Gears screeched on the starboard engine as Twila pushed on a spanner. The offending jam just. Wouldn’t. Clear! Her fingers slipped off the handle. She fell on the ground and struggled back to her feet, reaching for the spanner to keep working. Then she listened.
The engines had gone silent. She could even hear the other ship rats’ voices from the hold.
“Twi! Skipper wants us on the deck for mooring and shore orders. We’re coasting in to Iswixel,” Rosie said. “You look bad, Twi.”
“Thanks,” Twila said. She sighed and looked at her smog-stained overalls and shirt. Myst had stuck to her sweaty skin, and she reeked of oil and hard work. “Let’s go topside.”
Twila’s first view of Iswixel was of the flickering multicolored lights shining through the windows, and the lamps to ward off the Sable Tide as night fell. Narrow stone steps wove between houses. A flat-ish bit of land had been cleared to grow plants here and there, and a thin stone wall sealed off its lower side from the monsters that no doubt roamed below.
A crevice gaped in front of the Hourglass as she glided quietly past the village. Skipper Anton spun the wheel and cranked a lever. The last gasps of myst puffed out, and the ship slowly slipped between the crevice walls and into Iswixel’s harbor. Brass doors on the sloop’s sides popped open, and canvas cloths filled with air. The ship slowed even more.
A man at the dock caught the rope Twila tossed his way. Others grabbed the ones the crew heaved at them. They quickly wrapped them around metal hooks, yanking on them until friction kicked in. The Hourglass came to a halt next to the cliff face. A few other men lined up massive wooden beams suspended by chains with holes bored in the cliff. They hammered them tight as the sloop settled its weight on them.
“Welcome to Iswixel, boys and girls. There’s not much here, but if you’ve earned it, you get shore leave,” Skipper Anton announced. He stared at Twila and Rosie. “You girls are staying to work the engine over.”
The older boys cheered. Twila rolled her eyes at Rosie, who had slammed her armload of grime-covered clothes to the deck and was now sheepishly picking up undergarments and overalls. “Skip, you’ve gotta spend a crown or two on keeping the Hourglass’s guts together. She’s better than this!”
“Shut up, Twila. It worked out again this time.” The skipper checked his pocket watch, a lovely silver and brass thing with a cogwheel motif. “Rosie, Twila, go below and figure out what blew on the condenser, and then look over the flow lines. Fix what you can, and buy what you need. Cheaply. Will,” he said, raising his voice and talking into the hold, “get a rations list made. Everyone else, be back here in three hours.”
Twila held back a grin. It wasn’t shore leave, but working on the condenser meant flying!
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Twila screamed as she swung forty feet below the Hourglass’s hull - lower than the rats' nest. Only the long cable hooked to her [Ship Rat's Harness] kept her from plummeting into the dark crevice’s depths.
Of all the hazardous jobs on the Hourglass - rebelting an engine while it ran or resetting the condenser in a windstorm - Twila loved flying the most!
She wriggled back and forth, gaining speed. Her fingers grazed the copper coil wrapped around the mast, and she spun off into the darkness. “Light! I need liiiight!”
The stone wall grew closer, and she reached to touch it as her swing slowed, then reversed.
Suddenly, the mast loomed in front of her! She careened into it, her speed crushing her chest against the coil, but she wrapped her arms around the mast in a death grip. Her breath whistled past an exhilarated smile. “Light, Rosie!”
“Sorry!” A spotlight swung across the crevice, moving a bit past Twila before correcting to cover both her and the myst condenser in yellow-orange light.
“Okay, Old Bitch, what now?” Twila said to the condenser rig. She hooked herself around the mast using her safety loop, a leather strap dangling from her harness. The young [Ship Rat Mystgineer] reached into her bandolier for a cleaning rag. She wiped it across the aluminum, leaving a smudge of brown oil but picking up a layer of charred grime and purple soot.
“Leave the light there! Gonna need water - lots of it! Lower it down to me! And clean rags!” She shouted to Rosie and started scrubbing away the mess on the myst condenser.
The water and bucket lowered down a couple minutes after helped, but it was an elbow grease job, and Twila’s arms screamed by the time she’d found the problem. “You’re a mean one, Old Bitch.” She activated her [Tinkering] skill and got to work.
