The hull vibrated gently beneath Ferra’s feet, and the wind buffeted at his face. He took in a deep breath, contentment on the young man’s face. The infinite blue of the sky stretched out into forever in front of him, not an island to be seen, save for as tiny specks in the distance. Despite the ships’ relative height, the bottom half of the world still cut off at the horizon, the Mist stretching forever in all directions.
Even the best academics still had no idea if the world actually ended at any point. Efforts to chart the world horizontally all eventually failed, either from the aether thinning too much to safely continue, or from the air and gravity thinning too much if the attempt is made at a higher altitude.
Some people couldn’t deal with the scale of the world. Some lived on only the largest islands, in valleys or underground, perhaps. Trying their best to put their head down, avoid thinking about it, prevent their eyes from being inevitably drawn towards that infinite point on the horizon, where the world they lived in lost all meaning and scale. Ferra relished in it. Infinite space and infinite freedom, all for the taking. Just make sure not to fall.
He took another deep breath. Despite their height, the air on board the ship was perfectly breathable. Like floating islands themselves, the aetherstones that power an airship inherently gather air to them, a little bubble of breath in the vast expanse of the rarefied atmosphere; this also helped with what would otherwise be a ripping, chilling wind.
Ferra stayed there for some time, leaning against the railing. Occasionally he’d summon an orb of light in his hand, observing it, twisting it this way and that. The cleric felt the footsteps through the soles of his shoes before he heard them with his ears, turning to see Mel approaching from the stairs to belowdecks.
“Whatcha doin’?”
The wind was loud but not unduly so, and Ferra was pleased that he didn’t need to shout to be heard. “Practicing. If I’m with a team now I need to be better, faster, less bleed. Wouldn’t want to interfere with Mirana’s protections by accident while summoning a barrier, and the more stable the boundary on my summon, the less likely ‘lanche’s devices will damage it.” A pause. “Actually, now that I think about it, how does your fire interact with the divine?”
Mel shrugged. “No idea. According to the academics from back when I was a child getting tested, ‘results are inconsistent.’” She made the air quotes with her fingers while saying it.
“I didn’t pay too much attention. I do know that it seems to completely ignore the other majors, though.”
“Hmm. What does inconsistent mean, in this case?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why not find out?”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.” Ferra reached out toward her with the hand still holding his orb of light.
She flicked a wrist, a ball of flame springing to existence within her clawed grasp. Ferra found he had trouble describing it, or looking at it directly. It was like if you ripped out the very truth of what makes fire fire, and then painted an artist’s interpretation of that in the shape of an orb above her palm. It was an apple, then a surging dolphin; for a moment the writhing flames turned green and blue.
Mel smirked, clearly aware of how impressive and entrancing her fire was. She moved her flame closer, and at near the same moment they both released their wills from stabilizing the magics.
The light continued to float above Ferra’s palm, though it no longer felt like a part of him. Mel’s fire, however, billowed outwards in that way flame does when coals are blown on. When a tendril of it encountered his orb, the entire construct seemed to still for a moment, before seemingly siphoning itself down the connected tendril and into the orb.
Reflexively, Ferra dropped the combined amalgam. It was a good thing, too, as within moments the heat shot straight past ‘unpleasant to hold’ all the way to ‘will melt your flesh.’
Mel’s hand shot out and grabbed it, before the orb could fall into the endless void. Ferra cut off his warning mid-shout when he saw her hand was in no danger of burning. The smirk grew. “Innate fire immunity comes in handy, when you’ve got fire literally living inside you.”
“Ah- ah yeah, that would do it.”
She turned the orb. “Gotta say though, this is a new one. Never seen it combine like that before. Try to reach out, can you still connect to it?”
At her beckoning, Ferra leaned out with his will. The orb was slippery, mentally speaking. It was definitely no longer quite his, though with an effort he did manage to complete a connection. When he tried to change the shape, nothing happened.
“Huh, odd.”
Ferra suddenly felt a sense of agreement coming across the link, and the orb shifted into a cube.
