A tilt of the glass. A shift of the drink.

A sharp sweetness full of bitter herbs. When the real luxury was the ice cold touch.

Lights dimmed. Paintings and crystal fixtures shuttered against the walls. Bottles slipped and fell from the shelves in shattering pops and cracks. Whimpers and shouts rippled across the crowd.

"Hey, hold it-" the last scream of a life ripped through the chords of a man's throat. There came a hard hit against the wall. The low gurgle of breath choked upon the last gasp for air.

In through the door frame rushed a cloaked figure. Too quick, it darted towards young Malik. White trails snapped away to show knife drawn and blooded in one hand, and the other.

Across the floor flew sparkling glass. The coupe smashed against the attacker's quick turn and cut. Bebin's curved steel there behind it.

A clatter, strong against the weak. A scurry and hop back, a measured turn about the line to see another test. The tulwar blade come up and across. Caught against long knife and short. Another turn of bodies come to crash. Knife found knife's guard. Wrists angled to turn blades. The two shoved off and found small distance between them. The crowd behind the red cloak, the exit behind the blood stained white.


A third arm hung protracted from beneath the left side of the killer's cloak. His wild eyes wide with glee as his magitech-arm hissed and coiled to hide its red stained blade once more.

Bebin grinned, as his wound wept his blood. Breath the more shallow as he stared down the murderous menace before him.
 
Crouching down beside the body of his foe, Faramund drew back the man's hood. There was a collective gasp as the officer and the surviving enginseers took in the man's visage. Pale and scarred, cold as a wintry grave. And there, betwixt eyes unseeing, a brand beneath the thin layer of skin covering his forehead.

An open eye, iris aflame; all-seeing, even in death.

'Does that answer your question?' Looking up at the sky-elf, Faramund lowered the cultist's hood. Blood soaked the decking, spilt viscera making the engine room smell like an abattoir.

Despite their horror, despite their dead kin and the shiver of adrenaline, the enginseers assigned to the Vasdaya were quick to return to work. Their lives, as well as the lives of all those aboard, continued to hang in the balance. So long as-

The vox-speaker screeched.

'Alarm! Alarm! Situation on the passenger deck! Please, return to your rooms until the problem is resolved.' Leaping to his feet, Faramund rushed from the room, barging past four marines coming the other way. 'Secure the scene!' He heard the officer bellow. 'Selik! Dispatch a squad to the lounge! Haz, tend to the Captain, make sure he's safe!'

@Bebin
 
Breath pumped steady from Bebin's lips. Eyes ever-focused, limbs ever-ready as he felt the thin strings of the shroud weave about him. He watched as the three armed agent circled. Paced. Measured. Slow. No stranger to the clash this one. No words wasted. No movement too greedy.

Silver steel flashed. Long knives darted. The shroud lamps flickered and dimmed.

A turn of the first blade, a step off line of the second which came to a catch of heavy arm. Gears clicked, and the simulacra of flesh whined and twanged to taught snap. A ping. Metal against metal. The Agent's eyes went wide. Bebin grinned. Hands spun about wrist. Fingers grabbed tight and the whole weight of a shroud-steeled body slammed into the three armed agent. All shoulder and hip.

A twist, a tumult. The white robed figure sailed overhead and down into the floor with a crack and slam against the wooden floor.

Bebin's blade soon followed, but the magitech arm burned bright. Bebin's eyes went wide.

A boom ripped through the dining room floor. Smoke screened the space in a blanket of acrid and choking vapors, thick as ink.
 
The lounge plunged into darkness. Swirling, shifting, ink-black smoke filled the nooks and crannies, seeping through cracks, spreading to levels low and high. Figures moved through the cloudy haze, coughing, gagging on the acrid taste in the air, like burnt copper.

The Agent closed its eyes as it circled around its quarry. The device had been of its Master's making, and he knew its effects well. The blinding, cloying smoke brought tears to the eyes and bile to throat. An irritant. No more, no less.

Turning, it swanned past the beturbaned Lifeguard, making towards another.

'Syr Bebin?' Malik coughed, spluttering as he held a cloth to his nose and mouth. 'Syr?! Where-,' cough, cough, '-where are you?!'

'Right here,' replied the Agent, vocal cords vibrating to the sound of another's voice. 'Do not fret. It will all be over soon.' Rising up behind the young nobleman, the human facsimile straightened its hand, a knife poised to strike.

There was a blur of motion...

Grunting, Faramund caught Lero's wrist at the last moment. Twisting, pulling his opponent off balance, he brought his sabre down in a savage cut. The cultist's arm came away in a bloody spray, hitting the floorboards with a thud. Pain escaped him in a whisper, as the mortal within the monster recognised the Lifeguard standing in front of him.