One tiny brass sphere under the rats' nest had cracked - just a little split, but enough. Without all twenty of them working, the condenser wouldn’t pull enough myst; it just leaked out to be reabsorbed by the copper coil. A cracked myst condenser meant the ship’s main engines and the repulsor vents along its hull had no fuel.
No fuel meant the ship wasn’t leaving Iswixel.
Twila dug in her bandolier for the adjustable spanner - the one for gripping round stuff - and wrapped it around the brass ball. A few turns and the condenser popped loose into her other hand. She tucked the spanner and sphere into her pockets, tossed the rag into the bucket, and unhooked the leather strap.
“Okay, Rosie! I know what’s wrong! Wind me up to the rats' nest!” The harness dug into Twila’s bottom and back. She felt her stomach lurch as she zipped upward. But before long, she’d risen to the small platform.
A quick inspection of the two myst flow lines revealed another problem. One had worn through its runed leather wrappings, exposing the flexible, copper conduit within it. The myst flow wouldn’t stop from a little tear like that, but the leather dissipated heat.
Heat was only good if it was in the engines.
“Done! Coming up the rest of the way!” Twila scurried up the rigging toward the open hatch.
Once safely inside the hull with the door secured, Twila unclipped the rope and leather strap but left her harness on. She thought - no, knew - that she’d be flying again soon.
She marched back to the now-cool engines, pulled open a wooden door, and ferreted through some shelves. She pulled out rusty cogs and replacement levers, a dull rune chisel and mallet, and a dozen unsorted wrenches, but nothing she needed.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Supply run. Need a condenser sphere, type thirty-one, sized for a sloop or cutter. Also, six, no eight, feet of class three rune wrapping. And some brass piping. Let’s go find the skywright. Should be around here.”
The two girls opened the ship’s coffer and grabbed a fistful of crowns. Then, brass sphere tucked in Twila’s bandolier and coins safe in Rosie’s purse, they headed off into Iswixel to find a replacement sphere.
They didn’t have to search long. Iswixel seemed to be built on a single road, though calling the steep stairs and narrow path a road was a stretch. To the left, run-down stone houses, some three or four stories tall, stared out at the road mournfully. To the right, a few cantilevered wooden shacks sat suspended over a three-thousand-foot drop to the tuff pillar’s base - and the waves below. The faint scent of seawater mixed with the refuse piles on the cliff below and the manure-filled gardens.
Twila missed the smell of sweat in the Hourglass’s hold.
“At least the engines are in decent shape,” Rosie said as they climbed another set of uneven stairs.
“They’re not, not after what I had to do to them today. A village like this? Won’t find parts for a merchantman engine, or the boilers. But maybe I can patch them up, and make them hold ‘till Ternport.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Leftie? Boiler runs ten degrees too cold. Have to over-myst to compensate. Runes are holding for now, but we blew out some vent pipes coming in. Rightie? Allie didn’t oil it right. She got cut loose, but the engine’s in trouble, especially after we overtaxed it when Leftie’s vents blew. Needs an overhaul - new turbines, axle, and catch fans - but the skipper’s cheap, so I nurse it along.”
“Oh.” Rosie looked back at the harbor mistrustfully.
“Hourglass is fine. Just needs a little love,” Twila said. A lot more love than she’s gotten recently, she thought.
The skywright’s shop, predictably, was a complete turn around the stone tower and right above the crevice the Hourglass was moored in. The massive wooden warehouse filled the top of the gap, a few hundred feet up from the harbor. Light poured from the cracks in the door’s boards, and Twila heard tools and young voices working inside.
Rosie hesitated, but Twila knocked until a dark-haired boy of perhaps twelve opened the door. He looked over Twila’s head and started talking. “Wright Toll’s not here. We’re closed for the night, but -”
“Down here. I don’t care about you being closed. Get me a type thirty-one condenser sphere, sized for a sloop or cutter,” Twila said. “Plus 6 28-gauge hex bolts and nuts, six feet of brass piping. And rune wrapping. Eight feet.”
“Oh, a ship rat? From the sloop in the harbor, I assume? We’ll need you gone by tomorrow morning - we’re launching a new fisher for the villagers. Come on in. I’m Carter.” The boy stepped out of the way and gestured for the two girls to enter.
