ALL NOVEL 9 – Test Run
9 - Test Run
The boat rocks and Eris’s stomach rocks with it. She presses the palms of her hands to the wet metal of the deck in hopes the bite of the cold will distract from the nausea. It doesn’t.
What are the odds that the first day of this new job was going to involve the one thing she has an issue with? Not just the seasickness but the…
Diving into the water after her quarry. So eager. So dark down there. Blow to the gut. Air rushes out. Water rushes in.
No. Not thinking about that. There’s no point in letting herself get distracted by old memories. And it’s not like they’re going to be going in the water, so there’s nothing to be afraid of. Not that she would be afraid. Trying to fight in the water is just an annoying complication she’d rather avoid. That’s all.
The sound of approaching footsteps - felt more than heard through the combined noise of wind, waves, and engines - snaps her gaze up to see Road walking over to her from where they’d been talking with Sullivan.
“Eris,” they say curtly while take a seat on the deck next to her.
“Sup.”
“I can’t help but get the impression that you’ve been a bit on edge since we went through the bridge.”
Oh Hell no. She is not having this conversation. “I’m fine.”
“Alright then.”
What? That’s it? “Not going to press it?”
“Why would I? If you say you’re fine, I trust you. That’s how this team stuff works, right? Trusting each other? Legitimate question by the way. This might have been my idea, but the truth is I’m winging it with the whole team leader thing.”
“That sounds about right.” How many of the shows Lacuna recommended to her went on about the power of friendship? Probably more than didn’t.
“Well, if you ever stop being fine, I’ll be there for you - we’ll be there - whenever you say the word.”
Claw back onto the shore. Cough up water. Gasp for air. Feeling of being dragged back in.
“Sure thing.”
The two of them sit in what passes for silence while Eris looks for something else to focus on instead of her lurching stomach. The rats all seem to have gone belowdecks. Maybe she should join them. Ashan stands a short distance away with his eyes closed and one arm extended straight up, pointing a wand at the sky. Must be some wizard shit helping him keep his balance like that with how the boat’s moving. Off to the other side of her, Sullivan’s perching in the back of the tied-down carriage on top of the crates they brought and checking a gold pocketwatch. Road she trusts, and maybe Ashan even if he is a mage, but there’s a gaudy bastard who doesn’t care about making a good impression.
The wind picks up and the boat crests an even larger swell than before. A hrgk sound escapes Eris’s throat as she struggles to keep down her stomach contents that don’t seem to want to descend with the boat on the other side of the wave. She tells herself that no one probably noticed. A glance around seems to confirm it.
“You know,” Road says a few moments later, “it’s a shame this didn’t happen during one of the solstice windows. We’re close enough to the pole the elves probably would’ve been willing to lend a hand.” Somehow their voice sounds casual despite having to shout to be heard.
“The elves? As in…” No, surely she heard wrong.
“As in Santa Claus,” Road confirms.
“Bullshit.”
“Cross my heart.”
“No way. That’s just a joke we tell newbies on their first time Backstage.”
“I assure you, he’s quite real. I’ve seen the toy workshop myself in the phase-shifted pocket dimension overlaid on top of the north pole. Talked to the elves. Got to pet a reindeer. Fun trip.”
Eris laughs, still not really believing it. “Let me guess, ‘saved Christmas’ is on your resume too?”
“Me? No, that was all Carnette - the sorceress Bridgewood. I was only there because she and Sullivan weren’t allowed in without an escort who’s not on the Naughty List.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“Sullivan, back me up here,” Road calls over their shoulder. “Christmas of… you remember the one. Right after you and Carnette got together.”
Sullivan looks up from his watch, “Good times. Those pointy eared toymakers know how to throw an afterparty.”
“So you’re telling me, that there is actually - literally - a jolly fat man in a red suit who spends all year making toys and then delivers them into children’s homes around the world in one night? I don’t buy it. I’m no spellcaster, but even I know that not even the world’s most powerful mage could pull off the kind of mass precision teleports or time manipulation for that.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Road says, “he’s not actually a ‘man’ per say so much as an interdimensional eldritch god with an affinity for winter and a knack for infiltrating his imagery into existing religious iconography. And he doesn’t so much ‘deliver presents’ as grant blessings on gifts given in his name in exchange for his cultists creating classically ideal toys and then offering up the fruits of their labor in sacrifice.”
“I think I hate that that sounds more believable.”
“I mean, he’s pretty chill as far as the eldritch go. Basically benevolent and mortal exposure to his influence tends to manifest as generosity and merriment rather than, well, the usual problems that result from unprotected exposure to alien higher powers.”
Eris runs a hand through her hair and lets out a low whistle. “You’re actually serious about this, aren’t you?”
“I don’t lie,” Road says. “Hey, Ashan, you know Santa’s real, right?”
Ashan opens his eyes and finally lowers his arm before turning toward the two of them. He slowly rolls his shoulder as he answers, “On Orthon we call him the Twelfth Saint of Narva. The folklore around him is mostly the same as here, but as he takes on the role of saint for that particular goddess there’s more emphasis on the punishing of wrongdoings in balance with the granting of gifts.”
Eris looks from Ashan to Road to Sullivan and back to Road. “Okay, you got me. Santa Claus is real in the weirdest way possible.” She makes a short chortle. “This is gonna blow Lacuna’s mind when I tell her.”
“Speaking of the techie,” Sullivan says as he snaps his pocketwatch closed and hops down off the carriage, “she should have had enough time by now to get her new toys set up. Muscles,” he says to Eris while gesturing to the crates, “help me out here.”
“Call me muscles one more time and I’m going back to calling you Sully.”
Sullivan smirks. “Seeing as I promised my friend I wouldn’t stab either of you on the job, I’ll let you have this round. But really, be a dear and hold this net aside while I retrieve equipment worth more than I’m paying you.”
Eris bites her tongue instead of dignifying that with further response beyond a glare and helps as requested. After an uncomfortable minute or two of trying to pull one particular flat case out of the middle stack while keeping the rest from sliding off the cart and across the pitching deck, Sullivan finds what he’s looking for and tells the others to follow him up to the wheelhouse.
There’s a single rat standing guard in front of a rat-sized flap cut into the bottom of the wheelhouse door. Road makes some hand signs to the rat that Eris doesn’t entirely follow - something about equipment for the captain - and in response the rat goes through the flap. A moment later the door swings open towards them and they all follow Road into the cramped room where Cabetha sits behind a wheel. Several rats wait at the ready on top of a console full of levers and buttons while others watch various dials and gauges, making occasional chitters that a rat with a hat translates into signals to the captain.
“You’d better have a good reason for barging in here,” Cabetha says without looking away from her piloting.
