After all the necessary equipment was brought to the crew ship’s storage and distributed to each floor according to their category, the crew gave the higher-ups an affirmative notion with raised thumbs, followed by calls from the ship’s helmsmen to prepare for flight.
To say that the feeling of immediate levitation would be bizarre to the first timers would be an utter lie. Their stomachs turned upside down, bodies straining to adjust to sudden upward force. Most of the boys grabbed onto anything their hands could reach for support, such as bed legs or doors, while others just straight up vomited in the bins nearby.
Niva, seemingly the only one unconcerned with the whole situation, sat upright near a corner, took out a dirt-grimed cigarette stolen from the town’s local beggar, lighted it up with a matchstick, from a matchstick box she also stole, and inhaled a heavy puff of a seasoned smoker.
This was just another ride for her, nothing more. Her years-long tactic worked wonders, making her basically a free traveler, disguising herself as a young boy, each time seeking shelter from the offermen who would take her and the other kids to the training camps to be a soldier.
She hated it, just waiting to be sent to the special military ships, but unfortunately, she couldn’t find any other way that didn’t revolve around her being sent to prison or hunted down by the bounty hunters, eventually. She needed to leave the previous settlement as fast as she could, hoping to reach her destination on time in the end.
After the momentary shock shook off the boys’ faces, a few of them noticed her smoking silhouette and just stared at her profusely. Some glared at her with obvious intent to ask whether she had another one to share.
To answer all of them at once, Niva just shook her head and showed them her raised index finger.
“Don’t have another one, sorry guys. The ol-beggar Rick didn’t have a profitable day,” she said, inhaling another puff, some of it leaking out of her nostrils as she spoke.
Mouths moved to protest, but they all soon realized there was nothing they could that wouldn’t end in a brawl over a nearly died out stick of tobacco.
Sidrick sat across the room from her, peeking at the window overhead, mesmerized by the orange-blue shades dancing in the air as they moved through a group of dawn-bathed clouds.
He peeked at Niev, or Niva as she was now called, who did the same as him, and they just locked gazes onto one another, absentmindedly. He was the only one that knew her real identity as an older girl playing disguise amongst them, a fact that he came to realize when he accidentally peeked at her having bloodstains on her pants near the private area when she was at the streets, prying on some local tourists, who were about to lose gratuitous amounts of money under their own noses. There, after explaining how sick she felt, she ran off to a nearby infirmary and Sidrick quickly came to check up on her, only to find that there was no such boy treated there. Only a girl who soon ran off.
The nurses of course didn’t know who this person exactly was, nor that she was supposed to be a local orphan boy under the name Niev, and Sidrick especially didn’t expect to see her return to the shelter a few days later, only to get scolded at by Neick. Since then, although he told no soul about it, Sidrick kept nagging her to reveal any more things about who she really was, only to receive the cold shoulder each time he prodded her. As such, he stopped caring and just continued treating her as just another boy, or at least a tomboy, in their group. Up until now.
He stood up, walked up to her, and quickly swiped her cigarette before she could take another shot. It could bear one last whiff, which Sidrick made sure to savor, taking special delight in seeing Niva look at him as if she had just seen a murder.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
He let out a cloud of smoke roll off the tongue straight toward her. Her eyes wilder than a hurricane, screamed murder on the spot.
Before she could catch up, Sidrick already got out of the room and ran straight to the toilets, making sure she followed him, which she did. In vile anger, that is.
“I’ll shank you right here and now!” she hissed as she entered the cabin he almost secluded himself into. It was an unexpectedly big wooden cabin, with a modern toilet, with the bonus of a large circular window, giving an insight into the weather outside.
“I said give my smoke back.”
“Nu-uh.”
“What are you? A five-year-old?”
“I’m fifteen, and until I learn how old are you, I’ll consider your age to be in the triple digits, madame,” he said, throwing the last cigarette she had outside of the ship through the slightly open window.
He visibly saw the anger rise to her temples as canals of thick veins. But before she could strangle him, Sidrick quickly took a pack of cigarettes from his inner pocket, extending his arm defensively, as if facing a wild animal. He shook the pack with the free arm to her face.
“Peace?”
She eyed it for a moment, startled, with fists clenched and lips closed to a mutt. The pure wrath inhabiting her body left as if never there. She complied with the offer and begrudgingly gave into the yappy mood of her interlocutor.
Before they could continue their discussion, Sidrick signaled for her to wait for a bit as he exited the cabin and made sure nobody was inside the restroom or in the hallway outside. When the coast was clear, he returned to the cabin in which she now sat on top of a toilet with a closed lid, crossed leg dangling in the air mindlessly.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked.
