“Vivian! Turn the house around!”
I practically leapt down the stairs to the basement, skipping several of them at a time in my descent. I stomped down to the cellar and Vivian flinched, almost dropping a dangerous mix of components into boiling, alchemical soup. She turned to me and Aami. Glared.
“Forget that shadow-spawn of yours, both of you are—”
Striding up to the old woman, I grabbed her arm and practically dragged her to the lip of the shattered basement. The forest rolled beneath us as the giant spider legs underneath the house strode over the treetops, stabbing into the water below. I pointed before Vivian could complain a second time. My finger pointed far out into the distance—to a small, black blot poking out of the canopy.
“Take us over there,” I told her, before striding to the alchemy station behind her. I began throwing ingredients together, getting some basic everflare paste stuck to the tip of a stick. “That thing might just be our ticket to getting to Felzan as soon as possible.”
She peered out into the darkness, narrowing her eyes.
“Where, boy?”
“Northeast,” I said, sending her a quick glance. “Twenty degrees from where you’re facing—the ship’s bow in the darkness. See it?”
With a quick grunt and a mutter under her breath, Vivian’s eyes glowed yellow in the dark of the night. She stared outside and nodded, “I see it. What use do you have for a crashed airship, hm?”
“I saw it for a quick moment when the lightning struck. It might not be as damaged as it looks.”
“And do you know how to pilot one, even if it isn’t?”
“Can’t be that hard,” I said, bundling the everflare together with a piece of string. I swiped it over the fire, and immediately, they ignited with a brilliant white light that drove away the shadows in the basement. “And if it means faster travel, we might as well try, right?”
“And if there are survivors? That crash looks fresh, boy. No trace of overgrowth.”
“Then I can practice Weave and we can hitch a ride. Hurry up! Worry later!”
Sighing, the Hag snapped her fingers and pointed. Immediately, the house’s wooden legs changed course, and we tilted to the side for a brief moment. The glasses on the table slid a little, but remained upright.
The house began striding towards the crashed ship in the distance.
I raised the everflare behind me, and Aami’s tentacles reached up to take it. She held it over us both. And over my shoulders, the shoggoth wriggled forward. She peered at me with an eye attached to the end of a tar-black tentacle. “What’s an airship, Rowan? A boat?”
“A flying boat,” I said, nodding. “If it works out, we can get home quickly.”
“Ah! Your home. Mine is dark. I don’t like it. What’s yours like?”
“It’s past a big, glowing city. Just a small little town over the Stone Ribs.”
I watched the silhouette of the ship grow larger as we approached. And hearing the commotion downstairs, a flash of blue light flew down from the stairs. Venti landed on the other side of my shoulder and chirped. I gave her an asking glance.
“Did we wake you up?”
She nodded.
“Sorry, Venti! Rowan was being loud. I… er, sorry.”
“You’ve got a scary glare for a bird, Venti. Are you trying to melt Aami with a look?”
An indignant chirp. The bird flew away from my shoulder straight outside, flying towards the ship in the distance. I saw the spot of blue stop over it, circling above the ship. Once, twice. Venti returned with a flash of Galesong that pushed a powerful, curling breeze into the basement.
I tilted my head at her, “Any survivors?”
A nod.
“Wounded?”
She gave me a hesitant look, before nodding again.
“Alright,” I said, and I turned to Vivian, who was staring at the distant airship with narrowed eyes. “Can you come over here and help for a second, Vivian? I’m going to use some of the inherently magical ingredients here and I need someone to manual-charge these metals.”
She approached, and I handed her copper flakes and rust shavings. Vivian injected her mana inside as I worked, setting a beaker that survived the explosion into a boil over the fire. She frowned down at the metals.
“You should learn to ask more questions, boy.”
I added the activated metals into the water. The glow intensified, and I calmed it with two drops of O’denn’s solution. The liquid began to swirl as if stirred. At her words, I turned my head to her and raised an eyebrow.
“Questions like?”
“Like why that ship is crashed in the middle of nowhere.”
“You think it’s a trap?”
“Possibly.”
I shrugged, “Bandits and savages can’t see us. Immortals, remember? Even if they’re lying in wait, we’ll be alright. What are the chances of another immortal setting a trap for us out here?”
“And what if it’s a monster and not something sentient that’s waiting for us, boy?”
“Well, we’ve got you. Short of the Shaded Woods, Riftwalkers, and the Shissavi, I don’t think anything in Caereith can really touch you.”
“Bah. Overconfidence is a killer of the foolish.”
“Only when that confidence isn’t deserved,” I said, before taking the boiling beaker off the fire with some tongs. Glowing liquid emitted light inside, “Cool this, will you? Quickly. Try to freeze it instantly.”
