus and he growled cutely as he curled up against her. “He’s pretty wimpy, but at least he’s my wimp.”

“Hey, I came into this place against my better judgment for you!” It looked like Tarsus had more to say only his tail went ramrod straight when Merriami kissed him on the lips. “What were you saying beautiful, I think I forgot the last few minutes.”

“I do appreciate you coming for me, but you’re an idiot for coming here. You could have gotten hurt trying to rescue me!” Speaking of that Ami, I had something to do.

I crouched next to her and cast one of the links in the chain next to her neck brace. Once free from the wall, Ami tried to stand and seemed to be struggling with doing even that.

“You say I’m made of tissue paper, you can hardly even stand.” Tarsus flickered with green fire and turned into a familiar looking shrew. He looked like the one we met in the alley that led us to Mr. Sorex’s location.

“Speaking of rescue, we’re not exactly done yet.” They both gave me blank stares. “We still have to get out here and she’s obviously not in any condition to be running anywhere. Knowing our horrible luck, we’re going to have some problems escaping.”

“I’m going train myself up when we get out of here and you can be the distressed damsel next time.” Merriami Sorex muttered out loud.

“Sure thing, changelings like having strong females in their lives.” I take it Tarsus was referencing a changeling queen. It makes perfect sense that they'd like strong women.

“He’ll definitely be the damsel, he’s already met your father.” I cast and reversed the link of the chain closest to the wall. Taking the length of chain, I stowed it away in one of my packs pockets.

“What did he have to say about you Tarsus?” As soon as Merriami asked that, I clapped my hands together loudly getting their attentions.

“Look, is now really the time for this? We’re still in danger here.” I got the two of them staring at me, after a moment they shrugged. Jacky joined us as we started walked towards the one solitary entrance to the dungeon. “Let me put it this way, is Ami in any real condition to help us fight our way out of here?”

“You can tell the answer just by looking at me, I must be quite a sight.” Merriami was walking slowly while being propped up by Tarsus. “Which way did you come in?”

“The front door.” I was being looked at as if I had just lied about how we got in here. “The balcony wouldn’t have been any easier to get through.”

“We might want to leave through a balcony.” Merriami had me a bit curious. I just had to know what these two saw in each other, now wasn’t the time for that though. “They probably have the entrance covered by now if you entered that way, Gonnan has to be on his way if you tripped his magical sensors entering the building.”

“Magical sensors?” I asked feeling a sudden sense of dread.

I cast the door to the dungeon out of the way and as soon as we set foot in the corridor, the door down the way to our right slammed wide open. We had come in from that direction and it was obvious that someone wasn’t very happy about the magical locks not working.

I turned to see who was coming and froze, the big heavy thumps of his footfalls caused the building to shake. He was a ten foot tall giant, quite wide and mostly muscle and the two big white tusks sticking out the sides of his mouth looked like they had been bloodied in combat. He had dark greyish purple fur, spiky black hair, a blood red vest, dark brown pants and solid black eyes filled with malice.

I felt a sense of mortal terror just looking at him, so it couldn’t be anyone else other than Gonnan.

“So the little rat is trying to escape my hospitality, amusing.” Even his voice and chuckling caused a deep and vibrating sense of dread throughout the corridor. He pointed a larger than life pitchfork at us that ended in four swords instead of spikes.

“Jacky, remind me to buy a surplus of knife sheaths later on. You know, just for situations like this.” Sure Sekhet was powerful, but she looked friendly and at least somewhat approachable despite her size. I was quite terrified of this guy. “It doesn’t need to be said, but go in the opposite of that thing.”

I started backing away down the left portion of the corridor coming out of the dungeon. Gonnan snorted and charged for us, his every step shaking the entire corridor. The guy must weigh a ton and yet he was able to move so fast, I quickly cast my knife sheath and his thunderous approach stopped immediately. I stowed my knife in my pack afterwards.

“That won’t stop him for long, move!” I turned around and ran for the locked door and cast it out of the way. After they made it through, I was about to put it back when Jacky bent down to pick up the magical lock. She held it in the air looking at me, I reversed the cast and the magical lock took up its correct position in the doorway. “Good thinking Blackcap! That should stop him for a bit.”

A thundering was heard on the other side of the door as we made our way down the hallway while trying not to attract attention from the pigs on the upper walkways. A loud ripping noise was heard behind us, I looked back and wished I hadn’t. Two tusks were perforating the solid metal door, they quickly pulled themselves free and several fist shaped dents started noisily warping the door.

“Move faster.” I immediately charged up the stairs ahead of them and leapt onto a surprised pigs face to started bashing him down with my fist. The limping Merriami and Tarsus were getting up the stairs when the door was blown off its hinges and Gonnan marched through to look towards us.

Jacky was taking care of another guard alerted by the noise, while I cast the door on the second floor leading to the balcony out of the way. Walking out onto the balcony I could see fighting in the streets, it seemed The Desert Shrews were making a move.

“He’s coming Captain!” Yes Jacky, I know, believe me. You can't possibly miss something that terrifying.

“Tarsus, you’ve got a minute to get Ami as far away from here as possible.” I pulled out two griffon feathers and a raven feather, I cast a griffon feather at Merriami and sustained the raven feather to send a message. “Grab her and fly!”

Tarsus didn’t need to be told twice. Weighing less than she did a second ago, Tarsus was able to lift off with Merriami in his natural form and get her airborne. I put away the raven feather and cast the other griffon feather at Jacky.

“Captain, what are you…” I grabbed Jacky by the leg and swung her around to throw her towards mom, she let loose a shriek as she crossed the distance between the buildings.

Now to make my... I yowled, pain… my world was pain! I was sent flying off the building, with the feeling of metal digging into my back.

I was on course to slam into the building across the street, the shield on my back thankfully took the brunt of that blow and even then I felt that in my entire skeleton.

A cast settled over me and I slowed down to hit the wall softly.

I love you mom, but I think I might be currently paralyzed and still endangered.

Author's Note:

Rogue's are not good against big targets.

Comments

[theoldhunter]

Rogue's are not good against big targets

Really depends on the situation in all honesty

[The Faceless Maker]

And how far away from the target the rouge is. I've found that rouges fare better against everyone if they have a crossbow. Preferably with poisoned bolts.

[FridayPie]

8929044
If you face away from target, you can't dodge.

- evasion tank tips.

[SvenFoxx]

Rogues are like Wizards. Awesome at what they specialize in... squishy in all other areas.

[Umbra Animo]

Actually rouges are bad on groups. Big slow target just means more to aim at and bigger lethal points. The power triangle it heavy armored knights counter wizard area affect spells. Rouge counter slow knights. And wizard counter the rouge with hard to dodge spells

[Shadowshame]

I'm not going to Liepard this story is entertaining you really shouldn't put yourself down about something you enjoy doing as that just takes the enjoyment out of it

[The Scarlett Mare]

I swear, if you ended up friend zoning each other, I will do something very unpleasant to the both of you with a cupcake!

Noooo, Jade, it's not worth it