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( test replacement scene for v2ch15 )
Admiral Vintersvend struggled to hang onto the bulwark as his skywhale plummeted through the skies. It would have been easier if he could use both hands, or if his dead familiar wasn't falling towards the ground at a near fifty-degrees tilt.
Physical prowess had always been his brother's domain, not his. Furthermore, he also wasn't as young as he used to be...
Finally!
His other hand extracted the Air Glide Boost tablet from a belt pouch, which he promptly activated by pressing it against the gondola deck. He had prepared the runestone as part of his contingencies against 'all possible' emergencies. But never had he expected to actually use it.
...Certainly not today.
They had been winning! They had forced the Wickers onto the defensive and drove their boarding troops back. They were on the verge of shattering Weichsel's phantom corps and securing air dominance for the remainder of the war.
Then, in just the span of a minute, everything had been reversed.
The hammer blow had come too quick, too fast. By the time the Admiral realized what had happened, the damage had already been done:
Four heavily armed and armored skywhales -- the pride of the Skagen navy -- sunk in mere moments.
The mighty Drake Outriders had been thrown into disarray, then pressed into a desperate defense like predators pounced upon by packs of angry prey.
Over a thousand veteran marksmen, runescribes, engineers, and other experienced specialists all found themselves crashing toward their death. Those who managed to stay airborne found little mercy as roaming squads of phantoms cut them to apart.
It was a disaster. A calamity he had walked straight into.
A catastrophe that he had no possible way to overturn.
The battle is lost.
Faced with the grim situation, Vintersvend had no choice but to admit it. All that remained was to see how many survivors could still be saved from his fatal mistake.
"Milord, we have to leave!" shouted his Flag Lieutenant -- a young Wayfarer tasked to be his personal aide. "Once the Wickers see us glide, they'll hit us with overwhelming force!"
To effectively place a spell, even a simple Air Glide, across a monster of such colossal size was no easy feat. Vintersvend doubted any of the other skywhale captains could manage the same. This meant he had just painted a bullseye on his own sinking ship. But at the same time, it offered the only real hope of survival that his men had.
"I am NOT leaving my men behind to die!" Vintersvend yelled back in fury.
He had known most of the Polarlys' crew for at least twenty years. The thought of abandoning them in this critical moment was unthinkable. It would be cowardice beneath the dignity of any man alive.
"But Milord...!" the aide cried again, his earnest blue eyes almost begging.
"Sir, Skagen cannot afford to lose you in this war," came the voice of his First Mate from the communication tube.
As the Air Glide took hold and returned the flight deck mostly upright, Admiral Winter released the bulwark handle and dug into his pouches for two more tablets. The Gustcloak spellword was another one of his personal creations, and he reached out with both hands to project wind barriers onto the hangar deck entrances on opposite sides.
His falling skywhale familiar had become a bunker gliding through air. Its armored mass was now charged with delivering several hundred crew members safely to the ground.
"No! We're all going back!" the Admiral set down his proverbial foot. "Now both of you shut up and organize the men for defense!"
Vintersvend could already see a squad of phantoms riding towards them from beyond the wind wall. After tapping a rune behind each tablet to hold them in levitation, the Admiral reached into more pockets to pull out handfuls of lightning runes. He hurled these into the gust barrier that bulged outwards from each entrance, where cycling winds trapped them in the hurricane gales.
With one hand tilting the rune tablet toward the attackers, Vintersvend gave it a single tap on the back. The gale barrier then spat out a horde of runestones with ballistic accuracy, and the proximity-triggered electrical bursts called down a lightning volley that blasted the squad apart.
But the thunderous barrage also caught people's attention. Spell rays began flying toward the entrance in the dozens. However the explosive volley never made it past the wind. The barrier detonated spells as though solid matter. Elemental and antimagic blasts rapidly weakened the hurricane gales, though they were quickly replenished as the Admiral poured more ether through his specially crafted stones.