Sidrick just rested his back to the locked door of the cabin, took a cigarette and, after Niva lighted her new one first, gave way for the fire to bring smoke to his mouth and nostrils.
“What’s this thing about going to send a postal mail to some relative?”
“I thought you didn’t care.”
“Is it regarding your uncle? The one who lives on a Third Ring island? Are you planning to go to him?”
Niva mutely stared at him.
“I’d like to retake your offer then. Take me with you Niev.”
“No.”
“What?! Why? You said I could come before.”
“Yeah, that was dumb of me. I thought about it some more and now the best option seems to go solo. Not with the guys, as much as I came to like them, and, I’m afraid, not even with you, Sid.”
“Come on Niev, I’ll be usefu-”
“No,” she repeated in a monotonous voice. She didn’t acknowledge his plead even remotely as something possible now.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“But I could be useful! You know I’m good at all sorts of stuff, Niev.”
“Leading a group of stray urchin boys to steal from people is not that great of a skill, Sid. I’ve been doing it since the days I could count on my fingers, and I still did it better than you guys.”
“Come on, Niev.”
“I said call me Niva. Don’t you ever listen to me?”
“…Look, Niva, I can always learn something new. It’s not like I’m a rookie at this. You’ve seen how I fooled those rich guys into lending me money, right? They actually thought I was a lost royalty!”
“Well, that’s on their stupidity to blame. Besides, they quickly found out, and if memory serves me right, you got beat up pretty badly by those enforcers for it.”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s always something I could be of use to you or whoever you’re going off to.”
Before she could answer, they heard the outside door open with a loud screech, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps hitting the metal floor. They were erratic, panicked even, and soon reached their cabin, followed by a loud knock on the door. “Occupied!” shouted Sidrick and the person quickly knocked on the nearby one. When nobody was found inside, the person swung the door wide open and launched himself onto the toilet, grasping its edges as tightly as humanly possible. Soon erupted an orchestra of vomit muffles, filling the room’s silence like a freshly erupted magma hitting the calm ocean shore.
“When will this end…” pled the voice, which they now recognized belonged to Taki, absolutely devastated by flight-induced nausea.
After ten minutes of pure misery, his vomits subsided to simple dry gags. He was exhausted, covered with chunks of something resembling bread around his lips, his mind slowly processing the surrounding room.
“I swear, one day I’ll build a ship that’s not as shitty as this one.”
Moments later, he got up and washed his face and mouth with big splashes of sink water. Then the door rang open and closed again.
“Is he gone?” whispered Niva.
Sidrick opened the cabin, only to see Taki reenter the room for an announcement. “They called everyone to the deck, guys. Come quickly!”
Sidrick and Niva looked at each other with puzzled looks, guessing how Taki found out about them in the cabin but left the room shortly after to board the top floor, where all the soldiers and cadets were assembling.
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The reason for the call proved to be the captain calling for the cadets to come by and see the view, claiming ‘it was to die for’. It’s been more than half a day since their departure, and by now the ship has been sailing through a series of highly dense clouds near the Androssa Region, a belt of floating isles circling near the edge of the Second World Ring they were at currently.
Intrigued by the captain’s order, the small group of urchins, led by their guards, made way for the top. Once their eyes left the metal rooms underneath the cask of the ship, they were blessed with an awe-inspiring view of the world around them; it was an artisan’s blue canvas, brushed liberally with thick lines of orange-clad light, gracefully eliminating the clouds. Heads darted back and forth to look at the schools of flying fish jumping from one aerial water stream to another. Birds of high efficiency flew by and salvaged whatever they could find inside those snake-like water formations, sprouting and moving from one drinking source to another. Inside them were circulating objects of different kinds, ranging from worms scooped by the water streams on their way through dozens of skylands, to questionable shapes that could very well explain the reason for the military wanting to use water streams as weapons.
Sidrick heard about these phenomena from the local travelers, but never imagined them to be so darn entrancing to watch. He could watch for hours on end their typical life-cycle, starting when an island’s water stream reaches its final destination, the edge of the skyland leading down into the Abyss. From there, it would only be a matter of time before it would eventually interact with an aerial stream to take it upwards, to the skylands, or sky islands as people used to call them.
Such was the way of the water currents, and any man’s attempt at controlling its currents only led to disaster after disaster, without exceptions. Some sailors still claim to have seen parts of devastated ships and their captains flying around in the currents, endlessly circling by the world.
