Gareth and th Lost Island (22 page)

Aboard the Glorious Dawn, one of the four pirate
sentries turned to look up at the mountainside when he heard a
loud, simian grunt.  His eyes widened in shock when he saw a
Dwarf flying through the night air, straight at him.  Said
Dwarf tucked into a ball before he hit, knocking the pirate to the
ground, and forcing all of the air out of his lungs.  A
powerful punch ensured the pirate wouldn’t be getting up anytime
soon.  

The other three guards were too focused on the
sudden arrival of the Dwarf to notice two more figures leap from
the rock ledge above them and land on the deck.  The noise
made from their rough landing, however, announced their arrival for
those both above and below decks.  The pirate in front of
Elizabeth started to draw his sword, but stopped when something
soft and smelly hit him in the face.  “Shit!” he swore.

“Yes… yes, it is,” Elizabeth confirmed.  She
was going to punch the pirate in the face, but chose to drive her
knee into his groin instead to avoid getting Chim poo on her hand.
While the pirate was bent over in agony, Elizabeth put him out of
his misery by striking him across the back of his head with her
mechanical arm.

Thinking that this pirate might have hurt Izzy,
Gareth glared at the man in front of him.  With his anger at a
barely controllable level, Gareth managed to draw his strange black
rod out of his holster with ease this time.  Both combatants
were startled when the rod lengthened from both ends to become a
six foot long staff.  Gareth recovered first and swung the
staff at the pirate’s legs.  He caught the pirate in the back
of the knees and followed through with his stroke, causing the
pirate to land on his back with a heavy thud.  A sharp tap to
the side of the pirate’s head knocked him unconscious.

Henry joined the fight, and landed right in front of
the last two of the deck guards.  Seeing he was outnumbered,
Henry reverted back to his Chim ancestors, and tried to make
himself look fiercer than he really was.  He held both arms
out to his sides, parallel to the deck, while raising his right leg
as if to kick someone.  

Gareth saw his friend was outnumbered, and shouted
across the ship at Henry’s opponents.  “I’d run if I were you.
 He’s a master of Chim-Pan-Foo!” he warned the pirates.
 The warning caused the pirates to look first at Gareth, and
then at each other.  Henry used the opportunity to grab each
pirate at the base of their skulls and slam their heads together.
 After a sickening crack, the pirates crumpled to the
deck.

“Why wasn’t I informed my butler was a master of
Chim-Pan-Foo? Come to think of it, what the hells
is
Chim-Pan-Foo anyway?” Tralnis demanded.

Gareth shrugged his shoulders.  “Beats me, I
just made it up,” he replied.  

The door leading to the lower decks was opened by a
pirate who had come up to see what was causing so much noise.
 He took one look at the four victors, and slammed the door
shut again. The pirate made it halfway down the hallway to the
Captain’s suite before he was knocked unconscious by a flying
frying pan.  “Gareth… Tralnis, take care of the engine room
and the cargo hold.  Henry and I will clear out the crew
quarters,” Elizabeth ordered.  She knew the top deck was clear
and Pilot was in no danger.  He would have to wait a few more
minutes before he was rescued.  Gareth and Tralnis didn’t
bother to respond before they ran down the steps towards the lower
decks.

The pirate in the engine room was busy staring at a
painting of a nude woman he had tacked up on the wall next to the
controls for the Aetherium pumps.  He never saw the black
staff that sliced through the air to strike the side of his head.
 Not caring if the pirate was alive or dead, Gareth took one
look around the engine room and saw Izzy wasn’t there.  He
pivoted on the ball of his foot, and stalked off to find Tralnis,
his anger for the pirates and fear for Izzy's safety growing in
equal measures.

Tralnis wasn’t having such an easy time as Gareth.
 The pirate in the cargo hold was fully on the alert after
hearing the battle above him.  They wrestled on the cargo hold
floor, neither being able to dominate the other.  As they
rolled around, they managed to strike the bunk bolted to the wall
where Sheldon hibernated during the long trips.  The
Kwa-Kwa-Ur's open mouthed snores sounded like a poorly maintained
steam engine.  Not realizing where he was in the room, the
pirate reached up and accidently stuck his hand in Sheldon’s
enormous mouth.

