Matt Forbeck - Marked for Death

He surveyed the airship, looking for some means of getting aboard other than leaping from the unstable footing of the stands. There was the hole in the bottom of the hull, but the mad, half-dead titan in there closed off that route. The rope ladder was now too high from the ground for Xalt to reach. That left the mooring lines.

The two fore mooring lines lay draped over the shattered remains of Bastard’s box. One of the aft lines had been chopped in half, but the other hung down straight from the airship’s stern. Xalt decided this was the only option. He stomped toward the line. He could hear the cries of a few injured warforged in the stands, and part of him wanted to stop and help them. It was in its nature to do so, but he did not have time now.

When Xalt reached the mooring line, he grasped it and began the long, arduous climb to the ship’s deck. The absence of one of his fingers slowed him, but he was determined and tireless in his task. As he ascended, the ship jerked about like an animal caught in a foot-trap. For a moment, it was all he could do to hang on. When the shaking stopped, he began hauling himself upward again.

Xalt neared the ship’s aft rail, and the airship broke free from the stands and started for the sky. But something shook the ship violently, and the craft dove toward the ground. Xalt glanced down at the hold that was now in front of him rather than above. Through the hole, he could see the remains of the half-titan fighting on, and the warforged couldn’t help but feel the stirrings of a touch of pride that a creature forged like himself could be so powerful and tenacious.

The ship zoomed forward at top speed, and the titan tumbled into the aft of the hold. A moment later, the ship ground to a halt, and the titan burst out of the front of the ship’s hull and fell out. As the titan’s bulk left the airship, the craft lurched into the air, and Xalt went with it. For a moment, the artificer feared he would be flung from the rope, but he managed to hang on. Determined to get off the rope and on the ship as quickly as possible, he hauled himself up the line.

Just before Xalt reached the ship’s deck, an armored figure slid into the battered rear railing, which gave way. The artificer instinctively reached out to grab the knight who slammed into him.

The warforged’s left hand gripped the edge of the damaged decking even as his body went swinging out into space. The remaining finger and thumb of Xalt’s right hand ensnared the steel collar of the knight’s breastplate. Still unconscious, Brendis dangled limply as the weight dragging on his limbs caused the warforged to howl in pain.

When Deothen plunged through the decking, he had thought he’d be able to make quick work of the coward who had run from him at the first opportunity. Now, he wondered who was the hunter and who was the prey.

The space beneath Bastard’s box opened straight down to the ground below. No floorboard separated the platform from the land it moved over at a walking pace. When Deothen dropped to the earth, he found himself standing on crushed gray grass that dozens of the city’s walkers had trampled and dozens more would grind underfoot as the city moved along its chosen course.

The platforms here were high enough that Deothen could walk upright, but he could not raise his sword over his head. Compared to the stands above, it was dark and quiet, but the noise level grew as the warforged above stampeded toward safety, trying to escape the blaze started by the airship’s ring of fire.

Deothen’s silver-flamed sword glared through the gloom beneath the city. He held it up before him and peered into the darkness, looking for some sign of the warforged leader.

All around Deothen, silent sets of legs marched on, each holding a section of a platform perched atop it. He stood still and let the city move around him for a moment, then he felt something hot and bright behind him. He turned to see the flames from the airship’s ring of fire coming down through the floor. As he strode to the side to avoid the oncoming conflagration, he wondered if the warforged leader could have climbed up through the flames to return to the arena above. He decided it didn’t matter. If Bastard had gone that way, there was no way he could follow.

Deothen stood to the side and watched the flames as they passed by. As he did, he saw something moving behind them. Bastard. The warforged leader turned to Deothen, and the senior knight saw the light of the fire flickering in the creature’s sapphire eyes.

“Without your titans around you, you slither away,” Deothen said as he walked toward the warforged. “Like a snake to its hole.”

He brought his sword arm back, but before he could swing, Bastard stepped behind a nearby walker. Deothen slashed at the intervening golem, cutting its thin legs in half. The walker fell to the ground, and the platform sagged down where the creature had once held it up.

“You hide behind your tools like a child behind its mother’s skirts,” Deothen said. “Come out and fight me, coward!”

Bastard laughed as he stepped behind another walker that blindly ignored both its master and the intruder with the blazing blade. “What you call cowardly, I call cunning,” the warforged leader said. “I didn’t become a lieutenant of the Lord of Blades by charging into battle against every sword-waving idiot who challenged my bravery.”

Deothen cut down the walker standing between him and Bastard, but the warforged leader was no longer behind it.

“Face me!” said Deothen, waving his sword about to punctuate his words.

The knight heard something charging up behind him fast, and he turned. He was too late to bring his sword to bear, and the warforged leader slammed into him. He went sprawling across the dirt until he smacked another walker in the back of its legs. It fell away, and the platform sagged down over Deothen’s head.

Bastard leaned forward and kicked the downed knight. The spikes on his foot punched through Deothen’s armor and punctured his side. The knight cried out in pain, but he slashed up at Bastard at the same time.

The knight’s sacred sword bit into Bastard’s thigh, cutting deep into the fibers beneath its shining, spiked plates. The warforged leader grunted and leaped back before Deothen could strike again.

The knight struggled to his feet, clutching his chest. Blood seeped through the holes Bastard had kicked there.

“So, this snake can bite,” Deothen said through gritted teeth.

He spun about, looking for some hint of Bastard’s location. The arena floor above him shuddered as the airship fought to free herself from the stands.

“I answered your taunts once,” Bastard called. “I’ll not be so foolish again.”

Deothen glared into the gloom in the direction of the voice, then he turned to look back the way he’d come. There, in the wan light streaming through the hole the airship had torn in the arena floor, he saw Bastard. The creature’s spiked armor seemed to glow in the pool of daylight.

Bastard raised his golden horn and said, “Halt.”

The walkers carrying the massive city’s platforms on their shoulders slowed their pace to a crawl and then stopped.

“Fire and ashes!” Deothen said. He launched himself at Bastard, but the creature was too far away.

“Down.” Bastard’s order echoed in Deothen’s head. He ignored it and kept racing forward. Nothing was going to stop him from hacking the warforged leader to pieces with his blade.

Deothen grazed his head on the platform over him as he ran. At first, he thought he must have run up a slight rise in the ground. Then he realized that the walkers all around him were crouching down, each working its way to its knees.