“Like the view, boys? This awaits those of you who’ll join the navy ranks. In our day and age, winning the war is decided by aerial combat, and I’ll be damned if we’re not the best at it.” announced the captain, jumping down from the upper part of the deck, a few meters from the boys. One of the boys was about to make a statement regarding their future but the captain simply hushed the lad and instead took a quick stride to the nose of the ship.
He held out a pair of goggles and targeted the horizon, scanning for what proved to be a bastion of flying chunks of debris. His suspicions justified, the captain gave out an order to secure the boys down in their barracks room. Immediately after, the crew moved the alert state of hurry in case of a storm such as this, taking all the precautions drilled into them by the instructors. The crew moved ropes and belts around the deck to secure what they couldn't bring inside on time. There wasn’t enough time to put the roof back into place, however, as it required the combined efforts of nearly two dozen soldiers to bring it to closure simultaneously with the hand-operated gears under the deck. All they could do was to get ready for the oncoming slaughter.
Orders were given to the crew to ensure their safety against the wild wind, and a special team was assigned to try to assemble the roof using the gears on the lower floor. The upper crew, needed for immediate repairs and general help for the ship, ran to grab stashes of ropes with metal hangings at both ends, which connected to special metal lines along the ship’s deck, ensuring they could move but not outright fly away during a storm.
And then came the breeze. The wind gusts forth brought their demise to the debris, welcoming them in their unrelenting domain, knocking about any equipment and personnel not heavy enough to stay in their place. The younger and frailer soldiers held on to their dear life, most of them grasping the ship’s unbudging railings with their arms and feet despite the safety ropes, their heads clamped between their hunched shoulders as the officers instructed them to prevent any injuries. The experienced officers, acclimated to the phenomenon, upon first notice of the wind took out a pair of thick goggles and connected their belts to a thick rope hanging by a metal line, carved into the ship deck. It allowed their connected ropes to move along its lines, making sure they wouldn’t fly off the ship during the storm.
Amidst the chaotic symphony of titanic chunks of earth hitting the ship on all its sides, and despite the navigation crew’s best efforts to avoid them, a voice was heard loud and clear, piercing the air like a needle cutting through linen clothes.
“Why is that damned roof still not closed?!” shouted the captain.
His question came soon upon an answer when a loud metal screech made his heart drop in utter fear, along with a shake that dropped the non-flying men to the floor. An extraordinarily big chunk of debris hit full face at the side of the ship, and such great was the force behind this impact that it lead to a dent piercing right through the gears needed to close the roof. The men placed there were gone at a moment’s notice, and those on the upper floor were next.
Chunks of hard earth took out men like flies, as the ship dived and turned, nearly tipping over sixty degrees to the sides at certain points, sending the passengers tumbling and yelping for help. Down below, the urchins cried out for the mothers they didn’t even know, wishing for one last chance to meet them.
The onslaught continued for half an hour more, the clouds around lightening up in their color as they stepped out of its boundaries. Blood from the hit soldiers soiled the floor with red liquid spots, whilst the rest of the crew awoke as if from eternal slumber, not sure whether they were truly alive yet. After a small assessment, they slowly untied their ropes as they saw the wind no longer threatening to throw them off the ship at the first chance, with no rocks on their way to kill them.
Soon, the captain got down from his elevated position at the height of the deck and rounded the crew asking about the ship’s condition.
The inspection led to the discovery of the harmed gravitum pipeline system, as the lower decks were hit with an enormous amount of debris. Not to mention the enormous dent that killed six of their soldiers on the second floor that was set out to work the gears. The engineers explained they had to make a stop as soon as possible to refill their gravitum crystals and fill in a temporary fix for the pipes until they could get back to Leonhartian lands. Not to mention the amassed pile of bodies they now had to deal with.
“Write down their names, Alibert. I’ll report how the storm lifted them out of the ship before they could secure the ropes,” said the captain to the lieutenant as he gave an order for the deceased bodies’ to be cast overboard, down to the Abyss. The Leonhartian army already had a hand full of problems to deal with, and a ship with dozens of bodies to stop by a neutral territory wouldn’t exactly be the best thing to add to that wretched list. Either way, they would hold a ceremony for them once this was all over.
The captain, along with the navigators, calculated the remaining effectiveness of the gravitum energy with their damaged pipeline and decided their next stop to be Timigua. Their initial plan was for a quick stop at the neutral outer islands near Timigua, but since they couldn’t reach them in time with their hindrance, landing at the hostile Timiguan grounds was their only option.
“We’ll make an emergency stop at Timigua, approximately three hours from now. Be ready for whatever might come about in our situation, cadets,” relayed to the urchins the guard, whom they diligently listened to.