Adeena landed hard in the stoney ‘garden’ outside the foyer of the Pandemonium sky-ship, bouncing and rolling a few times before skidding to a stop. A few demons spotted her from the roof, and they shouted and pointed. Clearly, however, they hadn’t even thought that someone might counter-board them, because the front doors to the foyer were unguarded, and Adeena wrenched her glasses off as she ran underneath the entrance’s awning, folding them and putting them carefully away in her gambeson’s pocket.

  She felt her glamour collapse: eyes tingling as their shade shifted back to their natural red, short-ish horns poked up from her long red hair, and an arrow-headed tail that she was so careful not to use in any way that might disrupt the glamour swished and flicked behind her.

  The sound of the raging battle outside diminished as the glass doors shut, replaced by the tinkling of a rather gaudy water feature and tinny, slightly off-key music coming from some kind of musical device. She was hit by a wave of childhood nostalgia as she took into the foyer’s beige walls and the chocolate brown carpet, it seemed that demonic fashion hadn’t gotten any better in the fourteen hundred odd cycles since she’d fled, although the posters on the wall were new – pictures of various demons giving thumbs up with slogans like ‘In order to Succeed, we need to Believe that we can;’ ‘Don’t be busy, be Productive;’ ‘You did not sell your soul to be Mediocre;’ and ‘Failure’ is just another word for ‘Giving Up.’

  Ahead of her several demons came rushing down a set of stairs. They gave Adeena a suspicious look, perhaps because of her unusual garb, but before they could challenge her Adeena channelled all the ‘management’ courses her mother had made her take as a child, putting her hands on her hips and giving them a withering glare.

  “What took you so long!?” she barked, gesturing outside. “The mortal went around the corner. Get her!”

  She must have gotten the tone right, because the leader said “Yes Boss!” and they rushed past her, cowering slightly. She took a moment to smirk, before moving the way they had come, rapidly taking the switchback stairs, up and up and up until she reached the last landing, which opened onto a large open-plan flight deck.

  There were demons moving around with reports, other at desks clattering away at with-writers, an office at one corner of the room with ‘General Manager’ written on the door, and, most interestingly for Adeena, a large, glowing flight ritual circle covering the centre of the room, so large that there were walkways suspended above it, allowing warlocks with clipboards and sticks of chalk access the inner sigils and runes to make small adjustments.

  There was also a nervous looking arachnoid wearing a black suit with a pencil skirt and holding a gemmed device in one of her six hands by the stairs, and who flagged Adeena down.

  “Um, excuse me,” said the spider-like demon, who looked over Adeena’s blood-stained garb with something approximating terror. “Sorry, um… deputy vice-manager?”

  Adeena nodded, rolling with the assumption. “Yes?” she said.

  “There- there were reports of a mortal border,” she said, holding up the gemmed device. “I need to do a scan for a glamour. It’s policy…”

  “Of course,” said Adeena, spreading her arms and letting the young demon wave it over her. It lit up green as the six armed demon waved it about, but didn’t beep or buzz or whatever it was supposed to do in the presence of the glamour that a dastardly mortal might be using to pretend to be a demon.

  “Sorry, thank-you, deputy vice-manager!” said the demon.

  “No need to apologise,” said Adeena. “Everyone needs to be vigilant in a boarding situation.” She was about to move off, when she paused and looked over at the warlocks attending the circle. She needed a distraction, to get them away… She turned back to the arachnoid woman. “Have you done a general sweep of the flight deck yet?”

  “A… general sweep?” said the arachnoid.

  “Yes, what if there were glamoured boarders already amongst us?” said Adeena. “They could be in this room, right now. Didn’t you read the hand-book?”

  “Oh no!” said the arachnoid, her mandibles clicking as she raised two of her hands to her mouth to address the room. “Excuse me? Excuse me!? I need you to form a line for an emergency glamour screening, please!” she shouted as Adeena slunk past. “It’s, um, in the hand-book!”

  There were grumbles from across the flight deck, but it seemed no one else had read the handbook, because the various demons began to line up without protest. Adeena snagged a clip-boarded report as she passed the forming line, pretending to read it as she made a beeline for the flight ritual.

  Like all infernal rituals, the core was a pulsing green pentagram, but this was much larger and more complex than just that, with circles and shapes and myriad complex runes and sigils that she only vaguely understood the purpose of. However, she did see what was powering the entire thing.

  Five soul crystals at each of the central pentagram’s points, within which Adeena could see the occasional silhouette of a screaming face.

  Adeena stepped aside as the last of the attending warlocks filed off for their screening, giving one of them an official nod, before moving across the raised gangways to the pentagram.

