“Stop it, Twila,” Carter snapped.
Twila glared at him, still fiddling with the Hourglass’s levers. They’d dropped anchor off the coast of Seapike after evading the gunboat that Fort Blackstone had launched. The Hourglass, somehow, had come through unscathed. Twila had no desire to brave the fort’s carronades again, but they had to go back now!
She yanked on a lever, but it didn’t move. None of them would, and the black hand on [Anton’s Pocket Watch] wasn’t even moving!
“I hate to admit it, but Carter’s right,” Becca said.
“Hah! First time you’ve said that!”
“Shut up, Carter,” Becca replied, a voice shaking. “Look, Twila, that lever’s not going to work. We have time, and nothing to do with it, so let’s calm down and come up with some sort of plan. We’ve got a fort we can’t shoot our way into, crawling with guards, and a person inside it. What would Auntie Charlie do?”
Twila closed her eyes and stopped trying to move the lever. What would Auntie Charlie do? Back at the Gibson Foundry, she’d had a plan–but she’d already known the foundry inside and out. The woman had made plans quickly on the beach and in the cave. Twila didn’t have the ex-pirate’s experience to rely on, though. All she had was herself, her crew, and the Hourglass.
The Hourglass was the key.
Twila took a deep breath. “We’ll make a plan–like a Contraption or a Gizmo. We need a parts list first. We have a crew and an airship. Two [Long Fives] and two [Puckle Guns]. What else do we have?”
The ship rats started fidgeting nervously. Then Carter stared Twila in the eye. “We have your watch and the silver engine. But we don’t know what they do.”
“Well, it moves the ship back and forth in time,” Twila said. “We talked about that before.”
“Okay, but I agree with Carter again–don’t say anything–that we don’t know the rules.: Becca sighed. “It’s fine to pull the lever and send us back and forth, but how does it work? We have to know that before we start dashing off.”
Rosie nodded. She adjusted her eyepatch and ran off to the skipper’s cabin to grab Anton’s journal. She’d opened it to a blank page in the back when she returned. “Carter and Becca are right, Twi. First, let’s figure out what the silver engine actually does. Then we can make a plan for the rescue Gizmo. Tell me exactly what you do when you turn on the silver engine.”
Twila reached for the lever as the ship rats watched. “Pull the lever. It goes a few clicks. I’m not sure how many. I’m not sure what each click is for, either, but it could be a whole day. That’s why I think we can get Auntie Charlie.”
She started to say more, only to be interrupted by Becca, who stared at Twila accusingly. “I told you we should have played with it after we left Shimmertower, skipper. Now we need to know what it does, and we don’t.”
“We got sidetracked by the treasure, though. That was more important then.” Twila shook her head as if to clear it. “I think it’s a whole day, but we’ll have to find out by trying it. Anyways, pull the lever however far back you wanna go. I can only move the first lever right now, though. Others are stuck. Then you push [Anton’s Pocket Watch] into the gear hole, and the ship flies back in time. Wherever we end up, we’re stuck until the black hand gets around, though, and it’s so slow.”
She held up the pocket watch, eyes narrowed, and sighed heavily. “Rosie, are you writing this down?”
“Well, yeah. Twila, this is complicated. Way more complicated than we think it is.” Rosie paused to finish writing, then started sketching a picture on the next page. Her pen flew across the page, dipped back into the ink, and kept on flying. A series of wide ovals crisscrossed the page. The first looked tiny, while the last covered the page from one side to the other. “Keep talking. I’ll explain later.”
Twila nodded. “Okay. So, we have to stay for a day on either end, and we only get seven days to get Auntie Charlie back.”
“Why only seven?” Rojir spoke up. “It’s not over after seven days.”
Twila stared at the towering black pinnacle in the distance and at the fort on top of it. From this far, it didn’t look like much, but the carronade’s thunderous crash still echoed in her ears. They didn’t have the power to attack the fort or get inside and out safely. “If we can’t jump back to before Auntie Charlie gets taken to the fort, we can’t save her. The fort is too strong.”
Rosie cleared her throat. “So, with seven time-flights–that’s so weird, can we call them hops? With seven time hops, we should be able to come up with a plan here.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She flipped the page and tore the one with the ovals out. “Circles are a bad way to think about this. We just have to add a day every time we hop back.”