“I’m setting up a communications array,” Sullivan says as if it should be obvious. “As captain, surely you would welcome the ability to keep an eye on us while we’re on the other ship. All the better to know when it's safe to send your crew in for salvage and when to pull out if the situation degenerates.”
The captain gives a dismissive grunt. “So long as it doesn’t get in the way.”
“I assure you it won’t,” Sullivan says and then proceeds to set the black case down on the floor in front of the rat-occupied console and unclasp its lock.
“And if it breaks I’m not paying for it,” Cabetha adds sharply.
The majority interior of the case is occupied by a foam block with inserts cut out for the true contents: a brick-size plastic block with buttons on it, a digital tablet, and several earpieces.
“It’s not ideal relying on a central router like this,” Sullivan says while removing the plastic brick, pressing it to the side of the console where it stays in place and extends an antenna, “but it’s what I could get on short notice.” He removes the tablet and an earpiece then kicks the open case across the floor. “Take these.”
Road stops the box’s slide with their foot and pries out the remaining earpieces to pass to Ashan and Eris while keeping one for themself. Eris turns the slim black crescent over in her hand to examine it before pressing a button to turn on a green light and then looping it over her ear and inserting the bud.
“And here… we… go!” Sullivan says just before a brief burst of static in Eris’s ear followed by a beep from her phone in her pocket. She checks the latter and finds that she suddenly has both a signal and text from Lacuna from shortly after they left the bridge.
You make it through okay? Where’d you guys end up anyway?
Eris glances at the others before sending her reply and notices the split screen video feed now playing on Sullivan’s tablet.
You’re about to find out
True to her prediction, Lacuna’s voice comes in through the earpiece a moment later.
“Um, hello? Mr. Bridgewood, I’m guessing? Your instructions said to expect a call through this number?” There’s only a little bit of static.
“Hey sis,” Eris greets her.
“Oh, hey-”
“So techie,” Sullivan cuts her off, “you should be seeing a camera feed.”
“I don’t see aynth- oh, wait, yes I do. Loading now. One of the screens are black though?”
Sullivan sighs in exasperation. “Wizard boy,” he says to Ashan, “tie your hair back, it’s covering the camera on the ear cuff.”
Ashan pulls his hair back, mutters something, and then lets go, leaving his hair in a ponytail despite nothing visibly holding it in place save for a faint light-catching shimmer where the strands bunch together.
“Okay. Four feeds visible.”
Sullivan presents the tablet to Cabetha. “For you, captain.”
“Leave it on the console. The boys will handle it.”
“Hey,” Eris says, looking out the window while everyone else is focused on the equipment, “what happened to the waves?”
Outside, the water has gone still, offering a clear and unobstructed view of the beached bone ship now only a few hundred feet away. Further out, the waves abruptly pick up again forming the border around a placid field of water in the center of the storm.
“We’ve entered the crossover point,” Road says. “Nothing to worry about so long as no one here focuses too hard on trying to go somewhere else. Just be careful staring at the sky for too long, that can be a bit of a trip.”
“I presume this vessel is equipped with a conceptual anchor?” Ashan asks.
“What sort of daft fool do you take me for?” the captain snarls. “No, the Chance’s fuel ain’t going to stop burning and we’ll be going out the same way we came in. Now get out of my wheelhouse already. I’ve got a landing to line up.”
“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” Lacuna’s voice says over the line while they return to the deck, “what exactly is my job here with these video feeds?”
“Mostly just to be an extra set of eyes for now,” Road answers. “Let us know if you see anything weird on the cameras we don’t seem to be seeing, whether because we just didn’t notice or because there’s something keeping us from seeing that the cameras manage to catch. Certain types of ghosts, psychic perception filters, things like that.”
“Oh, okay. Sounds easy enough.”
“And in the unlikely event something truly bad happens or we get stuck somewhere, I gave Sullivan a list of emergency contacts to leave with you. Not that I ever expect us to need that, but it’s good insurance.”
Eris starts to add in her own words of encouragement but is cut off by the sudden eruption of rats from every pipe, hole, and nook across the deck. Most of the swarm devotes itself to working the mechanisms for unlatching and slowly lowering the prow of the ferry to convert it back into a broad ramp, but two smaller groups split off to retrieve a pair of large harpoons tethered to the deck. After nearly a minute the ramp finishes lowering into place with a dull thump on top of an expanse of gray scales and white flesh. The two harpoon swarms move to the top of the ramp but don’t descend.
A lone rat breaks off from the swarm and begins signing to Road. Caution. Waiting for you. Signal when dead. Road acknowledges the message and turns back to the others.
“Captain Cabetha doesn’t trust whatever we’ve just docked with not to start moving again, so she’s holding off on dropping anchor and keeping ready to bail out on short notice. If we can confirm it’s not going to wake up and start thrashing she’ll give the boys the order to further secure the landing.”
“Captain,” Sullivan says, “I know you can hear us. If you have anything to tell us, you can just press the button on the tablet.”
“Noted. Now get moving. Crossovers ain’t meant to be lingered in.”
Eris takes those words to heart as she follows Road down the ramp. Even with the water as anomalously calm as it is here she can still feel the sway and the rise and fall as the relative elevations of the Fluke Chance and the great immobile beast changes from one moment to the next. The sooner she has her feet on something stable the better. Still, she can’t resist a glance over the edge to get a better idea of what she’s about to step onto now that she’s close enough to see the submerged parts beneath the surface.
To the left, just beneath the surface, the scaled mass continues on for dozens of yards before sloping downward into the shadowy depths where she can make out the vague outline of shoulders and something broad, slowly waving fanlike in the slight current. Fins, or maybe wings. To her right stretches the length of a reptilian snout with a fanged jaw limply hanging open wide enough to swallow the Fluke Chance whole if it were to raise itself up out of the water. A yellow slitted eye taller than Eris rests cloudy and unmoving. Lifeless.
“We’re standing on a dead dragon, aren’t we?” Eris says, tapping the steel toe of her boot against a scale the length of her torso.
“Not like any dragon I have ever seen,” Ashan answers the rhetorical question.
“The concept of ‘dragon’ manifests pretty differently from one world to the next,” Road says. “Dorbreith has some similar to this.”
“It could be hibernating,” Ashan points out.
“Sullivan?” Road inquiries.
Eris glances over just in time to see the man chew and swallow something before he answers “Definitely dead.”
“Well, that’s the biggest worry out of the way, let’s go,” Road says with a beckoning gesture as they begin to climb up the dome of the dragon’s skull.
Following behind, Eris spares one last backward glimpse at the Fluke Chance where the rats are now descending the ramp and working the harpoons into the soft spots between the dragon's scales. Behind them, a long dark shape moves through the water, making a small splash before disappearing under the ramp.
“Guys, I just saw something,” she says.
