In hindsight, it really, really had been impulsive to smash his ship into the side of that fortress. Swick had almost known it at the time, however deep his drunken rampage had been, and every passing day after the incident only made it more overwhelmingly apparent to him just how great an error he’d made.

Skyships were a technology beyond virtually anything else. Few could repair one, and virtually none could build a new one from scratch. Shaiagrazni had seemed to consider them primitive things.

Well screw him, because apparently he needed this piece of primitive technology. Swick just needed to get it off the ground again.

“Your thrust is fine.” The engineer told him, calmly. “Better than fine, actually, whoever worked on it last did a good job. But there’s something off still.”

“I know there’s something off still.” Swick snapped. When he’d tried to last take the ship off the ground, it had worked. For all of a second. Then the poor thing had started rocking, shivering, shaking. It had been all he’d been capable of just to plant it back down before it shot off in one direction and rammed another fucking building.

And he still didn’t know why. Thus the engineer.

“I think it’s with the vectoring.” The man continued, apparently heedless of Swick’s irritation. He was a tall man, taller even than Swick, and kept his face concealed behind one of those masked cowels so popular in the East. Nonetheless, the occasional flash of bronze skin was easily visible beneath the fabric.

“Vectoring?” Swick asked. The engineer sighed, but subtly. It was nice of him to hide his irritation at being forced to speak with a mere plebian, really.

“The, uh, aim, direction. For the thrust I mean. Normal skyships automatically compensate for that in the air. They’d have to, or else they’d just start barrel-rolling after take-off. Yours, though, doesn’t seem to be capable of it.”

Which, Swick realised, explained why it almost started barrel-rolling after take-off. Interesting.

“So fix it.” He suggested. Another sigh.

“Do you know how to set something up so that it not only pushes off against a mobile mass like the air, but also compensates for that same mass moving in response to being pushed, as well as any tiny, sudden changes in direction caused by the wind hitting it from either side?”

Swick did give it a thought, as best as he could manage, before confidently giving his answer.

“No.”

“That’s a coincidence.” The engineer grunted. “Because I don’t, either. As far as I know basically nobody does. Which is a big part of why we can’t make skyships anymore. You might’ve thought about that before breaking yours.”

Had an edge to him, this one, but Swick didn’t mind that so much. Years amongst pirates tended to leave a man inoculated against most forms of misanthropy, and this case was paired with a fairly promising level of actual, practical understanding. There was very little he wouldn’t forgive in exchange for that of all traits.

“Can you work it out?” He asked, made hopeful by the fact that the engineer hadn’t just up and fucked off. As Swick might have hoped, the man paused rather than shooting down the notion out of hand.

“Probably.” He decided, with no small touch of pride in his voice. Oddly high voice, Swick realised. There was a definite edge of aristocracy to it too. “But it’ll take some doing.”

“Then do it.” Swick grinned, stepping back and deciding to watch the man at work. With a bit of luck, he might even learn a thing or two himself.

It didn’t last long, that hope. Killed by a couple of factors working as one. Firstly was the damned impossibility of actually seeing anything useful. This engineer, like most, seemed to most prefer working on the vessel by spelunking within its bowels, only rarely coming up for air- or more often, a refill of their lantern- and then disappearing back down again to continue whatever unseen magics allowed engineers to shape reality as all other casters did.

The second was that those few glimpses Swick did see, he had no bloody idea how to make sense of. There was simply no frame of reference in his life of experience for what was being done. Half of the components he saw, he couldn’t name. The rest he couldn’t describe. He felt like a blind man trying to study art by memorising the sounds of brush hitting canvas.

“You making progress?” He asked, eliciting another irritated grunt from the increasingly harassed engineer.

“It’s hard to tell.” They replied. “Do remember how unique this technology is, all I know of it is the basic theory and some anecdotes about its physical limits.”

Swick saw no reason why that shouldn’t have been enough, if engineers gained so little from all those years spent squatted inside hunched over books while their masters lectured away then it just made him wonder why they’d even bother to fucking do it. He decided that voicing the sentiment would not achieve much, however.

“Ah!” The man gasped, with excitement, not disappointment, infusing his voice. Swick stiffened, fighting back his own elation, not wanting to humour the emotion which had so regularly fallen down into mere disappointment.

“You see something?” He asked.

“Yes, hush.” The engineer snapped, moving farther into the ship’s innards. Swick heard the sound of components displaced and rattled against one another as he fiddled with them, haste so great that it was being conveyed through the sheer volume of his work. He wasn’t worried about any damage coming from it, skyship internals were built to withstand jagged turns and swooping drops. He doubted someone without a plentiful infusion of Vigour in their muscles could damage it if they tried.

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Swick watched, and waited. Eagerly anticipating some triumphant emergence from the Engineer. Oh, they’d charge him everything they could in exchange for such a repair as this, but he’d pay it all willingly. Anything to sail the skies again, anything and more.

The smoke emerged thinly at first, then quickly congealed into an opaque inky cloud which stifled Swick’s growing optimism just as completely as it did the light. He heard coughing, gasping, more coughing and then a fit of swearing which demonstrated quite a considerable vocabulary.

He added to it.

Waving a hand and wincing at the mess, the engineer emerged. Swick deflated at the sight of him scrambling back from the skyship.

“Fuck.” They gasped, once finally clear of the smog and able to inhale without furthering the torture of their lungs.

Swick didn’t bother asking what they could still do, he reckoned he’d already seen enough to know when a task was beyond someone. Perhaps these engineers should’ve hunched over a few more books before setting out to work.

“Captain Swick?”

