The wind roared against his body, and for a split moment, Nar wondered if he was going to be blown back up into the promenade, but then, he was through the wind resistance, plummeting towards the snarling raimel and the screaming apprentice stuck in its deadly, green hold.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Nar noticed that another apprentice was flying down at his side, the both of them plunging down at speed, desperate to save the tangled apprentice, but Nar landed first.

  He was unable to properly swing his sword, so he stored it and tried to grapple with the raimel directly. The slippery, hairy creature was nearly impossible to grab and hold onto, a surprise given the abundance of long fur on it, and its mouth darted right and left, already bloodied from its prey, and attacking both Nar and the apprentice it was wrapped around of.

  Nar groaned, moving his head in and out of the raimels darting attacks, and with the arrival of the other apprentice, the two of them fought to get it to let go of the apprentice in its crushing embrace.

  Fuck this! Nar thought. [Quickening]!

  The struggle slowed down before him, and he cycled harder. He pulled his blade back from his ring, and the sword ignited with an angry aura. Without the space to swing his blade, Nar pressed it against the body of the beast instead, and its bright green hair caught on fire almost instantly, burning from the contact.

  The raimel screamed in pain, and the green beast loosened its grip. The other apprentice, a female lengos brandishing two daggers, managed to get just enough space to get to work, carving out its serpentine shape.

  “Pull him out!” she shouted at Nar.

  Nar wasted no time with word and pulled the now passed out apprentice to his chest, and triggered his belt to send him flying back up to the promenade.

  A sudden thousand shards sliced into him, and he grit his teeth to keep going up, despite the ravenous aether ravaging across him, and as he neared the handrail, hands reached down for him, and took the unconscious burden from him.

  Nar leaned against the railing and gasped, his aura dispelling the last vestiges of aether from within him, the pins and needles like numbness slowly dissipating across his limbs as aura took back control of his pathways and body. And suddenly, someone was shaking him.

  “Can you go back to help her?” someone shouted at him, a gray hand pointing down. It sounded like Hoz, the party leader of the party to their right.

  “What?”

  Nar looked back down, blinking to steady his blurry and darkened sight. Rather than giving up, the raimel had latched onto the dagger wielding apprentice instead, and the two of them were swinging and slamming into the ship’s hull as they fought to claim each other’s life.

  Ah, for…

  Without bothering with a reply, Nar dropped back down, kicking from the railing in the direction of the struggle. His impact startled the both of them, and it gave Nar enough time to get a hand over the beast’s snout, and press it shut with all the grip he could eek out of his [Strength].

  The raimel thrashed wildly, coiling around both him and the other apprentice, but it wasn’t nearly as long, or strong enough, to wrap around the two of them properly at the same time.

  And while Nar kept its dangerous mouth shut and head locked in position, the other apprentice got enough of a margin to start stabbing again in quick succession. Nar felt each stab through the creature's spasms, and within moments, the raimel went from enemy to dead weight in his arms.

  “It’s dead!” Nar shouted, to the still stabbing and screaming apprentice. “Stop! Hey!”

  Nar reached over and tapped her on the helm, one that looked just like his shifting gray one, and she looked up at him, startled.

  “It’s dead!” Nar shouted again.

  “Oh…” he just barely heard, coming from her helmet. “Right…”

  The two of them let go of the dead serpentine body, and Nar followed its fall. The sinuous green body thudded against the hull and tumbled into the wind, and disappeared in a cloud of ravenous pullies.

  Crystal… he thought, as the pullies snarled and fought each other in a swirling mass, to suck the dead raimel’s aether and tear at its flesh.

  “Are you alright?” Nar asked, his eyes still on that feeding frenzy. “Can you make it back up?”

  “I… Yeah. Let’s go back up.”

  Together, they triggered their return buttons, and blasted off, back up to the promenade.

  “Nar!” Rel shouted, running towards him. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m okay!” Nar said, and searched the promenade for the apprentice they had rescued. “Where’s the other guy? Is he okay?”

  Rel shook her head. “He was taken to the healers. The raimel managed to get its teeth through the armor and he was bleeding from everywhere…”

  Nar grimaced under his helmet. He had noticed the raimel’s bloody, long and sharp teeth, though he hadn’t been sure if the blood had belonged to the apprentice or something, or someone else.

