Skybound - Chapter 14: Inclement Weather

Terisa Aras sat on the small bunk she shared with Foz, the gleaming, rune-etched form of Althenea spread across a sheet of linen on the desk next to the bed. Space was in short supply on the skyship, but accomodations had to be made for the sheer size of some of their people. The Ursaran in particular were simply too large to stack up in small bunks like the humans or dwarves, and especially not like the few gnomes in the group. The berthing on the skyship was actually more spacious than the travel tent she normally shared with her husband. The tent didn’t have an actual workbench, or windows for that matter.

Early morning light shone through the spun glass window, a fortune’s worth of work anywhere else. Dana’s golems had produced several hundred sheets of identical dimensions in mere hours, simply by processing sand from the shore of the lake in the middle of the valley. The ship creaked and groaned around Terisa, settling as it sat upon the ground. The lift tests done by Dana the previous evening had proven the vessel could lift its own weight, but after a few minutes the Engineer had lowered it back to the ground to perform another check of the structure.

The Huntress slipped another round into one of Althenea’s magazines with a soft and almost reverent click. She had reached level seventy-five while hunting and practicing with her sister’s new form, though only her husband knew it. She had not even told Kojeg or Dana. She had not lost her skills with a bow, but many of her existing ones did not translate perfectly to using a gun. And therein lay the hidden blessing that she had been given.

Teresa was levelling again. For a decade her advancements had been slowed to a crawl, her skills mastered and retirement loomed on the horizon. I’ve been sitting still for years, she thought. The first of her Skills to evolve had been a passive one. [Marksman’s Eye] had evolved to [Sniper’s Gaze] the second day she had practiced with Althenea’s rifle form. [Double Tap] had replaced her staple skill, [Rapid Shot], when using the colt. The Huntress had not felt so eager, so alive, since her adventuring days. Althenea’s approval of the situation almost made up for the bitter taste of her failure in protecting the gem, although she didn’t dwell on that particular topic very often.

She felt thirty years younger, thoroughly enjoying the refreshing boost to her Vitality from the recent level gain. Long years of experience and finely honed instincts left her feeling sure of more levels on the horizon as well. She had many more skills themed around archery, and was working to figure out new ones as she adjusted to what Dana had called firearms. Each new Skill she adapted from her old ones started at the first level, but rather than be disappointed Teresa viewed that fact as a blessing. Levelling skills was as valuable as battling enemies when it came to gaining overall levels, and was a challenge to be relished on its own.

For archery based classes and skills, abilities with the bow had always been enhanced through two different methods. Teresa had never had much talent for magic, so she had focused on the arrows and, before Althenea’s tragic fate, the bow itself. Magical variants of Archers could imbue plain arrows with each shot, or even in rare cases fire arrows made of magic. The Huntress had always felt if one had that much ability, a pure magic class would be more useful anyway.

With Ranger and Hunter specializations, Teresa’s talents had always leaned towards preparation and practice of her more mundane skills, utilizing what little magical abilities she gained to further improve what she was already good at. Her combat skills were built around increasing her own attributes to make her faster, stronger, augment her senses and reflexes, and give her the endurance to relentlessly pursue her prey. Success, she had almost always found, was helped best by preparation. And what little magical ability she had, always had been focused on improving her arrows. The Colt form her sister could take had no need of such, firing condensed motes of pure Mana. The Barrett, on the other hand…

Teresa set the small stylus carefully onto the cloth pad, careful not to scratch anything with the crystalline needle at its tip. Different from the awl and other tools she would normally have used for fletching an arrow and inscribing a simple rune, Dana had crafted the tool explicitly for use in enhancing Althenea’s ammunition. While it took an actual specialization or specific skill to create new runes, anyone with a modicum of mana ability could learn to inscribe the more simple ones.

The rune for [Piercing Shot] was etched in spirals around the front of the bullet, converging at the tip. [Homing Shot] had proven ineffective, the rounds from the M95 simply travelled to fast to be swayed even slightly. The shell casing of the round fit into a groove to hold it steady, and five more sat in a row on the flat bar of machined steel. Dana had made the jig just for Teresa once the Huntress had explained the need. Two more rounds sported [Piercing Shot] runes, and the other three bore the [Shatter Shot] rune.

Rune rounds were enough of a hassle to make that Teresa did not rely on them. Useful, yes, but time consuming and not without a significant cost in resources. Althenea’s own abilities were more than enough to add simple elemental enhancements or increase the overall power of her shots. However, sometimes you needed the option of piercing defenses both magical and mundane, and sometimes you just needed to knock a wall down rather than blowing a hole through it. For such reasons had the Huntress always kept a few special arrows in her quiver, and with bullets she would do no differently.