The voice caught him quite by surprise, and Swick barely resisted his usual response to the calling of his name. He turned, rather than simply diving through the nearest window, and was pleasantly surprised to see a man, not a debtor, standing expectantly before him.

He was tall, hawkish, almost eerie. He spoke to Swick with the sort of recognition one gained through hearing a reputation, and those who spoke to Swick like that…

Swick’s fingers danced towards the handle of his knife, because those who spoke to him like that were generally bounty hunters.

“Can I help you?” He asked, ready to start slashing and stabbing at a moment’s notice. The fight never came, though.

“No, but I believe I can help you.” The man replied. “I am…Well, name’s are irrelevant I think, I am Hand to his Majesty King Galukar of Arbite.”

Swick eyed him, surprised, but not disbelieving. He certainly matched the descriptions he’d heard.

“And you’re offering me a hundred knights?” He asked, hopefully. The Hand didn’t smile.

“I’m offering you a name, Bal the Treasure Hunter. You may have heard it before?”

Swick had done more than bloody hear it before, and he winced at the memory.

“Ah, that confirms it then.” The Hand noted. “I’d heard of your dealings together, the stories are true then?”

He reminded Swick of Shaiagrazni, always keenly watching, always catching the slightest hints that flitted past his vision and weaving them into knowledge.

Best be careful around this one.

“Yes.” He replied, deciding not to bother lying. Better to save his lies for later. “Years ago.”

Eight years ago if Swick was remembering rightly. They’d been fellow outlaws, both clever enough to not trust the other. They’d worked together, briefly, for practical reasons, and their semi-voluntary partnership had ended painfully when it outlived its usefulness.

Not a Hero, Swick thought. But uncomfortably close to one. Close enough to leave the eight-inch scar under his ribs which itched every time he remembered the bastard. A lucky hit, but most needed a lot more than luck to leave something like that on him.

Even if, in fairness, Swick had been drunk at the time. When hadn’t he been, those days?

“That’s convenient then.” The Hand smiled, without it touching his eyes. “Because you’ll be the one needing to find him. I have reason to believe he has just the component needed for repairing your skyship.”

----------------------------------------

The Dark Elves were not numerous, but they compensated with sheer efficiency. One hundred or so, perhaps, and they took several prisoners each through carefully calculated lines of sight and well-prepared shackles.

And butchery. That, Hexeri knew, was the meat of it. Those whose bodies were strong, Vigorous, were taken for their use to a Necromancer in fresh death. The others were disarmed, ushered away. And killed to keep from troubling the rest.

With weapons and commands they might have offered resistance, with neither the men either perished or ran. Most escaped, but the spilled blood of those few hundred stupid or slow enough not to was still a revolting thing. Then the march began.

Just like that, a force of thousands had been erased. Just like that the Dark Lord had himself two Heroes and a dozen Rangers as prisoners. Just like that, the fight was over and a crushing defeat had settled into its place.

And the Dark Elves hadn’t even needed to dodge a single spear thrust. The word demoralising had not been coined for describing so harrowing a defeat. Not even close.

Naturally Hexeri was split up from Collin Baird, and the two of them were marched under particularly weighty guard. She still heard him, over the other footsteps, having had ample time through their few weeks of familiarity to pick out his idiosyncrasies in stride, breath and scent. For the better part of a few hours, she did nothing but occasionally check to make sure he still lived. Then, eventually, she froze.

Because Hexeri found herself hearing the sound of falling bodies and smelling the scent of blood. Then Baird was beside her, hacking through the steel of her shackles like thin rope. Both of them were free, and the fight came almost before she even recognised the fact.

Elves came in, three of them. They were faster than humans, faster than human Knights even, and their hands held curved blades of metal Hexeri didn’t even have a name for. She ducked under one, replying to its wielder with a punch that sank deep into their guts and broke something within the soft viscera. It fell, blood spurting from their lips, and Hexeri seized the ichor with her thoughts.

It became a spray of crimson flechettes at the flick of her cognition, sent shooting for another Elf like so many arrows. Faster than arrows, than crossbow bolts, almost faster than Baird’s own projectiles. They dug through mail and lamellar, sinking into the meat below. Her target stumbled, fell, leaking more of their precious lifeblood out.

Hexeri appreciated the loss, for it gave her the ammunition to shred another two Elves. Baird himself was killing away beside her, a human whirlwind of blades and teeth. Fingers came off, wrists opened, and every artery within nicking range was nicked so smoothly and sharply that his blades were probably a yard clear before the pain even started.

Seconds passed, then the two of them stood at the centre of a dozen-strong litter of corpses. Some neatly switched off by pinpoint Ranger-swift stabs and slices. Others ripped to piles of twisted meat by the less subtle touch of blood magic and Vampiric strength. None were impeding their retreat, anymore, and so they sprinted.

A dozen surprised Dark Elves was one thing, the ninety more readying to give chase was quite another.

Bolts of magic came after them, now that the shock of sudden violence was wearing off. Hexeri was already fifty paces away, and the jet of searing energy that sailed just short of her missed by a good yard. Even still, she felt its heat. A normal Vampire would have been burned, even by that near-miss. A normal human killed outright. Elven magic was the stuff of legends for a reason, and the Dark Elves tended towards a more overtly destructive style than others.

There was nothing to do but run, and hope. They did.

Hexeri dragged the shadows beside them as she passed, pulling them up into a black mist at their backs. It would do nothing to impede such powerful energy- barely even enough to halt human arrows- but the obfuscation would hopefully keep them from being struck directly. It seemed just in time, too, for an entire barrage of power shot through in moments.

The Elves were slower in a dead-sprint, at least. And they never did hit them. Hexeri and Collin Baird managed to disappear from the fight.

It was, in the end, all they managed.