The creek of the airship was unsettling. The fact that they had traveled so far on security wheels did nothing to alleviate the fact that Finley did not want to be there.

In fact, they were going to have some big ceremony before they disembarked but he did not want to attend that. He found solace underground or rather in the lower decks. It was where his people were as they took off.

"It's okay Gigi," he said to the little girl inside of the goat. "We're just flying through the air on a perfectly fine airship. Nothing to worry about here. Me? Nope, I'm not worried."

Gigi bleated.

He was sitting in one of the only chairs that they brought on board. His hands were in his face. Though the chair had been nailed down, nothing had helped.

He was resolved to never travel by air again and stay on land for the rest of his life. Surely nothing else could be so rough on his innards.

"We're going to make it. I hope we're going to make it-"

Gigi bleated, disgust apparent in her tone.

"Well it's alright for you to say that. You've already died once, technically," he said. "I wonder what it was like in the afterlife for you. Or did you just say in stasis? Maybe that's worse."

Gigi bleated twice. If she could have cuddled him closer, Finley knew that she would have. Without arms, goats could only grab so much. Instead, she placed her head a bit closer.

"My first order of business is going to be figuring out how many class cards I can make up here. Maybe the focus on making more cards will keep me from thinking about how high in the sky we are."

Gigi shifted a bit, but it wasn't because the airship had done anything. She returned with a box and his frame.

"You know what? You're right. I need to stop worrying about the future and live in the present. That starts with making another druid card I think."

Finley focused on his work, avoiding any thoughts of the air ship.

----------------------------------------

"Ahoy, hand me the telescope, first mate!" Brianna said.

The warrior stood over the prow of the deck. There wasn't much that they could do from there. But they'd raked up a system of pulley and levers so they could shift to the direction of the wind travel. And then they had gotten airbenders there so they could move the wind.

The pulleys, levers and ropes combined with the focused air had given them a direction and a heading. They were now traveling south, over the quiet sea at about what Sophie judged to be three hundred feet.

They didn't have a compass or GPS. They almost didn't even have a navigator. But they could tell, from context, how close the other death knights were.

The first thing they'd done when they got in was to draw the chalk circle in the middle of the boat deck so that they could figure out which direction they were going.

It took them five minutes of flying before. Bob began to adjust the rocks. This gave Valerie the numbers that she needed to compute their direction and speed.

She did this five times every five minutes, stopping to assess the direction of the death knights.

"Fifth reading," she said, taking down the relative locations again into her notebook.

Sophie compared notes with Valerie.

The angles put one northeast of them, one southeast of them and the last that everyone was sure was closest to the southwest. The flesh weaver was there, waiting to challenge Bob in a game of one on one.

"If those readings hold, we'll be moving at about thirty span per hour," Sophie said. "Is that right?"

"You're close."

When she was done they told the crew that they were going at thirty or so span per hour. Then, much like before, Anthony set up a work and rest cycle for those with fire and wind affinity. This news was helped by the fact that they also had cake.

Somehow, Bob had smuggled some ingredients out and done a bang up job of making a pastry.

The cake physically didn't do much for her. Mentally, it felt like she had gone to a gas station after work looking for something sweet and ended up with the best thing that was on offer.

It rose to the level of a delicious distraction, like the monks and the warriors. She still didn't know what she wanted. She knew that she could make friends though but because of her previous situation, dating had been very fraught. It was hard to date when you didn't know if someone was chasing you for the wrong reasons.

The air whipped past them and she realized that she was a bit chilly. That would pass though. There were several warm goats that she could cuddle up to below decks.

No, really what Sophie wanted most of all was a way to stop her hair from flipping around. Perhaps they took too much from the ship part and not enough from the air part. This would be fine so long as they didn't hit a gale force wind.

Heck if their pace kept up, the quiet sea was supposedly only eight hundred span or so. They would need to touch down, eventually. She already had ideas on how to improve their travel.

It all started with putting something between the front of the ship and the crew. She wanted to call it the hull of the aircraft. The frigate they had chosen could easily keep twice their number, but there was nothing stopping the weather.

Flying that distance should take them not just to a milder winter, but perhaps to the mildest winter that they would get.

Then she saw the look on the poor dwarf girls face. She looked terrified.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Valerie, are you doing okay?" She said, settling down next to the teenager.

"What? No, I'm proper chuffed. This is like the best day of my month. You humans decided you want to make this thing and within a month you found the ship and you retrofitted it and this is just amazing. I just don't have an idea how this is even possible, except for the fact that you're all chosen."

A wry smile appeared on Sophie's face.

"Do you remember when you guys found me? In the bottom? In my parents’ basement? That was the lowest point in my life. But now? This might be one of the highest. This might be the darkest part of my country's history, for today? Dwarves are flying. We've all got hope now. I can tell. All the goats..."

There was a loud cacophony of sound and the damn goats sounded like they were singing a bar song below decks.

It hasld been resolved that since they were all on four legs, the safest place for them to be was where they couldn't tip over and fall off the side. There was no consideration for the two-legged fools that wanted to be on top.

Sophie found Valerie humming along to the song. Nothing in her life had prepared her for goats bleating along to a song. Or were they just humming loudly?

"That is a catchy tune, isn't it?" She said.

