"What's in a name, really?" Anthony said, staring up at the moored airship.
"Hopefully a lot? I think that we put out the feeling into the world that we want. But no, we're not naming it the Enterprise. And the union turned down, 'A New Hope' as well."
Sonya had crossed both of her arms but hadn't stopped chuckling at him. They stood in front of the grounded ship, it having landed in a small lake.
"Drat. I suppose that the 'Phantom Menace' won't work. Or Air Force One?" Anthony said.
"Might as well go with my suggestion: Regime Change. They said no to that."
"I still can't believe that we left the naming to the committee of dwarves."
"Still, they are a part of this war band. We need to include them in some decisions. It's not a strategic decision. It impacts nothing," Sonya said, threading his arms around her waist.
"You're right. They need some skin in the game. We're giving them a military mind who can go the distance. They're giving us everything," Anthony said, breathing in her hair. He could feel her relax. "I should just do this more often."
"Watch as a couple of dwarves are lowered off the side of the ship to paint it? I mean we could do that. I wonder how this would work with salt water."
The two dwarves finished their work, the stark lettering up on full display.
"The Queen's Con? Really?" he said.
"It's about the long game, honey," Sonya said, nuzzling in closer.
"Well, now that it's done, we can finally get to see the ocean, right?"
She twisted back to see him, her lips just below his.
"I always knew that you would take me places," she whispered. "I'm so glad that we made something together."
Anthony gulped, his heart racing.
Then she continued to whisper into his ear for a bit, his face getting more and more red, before the pair decided to climb up the ladder and take a long break.
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It was far too soon when they got back onto the airship to continue their trip.
Finley wasn't ready.
He had so much life to live and yet he was still here, floating high enough to cause sheer panic. Sure, he had the air bending card, but that only helped a bit. He was considering power leveling the card by passing it through the dwarves and having them use their mana on it.
The visceral fear of falling would never go away. Even if he fell, he knew that his body wouldn't survive. At least the elf parts wouldn't.
At least he had time now to go through his lengthy to do list. Most of that was to make useful card out of his card pieces. After making nearly two dozen druid cards, he was getting a bit low on options. He didn't want to just quit, but he needed more uncommon cards that were close enough to wild shape that his mana could bridge the gap.
It took him two more days of travel to run out of card pieces. Every common card that he made was for a purpose on the master list of requests that the union had put forth. He was going as fast as he could. Every time he came up for air, if felt like the ocean was the same. He was going to ask the sailors about their romantic ideas of the sea. Several of the dwarves had been sailors, and it was all getting so mundane.
It was three days before his unease turned into disinterest. He was utterly over making cards all day, punctuated by the thrill of going outside to take in the brisk air. Despite being so far south, the air hadn't gotten that much warmer.
What it did instead was get stickier. Not a fan of sweat, Finley had to deal with that above deck. It got a bit worse below decks where he couldn't dodge the smells of the herd, no matter what he did. Their daily trips to the promontory to graze was the only time he could get away from the warm soup that had become his life.
When he returned on the third day, it hit him even harder. He wasn't very pleased with returning, and immediately sought out the person with the cleanse card.
Then, once he was clean, it only took five minutes for him to sweat through his clothes again.
It was a hard to accept this change. The dwarves were no help in this matter, as they just lounged around all day in between working shifts on deck.
It wasn't until the fourth day that the began to see signs that the ocean would be ending.
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"Fishing boats," Bob said.
"You're sure?" Anthony said.
"They're not flying a country flag. They have fishing nets. What else could they be doing?"
The two men looked down.
"It could be a pleasure boat?" Anthony said.
"With the threat of sea monsters so high? That would be nuts."
Behind them, Valerie coughed.
"When you say nuts, you refer to general craziness, correct?" she said. "And not male gonads specifically."
"Yes. That would be deez nuts, not just nuts," Anthony said. "What? Someone had to teach her right."
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Bob gave him a blank state.
"Please stop teaching the queen bad slang."
"Better watch out for the mind goblins!" Valerie said, snorting.
The three of them shared a silly moment.
"All right, who should we send there to talk to them?" Bob said.
"Gigi? She has a water bending card. It will keep her safe. Not like they will know much. The important thing is that we are not heading to a continent with an active zombie outbreak."
"I'll get her," Valerie said.
"This ought to be good. Do you want to send anyone with her? Finley, maybe?" Bob said. "Where is he?"
"I think he's trying to pretend we're not up in the air. Yeah, Finley would be a good option. He might speak their language. I'll get him."
The pygmy goat and elf were quickly rustled up. Bob explained the game plan.
"You want me to do what?" he said.
"First contact," Bob said.
"There are more than ten Chosen and you want to send me to talk to some fishermen?" he said. The elf was not impressed.
"And bring your great talker with you. She said that she knew the lizard tongue," Bob said. "If they don't speak common then we will be a bit lost."
The pygmy goat turned her neck, putting her indifference on display.
"I'll take that as a tacit understanding that you understand what we're looking for," Anthony said.
"You're coming with me though, hero," Finley said. "That's part of our contract."
"So long as you two do all of the talking until we can figure out what's going on. They look like they are humanoid at least," Bob said. "You go with them Anthony."
Anthony sighed, already stripping off his gambeson. He replaced it with a thin white shirt. He took a second to put his hair into a man bun before facing them all again. He was super pleased that his chest of clothes were in the operations office.
"I might as well be comfortable, then."