The wind moaned mournfully against the outside of the ship as Teresa put away her tools, letting the simple enchantments settle. The magazines, five rounds in each slim rectangular box, slipped into pouches at her thighs. The augmented rounds of ammunition went into a small bag of holding sewn into her belt as she secured the rest of her gear into compartments cleverly build underneath the bunk she shared with Foz.  Althenea shifted smoothly back to her pistol form at a touch, slipping gently into the holster at her hip as the Huntress opened the door. She had been so engrossed with her work she hadn’t noticed the other sounds from within the skyship.

Foz had left their bunk well before sunrise, shambling to the galley in order to intimidate the cooks. Most of the expedition personnel had already moved into the ship, as the hold filled with hides, mana crystals, lumber, and other resources gathered before disaster had struck at Castra Pristis. The communal kitchen was busy every day, and her husband couldn’t be happier nor the other cooks more terrified. She snagged a honeyed pastry and a mug of kaffen, leaving him to his tyranny over the kitchens as she headed to the upper decks to make her way to the bridge. Glowing crystals illuminated the passageways, and the ship itself hummed and creaked with power that Teresa could sense through the soles of her boots.

It came as some surprise, then, that there was a new creaking.  Terisa's well-trained ears could hear something different on the air.  Her sure and steady feet could feel the difference in vibrations. Something was coming with the howling winter winds.  

Terisa picked up her pace then, not quite running as she made her way aboard the bridge of the ship.  Althenea practically thrummed against her hip, sensing, too that something was amiss.

As she stepped into the bridge, she glanced about, taking in the sights.  No stranger to sailing vessels, Terisa still marvelled at the subtle and not so subtle differences between a normal ship.  The ship's wheel was the same- but there were brass gauges and dials she was unfamiliar with, despite Dana having explained their operation.  She could see Dana fudging with the "alty-meter", she believed it was called, and she shrugged as the Worldwalker continued her work.  Looking out over the deck of the craft, she could see a small horde of loofahs cleaning and clearing debris, as the adventurers and caravaneers of The Expedition continued their work loading the flying ship.

But it was what was on the horizon that really grabbed her attention. The lift rings obscured the tops of the mountains from the view through the huge windows of the bridge, but wintry fog roiled and writhed like a living thing as far as she could see as it crawled down the mountains to make its way into the valley.

"Snowstorm.  Seems early yet." The Huntress never took her eyes off the shifting clouds.

“Aye,” said Kojeg, turning a brass dial which caused several crystals at the edge of the room to brighten, emitting a little extra warmth into the room. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone coming this far north on an expedition, we just don’t know what to expect…”

“I don’t like it,” said Teresa, peering into the fog even though her skills were nearly useless at such distances.

“We’ll be launching soon,” piped Dana, brightly. “Loading has gone faster than I expected, and Dana’s Sky Ship ‘Are We There Yet?’ will be ready to fly this afternoon!”

“The cannoneers dinnae like training on the side sails at first,” added Kojeg, checking more gauges and adjusting one of the control levers for the heat output of the lift rings. “But they are the most disciplined and best suited for the job.”

“I meant what I said, Kojeg,” answered Dana. “We built it to get out of the Wildlands, but I designed it for the Thuns. If your people are going to build them, your people need to learn to fly them.”

“Ha!” Teresa interjected. “With how much witchwood it took to build this one, I doubt all five Thuns working together could fund more than one every third year or so.”

“This is just the prototype! Witchwood was simply what we had the most of to use here.”

“There are alloys and metals only a Great Forge can produce, lass.” Kojeg suddenly sounded saddened. “But they don’t produce much of them, and that little gets used for enchanted artefacts of the highest quality. Witchwood will still be cheaper than cloudsteel, and far easier to get than the greater mithril alloys.”

Teresa had looked away from the distant slopes on the far side of the valley for merely a moment, as Kojeg spoke of the Great Forge. She looked back out the window, and stepped back in shock. The mists had come closer by miles in mere heartbeats, and instincts honed over a lifetime screamed silent warning in her mind.

“Odd,” said Kojeg, tapping a dial. “What did you call this one, lass?”

“That’s a barometer,” said Dana. “It works like the altimeters, but we won’t have them fully dialed in until we get in the air and get more data.”

“It just dropped over a hundred points by yer’ marks on the glass, and still falling…”

“What!?” 

Before Teresa could turn halfway around, the windows of the bridge frosted over, and the wind outside fell silent. The ice grew with an ominous crinkling sound, and even the heating crystals could no longer keep the sudden chill from the room. Althenea’s pulse of agitation was all the warning she had before the wind slammed into the ship hard enough to rip railings away and crack glass. The vessel groaned, shifting and shaking before the winds passed on leaving screams and creaking in their wake. The Huntress’s own instincts howled silently in her mind as the frozen fog crept closer.

