Isse had… actually, she’d rarely heard people swearing in this world. Makira had done it one time near the kids, and then only because one of her sisters had managed to catch her with a net and was painting her spider half pink while another one was tickling her. The second time had been in Pochi’s presence while they were on their way back from their outing to the town, although she didn’t quite remember why.
And after that? Well, a few patrons had sworn in Creanza’s café, but she’d otherwise never been in the presence of people that swore. Grandmother had been categorically against it and Albert had been Albert.
So most of the insults and swears she knew came from her life before coming to this world.
That is, up until now.
I shall not transcribe the words she heard in those brief first few minutes of attempting to fly away from the Alannian airship, for they were such violent expressions of things that would be done to those people’s mothers and their pets, of curses to be sent down their bloodlines that would most certainly end with them, for such people would never find someone willing to reproduce with them, and so much more… it wasn’t good.
Rather, it was great and somewhat funny, but it was not appropriate for this story.
*Shuffling in the background*
*Whispering*
“What do you mean it would be appropriate? It’s not!”
*Mumbling*
“So what if there was rape and death described in minute detail?”
*More mumbling*
“I don’t care. I decide what is and isn’t appropriate and I draw the line at how scurrilous she is being.”
*Grumbling*
“What do you mean ‘nobody uses the word scurrilous anymore’? So what if they don’t? They’re all savages. Wait, is this thing still on?”
*Sounds of tape being wound back*
Isse marveled at the amount of pure nonsensical insults Moon was throwing around like candy on Halloween, smiling slightly as both she and Siidi worked overtime to write them all down in their Mind Castle, the younger arachne somehow managing to both stay awake and be in there doing a [Scrybe]’s work.
“Moon, who’s coming after us?” she asked in the end when the woman calmed down.
“Alanna. Those fuckers must’ve sent a few airships from their fleet out here. They’re probably trying to figure out where you’ve disappeared.”
Well, now Isse truly understood why Moon was going all out on the swearing.
“Wait, but isn’t running away from them going to give away that I’m here.”
“Yes and no. Let’s just say that people transporting crimes against the continuation of life aren’t the only ones who run from those idiots.”
“What?”
“Nobody likes the damned silvers, girl, that’s what I mean. They’ve been known to shoot down airships that are unaffiliated to them or allied kingdoms. Gotta keep the supremacy!”
The last sentence was said with enough venom in it to burn right through the deck and down to the very bottom.
Before Isse could ask anything else, Shriya interjected helpfully: “Silvers is our slang for all airships affiliated to Alanna. They’re all forced to fly a golden flag with a silver image of a temple.”
She stopped, looking thoughtful, before adding: “Also, I think, like, half the silver fleet has beef with Moon and me.”
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On the Alannan airship the [Captain], a man named Furioso, shouted orders at [Mages] and [Sky Sailors]. Wind currents were called upon to breathe on their sails, which were being held open to their maximum.
“Has anyone managed to identify that damned skiff?”
Skiff was sky slang for the smallest airships and, usually, was used as an insult, because the damn things had a tendency to be blown off by a current just a little stronger than usual: for that reason they were only used as one-time vessels to assault other ships.
Finally his [Quartermaster] reached him. The man’s skin wasn’t skin at all because he had scales. They were a pale yellow and covered in scars, something very normal when talking about anyone who originated from Eva’s jungles. His left eye was a dull gray, while the right one was missing altogether, a wooden sphere painted yellow in its place. Furioso knew that he could’ve changed it into a magical glass eye that would’ve given him back his sight, he had the money for it, but, to use his own words, ‘One should not forget where they started. This eye is a reminder of that, together with the idiocy of my youth.’
Furioso respected the naga – because yes, he was an evolved version of a lizardkin – and smiled slightly as he slithered up towards him.
“So?”
“I’ve got some bad news. That airship, it’s the ‘Amissa’.”
Furioso’s face went dark, then pale, then he glared at the airship moving away from him.
“Is it now? The Mad Engineer’s airship?”
“I would recognize it anywhere.”
“And how would you?”
“Before being recruited by you I was on a trading vessel that sold her the nails she used to make that beautiful monstrosity. I was also there when, as a kid, she tried to board the ship I was working on as a mere [Sailor] because she wanted to ‘fly without wings’. She cried so much when we found her trying to smuggle herself in with the provisions.”