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The airship lowered them enough. Anthony and Gigi both had water bending cards. Despite having all four of the affinity cards, Finley had only really used the air bending one. When they jumped off the rope to land in the waves and surf their way to the large fishing boat, he used a bit of canvas to propel himself down.
It worked far better than he had expected. The humans laughed a bit, and he felt like he was recreating some romance novels plot where the duke’s son jumps out of a tower to meet his lover. Except for all the water, it felt similar. He didn't even fall that much.
The three lizardfolk in the boat watched the two people arriving step off the airship and then the third arrived via the air. Their stoic expression betrayed nothing. These were shrewd negotiators.
He needed to not come across too eager. He heard how the lizard folk tribes were very insular places, not really leaving their little fiefdoms unless they needed to.
"Pardon our rude interruption," Finley said, speaking in common. "We come from Noveria with terrible news of a calamity. Please tell us that the thirteen tribes have not been affected."
The three lizard men looked to each other briefly.
"A calamity? And you arrived by air?" he said. Finley was sure that the yellow lizard tongue darted between a row of sharp teeth. "This is terrible news."
According to the lizardmen, they were further out from the normal because they were looking for certain kinds of deep-water fish. They took in the tale of the zombies on Noveria with a solemn note.
Meeting actual living enlightened was refreshing. In a short time, they found out that the calamity had not struck Sunderland.
"There have been no outbreaks of zombies on the southern continent. We would have heard of it," the one called Zac said. He was the captain of their fishing crew and had been very interested in their story.
"Even if it was far away, we head to several ports with news, but this? This is new and it explains the complete absence of orcish and human goods," his companion, Gary said.
Finley shrunk to the deck, hearing this. He would have a place for his horses after all. The relief was palpable.
He could rest.
"This is true? We've traveled across a continent, fought our way past several cities and..." he said.
"Be calm, old one," Zac said. "You will find a safe place in Sunderland. If not among the Bright Tails, then with another tribe. I would hear all of your adventures, but alas I am not here for pleasure."
"We may need to cut out expedition short, boss," Gary said.
Both lizard men had brought yellow tails that trailed behind them, although they didn't appear to do much. He would have to find out, his only exposure to the lizard folk was the one roving Tinker trader that had grown up on Novaria.
"The more you can spread the word, the better this will be. We are going to try to take back the continent. I would need every single spear that we can get," Anthony said.
The two lizardmen talked between themselves for a bit. They looked like they were interested in helping out, but the price was probably a little bit too high.
"Even if you're not the ones that help us, can you help us recruit more people?" Anthony said. "Once we get to Sunderland, we're going to try to recruit people and we need to find out where the dwarven legion is."
"The dwarven legion?" Zac said, scratching his chin. "I haven't the foggiest idea, apologies."
There's a little bit more talk about the specific specifics of what they were trying to get out there. And that was when Finley had the idea to pay for some of their food for the first time in a long time.
"You say you're fishing, correct?" Finley said. "I can see a bunch of sea bass in there. I have many hungry mouths above me. Do you also cook what you catch?"
"We could cook it. We have a galley but perhaps ours would be smaller than whatever you have up there. Are you interested in buying some extremely fresh fish?"
I did that note, finally left over to see that several of the fish were still jumping around. He couldn't remember the last time that he had good fish. But those fish right now in front of him? They looked so delicious that he would eat them raw.
"Maybe you could just quickly explain how you would cook them, and I think I'll buy enough to feed about forty dwarves," Finley said.
"Make that fifty," Gigi said, smiling.
By this time, the airship stopped in a circular waiting pattern above them so they could easily be pulled back up when they were done.
"I can pay you in common and uncommon cards. I have a very special card that I've made several of that I think that your crew would get great use out of. Would you like to have the card that two companions use to get into this boat?"
"Yes, what was that? Several of us were trying to figure out what it was," Zac said. "If you have two of those cards, then I'll even toss in some of our favorite spices so that you can really make something good out of them. These do well with the light coating of salt. You can get a good amount of salt just from refining it from the ocean, but we already have it ready for you."
Finley turned out his pockets and found two water bending cards. Then he grabbed an air bending one.
"Because you gave us all that information and have been so nice so far, I'm going to throw on this third card... which, well you can see what it does."
Zac's face bulged at the three cards he was staring at. Finley knew the thoughts that were going through his mind. He had seen what was possible with these cards and now he held three of them in his hands.
"This will do very nicely sir," he said. " Now let me prepare a basket for you guys. Do you have a way of signaling a ship?"
"I can handle this part," Gigi said. Above her, a smattering of nautical flags appeared as she faced the Queen's Con. Neither had no tails of it but he knew that one on the door was on board. Wouldn't understand their message. Before long a rope was dropped down and Gigi brought a basket over to hook up to it.
"And you say you made these all yourself? This is impressive. I am very certain that you'd be able to sell these very easily back in Sunderland. And if you had a lot of card charts you'd be able to make even more?"
"The right card shards will help me make more. Those bending cards are all uncommon."
"Finley, my dear traveling sales elf. I've never sold fish to someone while I was still on my boat, so this is the first for me. Thank you for that. But I do have a cousin back on the mainland which if you're going straight South you'll hit very shortly, who would be interested in buying more from you. I won't be there in time, but if you find autos and Magical Emporium, you might want to go and check out his wears. He's in making a decent living off of selling cards for a while and I expect that he will want to offer you a better deal than I could possibly provide."
Finley smiled. Finally, a chance to check his skills.