  Guess there’s only so much it can do, Nar thought, looking down at the shifting gray plates coating his arm. And here I thought 20% was a lot…

  20% was a significant increase from the 9.5% damage reduction that his Climber’s gear had afforded him, but as it had been explained to them, the armor itself could be destroyed past a certain threshold of damage, just like his Climber’s gear had been, getting shredded again and again.

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  The raimel’s serrated mouth had clearly overwhelmed the guy’s armor, so maybe his gear wasn’t as strong as Nar had first thought it to be.

  Got to be careful… he told himself, as a red gauntlet appeared in front of his face.

  “Can you stand?” Rel asked him.

  Nar took her hand and together, they hauled him back up to his feet.

  “How are things up here?” he shouted.

  “Another raimel attacked us, but it wrapped around Gad,” Rel said, and Nar could hear the mirth in her voice through the raging storm. “Gad went nowhere, and we all piled onto the beast!”

  Nar followed her thumb and indeed, there was a discarded dead raimel at Gad’s feet.

  Serves you right, Nar thought.

  “I checked your ring just there! You’re all good!” Rel shouted at him.

  “Oh… Thank you!” Nar said, touched.

  “No worries!” she said, with a fake punch to his shoulder.

  “Rel! There’s more of those balls coming in!” Kur shouted.

  Nar looked up, and indeed, several lightning balls of feathered zappers were drifting over towards the promenades, blown along by the winds.

  “Crystal…” Rel whispered, looking up at the lightning balls of death. Thankfully, their snapping rays of blue were mostly sucked into the aether rods as the zappers glided alongside the hull towards them.

  “I really hope those things last…” Nar said, eyeing the closest rod.

  “Yeah,” the archer muttered.

  She nocked a new arrow, coating it in red aura, as the two of them headed back into the chaos.

  *********

  Chop. Chop. Cut. Slash. Throw down. Crunch on with an aura plated boot. Be seized and jolted by wild aether as they plummeted through clouds once every ten minutes or so… The tides of battle ebbed and flowed across the promenades, but they never ceased.

  The promenade grew thick with bodies and slippery gore, and reluctantly, Mynap and the other squad leaders had ordered them to clear out some of the bodies, losing on what Nar guessed was precious harvesting and subsequent XP.

  The beasts he faced were so weak that Nar didn’t find the need to use his [Sword Aura] much, and in that press of bodies, it was dangerous to be swinging a big sword coated in deadly, burning aura. Instead, he relied simply on the sharpness of his blade, the moves he could bring to the fore as best as he could, on his attributes and his ever crucial [Aura Quickening].

  How long does it take to fill up those damn aetherbanks? Nar found himself thinking, not for the first time. It’s been two hours already…

  He stumbled back from his latest kill, and flicked pullie innards off his blade. But looking up, his breath froze on his throat, as there were even more beasts flying out there now, and so thick, and densely packed together, that Nar realized that what he had first taken for clouds were actually gatherings of millions of beasts, gliding across the wild aetheric currents in a feeding frenzy.

  Can they bring down the ship? Nar wondered.

  So far, the pullies seemed content with the living targets on the promenades, as well as the countless zappers flying all around. But if even a tiny fraction of one of those clouds landed on the ship, could its combined weight bring it down? And what if one of those bigger agglomerates of zappers decided to shoot directly at the ship?

  That Dov guy said he’s never seen it, but… Nar shook his head. There was no point in thinking about those sorts of things. All he could do was focus on staying alive, on keeping everyone else alive as well, and keep raking in what he expected would be a sweet, sweet long list of gains at the end of it all. His gains had to be on pair, or even better, than the ones from clearing out the den…

  Suddenly, urgent tapping made him glance back.

  “Look!” Rel shouted, pointing towards Hoz’s party.

  Nar turned back around, but he heard the screaming first.

  “Holy shit!” he muttered.

  The thing was easily twice his size from bladed snout to bladed tail, and as it swam through the air, right in the middle of the promenade, apprentices screamed and shouted warnings, getting out of the way of its many gleaming blades.