“If the lever controls days,” Becca said. “If not, we’ll be wasting time learning what we should already know.”
“So, we need to come up with a plan for the first jump. How do we stop the Gibson Marines from getting Auntie Charlie to the fort?” Twila asked.
“Well, we know they’re going to be at the tavern,” Jamis said. “Couldn’t we just beat them to the tavern and grab her before she gets captured?”
“That could work,” Carter said. Rojir nodded as well, obviously agreeing with his fellow thief.
“No, it couldn’t. What if we saw ourselves? In legends about this kinda thing, seeing yourself is bad!” Ellie glared at Carter.
“Why is it bad?” Rosie asked, a shake in her voice.
“Because that’s how you get Sable Tide problems. Everyone knows that. Or sea monsters!” Ellie said.
“What do sea monsters have to do with seeing yourself?” Carter sneered. “That’s ridiculous. Let’s just grab her before she goes inside the tavern.”
“We can’t,” Becca said. “If we get her before she goes inside, she won’t be there to save us from the Marines. We wouldn’t have gotten away without her. And I can’t fight the Marines again. Not even in the past.”
“And we’re not having Sable Tide problems or sea monsters. Not again.” Rosie’s eyes were wide.
Becca wouldn’t fight? Was this about the fight in the skywright’s shed? Twila rubbed her eyes, groaned, and made a mental note to talk to the other girl later. “This was so easy when I just threw a lever and we hopped. We’re not risking the guards capturing us…that’s weird to say…so we have to free Auntie Charlie between the tavern and the fort. Let’s try a tavern ambush. Tell me about the tavern. Then we’ll work on the ship, practice the Puckles and cannons, and I can teach people swordplay.”
Almost as one, the ship rats groaned.
----------------------------------------
Twila watched the black hand on [Anton’s Pocket Watch] creep toward the twelve with one eye. The other looked near the sun, watching it set. Marianna ran around the Hourglass, lighting lamps to ward off the Sable Tide as the airship knifed just over the water. Somewhere ahead was a spot they could dock away from the town. But not too far away.
The sun dipped below the horizon. Twila fidgeted with the levers, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other. As the black hand slowly ticked over to the watch’s top, she pushed it into the gear-shaped slot.
It clicked in.
Twila’s vision went purple. Her ears filled with ticks as the ship’s boilers drained and the engines stopped. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen! She tried to pull the pocket watch free. But it was too late.
“What was that?” Carter asked. “You said you’d warn us before we hopped!”
Twila’s face flushed as red as her hair. The ship hadn’t gone back in time at all. The lever had already been down–now it sat upright and locked!
Six, she thought as she stared at [Anton’s Pocket Watch], and the black hand started to creep forward ponderously. They had six chances to save Auntie Charlie.
[Twila Tighe, Ship Rat Mystgineer, Equipment Level .91 (Myst 1/12, Hit Points 2/2)]
[Head - Empty]
[Eyes - Myst Lens (lvl. 1) Myst Sight (passive) See own status block and others’ classes]
[Chest - Platejack Coat (lvl. 2) Plated Coat (passive) +1 Hit Point]
[Waist - Apprentice Mystgineer’s Bandolier (lvl. 1) Deep Pockets (passive) - Equip an additional Gizmo]
[Legs - Canvas Overalls (lvl. 0)]
[Gizmo #1 - Loaded Dice (lv. 2) - Roll the Bones (active, 1 myst/roll) - gain a random myst enhancement; Skill - Trickery]
[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 - Empty]
[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 - Condensing Battery Mk. 2 (lvl. 1) Myst Storage (passive) - 12 myst maximum, requires condenser to refill; Condense Myst (passive) - Condenses 1 myst/6 ticks]
[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 - Heatblade (lvl. 2) Heat (active, 1 myst/tick) - cause the blade’s edge to superheat; Skill - Acrobatics]
[Weapon/Pair - Empty]
[Skill #1 - Trickery 2]
[Skill #2 - Perception 2]
[Skill #3 - Piloting 4]
[Skill #4 - Marksman 2]
[Skill #5 - Acrobatics 2]
BE PROUD OF ME BIGGUS!