“Watch it! Watch it!”
Duman was shouting and standing right behind Faro who was fanatically maneuvering their airship, now nicknamed the fat lady, against a pair of giant eagles. Its sharp talons had already scratched the airship several times. If it wasn’t for the armor plates, it would have probably gone down already due to deflation.
“These are too fast for me to react properly!” Faro exclaimed with his forehead streaked with sweat. “I think we may need to land! We can’t go on like this!”
Duman growled in frustration because he wanted the airship to land at the foot of Siwen mountain. If they landed now, they had about half a day to travel on foot before reaching the initial destination. At the same time, Faro wasn’t wrong. No matter how good a pilot may be, there was no way to handle two flying creatures in the air. They were at a disadvantage already because, for the eagles, the sky was their literal playground.
“Can we land even at this point?”
“I will do my best!”
Every time the airship was struck by talons, it made loud and disturbing screeching sounds and veered widely left or right. Its attacks were concentrated on the armored balloon part of the ship as if they were acutely aware that it was the weakest point.
“Try landing!” he exclaimed while trying to keep balance to himself because the airship was listing sideways. “What’s happening?!”
“I think one of them grabbed onto an armor plate!”
“Damn it!” He dashed out of the cockpit and alarmed those on the deck. “We’ve got an eagle on the ship! Get it off!”
Meizei rushed to the door and bashed it open to find a giant eagle having its talons grabbing onto an armor plate. It looked as if it was trying to rip it off. The resin hardened stitches were holding firm, however.
“Duman! This is your job!” She shouted. “Get your crossbow ready!”
Casting magic was possible, but friendly fire was an issue. A crossbow was a clean way to deal with the eagle, she determined. He rushed over with a loaded crossbow at once, and she stepped sideways to make room.
“Fucking bird!” He made a swift aim and made a shot. A bolt hit its belly from below. It squeaked in pain, and its dark brown feathers were starting to get drenched in blood. However, it didn’t let go of the armor plate.
“Mei, do something while I reload the crossbow!”
“I’ve got it!” It was Ayaan, however. He had throwing knives in between his fingers. Both Duman and Meizei made a way for him to throw. “Take that, bitch!” Alas, it didn’t look like it made any impact. “Bah! A thick skin, eh?” He, then, threw his sword which pierced its skin. This time, the eagle let go and took off, diving downwards.
“Tell the kid to make a quick landing. I don’t think we are going to be able to take too many grabs like that!”
“Yeah, no kidding. Is the armor plate okay?”
Meizei popped her head out to have a look. “Looks fine to me. They did an impressive job. I thought it’d come off for sure.”
The armor plate coming off wasn’t much of an issue, but the fragile linen part being exposed was. Since the stitches were coated with resin, even if it was ripped off, the resin residue would still seal the tiny holes somewhat. The airship wouldn’t lose much buoyancy noticeably as long as the damage was just a few plates.
“Okay, it looks like we are descending,” Duman remarked.
“How far is the mountain?” Meizei asked.
“About half a day by foot.”
“That’s far.”
“Maybe, we can still sail the ship just right above the ground?” Roseline suggested. “Better than walking.”
Both Duman and Meizei blinked their eyes, realizing gradually that it wasn’t such a bad idea. After informing Faro of the idea, the fat lady descended down until it was about three meters from the ground, which was high enough that no ordinary monsters would be able to attack them. It would glide at a slow pace after then. The giant eagles were much more reluctant to descend so far down to the ground although they did dive a few times to grab the airship. Whenever they did, Duman and the others jumped off the ship and retaliated with a crossbow and magic. This would go on until the sun was going down into the horizon, at which point they decided to rest for the night as well and not proceed further. The giant eagles weren’t nocturnal creatures to their benefit. Anchoring the airship, they had a short discussion as they had dinner on the deck.
“What can we expect at the mountain? I don’t think any of us has gone there,” said Duman while chewing a strip of boar jerky.
“Nobody has a reason to go there to begin with,” Meizei replied.
Siwen mountain was off limits for people due to the presence of strange and strong monsters. Basically, the difficulty scale shot up at the mountain and, with little reason to venture into, no adventurers went there willingly.
“I’ve gone there a few times,” Ayaan replied, which grabbed everyone’s attention. “Some self-proclaimed scholar wanted rocks and stuff from the mountain. No one was willing to go and the reward was okay, so I took it.”
“Well, well, what do you know. What did you encounter?” Folding arms, Duman asked.
“A lot of weird monsters I had never seen before. I don’t think we have names for those.” He did describe what he encountered. “There was an orc-like one with glowing red patterns on its skin. Maybe, we call it a fire orc or something.”