  Soul crystals were the result of certain rather horrible rituals and processes done to mortals who had been foolish enough to sell their souls to demonkind. There was a strict limit to how much energy they could produce at any one time, but no limit to how long they could produce energy for. After all, souls couldn’t be destroyed, only, using demonic sorcery, transmuted. The ultimate renewable resource, and although utterly foul and very expensive, it was a testament to just how powerful they were that the entire fortress was held aloft by just five of them.

  They were also very fragile, and it was generally not advised to hit them with enchanted swords.

  The demonic sky fortress lurched as she shattered the first crystal, freeing the soul trapped within in a stream of swirling blue energy. A faint ‘thank-you’ could be briefly heard before it was drowned out by shouts and screams from across the room.

  “What is going on?” came a rumbling masculine voice of what she assumed was the General Manager of the vessel from the direction of the corner office.

  A male General Manager? How progressive for the Hells. She’d never heard of a General Manager who wasn’t a woman. She almost felt bad for setting back infernal gender equality, there was no way he wasn’t getting demoted after this.

  Assuming he survived, which since a glance told her he was a wingless, spined-hulk, was unlikely.

  His enraged shout was cut off as Adeena smashed the second crystal and the burning pentagram began to flicker. This time she almost lost her footing, and the entire fortress began to list sideways, making her slip and slide. She caught a railing on the walkways above the pentagram, and saw several winged demons take off towards her.

  Three would have to do then.

  She thrust a hand out at a third soul crystal, and it shattered under the force of her conjured blast. The pentagram began to spark and fizzle, and the fortress pitched violently fifteen degrees starboard in the direction of the Firestorm.

  Adeena released her grip and broke into a Oathsworn power-aided sprint down the incline of the room. She sensed a pulse of shadowy magic roar from the direction of the General Manager’s office, but she conjured a shield, and the force only served to propel her faster towards the windows.

  The heavy glass shattered painfully around her as she entered free-fall, lacerating her exposed skin as she plummeted towards the edge of the stoney, now sloped ‘garden’ below. It was close, but she’d have enough space where she was going to land to slow herself down before she rolled over the ship’s edge.

  Then the hellish sky-ship pitched even more violently, and Adeena’s red eyes widened as the piece of ground she had been intending to land on vanished and she found herself falling straight towards the snowy, black and white slopes of the Shadowmeere far below.

  This might have been a very bad idea.

  Then a flicker of movement caught her eye, and she relaxed as she spotted a tawny barn owl streaming towards her through the smoky gloom. As it approached there was a pulse of blue light from the deck of the Firestorm that struck the owl. It began to immediately grow in size under the effect of one of Clawdia’s favourite spells – the enlargement charm.

  Well, actually, its inverse –the shrinking charm– was one of her favourite spells, since it let her pretend her poor opponent was a nice, juicy mouse. But the enlargement charm, Adeena had been told, was very similar magically speaking.

  The barn-owl swelled until it was the size of a small wagon, diving towards her with claws outstretched. They closed around her shoulders, and with massive wingbeats the pair began to rise back towards the Firestorm.

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  “Glasses, Captain,” said Xavier.

  “Oh, right,” she said, jamming them on her face. “Cheers.”

  “What would you have done if I hadn’t spotted you?” he asked as they approached the Imperium vessel. The deck was still an ongoing melee, and she could see that Heidi had taken over one of the front-line positions from a wounded priestess – the small gnome’s hideously loud ‘chain-sword’ swinging wildly and driving back demons who found it just as terrifying as Adeena did.

  “I’d have thought of something,” said Adeena.

  “Uh huh,” said Xavier, releasing Adeena five meters or so above a fiery demon who was just about to cleave the sea-elf captain, Laurent, in two.

  She landed on the crackling pyrovore sword-first, and the burning fiend crumpled as her enchanted blade dug deep into its demonic torso, igniting and replacing its hellfire with her golden soulfire, causing it to scream and explode into a thousand rocky pieces.

  Laurent, who had been knocked off his feet blinked up at her owlishly as she offered him her hand.

  “That was… I mean, my thanks, Captain,” he said as she hauled him back to his feet.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said.

  Behind them there was a roar, and the Firestorm shook as Xavier, still under the effects of the enlargement charm assumed the form of a bear and landed on an unfortunate clump of demons. The effects of Clawdia’s spell were already slowly fading, but he still took up almost a good tenth of the decking by itself. He took wounds, but they would only be scratches and grazes when he ‘reverted’ to normal size, and dozens of demons went flying in great arcs as he bashed and swiped at them.

  Some used their wings to recover, others didn’t, and were too wounded to resume flight as they went sailing over the sides of the vessel.