Vintersvend was soon breathing hard as he strained his magic reserves. No individual archmage could match ether endurance against dozens, hundreds of battlemages and win. He still carried plenty of runestones for combat use, but he had to hold those barriers firm with his own power -- at least long enough to persuade the Wickers to cease their 'worthless' bombardment.
It took half a minute before they stopped. Then, as the Admiral finally took a slow breath, he saw a single knight phantom charge in the wake of the barrage.
Another tap of the rune tablet hurled out a dozen more stones, but the phantom vanished in a bolt of his own lightning before the salvo struck. Yet just before striking the wind wall, the attacker rematerialized into physical form once more.
Vintersvend's eyes grew wide with astonishment as he watched the intruder fall into his hangar. The gale barrier had torn his uniform into bloody shreds. If it hadn't been for the man's steel and arcane armor, the cutting winds would have ripped him apart.
The sheer audacity of this... this boy!
The Admiral stared with near disbelief as the Knight Phantom crashed hard onto the steel floor and gradually rolled to a stop just five paces away. A dozen gashes had cut the attacker's face into a bloody mess beyond recognition. But Vintersvend estimated that the short redhead who appeared a teen couldn't be older than early twenties at most!
What it bravery? Overconfidence? Outright stupidity? Vintersvend didn't know what compelled the boy to perform such a foolhardy act. But it hardly mattered anymore.
A handful of his housecarl bodyguards were rushing over from the entrances. The Wicker boy would never be allowed to stand up again.
But as the hateful, blood-covered eyes turned to glare at the Admiral, Vintersvend realized that the kid wasn't finished yet. The redhead tossed one of the two kukris in his hands, hurling out the curved steel like a bladed boomerang.
However the kid was too badly hurt. His aim was terrible even at so close a range. The kukri merely tore the edge of the Admiral's billowing cloak.
No... it also grazed his layered wards, and the weapon's discharged Catalyst Dispel overwhelmed them with a cascading failure.
With a jerk of his hands, the Admiral summoned runic pebbles into his reach to replenish the wards. But a sharp, slashing pain from his right forearm caused him to drop the stones.
"Armor Screen!" the bloodied boy spat out, curving the protective bubble around the Admiral and enclosing his space against the steel bulwark.
Why would he... Vintersvend wondered in confusion before he saw the re-emerging threat.
The kukri had bounced off the wall and came back, somehow tripling itself in the process. Then, with another rebound off the translucent bubble, another two copies duplicated into existence.
A shallow cut across his shin; a slash grazing his bony shoulder; a hacking stab deep into his back. The whirlwind of steel escalated quickly, and Vintersvend soon tasted iron as blood flowed into his mouth.
He knew he had only moments to think of a counterspell, to figure out which prepared rune to use. But as the sharp outbursts of pain accelerated and multiplied, maintaining focus grew impossible as his consciousness began to scream out.
...
Reynald never found out if the Admiral lacked the right prepared spell to deal with the unusual threat or if he simply didn't react fast enough. But within seconds, the swarm of flying steel created by the Bladestorm Kukri -- a 'gift' from the Imperial Mantis Blades weeks ago -- had cut the old man to pieces.
Which left three armed and now outraged Northmen surrounding Reynald.
Too bad... I won't get to show Gerd my medal for this...
Lying face-up on the floor, Reynald cough up more blood as he glanced over. Not at the swords about to end his life, but the fading winds that once protected the entrance.
...At least I can tell the Holy Father... that I did my job.
Exhausted enough to sleep for an eternity, he finally allowed himself to close his eyes.
But there was no sharp escalation of pain. No ending of consciousness.
Instead he heard cries of agony above him, accompanied by an avian screech.
...The wail of a gryphon.
Reynald opened his eyes once more and there it was -- an armored gryphon of Weichsel standing next to him, with a middle-aged man bearing a Colonel's insignia riding on top.
As another spatter of blood flew across the air, the officer who wore a tall, bearskin hat with skulls and crossbones finally glanced down at him.
"Rest easy son. You did us proud."
Reynald spat out the blood in his mouth at he stared blankly at Colonel von Mackensen, commander of the Falcon Force.
"I-I'm not dead yet."
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