Mel hmmmed audibly. “It’s like, we both have control over it? Can’t make any changes without the other trying to make the same change. Probably worth turning in some samples for study.”
“Is that your mind I felt when it shifted?”
A flash of passion seared across his mind, fiery and fierce. She grinned as he stumbled and almost fell over from the intensity of the emotion. “Sure was.”
“Is- is that how you feel all the time?”
Mel shrugged. “Pretty much, it’s part of my bloodline. Super driven, all the time. Also a follower of Kiara, by the way,” she finished with a wink.
Ferra brushed past the comment with all the tact of a dragon’s take on diplomacy. “How do you sit down… ever? Just a taste of that has me wanting to run, to work, to do something.”
She didn’t comment on his word choice, which had Ferra sending a quick prayer of thanks to the heavens. “You get used to it. It’s like people who live with constant pain from an old injury, except in my case it’s mental. Kiara helps, and achieving things makes the urge subside. Draining myself of power works too, though that often comes with its own problems. Partially made of magic, y’know, so being out feels a bit like holding my breath, but spread out over hours.”
“I see.” Ferra steadied himself, meeting her eyes. “I appreciate your trust in me.”
She swatted him on the arm. “Nah, don’t make a big deal out of it. You’re one of the team now, after all!”
Ferra rubbed at his arm. “It’s only been a day!”
“Nah, the others like you, I can tell. I do too,” she said while eyeing his bicep. “Unless you’re secretly incompetent, or are massively grossed out by the realities of adventuring, I can’t see you not sticking around for awhile.”
“Like I said, I appreciate your confidence in me.”
She whacked him on the arm again, though really it was more of a tap. “I’m a good judge of character. You’ll come to trust yourself too, eventually.”
Before Ferra, no, Fezzik, could react to what was an accidental critical hit to the core of his being, she continued. “I’m gonna head back downstairs, pester ‘lanche while they tinker with all those tools. See if you can remind Grek to break for lunch, yeah? He gets way too invested in navigation while we’re traveling.”
He nodded, and she sauntered back below. Learn something new every day, Ferra hadn’t known one could saunter while clipped down to a guardrail. He reached down, removing first one and then the other safety clip from the bar they’d been attached to, placing them instead on the horizontal pole that ran along the edge of the ship. He wandered up towards the stern, coming to a stop near where Grek was taking several measurements with a heliolabe.
The command deck had a number of chairs about, so Ferra strapped himself into one, waving to Grek as he did so. The grunt of acknowledgement he received seemed only halfway there; Ferra figured he’d wait for Grek to finish, but after ten minutes of complete silence and Grek taking the device from his eyes to fiddle with it several times, Ferra lost his patience.
“Oi Grek, you in there?”
The man started, turning somewhat. “Oh, Ferra! Sorry, I got a little lost in the measurements. This heliolabe seems a little inconsistent; the enchantments are probably wearing off.” He brushed an invisible speck of dust off the side of the device, peering at the inscriptions placed upon it. “Before you ask, it would indeed probably have been a much better use of my time to ask Avalanche to take a look at it, rather than repeatedly fiddling with the dials to no success.”
Ferra held up his hands in retreat. “Hey hey I didn’t say anything, I totally understand getting stuck in the details on a project.”
Grek chuckled. “Fair enough, I suppose a follower of Kiara would, if no one else.” A moment of relative silence ensued as he continued to fiddle with the device. “Do you do any tinkering yourself?”
“A little, though I’ve never had too much luck with it. Most of the materials needed to stabilize the divine are far outside my price range.”
“Well, with a little luck we’ll get to change that, if you enjoy the tinkering. An important point in all our contracts is that we get first pick on secondary salvaged materials.”
Ferra leaned forward. “On the topic of stabilizing, apparently Mel’s flame is quite eager to integrate my divine, and the combination looked relatively stable. There might be something interesting to look into there, if the behavior is consistent.”
Grek’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “That’s quite the odd interaction. I’ve never heard of something like that happening before. Usually they completely ignore or try to annihilate each other.”
“Sounds like we’ve both got reasons to head belowdecks, and you’ve got time to swing by the kitchen for some food.”