I tossed the liquid up from the beaker, sending it into the air. Vivian waved her hand, and the solution froze—turned into a deep, blue cryst. One the size of a palm. Gold flakes glittered inside like fragments of fallen starlight. I caught it as it fell and slipped it into my pocket without missing a beat. I looked out from the basement.
The airship was close. There was a large hole blasted into the side of the hull, but aside from the tattered sails and other signs of wear, the ship looked relatively intact. I peered over to see a flag drifting over the wind, just over the mast.
I frowned, “That’s an RWA flag. What’s a crashed ship from the Riftwalker’s Association doing here?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Rhetorical questions become annoying quickly, boy.”
“Ah, shut it. You mumble over alchemy all the time and you don’t see me complaining. Confident silence is the sign of a profession workstation, you know.”
“Bah. It helps me focus, what does your habit do for you?”
“It gets me asking. That’s all a person needs to learn.”
“Then learn as you please, boy. We’re here.”
The house stepped over another set of trees, and the spider legs leaned forward, pushing us close to the deck. I pulled on the strap attached to my shoulder and my instruments came forward. I unhooked the bansuri from the leather case I’d haphazardly sown over the last week and I held it close as I hopped onto the deck.
I turned back to Vivian and Venti, who remained inside of the house. I blinked.
“You two aren’t coming?”
Venti yawned and shook her head. With a gust of wind aiding her, she went up the stairs and disappeared to sleep. Watching this, Vivian shook her head at me. “I leave this house, and I’m cursed to turn into my other form. I would prefer not to deal with the pain of having myself altered like that for no reason.”
“I see. Well, I’ll take a look inside. Can you keep an eye out?”
“That’s my intention. Scram, boy. Let’s not waste more time than we already have. I’m eager to meet this Blight Witch mother of yours.”
I nodded, “I’ll be quick.”
I took a step forward on the slanted deck, careful not to slip under the rain. With my bansuri to my lips, I played Galesong, condensing the air into a solid barrier around me to keep the rains from smashing into me. The weight of my steps brought a creak out to echo into the air. The ship below me groaned unsteadily, and the heavy rains of the Drowning Season splashed loudly onto the deck.
The ship’s deck was clean—unnaturally so. Abandoned and desolate. No signs of struggle or fighting were present. And as I passed the mast, I noticed the large hatch behind it. I unhooked the latches and pulled it up with a grunt of effort.
Stairs led down, deep inside the dark bowels of the ship.
“Dark,” Aami murmured, wriggling behind me. She waved the everflare I gave her around, causing the shadows to dance and flicker against the light. She steadied it just slightly over the backs of our heads. “Spooky ship.”
I nodded, “Make sure you don’t drop the everflare, okay? My eyes can see a little in the night, but not in pitch darkness.”
“Okay! I can see in the dark, so I can just pull you out if you get lost.”
“Just make sure you don’t dislocate my arm by accident.”
“I’ll try! But you can just make the glowy potion-things to fix it anyway, so it’s okay.”
I shrugged. That was good enough, I supposed. My feet carried me into the darkness ahead. The first step I took sent an echoing groan into the depths of the ship, one that seemed to make the darkness even blacker than it already was. I frowned. I wasn’t some child, afraid of the dark. And yet, looking into the bowels of the ship, I felt my heart slow to an almost painful sense of anticipation.
It wasn’t fear, exactly, no. But a sense of mystery. The sense of not knowing that I might discover, or what dangers lurked within the dark. It was like looking down from a cliff’s edge and preparing to jump, not knowing what waited at the bottom. It made my stomach tighten and curl into itself.
The feeling tickled the childhood sense of adventure in me by quite a bit.
I exhaled a breath and let the tension flow out from under my feet.
Nothing to be afraid of. Not yet.
The inner ship had several floors, being as large as it was. From the number of rooms I checked and the ground I covered, I estimated the ship to be capable of holding at least a hundred people at once. Other rooms were bedrooms, as expected, but along the middle level was a vast storage. Magitech cannons littered the walls, pointing out from portside windows that were battered by the rain. I pursed my lips.
This was no passenger vessel. It was a battleship.
So where was the crew?
Continuing down the ship, I made my way to the bottom level. There, it was flooded by the rain that had managed to flow inside. I stepped into the water, sloshing against it. Letting it run against my waist.
“This water smells weird,” Aami said, waving the stick around. Shadows danced around us. “It’s stinky.”
“Maybe the ship’s septic tank burst,” I noted, sniffing at the air. Nothing. My sense of smell returned to input. “Do you see anything beyond the light?”
“Mmm… nothing. Sorry, Rowan. This ship’s really empty.”
“Let’s check the engine room.”
I waded down the flooded halls. Above me, I saw magitech lights, each shattered and broken. Strange. The runes that powered them were scraped off, and the lines of activated wiring that connected them were cut. Shredded. As I moved deeper into the ship, the faint sound of trickling water became apparent up ahead.