'You?!'

'Yeah,' replied Faramund, smoke dissipating around him. 'Me.'

@Bebin
 
A laugh, sick with glee. A swipe swipe swipe of long daggers there in the close space between them. Cloth, guard, flesh. Blood spilled across the floor as the whisps of black smoked whipped about the snap of white cloak.

"The Babe himself," the agent laughed, a knife spun in his hand. "It is not the first time we've danced, is it?" A stutter step. A stab, a cut, a parry that sparked, black steel against black steel. The agent pressed close enough to whisper. "It will end soon you know," he hissed with a laugh like rolling smoke. "This DREAM," he swiped cut, swiped.

Through pain of wound, Bebin found Malik. Wrapped hand about his mouth to silence him. "Quiet now, Lordling," the Basilisk whispered, and pulled the lordling to cover.

From the door came the sound of footfalls fast with hurry. Masked figures stormed in, slice and cut through any body that stood before them.

A clash of steel, a cut, the whirr of a shroud woven into liqui-form blade come to its shape. A katar that sliced through armor with deft slash.

Through the vox-crystal came static. "A raiding ship! We have a raiding ship closing in from the starboard side! Able hands, to the deck- Able hands to the deck!"

The agent laughed maniacal.

From one corner, glyphs of weaving painted chartreuse through the smoke. Symbols of the North Wind, seals of storm and gale. A magicked wind sweapt through the cabin. Kerran there behind the woven spell as it cleared the smoke, and showed to all the carnage in the room. The young weaver's eyes wide with horror as Bebin held man dead at the end of his blade.


The ship rumbled and lurched.

A crackle from the vox-crystal "We are losing altidude! We are losing altidude!" the engines whined the slower. Groaned as their hammers slowed their strikes. Clear as crystal but pings ago, now dull as drums struck shallow.
 
He bled slowly, this agent. Part man, part machine, he was the perfect representation of what happened when science went too far. Madness flared in his eyes as he ducked and sliced, stabbed and parried. The stump of his severed arm dripped as he forced Faramund back. Blood as black as tar stained the decking, coagulating in the time it took to blink.

Locking blades, the assassin in white drew Faramund close. What remained of his sanity leaked out of him in the form of words meant to dishearten, if not break his fellow construct.

Grunting, grimacing, the dawnling broke the bind by slamming a fist into the assassin's ribs. 'You're... mistaken,' he replied, going on the offensive, black steel cutting the very air through which it passed. 'The dream ended that day in Crown's Hold, the day I ended you.'

Liro laughed, capering like a fool in blood-soaked motley. The knife-hands became a blur as his dance turned into a performance. For whom, Faramund wasn't sure; he barely had time to think, let alone act.

We've been here before, a voice spoke in his ear, calm, almost melancholy. History repeats itself, again and again. A cycle, never to be broken.

Bowing low, the dawnling's blade licked out, arm extended, to pierce Liro's chest. A step forward drove the sabre deeper, and Liro staggered, his gleeful smile interrupted by a flicker of pain. 'So, this is how it felt,' he remarked, grunting as Faramund withdrew. He took a step closer. Another. Liro grinned. 'He wants you back, you know? Father.' Hissing, the agent went down on one knee, then, the other.

'You said... the dream had ended, that I... was mistaken.' Looking up at Faramund, Liro smiled wide, revealing rows of black teeth. 'I find... it is in our nature to lie, ofttimes to ourselves. Self-deceit doesn't make the dream any less... sweeter.' Sagging, the creature chuckled darkly to itself, tensing only when it felt a blade at its neck.

Turning his head, Liro glanced up at Faramund, one last time.

'Go on, then, dreamer. Embrace the delusion! It will not save you - you are beyond saving.' With a sigh of parting flesh, Faramund drove his sabre home. Liro twitched and spasmed as his lifeforce left him. But even as the light faded from his eyes, the smile remained. Spiteful, even in death.

You are beyond saving, the words echoed in the chambers of his mind as he approached Bebin and Kerran, the latter standing slack-jawed at the end of a blade. Faramund brushed it aside.

'The security on this tub leaves a lot to be desired,' he said, deadpan as ever. Brown eyes fell upon Bebin. 'How fares our ward?'

@Bebin
 
"Unharmed," Bebin said. His dark eyes quick to take in the scene about them.

Malik forced a brave looked through the cracks of horror that marked bis expression. "I'm, I am well, Syr Faramund. I even managed to wield the weave against a foe!" He said, eyes too wide, smile too broad. Almost a laugh with his nerves.

