tradesman's deck became crowded with its halfling crew, shooting flaming arrows through the conjoined air envelopes to ignite inside the nautiloid's chambered hull. Black smoke joined the phlogiston in its endless swirl. Small explosions broke out as the arrows ignited the flow, sending Shockwaves across the small ships' decks.
Off to port, an illithid dreadnought turned and aimed its weapons at the Spelljammer. Ten ballistae fired from the Spelljammer's port batteries, then ten more from starboard. Then the dreadnought was torn by seven unyielding missiles. The ship spun crazily above the Spelljammer, looking more like a pin cushion than a fearsome illithid vessel.
To the Cloakmaster, it was as though someone had flung open the gates of the Abyss to let the fiendish lords run free.
— Don't they realize that the captain has come? Don't they realize that the ship cannot be theirs?
— Some know, some don't, but it no longer matters. They fight because it is their way. Their song is one of conquest. Our song is one of peace.
And the Spelljammer sang.
Finally, in his soul, he understood the Spelljammer's high, sweet song. It was soft in his ears, flooding his entire being with soothing tranquility. Around the Broken Sphere, none could hear the Spelljammer's song, but battles became less intense, and hatred and anger were momentarily dispelled.
The Cloakmaster was here because his path was true. Death had always been his enemy. Even in the War of the Lance, he I had hated himself for the atrocities he had witnessed across f the battlefields, and for what he had had to do. Yes, he had killed in self-defense. He had killed in defense of others. He had killed for an ideal that he would have died for, a purpose that had been far more important than a lone groundling named Moore.
And his purpose with the Spelljammer, he knew, was even greater.
He hesitated, had deliberately put it off, but his destiny could wait no longer, and his fight for life was the only thing that could save the universe from becoming enslaved by the unhumans.
This universe must survive, he thought. He knew that it was his duty to survive this war at the Broken Sphere, no matter how strong the enemy. Survive-that was all the Spelljammer had to do. Fight, defend, destroy, if necessary, but… survive. That was all.
Until the time was right.
Teldin knew the Spelljammer could survive only so long.. and that there would be no escape from its final destiny.
— Life, he sang, and his own song merged with that of the Spelljammer.
— Life, they sang.
The great spaakiil, whose legacy had been forgotten by all who lived, turned its tail to the Broken Sphere and swam toward the war.
The Spelljammer's change of course was noticed immediately. Some ships disengaged their enemies to veer away and wait to see what the Spelljammer was up to. Others ignored the great ship and pressed harder with their attacks against the smaller ships in an effort to defeat their enemies first.
Their concerns were unimportant. Their movements around the Spelljammer were nothing to the Cloakmaster, who looked upon the massed fleets as insignificant in the larger scheme of things.
Then the Spelljammer was in the thick of battle. Missiles shot from its towers to rend great holes in the ships fleeing before it. The Spelljammer tore through the mass of ships effortlessly, a juggernaut against the puny warships.
Three lampreys had engaged a single battle dolphin, firing upon it in a concentrated attack with their ballistae. The shadow of the Spelljammer fell across them like the specter of death, and the ships were torn asunder as the great ship plowed through them as if they were gnats. The battle dolphin was torn in half as the neogi tower caught it under the lower hull. Then the two halves of the dolphin separated, one to tumble across the starboard wing and into the endless flow, the other to spin out of control and collide with one of the fleeing lampreys. The remaining lampreys fell apart like sticks when the turning Spelljammer caught them from behind and shattered their hulls against the edge of its port wing.
The great battle began anew, and the Spelljammer longer stayed out of the fight. In a wide, sweeping arc that cut through the enemy fleets, the Spelljammer'was deliberate and careful, staying steadily on its planned course with its main objective always in clear focus. Wasp battled mosquito; nautiloid fought deathglory-the Spelljammer tore through them all without hesitation, raining missiles and boulders, arrows and bolts, upon its outclassed enemies.
Teldin winced within the Spelljammer's being. A eye tyrant ship had rammed the Spelljammer horn below, carving a great gouge in the chitinous hull that had withstood brushes with comets and the deep cold of Icespace. He could feel the beholder crew disgorging through the ship's hollow boarding ram, and he dropped the Spelljammer so that its underbelly scraped the top and starboard side of a dwarven citadel. The stone ship left a long scrape along the Spelljammer's belly, but the rock cracked and shattered the tyrant out of the Spelljammer's hull, to send it floating helplessly in the great ship's wake. The citadel went spinning like a top, and the dwarves inside were hurled against the outer walls from the ship's centrifugal force.
Single ships attacked the Spelljammer fruitlessly and were quickly dealt with by the crews manning the ship's complement of ninety ballistae and sixty catapults. The Armory doors were wide, open on the main deck, and the population was taking supplies and building extra weapons for all the towers, both human and Unhuman. Ammunition was plentiful and was shared by all the communities.
Then the Cloakmaster felt the ships around the Spelljammer separating in some semblance of organization. There were two squadrons of ships closing in: four hammerships, arranged in a classic diamond attack formation, and the six deathspiders, hexagonally flanking the command mindspider.
Teldin moved his arm. The ship banked to port and turned to stare down the approaching hammerships.
He took a deep breath and felt the energy well up in him, around him, through him, pulsing with a heartbeat of thunder and fire.
He shivered as the energy traveled hot up his spine.
High above the decks of the Spelljammer, its great tail tensed, quivering imperceptibly to the humans below. It glowed white hot for an instant, then a flaming bubble of incredible energy shot out of its tip and absorbed the hammerships.
The explosion took out seven other ships that had been stupid enough to stray near the attack. First there was blinding white light that blotted everything from view, then the fires of the Spelljammer's annihilation weapon spread throughout the phlogiston, which instantly erupted for a radius of more than two thousand feet. The Spelljammer rocked as the flow exploded in its path. Parts of vessels-a splintered mast, half of a light ballista, brass fittings-shot through the Spelljammer's air envelope to embed deeply in tower walls.
The Spelljammer made a sudden turn to starboard, faster than anyone had expected the great ship could ever make. The Cloakmaster focused all his enhanced senses on the remaining squadron of ships in his path, the neogi deathspiders.
He thought of Cwelanas, whom he knew was racing for the safety of her smalljammer. He thought of the tattoo with which the neogi B'Laath'a had branded her. He thought of the simple words that had drawn him from his home so long ago.
Keep it from the neogi. Take it to the creators.
The neogi deathspiders were closing. The neogi.
He felt the energy tingling up his spine.
Cwelanas, he thought.
Energy flared from the Spelljammer's tail in a comet of raw white power. The sphere hurtled down at the onrushing deathspiders and exploded in a nova that created a new, temporary sun in the flow.
The deathspiders exploded, burned, and melted in the coldness of the flow, and what was left was but charred dust, molecules of waste that had once been evil, breathing neogi and their weapons of senseless destruction.
The Spelljammer sailed through the fine debris of the neogi squadron and twisted deliberately to point toward the Broken Sphere.
Around the vessel, the remaining fleets watched, turned, prepared for one final assault against the legendary ship.
The Cloakmaster smiled grimly.
