Northeast of Cylvania, where the nights got cold, the trees turned to pines, and the winters were long and hard, rose the Guzoverdee Mountains.
They were a pale, frost-laden series of long teeth that ran the entirety of Cylvania's northern border. Beyond lay a cold land that saw perhaps a month of spring, maybe two of summer, and a whole lot of snow the rest of the time. It was home to dwarves, giants, some ubiquitous and often-drunk humans, and beasts of unusual sizes.
The Guzoverdee Mountains shielded all of Cylvania from all of those creatures.
And more importantly, it shielded the small land from the harsh weather, which even at the height of summer could produce pounding rainstorms that stripped the soil from the very stones of the peaks.
One such rainstorm was belting down now, and the pirate airship stuck under it, damaged and unable to rise above it, was in a decidedly unsafe spot. And as the captain and its crew scurried and hurried and worried, one small bear who was disguised as a princess did his best to stay out of the way and do what he could to keep people from dying horribly. Or at all for that matter.
“You know,” Threadbare remarked to the pirate nearest him, “this day didn't go at all as I expected.”
The pirate didn't respond. Instead she grabbed the nearest coil of rope and threw it up to the rigging. Tried to, anyway. The smoke pouring out of the hold made it hard to see, and she muffed the first two throws.
She seemed to be having a hard time of it, so Threadbare decided to help. “Animate Rope. Command Rope to climb up the mast until grabbed.”
The next time she threw it, it slithered out of her hands and whipped upward.
Pausing, the panicked pirate stared down at Threadbare. “What? Why?”
“You were having trouble.”
“But yer our prisoner!”
“Yes, well...”
The ship shuddered, and fell another dozen or so feet in the sky as something in the hold exploded.
“...we seem to be in the same boat,” Threadbare said, smiling up at her.
The pirate blinked.
“What's your name?” Threadbare asked.
She opened her mouth to reply—
“GET THAT BOOM UNDER CONTROL! GET THEM FIRES OUT! STORMANORM GET US OVER THE MOUNTAINS! KAREY, GIVE US AN UPDRAFT TO SLOW OUR FALL! FAST NOW! ANY SHIRKERS WILL ANSWER TO ME GUNS!”
That was Anne Bunny. Captain Anne Bunny. And Threadbare saw his new pirate friend's skin go pale under here brown fur as she scrambled on to the next task, before her bellowing Captain could start asking questions, presumably with bullets.
He looked around for less busy people to help, but there weren't many of those.
The fight that had nearly destroyed him and narrowly missed killing his friends had cut down a lot of the crew. Then the ship had flipped over, and more had fallen out. Now there weren't a lot of crew left.
“YOU!” Anne Bunny bellowed. She had been doing a lot of that, so he didn't notice that bellow was directed at him until she stomped over, holding an arm up to keep the rain out of her eyes, and glaring down at him with frustration. “You! Little princess. Ye be an Animator, then?”
“Yes,” Threadbare said, doing his best to smile.
“Then get below and start mending me engines! Yer little bear did that for me a week back, ye should be able to do the same.”
“Okay.” The word was out his mouth before he realized that Celia wouldn't know the way to the engines. “Can you get someone to show me?” he added, hastily.
Fortunately she was a bit busy, and didn't seem to pick up on any strangeness. “KAREY!” she bellowed, repeating the word and getting louder until a small beastkin woman wearing thick glasses ran up, staggering as the deck swayed, water sluicing past her boots and over the side to the ground far below.
“You called, ma'am?”
“Show our guest to the engines! Make sure she mends 'em without any funny business!”
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“Aye aye!”
Before Threadbare could move, the woman had scooped him up and bolted across the slowly-tilting deck, hurling herself into a slide to reach the hatch near the back of the ship. They tumbled down the stairs, and Threadbare braced himself for a few nasty knocks, but the woman shielded him with her body. He watched a couple of red '1's rise up as she bumped down the narrow staircase, and winced.
“Are you all right?”
“Aye,” the woman said, rolling to her feet. Then she squinted in the dim light. “Damnation! Me specs be cracked.”
“Mend,” Threadbare said, watching the thick glasses flicker, and the snaking lines through the left lens disappear.
“Me thanks!” said Karey, stooping low and shifting Threadbare from a two-handed carry to her shoulder. “Now be doing that a few hundred times to the engines and we might pull through this yet.”
Karey wasn't exaggerating. Threadbare remembered the last time they'd fixed the engines for the Cotton Tale. Mend was a useful skill, but it tended to have unpredictable effects when used upon magical items, especially ones made up of thousands of mechanisms and moving parts, each with slightly different enchantments designed to interact and shift depending on their placement and timing.