“Scrubbing back the feed. Give me a sec,” Lacuna’s voice answers. “Got it. It’s blurry, but it looks like a big eel or something.”
“Probably just a scavenger,” Cabetha says. “Damn thing’s eating my salvage.”
One more reason to stay out of the water.
Eris returns to the climb, making a point of keeping her eyes down to avoid looking at the shifting sky above. It helps that the prow of the galleon-like bone ship is jutting above the apex of the skull to partially block the view. As she draws closer, it becomes more apparent that the external bone frame structure was grown into shape rather than harvested from some creature and used as construction material. Not that Eris knows much about the subject, but the skin between and growing a thinner membrane over the struts is a good hint.
“I think I know what killed the dragon,” Road says as Eris joins them at the top of the dragon’s head.
Eris looks to where they’re pointing where the hull of the ship meets the dragon’s forehead. Starting just below the waterline and extending nearly to where they’re standing the dragon’s hide is warped along the border of where the structure of the ship has fused with the fallen beast. It occurs to Eris that the ship is going into the dragon instead of resting on top of it.
“Two objects attempting to occupy the same space at the same time,” says Ashan, walking up behind them. “Strange. Most modern interworld vessels have safeguards against that.”
“Probably got damaged somehow,” Road says. “Not much use speculating how until we learn more.”
Eris takes that as the go-ahead to get on the ship and stalks over to the spot where the merge line makes for the shortest climb up to the deck. She grimaces at the feeling of skin beneath her hands upon gripping the sides of the prow despite expecting it. It’s not the grossest thing she’s touched - not by a long shot - but there’s something about a structure having give and warmth that makes her own skin crawl. Some things just shouldn’t be made of meat. And a boat definitely shouldn’t have a pulse.
Still better than being underwater though, she tells herself as she grits her teeth and begins shimmying up.
“Hey, muscles!” she hears Sullivan call out to her a few moments later. She ignores him except to briefly consider flipping the bird in his direction, but her hands are too busy for that.
“Umm… Eris…” Lacuna’s voice stutters in her ear halfway up her ascent.
“Not now,” she grunts. The prow’s starting to transition to the more forward pointing bowsprit and she’s nearly upside down now.
Just a little further to climb. Not a bad warmup for her, really. As long as she’s burning Sullivan’s money, maybe she should add a rock wall to her equipment request along with the other training gear.
One more stretch. Grab the main pole of the bowsprit. Heave. Swing herself up. Nail the landing. Dust off her hands. Nearly lose her balance when she hears Sullivan slow clapping and sees the others already on the deck.
“What the Hell?”
“I conjured a ramp,” Ashan says matter-of-factly.
Of course he did. “And I verified that this ship’s still alive. Pulse and all.” Not her best recovery for saving face, but at least Road cuts Sullivan off from rubbing it in any further.
“So, it’s Culescun then,” they say to him.
“Told you so,” he replies. “The lack of color and obvious appendages just goes to show it’s a smuggler vessel.’
“Or it’s injured.”
“Excuse me,” Ashan interjects, “but it appears I lack the context of this conversation.”
“Culescu,” Road says, “is an off-world nation of flesh-shapers. Growing vehicles like this is fairly common practice there, although they usually tend to be considerably livelier and more ornate than this.”
“Necromancers then,” Ashan says.
That garners a condescending tsk from Sullivan. “Culescun flesh-shaping is about as much meat necromancy as genetic engineering is creative taxidermy. A shame that they’re so isolationist. Even my dearly departed wife had trouble trying to obtain one of their sculptures for her garden.”
“That’s all very fascinating,” Eris says with a twinge of irritation creeping into her voice, “but are we going to stand around all day talking, or are we going to do a job here?”
“Eris is right,” Road says. “Since no one’s coming up to greet us, best that we go looking. Eris and Ashan, you two check out the aftcastle - that part sticking up toward the back. Sullivan and I will head on down belowdecks. Keep in touch over the headsets and come find us when you’re done up here. This ship might be grown from meat and bone, but the layout should still be fairly normal.”
Eris would hardly call the partially ajar door that she soon finds herself prying the rest of the way open like a clamshell several moments later ‘normal’ but, to Road’s point, stepping into the interior of the ship’s upper deck beyond feels less like being eaten than she’d feared. The squared corners where the walls meet ceiling and floor help with that impression, as do the feeble motes of bioluminescence running along those corners. Not enough light to see by, but enough of a glowing outline of features to keep from bumping into a wall or stumbling down the hole in the floor where an ivory ladder leads down to the lower decks. No, not like going down a throat or into a stomach at all, she reassures herself. Sure, it is perceptibly warmer in here than it was outside - still not actually warm though - and it is humid, but any enclosed space on the ocean is like that, right?
The light that Ashan conjures behind her is welcome - for purely practical reasons, of course - as she makes her way to another shell door in the back of the room. There’s an engraving on this one in a language she can’t read. A sign of a captain’s cabin perhaps? Unlike the first door, this one begins to slowly swing open toward her on its own at the touch of her fingers along its rim.
A subtle scent of rotting meat creeps into Eris’s nostrils before the door finishes opening, causing her to tense on reflex, ready to either dodge or start swinging at whatever’s on the other side. She makes a quick hand gesture to Ashan without looking, hoping that he’ll get the hint that something dangerous is in there.
And then… nothing happens. The door opens and the cabin beyond is dark and silent. Nothing stirs.
Eris takes a step forward, only to be stopped by a glass pane rising from the floor to fill the door frame.
“A precaution for door breaching,” Ashan says before thrusting his wand forward, causing the glass to bend and bubble until it forms a dome inside the room. “Warriors first,” he says, motioning toward the conjuration, and then follows Eris inside.
With the room now illuminated by the wizard’s presence Eris can clearly see the source of the smell. Three humanoid bodies, each of a seemingly different species, and each as unknown to her as the markings on the door lie lifeless, desiccated, and spotted all over with foot-wide ragged round chunks torn from their clothing and skin.
The room itself is furnished ordinarily enough with bed, long central table surrounded by stools, dresser, and even what looks to be shuttered windows along the far wall. Ordinary enough save for said furnishings having been grown out of the very walls and floors. And save for the corpses. And save for the limply hanging slick black tendrils longer and wider than her own considerable arm scattered about the walls.
Something about that last detail strikes Eris as being out of place. The tendrils, dark and slimy looking, are a far cry from the dry, anemic skin walls.
“Those things on the wall aren’t part of the ship,” she says.
“Some kind of parasite?” Ashan posits.
“Maybe…” Eris pushes on the dome that has a texture with just a little too much friction for glass. “Can you get me closer? I want to try pulling one off.”
Following a gesture from Ashan a narrow tube just wide enough for Eris to squeeze through extends from the dome to the wall and envelops one of the tendrils. Making her way down it she could swear the temperature in here just dropped a degree or two.
