Diamondtip patted the wall of the giff tower. The surface was blackened with the force of the explosions, the immediate ignitions of the surrounding flow, but the tower still held. 'Stay with me,' Lord Diamondtip said to the tower. 'Stay with me.'
The elven flitters that had disgorged from the armada swooped down at the Spelljammer and through its streets like deadly wraiths. The light craft were built for speed, and the archers cramped inside whittled away at the Spelljammer's defenses with the sting of an insect. Some flitters even carried elven mages, who cast their spells of shadow or invisible force with a single, rapid pass.
The weaponry atop the dwarven citadel proved invaluable against a heavily outfitted nautiloid that seemed to swoop in from nowhere. The nautiloid shot four heavy ballistae and four heavy catapults simultaneously at the starboard wing batteries. Some of the shot went high and took out a portion of the roof of the Shou tower; but the weapons had been carefully aimed and destroyed the top floors of the human and elven batteries. The elven battery then caught fire, and a huge explosion ripped through the building and blasted stone chunks in a wide fan across the tail and the aft towers.
The starboard batteries responded quickly with their heavy weapons, but the dwarves directly beneath the nautiloid had the advantage of proximity. As the shadow of the nautiloid passed over their heads, Lord Agate Ironlord Kova ordered his troops to return fire. In the adjoining tower, Vagner Firespitter, as well, shouted to his dwarves to 'Fire until we blow the scum right out of the flow!'
The nautiloid was sandwiched between the assaults of the dwarven communities and battered mercilessly with loads of iron shot until a final missile from one of Firespitter's light ballistae pierced the chambered hull. The ship burst into a ball of flame. It fell in a flaming arc upon the beholder ruins and rolled off the stern of the Spelljammer, leaving a trail of exploding phlogiston as it fell from the deck.
The dwarven communities shouted and cheered. In seconds, the Spelljammer and its air envelope had left the nautiloid behind, exposing the flaming ship to the flow, and the phlogiston ignited again with a huge explosion that was momentarily blinding.
As the flitters from the armada ducked between the Spelljammer's towers to shoot and run, the Shou tsunami came steadily forward. The scro battlewagon never let up its onslaught, banking so that the tsunami was temporarily blocked from view as it swept closer and closer to the great ship's bow and attacked. Three ballistae and four catapults fired from the battlewagon's port side. Iron shot and missiles were black blurs as they hurtled toward the Spelljammer and crashed into the walls of the ship's stores and the Tower of Trade. A gaping hole was blown into the tower's lower levels, and the whole building collapsed upon itself in a shudder that shook the ship.
Then the first wave of missiles and boulders rained upon the Spelljammer from the approaching elven armada. Most of the missiles went short, passing harmlessly in front of the ship. A few boulders dug deep trenches into the landing field, and one steel missile embedded itself in the Spelljammer's port ram.
The scro battlewagon continued on its downward dive toward the ship. Ballistae and catapults from both sides of the boar fell upon the towers in a deadly hail of stone and metal debris. Archers along the sides targeted the Spelljammer's warriors in the upper ruins of the captain's tower and atop the Guild tower. Seven Guild warriors dropped dead on the tower roof, the ill-made arrows of scro protruding from their bodies. The fighters in the captain's tower profited from better cover in the ruins, and most of the scro arrows bounced off the stone walls. The archers there returned fire, and three scro fighters staggered away from the rails of the battlewagon, arrows quivering in their chests and necks.
The dwarves under Lord Kova had their ballistae ready and aimed toward the onrushing battlewagon. As the fearsome prow of the boar ship Eviscerator sailed over the decks, Kova screamed 'Fire!' and the dwarves' ballistae shot their missiles simultaneously. One missed completely, arcing over the battlewagon and passing into the flow. Two others impaled the hull, but did not drive deep enough to inflict significant damage to the ship or its crew.
The last missile collided with the scro ship just as it started a sweeping turn to move away and then come back on another run. The missile angled into the boar's prow and chipped off most of its starboard face. The missile and the face dropped to the great ship's deck, bounced off the captain's tower, and landed between the library and illithid towers.