As Carter rummaged through drawers and boxes, Twila looked around the workshop. A few boys and girls around her age sanded the hull of a tiny, one-masted vessel. Though the scaffolding around it made it look big, the mast only reached twenty feet down, and the hull wasn’t more than thirty long. Its engines also looked underpowered. Then again, all she had to compare them to were the Hourglass’s two beasts.
“Okay, rats,” Carter said, “I’ve got two options for you. First, you give me fifteen crowns and the old sphere, and the new one’s yours.”
“That’s robbery!” Rosie exclaimed.
“Sure is,” Carter said, “Or, the other option. Seven crowns and you two ship rats join me on a trip to the monster cliffs tonight!”
Twila cocked her head at the boy. A skill had to be running, but she wasn’t sure which one. “Not a trick to get us out of town and rob us, is it?”
“Nope. I just want to take two pretty girls on a tour of all Iswixel has to offer!”
“Eugh! No thanks,” Rosie mimed throwing up. Twila raised her eyebrow, a stony look on her face. One of the girls working on the airship barked a short laugh while nodding smugly behind Carter’s back.
“Okay, I’ll admit, that line was bad. Sorry. Just come see the monster cliffs - it’ll be fun. Then I’ll sell you the condenser sphere.”
“First, tell us what the monster cliffs -,” Rosie said.
“Five crowns, not seven,” Twila interrupted. She had to get those parts.
“Six, and the rune wrap is free.”
“Five Crowns, four masts, and it’s a deal.”
Carter blinked, speechless for a moment. He looked over his shoulder at the girl who’d shaken her head. “I told you someone would take me up on it by the end of the week, Becca! You owe me three wheels!”
“Whatever, Carter,” Becca rolled her eyes. “I’ll pay you when Toll pays us.”
“I asked a question,” Rosie said. Her eyes were saucers. “What are the monster cliffs? Do they have to do with -”
“The Sable Tide? Yep,” Carter said. He grinned. “But don’t worry, they only come out at night!”
“It’ll be night soon!” Rosie squeaked. “Twi, this is a bad idea!”
“We need the parts. He has the parts. We go down, look around, and come back. Hourglass is fixed, and we don’t have to explain to the skipper why fifteen crowns are missing when it should be six.” Twila said.
“...True. Skipper Anton is scarier than the Sable Tide. I think...”
“Honestly, the monster cliffs are no big deal,” Carter said. “We’ll head down the path, sneak past the village guards, go to the old farmhouse above the harbor, and I’ll sell you the parts then. We won’t even see the Sable Tide, I guarantee it.”
Rosie frowned and kicked at the floor. “But what if -”
“Fifteen crowns for a condenser sphere?” Twila asked. “Skipper finds out, you’ll get cut loose here.”
“Okay, fine. But I want an [Engine Wrench] in case we do see a monster!”
Carter laughed and rested the pipes on his shoulder. “Bring whatever weapons you like. The shop shuts down in twenty minutes. You ship rats can stay here ‘till then and learn from real apprentices what airship-building looks like. Well, real apprentices and Becca!”
“I heard that!”
“You were supposed to, third-rate!”
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[Twila Tighe, Ship Rat Mystgineer, Equipment Level .36 (Myst 10/10, Hit Points 1/1)]
[Head - Empty]
[Eyes - Myst Lens (lvl. 1) Myst Sight (passive) See own status block and others’ classes]
[Chest - Ship Rat’s Harness (lvl. 0)]
[Waist - Apprentice Mystgineer’s Bandolier (lvl. 1) Deep Pockets - Equip an additional Gizmo]
[Legs - Canvas Overalls (lvl. 0)]
[Gizmo #1 - Basic Myst Tools (lvl 1) Skill - Tinkering]
[Gizmo #2 - Empty]
[Gizmo #3 - Empty]
[Gizmo (Belt) - Empty (lvl. 0)]
[Myst Battery - Basic Myst Battery (lvl. 1) Small Storage (passive) - 10 myst maximum, requires condenser to refill]
[Weapon/Pair - Empty]
[Skill #1 - Tinkering 1]
[Skill #2 - Empty]
[Skill #3 - Empty]
[Skill #4 - Empty]
[Skill #5 - Empty]