Once up close she pulls out her own flashlight for a better look and realizes that the ‘tendril’ has fins and eyes. Prodding the creature with the flashlight gets a slight wiggle but no obviously aggravated response. She runs the tip of the flashlight slowly up the creature’s side, lifting one of the side fins and unfolding it to reveal a structure reminiscent of a wing. Giant amphibious flying lampreys. Because why not? Just one more thing to make the ocean even worse.
Eris pockets her flashlight again, cracks her neck, rolls her shoulders, and proceeds to enact her preferred course of action when faced with a creature like this: grab it with both hands, squeeze, pull, twist, and snap its neck before it has time to really start struggling and thrashing. Even dead, the thing doesn’t let go of the wall and leaves a bleeding round wound behind when she pulls it loose. Confirmation enough of what happened to the crew.
Ashan recoils when Eris returns and offers the deceased parasite to him. Eris finds that funnier than she knows she should.
“Not the type of wizard for collecting weird specimens?” she elbows him, half-joking.
“No,” he responds flatly.
“Well, I suppose we should tell the others what we found,” Eris says.
“Let me guess,” says Road’s voice suddenly through the headset, “a bunch of giant eel-leech-things?”
“It’s an open mic, we could hear you the whole time,” Sullivan’s voice chimes in, answering Eris’s next question before she can voice it.
“That, and we’ve found the same thing down here. They’re all over the walls. There must be hundreds of them. It explains why the ship is so sickly, getting drained of blood like this.”
“That, and being lodged in a dragon’s skull”
“Well yes, that too.”
“I assume you have not yet found any survivors,” Ashan says.
“Not yet,” Road replies, “but we did just find a cabin up toward the bow that’s better sealed than the others. Hopefully someone managed to hole themselves up in there safely.”
“Give me a minute and I’ll be over there to help with that,” Eris says.
Less than a minute later, Ashan has dismissed his bubble, Eris has closed the cabin back up, and the two of them are climbing the ladder down a level. The dead parasite they left on the floor of the room.
“So,” Lacuna’s voice breaks the silence of the brief trek from one end of the ship to the other, “if it’s an open mic, why didn’t I hear either of you two earlier?”
“Oh look, the techie’s still with us,” Sullivan’s voice lilts. “That’s because we weren’t saying anything.”
“We’ve had a long time to get in sync without needing to,” Road’s voice adds in a tone that sounds practiced in smoothing over their companion’s barbs. “How are you holding up Lacuna?”
“I - I’m fine,” she says. “Sorry, I just had to mute myself for a while when you found the - when you found the crew.”
“Please tell me you didn’t just make a mess of my freshly-cleaned floor,” Sullivan sighs.
“No! Of course not! I…” Lacuna’s voice trails off barely a whisper. “One of the little spider golems brought a bucket…”
Sullivan’s microphone just barely picks up his bemused laughter.
Eris flushes with secondhand embarrassment at the admission. And with firsthand shame. She’d forgotten her friend was watching the camera feed when she killed that thing. The awful thought that maybe she shouldn’t have pushed Lacuna to accept Road’s recruitment offer surfaces in her mind.
No, no time to think about that right now. They can talk it out later. For now, there’s a job to do and Road and their locked shell door are right up ahead.
“It is alright,” Ashan says. For a second Eris thinks he’s talking to her. “I had a similar reaction to my first encounter with such a sight.”
Lacuna’s voice mumbles something like a thank you and Eris suppresses a wince. Better to move on than to drown her friend in pity.
“Sooo,” Eris drags out the word to emphasize the change in topic as she steps between Road and Sullivan and around another body that she’s careful not to catch on camera. “Let’s take a look at this door.”
Said door is shut tightly enough that it actually seems to be digging into the skin of the surrounding wall and making it go pale from cut circulation. Running her hands along the edge of the door shell doesn’t get it to open up like the last one, nor does it find any room for purchase for forcefully pulling it open. She’s about ready to give up and start punching a hole through the center when notices how tense the cord of muscle along one side serving as the hinge seems to be.
“Maybe…” she murmurs to herself and then sets to work massaging the hinge with her fingers. A few moments of this and she feels the muscle loosen ever so slightly and hears the door shift. Not enough to make a difference in getting it open though, she finds when she checks again. She sighs and rolls her eyes. No one can say she didn’t try to do this the gentle way.
“Hey Road,” she says, “Tell me you’ve got that fancy sword of yours on you today.”
They reach under their coat to retrieve a bladeless gray metal hilt and hold it up. “Sure do. But you know it can’t actually cut things, right?”
“Don’t need it to.”
They arch an eyebrow in understanding. “Ah. I just need to disrupt the nerves on the hinge so it goes limp and the door swings open. Nice thinking. Alright, stand back.”
In one fluid motion Road steps forward, swings the hilt down, steps back, and returns the hilt to its holster with a flourish. As they do so a beam of orange light extends from the hilt, passes through the door’s hinge muscle, fades and shrinks before it can cut through the floor, and is gone altogether by the time the wielder’s sword arm returns to their side.
“Showoff,” Sullivan whispers.
Almost immediately the door falls open just enough for Eris to get her fingers under it to pull it open the rest of the way.
A shout comes from the small cabin on the other side as the door swings wide to reveal a heavily-bruised man backing into the far corner with his hounds out in front of him. Eris can’t understand the words he begins speaking, but the fearful tone is unmistakable.
Road takes a step forward, empty palms up and open. “It’s alright, we’re here to help. You’re safe now.”
The man hesitantly lowers his arms, allowing Eris a better view of him. He’s not human, but he’s close enough to pass as one at a glance. Almost as if someone had a general idea of what a human should look like but was missing a few details. His eyelids close from the sides when he blinks at Ashan’s light suddenly filling the room. His bruises disrupt patterns of subtle bioluminescent speckles. His thumbs have an extra joint to flex when he relaxes his hands at his sides. His teeth seem a little too perfectly symmetrical and even as he begins to talk, less frantically this time.
“We’re adventurers,” Road says in answer to the man’s question that Eris still can’t understand. “We heard about your ship suddenly appearing and running aground and came to investigate.”
“Any idea how they’re talking different languages to each other?” Eris asks Ashan in a whisper, while they hang back in the corridor to give Road and the survivor space.
The wizard looks at her in surprise. “Can you not understand what he is saying?”
“Not all of us can be mages.”
“No, but we can still all use translation charms.’
“I prefer to actually learn.”
“I envy your commitment to that pursuit.” Ashan pauses, listening to Road and the surviving crewmember continue to converse. “His name is Dismas,” he translates, “or at least that’s the closest my mouth can pronounce. There’s a click and a growl to it that I can’t seem to get right.
