The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 28

Chapter 28

“This is what we have to work with?” Larek asked, looking at what essentially looked like the skeleton of what was partially built ferry. “Partially built” was a bit of a stretch, however, as it was essentially just the sad-looking frame of a boat sitting in the dry dock in Swiftwater.

“Yep, that’s her,” the thickly bearded Dock Foreman confirmed, waving toward the wood and iron frame.

“Her?” he asked.

“Absolutely; our ferries all tend to have a temperamental personality, and what could be more temperamental than a woman!” he responded, slapping his knee before he bent over in laughter. He stopped quickly when he caught the look Mage Protector Zinnia threw him, and Larek simply ignored what was apparently a joke that he didn’t quite understand.

“And there are no apprentice Shipbuilders here to continue the work?” the Combat Fusionist asked.

“Nope. Nor are there any within the city with the knowhow to complete construction of the ferry, as such Shipbuilder secrets aren’t widely shared,” the Foreman answered, his demeanor a bit more subdued under the harsh gaze of the Protector.

“Secrets? Of how to build these ferries? Why would it be a secret?”

The man rubbed the back of his head as he considered Larek’s questions. “Well, I don’t rightly know why, but I do know that they do something to their ferries that allow them to travel the Swiftwater without breaking up, while also making them lighter for portage on the other side. What that is, though, I – nor anyone else in Swiftwater – don’t rightly know.” The Dock Foreman sniffed loudly before turning his head as if he was going to spit on the ground, but a look at the Protector made him swallow whatever he was going to expectorate.

“Uh, well, anyway, let me or anyone else on the dock know if we can help with anything, and we’ll be sure to rush on over,” the man continued, raising a cloth to wipe the sweat off his brow despite the cool morning. Without another word, he turned on his heel and took off, disappearing out of the large dry dock building within seconds.

Putting the Foreman from his mind, Larek looked again at skeleton-like frame of the partially built ferry, comparing it to the very basic drawing he was provided of what it was generally supposed to look like when it was done. Only by squinting at it could he see that it was even the same boat, and it was quite a bit different from the ones he had ridden on in the Kingdom.

The first thing he noticed about the ferry was that it was quite a bit narrower than he expected approximately 25 feet wide; the ferries in the Kingdom were at least twice the width, if not wider. This was balanced by the fact that it was long, somewhere around 100 feet long, as opposed to the Kingdom’s almost square-shaped 60-foot-long ferries. The second thing he noticed about the one in the picture and the dry dock was that its keel was tapered to a sharp point, rather than being relatively flat-bottomed compared to what he’d seen before, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him considering that they had to portage it on the other side – and a flat-bottomed boat would likely be a whole lot better for that kind of thing.

There were a bunch of smaller differences that he could see, though what caught his attention was the steering oar along the back which was made out of what appeared to be iron. It wasn’t present on the partially built frame, but it was remarked upon in the picture he was looking at, and he couldn’t help but thing that if it was completely made out of iron it would be extremely heavy. It was contained in a heavy-duty iron and wood frame along the rear of the boat, and he couldn’t help but think that it the entire ferry would tip over backwards from all the weight on it.

Then again, he wasn’t a Shipbuilder, so what did he know?

Practically nothing, that’s what. All he knew about ferries was limited to riding on a few of them back in the Kingdom, and other than a passing interest in what they looked like while he was on them, he’d had other things on his mind at the time which didn’t allow him to dig deeper into how they worked. He did know that the ones he rode upon used guide ropes strung across the river and poles to propel them by pushing off from the riverbed, but that was about it. He could see some poles in the drawing, but they were shorter and looked more for pushing away from a dock rather than used to push off from the bottom of the river. Besides, he was told that the river was quite deep, which was another thing that made it dangerous in addition to its speed, so it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.

“There’s no way I can figure out how the Shipbuilders constructed this thing and had it work, Zinnia.” Looking at the drawing and the skeleton frame one more time, he shook his head. “I’m not a builder of any kind, though I do know my wood a little from my previous profession. That being said, this is completely different from what I know of ferries back in the Kingdom of Androthe, and wouldn’t even know where to start with this.”

“You can’t help?”

Rolling up the drawing, as it wasn’t doing him any good, he responded. “I didn’t say that. I said I can’t finish this ferry the way it was designed, because I don’t have the knowledge to do that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything. I think I’m going to have to rework this whole thing by designing something simpler, perhaps a more flat-bottomed boat?” he mused.