  “It’s an ikuros!” Rel shouted for the party. “Guys! There’s an ikuros!”

  “Holy fuck!” Mul shouted, glancing their way.

  Even the aether crazed pullies and zappers darted out of the way of the massive ikuros slowly swimming towards them, its blades flashing in the aether gathering into the closest aether rod.

  “Just let it pass through!” Kur shouted. “We’re already in enough shit without messing with it!”

  Nar pushed himself against the steelium railing, and followed the big beast's slow progress.

  Its moves were erratic, jittery, and more fearful than frenzied.

  Come on… Nar urged it, eyeing the retreating pullies. They too seemed keen enough to avoid the ikuros, but in their frenzy, they could just as easily surge forward again at any moment, trapping them all against the wall and with the ikuros still heading towards them.

  Come on! He thought.

  “Agh!” someone cried.

  Nar looked to the left and gasped. Two raimels had snuck up on the party, and had latched onto Jul and Tuk.

  “Damn it! Help them!” Kur said, jumping towards Jul, who was holding onto the railings with everything she got as the green beast sought to pull her down. “Nar stop that thing!”

  Nar peeled himself off the wall and faced squarely against the ikuros. The beast looked at him in fright, and seemed unwilling to advance further. Nar glanced behind him. Viy and Rel were both involved in a snarling and spitting match with one of the raimels over custody of Tuk’s legs. Meanwhile, Jul, Mul and Kur seemed to have the other raimel well in hand with the help of someone from the party to their left. In fact, it looked as though the raimel was trying to run away, and Mul was the one preventing it from going.

  Nar faced back forward, to the shivering beast in front of him.

  Crystal… It’s just scared! He realized, lowering his sword. Maybe I can keep it here long enough for the others to clear out of the…

  With a rallying cry, Hoz’s party jumped the big, scared beast, taking it by surprise. No doubt they had seen the two raimels attacking Kur’s party and had reacted accordingly. But for some reason, Nar found himself grimacing and looking away from the quick butchering that followed. The ikuros, despite its intimidating look, truly seemed as though it had no bad intentions, and had just somehow found itself atop the promenade, shaken, and paralyzed with fear, and Nar looked away as Hoz’s party brought it down to finish it, even as he felt gratitude towards their swift intervention.

  Instead, he ran towards Tuk, Rel and Viy, who were still fighting a desperate battle to get the ring tosser free. Nar tripped on and kicked through a bunch of dead pullies just as another wild aetheric tendril wreaked havoc within him, and he collapsed against Rel.

  “Ah!” she screamed in surprise, her body most likely also still recovering from the aether zap.

  “It's just me!” Nar snarled, straightening himself and getting an arm against the raimel, who had been unaffected by the aether. “Hold it still!”

  Together, the four of them finally managed to wrestle the thing off of Tuk, and pin it against the floor. And with a grunt, Mul jumped over and crushed its head under a flaming boot.

  “Fuck!” he shouted. “I hate these things!”

  Before any of them could reply, a massive explosion brightened up the dark skies in the distance, and Nar straightened up to search for its origin.

  “My Crystal…” Cen whispered.

  Stunned and shocked silent, they watched as one of the ships in the storm slowly fell into the clouds, leaving a trail of flames and smoke in its wake. From this distance, Nar couldn’t tell what had happened to it, but he swore he spotted something flying around the falling ship. Some kind of large shadows…

  “What happened?” Kur asked Cen.

  “I don’t know… I think something hit it,” she said. “A lot of…”

  A loud rumble, half roar and half grunting, filled the air, cutting her words.

  “Brace for impact!” Mynap shouted, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. “BRACE!”

  “Hold onto the railing!” Kur shouted.

  Impact? Nar’s brain asked, not following, even as he held onto the steelium railing and dragged a still dazed Tuk into the safety of his arms.

  The sound grew to a crescendo and then… THUMP!

  THUMP!

  THUMP! THUMP!

  THUMP!

  The ship rocked under him, as the impacts continued, and he held onto the steelium railing for his and Tuk’s lives. What in the Pile was happening now?