“He says he was off his shift and sleeping when what he keeps calling a ‘pulse’ woke him. Right after that there was a terrible roar that still has his ears ringing and the whole ship started tumbling like a toy being picked up and shaken. Once it finally settled down he looked outside to find the shipmaster and flesh-shaper dead, or at least unconscious in the corridor. And then the screaming started.”
Ashan pauses, while not-quite-Dismas composes himself before continuing more tremulously. He gives the survivor a few seconds of lead time before resuming his interpretation.
“The noises started above deck and soon he saw another fellow sailor run down the stairs into this corridor before being caught by a pair of those creatures we have seen on the walls. Other crewmates started coming up from below or out of their cabins to see what was the matter only to be overwhelmed by the swarm pouring in. He managed to get his own door shut and locked just in time. He says that it’s sheer luck none of the creatures got in here when the ship started spasming and flailing as they started attaching themselves to it en masse. But then after everything finally went quiet for real he found the door would no longer open at all. He has been waiting in here since, watching the lights go dim, feeling the ship grow cold, and hearing its pulse grow weak and erratic.”
“I’m sorry,” Road’s voice interrupts Ashan’s translation of the question they’re answering, “but no, you're the first survivor we’ve found so far. We haven’t checked the hold below this deck yet though, so there might still be someone down there.” They pause while close-to-Dismas says something else. The tone seems a little more hopeful. Or maybe concerned. “There are passengers too? Don’t worry, my companions will look into them while I get you back to our boat. Is that okay with you?”
Sounds-like-Dismas-but-isn’t says something that Eris assumes is agreement.
“Alright,” Road says with a nod, “Captain…”
“I heard,” Cabetha’s voice crackles over the headset. “I’ll have the boys make a space for him. And I suggest you lot hurry up down there. The storm’s starting to pick back up.”
“Understood Captain,” Road says before turning to face the others, “I’ll try to be back quick. Dis!ma*s, let’s go.”
“Wait a sec,” Eris says as the two of them step out of the cabin and past her into the corridor. The look on apparently-Dis!ma*s’s face indicates that he doesn’t understand her words anymore than she understands his, but the gesture of taking off her coat and offering it to him needs no translation. “Here. It's cold up there.”
The survivor takes the coat, makes what Eris interprets as a gesture of thanks and pulls it on as he follows Road up the stairs to the upper deck.
Meanwhile Eris tries not to visibly shiver too much while she takes point on heading down the stairs to the hold. It seems like a strange place for passengers to stay on a trip. Strange enough to get her worrying that “passenger” might be a euphemism. And indeed, as she scans her flashlight back and forth there’s no sign of rooms or cabins down on this level, only scattered piles of crates and barrels and travel trunks. And rows of chrysalises lain flat and stacked on shelves growing from the wall that extend almost all the way down to where the floor and far wall are abruptly replaced by the scaly curve of the dead dragon’s forehead. At least there are far fewer of the lamprey creatures down here, although they’re all on the floor rather than the walls, making tripping hazards out of themselves. The bioluminescent guidelights on the floors and walls down here extend to the shelves and their contents as well.
“My friend,” Sullivan says into his microphone, “would you kindly ask your newest charity case precisely what kind of ‘passengers’ were being ferried on this vessel.”
“Excuse me,” Lacuna’s voice replies instead, “I think the chrysalises - chrysalies? - the cocoon things - are the passengers. They’re sort of similar to some things that I’ve… looked up before.”
“Give me a moment,” Road’s voice says before passing the question on to the survivor. “Lacuna’s right,” they confirm soon after. “Dis!ma*s says that’s the standard for oceanic travel on his world. A sort of hibernation that’s perfectly safe so long as you have a flesh-shaper to pull you out on the other end.” Road pauses for a moment while another voice vaguely gets picked up by the headset. “What? Yes, I said your world. Well, technically we’re in a crossover point right now but we’re primarily manifesting on this cluster’s anchor world. No, I’m not going to-” Road’s voice drops to a low whisper. “Hey, I’m going to have to get back to you all. Apparently this ship isn’t supposed to even be able to travel between worlds and he’s not taking the news well. And now he’s looked at the sky too long. I’m going to go on mute for a bit while I snap him out of it and calm him down. You all have got this.”
There’s a soft electronic pop in Eris’s ear as Road’s headset abruptly disconnects and she, Sullivan and Ashan are left standing in the quiet dark of the hold.
“Yeah…” Lacuna’s voice breaks the awkward silence, “they just turned their whole earpiece off.”
The muffled sound of captain Cabetha laughing some distance from her own microphone echoes in everyone’s ears.
Sullivan sighs and massages his forehead. “I distinctly told them the button was power and the switch was mute.”
“So, now what do we do seeing as we don’t have a flesh-shaper on hand to get these people out?” Eris asks.
“We cut them out and deal with whatever weakened state they come out in and find a healer later,” Sullivan proposes, knife suddenly in hand.
“Wait,” Lacuna says. “If this works like what I’m thinking of, then it’s not going to be like pulling someone out of some kind of stasis pod, it’s going to be like cutting open a caterpillar pupa mid-metamorphosis. When I said those are the passengers I meant it literally.”
“And what, pray tell, makes you such an expert on Culescun flesh-shaping?” Sullivan asks.
“I - I never said - I mean I’m not - err, no one is - well, no outsiders anyway - it’s - I just…” Lacuna’s stammering trails off into a quiet mumble.
“You just?” Sullivan draws out the “just” into several syllables, infuriating bemusement dripping from his voice like rotten honey.
“She just happens to know a lot about this!” Eris snaps. “She’s got her own reasons for the research she does in her spare time and they're none of your damn business. If she says something I trust her to know what she’s talking about. So are you going to keep standing off to the side making snide remarks like a rich asshole, or are you going to make yourself useful for once and help me carry these people back to the boat?”
Sullivan inhales sharply through his nose, slowly blinks once, and lets out a long breath. “Oh, I see,” he says as that insufferable smile of his grows wider than ever. “It all makes sense now. My apologies madame Lacuna. I failed to take several obvious factors into account. I’ll defer to your expertise on this subject for the time being.”
“Thanks?”
“But of course.”
Eris just grunts, still fuming, and turns to the rack full of chrysalises. Somehow that bastard even makes an apology sound like he’s playing a game at the other person’s expense. It’d be one thing if it was directed at her, but this is just bullying at this point with Lacuna. Enough of that, just calm down and focus on the task at hand. She can sort the social part out later. And so, calmly she reaches out to get a grip on the nearest chrysalis only to have her hand violently repelled with a flash of fuschia light. She swears as she shakes out her wrist.
“There is a ward over the passengers to keep them safely in place, and on an additional container at the far end that I presume is for fragile cargo” Ashan says in an even tone without looking at her from where he’s now standing twenty feet down the corridor tracing patterns in the air in front of the opposite shelf. “While you three were having your conversation I have been working on disabling this one.”