“Now’s not the time for happy memories Murgia. She took down over a dozen airships up until now.”
Murgia, the [Quartermaster], made a so-so gesture as he took out a spyglass and looked towards the distant airship: “Define ‘take down’, my captain. From what I’ve heard and seen she only, quite literally, took them down to the ground by damaging the balloons. She never killed the people aboard.”
“Ah yes, because destroying the balloon keeping the airship aloft and watching people fall to their deaths isn’t killing, right, right. She didn’t plant the knife in their hearts, it’s reasonable.”
“No, I mean that in the sense she literally never… rarely caused the deaths of others. The ships’ balloons were damaged enough to make them useless but not to the point of making them plummet. She’s no murderer, just someone who values her ship more than anything else.”
Furioso sighed heavily and waved him off.
“Be that as it may, all [Captains] have been told to get her alive, and bring her to Alanna for questioning and convincing. Apparently some people higher up in the chain want her to collaborate with them.”
And at that Murgia began laughing like a madman.
His [Captain] and, secretly, [Lover], raised an eyebrow at his reaction, clearly not understanding what was so funny in his statement.
When, finally, he managed to calm down, the [Quartermaster] spoke: “Knowing her, she’s already got three plans in mind to fuck us right up. So let’s give her our all now, shall we?”
Furioso narrowed his eyes: “I’m really starting to wonder what side you’re on.”
“Bite me! And then try to throw allegations of betrayal with your broken mouth.”
They chuckled.
And then they were serious again: “Well, here goes nothing: [Crew: Enhance Dexterity], [Crew: Enhance Wind Magic].”
The [Captain] followed a moment later with Skills of his own: “[Aircutting Hull], [Balloon: Enhanced Resistance].”
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“So, got a plan?” asked Isse.
She’d long since gotten bored of shouting at Moon from the door and had stepped on the bridge, her dress hiding her spider half.
“We’re gonna do what I colloquially call the Dance of the Three Fs, or, as my dear friend calls it…”
She looked towards Shriya with a hopeful smile.
“I’m not gonna finish that.”
“Oh, come on Shriya!”
“Nope, not gonna do it.”
“Not even if I –”
“Nope.”
Moon grouched: “You’re no fun.”
To which her companion responded only with a slight smile.
“Anyways, since she doesn’t want to say it: it’s also simply called the Dance of the Fuck-Fuck-Fuck. So, basically, we’re kinda fucked, so we’re gonna fuck around and, in the end, we’re going to fuck up our enemies!”
Isse frowned, then opened her mouth, a finger rising in the air as she attempted to parse that sentence, then she realized there was absolutely nothing to parse, for there was no plan to speak of, and just shut her mouth tight.
“Atta girl, I see you understand!”
The arachne turned towards the [Druid], her raised eyebrow being all that she needed to say.
“Yes, it’s always like this. She makes things up on the fly. It shouldn’t work as much as it does, but it does, and that’s all I care about.”
Isse looked at her, nodding in understanding, before she interjected: “Did you just make a pun?”
Shriya ground to a halt, turning to glare down at her.
“You know. ‘Make things up on the fly’, and we’re on an airship…”
The [Druid] sighed: “She’s rubbing off on me.”
“Hold onto anything my dearies, we’re gonna be doing some [Unpredictable Maneuvers]!”
And with that Skill shouted the ship groaned like a beast waking up from deep slumber, the wood rippling as, in its depths, the bones shivered. Not a moment later Moon smiled like a madwoman as her hand moved to a series of levers to her right. She pulled one, pressed a button, and they suddenly began to plummet towards the distant ground.
Of course Isse screamed.
And of course Siidi joined in, shouting about how arachne weren’t meant to fly.
She had not expected Moon to commit suicide right at the start of the battle.
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For a moment she felt herself floating, her legs unable to grasp at the wood underneath because of the sharp change in direction, but a moment later she felt something grab at her legs and rapidly crawl up to her spider half, bringing her down and locking her in place, making sure she wouldn’t be flying away.
She turned towards Shriya, considering the idea of begging her to let her go: maybe she could weave herself a parachute before going splat like a mosquito against a windshield.
