"These absolute morons have decided that this vessel is seaworthy?" Stella said.
"It's true," Anthony said. "If we can't make it fly we can make it float."
But there are sea monsters and shit down there. They can't be serious."
"They are serious Stella. Unfortunately for us."
Anthony and Stella were holding up their most favorite find in the entirety of the promontory neighborhood. One wouldn't think that it would be important to search every mansion thoroughly in an apocalypse situation.
One would be wrong. Picking over mansions replenished the Caravans needed supplies.
But more importantly, they created a reason to look around for important things that couldn't be moved.
One of the things that they had overlooked this entire time was a workshop door that could let an entire caravan come through. Sonya had advanced her skill with her gate card enough that she was confident she could open a gate between two wrought iron anchors. The only problem she had was that for a larger gate, the entirety of the portal had to be touching iron.
Overlooking their first couple weeks of searching through the mansions, one of the workshops that no one had particularly cared to enter had an iron gate. Inside of it, the dwarf who had previously occupied it had been a collector of wagons.
"This guy is like the Jay Leno of dwarves," Stella said, feeling around the outside of the workshop door. "I think that this matches the academy door pretty well. It's not a one-for-one match but it's pretty close."
"It's too bad he only has three of them. I feel like we should have spent more time in this workshop," Anthony said. "That Earth bending card, though, really let us know what we're looking at."
"Andrew was here a lot. In fact, he was here with some of the goats."
He had not told them about how extensive the workshop was with hopes that none of them would bother him.
But the goats knew.
They followed him around. Especially the ones that had previously worked on ships. It was hard to tell what the jobs were but at some point in time the goats figured out that it would be easier if they stuck to a human or two. This meant about two goats per human.
Finley, of course, stuck close to Gigi.
Andrew, being the odd dwarf out, had gotten about five dwarves.
He was also unique in his special offering that had nothing to do with this current kingdom. This made him an oddity and, more often than not, several goats were there ready to grab a tool with their mouths to help him out.
"I can hear both of you talking about me," Andrew said, from the back of the workshop. "I'm very flattered that you considered that I was hiding this from you. Really you guys need to pay more attention to the non-humans once in a while."
"Thanks, dear," Anthony said.
"Anytime, honey," Andrew replied.
Stella laughed.
The first thing that Sonya had them do was to clear the area around the gate. The next step was going to be making sure that iron was all the way around and that there was nothing that would stop the aperture of the portal opening. Then she would anchor it.
This was how Stella and Anthony began to clean the place with brooms that were slightly too small. They were made for dwarven hands and bodies, causing a little pain in Anthony's back.
"Do you think she's done with the Academy grounds yet?" Stella said.
"She shouldn't be too long. I'm glad that she now has the ability to shape the metal."
"It does make sense for anybody else to have metal bending powers other than Sonya. I mean, what am I going to get fire bending? That's the one that Finley got for Bob."
"You and Bob smolder for each other," he said.
"Our love is eternal like the black flame."
Anthony stopped sweeping for a second. This particular workshop was not directly looking over the port city. It had a pastoral scene of the land east of the city as the shore line continued northeast as well as the quiet sea. He gathered the two small pieces which he needed to pick up his pile of dirt and wood shavings.
Stella swept her bit into the outside, waiting for Anthony to return. Anthony scooped the remaining debris and took it further out.
Below them the entirety of the frame was now in view. They only had to dig a little bit in the center where dirt had piled up. But now? The entire area around it was clean. Behind them, the wagons that they were going to need to move had been pushed as far back as possible.
There had been a lot of talk about the goats and their place within the Caravan. Even Finley was talking about creative ways to use them. Because not only were they intelligent, they couldn't talk much and that made it hard for them to express themselves. There was a lot of pent up desire to help and talk.
Sure, the two that already had druid cards could speak for about thirty minutes a day.
They said they wanted to do what they were doing and they were advancing rapidly but that wasn't enough.
In one of their talks, the dwarves had said that they would not have a problem being hooked up to a caravan, but only some of the goats were large enough to pull a caravan.
The goats knew that they were slow, if there was an actual zombie attack. Which is why Andrew was spending his time putting together a special harness for four goats to pull one Caravan wagon. Several of the goats were the right size to do so, but not all. Five of the goats were pygmy sized.
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Anthony and Stella paused to go help Andrew rig up the makeshift goat harness. The benefit of the goats being intelligent was that they understood what was about to happen. The horses had to be kind of led into the saddle usually with an animal handling skill. These goats waited in a line to get hooked up.
With the door open, Andrew got the four goats in and they helped him walk the goats and the wagon outside. It was the first test of this design, as the goats had wanted their own wagon.
Another part of the problem was that nobody had really figured out how to make more space to accommodate all the animals inside of the ship.
The frame adjustments that would carry the ship were all finally completed. They just needed to be dragged down to the actual boat part. The balloons that would provide the shift with the necessary lift had been tested several times.
The airship was ready to launch in terms of physically being able to do it. In terms of the ability to house all the things and people that need to go on the airship, this was not yet resolved.
There were more people than space available, especially if they accounted for crew space and sleeping space.
