Thio was tethered to the ship’s port side when he saw the young windmistress slide and tumble when the ship dived. The warning he shouted once white puffs of smoke appeared from the other ship didn’t register on her face. Thio dropped down to the deck as the Vol Mortem moved to dodge the incoming projectiles. When a cannonball hit the ship’s side near Eletheria, he worried for the lady’s safety. Splinters or bits of wood being hurled after a hit often killed as many as the ball did.
As Eletheria was being dragged off the ship, Thio unclipped his tether and started running towards her. He had made it two steps when she limply disappeared over the edge. He wondered how hard she hit the deck. He stumbled but remained standing as the ship turned and dipped while maneuvering into a good firing position for its cannons. With no time to spare, he quickly grabbed a couple of the parachute packs on a hook near a mast. One in each of his hands, he ran towards the side of the ship where Eletheria was dragged overboard. The place where the railing used to be was now a jagged scar marked by broken bits of wood. A glance verified she wasn’t hanging on either of the support arms that connected the weapon pontoons to the main ship. Thio had hoped she hadn’t fallen completely off the ship. Looking downwards, there is a little speck of brown below. Without thinking further, Thio dove off the edge.
For a brief moment, terror-filled Thio, but he was able to gain control of it as he started falling. Each second, he was picking up speed. The air went from a breeze to a roar as he fell. Tumbling through the air, the wind made every movement a struggle as he worked to secure a pack to himself. ‘Should have put a parachute pack on before jumping,’ he thought. Once the pack was secure and the belt bucked across his chest, he held the other one tightly against his chest. Then, as every airship sailor is taught, he held himself straight as a board. He gripped the leather pack as close to his chest as he could. Memories of the third mate from the Rattling Can instructing him how to save an overboard crew member or how to exit a no-longer-flying ship came back to him.
“Make yourself like an arrow; use your feet to steer; you only have to count to 20 before you open your chute. If you do not have the crew member by then, leave them. Better to lose one than to lose two.” The count of 20, he forgot to start. They were higher than usual; would a count of 40 also work? The sea below was still far away, so he started counting and hoped it would be enough. Eletheria was still a speck below him; the only way he could tell it was her was her hair flying all around as she tumbled towards the sea. As he picked up speed, he smiled and used one hand to pull his goggles over his eyes. He hoped he would be able to catch Eletheria. Windmistresses, even the ones in training, were too valuable to lose. Especially one as pretty as her, he thought with a smile.
The wind roaring in his ears and his focus on the brown shape below pushed everything else into the background. He was hit by something from above. His first thought was a piece of debris that hit him and could possibly hit Eletheria, so he tried to twist around to locate the object. Someone grabbed onto Thio’s belt and swung him around. The momentum of him being hit and swung around by his belt made him feel a bit queasy. A hammer hit him in the stomach; the force of the blow and the momentum of his swing made him lose what little lunch he had. Bits of it went on the shoulder of the sailor in black.
“Give me the pack!” the sailor in black yelled at Thio as they tumbled in the air, his statement barely louder than the roar of the wind. The sailor started to say more but his next punch to Thio’s head made him lose consciousness for a moment.
Thio wasn’t sure how long he had been out of it. From his altitude, it could not have been long. A quick glance around, and Thio saw Eletheria still below him, tumbling in the air and above him, and a good distance to his left was the guy who attacked him. The sailor in black was securing the pack to himself. In the back of his mind, Thio was happy the sailor didn’t take both but understood why he only took one. Every airship crew member fears the day they are either forced off the ship or their ship goes down. The long death it is called because the fall from such heights gives you plenty of time to face death. There are stories of corpses falling to the ground due to sailors killing themselves instead of facing the long death.
Thio re-focused on trying to rescue Eletheria. He angled himself and sped up. This time, though, he learned his lesson, so he would occasionally look up to verify that no one was attempting to take his last pack. Also, he could see some explosions up above as both ships were now within point-blank range and firing upon each other. Part of him really wanted to watch the battle as, from this angle, they appeared as little model ships moving around to deny a shot to the other. The Vol Mortem’s lack of a balloon gave it better maneuverability. It moved around, placing itself in the blind spots for the other ships cannons.
Out of the corner of his vision, Thio detected movement. A black shape was moving towards him but it wasn’t at the right angle. As it got closer, he realized it was the sailor from earlier. This time he had some wooden wings attached to his back. Thio cursed silently and checked the stitching on his pack. He cursed again, but the wind covered up his obscenity. The sailor’s angle wouldn’t allow him to intercept Thio. The pack was not a parachute as Thio thought. It was a glider pack. The glider packs required quan to be powered. He tried making himself even more like an arrow with new resolve and ignored everything above him. He had to get to Eletheria, or he would die as well because he did not have the ability.
At a count of twenty, Thio reached Eletheria. He ran into her pretty hard, as he couldn’t slow down enough before he got to her. The initial impact of them colliding was him flying into her foot. Thio expected to hear something from her but was met with silence. A pain in his shoulder rendered a curse from him that, thankfully, the wind covered up. He slowed angling toward Eletheria’s tumbling form. He reached a hand out to grab her jacket but missed. A second try with her closer and at a different angle he was able to grasp a pouch she had secured to her thigh. Briefly, they both tumbled through the air until he could gain control. He held her body close to his with one hand and used his other hand to feel and see if there was a heartbeat or any indicators of life in her.
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A faint heartbeat assured him, but he needed to wake her up. Checking her for wounds, he only found the blood from her nose from when her face had met the deck of the Vol Mortem suddenly. A gentle shake turned into a much more vigorous shake. It was the most he could do while they were falling. Resorting to the last possible method, he started gently slapping her face. When little slaps didn’t work, he started to escalate them, hoping one would wake her up.
