When Keolah’s group arrived at the camp at the edge of the Witchwood, Narcella was waiting for them, having made something of a makeshift nest in their cart.
“Hey, Narcella,” Keolah said. “Is Silver coming?”
<Yes,> Narcella tepped. <He and Sedder should be along shortly.>
“We’ll wait, then,” Keolah said.
They set up camp to wait casually. It took a few more days for Silver and Sedder to come strolling along the road from Scalyr, casually, as if this were something they did every day. Some other travelers passed by in the interim, and even shared their camp once, but no one thought them simply camping along the road near the Witchwood was anything unusual, either.
“So,” Hawthorne said, looking over to the two of them. “Did you?”
“What?” Sedder wondered, looking at her in puzzlement.
“Did you? Did you?”
“Did we what?” Sedder asked.
“You know,” Hawthorne said, making an obscene gesture.
Sedder groaned and flushed. “Damn it, Hawthorne.”
Silver cleared his throat.
“You totally did, didn’t you,” Hawthorne said, practically bouncing.
Keolah put her face in her palm. “Right, whatever they did or didn’t do is really not any of our business. Shall we head into the Witchwood and meet back up with the others, and make sure they haven’t driven one another mad inside there while we were off dealing with our various interpersonal issues?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hawthorne said. “Maybe if we had a way to magically shrink Narcella down to the size of a parrot, she could come with us too. It’s terrible leaving her out of this all.”
<I assure you, I am perfectly fine,> Narcella tepped with a touch of amusement. <I have no need of being the size of a parrot.>
Following Keolah’s lead, the group headed back into the Witchwood. Keolah wished that she could find a quicker way to traverse the forest, although it was getting easier each time as she was getting some practice at following the waves of mana into the heart of the forest. It was still getting a little tedious going the long way through each time. But perhaps once they got the Nexus active and were able to readily visit other worlds with it, it would seem like less of a problem.
When they arrived back in the pocket-world, it was plainly obvious that Amanda and Yennik had been busy. A veritable city had sprung up amongst the spokes of the wheel, admittedly one that no one was really living in yet. Keolah rather preferred elven living wood construction to Yennik’s stout stone, though, but she wasn’t about to argue with it.
“There you are,” Calto said, approaching them. “Yennik and Amanda are holed up in the School of Thought at the moment. How’d things go?”
“Well as can be expected,” Keolah said. “School of Thought?”
Calto nodded. “That’s what we decided to call the library. Or school, apparently. We’ve been working on reconstructing some of the old rituals in the books, and they’re just fascinating.”
“This could turn into a veritable home of wizards at this rate,” Keolah said.
“Well, that’s a better name for it than just ‘the pocket-world’,” Hawthorne said. “Especially if it turns out that this isn’t the only pocket-world.”
“Home of Wizards?” Keolah said. “Torn Elkandu?”
“I like it,” Calto said.
“We could really make a home for ourselves here, even if it takes us ages to get the Nexus working,” Keolah said.
“Damned well no door-to-door salespeople are going to be bothering us here,” Hawthorne commented.
“No one will ever be likely to siege it,” Sedder added.
“We do need to find a way to get Narcella in here,” Silver said.
Keolah headed over to the newly-dubbed School of Thought, where Yennik and Amanda were hard at work. For all that he’d tried to get away from them and claim he knew nothing of ancient Astanic, he was certainly putting in a good effort. She would certainly have imagined that the rewards would far exceed the demands.
“How’s it going?” Keolah asked.
“You wouldn’t believe some of the things we’ve uncovered,” Yennik said. “I don’t understand why some of these things were forgotten, unless it were deliberately.”
“Like what?” Keolah asked.
“We’ve been working on a book on Time Magic,” Yennik said. “This stuff is unbelievable.”
“You mean like, hasting and slowing effects, or prophecies?” Keolah asked.
“Time travel!” Yennik exclaimed. “Alternate universes!”
Keolah blinked. “Deliberately lost, perhaps. Will you and Amanda be ready to leave soon?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Yennik said. “Anytime. It’s not like we’re making the magical breakthroughs of the millennium or anything here.”
They were more careful about what notes they brought with them this time, and left the books themselves in the safety of the pocket-world, now dubbed Torn Elkandu. There was no way that they were going to risk losing them after all this. Sedder, for his part, did not bring up anything regarding Sardill, and did not mention any arrangements made with him. He had no idea what both Sardill and the party would be so paranoid about, though. Sardill wanted to help them, after all. At least, that’s what it seemed like to him. If Sardill had other plans, then Sedder had not the foggiest idea what he was playing at here.
“You know any inborn Seeker could get in there, too,” Keolah said.
“Well, how many inborn Seekers could there possibly be?” Hawthorne wondered.
“I don’t know,” Keolah said.
“Do you think a non-inborn trained Seeker could manage it?” Sedder asked.
“Not a chance,” Keolah said. “It was hard enough for me to manage it, at first.”
Sedder chuckled. “So, are you the best Seeker alive?”