“Uh, well, I can’t say that I’m an expert on these things,” the Protector said, gesturing to the wooden frame, “but I think the problem with flat-bottomed boats was that they are too hard to control in the Swiftwater, as they have a tendency to spin uncontrollably and even flip over completely. At least, that’s what I’ve been told – but I’m not all that knowledgeable about it, either.”

“That strong, huh?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Every year there is at least a few daring souls who think they’ve got it figured out and go out onto the water unprepared, never to be heard from again. That’s the only reason I know as much as I do, though I’m sure there’s a lot more that I don’t know.”

Hmm…. This is harder than I thought.

The more he looked at what he had to work with, compared it to what he little he knew of navigating through the water (which was next to nothing), the more he began to think that this project was impossible. His Fusions couldn’t put together a boat, after all, especially if he didn’t understand how it worked; a simpler boat could probably be achieved with the help of some of the dock workers who had nothing to do, but it likely wouldn’t get across the river in one piece – or with everyone and everything still safe upon it.

That was when he started to think about how they would even get across in the first place without being swept downstream. The Kingdom’s ferries only had to navigate much slower, shallower rivers where guide ropes and poling was easy enough. Here in the Empire, at least on the Swiftwater, they seemed to utilize a different keel shape and a rudder, which he assumed allowed it to cut across the river without capsizing or being uncontrollably swept downstream, though they still didn’t go straight across – hence why there were two towns on the other side, and then they had to portage the ferries upriver in order to come back.

Could I do something like that? He knew at once that such a thing wasn’t likely with his lack of knowledge and experience in such things, and wouldn’t even know where to start. Even if he did, he could spend months trying to get something like that to work, even with the aid of Fusions, because it was so foreign to him that it almost hurt his head just thinking about it.

What other ways could I use to get the boat across in one piece?

Larek immediately thought about the types of Effects based on spells that he knew.  The first one he considered was something like the Water Stream Fusion, which shot out a stream of water with incredible force, allowing it to cut through most softer materials like it was paper. Could that be used to propel a boat forward?  No, that wouldn’t work, because there was no opposing force on the area where the Fusion originated. For instance, when he added the Water Stream Fusion to a staff, it didn’t push the staff with any of the force that shot out the stream of water; otherwise, it would’ve likely tried to rip itself from his hands whenever he used it.

The same went for Effects included in Fusions such as Repelling Barrier; the gusts of air that were formed might be powerful, but they didn’t push back on anything with equal force.

What about freezing a portion of the river with something like Frozen Zone and sliding across the ice? That was a good thought, but he realized that the water was so fast-moving that the ice would simply be carried downstream even faster than a boat would be. In addition, freezing that much water in such a large area needed for the ferry would be difficult and extremely Mana-intensive; he could imagine making a Fusion that could do it, but it would work for all of 30 seconds before all of the ambient Mana was sucked out of the environment.

The same problem arose when he thought about somehow floating the entire boat on a cushion of air, created by forming a larger and slightly less forceful Repelling Barrier along its keel, but having the gusts blowing up into the boat instead of down into the water. He thought it might work to lift the ferry, but it would also require so much Mana as to make it impossible to use for more than a minute or so before the ambient Mana was drained away.

But what if I made it smaller? Such as one that would fit just… me?

As he considered how he would put something like that together, he became more and more excited over the prospect of creating some sort of personal flying contraption that would allow him to hover straight over the river without any problems at all. There were some problems he needed to solve, such as propulsion, balance, and steering, but he thought that it might eventually be possible.

He mentally shelved the idea after a minute or so of thinking about it, because he had something else he needed to do first. While getting to the opposite side of the river was his ultimate goal, he needed something from the people of Swiftwater just as they needed him. He wouldn’t get far without supplies, and to get those supplies, he needed to earn it. Besides, by doing this, I might be able to figure out the problems with my personal flying craft along the way.

Turning his attention back to the prospective ferry, Larek was drawing a blank on what else he could do. That was until he remembered the river near Rushwood and how they pushed their finished logs into the water, where they floated downstream to the sawmill.  It wasn’t how they floated or even the process of directing the logs into the mill, however; instead, it was how the sawmill operated through the use of a waterwheel to rotate the saw they used for cutting and shaping the logs they processed for use elsewhere. He remembered seeing the time he had visited with his father, amazed at how something as simple as a wheel using the power of water flowing through it could do something like that.