In the back of Thio’s mind, a voice counted, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44. As it increased, his desperation grew. His slaps got harder, and at one point, he slapped her with everything he could muster. Angling his arm back for another swing he saw her eye lids flutter a little as she appeared to be waking up. Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, the count continued in his mind. Thio mused a little that the voice he heard was the third mate from the Rattling Can. His musing and motion to slap her stopped completely as her eyes widened, and he could see her waking up to reality.
Eletheria put her hands to her face as if to protect it from another slap. Her brow furled, and she stared at Thio. A poorly attempted kick from her was nullified by the fact that they were both falling, and when Thio felt her foot pull back, he held her at arm’s length to prevent the kick from doing any real damage. The hair on Thio’s arm started to raise a little, and he saw her hands reaching for him. He quickly grabbed her hands and restrained them so she could not touch him.
“GLIDER! You need to use the GLIDER!” Thio yelled, hoping she would hear him over the roar of the wind. Eletheria looked a little confused and like she wasn’t going to try and kill him. He let one hand go and reached around on the pack to pull out an arm that swung around from the back to the front. Then, with his free hand, he took her hand gently and released the other hand. This allowed him to grab the arm from the other side of the pack. She quickly put the pack on with almost practice ease.
Once her hands were upon the control yokes for the glider pack, Thio pulled her close and wrapped his arms and legs around her. His face was to the side of her head as he yelled, “START THE GLIDER!” They still fell, and he felt her struggle to free herself from his grasp. Though he was about the same height as her, she was still coming to consciousness so he held on with his arms and used his feet to change their descent angle. Now that she was facing the fast approaching sea he again yelled in her ear, “START THE GLIDER!”
Fifty-Five, Fifty-Six, Fifty-Seven was he counting too fast? The push of a button had engaged the wings to split out from the pack. The sudden jerk of their descent slowing as the wings extended from the pack would have torn the pack from Thio’s arms if he had not secured it. It almost tore Eletheria from his arms, but he wrapped his legs around her waist. The canvas of the pack turned into the skin of the wings.
Glider packs were devices created by the G’Aeris that allowed them to use their power to achieve flight. Thio wasn’t sure how it worked exactly, just that a few Windmasters could use the packs to rescue people, perform scouting missions, fly over to an opposing ship to start boarding, and many other things. What he now knew was that if you engage one of the packs when falling, there is a sudden feeling like your stomach will be ripped through whichever end of you is pointing downwards.
Sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three. The voice still counted in his mind, and he still wondered how accurate the count would be if he had started counting from the beginning. Out of the corner of his eye he managed a glipse of the see below. Now, he could see individual waves and even the occasional flotsam. Sixty-five, sixty-six, even as he tried to concentrate on something else the voice continued in the back of his mind.
They were not falling as fast as they had been, but their speed was still immense. Thio gritted his teeth and held on as the Eletheria used the pack to change their direction from vertical to horizontal. They were still aimed downwards, just not straight downwards. Every second, the wings strained to their limits, creaking in protest for every inch Eletheria forced them to change. Thio’s limbs and stomach were also strained; he closed his eyes to focus on keeping ahold of Eletheria. At some point, he heard some screaming as if someone was in extreme pain; he realized it was both him and Eletheria as she tried slowing them down. Sixty-seven, sixty-eight….
They hit the cold water fast and hard. Luckily, the angle was almost parallel to the surface. The impact separated them as soon as they hit, and they skipped a few times across the surface. Thio came to rest in the water, battered and tired but alive. He bobbed a little with the waves and looked around. He couldn’t see Eletheria, so he dived under the waves to see if he could see anything under the water. Seeing no one, he went back up for air.
“Eletheria!!” he yelled while looking all around, hoping to catch a glimpse. A shiver ran through him as the water seeped into his clothing.
“Eletheria!!” he yelled again; this time, he didn’t see her but felt something grab his foot. He ducked under the water and saw Eletheria trying to swim to the surface. He pulled her up, and as soon as she broke the surface, she gasped for breath several times. Up close, he saw she was beautiful, even with the faint red mark on the side of her face where he slapped her. There was even a brief indentation from where his ship ring had struck her. He decided to save the apology for later.
“Are you ok?” He asked while they bobbed in the sea.
“The ship?” She asked, looking up in the sky. They were so far down, though, that both ships would be specks in the sky and almost impossible to see.
“We got attacked, you fell overboard,” he responded.
“Did you fall overboard too?” She asked, looking at him.
“Um, no. I jumped after you to rescue you,” he replied, his cheeks red.
“Why?” Eletheria asked, looking straight into his eyes.
“Well, I couldn’t let you go for a swim alone,” Thio replied, splashing a little water. The awkward moment was avoided, he hoped, and they were both alive. He decided to count this as a win in his book. The pack had been torn from them when they hit the water. He grabbed it as it floated nearby and placed it between them.
With the pack floating now between both of them Thio was able to get a good look at it. There were two long poles wrapped in a reddish-orange wire on the left and right side of the pack. It made up part of its support and structure. The wires went into the side, where they appeared to connect to the arms that one had swung out to control it. The rest of the pack was devoted to holding the wooden and metal frame and tough canvas skin that covered the wings. Thio guessed the wingspan was about twice his height. Holding on to the pack he attempted to use it to lift himself up a little in order to see over the waves. The waves around them were high enough that he couldn’t see anything more than the waves. He tried to remember his training on signaling the ship but was drawing a blank. Floating there, holding on to the pack, he looked at Eletheria and said, “I guess we wait?”