Fredrak wanted to go for a round with me, but I was a bit nervous as his weapons was something particularly nasty. We were squaring up after dinner, while the sun still cast a reasonable amount of light, and his hammer did look kinda scary. It was coursing with black mana, and the air around it seemed almost warped. My previous sparring with Larrik had been with blunted weapons, and while you can’t really blunt magic Leona’s spells couldn’t hurt me either. This would be my first fight, other than my oneshot wonder with the wyvern, where the enemy was focused on me and had lethal capacity.

He started with a wide and low swing, aiming to take me in the knee. I took a half step back and it missed. Not that I had just performed some kind of inhuman reaction, the hammer swing had been quite slow. That was just the start though, as each successive swing he made was faster, and the hammer was stealing my mana whenever it got near me. I tried taking one of his blows on my bracer, but it went right through my whole arm.

My left hand dropped limply to the deck, and I had to really start giving ground as his swings came faster and faster. It took me a second to gain control over my stump again, and form a new arm. His hammer was no joke, and so I would be needing to start applying my own pressure. I sprung my trusty halberd into my hands, and I started by using its long reach to force him away. Larrik had helped me practice some basic moves, and despite going through three halberds, I gained myself enough ground to start getting creative.

I swapped the axe and spike for a hammer, and swung it for his center mass. He went to bash the haft of my weapon away, but he realized too late that it wouldn't stop the hammerhead from carrying on into him. I had increased its density, so its momentum promptly carried him into, and then over, the railing. Everyone started panicking because we were a couple hundred feet in the air, and he hadn’t been tied off to the ship.

I simply walked over to the edge and started pulling him back up. I had woven a thin web of mana all around us after he’d broken my third polearm, and that let me continue to maintain any parts that fell off of me. I had sent him flying overboard with plenty of my mana, so turning it into a chain to catch him was easy enough. By the time I got him back aboard I was starting to feel drained, as I’d been projecting and manipulating so much mana.

~~~

Fredrak had not expected the Soulsteel’s blow to carry quite so much momentum. He’d tried to catch himself on to the railing as he went over, but his gauntlets prevented him from establishing a firm enough grip. He knew that Creighton could fly down and get him, or that one of the wizards could cast something to slow his fall, but he was still briefly terrified by the long drop ahead, especially with the wind knocked out of him. That was when he felt something wrap around his bruised ribs, and his fall came to a sudden, painful halt.

He stopped channeling mana into his Hammer of Oblivion when he saw it was Creighton who was pulling him back up, as he didn’t want to risk disrupting the chain. After managing to scramble over the topsides, he and Creighton both took a second to rest against the ship’s rail.

“You’ve got a lot of strength, don’t you?”

“Everything can be muscle.”

“You didn’t use any mana in that strike?”

“Did to add more weight, and to keep together.”

“I’m surprised how quickly you can reassert control, mages struck with one of these are normally stunned.”

“Felt tingle. Remind of arm fall asleep.”

“Thanks for pulling me back up. Wasn’t looking to take a saltwater bath tonight.”

“Welcome. Good fight?”

“I was a little disappointed at first, but I enjoyed myself plenty after you started pushing me back.”

“Can learn how you do that?”

“Aye, I suppose I could teach you. Not right now though. I’ve had it for today.”

“Am I tired too.”

Leona was the closest thing to a healer on the ship, and she set about getting the dwarf comfortable in a proper bed. The next two days were spent with Creighton trying to integrate an absorption spell into one of his weapons, but they kept consuming the very mana that he had made them out of.

~~~

Rodney, Cole, Eugene, Creighton, and Fredrak were all at the bow of the ship, staring out at the distant curtains of rain. They had been putting off making a final decision until they could visually assess the Broilstorm’s height, and now that they were here they had to make a choice.

“So, are we going over the clouds, or are we going to try and make it through one of the valleys?”

“I don’t see why we aren't doing both. Just sail along the very top of the valley.”

“If we go between the Rainheads, we will be at risk of getting sucked into one of the storms, and we’re far more susceptible to sudden changes in the wind without the drag from the ocean.”

“Aye, but what about going over it all?”

“I’d estimate the height to be around ten thousand feet. We should be fine to sail up that high, but the air will be noticeably thinner, and we’ll all be especially short of breath if we’re over a Broilstorm.”

“We could take a day to rest, and then try and fly over it with the entire crew awake?”

“We can’t be sure just how long we’d need to sail to come out the other side, and if we had a malfunction up that high we’d have a long way to descend before we hit the ocean.”

“Propeller not help?”

“No, it would. I think using it and running a passage is our best bet.”