The Spelljammer's fighters soon came to understand the attack strategies of the elven flitters, and quickly learned how to fight back against their swiftest opponents. Light catapults were used to the best advantage, and soon flitters were falling to the decks all around and crumpling like paper, battered and torn by the rock storms that shot from the towers. One flitter was hit by a hail of iron shot from the Chalice tower and sailed directly into the roof, crushing the warriors who had shot it.
The number of elven flitters was soon cut down in half. By that time, the armada had come well within range to bear its heavy weapons, and the scro battlewagon had turned itself around to stare down the Spelljammer once again and begin another attack run.
High above the decks, directly below the Spelljammer's triangular stinger tail, a glowing ball of light appeared, which transformed in the figure of Gaye Goldring. Arms outstretched, floating above the towers like a spirit of the winds, she summoned power to her and concentrated, molding the wild energies of her mind, the energies with which Teldin had fortified her, and focusing on the approaching ships. Energy flickered around her in a golden cloud of lightning, of swirling, formless power.
In the lower hull of the elven armada, a pinprick of golden light blossomed. It spread slowly, glowing bright with Gaye's psionic energy. The glow faded as it spread across the hull in an expanding circle, and where the light had burned, the hull became discolored and appeared warped or weakened.
Gaye floated there, concentrating on her target, while the armada attacked, while missiles rained death upon the Spelljammer and its crew. The minotaur tower was felled by a barrage of both stone and missiles. Immediately, the Spelljammer's weapons shot back from the hulk and giant towers. One missile punctured one of the armada's great wings and continued past. Another was shot straight into the armada's lower hull.
The elven ship shuddered as the missile pierced the hull easily, like a sewing needle through fabric. Gaye's molecular manipulation had transformed the armada's thick, chitinous hull into a material no stronger than parchment. The crew of the Spelljammer quickly assessed the armada's weakness, and weapons across the ship were aimed at the discolored, vulnerable patch that now had grown to cover the armada's entire underside.
Within minutes, the armada fluttered drunkenly across the flow, a dozen missiles sticking out of its underbelly like stubby legs. Its wings were broken and bent, tattered into shreds by the shots from the Spelljammer's catapults.
The armada managed one last, fitful assault against the Spelljammer. One missile found its target in the uppermost chamber of the illithid tower. Trebek's books and scrolls exploded out of the tower and showered the decks below.
Then the armada shook as chambers inside ruptured, fires broke out, and explosions rolled in a chain reaction throughout the ship. The elven flagship blew apart and sent the shattered hull scattering in all directions. Blackened bodies spun into the flow; then the phlogiston ignited around the wrecked ship, and the sky blazed.
The Spelljammer was buffeted by the storm of heat and turbulence. The scro battlewagon shook and was tossed sideways by the blast. The Shou tsunami appeared unbothered; only its frontal antennae were slightly scorched as it sailed harmlessly through the last of the explosion.
The Spelljammer adjusted its course and accelerated. Its starboard wing swung up, over the scro battlewagon, which could not recover fast enough from the explosion to fire at the Spelljammer's lower hull. The battlewagon's helmsman realized his mistake and quickly turned the ship around in pursuit.
The tsunami fired its heavy weapons as the Spelljammer passed directly in front of it. Boulders fell into the walls of the Long Fangs' tower and the beholder ruins, then the Spelljammer's crew retaliated individually, firing indiscriminately at the beautiful Shou ship as it wriggled through the flow. One of the tsunami's long antennae cracked and was sent spinning away by a hail of iron shot.
The Spelljammer flew straight through the gap in the Broken Sphere, heedless of its enemies. It was swallowed by the darkness, by the enormous weight of its ancient, forgotten birth. Behind it, clouds of phlogiston roiled into the sphere, kicked up by the Spelljammer's wings and sucked in by its wake.
The battlewagon fired from behind and to starboard, clipping the mast of a galleon with a ballista missile, then the wildfire projector was readied on the Evisceratorupper firing platform. The boar ship sped forward, close enough to the galleon to see the surprised look in the pirates' eyes as the scro on deck aimed their arrows and killed eight warriors in a single pass.
