Chapter 8
Henry was busy tinkering with the ballistae that Victor built when the ship was being built when he stopped and looked up, confused. “We already there?” he queried loudly.
“Yes. we are now at the Dragon’s Corpse, the place where we have to pick our path to journey onwards.” said Levi. She was looking at the cloudy sky, which obscured the suns’ glow and the gleaming of the ring above them.
“Ah, I remember this place. It had the best bar for miles around, and they sold the best mead here as well. Mind if we stop for some provisions?”, begged Henry.
“Alright, when Victor and Silk awake. I’ll stay up again until daytime. I’m not that tired, and it’s been about 5 weeks since you joined up, so I’d say I’m rested up enough for another all day-er.”
“All day-er?”
“It’s like an all nighter for nocturnal and crepuscular species. We have to alter our schedule sometimes to accommodate you humans and elves’ diurnal schedule.
Just as Levi was going to explain her sleep schedule some more, Bundo spotted a massive structure up ahead.
“Bundo sees the Dragon’s Corpse Island!”, he stated excitedly. Sure enough, a massive rocky island showed, it’s massive spiked mountains revealing themselves to be nothing more than teeth on what used to be the most vicious beast in the Omnic Empire.
“I’ve been reading up on the folklore about this place. Want to hear it?”, offered Silk.
“Yo. Henry. DO NOT pass up an opportunity for Silk’s Storytime. It’s awesome”, said Victor, who suddenly popped out of nowhere seemingly instantaneously.
“GAAH where the hell did you come from”, shrieked Henry in a startled manner.
“You get used to it eventually. He wasn’t a thief for seven years for no reason, you know. He did it so he could learn dumb tricks like that”, said Silk offhandedly. “Anyways, here goes my recounting of the supposed origins of the Dragon’s Corpse.”
“Long ago, in the days when the Omnic Empire was not yet made, there existed Three Supreme Leaders. There was Ket, the Sage who was said to be the most knowledgeable being on the planet and studied under the Radiant King when he was leading humanity. There was Heraktus, the Warrior who was one of the first beastkin to ever exist and had Ket implant traits of every creature into him. And there was Balareth, the Ambassador who was the first being to contract with the Uranium elemental. These three powers were constantly at war - well, not really, but their underlings really hated each other and kept killing each other whenever they decided to chill out or whatever they did on their off time - and much bloodshed ensued. Only until a grand dragon, taking up the mantle of the Leviathan threatened the planet did they team up and decide to kill it. A massive battle ensued, with Balareth said to have ended several stars somehow. At any rate, the Leviathan was eventually killed by Balareth weakening it, Heraktus restraining it and Ket making some sort of weapon that could kill it. It is said that the weapon was so mighty, it destroyed the “moons” that were around our world and turned it into the ring above us. Falling down out of space, the beast shunk until it was merely the size of an island, it’s bones still intact and joined together into a massive structure that fused with the earth. On its corpse, they made the third and final city that housed one of the three factions for the Omnic Empire, Arcnest. It housed politicians on that weird bone crown thing we see right now, in fact. But that’s just what I read from Scinticius, most of it is probably myth.”
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With that massive amount of information being piled on to the crew, they stayed silent until they bumped onto the harbor inside one of the thing’s mile-high eye sockets, the inside of it’s skull housing a beautiful city with a small hole leading up to the surface. The air pleasantly humid and warm, the massive cave seemed to be illuminated by the massive amounts of glowing gems under the water. Each of them must be the famed Glowshards, said to be the tears of the Leviathan as it succumbed to the Sage’s weapon. Inside the skull, a massive metropolis was encircling the inside of the now-dead being’s cranium, lines of buildings spiraling up with wooden walkways making up the floor, giving the appearance of layered balconies with a small hole leading up to the surface.