“If we use the screw, we won’t need to rig the sails, and we can keep much more of the crew below deck.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Won’t that impact our fuel consumption?”

“It will, but we have plenty, especially with just how fast we’ve been running with the wind.”

“Should we go today, or wait until tomorrow?”

“Creighton, can you go scout a good one for us? You can get up quite high, and see which ones are the straightest, and widest.”

“That can do. Keep up?”

“We’ll follow along behind you, if you like the look of one coming up, return and tell us.”

It was well past noon before Creighton returned, and the pick he’d made had a narrow gap and steep rainheads, but it was a nearly straight shot for as far as he could see. The crew was as fresh as they were going to get, so while Creighton headed down into the engine room to siphon off some of the ambient mana, the ship turned to take the plunge.

The width at the bottom would have been too tight for a ship to tack back and forth in, but by climbing almost halfway up the Broilstorm and with the aid of the ship’s screw, they found an area of constant updraft that let them maintain a constant speed and heading. The slight nose up attitude of the ship let the sails catch some of the updraft, and they were able to push ten knots once they were sandwiched between the towering cliffs of water.

Broilstorms only get more intense the deeper into them you go, but up here in the sky the rain fell without making a sound. The straining of the rigging was the only thing the crew could hear, other than the occasional course correction. They could still tell that the storms on both sides were getting thicker, as it was constantly getting darker. Lamps were hung around the ship, as the sun had descended past the strip of sky above them, and its light was stifled.

The air held the scent of brimstone, and when night arrived Joan started guiding them by the stars directly above their heads. She stood just behind the mainmast, and called out headings to keep them away from the mute walls of steaming pain. The knights on watch held bullseye lanterns, aimed so that they could just make out the light reflecting back off the curtains of rain. They passed two other branching paths in the storm, but both angled off perpendicularly to their current route, and both Joan and the ship’s compass agreed their current heading was still taking them westward.

It was just as the watch was changing, with daylight first appearing high above their heads, that the first man was found asleep at his post. Despite other crewmembers trying rather vigorously to wake him, he could not be roused. Many of the next shift’s crew were unresponsive, and the most exhausted also started slipping into unconsciousness. Leona had been the only mage for the night shift, and she was the first to realize what was happening.

“It’s a sleep spell, but I have no idea what could be casting it.”

“Where is Creighton, he doesn’t sleep.”

“Well, he doesn’t normally sleep, but the deckhands couldn’t get him to budge. Apparently it affected the engine’s room first.”

“Shit. Can you counterspell it?”

“What?!”

The ship’s bell had been ringing, but with Larrik’s voice petering out Leona was suddenly very aware that she couldn’t hear it anymore. Turning to it, it was still swinging, but with each strike of the clapper it produced no sound. A sudden jolt went through the ship, and she turned back to a massive gray dragon digging its claws into the port topside.

~~~

“What the hell was that?”

Something big had been stalking below the ship, and it’s apparently a dragon.

“You didn’t wake me up for this?”

How was I supposed to know it was a problem before it started putting the crew to sleep?

“How much of the crew is still awake?”

About half, Though that number is dropping.

“Are the other mages up?”

That girl in the green robes is, but she’s kinda busy.

“Why can’t I hear anything? Why is the ship listing so badly?”

I’d blame the dragon for your deafness, and he just landed on deck.

“Oh shit. Where is Creighton?”

He’s still down by the boiler.

“Then go wake him up, I’ll go try and dispel whatever it’s doing, hopefully with Leona’s help.”

When Deuin made it to the deck, A few knights of the Drake Guard, plus Leona, Larrik, and Krisjen were still on their feet. Leona was focused on repeatedly rousing whomever had most recently fallen asleep, but she then got distracted patching up a knight who’d taken a swipe from the dragon’s massive tail.

It was having some difficulty trying to get its head past the rigging, and its claws were busy gripping the ship, so it was currently only striking out with its long tail. Just looking at the dragon made Deuin feel lethargic, and he started chanting a counterspell. It was using sound and order mana to suppress all noise, so he focused on conjuring a drum out of his own and enhanced it with chaos.

His first few drumbeat couldn’t overpower the oppressive silence, but it was not long before some broken notes started to break through, and then all at once the roar of the fight reasserted itself. The relief was not the saving grace Deuin had hoped it would be, as the dragon opened its maw and a rolling cloud of gray blanketed the deck of the ship. As it came into contact with each person, their movements stiffened as their flesh turned to stone.

It was only now that his legs were frozen in place that Deuin remembered he’d neglected to pass along the old man’s advice for Creighton, but as the petrification reached up to his neck, the last thing he could hear was the ship’s whistle.