The orc chuckled again. “Mel set you up to this, did she?”
“Indeed. The wheel can survive unattended for a moment. It wouldn’t do to have Mel’s trust in me be misplaced, yeah?”
“I suppose you’re right. I need to swing down to give this to Avalanche, anyway.” He pulled a lever on the control panel, engaging the autopilot, and began moving his clips to the guardrail. Ferra did the same, following him back along the deck.
Apparently the Nova Fists actually owned this airship, though they contracted dock maintenance out to an engineering firm. It wasn’t anything impressive as airships go, enough space for seven people to comfortably live on for extended journeys. A small workshop up front, for magical tinkering, a decently stocked kitchen unit with a magical chiller for keeping raw ingredients fresh. There was an open socket for an aethercannon on the bow, currently empty. They were somewhat notorious for exploding after being damaged, expensive, and the team had plenty of firepower anyways.
Anything big enough to bring the ship down while under attack from Mel and Avalanche wouldn’t care about the sting of an aethercannon, after all.
About midships, a fanlike structure forty feet in length poked out from the side of the vessel splayed perhaps thirty degrees open. An intricate network of silk ran between the spars, and faint wisps of yellow energy could be seen traveling along them. Whether alchemically treated silk or harvested spidersilk Ferra did not know, but in either case these fans were the source of power for the ship, channeling aether down into the ship’s aetherstone core.
The stairs to head down led to a pair of doors. The one on the right led to the ship’s sizable cargo bay, the one on the left leading to the rest of the internals. Grek turned left then right, heading up towards the bow. Ferra followed, curious to see Avalanche at work. They passed all the bedrooms on the way; the ship only had a single internal level.
Opening the door to the artificer room was a surprisingly laborious process. Anything magical needed to be left by the door; Grek’s armor seemed to be capable of removing and stacking itself at will, which was certainly a convenient time saver for this step. Then Ferra had to put on a holy dampener, an arcane device that Avalanche had apparently made this morning.
“This will feed on any leakage you emit, turning it instead towards strengthening the barrier keeping the divine contained,” was Grek’s explanation.
Ferra simply nodded. “I’ve seen these before, and I certainly wouldn’t want to accidentally destabilize any projects ‘lanche is working on.” He caught a pair of green eyes in the shadows of a corner, and shook his head no ever so slightly. This wasn’t an assassination attempt, Nine!
Next they both placed a hand in a slot on the wall, which scanned them for magical leakage. Seeing none, the door finally slid open. Grek squeezed in first, narrowly fitting in the space between the inner and outer door. The outer slid shut and the inner slid open, letting Grek into the room without allowing any external energies in.
Ferra followed, stepping down into a brightly lit, blue tinged, metal coated room. It was a perfect cube, and impeccably organized. Two corners contained large crates, presumably raw materials. The two far corners both had a shelving unit, which glowed slightly to his eyes. Magically insulated shelves?
The three main walls that weren’t taken up by a door all had a corner to corner workbench, each with a different set of tools hanging above. On the right bench was what looked like a partially completed clawed arm, seemingly abandoned partway through an inscription. Ferra couldn’t name any of the tools and couldn’t even see the set on the far wall, mainly due to Grek’s massive form being in the way. He edged around the big guy, thankful for a floor devoid of random things to trip on, and leaned around to see what they were looking at.
It was the amalgam of fire and divine. Mel was braced against the side of the table looking somewhat bored, elbows splayed, cheeks scrunched up from resting against her palms.
Avalanche was standing still, save for all the whirling tools. They held the cube of flame in a three pointed claw, floating in the grasp without touching any of the components.
“It really is quite intriguing,” he rumbled, “it seems to produce as much heat as you do at your best, but only when directly contacted. The energy doesn’t seem to be thinning, either. It’s entirely inherently stable, only leaking power when the boundary is disrupted by magical or physical means.”
They brought another arm near the cube, this one tipped with some kind of lensed device. “It seems to have lost the divine’s interactive properties with arcane, only reacting when the spell structures make direct contact.”
Mel looked up. “Oh, hey Ferra!”
