Sky Swimmer

Probes, Part 9

The little log cabin is left far behind a bellowing dust cloud that marks the tractor trailer as it careens down a scenic, serpentine logging dirt road. Fuegar drives the timber lorry with the finesse of a formula one race car driver, not easy to do while pulling a trailer of freshly cut pine logs stacked thirty high and bound tight by heavy chains.

Inside the cramped space of the semi's cabin the atmosphere is electric and pulsing, but no one is speaking, until ... "Fuegar!" yells Livia. She is staring into her side mirror.

Fuegar steals a glance into his side mirror. The enormous logs on the trailer are twisting, rotating, bending as if they are tired of laying serenely on their backs, colossal wooden beings are forming.

"Divine mortification, we are lost," says Dan.

Fuegar, still in his serious Palace Guard tone of voice that seems highly appropriate says, "Eric, take my stead at the wheel, and do not slow, real Soilers are surely in pursuit, for these are mere probes."

Livia looks calm, but her voice betrays her agitation. "Fuegar, the probes can possess the truck itself."

"Not to fret, I have conjured defenses, but the wood, as you see, was not so protected. I must now handle this without lore."

Fuegar emerges from the semi cabin with axe in hand, Eric is at the wheel.

Fuegar leaps from the cab to the trailer just as a wooden Soiler probe stabs forward with it's spear-like branch-arm. Fuegar's shirt is ripped open, he twists and brings his axe down hard and removes the probes arm with a single clean cut. Other creatures jump into the fight. There are so many that there is hardly room atop the trailer bed for them to stand. Fuegar hacks away with an inhuman speed, his arm a blur as it swings repeatedly through limbs and into torsos, the mangled Probes drop off the trailer, but there are always more to replace them.

Eric navigates a sharp curve, the eighteen wheeler tips dangerously over, and barely makes it around the bank. Eric clearly does not have the driving skills needed to hurry the semi down a steep, narrow mountain dirt road. The cliff to his left is just as much an imminent danger as the probes.

Livia starts to climb out onto the trailer, with one hand holding on to a cabin rail she uses her free hand to cast lore at the Soiler probes. The truck hits a giant rut in the road and Livia's spell is misguided, a trio of whirlwinds hit the side of the mountain above them and the initiated landslide booms loud and threatening as swaths of ground and boulders crack and drop from their precarious foothold and come tumbling down the embankment.

The landslide steamrolls straight toward the semi. Eric punches the gas, even though they are headed for another sharp turn in the road. But what can he do? He has to try to outrun the landslide.

"Fuegar!" it is more a desperate shout of hopelessness than a warning, Livia's Dream Arts are in full bloom and she senses that the 18 wheeler will go over the edge of the cliff ... .

Fuegar does not take his eyes off the attacking probes as he continues to hack away, but yells, "Save the princess!"

Livia obeys and goes back to the cabin, grabs Floe's arm. "Come on! We have to get off!"

Floe is shaken, she is already battling with her inner panic, but she is aware enough to understand what Livia is saying, they need to get out before the turn in the road, or before the landslide buries them, which means leaving Dan and Eric behind.

"No!" she shouts above the din. "No! We stay together!"

And then it is too late, Eric yanks the Semi into the turn but their speed carries them straight toward the fall-off point ... the point of no return.