As they were moving to board the Scourge of the Skies, Lia stopped, then turned back to the assembled crew. “We’re going to take her for a quick fly.” She said. “Just while we’re touring it, to get a feel for things. We’ll make sure it doesn’t affect our timing at all, we’ll be back as soon as we can.”

The captain who had previously told her it was fine to have Lia and her lovers tour alone looked up at her, mirth visible in her eyes. “My Queen, you don’t need to explain yourself to us.” She said. “This is your vessel, do as you will.”

“I was just letting you know, so you wouldn’t worry.” Lia replied. That out of the way, Lia and her lovers walked up the nearest staircase and into the Scourge of the Skies. As the race’s description had promised, the inside was made of an odd metal, giving the thing an atmosphere incomparable to…well, anything Lia had been in before, really.

Currently, they were in a large hollow section of the vessel that seemed to stretch as far as Lia could see in either direction, broken up only by stairwells leading upwards placed in front of each hatch. From what Lia could see, the walls were lined with odd screens like the ones in the control room of the warships Lia had converted, a control panel set near each screen for what Lia could only assume were weapons of some sort.

The outer walls were mostly made of that odd metal, but every so often were interspersed with windows made of a transparent flesh substance not dissimilar to the ones in other ships Lia had converted. The area was lit evenly by strange glass fixtures set into the ceiling at regular intervals, sort of like the Dimension of Discounts.

The windows allowed Lia to see outside as the Scourge of the Skies stood up and unfurled its wings, though Lia felt nothing standing inside of it. She gave the vessel a mental command to begin flying, and was astonished as the ground outside began to tilt, becoming nearly vertical as it began to rapidly shrink.

Obviously, the ground itself wasn’t tilting, so that could only mean the Scourge of the Skies was the one that was nearly vertical, yet Lia felt no difference in the ground she was standing on, no turbulence or feeling like she was being pulled down the length of the ship.

“Amazing.” Rose breathed. “Truly astonishing.”

“It seems that whatever magic field is keeping people from falling out is also altering our gravity whenever this thing tilts.” Amelia observed. “And it looks like, if part of the hull was punctured and someone fell through, they would get telekinetically thrust back into the ship. The Mana work on this is well done.”

“High praise, coming from you.” Lia said. “So…do we start down here, or do you two think we should go view the upper levels first?”

“Let’s go up above.” Rose said. “I’d like to take a look at the weapons when we’re at the altitude they would usually be used at.”

“Alright, upstairs it is, then.” Lia said, leading the group up the staircase in front of them.

They eventually emerged into some sort of hallway lined with doors, lit by those same glass fixtures that had lit the floor below. The wall behind them was one giant “window”, allowing for a breathtaking view of the shrinking land below them. Curious, Lia opened one of the nearby doors, and found that it seemed to open into a small but comfortable-seeming living space with a couple of beds, a desk, and two sets of drawers. More importantly, however, a map was posted on the inside of the door, allowing Lia to get a grasp on where the important areas for the vessel were without walking the entire length of it.

She quickly waved over Rose and Amelia, and together they stared at the map. They were on the second of four floors, with the first being the one they had just come from, the third being storage in the back half and strategic rooms such as the control center, labeled the “bridge” in the front half, and the fourth being the deck. The second floor seemed to be entirely residential, filled with dorms, kitchens, recreational areas, and miscellaneous facilities such as laundry or dedicated waste disposal areas.

Of particular note was that the area closest to the Scourge’s head on the second floor was sectioned off from the rest of the rooms by a wall and was labeled the “Royal Suite”. The rooms inside were noticeably bigger, and from the looks of it, contained at least one of every other type of room found on the floor, meaning that the occupants could theoretically spend the entire time they were on the vessel within just those quarters, so long as they were kept stocked with food.

Lia sighed internally as she looked at it. It must have been a holdover from the previous flagships, likely Alisha’s. She didn’t like the idea of the area just rotting away, unused, for the majority of the time, so she’d have to work something out with the captains to make sure the rooms didn’t just take up space doing nothing. Or…maybe she could tell the captains to do with it as they pleased, so long as it was used fairly?

Whatever the case, she diverted her attention and looked at the first floor. It was, predictably, mostly for weaponry, but one section towards the back puzzled her. It was labeled “Hangar”, and Lia just didn’t know what that was for. It almost certainly wasn’t a misspelling of “hanger”, but that was the only thing Lia could even think of.

“Do either of you know what a ‘hangar’ is?” Lia asked.

“The thing you hang clothes with?” Amelia asked.

Rose shook her head. “No, she’s likely referring to ‘hangar’ with an a instead of an e. It’s an obscure term that was sometimes used for places that store vehicles. I think summoned Heroes introduced the term, but I’m not totally sure so don’t quote me on that. Odd that there’s one here, though, I don’t know what sort of vehicles we’d be storing on this.”