She then noticed that the [Druid], too, had anchored herself to the bridge… using vines. Yes, vines had sprouted from the wood of the airship and were tightly binding her feet to it, making sure she wouldn’t be flying away anytime soon.
The woman opened her mouth and said something but Isse couldn’t hear anything over the howling winds.
A moment later though she heard Moon thanks to, probably, one of her Skills: “Get ready, we’re about to move back up!”
Not a second later she felt a great force push against her back as she was squished towards the bridge. Looking up she saw that the balloon, which had been visibly deflated up until a few moments ago, was filling back up… and then expanding beyond its previous dimensions.
“[Balloon: Increased Elasticity]!”
Ah, so that’s why that thing hadn’t popped with how big it had become.
Then Shriya said: “[Vines: Increased Strength (Major)].”
Her voice was calm, as if falling out of the sky and then suddenly ascending like some kind of fucked up cricket jumping through the air was the most normal thing ever.
“They never expect it. It’s very much against protocols,” says Shriya as if reading her mind, all the while acting absolutely nonchalant and making herself look like a complete sociopath.
“Of course it’s not fucking normal, who the fuck thinks that falling hundreds of meters from the air is a good and viable tactic?”
For a moment she felt a discordant sensation of emptiness as her mind expected someone to shout ‘Language!’ at her… but nothing came. Right, Albert was dead. Grandmother too. Everyone was dead, or she had left them behind. Not that Morra, her [Necromancer] friend, had ever cared about such things.
Moon laughed behind her as she said: “Apparently someone does!”
Turning around she saw two things, one of which was very alarming. The first was their [Pilot] holding some kind of scroll in her hands, a pen in the other scribbling something on it. The other, the one that was scaring her, was the enemy airship reaching them at an alarming speed.
Did those motherfuckers just copy Moon?
It would seem so.
Isse got ready to fling [Fireballs].
----------------------------------------
Murgia watched the Mad Engineer’s airship as they rapidly began closing in, his mind awhirl. He still remembered the young girl he’d found a very long time ago hiding among barrels of fresh fruits in his ship’s hold, back when he’d been a mere [Skybound Deckhand].
He remembered meeting her multiple times in Alanna while she’d been an apprentice under one of the city’s greatest [Engineers]... unknowingly. The man loved his job but absolutely despised anything living that wanted to work with him, so he tended to rarely take on jobs. His prices were also so high that only the richest of the rich would ever consider buying from him, but the quality of his work… oh, his airships were works of art. To this day Murgia still wondered how in Airm that young woman had managed to convince the man to take her under his wing.
What he knew for certain was that he had put her through Airm if the consistent amount of dark circles under her eyes had been anything to go by. But, thanks to all her efforts, Moon had ended up being a great [Engineer], one who could build an airship out of literal bones and make it fly.
And then, finally, he remembered seeing and talking to her for years as she slowly built her vision, selling her good quality nails at half the price just because he liked her. And also… because she was one of them: a jungleborn. Someone raised in that harsh land who had learned to love it for all of its constant attempts at making itself unlivable.
‘Unity in common strife’ was their motto, their very way of living.
It had been nearly five years since he’d last met her.
Nearly five years that he’d been recruited by this [Captain], who he’d fallen head over tail for.
And now, right here, in these homely skies – free of the more savage tribes of birdkin that would often attempt to bring airships down to loot them – he met her again… as enemies. Supposedly.
“I need a Communication Scroll, now!”
The words left his mouth before he could be certain of his course of action – but really, there was nothing to decide. She was one of them, just like him, after all.
Furioso raised an eyebrow as he rummaged around in his bag of holding and took out a little scroll, eyeing him up and down as if admiring his self assuredness.
Murgia took it with a nod of thanks and began writing on it with the same pen he normally used to write routes on maps, the point connected to a nearby inkwell.
“Who are you writing to?”
“To Moon, obviously.”
The [Captain] raised his bushy eyebrow again: “Are you sure she even has a Scroll to answer you back?”
The naga chuckled slightly, nodding his head: “Of course she has: for all that she’s strange and probably slightly insane, she was trained by one of ours. She follows protocols.”
“THE ENEMY AIRSHIP IS PLUMMETING TO THE GROUND!!!” shouted a [Sky Sailor].