“A fire orc, eh. Makes sense since it’s an active volcano.”
“There was also a very large snake that breathed fire. Very nimble and agile things. I don’t know whether it’s poisonous, though.”
“So, basically anything we are going to find over there is going to have some degree of fire magic,” Roseline concluded. “How large were the snakes?”
Ayaan pointed at Duman.
“You can’t be serious,” she uttered.
“It was a long time ago. My memories cannot be trusted.”
“Still, it had to be pretty big.”
“Which is why I pointed at the big dud.”
Duman raised his voice timidly. “Hey, calling me a dud? I am anything but that.” Then he chuckled. Being inside of a wooden ship, it wasn’t possible to have a campfire going on. Instead, they had a fire-crystal campfire which was another small invention by Cezary. Essentially, there was a large iron bowl where they’d place a fist-sized fire crystal, and it had four short legs to place it above the floor. While it didn’t get as hot as natural fire, it was good enough to make hot water and roast meat as well as provide warmth. Faro was the last one to join because he had to make sure that the ship was properly anchored and all controls were locked so that it wouldn’t veer off on its own due to wind and other elements. Amanda handed a strip of boar jerky to him as soon as he sat down.
“Good work, kid. We made it down intact.”
“I almost pooped myself,” he joked, although it wasn’t too far from the truth. He peed a little in fact. They laughed pleasantly regardless.
“Something like that is common in our line of work,” Amanda told him while gently patting on his back. “You will get used to it.”
It wasn’t growing the nerve of steel; it was just getting used to danger.
“So, anyway, the basic plan is to push our way through the mountain trail, reach the top, poke the dragon in the eye, and we get the hell out of there, right?” Duman laid out his plan which was as basic as it could get.
“Why don’t we have Faro to pick us up at the top?” Roseline suggested. “Making our way down may not even be possible.”
Faro sank his shoulders, recalling the horror he had to endure a moment ago. He said timidly, “Um, I am not sure if I can make it through the eagles…”
“Our lives may depend on this, Faro,” Roseline said firmly. She was fairly certain that they could reach the top. But getting out alive after provoking the dragon was one big question mark. Without knowing what a dragon was capable of, they were going in there blindfolded, which was something Roseline loathed to do.
“I, I need some practice. Would it be possible for us to run into the eagles again?”
Roseline glanced at Duman who was considering his request. “You think that’s the best way, Rose?”
“We know nothing about dragons. What if it casts spells we don’t even know? We poke him as you say and we get out is probably the best way.”
“So, get the kid to learn piloting and then we climb up. That’s the gist, yeah?” Ayaan said.
“We may need to repair the airship as well. Thankfully, they gave us some repair materials in the storage,” Meizei added.
The airship was about to get some beating indeed. After finishing their meals, they went under deck into their rooms for some sleep. Faro was the only exception whose rooms were the cockpit and the crystal storage compartment which he needed to check before getting some shut-eye somewhere in a corner. The storage compartment was the heart of the airship. It was where wind crystals were installed to provide air. Fire crystals were used to heat air for buoyancy. These needed to be checked daily absolutely to ensure that the airship did not run out of “fuel” midday. The storage compartment looked like a rudimentary boiler room with lots of crates stacked on top of each other on side walls. The crates were secured by nails so that they wouldn’t fly off and bash things. In the back, there was the boiler, a water tank-shaped black metal contraption with a square door in front with several pipes coming out from its top. It was where he’d store at least one fire crystal inside after cracking it with a small hammer. Opening its door, he found two fire crystals that looked almost depleted. Putting on a mitten, he grabbed the two almost-depleted fire crystals and placed them in a copper container for them to be depleted safely. Then, grabbing a pair of new fire crystals, he placed them into the boiler after cracking it with a small hammer. The crystals began to glow in red rapidly, and he threw them into the boiler at once before they’d get too hot.
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“Okay, done for the night. I am gonna get some shut eye.”
The storage compartment was the warmest part of the ship, so he sat down in a corner and dragged a blanket nearby to cover himself. He began to snore almost instantly. It had been a long day for him or for anyone else for that matter.
“Woah! WOAH!” Duman and the others were rolling and flying about on the deck. The airship was heavily veering left and right non-stop. At one point, they felt as if the ship flipped upside down for a moment.
“The fuck is going on here?!” Ayaan, crawling out of the stairs, shouted with his eyes bloodshot.
“It’s the giant eagles! We’ve got several on us!” Roseline shouted in response. She had her sword pierced into the wooden floor and was holding onto it.
They were meant to give Faro a chance to hone his pilot skills. But this wasn’t the moment because they had just taken off early in the morning and were going to approach the mountain closer before conducting the training session. Therefore, everyone was caught off-guard when about six giant eagles dove in to assault the airship. It seemed like they were waiting for the sun to provide light.