“We’ll have to make a point of checking it out later.” Lia said. “We probably won’t be able to figure it out without actually going there. It’s at the back end of the first floor, though, so it’ll be a bit of a trek.”

“Well…I think we won’t really need to check out much on this floor.” Amelia said. “We can probably give the royal suite a look-over, since I imagine we’ll be near the head anyway when we check out the control center, but otherwise we can save a lot of time by just not looking at this floor.”

“That seems wise.” Rose agreed. “We probably shouldn’t check the storage areas, either. This ship is quite a bit larger than the one I toured yesterday, and we’ll be here for hours if we try to check even half of the ship. Really, as long as we have a general grasp of its layout and important features, we should be fine.”

“So…maybe we can head up to the deck, make our way to the head of the ship, then descend to check the control room?” Lia suggested. “When we’re done, we can head down, check the weapons, and make our way to the hangar while it descends.”

Lia glanced out the window, and was surprised to see that the Scourge had already started to level out, the entirety of Aura’s capital visible far, far below. “We’ve only been on for three or four minutes, and we’re already so high? Wow.”

“Just going on the distances and speeds the race description had, that checks out.” Rose said. “I imagine we aren’t ascending at full speed, but even half-speed would get us up pretty quick. Anyway, I’m sure the view would be even more stunning from the deck, shall we go?”

The group took the stairwell up, and they soon found themselves on the deck, which was…basically the same as the warship they had converted, but much, much larger. It was enclosed in that same dome of transparent flesh, and Lia was able to walk over to the railing near one of the gaps in the wings and look down to see the land below, all tinged faintly white.

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“Interesting.” Amelia said, peering over the railing with Lia. “It looks like the magic keeping us on the ship also lets us see through the clouds to an extent. I’m kind of surprised I didn’t see it when I was looking earlier, it’s really subtle.”

“It makes sense.” Rose replied. “The description stated that we’d be able to aim accurately from this high, and clouds would very much get in the way of things. Still, the view here is…something else. Not many people get to look at the world from this high up.”

Lia took in the view for a moment more before beginning to walk towards the head. “There doesn’t seem to be much to do up here.” She commented. “Though, I suppose if this ends up swimming through the water like a boat instead of flying above it, it could be used to fish or something?”

“Sometimes it’s good to just have a large, empty space like this, too.” Rose said. “If we need to draw out large ritual circles or convert a large number of people at once, then having a space where we can do that without interrupting other work is good.”

It took a couple of minutes, but they eventually reached the head and proceeded to head down the stairs, which brought them just outside of the bridge. Lia eagerly pushed the door to the bridge open, and wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. The room was filled with a dizzying assortment of screens, panels with buttons and levers, and big, important-looking chairs, as well as a few other things Lia couldn’t quite tell the purpose of from where she was standing.

“Seems rather obvious to put a critical room like this in the head, don’t you think?” Amelia said dismissively. “But…it looks like the armor is a lot thicker here and there’s even some magical protection, so I guess it’s not too glaring a weak spot.”

“Where else would it be?” Lia asked. “This is all conceptual stuff, right? Of course the control room would be in the head.”

“Fair enough.” Amelia replied. “It’s just less than ideal since the head will be one of the first things to be targeted.”

“It’s nothing we can’t shore up with some dedicated defense mages.” Rose replied, moving over to one of the walls. Any wall that wasn’t covered by a display or panel was made of the same transparent “window” substance, allowing for a remarkably good view of the outside. “With some practice, it shouldn’t be too hard to cast spells through these windows.”

The group chatted a bit more as they inspected the room. Like the previous two ships Lia had inspected, there was an orifice that could be used to feed the Scourge from within, and the displays were even more sophisticated than the ones on the warship had been. There was a display for just about everything Lia could think of with regards to the Scourge, from an overview of where any damage was to how much of its stomach was filled to how many people were on board.

It also seemed that there were four magical video capturing devices on each of the Scourge’s one hundred and fifty segments, one on top, one on bottom, and one on either side, and on any display, you could flick through each of those or even pin multiple to the corner of a screen so you could keep an eye on them while you worked.

And, just like with the warship, it seemed that you could control every built-in weapon the Scourge had from this room. Furthermore, each weapon seemed to have its own integrated video feed, which could zoom in to a frightening degree so you could see where its shot would eventually hit. With a bit of fiddling, Lia was even able to get one of the weapons to focus on the sailors below her; the point of view of the screen was what she would estimate as hundreds of feet off of the ground, and it was all tinged off-white due to clouds in the way, but it was plenty for the purposes of aiming a weapon.

Of course, shooting from so high up in the sky or while the Scourge was moving quickly would be incredibly difficult to do accurately even with such tools, so each weapon had the option to turn on “aim assist”, which would add a not-insignificant Mana cost to whatever the attack already cost to fire, but would in turn nearly guarantee that it would hit its target.

