The passageway Twila found herself in, with the others behind her, struck her as odd. To begin with, it wasn’t a cave. Someone had gone through the trouble of putting in wooden supports. They were spaced evenly along the shockingly straight pathway.

Second, little myst machines lined the tunnel. Some were so dusty it’d take ages to get them working again. Others siphoned off a tick from her myst battery and lit the path in an uneven purplish glow.

“Skipper, hold on a moment,” Charlie said. She started poking at Twila’s ribs, drawing tiny grunts of pain and tears. When she’d finished, she nodded. “You’re a lucky girl, Twila. Nothing’s broken, but you’ll have a bruise across your back and rear for a few days.”

She leaned closer and whispered, “Don’t look behind us, but we’re not alone.”

Twila immediately looked behind her, just in time for a figure to duck into the shadows as a purple light flickered off. Whoever it was, they didn’t have a myst battery to draw from–or it was dead.

“What do we do?” Twila whispered back.

Auntie Charlie grinned. It wasn’t a happy grin–this was the grin a ship’s cat gives a mouse. “We set a trap, figure out who they are and why they’re following us, and do whatever it takes to make them stop.”

“No killing,” Twila said. Not unless we have to.

“Twila, you’re a skipper on an airship that’s not running cargo between Seapike and Smallfield. You’re not carrying those pistols around for show, and the cannons on the Hourglass are for putting holes in airships.”

“Oh. Right.” Twila scrunched her eyebrows. “Try not to kill whoever it is first. If we have to…”

“If we have to keep ourselves alive or get what we need, we will,” Charlie said. “Now, keep moving. We’ll need a wide part of the cave to ambush this guy properly.”

Twila couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder as they walked further down the tunnel, but she couldn’t see anything. The mystlights flicked out almost as soon as Rojir passed them, though, and the darkness set in quicker than anything she’d seen before. She wished she still had the light, but they’d decided to let their compressors catch up for a bit.

“How deep are we?” Rosie asked.

“Probably not very deep,” Twila said. “Didn’t go down much, except for dropping down into this.”

In fact, the tunnel took them slightly upward. They left the saltwater puddle behind and came to an opening.

“Here,” said Auntie Charlie. “Rojir, on the left side. I’ll take the right. Girls, get up ahead a little and turn on the lantern. Make a lot of noise. Talk about anything.”

“Okay,” Twila said. Her myst battery ticked, and the purple light blossomed across the chamber.

It was gigantic. Twila was surprised North Peak could stand with such a vast section of its middle missing. Fallen stalactites littered the ground; this wasn't carved, unlike the man-made passage from below. She started striding deeper into the cave.

“Tell me about, um…” Twila couldn’t think of anything to talk about. “Uh…”

“Brelven. I’m from Brelven,” Rosie said. She started to look behind her, stopped herself, and kept walking. “It’s not an easy place, like Shimmertower or here, but we were doing well. Until Dad got pressed onto a gunboat to go fight Drelven, and we never heard from them again.”

Twila looked at her feet. How had she never asked about Rosie’s past before? It wasn’t common to talk about them aboard airships–most ship rats’ stories weren’t happy, and she’d been sold for carrots. “Did Anton apprentice you after that?”

“No. Mom tried to keep me home, but I ran away. He picked me up a bit after. Sent some money to my mother, though.” Rosie’s eyes were wide and teary, and Twila gave her a one-armed hug as they walked. Rosie leaned into it.

A crashing sound from behind them made both girls jump. They turned, Twila’s hand on her pistol, as Rojir and Auntie Charlie wrestled with a figure on the ground. She turned and ran toward the fight, Rosie right behind her.

Rojir’s fist pulled back and slammed into the figure’s nose just as Twila and Rosie scrambled across a broken stalactite. The figure went still, and Auntie Charlie leaned back. “Good hit, Rojir.”

“Thanks. She’s got a hard face,” the big boy said, waving his hand and wincing. He rolled off the unconscious person, and Twila got a good look at who’d been following them.

Her gray hair, impossibly thick and smooth, stopped only inches from her face. Twila fidgeted–running her fingers through it would probably feel amazing. The short hair didn’t quite cover her ears. Or, more accurately, her lack of them. Instead, she had a hole on the side of her head covered with shorter, finer hairs. Her clothes looked threadbare, and Twila could see ribs through the tears in her shirt.

“Is she a selkie?” Rosie asked, captivated.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Yeah, this is a selkie,” Charlie said. She shrugged. “If she’s that skinny and not fully dressed, she’s in trouble.”

“Why? Looks dressed to me,” Rojir asked. He stared at the woman as her wide, black eyes opened slowly.

“I’ll let her answer.” Auntie Charlie drew her pistol and sat down next to the selkie. “Who are you?”