Both Murgia and Furioso turned their heads towards where, moments prior, the Amissa had been floating away from them, or rather, trying to. Now there was nothing but empty air. Looking down they saw the airship falling to the ground.
“Protocols, right?” asked the [Captain] with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Don’t use that tone with me, mister. As for her, [Infer Plan].”
The world stopped as his mind began to race faster than sound itself, analyzing the situation he was in and showing him different possible outcomes. It was a powerful Skill, one he’d obtained at Level 30 in fact, but it had its limitations. Or rather, limitation. Singular. That being, the Skill helped him deduce many possible outcomes from an enemy’s movements, but in the end, he still had to be the one to choose which outcome was the likeliest.
So he observed and judged: one of the outcomes, naturally, ended with the airship breaking apart and falling to the ground, causing the death of whoever was onboard. He immediately discarded that one, knowing full well that Moon would never just end her life, not in such a… boring way, at least. Other outcomes showed her somehow filling her balloon and ascending back up, stopping at different heights to either run away or fight them head on, but now with a greater advantage. He discarded them all: this definitely wasn’t how she would do it.
Then, finally, he saw it: a possibility in which she ended up being higher than them, ascending with such speed that the one successful attempt had been covered by hundreds of others in which the ropes holding the balloon connected to her ship broke, making her fall. In this projection, though, she somehow made it, ending up in a prime position to…
“Well, fuck me gently with a sword,” he whispered.
“Furioso, get us higher, as high as you can!”
“What? But she’s going down!”
“She’s gonna come right back up! [Balloon: Increase Lift]! Move it, move it!”
His orders caused havoc among the crew as people began to man the ropes in an attempt to keep the airship on course.
“Furioso, I need you to use your Skill to change the air currents! We need to move backwards thirty seconds ago!”
Had Murgia been anyone else the [Captain] would’ve told him to fuck right off and, probably, thrown him overboard for daring to give out orders the way he had, for all that he was what amounted to a First Officer on his relatively small vessel. The naga, though, had proven more times than he could count just how sharp his mind was, so if he said something had to be done with as much fervor as he did now, it meant it had to be done.
“[Sails: Turn Around]. [Change the Winds: West-North-West].”
He activated his Level 40 Capstone Skill and felt a current of wind form in front of them, blowing them backwards, their sails, suddenly turned the other way ‘round to the utter bafflement of his crew, catching the winds in stride, moving them back.
“Raise the sails, now!” he shouted when he was sure they had gone backwards enough, and his men immediately began pulling ropes up.
Not a few seconds later they saw the Mad Engineer’s airship appear right in front of them.
“See, what did I tell you?” smugly said the naga.
“You did good. Thank you,” he said back gruffly but with a small smile.
Then the [Quartermaster] began writing again.
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Murgia: Hello Moon. It’s been a while.
Moon: Murgia, is that you? What are you doing with the silvers?
Mu: Oh, you know, getting paid, eating relatively good food, fucking the [Captain].
Mo: You’ve got to be shitting me. I want all the saucy details.
Mu: Maybe another time you little madwoman. We need to check out your ship and bring you back to Alanna. Could you make it easy on us?
Mo: I’m afraid not Murgia, my pal. I’ll never forget your kindness when I was building the Amissa, nor will I forget the times you covered for me during my training, but this? I’m on a mission, helping someone. I can’t come with you, nor let you get on. Maybe later, when I’m done? We could chat! It’s been years! And you can tell me all about your captain!
Mu: …
Mu: Moon, I’m sorry, but this is my job. Please. I don’t want to hurt you.
Mo: Ha! As if you could.
Mu: Moon, I know you. I know your tactics, I know the way you work. If there’s anyone out there in the world who could get you it’s me. Please don’t force my hand.
Mo: … You’re right, Murgia. You know me well enough. And you’re junglebound, like me, so you think like I do. But here’s the thing: you know me. And I don’t work alone anymore.
Mu: Very well. I’ll try not to go too hard on you. We’ll try, me and my captain, or he can forget all about –
Mo: Ah ah ah! No spoiling until I’m there with you! I don’t want a drop of water, I want the whole bottle all in one go. See ya!
With that the Scroll’s magic faded, Moon clearly having closed her counterpart.