Avalanche rotated to look at him. “Ah good, you’re here. Mel informed me that she can’t change the shape without your presence. Could I entreaty both of you to shift it through the basic geometries? I want to check for resonances.”
Mel shot them a thumbs-up. Ferra nodded. “Sure, I’d be happy to help!”
“Good. First, sphere.”
They went through the shapes together, Avalanche performing a number of measurements each time and humming quietly with thought. Sphere, tetrahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron.
“For something being controlled by two separate individuals, I must confess to being somewhat surprised at your ability to create the more intricate shapes.”
Ferra shrugged. “Mel’s got her own reasons for having excellent control, and my tutor always hammered in the idea of minimizing leakage into my head. To do that you need control, and so here we are. It’s something I practice pretty much daily.”
She nodded. “Exactly, it’s not all too surprising.”
Avalanche simply hummed again, seemingly lost in thought and regarding the odd magic. “You’ve given me quite the puzzle, here.” A long pause. With seemingly great difficulty, he wrenched his gaze away, turning instead towards Grek’s heliolabe.
Grek grinned. “Oh so we’ve got time for my problems, now?”
Without missing a beat, Avalanche replied smugly. “It was intentional. Doing something for an hour or two other than staring through that lens would do you good.”
“Surely not, you’ve said so yourself that my precise navigation has saved us hours!”
“While that may be, I still think you toy with this thing entirely too much.”
“Focusing one’s mind is important, when practicing law. This is good exercise!”
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Avalanche didn’t respond, seeming entirely engrossed in looking the heliolabe over. Their second arm reached up to the tools hanging above the workbench, disconnecting the current tip and grabbing one that looked like an engraver. It hovered over the heliolabe, pulsed once, twice.
Avalanche handed the device back. “There, fixed. Try not to break it this time, you know how much I hate interfacing with another’s work.”
Grek chuckled. “Well if you made me one yourself, then you wouldn’t have to fix another’s.”
“Bah.” Avalanche was already turning back to the flaming orb. “I have better things to do than spend hours perfecting a device you can buy for cheap on the open market.”
“True enough.” Grek conceded, with a grin on his face. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’m needed back on deck.”
Mel shot up to her feet with a mock glare. “Oh no you don’t, not until you get some lunch in you.”
“I guess that means that responsible individuals such as you and Ferra are going to have to come along, to make sure this miscreant does as he’s told.”
“Hey, if you wanted me to join you for lunch, all you had to do is ask.” Ferra smiled. “I’m quite hungry myself, after all.”
The banter between Grek and Mel continued as the three headed out of the room, bidding their farewells to Avalanche. He absently responded, muttering what sounded like at least half of a goodbye; perhaps it was a request to be quiet and get out, Ferra wasn’t too sure.
The group stopped by Mirana’s room, Grek giving a gentle knock on the door. After a moment’s pause the door swung open, revealing Mirana in a forest green sundress. Behind her Ferra could see knots in the walls, ones that felt like they were watching him. Her room gave off the vague sense that it was alive.
She raised an eyebrow inquiringly. “Yes?”
Grek gestured behind him. “These two are dragging me off for lunch. We figured you’d like to join.”
“Of course.”
She stepped out, and the group processed down the now rather crowded hallway into the paired kitchen and dining room.
“Alright.” Grek clapped his hands together. “What’ve we got right now.”
Mel grinned. “Some of my leftover fire chili?”
Mirana looked torn between desire and fear. Ferra glanced at her. “Something I should know?”
“Not really, I suppose. Mel’s chili recipe is ancestral, and apparently gets spicier with every generation. It tastes so good, but it also burns enough to qualify as an improvised weapon.”
“Ha.” Ferra grinned back at Mel. “Well with a recommendation like that, how can I say no?”
“I’ve got it.” she said in a sing-song voice as she bounded over to the chiller. As she pulled a pot out, she continued to speak. “Grek, for tonight you should try making those sellark salad sandwiches. Just a couple more attempts and I think you’ll have a perfect recipe on your hands.”
“Sure thing, little firebrand.”