“Great,” Eris says, struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her tone, “just maybe give me a heads up next time.”
“I did not want to interrupt, but I will keep that in mind for next time.” He pauses for a moment and then continues, “Speaking of interruptions, the technique used to make this ward is both complex and foreign to me so undoing it will take some time and concentration.”
“Can I...” Lacuna’s voice starts to ask, “No, nevermind.”
“Sis, it’s okay, what is it?”
“No, it’s fine. Glassheart’s the wizard. He’d know this stuff better than I ever could. I’ll just be quiet and stop interrupting. Sorry.”
“If you say so.” Eris finds a crate to sit on and begins waiting. At least most of the cargo down here doesn’t seem to be made of meat. No point in prodding her friend farther when she gets like this unless she wants to push her even further into her shell, and no point in telling a mage to hurry up his work unless she wants something to explode. She glares at Sullivan, expecting him to say yet another thing that no one needs to hear, but he’s ignoring her now in favor of staring at that gold watch of his again.
Several minutes of staring down the corridor at where the ship’s fused with the dead dragon later, Eris is beginning to wonder if maybe she and Sullivan should start moving the luggage that most likely contains the passengers’ belongings when a low rumbling noise shakes the ship and tilts the floor several degrees to her right. To starboard, some inane part of her mind tells her.
“Oh captain, my captain,” Sullivan intones, “whatever is going on up there right now?”
“In case you lot’ve forgotten, yer sitting on top of a giant corpse. Corpses bloat and burst.”
“But that should take days,” Eris says, “especially in this cold.”
“It’s a dragon. We’re lucky it hasn’t gone up in flames already.”
There’s another electronic pop and Road’s voice comes back on the line, “ -about that. I’m on my way back now. How are things going down there?”
“This ward will need another twenty to thirty minutes to safely disable,” Ashan says, calm as ever despite the recent shakeup. “I will need that long again for the other side.”
Slowly sinking into the water. Past ankles. Hips. Neck. Speed past face too fast for the chance to take a breath. Too weak from the previous near drowning to resist.
Eris blinks and shakes her head. “That’s too long. If this thing’s springing leaks we’re on the clock now.” She cracks her knuckles and strides down to the center of the rows of chrysalises. Unzipping a pocket on her cargo shorts, she retrieves and slides on a pair of fingerless black gloves. Glyphs etched in silver threads catch the light from the conjured mote floating above the nearby wizard.
“What are you doing?” Ashan asks.
“Opening this the fast way,” Eris says while staring at her hands and tracing the glyphs on the left glove with one finger. Back of the hand then the palm. “Get back.”
“But this ward is only partially undone. Unstable as it is -”
“It will make what I’m about to do that much easier.” The corner of her mouth twitches up in anticipation while she traces the right glove’s glyphs. “So thanks for that, but get back. There might be some backlash.”
Eris claps her hands together and twin jolts run through her palms and up her arms to meet at the base of her neck. She throws her head back involuntarily at the shock and bares her teeth in an expression closer to grin than grimace than it should be. The initial sensation fades as she lowers her gaze to look at the shelf in front of her but her hands are tingling now and will be until she takes off the gloves.
She rears her right arm back and, with strength that’s punched holes in concrete, brings a fist down knuckle-first onto the invisible ward. Fuschia light ripples from the impact point down the length of the shelf and back to her fist. She dimly registers the noise of Ashan scrambling away and an amused comment from Sulivan. She tunes those sounds out and draws her fist back to strike again, now with sparks arcing from the ward to her hand. She strikes once more with the same ensuing spectacle. The glyphs on her other hand are glowing now. On the third time there’s a brighter flash, followed by a tearing sound and the crack of breaking bone as her fist makes contact with one of the struts of the shelf. The shelf’s bone, not hers.
Her left hand - the one she hasn’t been punching with yet - has practically gone numb and the glove is bright enough that it hurts to look at. If this were a simple barrier like Ashan’s glass dome earlier that’d be one thing, but the energy from that repulsion effect still needs to go somewhere. Fortunately she has a convenient outlet right behind her.
Spinning around, she slams the open palm of her left hand into the shelf on the other side of the corridor. Her whole arm shudders with the pulse of kinetic energy discharging into the ward that makes the entire length flash. The recoil is enough to send her spinning, but a well-timed twist simply adds that momentum into a followup swing of her now-glowing right fist. The shelf support behind where the ward had been just a moment before buckles satisfyingly and a fuschia bolt arcs from her outstretched left hand to one of the lamprey creatures attached to the floor. There is no longer a lamprey there afterward.
She takes a step back, slips off the gloves, and runs a hand through her hair that’s now standing on end. Movement out of the corner of her eye causes her to glance up.
“Yo, Road,” she says to them, still grinning from the rush of channeled power, as they come down the stairs, “just in time to help get these people out of here.”
“So I see,” they say, casting an eye toward the damaged shelving.
Eris winces. “Don’t worry, they’re fine. I made sure to redirect any backlash.” She really hopes she’s not lying.
Road’s expression brightens. “Good job. In that case, let’s get moving. Like you said, we’re on the clock.”
*******
Nearly two hours later they’re still unloading the passenger chrysalises. There’s just so many of them - at least a hundred - and all of them are stiffer and somehow even more awkward to maneuver than a regular unconscious person. Getting them up the stairs and through the narrow corridors of the ship has been a pain, and as for getting them off the ship, Ashan’s clearly growing exhausted keeping up a ramp for the rest of them while also moving around conjured floating stretchers so he can help carry. And then all the holes that captain Cabetha’s “boys” have dug around the landing area to “salvage” chunks of dragon meat and scale and bone have made for one Hell of a tripping hazard.
The dragon rumbles and shifts yet again, causing Eris to stumble on her way up the docking ramp. That’s been happening with increasing frequency. She tries not to look at the dark water below. Or at the shifting sky above. Or at the now-raging storm beyond the edge of the crossover zone that’s going to be its own special torture to ride through.
It’s with a sigh of relief that she steps onto the open deck and sets down the two chrysalises she’s been carrying, one on each shoulder. The rats swarm over and take the rescued passengers to join with the others near the pile of dragon scales, wrapping them in blankets out of Sullivan’s supply crates as they go. Getting Cabetha to tell her crew to stop stripping the dragon for parts and start helping had taken a fair bit of convincing on Road’s part. One more thing that’s slowed them down.
Behind her, Road sets down the latest chrysalis they’ve been carrying.
“Alright, just one more trip,” they say to Eris. “Ashan’s on his way back with two of them, Sullivan should be picking up the second to last passenger now, and I’ll go get the last one.”