Everyone agreed that they needed to get the wagons up there. A ramp had been constructed as well as a system of pulleys and levers for when they had to disembark. This had all been put together with frightening speed that made Anthony wonder if anyone had ever thought to ask for work permits.
Not that there was a body that would be able but to issue any, he was just used to things taking forever in the city and then one guy would come in and smooth the whole way through.
He figured that he was that guy right now. And it was better that he didn't ask them too many leading questions.
In fact, their only question was whether they should move the fourth wagon on or take one of the newer wagons. The orcs had their own wagon because they were uniquely large size. In comparison with the humans and dwarves. They were about two feet taller. This meant that the normal elf-sized seats were a little bit too small for them.
"Are you ready to make the tie down here?" He said.
"I guess we can do that if you're ready," Stella said. "Andrew, we're getting ready to ground the airship up here."
Andrew poked his head through the back door.
"Already? But we had so much time!"
All three of them turn down to look at the now slightly floating airship.
"They're going to need it soon," Anthony said. "I think they are loading the horses."
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If there's one thing that a horse doesn't want to do, it's go on a ship.
It was taking all that Finley had to get these horses onto the ship.
The large ramp that they had to get up was impractical. Really, the only thing that Finley had going for him was that he knew that his storage skill just reach the next level and he was able to use it on the ship.
One of the things that changed when it leveled up was that he was pretty certain that the weight of the things that were inside of his storage field was reduced.
With twenty horses, it had better be.
They had tested it to make sure the ship would fly. But they couldn't leave the horses behind. They had gone through too much together. And when they arrived on the southern continent, they were going to have to move around on the ground.
It would Just look so much more official if they had horses when they came to request aid from the Irumian military that had been overseas when disaster struck.
He was surprised that it was holding, but they had put a lot of work into it, so he was going to do his best to live up to their expectations to them.
All three of the monks had taken air bending cards. Brandon also had a water bending card. This meant that the three monks were providing the lift. Next to him, in the center of the area, Bob was using his fire bending card to provide heat so that the canvas expanded. He only had to provide a little bit, and they all knew that Andrew was going to be creating something to replace that need. Because otherwise Stella and Bob were going to be working on that specific task for a long time.
Finley really liked how the humans had taken to using all these cards to get things accomplished that he wouldn't have even thought to do. His frame had been getting so much use free instantly that he was surprised that he still had such a large stock.
They had decided as a group that they were going to leave a lot here for them to take on their supply runs. If they could take the bare minimum onto the airship, then they were going to leave a lot of things back.
Additionally, they were going to take as much as they could and put it into the warehouse at the Academy. That had been their major storage area in the absence of another secured place.
It was deep within the kingdom, but it was also behind a large fence and inside another large warehouse-meets-workshop that had become so ubiquitous among the upper crust dwarves. One of the humans had pointed out the connection between the amount of money that a dwarf had and the chance that they would have a workshop.
Finley would have never put that together on his own.
With the last of the horses on, he concentrated on making another druid card. Through all this sorting through the various uncommon rare cards, he believed that he could make another druid card from the uncommons that he had currently.
Tomorrow he would be back at the drawing board, looking for the combinations that he could put together.
Tomorrow he would be on an airship, hopefully flying over the quiet Sea.
The boat rocked. Finley found himself grabbing for the side rail. All of a sudden, it didn't seem to be tall enough. His stomach was a knot. He hadn't thrown up in a long time, but for the first time he felt like that might be in the cards for him today. And then, they were off. The first flight of their airship had to be all the way to the promontory.
There were several loud, happy yells as the ship actually went in the direction that the intended to go. From the back of the ship, the three monks were taking turns directing the ship towards the promontory.
One would make a dance move that caused air to fly out of his hands then the other and then the third. Taking turns, this made the airship move intentionally.
They told him about how they were going to try to connect to the local weather pattern and tap into the wind, but today had been a very slow day for wind. This meant that they had to do this all themselves.
Andrew had promised them that he would make an engine that could provide some sort of thrust, but he wasn't sure when that was going to happen. He was going to place that on top of the rear of the ship, and he had described something that all the humans understand distinctively but that Finley had not really gotten.
He was excited to see it to be certain, but he did not know what the heck any of them were talking about when they said rockets. Weren't rockets just artillery?
The main thing that they were testing was how tired the monks would be trying to move the airship. A lot of the team thought that they might be better off in the sea. The ship was still seaworthy.
It was just that they didn't want to deal with the sea monster.
They could land the ship on land because of the frame that Andrew had built. It wasn't going to move once it was on land but they could land it. Hopefully they could move it someplace so that it wouldn't fly away. Finley had an idea that it was going to float away at some point in time and that might be an issue, but until that happened, he was not going to worry about it.
What he was going to do was walk down below the deck and double check on his storage area.
Underneath the boat, he was able to see exactly how he wanted. Its interior of the boat was larger than the exterior due to his power and even better, he knew that he could take it.
It felt solid in its mind.
Now he was ready to move hundreds of pounds across an ocean. All he had to do was get the goats and the humans on board. And also perhaps figure out how the heck to make this thing move on purpose.