“We have to get above the fog, or we die!” she snapped.

“There’s still over a hundred-” Dana blurted as Teresa cut her off with a raised hand and a sad scowl through gritted teeth.

“Already. Dead.” Teresa pointed through the glass where the figures working above deck were frozen solid, toppling down to shatter against the planks.

For a brief instant she thought the Worldwalker would protest again, as Dana’s eyes flared with sudden anger and the plates of the suit seemed to stutter and pause in their natural continuous adjustment. The Engineer took a quick breath, and to Teresa it seemed something died in the other woman’s eyes, leaving something colder than the winds outside behind the woman’s face. An entirely different Dana spoke then.

“Understood.”

The words were crisp, and carried themselves quickly with no room for embellishment or misunderstanding. “Kojeg, you have the con just like I showed you. I’ll boost the rings for a fast ascent-”

Ahead of the approaching clouds came fast flashes of white, and dozens of glowing silvery orbs slammed into the deck of the ship. Dana wasted no more time on speech, darting down the stairs on multiple legs as she headed from the bridge to the engine room. It took Teresa several heartbeats to realize Kojeg was talking into an orb that hung from the ceiling by a curled cord, his voice being projected through the ship as he ordered hatches closed and gear secured.

“[Ice Wights]!” she shouted at the dwarf. “Anyone with fire skills or frost resistance, send them topside, with me!”

Althenea’s pistol form glowed briefly red as she drew, fishing a resistance potion from her pouch with the other hand. Barely visible, the wights floated around the ship, dipping and dashing with each gust of wind. While weaker than the rifle form, the colt required no ammunition save Mana, and her sister could imbue the bolts of energy with raw elemental power for only a slight increase in the cost. The wights resembled giant snowflakes that would partially vanish as they turned in the light. The fractal vanes and leaf-like protrusions sent blasts of raw ice magic at the ship in spinning patterns, and everywhere they hit the witchwood hull left chunks of frozen sleet and condensed magic that frosted over the enchanted wood in spreading circles.

A half dozen wights were blasted apart in Teresa’s opening salvo, vicious red bolts of her [Flame Shot] shattering the elemental creatures like flimsy glass. Small icy orbs clattered on the deck, already drawing in the cold as the wights tried to regenerate from the ambient magic.

They were interrupted by sudden wurbling, startling even Teresa as several fluffy loofahs converged on each fallen core in triumph. She thought she could hear a faint shriek, like wails in the distance, as the glowing gems were rapidly exfoliated from existence. Two more shots, and two more elemental cores falling to the deck, and for the first time in years, with the third shot, Teresa missed.

She stared in shock as the fluffy scrubbies that had swarmed the cores began to glow with soft white light, and while she missed a passing [Ice Wight] in shock, the dozen loofah’s did not. With the edges of their fronds now frozen and jagged, glimmering soap bubbles sprang into existence around the scrubbies. From the thin-shelled spheres of mana sprang bolts of magic similar to the wight’s own attacks. Smaller, but more numerous, and frozen cores soon fell to the deck with regular tinkling. Each core that fell was swarmed, and more scrubbies gained frosty upgrades.

The scrubbies worked their way across the deck and along railings, devouring the ice where the wights had already attacked. The winds grew colder, however, and soon the scrubbies began to suffer, slowing as their fronds hardened and they stuck to the decking.

The skyship lurched as Teresa dispatched another wight, a sudden thrumming through the hull that grew in volume. The coils in the center of the rings gave off creaking and popping noises as the energy built, heating the spatial pockets. The vessel jumped nearly three feet, swaying as the ropes mooring it to the ground were pulled taut. She braced herself against one of the struts connecting the ring above to the hull as the wind gusted again and several frantically wurbling scrubbies were blown over the rails. 

The coil in the ring over her head glowed dull and red, then brighter as Dana pushed the reactor to its limits. Power pulsed like a slow heartbeat, then sped up, and all of the rings flared brightly. The winds themselves were suddenly pushed back as runes lit up along the rails and tracing the outside of the ship. The crawler’s strange shield, repurposed and much weaker, but effective at lessening the cold after all as it flickered into a barrier around them.

The D.S.S. Are We There Yet strained against the ropes that connected it to the ground, the hull pulsing with power faster and faster. The deck tilted under Teresa’s feet as the rope at the bow gave way with a snap, then two more at midships. As if sensing freedom near, the hum of the engines reached fever pitch and the last ropes gave way. The skyship shot straight up, nearly throwing the Huntress to her knees. Only the strength from her levels and her grip on the support beam kept her upright as they ascended.

All for naught, as the frozen fog enveloped the ship in the same moment it leapt for the sky.