"Everyone, report to your stations at once!" boomed the voice of Thurt Grayle. Frantically, the Twilight Marines on every gantry, bridge, and tower readied their weapons.
"Bron, we've got to arm our catapults!" shouted Durix, scrambling towards the weapon mechanisms.
"I'll do the loading!" said Mord, seizing two ironwood balls and shoving them into the slings.
Bron hastily dashed over to the machinery, his heart pounding. The Vilnix Pompolnius was coming! It was time for his first battle.
After the equipment was loaded, the three of them stood, tensely waiting for the arrival of the dreaded glistership. The Vilnix Pompolnius was still far, far away. It would take a long time for it to even grow large enough to be seen with the naked eye.
The minutes became hours. Bron felt cold, tired, and scared. Having to wait for the battle to begin was horrible.
Eventually, a large group of sky ships arrived, entering from the distant sky-gates and coming to a halt in midair, hovering in front of the fortress, pointed towards the Phraxfields. Bron saw, with a leap of excitement, that among the nearby sky ships was none other than the Squallskipper, the vessel belonging to the great Raziel Tollinix herself. Would he possibly get to fight alongside this legendary pirate?
After a few hours, the Vilnix Pompolnius finally became visible, a growing speck emerging from the swirling mist. The evil vessel approached at a barksnail's pace, roaring with the energy of its propulsion ducts. It seemed as though every single soul in Twilight's Edge was holding their breath. Then, Thurt Grayle's voice boomed out again. "Fire at will!"
A solid wall of projectiles flew outwards, several of them striking the Vilnix Pompolnius but causing no visible damage. The Phraxguardians immediately returned fire, launching a volley of phraxfire globes which exploded upon contact, creating roaring blazes wherever they struck. Soldiers fell, screaming, from gantries, and the survivors scrambled to put out the flames.
The Pirate Academics suddenly launched an attack of their own. Blazing harpoons soared at the Vilnix Pompolnius, a few of them crashing into the deck. Suddenly, several small glistercraft launched off from the larger vessel, piloted by the most brutal-looking hammerhead goblins Bron had ever seen. Some of them were shot down, but several attached themselves to the sky ships, the hammerheads swarming the decks and cutting down the pirates…
Suddenly, with a jolt, Bron realized that the Squallskipper was heading for the platform on which he was standing. A group of Pirates Academic were clustered at the port side, launching balls of flaming sumpwood tar at the vast glistership. Stationed at the helm, frantically pulling levers and setting dials, was none other than Raziel Tollinix.
"That's it, boys! Show them no mercy!" Bron heard her cry. "Give us lift, stone pilot!"
At the flight-rock platform, the figure in the conical hood and protective suit obliged by plunging the cooling rods into the buoyant stone, which hissed and gave off steam. The Squallskipper leapt upwards, and Raziel Tollinix was lost to view.
The battle taking place above Bron's head was one of hundreds, he realized. The Vilnix Pompolnius was so vast, so heavily armed, so thoroughly outfitted with attendant craft that even the mighty defenses of Twilight's Edge, combined with the efforts of the Pirates Academic, were barely holding back the colossal glistership. Everywhere Bron looked, he saw explosions, clashing swords, and booming phraxweapons.
All of a sudden, a great ironwood ball came hurtling right for the deck of the Squallskipper. The moment it made contact, the sky ship juddered, listed to starboard, and began to sink.
At the same moment, another blaring alarm began to sound. Bron froze with horror. He knew this alarm from his training. It meant that the enemy was preparing to use their most dreaded weapon of all.
Bron's eyes traveled to the mighty Upper Central Deck of the Vilnix Pompolnius, which was dominated by a giant, menacing mechanism. This machine was covered in pipes and gears, and topped off with a vast, pivoting cone, which, as Bron watched, began to rev and glow with internal energy.
"Earth…and…Sky…" gasped Durix, turning to look at the Vilnix Pompolnius just as Bron had done. "They're…they're going to fire the glisterbeam!"
Powered by the energy of the same glisters which gave the vessel its lift and thrust, the glisterbeam was a formidable weapon indeed. When fully charged, it would release a powerful blast of pure energy capable of boring through anything.
Suddenly, all weapons were trained on the horrific device. Hundreds of harpoons and phraxshells flew at the machine…but it was too late. With the most earsplitting roar that Bron had ever heard in his life, the glisterbeam fired.
Bron had never seen anything like the blast from the glisterbeam. Pouring from the machine was a white-hot energy beam at least twenty strides across. For where it made contact, not too far below the place where Bron stood, platforms and gantries crumbled and vaporized, along with their occupants. Violent tremors shot up the side of the vast fortress, and Bron felt the platform he, Durix, and Mord were standing on begin to shudder and buckle. Meanwhile, the glisterbeam was beginning to move up the side of the fortress wall towards their platform.
"We've gotta get off this thing!" screamed Bron. All thought of firing their weapons completely forgotten, Bron and his two friends tore across the trembling platform towards the door. Before they had gotten halfway, however, the inner struts of the platform snapped under the strain, and the structure began to swing away from the wall.
Bron and Durix gave ungainly wobbles, but managed to right themselves. Mord, however, toppled over backwards and fell from the platform. Bellowing in terror, the young cloddertrog tumbled head over heels through the shimmering, searing air, right into the glisterbeam. For a fraction of a second, Mord was visible as a luminous white shape in the furious energy ray, before simply vanishing into thin air.
Bron and Durix had barely a second to stare in horror at the point where their friend had disappeared before the collapsing platform gave another lurch, and they leapt backwards. Soon, the platform would be hanging at too steep of an angle to stand on, and they too would fall into the terrible glisterbeam.
Suddenly, Bron noticed that the Squallskipper was falling in earnest. As the deck drew level with the wobbling platform, Bron saw why. The ironwood ball that had crashed into the flight-rock platform moments before had crushed the stone pilot, who was lying in a seeping pool of blood.
Without thinking, Bron seized Durix's arm and leapt from the platform, just as it gave way entirely in a creaking mess of splintered timbers. The two of them sailed through the air and came to rest on the deck of the Squallskipper. Bron heard Raziel Tollinix, evidently unaware of her stone pilot's fate and the two fourthlings who had boarded her ship, shout "Stone pilot! What's happening? Give us lift NOW!"
Bron seized one of the cooling rods rolling across the listing deck of the ship, staggered to the flight-rock platform, and plunged it as far as it would go into the sinking flight-rock. Just as before, it hissed loudly and strained at its cage, causing the Squallskipper to jump higher.
"Captain Tollinix!" Bron screamed. "MIND THOSE GANTRIES!"
Raziel Tollinix turned to the flight-rock platform, startled to see the strange youth tending her flight-rock, waving his arms frantically and pointing upwards.
CRASH!
With a deafening sound of splintering wood, the Squallskipper collided with a mass of gantries protruding from Twilight's Edge. One of its occupants fell with a shriek, tumbling onto the deck of the Squallskipper and lying there, out cold. A few seconds later, a phraxfire globe hit the damaged gantries, causing the whole structure to explode in white-hot flames.
Bron collapsed onto the deck, suddenly dizzy. He had used all of his energy in the battle, and had no more to spare. Everything went black.