Ferra looked somewhat uneasy at the idea. “Sellark… salad? I’ve heard things about the texture.”
Mel carried the pot over to the room’s corner table, seemingly weaving strands of fire inside as she spoke. “It’s this thing he does with law. He like, rules that the bad parts don’t exist so they just-” she clapped her hands together after dropping the pot the last few inches to the table. “Poof!”
The cleric turned to Grek. “How does law work, anyway? I know the bare basics but not much in details. Hell, you’re the first lawcaster I’ve ever met.”
“Law is the act of applying my will onto the world to change it, essentially. It’s rather more complex than Mel makes it sound. I can’t create or destroy matter, but there’s a particular protein in sellark meat, which I can alter the properties of such that when heated it breaks down at a temperature far lower than normal, improving the texture and taste.
“I can ban a type of magic in a radius around me, though that’s an entire field of study all its own. The divine, for example, I could suppress in a number of ways. Allow shaping but prevent manifestation, which would mean someone could bypass the law by bringing power in from outside the area. Prevent shaping but allow manifestation, increase reactivity with another type of power in the area, the list goes on, but each method has its own weak points. I could apply multiple restrictions, with exponentially increasing levels of concentration needed. And of course the most salient point, that any law I apply will always apply to me as well.
“I could rule all blood in an area to have no momentum and no energy, thus killing everyone in the area instantly, but I wouldn’t be able to avoid that same grisly fate myself. Typically when we’re in our standard formation, I’ll be out front with a law increasing the tensile strength of solids. If we have time to prepare beforehand I can completely nullify a creature’s innate magic, or root it to the spot by outlawing momentum from chitin or some other medium, and let the rest of the team destroy it at their leisure.”
Ferra rubbed at his chin. “Doesn’t that mean that every time you speak, you’re risking grievous self harm?”
Grek nodded as he sat down and began to spoon the sorcery-heated chili into a bowl. “It used to be a possibility, though the pattern is now so well worn in my mind that there is essentially zero risk. Even if my mindset does slip, the law is unlikely to shift into something too harmful before I can cancel it.”
“So to clarify, you can’t create or destroy anything, but you can enhance or dampen reactions between things or properties of things, and it completely supersedes magic?”
Grek gave another nod. “Sounds about right.”
“And you already stated that the void completely ignores law. What about direct divine attention?”
The orc reflexively glanced around, as if to ensure they weren’t being watched. When he answered, it was in a much quieter voice. “Well that’s a bit of a sticky question, you see. The Church maintains their stance that divinity is the peak and above all other powers, but it’s somewhat of an open secret among law practitioners that depending on the god, you can actually supersede them. Though that does nothing to prevent you getting instantly smited through any number of mediums, it does raise some doubts as to the actual nature of divinity itself.”
Ferra filed that tidbit of info away for later. There was a quiet pause, broken by Mel clapping her hands together. “Enough with this ominous divinity talk! Eat, eat! Don’t make me have to rereheat the chili!”
“Right right, of course! Apologies.” Ferra scooped himself some, Mirana and Mel following shortly after. The chili was a deep red, all the more terrifying due to Mirana’s earlier warning. He took a bite, seeing Mel watch him expectantly from across the table.
He coughed mid bite, inhaling causing chili fumes to race into his lungs. It nonetheless tasted amazing, and Ferra shoveled a second and third spoonful in.
Then it began to burn. Every other spicy food Ferra had ever eaten in his entire life, even combined? They could all rot. There wasn’t even a point of comparison for the difference. His face grew red, and sweat began to break out on his forehead.
Then he drew on the divine within him, carefully weaving it and turning what was enough spice to probably qualify as an assassination attempt into something entirely more tolerable.
Mel deflated, her expectant grin turning into a pout. “Aw, you’re no fun. I had a deal with Mirana that she’d only heal you in exchange for you taking up our shipboard chores for the next couple weeks.” She took another bite of her chili.
Ferra guzzled a full glass of water, immediately going for a refill. “How,” he gasped, “can you eat that so freely?”
Grek chuckled. “Law.”
Mirana gave a small smile. “Warding against excess spice is child’s play, for a fae practitioner.”
