“It was my father’s.” Cira replied succinctly, pushing mana into her shield ring. “I inherited it.”

“Ahh, I see…” The man seemed to relax, “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen your ship. Even been aboard it once.”

She blinked in surprise, letting the mana in her ring slip. Her father travelled his whole life, so plenty of people had seen Breeze Haven before. The people who had been aboard were far fewer. This man was a first.

“You… Did you know my father?” She struggled to ask.

“Gazen, right? The lanky wizard with a funny accent and flashy spells? I always thought he was too old to have kids… and that was some time ago.”

“H-He was no older than you!” She defended him then caught herself and flushed with embarrassment. “And his accent wasn’t funny…”

The man laughed, “That’s ‘cause you got a funny accent too, little miss. Besides, I think he was older than he looked, but that’s another story.”

Hold on, I kind of want to hear that one, she almost said, but the man grew incensed like he just remembered something.

“Wait, so how the hell did that old bastard die—er, I’m sorry. I mean, it’s hard to imagine him dying.”

Cira looked away with guilt, “He shouldn’t have died… It wasn’t—"

Boras put his hand up, “Hey, I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. It couldn’t have been easy for you.” The man consoled her.

“No, it’s okay… He fell to a curse.” She thought it was only fair to tell him if they were acquainted, “How did you know my father?”

At first he seemed suspicious of her, but it would be strange for him to care unless the two were close. Still, anyone who’s boarded it would think a little girl attempting to steal such a vessel to be laughable.

“Old Gazen taught me everything I know too,” He winked, “About alchemy anyway. Had to be twenty years ago by now.”

“Really?!” She jumped up in excitement. She’d heard stories of past students he took but never met one, “Hang on… Boras, you say…? Boras… Boras… Did you used to go by Borty?”

The man looked like he’d seen a ghost, “No, I did not go by Borty,” he sighed, “So you’ve heard of me, huh? What’d the old man have to say?”

Now how did it go? “Boy can’t tell a Limroot from a Dimnut.” “Never leave flammable ingredients out when Borty’s comes around.” “Always stock twice as much as you think you’ll need teaching Borty, but you’ll save on bottles.” Wasn’t it supposed to be Bortimer, not Boras?

“Ahh, in your thirst for knowledge he had never used up ingredients so rapidly, or something to that effect.” Borty had clearly taken great strides since, so she couldn’t relay his words verbatim, though she questioned if she did any better than her old man.

“That bad, huh?” He let out a boisterous laugh, “Seems you were his star pupil in the end though. I’m glad he got to pass on his knowledge to someone who could take it.”

A warm feeling welled up in her cheeks and she smiled despite herself. Her father had said she was his best student, but seeing how unreasonably skilled a sorcerer old man Gazen was made that hard to believe from the horse’s mouth.

Borty continued, “And I don’t know if I would have believed your story as readily if you hadn’t put me to shame so thoroughly with the Limroot. I’d only met one man who could work that fast.”

“If you’ve been to Breeze Haven, shouldn’t you know not just anyone can board?” It required a boarding pass—a mithril pendant of which Cira kept the only ones in existence in a trunk in the broom closet.

“Ah, a boarding pass, was it? Think I still have mine somewhere back home.” Cira made a face at his revelation, “But that’s not it. There’s been talk up in these skies of people going around stealing islands.”

“What? How does that even work?” Islands couldn’t move, usually. She was floored if someone could manage to steal one. Could there be someone like my father out there?

“Couldn’t say. There haven’t been any reports within Gandeux skies so it’s really just rumors on the wind. Until I saw a little girl walk out of that old man’s house I didn’t believe it either, but now I guess I don’t again. Probably all talk.”

They chatted for a while, purifying all the ingredients together. That drew on into the late evening but Cira was never one to refuse the first real work she’d had in months. They were on such a roll that they promptly moved on to brewing up potions. Limroot was essential in a standard tonic. It’ll get you over a cold in mere hours. The rest of the ingredients left over went into hemostatic elixirs—those that didn’t know healing magic relied on these for injuries. Depending on where you fly, Boras explained, they sold faster than limroot tonic.

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It was well past midnight by the time Cira headed home with a leather bag full of coins. She’d seen wood tokens, shiny rocks, and gemstones as currency, but metal was a new one. She liked their uniformity and the clinking sound they made when she jostled them around.

Come morning the alchemist was already gone. Cira woke up with the sunrise and went over to the merchant’s hovel to greet everyone. They were friendly, inviting her to breakfast and making small talk, inquiring about magic and the like.

She enjoyed a plate of fried eggs and hashbrowns, a staple breakfast of the Gandeux skies they say. Afterwards she found the jewelry merchant and made an offer. There was one ring that caught her eye the night before. It was a simple ring carved out of a bright piece of jade. Only five silver crowns now, but she’d need a few more things to enchant it later on.

Next there was one item that had been on her mind since last night. She had no practical reason to buy one, but she had money in her pocket. A sorcerer must treat herself now and again.