The intrusion of the hand woke up Sheldon and his
eye stalks. Reacting on instinct, Sheldon clamped down with his
massive jaws, severing the pirate’s hand completely at the wrist.
“Eeeew!  Spit it out!  Spit IT OUT!  You don’t know
where that hand’s been!” the left eyestalk ordered.  Sheldon
spit the severed hand out, hitting the shocked pirate holding his
bleeding stump in the face with his own hand.

“Sheldon, the ship’s been taken over by pirates!”
Gareth yelled as he ran into the cargo hold.  

Sheldon stood up, and gave out a growl that sounded
like a glacier crushing boulders into pebbles.  Without giving
anyone warning, he reached over and grabbed the pirate’s head with
both of his hands.  A quick twist, followed by a loud snap,
ended that pirate’s suffering.

Gareth swallowed bile back into his throat after
seeing the easy way Sheldon killed the pirate.  “Let’s go find
the others. Izzy wasn’t in the engine room,” he suggested.

Elizabeth smiled as she watched Henry use cooking
twine to tie up the two pirates who had decided to raid their
stores for a midnight snack.  When he was done tying them up,
he shoved a pignut in each of their mouths to keep them quiet.
 Elizabeth nodded her approval to the Chim, and resolved again
to find out what it would take to hire Henry permanently.
 Satisfied their work was done, she turned and made her way to
her cabin.

Words couldn’t express the outrage Elizabeth felt
when she threw the door to her cabin open.  A skinny pirate,
with a scruffy beard, was currently wearing her black, silk, steel
boned corset and brushing his oily hair with
her
hairbrush.
 The Captain paused for a moment while she tried to decide
what to do.  She couldn’t run the bastard through with her
sword without ruining her favorite corset.  Shooting him ran
the same risk.  Even if she managed to shoot him in the head,
he was likely to bleed all over her stuff, and blood was a right
pain in the ass to get out of fabric.  For his part, the
pirate was frozen in fear.  Prior to now, he had no idea the
woman whose clothes he was enjoying was a mechanical armed monster
with one half of her face hideously scarred.

A well thrown potato that came from behind her
solved Elizabeth’s conundrum. The potato hit the pirate between the
eyes and knocked him backwards. As the cross-dressing pirate fell
backwards, he struck his head against the edge of the Captain’s
dressing table, knocking him out. Without turning to look,
Elizabeth said, “Thank you, Henry. Let’s make sure he stays
unconscious, and then get him out of my clothes.”

Gareth ran to the Captain’s suite after looking in
each of the crew cabins for Izzy or Teesh. When he reached the door
to the Captain’s cabin, he found a bemused Dwarf leaning against
the doorframe. Tralnis looked up at Gareth, and shook his head.
“You would think being an omni-sexual Dwarf, I would have seen just
about every kinky thing under the twin moons, but a woman with a
mechanical arm and a Chim stripping a pirate out of said woman’s
lingerie is a new one for me,” he chuckled.

Gareth took one step into the room, and met
Elizabeth’s eyes as she turned to look at him. “Have you found
Izzy?” they asked in unison. Gareth shook his head sadly. “No sign
of Teesh either,” he informed the others. Their conversation was
cut short by the loud blare of a steam whistle.

Gareth bolted out of the Captain’s cabin, and ran to
the main deck. The others followed close behind them with Tralnis
breaking off to free Pilot. They saw the pirates' dirigible had
dropped in altitude, and maneuvered to give her port side gun a
clear shot at the Glorious Dawn. From where they stood, they could
see the assembled crew of the pirate ship all standing on deck. A
Scaled One was standing at the bow, gripping the arm of a captive
with a bag over their head just like the one Pilot had on his. With
a flourish, the lizard-man pulled off the sack to show everyone
Izzy’s bright, red hair.

The Scaled One held a stiff leather megaphone up to
his mouth while shaking Izzy’s bound arms with his free hand.
“Throw your weapons overboard, and prepare to be boarded, or I toss
your beautiful engineer over the side,” he shouted. For good
measure he pushed Izzy away from him, and then yanked back hard on
her arms right before she fell over the side.

Tralnis listened to the Scaled One’s demands as he
untied the ropes binding Pilot. When he was done, he looked over at
Gareth to see how his son was holding up. He wasn’t prepared to see
tendrils of purple magic crawling from the staff, to Gareth’s hand,
and then back again. Tralnis definitely wasn’t prepared for Gareth
to leap over the side of the Glorious Dawn.