Mel gave one of her trademark full grins, before taking another bite. “I’m just used to it, y’all are a buncha babies.”
The group continued to talk of relatively inconsequential things, Ferra enjoying his meal a good deal more after Mirana gave him a protective charm. It really was quite tasty, though the lethal levels of spice would probably be a dealbreaker for most non mages.
“What’s in this, anyways?”
“Oh, you know, family secrets. I will tell you, though, that some of the ingredients are surprisingly-”
An alarm cut Mell off as the group immediately reacted, drawing weapons and leaping from their chairs. Ferra stood a moment later, almost tripping and feeling dangerously fragile when compared to the veteran adventurers by his side.
Grek was already moving out the door as he shouted backwards. “That was the proximity alarm. Ferra, stay inside until we can determine the threat!”
By the time Ferra had caught up to what was happening, Mel and Grek were both long gone and on their way up the stairwell. Mirana was sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed. Her hair, currently free and unbraided, was floating around her head in a nimbus as she gave off a faint green glow.
Ferra blinked, looked again. It wasn’t so much that Mirana gave off light as it was that things around her seemed naturally tinted green.
After only a few seconds her eyes snapped back open and the glow faded, his hair being ruffled once by an unseen breeze. “Sellark swarm. Odd that they’d journey this far from their island, and in such a large group. Migration, perhaps? Fleeing something? Unlucky, and concerning.”
She glanced at Ferra. “Good practice for you, though. Follow me.”
Without waiting for his response she also zipped upstairs. Still somewhat off kilter, Ferra nonetheless followed, running into Avalanche at the intersection below the stairs to the deck. “You’re here, good,” they rumbled, “Just stay under cover of the stairwell. Grek will probably want you casting barriers to cover our backs or something similarly simple, for now. Listen to him and you’ll do fine.”
Again not waiting for a response, Avalanche floated out onto the deck, humming filling the air as blue lightning crackled along their form. Ferra’s hair raised as he watched, the amount of arcane leaking from ‘lanche as all of their enchantments spooled up somewhat shocking to someone who’d never been in a proper, full blown fight.
It wasn’t enough energy to disrupt his casting much, but it was an unpleasant feeling. Like a blanket muffling the sense he had of his magic, or the aggressive prickling of a limb that’d fallen asleep. Ferra poked his head out of the stairwell, meeting Grek’s eyes.
“They’ll be here in just a minute or two. Can you come and layer an enchantment on my sword?”
Ferra nodded, hurrying over. Focusing on that internal sense of his, the divine welled up through him. He focused the light on the man’s greatsword, strengthening the blade, giving it a supernaturally sharp edge, and granting it an extra foot of swing with no added weight.
It wouldn’t last long, only four or five swings before the stress shattered the enchantment; the extension of light at the end of the blade had no physical support and so would be quite fragile, but those couple swings could well make the difference.
“No blessing, right?”
Grek agreed. “It’d interfere or be interfered with by the protective gear Avalanche has made for Mel and I, and with Mirana’s casting.”
Somewhat disheartening to not be of much use, though considering Ferra wasn’t an actual full cleric of Kiara and didn’t have access to her blessings save for a couple basics, that was probably for the best.
“When they come within your casting range, I want you to throw a wall in front of them, to break their charge. Afterwards try to just keep them from swarming with barriers on the side of the swarm, and make sure Mel and Avalanche still have a clear shot into the cluster.”
Ferra nodded, retreating back to the stairwell. It’d be simplicity itself for the cleric to just wall the exit off and back further down, if a sellark came directly for him.
The next minute was quite tense. Avalanche was now fully surrounded by a crackling purple and blue barrier made of slowly rotating, hexagonal panes of energy. Mirana seemed not entirely there, and his eyes kept slipping off of her form, refusing to acknowledge her presence; the shadows on deck were surprisingly deep. Mel seemed unaffected, simply tapping her foot impatiently with no visible signs of preparation.
Before too long, Ferra could make out a smudge on the sky; it seemed to be growing quickly. Moments later that smudge resolved into the form of a hundred or more sellarks, rapidly approaching the airship as their tails wriggled with determined purpose.
