The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Attack - Part 3

     It took everything she had, but the wound closed and she gasped in relief, chanting words of gratitude to Ramthara. "Are the rest of you all right?" she then asked, quickly looking them over.

     Their other injuries were trivial, though. Nothing more than glass cuts that they pressed wads of cloth against, and the cleric decided they could wait. There might be others with more serious injuries who needed whatever healing power she might be able to channel. She ran from the room, therefore, out through the door and across the corridor to the lounge, and finding it to be empty she dashed across it and out through the opposite door, where she heard cries of distress coming from somewhere.

     She followed them to the bridge, where Thomas was gabbling Tassley's injury to Timothy, who was trying to tell him to slow down so he could make out what he was saying.

     "Tassley!" the wizard gasped, trying to pull the cleric to the door. "She's hurt, I don't know how badly! Quick!"

     Timothy nodded and started to follow him out, but Saturn barked an order for them to stop. "The moon trogs will be most in need of your healing," he said. "Check on them first."

     "But Tassley...!" cried Thomas. "She's unconscious and bleeding from a head wound! She could be seriously hurt..."

     "Saturn's right," said Timothy, though. "You know how frail the moon trogs are. They've got to be in the worst shape. Daleen, you see to her. I'll see to the moon trogs..."

     "No," said Saturn, though. "Both of you go to deck six. Gown, make Tassley comfortable and try to stop the bleeding. One of the clerics will see her later if they've got any strength left."

     Daleen stared at the wizard, but Timothy was tugging at her sleeve. She nodded and the two clerics pushed past Thomas and out of the room.

☆☆☆

     "Another attack on the way!" cried Prup Chull, who'd put his helmet on. "No, my mistake. Two more. Three!"

     The other members of the bridge crew put their helmets on and saw what the moon trog had seen. Three more of the fast moving objects speeding towards them, less than a couple of minutes away from impact. "The spell stopped the last one," pointed out Strong, who'd spotted the wreckage of the first attacker flying away from them in all directions. An impact of such violence that it would have torn the ship apart if it had struck the bare hull.

     "We can't take too many impacts like that, though," added Saturn. "The orbs are fragile, and if either the Orb of Propulsion or the Orb of Skydeath Protection breaks, we're dead."

     Strong nodded. "Orbmaster, take us away from here, fast as you can. Take us back to the portal."

     "We won't make it in time," said Saturn, who was on the floor again, preparing another spell. "And anyway, it’ll be two days before it opens again. I've got another idea. No time to explain..."

     "Just do it," said Strong. "Do whatever you have to."

     Saturn didn't hear him, he was too busy concentrating. He cast another spell on the orb, knowing even as he did it that the orb could only magnify one spell at a time. The second spell would cancel the Globe of Invulnerability, and if it failed to perform as he hoped it would, they were dead.

     The orb darkened, then brightened again, but Clordus and Prup Chull both gasped in surprise at the subtle change that seemed to come over the room, and presumably the whole ship. The walls around then, and the floor under their feet, had assumed a strange, insubstantial quality, as if they had somehow become less solid, less real. The moon trog was particularly upset by this, as he knew what vacuum could do to living people, and those walls were all that were protecting them from it.