Kerran frowned, face scrunched with a worry too real. "All this bloodshed," he said, hollow voiced and full of a sinking loss.

The shroud lamps flickered, their glow dimmed before they popped back to brightness. A crystal clink came from behind the bar. All the glassware set to roll and clatter.

"With more sure to follow," Bebin assured, sword sheathed, he wove his wound shut with a silver thread, driven through with a shroud needle formed from a sliver of water.

The vox crystal crackled to life. "Ready for emergency landing! I repeat, ready for emergency landing!"

Survivors whispered their horror and panic all around. Screamed as the ship lurched violently down, like some toy thrashed by a child. The hull rattled and groaned while the whine of the engines, struggling to find power as crystals and hammers worked the shroud, sounded like a distant dissonant song.

Bebin's needle dissipated, and he looked to their charge, the young weaver, and those survivors. All the cabin shook. "Brace yourselves," Bebin warned.

All was a matter of fate now.
 
A nod as the dawnling regarded their ward. 'You did well, lad,' he reassured the youngster, clapping him on the shoulder and steering him away from the carnage. From the blood and ruin. 'These men were here to hurt us. You defended yourself, and came out unscathed, thank Taerah!' Faramund tried not to invoke the gods too often, lest they finally deign to pay attention. No, he merely sought to keep the kid from falling apart at a critical moment. Like now.

An emergency landing wasn't really a landing, after all.

More like a crash with extra steps, the knight thought to himself, resolute in the face of uncertain death. 'We should find a place to brace ourselves, syr.' Turning, his gaze alighted on his dusk-brother. Bebin had proved himself a font of knowledge and experience in the past. On a ship powered by the shroud, odds were only equally potent magic would spare them the worst of the "landing".

Course, the Shroud had never cared much for ol' Mund. Fortunately, it was not him they were here to protect.
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From across the room, Faramund spied a bundle of robes and frazzled hair crawling out from behind the bar. What was left of it, rather. 'Yesna?' Lifting her head at the mention of her name, the underelf smiled, stood to find herself on unsteady footing.
'Syr Faramund? Syr Bebin? You're alive!'

Picking her way past the bodies, the bartender coughed, shivered and shook in tandem with the ship. Faramund saw fear in her grey eyes, in the rigidness of her body.

Malik wasn't doing much better. In all the confusion, Faramund had nearly forgotten him completely. A slip in his concentration, but not one that had proven fatal. Yet.

'For now,' he replied, weary, and all too aware of the mistakes he had made leading up to this point. 'Are you unhurt?'

'Y-yes, for now.' The underelf forced a smile she didn't feel. 'We-we should perhaps seek shelter in one of the strong rooms,' she suggested, glancing nervously at Bebin. 'Not a bad idea,' Faramund agreed, turning to the Pursuant for guidance. 'Unless you have any tricks left up your sleeve?' Faramund grinned knowingly.

@Bebin
 
Bebin sat a moment in the cacophony that enveloped them. His eyes came shut, and all the sounds of the Vasdaya, rattling against the forces that be, dimmed distant as he communed with the Loch.

His mind was turned to a single drop amidst the tumult and upturn of so many psyche. Was threatened to be tossed by the tempest of shroud that whirled and rushed.

The world of flesh and bone, turned to the world of dream and daring The waves of panic. The fear that swirled as all the people made their way through the press. Fear and fury ruled the moment. Kindness was thrown overboard. Consideration gone. Only their own safety would matter. Their own survival.

He could not help them.

So the ghost of his mind, the mirrored dream he wove so well in the darkness of his thoughts, looked to the raging currents instead. The winds, and the shroud they carried. Like streams of glittering fish scales, come swim across the sky. The crashed, and splashed, turned and lifted the ship. Swam into its engines. Dove into its crystals.

There they turned and churned and stuck. With no where to go.

His eyes came open, traced with the blue light of Loch. "There is something," he said, and turned to each of the young weavers. "We must go to the engine room," he fixed his gaze onto Kerran. "If we can control the flow of the shroud, as it weaves into the engine stones,"

Realization dawned unto Kerran. "We might help restore power!"

Bebin nod. "Let us hurry,"
 
Faramund felt his nerves grow taut as the silence stretched on, the Vasdaya creaking and groaning as it, quite literally, fell from the skies. What magitech they had stuffed its bowels with was clearly failing, and fast. The result of sabotage, yes and of his own failings. They should have seen this coming.

He should have seen this coming.

The brethren spoke of sacrifice, of giving one's life for the cause. Few ever actually went through with it. The Cult of the Everwatcher were different in that regard. Zealots one and all, they revelled in chaos and irrational thought, believing their God would reward them with power and who-knew-what. Perhaps they were righteous in their beliefs, perhaps not. Few lived long enough to find out.