“Tell him to stop the ship and descend! We can’t take this many!” Meizei shouted in a corner with both of her arms providing just enough friction not to roll off. The trouble was that somebody had to reach the cockpit, and that wasn’t going to be an easy task with everything shaking left and right violently. Letting go of whatever they were holding onto was a dangerous act because bouncing off walls had deadly consequences.
“I’ve got this!” Ayaan shouted as he used his throwing knives as steps to crawl forward at a very slow pace. His body was lifted up and down violently as the ship twirled around, but he held on. “Fucking hell, well, we sighed up for this shit, didn’t we all!”
“That’s fucking right!” Duman replied.
Slowly but surely, he made it out of the deck and eventually crawled into the cockpit.
“Hey, kid! Get this down! We are -” He was flabbergasted as he looked up to find Faro not present at the wheel. Instead, he was knocked out in a corner with some blood on the floor. On a quick glance, it looked like he bashed his head and lost consciousness.
“Well, that explains the rough ride!” While Faro was the designated pilot, everyone in the group knew the basics of flight. Therefore, he jumped onto the widely free spinning wheel and steadied the ship, or at least he tried. He was almost knocked off by the sheer force of the feedback from the control wheel.
“No wonder he got knocked off!” He pushed a lever down which meant rapid descent. Thankfully, the airship wasn’t a type of airborne vessel that could nosedive. All it did was just lose its altitude fast by releasing hot air en masse.
“Ugh…” Moaning painfully, Faro was starting to regain consciousness. “Ouch…, my head…”
“Kid! Get up! I need some help here!”
“.... What?” He was quite confused for a moment as if he had completely forgotten what he was doing or even where he was. Blinking his eyes a few times to take everything in, his eyes shot up soon enough. “Ah!” Touching the back of his head, he found his hand blooded. Not minding that, he got on his four immediately and crawled toward the controls. It didn’t take long to see the altitude lever all the way down.
“Why is the lever down?”
“We’ve gotta get down. I don’t think we can take it.”
“Then you must lower the landing legs!”
There was a small lever next to the altitude lever on the control podium which he dragged down with haste. Pretty much as soon as he hit the lever, there was a loud thud as the airship made an abrupt landing with a lot of creaking and whatnot.
“I hope nothing is too damaged,” he wondered. It did sound like several things got broken at the rough landing. Then he heard shouting and peal-calls from the giant eagles. Ayaan had already dashed out of the cockpit at the moment. Duman and the others had already jumped out of the ship and were already engaging the eagles. Faro, after having applied first aid on the back of his head, grabbed a crossbow and jumped out of the airship himself to find a giant eagle already down on the ground with several bolts to its head. And another eagle was engulfed in flames due to Amenda’s fireball. It fell to the ground and rolled around to rid itself from fire, but Ayaan jumped on its head and shoved his sword into its eye and through its skull. With two of them going down quickly, the rest of eagles circled around them cautiously before eventually flying away. The battle was over before Faro could get a shot.
“Tsk…” He was disappointed.
“Do we gather the feathers? These patch some coins, no?” Ayaan asked aloud while sitting on top of the head of a dead eagle.
“Don’t bother. Money isn’t a priority right now,” Duman replied.
When they finally had a chance to inspect the airship, the damages were clear. There were numerous heavily dented armor plates. Three armor plates had fallen off entirely, exposing the weak linen surface. Talon scratches were all over on the ship part as well. While it sustained a lot of damages, most were cosmetic only although the armor plates would need to be put back ASAP.
“Man, this thing is tough. I will give it that much,” Meizei said, sounding impressed. “I thought the airship was done for sure.”
Faro was inspecting the landing legs. Three of them were fine. A front landing leg appeared to have taken full brunt of landing force and had snapped in half with the broken part found not far.
“Fixable,” he said. “With a hammer and nails.” He was an ex-carpenter after all. He may have not been excellent at it, but his experience was going to assist him.
Either way, they had pretty much crash-landed in the middle of deadland with Siwen mountain not far from where they were. There was a dense cloud of dark gray smoke coming out from the top of the mountain which was heavily obstructing the sunline, making the whole area dark enough as if a severe thunderstorm was about to hit. Duman called for others to gather to discuss what their plans were going to be.
“We aren’t far from the mountain, and monsters don’t appear to be present around here. I think we will walk,” he declared. This meant that Faro would be left behind. “Kid, can you fix up the ship alone while we are away?”
“I thought we were going to get me a training session,” he replied, tilting his head slightly.
“Nah, don’t think that’s gonna work out. You fix the ship or at least try. Get her up and try to spot us from afar.”