There were a surprising variety of weapons on the ship, too. The most impressive was a large-scale beam attack that was fired from the Scourge’s mouth, taking the raw power of the dragon’s breath, optimizing it and focusing its power by mixing in bits of various weapons and technologies the two flagships had. There were also more conventional cannons, miniature dragon breaths, and a host of other things compromising the dragon’s Skills and everything else on the flagships, all spread out along the entire length of the Scourge, often several weapons to a single segment.

Of course, using all of those weapons for any extended period of time would be incredibly taxing on the Scourge’s Mana and Stamins reserves, but there was, fortunately, a workaround. The Scourge had an impressive Mana and Stamina pool on its own, but it also seemed to have a secondary, overwhelmingly larger pool that stretched into the millions, but would never refill automatically. Instead, it would have to be filled piecemeal by the crew, functioning as a reserve for when it got into an extended battle.

Outside of that, like the warship, the room had a place to transfer Mana to the Scourge, but unlike the warship, there was an entire portion of the room dedicated to managing whatever the hangar was. Fortunately, the interfaces gave some hints as to what the hangar was for. It seemed that the hangar was capable of storing…monsters, by the looks of it? It had a list of “combatants” stored and how many were “deployed”, as well as an indicator for if some hatch was open.

They investigated a little more in the bridge before deciding to visit the hangar. On the way there, they briefly checked the weapons, and there was really nothing to see there that they hadn’t in the bridge. They still had the aim assist function and the view of where they were targeting, and these weapons had circuits to allow crew members to pump their Mana into them directly instead of having to do it via the bridge, but they were otherwise unremarkable.

As they reached the hangar, Lia instructed the Scourge to begin its descent, then turned her attention to figuring out what exactly was supposed to be kept there. And, as she had expected, it turned out to be monsters. There were sleeping spaces set aside for them, feeding and bathing areas, grooming supplies…it looked more like a menagerie than anything.

“I see.” Amelia said, inspecting one of several large rectangles outlined on the floor. “These open up and let things through.” She explained. “It looks like, if you tag something using one of those tools,” she motioned to an odd device hung up on one of the walls, “it becomes immune to the Scourge’s ‘no falling off’ property for five minutes. Then you presumably send it through these hatches in the floor, and when it comes back it’ll get sucked back through the nearest open hatch.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask, does that function work on everyone?” Rose asked. “If our enemies try to board the Scourge, will they get sucked on?”

Amelia shook her head. “It’s set to only work on members of the swarm, and, if you were wondering, it’s temporarily halted in function while the Scourge isn’t flying, so it won’t prevent people getting off.”

They poked around the hangar until the Scourge finished its descent, then stepped off to greet the crew. The Scourge had, thoughtfully, landed in such a way that the hangar was positioned near where the area they had initially boarded the Scourge, so was, fortunately, no need for more walking.

“My Queen, was the ship to your liking?” One of the captains, who Lia now noticed had the Glens’ insignia on her uniform, asked.

“It exceeded all expectations.” Lia replied. “Have you decided how you’ll be handling the merger?”

“Yes.” The other captain replied. “I will be handling all combat and weapon-related tasks, and she will handle all navigation, scheduling, and steering. In times of crisis, she will be considered the higher of the two of us, as she has more experience and a more level head.”

Lia nodded. “Very good, I approve.” She said. “The three of us will be returning to the capital now, but before I leave you to get acquainted with your new vessel, there is one thing I want to make clear; in the living area, there is a space known as the ‘royal suite’. Don’t feel obligated to reserve it just for me and my lovers; do whatever you please with it, so long as it’s fair to all the crew.”

“Understood, my Queen.” The captain from the Glens said. “Is there anywhere you would like us to bring this vessel once we have gotten situated?”

Lia glanced to Rose. “What do you think?”

Rose pulled out the SPS, bringing up a projection of the area and pointing to one of the border forts. “Fill as much of the creature’s reserve Mana and Stamina as you can and bring it to this fortress, I wish to make a show of force later tonight. There’s a device in the bridge that will let you fill the reserves, you’ll understand what I mean when you visit the bridge.”

“Understood. We will see you later tonight, then. Anything else we can do for you while we’re here?”

“That will be all.” Rose said. “You’re dismissed.”

The gathered sailors gave a salute, then began to busily gather what luggage they had. A moment later, there was a wrenching in Lia’s gut, and then she and her lovers were back in their home.

“I’m gonna go take a nap.” Amelia replied, already walking towards the bedroom. “Wake me up when it’s time to go.”

Rose turned to Lia. “I think I would like it if you came with me for the show of force.” She said. “I have an idea, and I’d like you there to help really drive it home. If you have a bit, do you want to talk out a plan with me?”

Lia nodded. “I’d love to.”