  Adeena went to aid her friend, catching a glimpse of the now rapidly falling Pandemonium sky-ship. It had continued to pitch in the direction of the Firestorm, and was now oriented perpendicular to their vessel.

  The Firestorm’s guns continued to pound it as it fell from the sky. Demons with wings abandoned the falling sky-ship for the only thing still flying – the Firestorm; those without wings, however, were out of luck. Unfortunately, that meant that the Firestorm’s decking was assaulted by an even larger wave of demons than the boarding party. Many of them were unarmed, but there were plenty weapons scattered around beside the bodies, and Xavier, battered and bloodied was forced to withdraw, shifting into a snake and slithering back behind their lines, leaving a streak of blood behind him.

  Adeena looked over her people. The wounds from the shattered glass might have already closed for her, but the others were in rougher shape. Even with a frankly silly number of priests and priestesses all of them had wounds, and they were exhausted.

  “Tight formation, I’ll take point!” said Adeena.

  An arachnoid armed with six swords stepped up to meet, and Adeena grimaced. She hated fighting Arachnoids; most of them weren’t actually good enough to use that many blades at the same time with anything approximating skill, but they still often overwhelmed even decently skilled opponents with their wild uncontrolled flurries.

  Adeena, however, was not merely ‘decently skilled,’ and she was perhaps the worst person to try such a tactic against, now that her powers were returning. The demon raised his many weapons, and as Adeena focused her Oathsworn abilities she Saw a few moments into the future how his attack would fall as a kind of after-image, which then multiplied and shifted and changed as her knowledge of the future altered it. But that was fine, she’d already seen a path through.

  Parry, duck, side-step, feint, and then, with lightning quickness that would have been totally beyond her abilities even last cycle, riposte.

  The demon collapsed as his head flew from his shoulders, his swords clattering to the decking. A pit fiend who had been moving to support the arachnoid paused, her burning red eyes betraying shock and wariness.

  Adeena smirked at the demon, even though she knew they were in, at best, a holding pattern. More demons were arriving every moment, and even the mind-bogglingly strong Melicende across from her had taken a nasty shoulder wound that took her several moments to close.

  Then the ship’s guns fell silent as the infernal sky-ship vanished into free-fall, and there was a sound of running footsteps behind them. The now available crew-members appeared on the stairs, sleek, aether rifles in their hands that were far more modern looking than any Adeena had seen before.

  Dozens of shots began to whiz past her, and while the demon’s enchanted gear and infernal strength turned most of the blasts aside, it didn’t stop all of them, and the force of the projectiles sent the infernal creatures staggering and reeling.

  Across from her Ser Samara, too, emerged onto the deck, and immediately lunged for the battered and bloodied charcoal-suited succubus who Adeena had run away from. The demoness immediately found herself on the backfoot. Ser Samara was relentless, a veritable crackling tempest of lightning magic, and so strong that she moved her massive claymore like a rapier.

  With the aid of the gunnary crews, the tide began to shift. The air all around them grew lighter, and the throng of demons diminished until the charcoal-suited succubus leapt back and raised her hands.

  “OK, OK!” shouted the succubus. “We surrender! We waive our salvage claim on this vessel!”

  Adeena, who had been about to cut a plague demon in half hesitated, and the ugly, pustuled woman hesitantly stepped back and put her mace on the floor.

  “Who said we were accepting surrender, demon?” growled Ser Samara, who beyond a few scratches in the enamel of her breastplate, was totally unharmed. She raised her crackling claymore. Overhead the last of the sulphurous black storm clouds dissipated, and Adeena raised a hand at the blinding, strangely white sun that… was coming from the south east?

  “You are legally required to-”

  Whatever House statute or rule the succubus was going to invoke, however, was cut off as a beam of blinding white light slammed into the ship’s already weakened shields, cutting straight through them and emerging out the other-side of the vessel. The decking pitched, and the ship began to list as she felt them go into free fall for a moment, before some kind of strange wing-like projections of energy emerged from the ship and turned its free fall into a slightly less uncontrolled kind of descent.

  Adeena followed the source of the blast, peering into the blinding light and swore in disbelief as she saw the source, a horde of elysium godlings streaming towards them on alabaster wings, accompanied by a few weird air-chariot-things that had cannons on them, and which must have shot the ship.

  “You can’t be serious,” she heard Xavier say weakly.

  The demons had been hunting the Firestorm, but it seemed that they too had been pursued. All around them denizens of Pandemonium saw what she had, and immediately took flight, abandoning the ship and streaming away from the oncoming angelic host. It seemed that they’d rather risk what looked like the Shadowmeere beneath than try their luck with their most hated enemies.