“Time for the luggage then,” Eris says and starts toward the ramp.
Road’s hand on her shoulder stops her. She’s surprised how warm it feels.
“You stay here. Take a rest, you’ve earned it. Sullivan’s got a few tricks up his sleeve so he can get all the cargo in one trip.”
“Fine, blab all my secrets, why don’t you?” Sullivan’s exasperated voice comes over the headset.
Road chuckles. “Oh please, there’s not enough hours in the week for that.” Focusing back on Eris, they nip a budding protestation. “It’s fine. If you really want to do something go check on how Dis!ma*s is holding up. You’ve pushed yourself plenty today, and we’re almost done here.”
Eris nearly retorts that she’s barely broken a sweat when she catches the look in Road’s eyes. That’s not the kind of pushing herself they meant. Dammit. Have the others caught on yet? No, Sullivan and Lacuna definitely would have said something. Hard to get a read on Ashan though. Hopefully not. The last thing she needs is that kind of a first impression with a new team. If this job had been literally anything else…
“Fine,” she sighs and steps back.
“Alright,” Road nods and then descends the ramp, “we’ll be out of here in no time.” Looking back over their shoulder a moment later they add “Oh, and grab yourself another coat and a hot drink from the supplies, you’re freezing.”
Not ten seconds later the loudest rumble from the dragon yet begins, extends too long, and then crescendos into a boom with a pillar of flame erupting from one of the holes that Cabetha’s crew had cut open.
Once the shuddering dragon corpse and the water around it finally settle there’s a moment of silence. Road, still steady on their feet, looks back at Eris with a reassuring smile on their face.
“Just one more trip, we’ve got this.”
“Um, guys… Sullivan’s feed just cut out.”
Road immediately breaks into a sprint in the direction of the grounded ship.
“Sullivan! Ashan! Answer me!” they call as they run, “Cabetha, give us five more minutes. Eris, stay on the boat and make sure she gives us that.”
“I am here,” Ashan’s voice replies. “I am cresting the skull now.”
“Road,” Captain Cabetha says, “I like you, but I don’t know if you’re going to have five more minutes before this beastie breaks up too much for the Chance to anchor to.”
“Just give us what you can,” Road’s voice says, now far enough away to not be filtered out by Eris’s headset. “Please.”
Standing at the top of the boat ramp, Eris watches Ashan pass Road with a chrysalis floating on either side of him. He’s halfway across the butchered neck when another rumble shakes the dragon, followed by several more eruptions of flame, smaller this time but still large enough to engulf the wizard, blocking him from view.
The flames part to reveal Ashan walking out of them, calmly as ever with a gleaming bubble around him and the flanking chrysalises. The bubble pops a few moments later upon him reaching the boat. On deck, he’s visibly shivering as he doesn’t so much set the hovering, hibernating passengers down as drop them.
“Sorry,” he whispers before abruptly dropping to one knee.
Eris drapes the bright orange coat winter she’d just pulled out for herself over his shoulders.
“You okay, kid?” Eris asks while helping him to his feet.
“I shall recover anon,” the young wizard says through chattering teeth. “Too many simultaneous conjurations up for too long with suboptimal power sources to draw from. I have been through greater trials though. Do not worry about me.”
“Good to hear,” Road’s voice says. “I was worried for a second when your ramp disappeared over here.”
“I will return to redraw it,” Ashan says, taking an unsteady step followed by a slightly steadier one.
“You two stay there. Sullivan and I will manage. We always do.”
The unspoken question about Road’s assumption hangs in the air.
A second passes.
Two.
Three.
Four, and an electronic pop crackles in Eris’s ear.
“Aaand I’m back,” Sullivan’s voice breaks the mounting tension. “Pardon the momentary signal interference, I’ll be filing a strong complaint to the equipment manufacturer later about that. Ah, my friend, there you are, if you would - ”
The next internal explosion from the dragon is loud enough to cut off Sullivan’s prattle and violent enough to set the Fluke Chance rocking. The chains on the twin harpoons strain and groan until one of them pulls free from the dragon’s flesh, snapping back and falling into the churning sea. Half-unmoored, the Fluke Chance begins to skew to one side. The sound of the metal ramp leaving rusty skid marks on scales and scraping skin sets Eris’s teeth on edge.
Ashan wastes no time in conjuring a replacement for the harpoon. Line after translucent line he draws from the deck and side of the ship to the dragon, weaving them together until the boat nearly stabilizes once more. The glass-like texture of these new threads blends eerily with the layer of frost now spreading across the sodden deck from Ashan’s feet. Sea spray condenses into mist and snow as it’s thrown toward him by turbulent waves.
Eris reflexively steps back from him. She doesn’t know if this is a side effect or if he’s trying to freeze the boat in place, but she knows enough to not stand near a mage when they’re doing a working this big.
Another step back and she realizes she’s stepped onto the ramp. She looks behind her to see small spots of flame popping up all over the dragon’s neck and bubbling, boiling patches beneath the water blowing away chunks of scale. The rumbling and shaking is nonstop now. Looking at the other harpoon she realizes that the spot where it’s dug in is about to break away entirely. Up toward the dragon’s head she sees figures just beginning to crest the rise.
Just a little bit longer.
The next big explosion comes from right under the ramp.
For a stomach-dropping second, Eris finds herself airborne. The mind-numbing thought of landing in the water flashes through her brain and then she lands hard on the ramp. For a brief enough fraction of a section that she wonders if she imagined it, the metal is scalding hot before icing over. More by reflex than conscious thought, she catches the second harpoon that’s ripped free and nearly landed on her. A several-foot wide chunk of dragon meat is still attached.
Looking back at Ashan, he seems to be standing a little straighter now in the wake of that last blast, but Cabetha’s shouting over the headset for him to stop doing whatever he’s doing before he freezes the ship over.
A sudden wet chill at Eris’s ankle alerts her to the fact that the ramp’s now slid off the dragon entirely. Gasping, she scrambles back up toward the deck, slipping on the ice that’s formed.
Back on the dragon, Sullivan and Road are now stuck in the middle of a veritable field of fire. Road’s jacket seems to have turned into a large cape now, shielding the last two passenger chrysalises from the flames, but there’s little way from there to the boat without passing through fire at this point.
Barely audible above the noise of the rapidly combusting dragon, Eris hears Ashan’s voice above her. This time, his usual placid calm strikes her as forced.
“I have an idea.”
And with that the Fluke Chance rocks with the sudden disappearance of the conjured threads holding it in place. At the same time, Ashan glides past Eris across the rapidly widening gap of water. From where she’s staggering to her feet, she can’t make out most of the motions he’s making with his hands, but the smaller flames are going out as he passes.
Another column of flame erupts, nearly the size of the first one that lit this giant’s funeral pyre.
