Chapter 40: Science

“You see,” Isai said as he put his bowl down on a cluttered workbench, wiping his hands ‘clean’ on the legs of his tan britches. “The major problem with the Shepherd right now is that one of its two floaters was shredded beyond our ability to repair. The other one, thankfully, came out with only some minor tears, which we were able to fix.”

Next to Rylan, Tamina was still testing her arm, having moved on to flexing and unflexing individual digits. With some effort, he managed to drag his eyes away and pay attention to the professor as the man walked up to the covered device, gesticulating wildly as he continued to speak.

“So, the challenge is to generate as much lift with a single floater—or close to it, at least—as we previously did with two. That’s where this device comes in.”

With some dramatic flair, Isai yanked off the tarp, revealing a mesh of gleaming yellow metal. It took Rylan a moment to parse that the complicated structure sprang forth from a cylindrical steel base below—a base that was covered in engravings filled in with the same coppery, mana-conducting alloy that made up the wires used in Tamina’s prosthetic.

“Is that whole mesh made of skymetal?” Rylan asked in surprise.

“Sure is,” Isai replied as he fished a glowing Cube out of a pocket on the front of his brown waistcoat, and inserted it into a runed cubical recess in the steel platform below. “Watch this.”

He flicked a switch, and stepped back as the coppery runes covering the metal base lit up with an orange-tinted glow. After a moment, the whole thing started to hum, and then, the skymetal on top began to move. Rylan watched, fascinated, as the mesh started to shift and unfold, rapidly expanding upward into an ovoid shape that took up most of the available space between the floor and the ceiling of the room.

“Mind you, this is just a model,” the professor said, raising his voice over the humming and creaking of metal. “A proof of concept, if you will. The real thing will be about six times higher, big enough to fill up and expand our single still-intact floater, before we seal it from the bottom.”

“But what is it for?” Rylan called back. “What does it do?”

Isai grinned. “Step closer, and you’ll find out. Go on, don’t be shy!”

Rylan hesitantly glanced at Tamina, but she met his gaze impassively, her face seeming to say that he’d cooked his rice, and now he’d better eat it.

Swallowing, Rylan took a step closer, then another. The first thing he noticed were the flaxy strands of hair hanging over his eyes starting to lift. His next step felt a lot lighter, and on the one after that, his toes were scraping the floor. “Woah!” he exclaimed, laughing at the swoop in his stomach as he gently pushed off and grabbed onto the side of the mesh, now fully floating. The skymetal hummed pleasantly beneath his fingers, slightly warm to the touch.

“Pure Aetherium, as most folks know, is weightless,” Isai explained as Rylan grabbed onto the mesh with more confidence, and began to turn himself upside down. “This is not its natural state, however; it’s an effect that only occurs in the presence of mana. When isolated in a mana-free environment, Aetherium weighs about a third as much as iron does—admittedly still quite light for a metal, but not exactly weightless. When saturated with mana, on the other hand, Aetherium extends its weightlessness to its immediate surroundings. An effect that can be enhanced and guided with the help of a well-crafted runework.”

Hanging upside down from his toes, Rylan waved at Tamina, who returned his wide grin with a lopsided smile of her own, shaking her head.

“All right, I’m going to shut it off again, now,” Isai warned.

Rylan hurriedly turned himself back around and pushed off. As he gained some distance from the grid, gravity rapidly returned, and he swiftly floated back down to the floor.

Meanwhile, the professor flicked the switch and pocketed the Cube, causing the machine to power down and the mesh to start folding back in on itself.

“So,” Rylan said, having finally taken a moment to process what the professor had said. “By creating this rig inside the floater... you can turn all the air inside of it weightless!”

“Not only that,” Isai said. “But also any heavy cargo we wish to move. Like the propulsion device I built from scratch.”

“What did you use to propel the ship before?” Rylan asked, before his eyes widened. “You... you didn’t have anything pulling it, did you?”

“Hah!” Isai barked. “No, thankfully not. That would’ve made out landing even messier. No, we had an Aetherium drive—that’s a more advanced use of Aetherium, requires a complicated runework and an active controller—but it got busted up in the crash. Could have tried to fix it, but I needed the Aetherium to build this. So instead, I made a putt-putt engine.”