'The engine room?' Faramund frowned.

Fuck it! Not like I have a better plan. 'Alright, then. Kerran! Stay between us! Malik! You come, too!' One more weaver couldn't hurt, even if he was an unknown element. 'What about me?' Yesna asked, appearing from behind Malik's back. 'Go to one of the strong rooms, lock yourself in. With any luck, we'll set down safely!' She grimaced at him. 'And the alternative?'

'We set down, though likely not in one piece.'

Nodding, the bartender wished them all luck. Faramund could feel time slipping away from them, and, half-expecting a barb from Bebin, he turned to lead the group to the engine room. A short journey, albeit a precarious one.

'Watch yourself,' urged Faramund as the ship shook between decks, throwing him from the stairs and into the bulkhead opposite. The glow-globes running the spine overhead flickered, one at the end of the hall popping, spitting glass in several directions. 'The officer of the watch left some marines here, before I returned to the lounge. They should be just below, on the next level.'

The Vasdaya whined as something somewhere strained under the pressure, ship systems shutting down, one by one.

@Bebin
 
Bebin grit his teeth as the whole ship shuddered under its own weight. The shift in the hull violent enough to toss him against the wall of the lower deck corridors with a slam. He braced himself, and looked back. Helped Kerran up, and went on.

As they grew closer to the engine room. the sounds of panic were high on every voice. "The Crystals are struggling to hold together,"

"Hammer needles six and eight are shattered, they are striking the crystals raw!"

From the engine room, the shroudlight flickered mad. Bright and burning orange and gold, turned cold blue and swirled purple to the speed of the many hammers and rings. Like a child caught in a fit, the engine whined and cried, shuttered and shook. Every bit of its construction doing what it could to hold it together, if only to show its agony all the more.

"Where is the shroudmaster?!"

"Casualty!"

"Damn it all!"

Quick as a knife, Bebin entered the room.

"Who the fuck is this guy?!"

Bebin's eyes narrowed as he looked over the machinery. Felt the dissonance of the shroud, turbulent upon each breath. "The acting shroudmaster!" he said with a bark that cut over the din. "Kerran, Malik, make ready a Locus Ring!"

"On it!" Kerran called out, his hand whipping out a scrawling stone. A moment of stunned horror as he saw the blood-slicked floorboards.

Malik moved fast. Cleaned up what he could. "We've no time!"

Kerran nod, and bent low to the work.

Bebin's hands shift and wove between mudras. Fingers curled and flexed as wrists snapped and bent with the flow his his arms and rhythm of his breath.

"Raiders!" called marines from the top deck.

"Faramund!" Bebin shout out through grit teeth. "Don't let a single one make it through!"

On the top deck, what marines still lived watched wide eyed as a raiding vessel closed on the failing Vasdaya.
 
The call came down from the top deck. Raiders on the approach. Another part of the cult's plan or just bad luck? Faramund had to wonder, acknowledging Bebin's order with a curt nod. He closed the door behind him as he left. The two marines flanking him shared a look, their weapons already bared and bloodied from a previous engagement. They knew what was happening to the ship, felt the way it toiled on in gasping breaths, like a battle mount ridden to its limits, white-eyed and exhausted.

'I'm going topside,' Faramund told the pair, the darksteel in his hand coming to rest upon his shoulder. 'Kill anyone that makes it past me.'

The marines took a moment to answer, but by then he was already moving, climbing to where the sky opened up above him. Pandemonium awaited him there, amongst the clouds. Crewmen and marines, those not needed below, were arming up, readying themselves to repel boarders.

The Captain of the Vasdaya had clearly had enough of people fucking with his ship.

'To your stations, men! Quickly now!' Faramund heard the officer's voice before he saw her. Bodies crowded the main deck, mingling, colliding in their haste to get to wherever they were going. Not so the Officer of the Watch. Standing tall, her gaze was locked on the enemy raider as it closed in from the stern. Faramund noted how they were coming in slightly higher, belly exposed. Archers lined their gunwales, and the dawnling could see their vanguard massing just behind, preparing to descend.

The shroud-lances along the Vasdaya's sides remained quiet as the first of the arrows began to fall. The angles were bad, and the Vasdaya's defenders could find little in the way of cover. Faramund heard screams and shouts. Men fell to foul the decking with their lifeblood. More arrows followed.

Then came the hooks, and the men behind them.
 
Axes hacked at the boarding lines, whilst the Captain turned his fast falling ship hard to port whilst the raiders zipped down their lines. More than a pair of souls flung off the ropes like fleas from a cat come give itself a shake.