It was initially suggested that Faro would have two more helpers to operate the airship, but Duman rejected the idea; he wanted a lean crew. He never told anyone why, but the reason was to give Faro the full credit if he survived.
“Keep eyes on us and, when we need to get the fuck out, help us. Sounds simple, right?”
He dropped his head with his shoulders sagging. “I am not sure. I got knocked out this time. I don’t think I am good at anything.”
“True, you ain’t good at anything.”
His eyes went wide at Duman’s words, and the others looked at him, looking surprised.
“But sometimes a man has to do what he has to do no matter how fucked he is. We are much better than you. Yet, we will have to count on you for getting us out.”
He wasn’t sure what to say.
“Pull this one for us, and nobody will tell you that you are useless, like ever. You have one job to do. Do it, and you shall be a hero.”
“One job…,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, one job. This one will require good timing, intuition, guts, and fucking everything.”
Duman approached him and placed his hand on his shoulder. His rugged hand had seen pretty much every hardship this world had to offer.
“We will be counting on you. Without you, none of us will make out alive.”
Faro narrowed his eyes at once.
“None of us might make out alive,” Roseline repeated to him.
“You might be the only one returning home, yeah,” Meizei said casually.
“Aren’t you afraid of dying? Why are you doing this? Faro asked aloud, looking around frantically.
“Why are you doing this then, kiddo?” Ayaan asked with a serious look. “We are all after the same thing, to be called heroes. Money and fame, yeah, they are good. But this is something above that.”
“I hope that our names will be recorded at least. For that someone has to survive and return home,” Roseline said with a weak smile. “To put a proper period mark on this adventure. Otherwise, who knows what kind of nonsense they might write about this.”
Tears welled up in his eyes immediately. “I don’t want any of you to die,” he said with his shoulders shaking slightly. He started to sob. “All of you are like my family to me.”
Duman and the others beamed smiles at him.
“We are adventurers. Therefore, we always state a realistic chance of survival. Kid, I guarantee that not all of us will make it back,” Duman said with a smile.
“Probably only one or two of us will survive. And that is only with your help,” Roseline said, again with a smile. Then Ayaan laughed pleasantly with Amanda smiling as well. Faro, his eyes full of tears, looked around with his face mangled and streaked with tears.
“How can you smile at a time like this? It feels like all of you are going to your doom.”
“We are, probably,” Duman replied.
“Then why go?”
“The risk versus the reward, kiddo,” Ayaan replied. “This is the highest risk anyone can ever take. The reward? The world.”
“The world indeed,” Roseline added. “If I can come back alive, I will be able to dedicate my life to research.”
“We can get married finally,” Meizei approached Duman, and he grabbed her by the waist. Looking at each other, they beamed big grins at each other.
“I will be able to get myself a decent man,” said Amanda.
“Likewise, I will be able to able to fuck a noble woman,” said Ayaan with a loud chuckle. Amanda rolled her eyes, looking fed up.
“I don’t understand how you can be all so … positive,” Faro said, sobbing slightly because he felt that what they desired was mundane things.
Duman explained with Meizei in his arms, “You have to be positive in a situation like this. Death tends to avoid laying fingers on those who are not afraid of it.”
“At the same time, it’s said that stupidity equals bravery,” Roseline said with a chuckle. After another round of laughter, they went in to grab their gears and prepared themselves for departure. As Duman led the others toward the mountain, Amanda paused and turned around briefly to look at Faro who was still sobbing. She waved brightly before turning back and joined the others. He fell to his knees and cried for a while. When he had calmed down, they were too far away to be seen anymore.
“They left. They … really left.”
After a moment of silence, he bit his lips and clenched his fists on his thighs.
“... I have to do this. I have to save them.”
His voice was determined, and there was fire in his eyes.
“This is not about me. It’s not about them, either. I have one job to do and I will succeed this time.”
Looking up, he heaved a long sigh. “So far, I’ve been only a failure, but failure is not an option for me this time. I will succeed. I have to. I just have to. I don’t have the option to fail.”
Slapping both of his cheeks powerfully, he dashed into the airship to grab his tools to repair the airship in any way he could. He repaired the snapped landing leg first and then used a ladder to climb up to reattach armor plates with a sewing kit. Probably for the very first time in his life, he had a clear purpose and was fully determined to complete it no matter what. Also for the first time, he couldn’t care less about his limping leg. It wasn’t important. He could still move anyway, and that was all that mattered. He was sweating bullets, but that wasn’t important, either. He needed to get things done to repair the airship and take off at once.
“If a useless boy like me can do the honor to save you, then I will do it,” he said to himself as he put an armor plate back on and started to sew it onto the balloon.