The professor pointed at something behind Tamina, and when Rylan spun to take a look, he was surprised to see nothing but a steel tank with two pipes pointed in the same direction.

“It’s a pretty simple engine,” Isai continued as he walked over to his bowl and resumed eating. “Technically doesn’t even require any mana. You just fill the tank partially with water and apply heat—I’ll be confiscating your stove at some point to do some testing. The resulting steam comes out in puffs that push the ship forward.”

“Great. So when are we getting out of here?” Tamina asked.

The professor sucked in a breath, leaning back against the workbench he’d fixed Tamina’s arm on, not seeming to notice or care about the oil dripping off its edge. “Well, there’s three problems. Even if I build the full-sized version of my flotation device... we’d still need fog to help get the ship off the ground. We can’t lower the weight that far. Which means we’d either need to move the entire ship out of the bubble, or find the device that’s repelling the fog and shut it down. Either way, we expose ourselves to problem number two.”

Rylan’s stomach clenched. “Dreadmaw.”

Isai nodded soberly. “Exactly. The full-sized version of this machine would eat up a lot of mana. We have the resources for it, but firing it up will most definitely attract the fogging beast, so we’ll probably have to fend it off or distract it somehow.”

“What’s the third problem?” Tamina asked with a frown.

The professor clicked his tongue in an annoyed fashion. “I don’t have enough Aetherium. I can only tool it into wire so thin before it loses its structural integrity. I have about eight ingots worth of the stuff, but I need more like twenty. You three wouldn’t happen to have brought a dozen ingots of Aetherium with you, right?”

Upon seeing his hopeful look, Rylan could only smile wryly and shake his head.

Isai sighed. “It was worth a shot. Well, then we’ll just have to scrounge something up from the ruins. There’s bound to be some Aetherium squirrelled away somewhere. The Hermeans definitely knew how to use it, and no one leaves the stuff out in the open; it tends to float off.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Rylan promised.

“Good, good... Now, if you don’t mind leaving, I seem to have finished my bowl, and I’d like to get back out there and see if there’s any eel left, or if those pigs inhaled all of it in our absence.”

They didn’t do any training that evening, exhausted as they were from the impressions of the day.

Yuel had come through with a large piece of tarpaulin from the Shepherd’s busted floater, and enough solid pieces of bamboo and rope to set it up as a makeshift tent. More importantly, he’d dug up some spare bedrolls, meaning for the first time since they landed down in the cloudsea, Rylan had a bed of his own.

It'd be a bit chillier without someone to share it with, of course, but the fact that it was dry more than made up for that fact. Besides, his companions were still close by. In fact, that night, he went to sleep right in between them. He’d been worried he might lay awake for a while after all the excitement, but in the end, he was out like a candle.

Over the days that followed, they quickly fell into a new routine.

In the morning, Rylan went into the kitchen with Nazyr to make a simple breakfast, like sweetened congee or rice cakes. After that, he generally went out looking for food around the camp to use for the day’s meals, things like edible plants and mushrooms, and eventually, eggs. Because apparently, a flock of gulls had picked one of the higher mounds of rubble as their nesting ground.

The addition of omelettes and scrambled eggs to the breakfast and lunch menus were highly appreciated—as were all the change and variety he was adding.

Apparently, Nazyr had just been serving plain cooked rice for breakfast before.

Most afternoons, he, Yuel, and Tamina took a longer trip to go hunting. Whenever they went out into the fog, Rylan took special care to take note in what direction the tingles were pointing, but they always seemed to lead straight back at the centre of the city.

He relayed his findings to Tamina, but when she reluctantly suggested to Yuel that they look there for prey, the former pirate informed them that the centre of the city contained too much rubble from collapsed buildings to make for an inviting hunting ground.

Put simply, it was too hard for most prey to traverse, and too difficult for them to give chase to any that could. The closest they managed to get to it was hunting for suitable prey around the outskirts of the centre when it had been spotted, but even from there, Rylan couldn’t sense anything unusual.

While they occasionally found tracks from the ramtusks, the animals themselves proved elusive, which Rylan felt was rather a shame. They did come across a lone coralbou once, but the majestic creature got spooked before they could get close enough and ran off. Rylan was secretly a bit glad to see its glittering, deep-red antlers disappear in the distance. Killing it would have felt almost sacrilegious. Also, he hadn’t looked forward to trying to carry it back, let alone skinning it!