A heartbeat later they were close enough for Ferra to make out their beady solid black eyes, and the heartbeat after that they were within range and he was already moving, light blooming from every orifice and under his nails as Ferra drew deeper on the well inside him than he ever had before.
On the third beat of his frantically drumming heart a pane of glowing yellow energy manifested before the swarm. Several slammed into it and began to fall midair, though most broke their charge and circled around it. On the fourth beat he dropped the first wall, letting it twinkle out into glimmering shards of fading glowing ice, creating instead a thinner wall on the left and right side of the swarm.
His heart caught in his mouth and Ferra held his breath for an indeterminable moment, hair rising ever further as the static charge in the air grew.
“Brace!” Grek roared, shielding his face with an arm and looking away.
Ferra followed suit half a blink later, still slightly too slow.
Light bloomed, the world flashing white for a single instant as all of the energy built up around Avalanche discharged and fired in a beam the width of one’s torso, flashing from sellark to sellark, focusing on them for only a quarter second before jumping to the next even as the first burned to a crisp and fell, smoking, from the sky.
Ferra blinked in pain, temporarily blind. A quarter second later the divine welled up under his eyes, bringing his sight back just in time to witness the next beat of the dance. He felt his control slip under the strain of maintaining so many workings, though there was no time to worry about it or even acknowledge the event.
Flames roared out as Mel hurled massive globs of fire, dancing on her feet and spinning with her fists out, moving more like she was ripping flames out from behind a hidden curtain in reality than summoning it from inside herself. She guided these towards the center of the swarm with careful attention, detonating them in massive conflagrations. Swathes of sellarks fell, following those stragglers Avalanche was targeting as he prevented any from escaping.
Mel pounded the swarm for what felt like an eternity, detonations shaking the hull of the ship one after the other, almost loud enough to deafen him. Each explosion shook his soul, when the flames came close enough to lash at his barriers. With a final “Ha!” and a last wobbling, liquid orb of dangerously unstable flame, she ceased her dance. It moved deceptively languidly towards the last of the swarm, tongues of flame lashing out and swallowing them whole as the orb exploded. A couple fled back in the direction they’d come from, but another quarter second had the beam of light picking the last few off.
Avalanche’s beam died out. Ferra cut the connection to the panels, letting them wink out as he toppled over, weak and woozy.
The whole exchange had taken nine seconds from opening beat to finish.
The silence after felt unreal. His sight and hearing were off, damaged from the intensity of the attacks. His skin felt crisped slightly on the side that had been within view of Avalanche’s beam. Looking up, Ferra saw that Avalanche was as imperturbable as ever, and Mel showed no signs of exertion beyond a bit of gasping breath.
Mirana and Grek hadn’t even done anything, and a swarm that would have eviscerated a small town had been completely nullified, with no collateral damage, by two people with a small amount of support from yours truly.
And they weren’t even a highly ranked team!
Mirana hurried over to him as the group relaxed, lifting him out of the stairwell with seemingly no effort and leaning him against the wall. The smell of pine needles filled his nose as a supernaturally fresh breeze picked up around the two, the half elf’s eyes glowing green.
The soreness in his eyes faded and the ringing in his ears vanished. Red, angry skin receded back to its normal state, and the shaking in his limbs eased somewhat. They still felt stiff and unruly, like a thousand angry wasps were trying to escape from under his skin.
“You overdrew.” It wasn’t blame, merely a clinician’s statement of fact.
It was true. If he looked inside himself, he could see where his flesh had been scoured by the divine, bleed from his own mistakes. Ferra nodded, still largely focusing his attention on deep breathing. Mirana was currently reversing what was essentially an accidental self induced divine smite, Ferra’s own magic scouring his inside due to a loss of control when channeling such a large amount of energy.
Her brow furrowed in concentration. He could feel her magic in his bones, dimly, and focused on calling the divine within him to heel as much as possible. No healing could be done, if his magic kept eating hers by nature, and of course the divine could not heal what it itself had wrought.