Larek, of course, had absolutely no knowledge of the inner workings of such a process, and while he thought about somehow harnessing the power of the rushing Swiftwater to power some sort of internal propulsion system, he scrapped that idea quickly. Instead, what he wanted to use the waterwheel itself for propulsion, sort of like when he was swimming and using his hands to pull him along the water.

How would it be powered? Fusions, of course. More specifically, a strong Repelling Gust of Air Fusion that would push downward on the wheel, which would then in turn propel the ferry forward. Simple enough – or so he thought.

With the help of Zinnia along with some paper and a stick of charcoal she brought with her, he began to sketch out his idea. His first inclination was to put one waterwheel on each side of the ferry, which was sized to be more aligned to the dimensions he knew about from the Kingdom, but he quickly disregarded that idea as he thought that the width of the whole thing would be just too wide at that point, as the wheels would have to be large in order to move through the water easily.

That was when he considered moving it to the back of the ferry, which seemed to flow much better, as it would be pushing it from the back rather than essentially pulling from the sides. Then came the problem with steering, as he had no idea how you were supposed to steer something so large without the large rudder he saw on the drawing of the normal ferries. The trick to the rudder system was beyond his comprehension, especially as it had to be easily moved through what was likely to be extremely strong forces of swiftly flowing water pushing against it, and while Larek thought that he would be strong enough to control it, he wasn’t sure if anyone else could.

Therefore, he thought about his previous plan to have two wheels on either side of the ferry for steering – and suddenly had an inspiration that made those side wheels obsolete. He had been thinking of the waterwheel as a relatively thin wheel on the backside providing propulsion, but what if he made it much wider, such as nearly half the size of the ferry’s width – and then put two of them side-by-side, so that if the boat wanted to turn, only one of the wheels would have to be activated.

Then came the wheel itself, as the more he thought about the waterwheel from the sawmill, he more he realized that it was designed to catch the water rushing through it rather than pushing against it. Redesigning it was a matter of thinking about how he swam through the water; when he had the fingers in his hands pushed up against each other, he created much more surface area to push against the water than if he had his fingers spread apart. Cupping his hands also helped, as it allowed him to really dig into the water and push himself forward, though it was more of the surface area that counted, especially when he added his arms into the process.

As a result, Larek changed his original plan for a relatively closed waterwheel with smaller pockets designed to catch the water to one with larger sheets of wood that would dig into the water with a lot more surface area. These long sheets of wood would be arranged like the spokes of a wagon wheel allowing the greatest amount of water to be pushed away, sending the boat forward.

“That’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Zinnia remarked as she looked over his shoulder at the drawing when he was finished – or as finished as he could be without going into the smaller details. “How is that even supposed to work?”

Cleaning his charcoal-stained fingers on a rag he found inside the dry dock, Larek shrugged. I’m not rightly sure yet, but if I can get the Fusions for them right, I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Do you think we can have the dock workers start on construction of the body of this ferry? It’s relatively straightforward, or at least I hope it is.”

“Sure, I’ll talk to the Dock Foreman in just a moment. Do you want to talk to a Cartwright about this… wheel?”

“Cartwright? Oh, like the ones that make wagon wheels?”

“Yes, precisely. I don’t think the dock workers would be suited to something as intricate as that, as it seems important.”

Larek nodded, knowing that it was probably the most important part of the boat, other than the Fusions he was going to add. “I can do that. Is the city covering the materials and labor for all of this?” he asked.

“They are – or at least they will once I talk to the mayor,” she admitted. “I hadn’t broached the subject with anyone yet, as I wasn’t sure if you would even be able to do anything, but if you think this will work…?”

“It should – or at least I’ll figure out something that does. I have a good feeling about this plan, though.”

“Good enough for me; it’s better than anything that anyone has thought of so far, so we might as well take our chances.”

It wasn’t exactly a shining vote of confidence, but then again, Larek wasn’t altogether confident in his idea, either. Before he did anything else, he supposed that he should make a smaller model of what he had planned, just to ensure that his Fusion ideas were solid before beginning on the larger one.

With that in mind, he broke off from Zinnia and went looking for this Cartwright she mentioned earlier.