Russ Howard - The Ultimate Helm

Gaye concentrated and felt the psionic energies building inside her, unstoppable. She looked down. Her hand was glowing white-hot with the power of her own life force.

Life, she thought, for Teldin, for the Spelljammer. Let destiny be served.

She was stronger, more powerful, than she had ever felt before. The scro warriors came to a halt only a few feet from her. Her powers flickered around her like a thing alive, blistering their orclike faces with the heat of a star. They scrambled to get away, but Gaye let the feeling of purity, of heat, rush over her, and then she was one-one with Teldin, one with the Spelljammer, seeing their united, eternal destiny in a flare of energy that lit the phlogiston like a blazing star.

The Eviscerator's foredeck blew apart in a single burst of stellar fire. When the phlogiston exploded in a blazing sphere, half the battlewagon was ruptured, shattered and torn apart into shreds and splinters, its hull blackened and blistered. It arced down like a dying comet, down through the flow… on a collision course with the Spelljammer.

They could do nothing but watch helplessly, frozen, as Cwelanas battled the neogi. They had been caught unawares as Cwelanas ran to check the hangar door. B'Laath'a, waiting in the cover of the jamberry trees, had stepped out and cast a spell at them, holding them immobile where they stood.

They watched as Cwelanas killed Coh and the mage leaped to take his place. Then B'Laath'a was destroyed with the power of her chain mail. Cwelanas fell to the ground. The spell holding the warriors was broken with B'Laath'a's death, and they jumped to help the elf.

She was barely awake, shivering as though with intense cold. CassaRoc knew a bad fever when he saw one, and this one was the worst he had ever seen. "You'll be all right. We need to get you a healer. Can you take the helm like this?"

She tried to shrug. "It doesn't matter," she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I have to, don't I?"

CassaRoc pushed back a strand of hair. The wounds in her shoulder were angry and red, puckered like craters and surrounded by yellow and blue bruises. "Are you sure?"

Cwelanas smiled through her pain. She felt her body shiver with a reserve of energy, and her pain began to slowly recede. The chain mail Teldin had given her played its power through her like a healing flow of energy. "I think I will be fine. Teldin has taken care of that. We must go."

In the smalljammers control room, CassaRoc helped Cwelanas take her seat. Instantly, she felt better, at peace, as the ship warmed to her touch. Its energies flowed through her, giving her strength. "We still have to get out of the gardens," she observed.

The others looked at her, confused. They had never caught up with her to examine the hangar doors. "What do you mean?" Djan asked. I thought Teldin told us to sail away from here."

"Yes," she said, "but to cast off we must first get out of the gardens, and neither of the doors will open."

CassaRoc shook his head sadly and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Damn," he said. "Damn."

The ship was pounded from above, and the collision reverberated like thunder above their heads. The Spelljammer shook as though it were being slammed by a giant hammer. The warriors sprawled to the cabin deck. The hammering came closer, closer, rolling heavily like a bouncing boulder, and the ship shook with its thudding impact.

The wall of the gardens exploded inward in a hail debris from the Spelljammer's thick hull. Rubble slammed against the smalljammer, then pattered like hard rain as the echo of the explosion died away.

Cwelanas looked up, coughing as she inhaled dust. The others stood around her.

"Look!" Na'Shee said, pointing.

The Cloakmaster saw it with the Spelljammer's eyes. The scro battlewagon was listing dangerously, descending toward the Spelljammer at incredible speed.

He reached out with his senses and felt Gaye. He felt her warm, golden glow, distant, weak, but still alive and, without words, he knew that all was right. Then he reached out and touched the battlewagon, looking ahead with one of the Spelljammer's innate senses that transcended understanding and human explanation.

He asked a question.

He saw a ship, a star, a broken sphere.

He understood, and it was good.

The Eviscerator plummeted down from the flow. A ballista missile from the Tower of Trade unexpectedly hit the ship's wildfire projector, and the stern of the scro battlewagon erupted into flames that trailed the ship like a cape of fire.

Teldin willed the ship to move, and the Spelljammer turned gracefully. The starboard wing lay spread out before the hurtling battlewagon to act as a landing field, but the Eviscerator was sailing in from starboard. And the centaur tower lay directly in its fiery path.

The maimed face of the battlewagon met the stonework of the centaur tower head on. It crashed through the tower, then bounced once, twice, and started rolling as flying chunks of stone rained all around it. A trail of flaming wildfire followed, quickly spreading across the starboard wing as quick as liquid fire, igniting the flow in a series of explosions.

The fiery substance burned through the outer hull to catch fire inside the ship's porous body. The scro battlewagon careened over the wing and spun blindly into the starboard door of the gardens, tearing a huge, jagged hole in it before bouncing off the Spelljammer's bow and tumbling into the phlogiston.

The explosion at the bow hurled the Spelljammer up and shot the jagged remains of the battlewagon into the ship's underbelly. The Cloakmaster reeled under the explosive force, then sought out the Spelljammer's consciousness, felt the cold wildspace of the Broken Sphere surrounding him, and he again became one with the ship. He straightened their course toward the remnant of the star.

He reached out and saw Cwelanas and CassaRoc, Djan and Estriss, Na'Shee and Chaladar safe in the smalljammer, and he touched their souls in a final farewell gesture. Cwelanas shook herself; CassaRoc got up from the floor and placed a hand on her uninjured shoulder, wondering why he was suddenly thinking of Teldin.

— You must go now, Teldin told Cwelanas. -This may be your last chance.

She did not hear him, but she felt the meaning of his words in her soul. She nodded to herself, and the smalljammer levitated inches above the earthen floor of the gardens and angled toward the rent in the door.