"It's an old dwarf drinking song. You learn it as a lass and never forget. It just kind of comes back to you."

"See that kind of thing? We need more of that."

"Sophie, I never thanked you for sticking around with me after you found me. I owe you a debt of Honor and someday I'm going to repay that."

Sophie placed her hand on Valerie's shoulder.

"Normally, I'd say something like you don't always do anything, but we're all in this together. You can sign on for as long as you like. I know as soon as this is done? I'm going to spend some time not doing anything like this."

"Do you normally save a girl and bring her back to health? And then have these conversations later on? Because if this is happening to you a lot then we need to talk about maybe it's a you thing."

The ship lurched briefly but returned, more of a bump in the road than anything else.

Sophie realized that she was kind of leaning on her class cards. As a rogue, she had to have the ability to be nimble on her feet.

The one thing that she was realizing that they probably needed would be either parachutes or something that could connect you to the ship in case it decided they wanted to turn sideways. She added making parachutes to her to-do list.

That wasn't going to happen anytime soon. It would be much more efficient if they just had hang gliders or something else.

It would also be more efficient if they just park the thing twenty feet off the ground and just that way. But if I did that, then there would be so many things that could rise if it hit them, especially small hills. They would have to be thinking about all the small things that rose up in front of them that they would have to steer around. They could go really fast, but steering was looking to be more difficult if they were going really fast.

She watched as the teams assigned to move the airship got used to the specific touch it needed. She knew that they were going to have to create a few more cards. Finley had taught her some of the tricks, but he had recently gotten to a point where he could create specific cards for people.

Sophie hadn't gotten to that point yet. Unfortunately there wasn't a card skill that made one better at that, you just had to work at it.

"I'm not in the practice of saving girls, but I'll save as many as I can," Sophie said.

"You and me both. I'm glad that Gigi was able to get a druid card. I think that she's going to be able to do some real damage. If we drop a cadre of trained goat mages somewhere, then we'll be able to make an instant safe landing zone."

"You want to airdrop goats into battle?"

"Airdrop? I guess so. Or we put them like cannons on the side of the ship," Valerie said, fully into it now.

Sophie loved seeing the dwarf light up. It made her feel that happy feeling of actually getting to see someone on the road to recovery, except hers was more the road to revenge.

Sophie was ready for revenge. Even if it wasn't hers. But first she would have some more cake.

Brianna had the wheel, and she had the ear of her newest disciple.

----------------------------------------

Bob, Mork's highest representative, had a bone to pick with Stella. His honey bear wasn't taking her breaks.

"You need to take your breaks and let everybody else have a turn."

She was filling up the air inside of the canvas balloon. Or really not filling it up but heating it up so that it would stay up. They were figuring out a way to get the open air to be smaller and smaller, like an actual hot air balloon. It would have to land as a proof of concept, but no one wanted to do that until they got to the other side of the quiet sea.

They'd only been in the air for a few hours and Finley was already threatening to use his refresh power on one of them, taking them out. There were only a few people with fire affinity. Bob and Stella were the best at it.

"Snookums, sometimes you just have to let a lady cook," Stella said, unleashing another ten foot tall flame for about ten seconds.

They had worked at a system where they could do this every every two minutes or so and that would be sufficient. This let them recharge their Mana. This also let them stare at each other for a long time as there was once again no way to time anything.

Bob would give about three cakes for a watch. He would be so happy. All the ones that they had found in their salvaging runs had been smashed, and the few that looked promising have been heading over to Andrew to see if he can work his magic. Andrew, having a lot on his plate with the whole airship project, hadn't really taken to the whole endeavor with as much enthusiasm as Bob had thought it warranted.

"I really think that a watch would be nice right about now," He said.

"What, so we can time how quickly you finish?"

Bob laughed. She could always find a way to remind him how much he wanted someone with the same dryness that he'd appreciated back at home.

"We don't need a one minute timer, Stella," he said. "It'll be useless either way."

"Ah! So you knew!" She said, giving him the once over.

The new place where everyone was set to meet up was below decks, the first floor below. The balloon that they were inflating was right above a hole that had to be for loading cargo. They were only feet away from the short drop, though they had chosen to lay down in between turns.

Once again it was his turn. But then it was her turn again.

"There has to be a better way. I'm sure Andrew's thinking about it already. We just have to hold on until we get back to land again."

"That sounds about right. But we've got two replacements later so I think that we're going to be alright," she said.

If I didn't get off shift sometime soon, the tedium was going to get to him. He wanted to bake more. The itch to get back into the groove, the mise en place of it all felt so familiar and it was now within his reach.

It had started out as something fun to do with his friends and steamrolled into a lifelong love of baking, and now? In this life? He had a captive audience that wouldn't mind his experimental cake therapy.

"Hey Stella? You want to hear how to set up a cake business? We've got nothing else to do," he said, trying to see if she would take the bait.

"I mean, sure. You can tell me whatever you want. I feel like we know all of the other stories by now. It has been a month, right?"

"This has been a month," he said. "But who's counting?"

Bob spent the rest of the day and night going into great detail about how to make the perfect bake, and then how to sell. By the time their relief arrived, Bob was certain that if she wanted to open a cake shop in Hoboken, she would have a good chance of competing with his old business. Even if it was in Jersey City.