“Do you have much experience using a crossbow?” The young woman with curly brown hair asked in a cheery voice.

“None at all, but I’ve seen schematics before.” She’d hit apples out of a tree in the garden with a slingshot when she was a kid, and this felt like the natural progression.

But the merchant didn’t mind, “This one here is good for beginners. Not a lot of kick and it’s easy to reload.”

“Which one shoots the furthest?”

This time the woman chuckled, holding a crossbow up with drawstrings on pulleys and a rifle stock, “That would be this one here, but it can be kind of hard to work with.”

Noticing Cira still looking on with interest, the woman continued, “If you’re heart’s set, you’re welcome to try it out!” She took precautions to be an honest merchant, but still didn’t want to lose a good sale.

“I think I’ll do just that.”

They wandered across the island towards the shore and laid out some rocks for target practice. Showing Cira how to load a bolt on the smaller crossbow first, she handed it over to try out. With utmost concentration Cira closed one eye and took aim, utterly missing the rock.

“Wow, this is way harder than magic. But I like it. Feels good in the hand.”

“My, thank you!” The woman was flattered.

She went on to try the next one, “So I just pull this back? Reallllly hard?” It was a struggle, but she managed to pull a bolt back using both hands.

Like the crack of a whip, the bolt went flying. She missed even worse this time but it dug itself into the dirt on impact.

“Impressive… But how far will it go?”

“Further than this island is long, but feel free to shoot one off the edge if you like.”

Instead of wasting a good bolt, she took aim at her humble little cottage. She pulled the trigger and it closed the distance in the blink of an eye, flying into the barrier with an audible crash before getting repelled halfway back to them, bent and rendered unusable.

“I was trying to save a bolt, but I guess that didn’t work out. This thing is incredible!” She could make the bolts herself if she ever ran out and it could even be enchanted to make it easier to draw. On that note, she got ideas and bought the small crossbow too, setting her back another twenty silver in total. Her work ethic was not to be discounted though and she still had quite some coin left.

Jingle jangle. What delightful money.

With this, her business was concluded and she bid farewell to her new friends. The skies were calling Cira and she had a salty rock to find.

The map took her a little off course and the mist had begun to dissipate while the clouds remained gray.

She couldn’t feel the wind on her face but they buffeted the barrier making for a noisy journey. To kill time, she sat in the yard conjuring targets out of stone and practiced her marksmanship, catching the same bolt with telekinesis and bringing it back every time she missed.

Eventually she started conjuring iron bolts out of thin air, challenging herself to see if she could make each one before she needed to load another. She could make them rather quickly since they only needed to last ten seconds or so, but this got especially hard when she started loading them and drawing them back with telekinesis as well. Once a few hours had passed she had lost all sight of her goal and was missing targets faster than any crossbowman in the sky.

Soon a little white pearl appeared on the horizon. Cira corrected course to go straight for it and went back to cruising, breaking up the monotony and returning to her geomancy studies. The need for iron got her excited about the subject again and she flipped pages until the sun started going down. Feeling something was amiss, she looked over to see the pearl about large enough to fit in her hand.

Strange… I started reading around noon. Shouldn’t it be closer?

She checked her speed again and hadn’t slowed down. That meant Fount Salt had to be massive.

So, she spent the next two days shooting targets in the morning and reading until the sun went down. Each night was spent frivolously cooking steaks before turning in early. Cira passed three or four merchants a day, all in expensive vessels with propellers and metallic canopy sails. You rarely saw such fine ships out in the rural skies Cira was used to.

The third morning she approached the salty monolith. It was one of the biggest islands she’d ever seen, and it was so round! Cira reckoned it had more mass than any island she knew by far. Just as she imagined, countless waterfalls fell off the pearly stone. Some had dug deep into the island’s surface, creating large fissures and awkward shelves of salt jutting out into the air. Due to the stark white surface reflecting most of the sun’s fervor, it was impossible to tell how far away it was still.

“Wait, that’s really close isn’t it?” She fired her crossbow at it and watched it hit. “Wait, no no no! stoooop!”

She frantically ran up the helm spire, though it made little difference for stopping. She could stop very quickly, if she felt like spending another afternoon mending dishes. To her credit though, the spire did allow her to veer off cleanly while dropping speed. Breeze Haven started tipping back as she tried to stop it. Now she could see her own shadow on the salt rapidly approaching.

“Noooo!” she cried, pulling back even further. She was told crashing wouldn’t be the end of Breeze Haven, but the shock could destroy her whole house. She really didn’t want to find out what happened when Breeze Haven turned upside down either.

Her ship ground to a halt mere feet away from the giant island. Cira was sweating bullets as she finally stopped moving, breathing a sigh of relief. Just in time to watch her barrier gently love-tap the salt, leaving her teapot outside on the garden table to fall in the grass and shatter.

“Son of a…”

Cira had officially arrived at the bottom of the noose.