Chapter 1: Shuttle to Nowhere

"Having gleaned wisdom from our venerable Codes, I am making this proclamation: Piracy as you know it will be eradicated within the decade, and it will be done by my hand."

-Bron Silvers, Minister of Glory (181 U.E)

Stephan Lordling hated kneeling.

It was a ways better than dying, of course, but excruciating all the same.

His knees ached from hours spent pressed against the corrugated metal floor. His legs were on the verge of going numb, and in a way that might have been better. His wrists were rubbed raw and bloody from the steel shackles clamped around them.

At this point, however, it was nothing less than expected. Rote, even.

Stephan yawned. He wished he could lean back to have a nap. During the night, they allowed his chain enough slack for him to lay down and catch some sleep, but only then.

It was a strange feeling, being the only slave on a slaver ship. There had been others, of course, but they had all been sold off fifteen days ago. He had kept count of the days, tried as best he could to calculate the distance traveled since his capture. His mind was the only thing he still had any power over.

The slavers hadn’t kept him because of his usefulness to their ends, or because of any intrinsic talent that would make him ideal for high-end purchase. Not even beauty—perhaps least of all that. There was something else that made him valuable.

Stephan was a diplomat of the Concord, of slightly higher strategic value than the common soldier.

Which meant that they could ransom him.

At least, they should have been able to ransom him. However, it had been more than three weeks since his capture. He had a hard time understanding the slavers’ dialect, but could only assume that something had gone wrong.

Which made him wonder:

Just how long will they keep me alive before they lose patience?

The floor of the skyship was set to a constant rattle, shaken by the thumping engine. He had seen the ship only once from the outside as it was approaching, just before his own vessel was boarded. Almost all his compatriots had been killed in the exchange.

The slaver ship was large and blocky, with stubby wings and suitable armaments to cripple any smaller vessel. It ran on a steady stream of anima which powered the engine and utilities, keeping it afloat like a massive bird of prey.

The ship had a large crew, and there was always a buzz of activity on the main deck. Stephan was kept in the makeshift brig there, his shackles attached to an iron bar that was soldered to the floor.

The captain was yelling at the pilot in the adjoining cockpit using urgent gestures, voice raised. Two other men stood close by, chuckling at the conversation.

The captain was easy to pick out from the rest of the crew because of his red robes, whereas the others wore white.

They spoke Ashlandic, which Stephan was passably fluent in. Unfortunately, most of the crew—including the captain—had an Umani dialect, which was notoriously difficult to decipher. In the weeks he had spent on the ship, he had only been able to overhear a few words and phrases.

He strained his hearing to listen in on the captain’s conversation, but couldn’t make out anything of value.

There were shuffling footsteps from the staircase leading to the hold. Stephan looked over his shoulder and saw a heavy-set, tanned Ashlander come up the stairs with a metal tray in both hands.

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The mere sight of that tray made Stephan’s skin go cold and clammy, and his stomach wrenched with the desire to vomit.

A nasty, lopsided smile crossed the slaver’s face as he approached Stephan, no doubt noticing the disgust on his face.

Stephan had taken to calling this particular specimen ‘Donkey’, on account of his disproportionately large front teeth. Donkey was one of his most frequent abusers. He had suffered more than a dozen beatings at his hands. The man seemed to enjoy it a great deal.

Donkey placed the tray on the floor and kicked it. It slid across the floor, and Stephan stopped it with shackled hands when it reached him.

There was a brownish-grey slop in a bowl on top of the tray. Presumably, it was supposed to be gruel of some kind, but the oats had clearly long since spoiled. There were some black spots in the half-cold slop. Stephan would rather not guess what those were, but some of them seemed to be moving.

Next to the gruel was a stale heel of bread, as well as a mug of foggy water.

“Thank you,” Stephan said and forced a courteous smile. He figured that if he built some kind of rapport with his captors, that would give him a better chance of surviving.

The slaver grinned. He lifted up his white robes and pulled down his waistband.

“Special ingredient,” he said in butchered Attean.

A steady stream of sour-smelling piss spattered into the gruel bowl.

Stephan screwed up his face and shuffled away from the tray as far as he could.

The slaver simply laughed and walked off once he was finished with the humiliation.

Stephan sighed. He settled back on his heels. Like every day, he contemplated escape.

The slavers had searched him before bringing him onto the ship, but they had allowed him to keep his glasses. Big mistake on their part. He had folded them into the breast pocket of his suit to spare them being broken during a random beating.

He had already gone over all his options several times, but he did it once more, just on the slightest off chance that he had missed something.

He could try and get out of his shackles, but he was no vivimancer with the strength of ten men. He would need a key, but the only one who had them was the captain, and he had not been able to get within spitting distance of the man since coming aboard.

The other option was dislodging the metal bar by which his shackles were fastened from the floor, but he ran into the same problem there. He wasn’t a mage, or a soldier, or anyone noteworthy. Just a diplomat who had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Stephan had even considered breaking his own fingers to get out of the shackles, but once he was free, running around a skyship in the middle of the ocean filled with slavers, hands broken, he couldn’t see any possible way that things would resolve in his favor.

If he cracked his glasses, the broken enchantment would discharge a small amount of anima. The energy released wouldn’t kill or even injure someone, but it would perhaps be enough to start a small fire. Maybe, if he could just…

The pilot screamed something, seemingly unrelated to his argument with the captain. The latter turned around with a startled look on his face. He set his jaw, put on a brave face, and started barking orders to his men.

Stephan couldn’t make much out. He was only able to catch a single word.

‘Pirates’.

Donkey, halfway to the staircase leading to the lower deck, froze mid-step. He ran over to one of the circular windows and pressed his face against it.

The other five men on the main deck—excluding the pilot—fumbled for their weapons. Three were armed with pistols, including the captain. The other two brandished hatchets.

A dull boom sounded, and the whole ship shook. Donkey stumbled. Another impact made him fall on his ass.

Stephan couldn’t help but grin at the man’s misfortune.

Getting killed by pirates sounds like a better fate than being starved to death by slavers.

Right in front of him, the world split in half. Reality tore away, revealing a nothingness that was blacker than the darkest night, ringed by a vortex of swirling, purple energy.

Stephan frowned. He fished the enchanted glasses out of his pocket and put them on, the world snapping into perfect focus.

The strange void, however, didn’t go away. It was no trick of the eye.

A woman stepped out of the nothingness. No, a girl, perhaps in her early teens. Her skin was a deep green, and her eyes were large, black prisms. Her hair was long, the same color as her eyes. She brandished a straight, short sword in each hand.

Donkey looked back over his shoulder and his mouth gaped open in a wide O.

The girl took a second to survey the deck, then smiled.

She pushed off the ground, moving with incredible speed. She flipped in the air and landed on the ceiling, then pushed off again.

She hit the ground in a crouch next to Donkey, and the man’s head came clean off, still frozen in a dumb look of surprise. The head rolled across the deck and bumped against Stephan’s knee.

Donkey stared up at him with dead eyes.