Magitech was no joke. The sheer complexity of the stuff meant that few who lived had the proper combination of skill, magical power, and time necessary to craft or even maintain the powerful-but-finicky engines that the airship used to stay aloft.
As she brought Threadbare into the lowest part of the hold, Karey tapped one of the glowstones mounted in the wall until it flickered to life, and revealed the engine room.
And with it, the hundreds of fragments of machinery that littered the floor, next to the one working engine that remained.
“I don't think it should be smoking like that,” Threadbare said, considering the ancient device.
“Well then ye'd best start a fixin'!” Karey snapped. She was back out before he could respond, her feet thumping the decks as she scrambled back up top to help where she could.
Threadbare looked around at the mess.
“Mend?” he tried on the chugging, sparking, smoking engine.
It farted out more smoke, and a few more parts on it started moving.
“Mend,” Threadbare said, encouraged.
The device stuttered, and a belt ripped free of it and snapped past his head, whipping his left ear neatly off.
“Hum,” Threadbare said.
The wind pressed harder against the hull, and everything groaned. Screams from up top seemed to indicate that they were falling faster.
“Mend,” Threadbare said, patting his head and reattaching his ear. Giving up on the (somewhat) still-working engine, he focused on trying to match the debris on the floor to the non-functional engines, repairing them a bit at a time.
It wasn't easy. And the ship shuddered in a quite alarming manner whenever he managed to get one of the engines online again. But he managed.
INT+1
Congratulations! By working with advanced technology under stressful conditions, you have unlocked the Tinker job! Do you want to be a Tinker at this time? Y/N?
Threadbare paused.
This might not actually be a bad idea. Celia was a Tinker, and he was pretending to be Celia. Furthermore, the pirates didn't seem to have too many people who could work with the engines. Given that the airship was rather important to their survival, it would increase the odds of getting through this without too much death.
“Yes,” he spoke, and his last crafting job slot filled, as he gained yet more skills.
You are now a level 1 Tinker!
DEX+1
INT+1
You have learned the Improvised Tool Skill!
Your Improvised Tool Skill is now level 1!
You have learned the Tinkering Skill!
Your Tinkering Skill is now level 1!
He had just enough time to look around and feel good about what he'd done, when the airship gave a bump, and the hull cracked and groaned alarmingly. Then everything scraped and shook and shuddered, nearly sending him tumbling. Threadbare staggered backward and grabbed ahold of the doorframe, looking around to see if the ship was crashing and collapsing in on itself, for that's what it felt like.
Planks groaned and buckled, and the grinding noise rose, but the hull held together. And as Threadbare stood braced, the shuddering slowed and stopped.
Threadbare would have breathed a sigh of relief if he'd had lungs. But as it was, he knew that his troubles were by no means done. They were only getting started.
He needed a focus, and time to think. He needed answers, and he'd have to be very careful about what questions he asked.
And he needed allies.
Almost as if on cue, he heard a small voice whisper behind him. “Hello!”
He turned, looked through the doorway to where a small stuffed fox had crept down the stairs, crouching in the shadows and gathering the shawl that had been sewn into it around himself. He knew this fox. He should, for he had made him, a few years back. And though he had made many golems, granted sapience to hundreds, he remembered all of their faces, and all of their names. He would have been a bad father, otherwise.
“Renny,” Threadbare said, stepping forward and giving the golem a big hug. “We didn't have time to talk earlier.”
“I'm not sure we do now,” Renny said, muzzle darting around between Threadbare and the top of the stairwell. “They'll be coming to check on you soon. You're going to have to pretend to be Miss Cecelia for a while, if everything goes right.”
“To what end?”
“Well... somebody hired them to kidnap you. Her, I mean. At some point they're going to try to hand you... her... over to them. That's the thing that Chase couldn't find out, was who hired them. We need to know that, so we can stop them!”
Threadbare considered.
“And then what?”
“What?”
“If they hand me over to their employer, what happens then?”
“Well... I don't know.”
“Do they know?”
“I don't think so.”
“So how do we stop them?”
“I don't know, really,” Renny's tail drooped. “Chase said we would have to play it by ear.”
“Well,” Threadbare said, wiggling his own ears. “We have four of them between us, so I suppose we can give that a try.”
Renny laughed, then gave him a final squeeze. “It's good to see you again, Mister Threadbare Sir. I'm going to have to go hide now, though. But don't be afraid, I'll be as close as I can.”
“I'm not afraid,” Threadbare said, letting him go and turning his head as the voices above him got closer, and feet slapped against the stairs. “But I'm glad you're here with me.”