But more boots still landed.

The skymen of the Vasdaya fell upon them quick and desperate. Axes, machetes, clubs and spears all set to do their ugly work. But the raiders moved with a practiced efficiency. Lantern shields caught blades, turned and loosed a gout of shroud flame there behind the sweep of arm. A raider fast behind the roar of the golden tongues.

Clashed with the officer's cutlass, a wand there in her offhand which she pointed at the fire's that spread across the floor and whipped them back at one of the raiders. Like a dog set upon its mark, the flames leapt up and crashed against the man.

Down below, the locus lines had been scrawled and set with stems of sigils. Rain, water, wind, flame. Bebin's mudras came to an end with a clap, and he let pour the breath from his lungs quick against the whirl and whip of wild shroud flow that jet from the engine in super-heated-technicolor plumes.

The weave of spellwork upon the floor coated with rime and burned with a frigid light.

"Come the call of cold winter, gone the blaze of summer's heat," the younger weavers chanted in union, their own hands twisting and bending their fingers as they channeled the shroud through the tremble and shake of the airship.

"The ice holds the river back, the falls freeze against the stone," the ice upon the floorboards crept, out and out from the channeling circle that was their foci, and Bebin could see it. The flow of the shroud slowing. Stilling. Raw and every-color turned slow to red, and purples and blues. Cooled to warm mist and silver steam.

"Rest now, and let the world rest with you, calm now, as the warmth bleeds away, and the stillness takes you,"

 
Fire licked at Faramund's boots as he pressed in to meet the vanguard, unafraid. His sabre caught the shroudweaver in the neck. Muscle and sinew were no match for tempered steel. The shroud-fire eating at the ship's decking went out, the officer's direct intervention a godsend for the men and women set to defend the Vasdaya.

And defend it they did, doggedly, and at great cost.

Slicing at a boarder wielding an axe, Faramund did what he could to stem the tide sweeping across the gunwales and onto the upper decks. The melee was a frenzied thing, all limbs and blades and brute force. Vasdayans tangled with raiders, punching, kicking, swinging with all they had. Shields staved off sword-blows. Axes opened bellies and throats and skulls. Blood hung in the air as the Captain put the ship through its paces, trying to throw off the enemy vessel. Faramund could hear the shroud-engines labouring over the din.

No good.

The Vasdaya was ailing. Whatever hope they had of breaking off and making a run for it rested entirely on the efforts of Bebin and his fellow shroudweavers. If only they'd-

Something heavy tackled Faramund, knocking him to the deck. He caught a glimpse of scarred flesh and bristle from the corner of his eye before strong hands seized him by the throat. Rolling, gagging, he tried to break the hold. Chin tucked, he lashed out with an elbow, felt it bump ribs. The back of his head followed, pulping a nose. He managed to get a hand on his dagger, mustering enough force to drive it back into his assailant's thigh. There was a scream.

The hold broke.

Slithering free, Faramund clambered atop his foe. Twisting his dagger, he plunged it down, again and again and again until he felt the life go out of the man's limbs. His sabre lay on the deck not three feet away.

Spitting blood, he picked it up, and went back to work.
 
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Whispers and prayers, cants and incantations down in the engine-room bellow. Voices that carried through the timber of the ship itself. Resonant with the wind, punctuated by the clatter and clang of steel, whilst three souls wove the shroud to slow. The fibers of their beings thrummed, as all weavers thrummed with the strain of those magick fibers come to form to the pull and twist of their minds. Dream and perception, reality and those things innermost, willed to be.

The ice. The silver. Threads like silk spun and dove there between the snaps and twists of Bebin's fingers and wrists, like spider's legs spun fresh gossamer from spinneret. A finger dipped in to the raw spool of gathered shroud, crooked knuckle a hook that plucked the line of energeies formed there before him. A snap of right arm pulled it out long, like line cast from rod. A whip back, a throw forward, and the line traced forward in racing arc.

Struck the shroudstone clean.

The engine sang bright. Needle hammers steadied, like a beast that'd found its gallop. Free from frantic crash.

Topside. The ship lurched one last. Lift. Rose the steadier. Still too late to avoid the tops of trees. Pine crowns and elm crests cracked and ripped against the Vadaya's hull. Sailor and raider alike were thrown to the deck. Flung over the gunwales.the officer rammed over. Her desperate hand latched onto the edge as she screamed and the forest below went on with its abrasion.

Every ounce of her strength used to hang on as the captain called for over boards and did what he could to keep the ship from coming apart against ancient tree and timeless stone.

"Powers coming back to the engines!" Someone shout over the vox-crystals.
 
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