Rylan did eventually have to get his cleaver wet, when they managed to find and take down a mature foghorn, though not before the odd goat managed to blow into one of its curved, hollow horns with holes in the side, and warned the rest of its flock with a haunting, reverberating note.

Thankfully, back on Thistlebloom, Ava had tasked Rylan with helping her skin and prepare a cloudsheep a few times, so he knew what to do—more or less. He ultimately decided to add the gamey, pungent meat to a stew, and it turned out quite well.

Somehow, despite all of the time he spent in the kitchen, Rylan found he was enjoying himself rather a lot. It helped that he got to boss Nazyr around, and it helped even more when Tamina developed a habit of dropping in on the kitchen during dinner prep to land a hand.

However, the help wasn’t the main thing. It was the gratitude he saw on everyone’s faces every day, the compliments he kept receiving. The appreciation.

In the evening, they trained. Rylan was mainly working on his mana-exercises, on overcharging Jump, and on trying to control the rotation of his knives in mid-air.

Aside from that last one, it was going quite well.

He was also still sparring with Tamina, working towards Dagger-Fighting while she tried to get Sword-Fighting. If Rylan had to guess, he’d say she was getting pretty darn close, just needed the right opportunity to show Ethereon what she could do. He himself, was not that close yet, but getting closer every day.

Training was also the only time they got to see Soren—who was also still working on the Overcharge Augmentation for his new Skill—as the young noble was helping Captain Hammermore explore the city during the day, looking for Aetherium.

Some nights, the captain came and watched them spar and practise, and even gave some tips. Though she would boast and make fun of them just as often, albeit in a teasing manner.

Days passed like that, and while the stores of rice and dried mushrooms were slowly decreasing, Rylan wasn’t too worried yet. They were supplementing their rations with a lot of game and wild plants these days, and the little bamboo garden Halloth had started to provide Nazyr material to repair the ship with was growing well, so they were even adding fresh shoots to every other meal now.

The repairs on the ship were coming along nicely too, though it was apparently going to be a lot smaller and more cramped than it used to be. It wasn’t just that much of the ship was irreparable, it was also that they needed to spare as much weight as they could.

Because unfortunately, the search for Aetherium hadn’t turned up much yet.

Rylan’s secret search for the mysterious being that called to him every time he entered the fog hadn’t progressed much either. The city centre was simply too big, and their opportunities to go there too slim.

At some point, he even suggested sneaking out during the night to go looking in the city centre. Tamina was understandably disapproving of the idea, as she still wasn’t fully on board with his quest to find his ‘spirit friend,’ and found unexpected support from Soren. The young noble had been adamant that they couldn’t risk being caught, lest they be forced to tell the truth about how they’d ended up in the city.

And since the crew of the Black Sheep had rotating shifts of night guards each night, even Rylan had to begrudgingly admit that the risk was significant.

However, one day, when he was out hunting in the fog with Yuel and Tamina, something changed.

They hadn’t been having much luck, and thus ended up venturing out a bit further than usual. Right as they were considering giving up and settling for a meal enriched only with some shellfish they’d found along the way, Tamina tapped on Rylan’s shoulder, and silently indicated a sizable octopus.

From Yuel’s excited intake of breath, he’d noticed it as well, so Rylan wasted no time in raising his boning knife and activating his Skill. Before he could throw it, however, the animal inexplicably startled and pushed off from the wall it was hovering nearby, shooting off to the side and away.

Rylan froze and immediately started carefully scanning his surroundings, seeing his companions do the same from the corners of his eyes. They were always on the lookout for predators out here—especially Dreadmaw. Only after several seconds passed, did Rylan dare to lower his knife, deactivating his Skill and drawing as much of the mana as he could back out of the charged-up blade.

Then he blinked. Another tingle went up his spine, but it was... unusual. Not only was it stronger than he was used to, he felt like there was almost a sense of excitement, of hope, being sent along.

More importantly, the direction it pointed him in was almost completely opposite to the one before. Rather than urging him back to the bubble of air, it was directing him towards a nearby rectangular opening in an overgrown wall, right below where the octopus had just hovered...

Author's note:

Bit of a long stretch of telling in this chapter, hope it wasn't too egregious. ;)