The muscles in Gareth’s cheeks stood out as he
clenched his jaw to keep from screaming at the Scaled One.  He
wanted to scream in fear for Izzy’s life, and in anger that anyone
would dare threaten someone he cared deeply for.  The knuckles
on his right hand turned white from how hard he was grasping his
strange weapon.  As the seconds ticked by, Gareth’s anger
became more pure, and less diluted with mortal concepts, such as
pity or mercy.  Eventually, the turbulence of his thoughts
became disturbingly calm as Gareth came to a decision. The Scaled
One’s life had become forfeit the instant he had threatened to harm
Izzy.  Once the decision had been made in his heart, Gareth’s
vision quickly blurred, and then went black.  Not the black
that comes from closing one’s eyes, but the absolute absence of
light that characterized his strange new weapon.

From a distance that was somehow infinitely far, yet
at the same time right next to him, points of light started to form
around Gareth.  The lights began to gain substance, shifting
and stretching into elongated shapes.  Soon, the shapes took
on the form of at least two dozen “humans” with pointed ears. The
light directly in front of Gareth took on a form that was vaguely
familiar to him.  

As the figure became solid, Gareth recognized the
form fitting armor of the underwater statue that he took the rod
from.  The warrior’s armor was a dark gray, much darker than
was implied by its stone statue.  He cocked his head in
confusion as he looked Gareth over from head to toe.  “Odd,”
was all he said to Gareth.

“Of course he looks odd, styles change over the
years.  Trust me, I know,” a cheerful voice said from behind
and to the right of Gareth.  A gray haired man, wearing only a
leather kilt and a loose linen shirt the same gray as the warrior’s
armor, stepped around Gareth to stand in front of him.
“Congratulations on mastering the T’shun meditation techniques,
young man” he praised Gareth.

“The what?!  Where am I?!” Gareth demanded.

The gray haired man frowned for a moment, and then
perked back up.  “Perhaps over the years, the name of the
techniques I developed have come to be known by something
different.  As for where you are, I would think that would be
fairly obvious considering you just spent two days fasting and
meditating to get here,” he said.

The warrior raised his hand for the man in the kilt
to stop. He had been watching the newcomer intently, and saw
genuine confusion on the newcomer's face.   “Hold, old
one.  I do not believe he knows of what you speak,” he said
slowly.

Gareth nodded in thanks to the warrior.
 “Exactly.  I haven’t a clue as to what you are going on
about.  And like I said, I don’t know where
here
is,”
he repeated.

The man in the kilt ran his hand through his long,
gray hair. “The rod, boy!  You must have meditated and fasted
in order to get your consciousness to enter the weapon,” the gray
haired man explained.

Holding both hands up, Gareth took a step back and
looked around at the absolute blackness surrounding him.
 “Wait a minute!  Are you trying to tell me we’re
inside
that black rod?” he asked to make sure he was hearing
things right.

“Of course we are.  What did you think the
purposes of the fasting and meditation were for?” the gray haired
man demanded.

The warrior shook his head no.  “Again, I say
hold.  From his answers, and obvious confusion, our new
brother did not partake in the usual ceremony to join with the Void
Rod,” he suggested.

“Then how else do you explain…” the gray haired man
started to ask before he was cut off by the warrior.

“What is the last thing you remember, brother,” the
warrior asked Gareth.

The scholar’s eyes widened in fear as he remembered
what the Scaled One had been threatening to do.  “Izzy!
 That bastard is threatening to kill her!  I have to go
back to help her!” he yelled.  Gareth turned around in a full
circle, trying to find a way out.  As he turned, he saw the
other apparitions were a combination of men and women.  All
but the two who had already spoken to him stayed silent, but looked
upon him with curious eyes.

“Righteous anger…” the gray haired man mused for a
moment.

The warrior nodded his head in agreement.
 “Fueled by his love for another,” the warrior added.

The gray haired man rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
 “Yes, I suppose that could work, but he would have to have
truly tremendous magical powers to do that.  I’m talking about
magical strength on the level of the Mintels,” he stated.

The warrior frowned for a moment as he mulled that
over.  He was shocked when the newcomer said softly, “My name
is Gareth Mintel.”  Many of the figures around them went down
to one knee, while the others, including the warrior and the man in
the kilt, bowed their heads in respect.