“Coatless,” the selkie responded. Her voice seemed weak and far away, and Twila felt a pulling at her heart.

“Okay, Coatless…that’s not even a name, that’s just what you are…where’s your coat? And why haven’t you gotten it back yet?”

“It’s in the cave. I couldn’t get in, and I couldn’t climb the outside to where it is.” Coatless rolled up a sleeve, showing a massive bruise across her arm. “I fell when I tried.”

“Stay here, don’t move. Twila, we need to talk away from Coatless here,” Auntie Charlie said. She waved the rest of the crew a bit deeper into the cavern. There, she lowered her voice, glancing at Coatless. “Okay, ship rats, we have a problem.”

“We’re going to help Coatless get her coat back, right?” Rosie asked.

“I don’t think we should. Before I explain why, what do you know about selkies?” Auntie Charlie asked. Her hand tapped the butt of her pistol as she glanced at Coatless again.

“They need their coats to swim and fish, and they have to get them back if they lose them,” Rosie said. “That’s why we have to help her!”

“That’s why we can’t help her right now,” Charlie responded. “If she needs her coat, she’ll know where it is. She’ll be drawn to it, and eventually, she’ll have to go find it. But she didn’t lose it here–someone took it into this cave, and recently at that. Coatless will go straight to whoever it is. I guarantee it. And when she does, they’ll come down to find out how she got inside.”

“But if we help her get it back, won’t she want to help us?” Rojir asked.

“Maybe, but likely not. My experience with selkies is that they don’t much care for what people who aren’t other selkies need. She’ll tell you otherwise right now, but when she gets her coat and turns into a seal, you’ll never see her again.” Auntie Charlie turned toward Twila. “This is up to you as skipper, but we should kill her. Or at least do something to keep her here while we explore.”

“No. We ain’t killing her. Not unless we have to,” Twila said, hugging herself. She breathed and blinked as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to kill, and certainly not a defenseless, starving prisoner.

Rosie jumped it, glaring at Charlie. “Whoever’s in here, we’ll have to manage them somehow. We shouldn’t leave her to die here or get stuck trying to get her coat back from someone worse than Garreth from that story. I don’t think he did anything horrible, but whoever has the coat could be worse.”

Auntie Charlie held up her hands, palms toward Rosie. “Easy, ship rat. I’m just suggesting the course to help us find the treasure easiest if it’s here. Skipper, what do you want to do?”

Twila closed her eyes and thought while her crew stared at her. Being a skipper was just a lot of decisions, she realized. And the selkie was a big one. She scrunched up her eyebrows and hummed, then opened her eyes.

“We’ll help her. If someone’s further in, they’re closer to the treasure than we are. She’ll lead us to it.”

Rosie cheered while Auntie Charlie put her head in her hand and sighed loudly. “Alright, Coatless, it’s your lucky day. We’re going to–where’d she go?”

Twila looked at the cave floor where they’d left the seal woman. Auntie Charlie was right. Coatless was gone!

[Twila Tighe, Ship Rat Mystgineer, Equipment Level 1.33 (Myst 1/10, 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 (passive) - Equip an additional Gizmo]

[Legs - Canvas Overalls (lvl. 0)]

[Gizmo #1 - Multitool (lv. 2) - Tool Transform (active, 1 myst/switch) - Change between many common tools; Skill - Tinkering]

[Gizmo #2 - Anton’s Pocket Watch (lvl. 4)] Redo (active, 5 myst/5 seconds) - redo the last five seconds of time, with knowledge of what’s happening (1 minute to reset); Skill - Piloting]

[Gizmo #3 - [Pocket Condenser (lvl. 1) - Condense Myst (passive) - Condenses 1 myst/5 ticks; Skill - None]

[Gizmo (Belt) - Mystwork Lantern (lvl. 2): Mystlight (active, 25% failure chance, 1 myst/attempt) - start the light; Adjustable Light Aura (sustained, .5-2 myst/tick) - light a variable area; Skill - Perception]

[Myst Battery - Basic Myst Battery (lvl. 1) Small Storage (passive) - 10 myst maximum, requires condenser to refill]

[Weapon/Pair - Anton’s Paired Pistols (lvl. 2) Smoothbore Myst-Shot (active, 1 cartridge/shot) - fire a ray of heated myst; Rapid Shots (active, 2 myst/shot) - fire twice/tick; Skill - Marksman]

[Weapon #2 - Chain-Cutlass (lvl. 2) Rattleblade (active, 1 myst/tick) - spin the serrated blades on the cutlass’s edge; Skill - Intimidation]

[Weapon/Pair - Empty]

[Skill #1 - Tinkering 2]

[Skill #2 - Perception 2]

[Skill #3 - Piloting 4]

[Skill #4 - Marksman 2]

[Skill #5 - Intimidation 2]