Ashan jumps into it.
Lacuna’s voice gasps in Eris’s ear. She’s just about to cry out herself when all the flames go out at once.
There, standing in the middle of a great glowing serpentine coil is Ashan Glassheart, unharmed. He raises his wand like a conductor’s baton and brings it down, directing the massive conjuration toward the Fluke Chance. The glass serpent wraps under the converted ferry and pulls it closer, lifting it and setting it down with the ramp firmly in place once more.
He then unceremoniously falls over and the conjuration shatters.
Eris tosses the harpoon back onto the deck and starts running.
“I’ve got him!” she shouts as Road and Sullivan approach with their hands already full carrying the last two passengers. She barely spares a thought for why Sullivan is covered in blood.
She passes them by, steps over the ring of frost around the fallen wizard, bends down, picks him up, and slings him over her shoulders. A white glint on the ground catches her eye. His wand. She’d almost written it off as a frosted shard of bone. She pockets it and starts running back to the boat.
Another shudder beneath her feet and this time the dragon begins to roll slightly. The boat rocks as it’s pushed on by something from underneath but stays upright. Ahead of her Road and Sullivan make it up the ramp safely.
As Eris follows behind them, it occurs to her that the ramp is completely on the dragon now instead of bridging a gap of water. Ashan mumbles something and blinks, his eyes half-hidden behind his unbound hair. Not totally unconscious then.
“All hands accounted for?” Cabetha’s voice crackles over the headset the moment Eris sets Ashan down on the deck and then continues without waiting for an answer, “Good, we’ve already tarried too long and we still have a storm to get through. Hold on tight.”
With that perfunctory warning, the Fluke Chance’s propellers roar to full speed and a tremendous metallic scraping sound vibrates through the entire boat.
“Oh for the love of -” shouts the captain, stopping the engines. “Someone get down there and see what she’s stuck on!”
Eris swears under her breath, shouts an “I’ve got it!” grabs a pair of dragon scales from the pile, and runs back down the ramp.
As she thought, when the dragon rolled the curve of its neck repositioned to lift the front portion of the Fluke Chance out of the water. If they wait around long enough the dragon might sink enough for them to float free but…
Looking toward her left she can see an oily black swarm dispersing from the bone ship, now more visible from this new angle and flailing formerly withdrawn fins and tendrils. She doesn’t want to stick around long enough for those things to do to this boat's occupants what they did to that one’s.
Well, Road and the wizard aren’t the only ones who can show off.
“Captain, get ready to lock the ramp and restart the engines,” she calls.
Carefully judging the angle and wind, she tosses the two dragon scales that she’d had tucked under one arm up into the air. She steps forward, crouches down, slides hands under the end of the ramp and lifts.
Like flipping a coffee table, she tells herself and the rusted metal bends at the points of contact, cutting into her palms as she adjusts the angle of force until she gets it just right and… There! The entire ramp flips up out of her grasp, banging into place against the hull just in time for her to catch the thrown scales as they fall back down.
Eris rushes the beached hull of the Fluke Chance before anyone else can get in the way trying to help her. Palms flat and arms wide, she slaps the scales onto the metal to distribute the weight of her push. No good if she just punches a couple of fist sized holes instead of moving anything. She braces her feet, trying to keep from just sliding herself backwards. There’s no way she can move however many tons of the entire metal ferry, but she doesn’t need to. It’s mostly in the water already. She just needs to give this one portion of it a slight boost so it can get itself unstuck. Maybe even dent the “ground” beneath her a little bit to loosen things up.
She strains, she grunts, she breaks a sweat even in this cold. She refuses to admit this is beyond her. It’s beyond human strength, beyond what mere muscle can accomplish.
She knows she has more than that.
The Fluke Chance’s propellers start up once more in another attempt to pull away and the metal on scale scraping returns, vibrating through her very bones. She shifts her weight, feels how that vibration changes, slides the scales with their remaining strips of connective tissue laced between her fingers across the hull searching for something. And she finds it. Just the right spot to readjust her stance and push, upwards as well as forward.
And so, at last something gives and the boat pops over the spiked frill running down the side of the dragon’s neck and slides the rest of the way into the water away from her, leaving her stumbling toward the edge, pulse racing with the excitement that always comes with breaking past physical limits as well as any mage.
And so, momentarily off balance from that herculean act, briefly blinded by the accompanying splash of salt water, and still half-deaf from the engines' vibrations, she doesn’t see what suddenly hits her hard in the side of the chest.
And so, wrestling with the lamprey creature trying to attach itself to her, she overbalances and falls into the water.
The full-body stabbing pain of the cold shock is nearly as bad as the gasp reflex that it initiates and the water she inhales because of it.
It’s worse though than the creature between her hands trying to suck her blood. That she crushes easily enough.
The other three that arrive and do manage to latch on to her shoulder, calf, and back; now those are pretty bad.
As are the streams of blood pumping and swirling into the water that get left behind when she rips them off in a panic.
All of that pales in comparison to the memories flashing back through her mind with the realization that she’s sinking.
No! It’ll be fine. She’s stronger now. She just has to swim up. Straight up. Toward the light of the sky.
That strange, weirdly shifting sky.
Even through the waves on the surface she can see how it’s constantly changing colors and weather and stars and time.
It’s nauseating.
Beautiful.
Mesmerizing.
There’s something she wasn’t supposed to do.
What was that?
There’s something she should be doing right now.
What is it?
Something about the sky.
Getting darker and further away.
It’s peaceful.
What’s that sound in her ear?
Someone shouting.
Crying maybe.
It feels so distant.
“E!”
Oh, her name.
She should probably answer.
Something on her thigh vibrates.
Her phone.
She should probably answer.
But she’s tired.
And warm.
And comfortable.
She closes her eyes.
A burst of static then a sped-up voice speaking gibberish erupts in her ear. Her phone vibrates again. The voice in her ear stops. The phone grows warm. Her eyes snap open. She starts coughing up water and breathing in air.
Air!
She’s floating in the middle of a bubble now. She looks around blearily and the sound of a high-speed voice making unintelligible speech draws her sight to the light of her phone shining through the pocket of her sodden shorts. She tries to reach for it and winces.
Huh, that’s a lot of blood leaking from her shoulder. It’d be really dumb if she miraculously survived drowning only to bleed out. And a quick glance up - just a glance this time, God, how could she have been that stupid? - tells her she’s still sinking.
She should really do something about all that. And she will. Any second now.
Huh, that really did a number on her, didn’t it? It’s probably the blood loss. If it was like lamprey, there’d have been an anticoagulant in the bite. Yeah, that would do it. Just have to patch it up with… something. Just gotta get moving again.
Aaaany second now.
She glances back up.
Is that a mermaid?
And with that final thought, Eris blacks out.