Murgia shook his head, although he couldn’t help the smirk forming on his face.
“I’m a fool,” he said, looking up to his lover.
“Nothing new there. Got any specific reason?”
He chuckled: “She never once in her life chose the easy way out. I was a fool for thinking she’d do that this time around.”
“Soooooooo… does that mean we can start casting [Fireballs] and throwing harpoons?”
“Yes, you can start throwing fireballs and harpoons Furioso.”
The [Captain] gave the order and everyone on the bridge cheered.
Murgia just hoped Moon wouldn’t be too angry at the damage. Although, seeing that chitin armoring her whole ship, he guessed there wouldn’t be much of that.
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“So, let me get this straight: that man offered you to do things peacefully if you decided to go with them and let them inspect the ship. You refused. And now they’re probably going to attack us,” tried to understand Isse.
“Oh no, they’re absolutely going to attack us. I think we have thirty seconds to a minute before they do.”
Issekina Silksoul, who’d been trained by Grandmother herself, an Elder of the arachne, and had lived for months in the company of Pochi, who was Makira’s sister-in-chaos and a great [Strategist], who had also been trained by not one, but two master [Spies], had seldom witnessed such unsound decision making.
“I can hide! You see what this dress can do! I can even change my face with illusions! You could’ve let them get on, they would’ve found nothing and then you could’ve negotiated to go back with them after you dropped me off wherever I need to be!”
Moon nodded sagely, the line of her mouth clearly saying she didn’t care one iota about any of that.
“I think you’re forgetting about your little bed you made yourself down in my hold. Plus… I don’t want them on my ship, it’s that simple. Well, except for Murgia. This was an unexpected encounter.”
Isse felt like tearing her hair out and then doing the same to Moon’s, but in the end she took a few deep breaths and asked an extremely stupid question: “So, what’s the plan?”
“Plan? I thought I told you: it’s the Dance of the Thr –”
She didn’t manage to finish the sentence as the airship shook from an explosion. Someone had just thrown a fireball at their back.
“FUCK!” shouted Isse.
“No thank you, later, and I already have a girlfriend!”
Another explosion hit them and made the airship shudder and groan.
“Can this thing resist?”
“So long as they don’t want to be court-martialed for hitting the balloon and sails then yes, we’re very much safe from the fireballs: the chitin this ship’s covered in comes from a few big Reveler Ants and the little… not so little bitches are known for being quite resistant to fire. No, there’s only one thing at risk here and that’s us: the ship can take a beating, I, on the other hand, have no desire to find out if there’s a Skill for [Explosion Resistance].”
There was, in fact, a Skill like that.
“So let’s get going! Shriya, can you slow them down?”
“On it!” said the [Druid] as she turned towards the silvers and raised her right hand in a come hither gesture, her wings fluttering slightly in the air. A moment later vines began to sprout from the wood on the enemy’s ship, where the sailors began to panic while some attempted to attack them. The long vines seemed to dance in the air, like charmed snakes swaying to a song, but otherwise were completely harmless.
“That should keep them occupied for a short while,” she announced.
“Do those vines do anything?” asked the arachne.
“Absolutely not, but the fact they grew out of nowhere in the middle of an airship is usually enough to scare most people into thinking they’re dangerous.”
“So, let me get this straight: most of your tactics revolve around fucking around with people’s heads?”
Moon and Shriya looked at each other at that, their eyes meeting as they seemingly had a conversation without actually speaking.
Then the [Druid] simply said: “There’s enough death in this world. We see not the need to cause more, not without reason.”
As Isse heard these words she remembered something Albert had told her once: “The Greatest Game was born as a way to stop the wars in a peaceful manner. A game of intrigue and spies, where people would be ‘killed’ by destroying their reputations, by exposing their evil deeds. That is what the Game was, once upon a time.”
The people change, the ideas don’t, said Siidi.
Although, if I may, we should probably worry more about the incoming attacks.
Oh right, there was that.
“I’ll try to help, alright?”
“Sure, go ahead. I’ll see if I can lose them somewhere, it’s my speciality. Just keep them distracted!”
And with that, as the people on the ship were ordered back to calm by the [Captain] and their attention was returned to the fleeing airship, Isse stood at the stern and looked up at the enemies, getting ready to help.