Merton sobbed. Great. Whacking. Heart sucking, lung destroying sobs. He curled inwards on himself, his arms wrapped around his shins. He sobbed - and then choked out a loud, blubbery: "What the absolute livery fuck?"
The space surrounding the transparent cocoon of life sustaining dragon-shifted cells that sheathed his naked, goo-slick body was filled with wreckage and with corpses. Humans, goblins, kobolds, even a few dragons and orcs. All of them tumbled together as they spilled out of wrecked and still burning starships and sea-going ships that had been shoved to the stars with nothing more than a prayer and a spelljammer helm. But the thing that he heard, the thing that made him jerk his head up and look around was...
Was...
"Arf arf!"
The sound was unmistakable. Anyone who had been alive for the past few decades had heard it at least
once
. It was used in joke videos and on
Rick and Morty
and a few movies trailers and who knows how many TV shows. It was the first sounds that came on the track for
X Gonna Give it To Ya
by DMX, famed star of acclaimed horror film
Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpant
who also had a side career of rapping sometimes.
Then the sound cut off. In its place came the normally welcome sound of Julia's voice. "M-Merton?" she sounded as if she was literally talking through a softball sized chunk of pain jammed down her throat. "Merton? Come in?"
Merton slapped his palms against the skin of his cocoon. "Julia?"
"Oh god, I got him!" Julia's voice sounded like it had snapped. "Relix, he's alive! Merton, we detected what...what Brash did..." She gasped. It was a shuddering sound, like her whole body was shaking. "Merton, are you okay?"
"I..." Merton paused. "I need a ship. I need it right now."
"What?" Relix asked. There was a faint squeak and a clatter and Merton was treated to the slightly amusing mental image of his wife shoving his girlfriend out of the way to get at the magical microphone they were using to talk to him. "You need to get back here right now! Wait just five minutes, our engines are all screwy."
"Why?" Merton asked.
"W-When Brash died, he reflected the planar energy from the hellcannon back into the Warsphere. Now, it's been partially sucked into the Abyss, and everyone's portal tech is offline." She sighed.
"Admiral Xu is dead, and the surviving human commanders are working to recover people from the most hurt ships, but there are still a few Dominion ships out there shooting at anything that moves. Anda few who are surrendering until our ships get nearby then opening fire with what guns that still work..." Julia said. "It's a freaking
mess
."
Merton rubbed his face against his palms. He tried to comprehend the amount of lives lost...and found he couldn't. All he could think of was that one thing he had heard. Arf arf. Arf arf? Why the flying fuck had he heard, if only for a few seconds, the sounds of DMX's rapping? As he worried at at that thought, Relix swore. "Scrying has an Asp fighter coming towards your position. Screw it, Speccy, get the emergency teleporter online!"
Merton's brow furrowed. He looked out through space and could see the slender, triangular dart of the Asp fighter. It was moving forward slowly. Carefully. Like the pilot had no idea what it was what he was looking at and wanted to be sure. But past the Asp, he could see the Warsphere. Huge, even at this distance, he could see that it was actually slowly
collapsing
. Huge chunks of it were crushing downwards, as if the middle were being hollowed out by a vacuum cleaner. He could imagine the portals to the Abyss within that thing, ripping and tearing adamantine plate and corridor material apart. They had...maybe...two hours before the entire 'sphere was gone.
Good thing too. He hated to imagine what all the
standard
debris was going to do to Earth if any of it drifted too close.
Drifted...
Drifted...
He had drifted after seeing Brash go on his suicide run.
And what had he heard?
"Okay, hold perfectly still..." Relix was saying.
"Don't!" Merton shouted.
"What?" Relix and Julia yelped at the same time.
"Denouement!" Merton exclaimed as the Asp fighter got closer. Closer. Closer. The narrow nose of its fuselage looked as if it was about to poke the skin of the bubble. Merton didn't care. He had a sudden
fire
of hope burning in his chest. It hurt nearly as bad as the pain, but it gave him nothing but energy. He grabbed onto the skin of the bubble and dragged himself to the very edge, so he could look out at the kobold pilot. The black scaled kobold was looking at him through a thick faceplate on his muzzle-equipped helmet.
"Gesundheit?" Relix asked.
"We're not in a story, Merton!" Julia said. "The ending isn't over till your butt is on Earth!"
Merton glared at the kobold. He made this as clear as he could. He pointed at the Kobold. Then he pointed at the Warsphere. Then he looked at the kobold and slowly drew his finger across his throat. The kobold sat in the seat of his fighter. He sat there. Sat there more. Merton didn't break eye-contact. He tried to
exude
menace. As if he was some great and powerful wizard. A controller of dragons. An emperor among emperors. The kobold slowly looked back over his shoulder, then back at Merton.
Merton pointed towards the warsphere more forcefully.
And sitting in the cockpit of his Asp fighter, the black scaled kobold considered his options...and then seemed to say:
Eh, fuck it
.
The nose of his ship darted underneath the cocoon and then he accelerated forward. Merton sat back in the cocoon as Relix shouted. "What the absolute hell are you doing, husband!?"
"I'm saving our son, Relix!" Merton said, laughing. "I was listening to his fucking playlist! Brash loves DMX!"
"What?!" Julia squeaked.
"Anything you heard might have been the last flutters of biomotonic energies!" Relix said, her voice choked. "Merton, Merton! Don't! You're not even a level 1 wizard, that's a Warsphere full of-" Her voice faded into static as the Warsphere came closer and closer and closer. It swelled before Merton and he clenched his shoulders. The retro thrusters on the Asp fired and the kobold made an abortive grabbing gesture with both hands as he was reminded of the simple physics of Sir Issac Newton.
The bubble of life supporting cells flew off the front of his fighter, like a hood ornament that had been unscrewed, or a basketball from the snout of Air Bud.
As the bubble continued forward, going roughly 50 KPS, Svenk Blackscale sat in his seat, blinked a few times, then said: "Not Svenk's fault!"
***
Merton had a few seconds before impact to bring up his arm. When the weakened adamantine armor hull buckled under the impact of his psi-shield, a shock radiated through his whole body and he skidded along deck for what felt like half a football field before coming to a stop. He groaned, then coughed, hacked, coughed again, and forced himself to his feet. He was standing in a long, narrow corridor full of wreckage and bodies. The bodies weren't dead...rather, they were all alive and twisted and wriggling. Like maggots. Their pulsating white skin made Merton want to heave. Knowing they had been goblins or orcs or something until a few minutes before made him feel even sicker.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that he had hit the armor plating of the Warsphere, smashed through, hit the corridor, then skidded to a stop. No air rushed out through the hole in the ceiling. But he kind of wished it
would
. The air that hung in the corridor smelled of the Abyss.
Merton had never imagined what hell would smell like.
Okay, that was a lie. He was a Dungeons and Dragons DM. At least a quarter of his life had been spent picturing what hell was like. But finding out he had been so catastrophically wrong was not exactly the happiest moment in his life.