  The Firestorm continued to lose altitude, pitching and twisting and roiling as the helm tried to keep the crippled ship steady. Overhead, the angelic host passed by, entirely focused on the demons.

  “All hands, below decks; I repeat, all hands, below decks!” came a voice on the farspeaker. “Officers to the bridge!”

  Adeena stumbled across the heaving decks to where Melicende and Ser Samara were descending towards the bridge, following them down the stairs and into the semi-circular room. Several of the thick panes of glass were cracked, and one looked partly melted, but they clearly showed the large monochrome, snowy mountains looming ahead of them.

  “Report!” barked Ser Samara. “Where is Lady Aeviexisitrixia!?”

  “Whatever that was, it took out our air elemental,” said Bloodmoon. “Lady Aeviexisitrixia is in the hold, trying to repair the containment system and summon a replacement.”

  “By herself?” said Ser Samara, turning and racing from the bridge. “Captain Adeena, with me!”

  Adeena hesitated, glancing at Melicende and Bloodmoon before turning and running after the Dragonsworn. She knew why the feyleen woman was upset and worried. Elemental binding could go rather wrong, and even the most experienced mages always made sure to have plenty of armed help on hand if one of the seals didn’t take and the summoned creature went on a rampage.

  The Dragonsworn bowled through crew members without a care in the world, knocking them flying as she raced into the central chamber at the heart of the ship, the port, and starboard hull of which had been blasted cleanly though by the angelic weaponry and now showed monochrome mountainside whipping past through the gaping holes.

  Lady Aeviexisitrixia, for her part, was rapidly sorting through damage crates, muttering things like ‘darn,’ and ‘sugar!’

  “My Lady!” said Ser Samara. “Please, you cannot run off like that! You need to get onto the main deck and fly off the ship-”

  “I need to resummon the elemental, Sammy!” said the little dragon, as around them the ship began to hum and vibrate, pitching upward, making everyone who could not casually fly skid precipitously aft. Debris and detritus and now unsecured items skidded and banged and fell all around them as the ship shuddered.

  “My Lady, there isn’t any time!” shouted Ser Samara.

  “I have to!” said Aeviexisitrixia, moving over to some kind of articulated brass runic array and slotting the gemstone she had found from a box of them into a receptacle. The runes lit up, and she began pulling levers and winding cranks to shift and realign the magical matrix. “Ok, let’s see now, got to account for the Shadowmeer distortion…”

  “My Lady!” shouted Ser Samara again, grabbing her arm. “There is no time-”

  “All hands, brace for imminent impact,” came Bloodmoon’s strained voice over the room’s farspeaker.

  “Adeena, full shield around the Lady!” barked Ser Samara, pulling the small dragon away from the array and wrapping her a bear hug. “Now! My Lady, lift us!”

  Adeena thought that a doubled up shield sounded pretty good right about now, and stepped in close, grabbing the pair and pouring as much of her power into a barrier as she could, as Ser Samara did the same. The hues of their souls weren’t quite the same shade, Samara’s a blazing silver, Adeena’s a deep ruby-gold, but they didn’t fight one another, and formed a swirling, shimmering bubble around them. She felt her feet leave the ground as the small dragon floated upward, the bone-jarring shaking from the deck vanishing as they hung, suspended.

  Then the ship pitched further back, rolled slightly onto its side, and hit the side of the mountain.

  Adeena was becoming something of an expert on sky-ship crashes, this being technically her third, if breaking the flight ritual of the Pandemoniumone counted. It was, however, a rather different experience to be encased in a powerful shield and not under the effects of gravity.

  The ship hit, but they kept on going, smashing into, then part-way through the forward bulkhead, and then bouncing backwards through the room, crashing into the aft bulkhead before slowing as with a rumbling, grinding sound the ship bled away its momentum and wedged itself deep into the snow.

  Adeena released her shield, and let go on the dragon, hopping down with Ser Samara and looking over the room.

  It was a mess. Walls of snow were entirely blocking the holes in the hull that the angels had made, and some of it had fallen in, mixing with the shattered and bent and, in some places, burning remains of the ship’s heart. The deck had cracked and shattered in places, and she caught a view of the hold beneath, which seemed to be little more than a sea of smashed crates and strewn cargo.

  “My Lady, are you alright?” asked Ser Samara.

  “We- we crashed?” sniffed the young dragon. “I should have listened to Dad…”

  The young dragon began to cry, scalding hot tears running down her face and hissing as they dripped down onto the snow-strewn floor beneath. She buried her face in the Dragonsworn’s shoulders and wept.

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