The light roiling in his bones and organs, slowly crystallizing them in its anger, eventually receded under their paired efforts. It was perhaps five minutes later, when Ferra opened his eyes to a round of concerned faces. Mirana’s snapped open a moment later, sweat beading on her forehead. She gave him a small smile as the smell of pine and fresh spring breeze faded.
“So…” Ferra itched his head. “I might have overdrawn a little bit.”
“You don’t say.” Grek’s voice was flat. There was concern, but also some level of anger in there. Upset that Ferra had endangered himself? “How did you overdraw?”
“It was the initial flash from Avalanche. I didn’t protect my eyes beforehand and didn’t close them in time. Reflexively healing the resulting blindness caused my control to slip; I’ve never ran three separate casts before, and certainly never spent as much this quickly.”
“Hmm.” Grek’s expression softened in some interminable way. “Why’d you try to cover both sides, then?”
“Well-” he started helplessly. “I thought that’s what you needed me for.”
“Ah.” The orc rubbed at his chin. “I’d intended to start combat drills after arriving at our target island, a mistake that is certainly mine. Typically we’d have Avalanche put up barriers and have Mirana handle stragglers attempting to leave with mental nudges and misdirection; it’s just that divine is better at barriers. In fairness this is still within the first twenty four hours of us meeting each other, so perhaps there’s no real mistake at all, just a minor lapse in communication.”
He turned to Mirana. “If you could go over our standard procedures with Ferra, I’d greatly appreciate it.” He turned back to Ferra. “Certainly, if a task seems likely to result in overdraw, let me know! Don’t just nod and bear it, burning you out is the last thing we want. I can’t know your limits if you don’t tell me.”
Ferra gave a self-conscious nod.
“Maybe I was expecting too much of an unproven caster. It’s tough to put myself back in that mindset, when everything was new and happened so quickly, when adventuring was still a shiny idealized dream.” Grek pulled a small journal out from his belt, jotting something down. “I will think on the matter, and rectify my behavior in the future. A mistake such as this will not happen again.”
There was a surprising sense of finality to the journal snapping closed, Grek walking towards the stern, and its control panel. Halfway across the deck, he turned back. “One last thing. I’m adjusting our course to circle further away from whatever spooked those sellark, and we’ll include a warning in the mission report. I don’t expect they’ll call a strike team out here, but sending an adventuring group to investigate and routing civilian travel away from the area are distinct possibilities. Good work, team.”
Nods all around, the only sounds the rushing of the wind and the quiet hum of the aether surging belowdeck.
“Come on.” Mirana patted him on the shoulder as she started down the stairs. “I’ve seen burnout before. The combat stress is helping now, but in a moment here you’re gonna crash. Let’s get you something warm to drink.”
Now free to think, Ferra shuddered at the memory of how it felt to have his body slowly solidify from the inside. Grateful for the distraction, he gave her a nod and stood.
“Hey, Ferra?”
He turned to Mel. “Yeah?”
“Avalanche and I-”
She hesitated.
“Nevermind, I’ll pitch the idea to you tomorrow. Just be more careful in the future, yeah?”
Hmm. “Ah yeah, I will. Talk to you later.” With a wave, he headed downstairs.
Now that the danger had passed Ferra could feel his brain shutting down, in a way; it was struggling to grapple with a potentially life threatening injury, one that had resolved just as quickly as it had been incurred. He felt like he was dreaming, or floating, and the cleric wondered if this was how someone felt after losing an arm; the glance over, the attempt to send commands to a limb no longer present, the disconnection between reality and memory.
He remembered the pain, he remembered feeling his control slip, but Mirana’s healing was so good that there were no after effects, and his brain was having trouble reconciling the experiences of the last six minutes.
He entered the meal room, seeing that Mirana already had a heated kettle, and two mugs of tea. Ferra slumped into one, and gratefully accepted the proffered mug. The warmth suffused his body, smoothing aches and pains he hadn’t realized he’d had. The wrinkle in Ferra’s brow faded as he sat, and listened, losing himself in the confident, calm, and quiet sounds of Mirana’s voice.