Aami shone the light over one of the large doors at the end of the hull.
ENGINE CONTROL ROOM, a sign over the door said.
I turned the hatch and stepped inside.
There, I found a large set of engines, sputtering in the dark. Metal runework flickered on and off, casting the room in shifting shades of shadow and light. Large gashes in the engines spat out crackling sparks, zapping out and striking the floor. The metal walkways next to it were scorched black by the discharge.
My eyes followed the length of the walkway, and I walked forward, circling around the engines. And then I found him.
A human.
He was barely conscious, leaning against the engine. On a walkway just barely out of the floodwater. He had matted brown hair and deep bags under his eyes, almost looking like a corpse. But I saw him breathe. Ragged little rasps scraping out from between his bloodstained lips, keeping him alive. A long spear of artificed metal pierced the protective vest he wore; it stabbed him just above the liver. It barely avoided a fatal wound.
As soon as I saw him, I took a step forward, and the world shifted.
Smell, sight, touch, and taste. I smelled copper and tasted the reek in the air. I felt the biting cold of the night and saw the blue moonlight leaking through the hole in the hull. My senses returned to me, and I felt my hood flip up by itself, before shrouding my face in thick, almost solid darkness. My silver eyes glowed in the shadows of my hood.
“Huh,” I muttered, frowning. “My glamour activated by itself. Did you do something, Aami?”
No response from the shoggoth. I glanced behind me, but I saw only a blur in the air. Almost invisible. It stuck to my back, wriggling. Looking at me with bulging eyes that seemed confused.
Hm. So a full Weave fully dragged me out of the Phelasce. The in-between. It rendered things like Aami close to invisible to me. Faint. I patted the air where her mass should be.
“Stay there for a while. I have to help this guy out.”
She wriggled soundlessly, and at the sound of my voice, the human’s face twitched up. Just by a tiny bit. He looked at me with his eyes, dull and sunken beneath dark circles.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he rasped, his voice like the sound of crumpling paper. “You shouldn’t have come.”
I approached him and kneeled, “Shut up. Grit your teeth.”
“You shouldn’t—agh!"
My hands grabbed at the spearhead protruding from his back, and I pulled. I tore the spear out of him. The man writhed in pain, bleeding profusely, and I brought the cryst out from my back. I crushed it in my hand and it exploded into a puff of powder that fell over us both.
Immediately, his wound started to heal. The flesh began to knit back up, restoring itself and leaving only a small scar behind. The man panted, pale, and glanced up at me.
“Who… who are you?”
The answer came to me instantly. From a corner of myself that had been quiet until now.
“My Name is the Traveler,” I said, and my voice was like static. A mash of different sounds that were decipherable, but impossible to make out. “And those who hear it will remember.”
The feeling that emerged from my chest receded, and I felt the identity slip back into my chest. I blinked, taking a moment to regain myself, before offering the human a hand. He took it with a grunt, his teeth chattering. He pulled himself up and I felt the weakness in his grip. Anemia. Healing crysts sped up regeneration but failed to cure blood loss instantly. This human would need food soon, and lots of it.
He staggered to the side and panted, leaning against the engine. I saw the gleam of a Riftwalker’s Token on his vest, on his lapel. My eyes blinked at it as he shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” the man muttered. He looked up at me. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
I frowned, “And why’s that?”
He shook his head and pointed up, up above us. I followed his finger up and saw the hole in the hull, smashing straight through metal and wood. It led up to the sky, where the rains were beginning to thin once more. Where the clouds were like faint veils of mist.
And hiding in their midst, there was a patch of blackness. Undulating behind the fog, watching.
The clouds cleared. Slowly, gently, revealing what was on the other side.
I stared up at a gash raking through the stars. A tear in the fabric of space, splitting the night sky with jagged ends that resembled rows of hungry teeth. Red flesh pulsed inside of the gap. And then, as I began to realize what it was, the sky began to bleed. Red began spreading out from the rift. Flowing, crimson taint. It dyed the blackness of night red with gruesome malice.
Blackrend began to stir, and I finally realized what the smell was. What I’d been wading through this whole time. I raised my stained hands and stared at the red.
Blood.
“Sorry, Traveler,” the man said, reaching for the magitech pistol on his waist. He drew it and energy pulsed. Charged. He looked up at the sky. “But I’m afraid that I’m just the bait to the real trap.”
“We need to leave,” I whispered, and he nodded.
“Too bad there’s nowhere to run.”
And then there were footsteps—running, splashing down the hall. Straight to us. Growls began to echo out from the depths of the ship as things rose from the water. Twisted, skinless evils. Monstrosities bloated by pus, rot, and acidic black blood. Mockeries of human and amarid life.
The Crimson Tide rose. Terrors. Blights.
And it turned to face us.