Levi, Silk, Victor and Henry all oohed and aahed over this sight, with Levi using her quick drawing skills to make a surprisingly realistic sketch within the span of a couple seconds to commemorate this event. The gems sparkled deep below, giving a shimmering effect that illuminated the roof of the caves in a brilliant shine, the normal sea of clouds somehow changing into a lake of water, refracting it to make rippling lattices of light on the ceiling. They then drifted, their anchor too buoyant in the artificial lake to do anything but float there ineffectually. After an awkward silence, a team of scraggly-looking street rats took the anchor and tied it to a post, obviously used to their unfamiliarity with sailing on water.
Everyone except Bundo (who was currently riding atop an armored Fluffy while wearing some sort of miniature plate mail) walked aboard the pier, with Bundo majestically having his steed trot onto the deck.
“Okay, who let Bundo read one of my chivalric romance books? I told you guys he would try to imitate one of the knight-errants” said Silk in an exasperated tone.
Victor, always an agent of chaos, simply laughed maniacally, his demented chuckling proof of his nefarious intentions. Bundo simply looked proud, imitating one of the knight-errants of old to pay homage to the historical warriors.
“Okay, Bundo aside, I’d say we follow our plan, and do what prompted us to leave scinticius three years earlier than we planned: we can now leave the Archipelago Basin. That’s right, the weird walls above us that put us in some weird valley in the sea can now be traversed, with some weird tech guy saying he found a way for us to sail up those cloudfalls. I think we have enough money to do so if we sell the ancient relics we looted from when Batrascu absolutely wrecked us, so let’s get our ship upgraded. Who’s with me?” said Victor excitedly. Indeed, the reason that so much of their world was unexplored was because they were stuck behind these massive cloudfall barriers in some weird basin, miles below where people estimated most of the world was. It was not three months ago that it was announced, and they left the same week the news got to Scinticius. Now, they were going to go to the skies and sail, searching for Gold, Glamour and Glory untold. All they had to do was get enough money to do so.
“100000 credits is the going rate. Take it or leave it, it’s the standard value as proven by the Merchant’s Guild”, said the shopkeeper. His red fur and whiskers indicated he was a beastkin, and his spectacles indicated his wealth and age with an equal amount of confidence. Handing over the ancient statues, data cards, and Omnic jewelry, he handed a large bag of Omnic Tiles in exchange.
“Holy crap, we’re rich!” whispered Victor. They hadn’t gotten this much money since Victor nearly crashed Scinticius’s economy with some weird form of stealing that he called “white-collar crime”, then used it to build their ship by buying a ship junkyard.
“This should be more than enough to furnish our ship with those weird blast-rockets!”
“Alright then. Let’s get going.”
The crew, following closely, went up from the shop they found and climbed a ladder to the Crown of Leviathan, the city of Arcnest proper. Inhabited by the upper crust of society, it was said that a ruler of a city was nothing more than a citizen when they lived in one of their gleaming sterile mansions. Blending in with the bleached bone, they found a domed building that handed out licenses for various weapons-grade technology for naval vessels. Inside, a bored beauracrat took an exorbitant 30,000 Tiles for a liscense, and directed them back to the underground belly of the city to acquire the blast-rockets. As they walked up to a gruff, bearded blacksmith, they were prepared. Also, they were going to have 10,000 tiles left to splurge on, even after the amount needed for supplies.
“That’s going to be 69,420 Omnic Tiles.”
Victor sniggered.
The blacksmith sighed. “The creator of these things insisted on making that the price and wouldn’t let anyone sell them if they didn’t sign a contract allowing it. Just give me the money.”
“Nice.” said victor and silk in unison before high-fiving each other.
“Ugh, okay. Thanks for the money. Let me install the stuff on your crapper of a ship.”
“Oh no, it’s fine. Just allow me, I’m sure I could install it” offered Victor.
“Alright, but it’s your funeral”
With that, Victor began installing the “engines”, as they were called, into their patchwork of a ship. The others began getting supplies and luxuries, with Silk heading to a bookstore and Bundo heading over to an armory to fully deck out his knightly regalia. Their journey had now officially begun.