Eleanor Deveena

Her group followed right behind EE-Thirty. The elven representative’s voice nearly sang in delight as she danced with her words describing the Vadstena.

The first room she led them to was essentially the ‘shipmaster’s room’ aka the wheelhouse. It was where the captain would steer the ship through the sailing seas.

It was jaw-dropping. The controls were just alien to her. There were no wooden parts, just all steel. The buttons - if you could call them that, were made out of hard light.

The lights would dance in a way that would form a map of the sea and terrain. Are they using illusion magic for this? Eleanor thought to herself. She didn’t detect magic here though, so she was confused and curious as to what powered that strange device.

Eleanor could feel a hint of pride in EE-Thirty’s voice as she talked about the technology behind the shipmaster’s room. She was surprised to see Professor Leylon feel so out of his depth as he just stared blankly at the controls. The redhead couldn’t help but silently snicker as the normally stone-faced professor had a blank look of loss plastered on his face.

“As the shipmaster, I must ask you to not be lured by the lights. Leave the controls well alone,” the elf stressed. Everyone nodded. Satisfied, EE-Thirty guided them to the kitchen.

There weren’t too many fancy lights like before, but just like the shipmaster’s room, it had no ounce of magical power. The buttons that spawned cooking flame had no trace of mana. EE-Thirty said it had to do something with gas. Eleanor couldn’t follow what EE-Thirty was saying. Molecules? Gas? Clearly the Sanctuary was moving away from magic.

Or maybe they already have done away with it, Eleanor shivered. If the Sanctuary had that much knowledge, then why did they need to go to the Harpocrates Caverns? Why were they even interested in it in the first place? It didn’t make much sense to Eleanor.

While she was in her own little world, the group followed EE-Thirty to the cabins. It went by like a blur to Eleanor, as the elven representative showed Leylon and his daughter their rooms, then Michael’s, Veronica’s, Elsie’s, and then finally, Eleanor’s.

Apparently each room had a sink and bathroom installed, with clean water (Eleanor scanned it with her light magic) on all. Apparently the ship would consume water from the ocean, clean it, then recycle it. Not a single drop of water was wasted aboard the ship.

Economy-friendly. That’s what EE-Thirty called it.

Eleanor had thought she’d need to share showers with her classmates, but with a shower installed in each room, that was unnecessary.

Elsie had other plans though, as she grabbed onto Eleanor’s arm and leaned on her. The redhead felt herself being pushed down due to her short height. She hated how tall Elsie was compared to her. “Elsie, stop leaning on me! You’re heavy!”

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Her friend gasped, “So rude!” She leaned even closer, “How about we take a shower later? We haven’t had one in forever.”

“No way!”

“Why not?! Best friends shower and bathe together all the time!”

“No, they don’t, you freaking weirdo!” The two laughed their butts off.

Elsie raised an eye, with Eleanor suddenly feeling a bit awkward. She shuffled her feet waiting for what her sporty friend was going to say. “Don’t feel as nervous as before?”

Eleanor gazed over her, curious. “You noticed?”

“Totally. You even had the face of a conspiracy buff. It was like this,” Elsie pulled her cheeks downward to try to mimic some old gruffy dude. “If only I had a tophat.”

“Pfft, I swear. Thanks Elsie, I needed it.”

“No problem shortie.” She ruffled her hair, which annoyed Eleanor. A vein nearly burst out as Eleanor pouted angrily. Elsie just laughed as the redhead raised her hands to try to barrage-punch her in the shoulders.

Several hours later…

The ship finally had the clear to move after everyone settled into their new rooms. The only particular reason why it took several hours later, however, was due to there being a necessary ‘power cell change’ as stated by EE-Thirty. She also remarked how strange it was for a fully-charged power cell to suddenly die.

Eleanor didn’t know exactly what a ‘power cell’ was, but she figured that by the name, it was a source of power for the Vadstena. EE-Thirty seemed, for the first time ever, surprised and even concerned. At least, that’s what it looked like to Eleanor.

“This is unprecedented,” she heard EE-Thirty whisper, “We’ve had every precaution in place. Was it just bad luck?”

On the other side of the situation, Eleanor peeked at Veronica, who looked peeved. It was as if something was chewing at her. The way she scratched her arms and anxiously looked behind her shoulder constantly was a clear indicator that Veronica was in a sea of paranoia.

She wanted to go to Veronica and pet her hair and comfort her, but they weren’t close. It felt a little frustrating that she just couldn’t close the emotional distance with Veronica.

The journey had already started on the wrong foot. Eleanor just prayed to the Spirits nothing else went wrong.

Veronica Leylon

She smelt the miasma in the air. It was a miasma so implicit, so inconsequential that it could easily be overlooked. Was it responsible for the collapse of the ‘power cell’? Veronica wasn’t sure, but the coincidence was uncanny.

Shaking her head, Veronic walked past the shipmaster’s room and stopped in front of Eleanor’s door. She looked back and knew her mate was still looking over the situation with that half-dead elf. With just the slightest hesitation, she conjured a magic circle using mana of blue light and casted it through Eleanor’s door which expanded throughout her room.

“This should protect her, at least while she’s in her room,” Veronica whispered to herself.

It was a spell designed to keep any amount of malicious mana out. She called it “Absolute Zero”. It was primarily an ice spell, with its main purpose to freeze any malicious mana. Her helding mother designed it to avoid freezing everything else.

Veronica then casted a stealth spell over Absolute Zero to make sure no one, not even Eleanor would notice it. At least without actively looking for it, Veronica thought.

She just hoped the spell was enough to keep Eleanor safe.

Eleanor Deveena

“That should be it,” EE-Thirty said, wiping her hands on a handkerchief one of her escorts handed to her. Finally, the lights on the Vadstena came back to life.

Eleanor felt the ground beneath her lightly shake as the ship woke up. “What are you going to do with the faulty power cell?” She asked out of curiosity. EE-Thirty raised an eyebrow at this. The redhead couldn’t tell if the elf was angry or simply surprised at the inquiry.

“The cell will be brought back to the Sanctuary after the journey for observation and possibly repair. It was quite strange for the power cell’s energy to suddenly collapse in on itself like that. We can’t have something like that happen again.”

Although EE-Thirty sounded reliable and calm, the information was nevertheless worrisome, but as she triple-checked the new power cell, EE-Thirty concluded there were no further problems.

At least that stroke of bad luck is out of the way. The rest of the journey won’t be as bad, right?

I hope I didn’t jinx us to oblivion, Eleanor tugged at her collar nervously. I totally did, didn’t I?