“Well, without a framework for comparison, I really couldn’t say that,” Keolah said. “However, given the fact that we found no evidence of people having been in or near Torn Elkandu at any point in the recent past to have left any traces behind, I think it’s a fair assumption that no one is likely to manage it in the time it takes us to get to Albrynnia and back. I doubt anyone is even trying.”
“Captain Cooper might have shown other people the notes he took from us,” Sedder pointed out.
“Bah, forget Billy,” Hawthorne said. “I bet anyone he told about it already got lost and died in the Witchwood or drove themselves mad wandering around.”
Sedder looked back toward the skull cave. “I still think we ought to leave some sort of additional defenses behind.”
“What could we possibly add to what’s already there?” Hawthorne wondered.
“Wards, illusions, something?” Sedder said. “Maybe some sort of traps?”
“Anything we put might just make it easier to get to rather than harder,” Keolah said.
“I guess that’s true,” Sedder said.
He’d been discreetly practicing with the techniques Sardill had shown him, but he was still a long way off from tricking even the weakest Seeker, never mind an inborn one like Keolah. Maybe they were right and it was best to just leave the Witchwood’s natural defenses alone. An inborn Seeker capable of navigating the forest would only find any enchantments in it to be a beacon that could draw them in.
They set off out of the Witchwood and headed south along the main road to Fehndarlai, leaving behind the relatively temperate climate of the Witchwood and greeting the jungles of Hannaderres.
“It’s hot as a demon’s balls out here,” Yennik muttered. “And just as humid.”
“This is what’s normal for the area,” Delven said. “It’s the Witchwood that’s unusually cold.”
“I’m not used to this climate anymore, myself,” Kithere said. “Let me just lower the temperature a few degrees for you there.”
Kithere raised her hands, and a sphere of chill air surrounded her and Yennik, brushing lightly against the rest of them.
“Hey, I can handle the heat,” Hawthorne said.
“I know,” Keolah said wryly.
They continued south out of Hannaderres and into Hlaya. Crossing the mountains took them out of the jungle rain and into arid desert. This did nothing to improve Yennik’s disposition.
“I’m already starting to miss Torn Elkandu,” Yennik groused.
“Oh, quit your whining,” Hawthorne said. “You’ve got a Frost Mage protecting your poor goblin ass from the sun.”
“Just the heat!” Yennik said. “The sun is still awful.”
Sedder rolled his eyes and blanketed the goblin in shadow. “Happy now?”
“Now I can’t see!” Yennik whined.
The road led them down to the coast, and they turned and headed west to Hrackston. While much of the country was desert, there was at least a thin strip of life along the edge of the coast. When they got to Hrackston, they emerged into the lush Anduana river valley, the greatest center of life in Hlaya.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been back here,” Delven said.
They came down amongst mud brick buildings baked in the sun, and beaten, dusty ground made way for brick streets. Vendors along the sides of the broad streets hawked their wares. The harbor was full of ships of various types, but none of the steamships of the north. They headed inside and booked rooms at an inn not too far from the docks. It had been a long walk from the Witchwood, and they could all use a rest before getting on another ship.
Come morning, some of them went to try to book passage on a ship heading for Albrynnia. It didn’t go quite so well as they’d intended.
“Will nobody in this town take us to Albrynnia?” Keolah wondered. “I’ve gotten refusals from everyone I’ve spoken to!”
The sea captain spat. “Nope. Not a single one.”
Sedder groaned.
“Can I ask why?” Keolah wondered. “No one has even offered me an explanation.”
“You really need to ask?” the captain said. “Listen, we’re not going to take you there, and I suggest whatever reason you have for going there, you rethink it.”
“We’re scholars,” Keolah said. “We’re going on an archaeological expedition to uncover ancient ruins.”
The captain spat again. “Look, if you want to dig up old ruins, I can take you to the Sunrise Islands. There’s old imperial outposts out there, too. I’m willing to take you anywhere else along the Sea of Stars. But I won’t take you to Albrynnia.”
“You haven’t actually told me why,” Keolah pressed.
“What tree have you been living in that you haven’t heard about the monsters?” the captain wondered. “The land is overrun by monsters.”
“The whole continent?” Keolah asked.
“The whole continent,” the captain insisted. “I’m not going to dock there.”
“Could you, maybe, just get us close and drop us into a boat so we can row the rest of the way there?” Keolah suggested.
“I’m not even willing to get in sight of the place,” the captain replied. “They say there’s monsters in the waters around Albrynnia, too. You’d have to be crazy to want to sail there.”
Keolah sighed. “I suppose I’ll just have to find a crazy ship captain, then.” She turned to the others. “Is the Careful still in Scalyr?”
Calto gave a smug grin. “It should be.”
“We’re not planning on walking all the way back there, are we?” Yennik said. “Why are there no trains on this backwater continent?”
“It won’t be necessary,” Silver said. “Narcella can fly me there and I’ll just have Captain Zenk sail around the coast.”
“He won’t listen to you,” Calto said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Then let’s do it,” Silver said. “If the captains of Hrackston will not take us there, we will bring in someone who will.” He looked dubiously to Calto. “Are you certain that Captain Zenk will take us to Albrynnia?”
“He won’t care about the superstitions, that’s for sure,” Calto said. “We might need to sweeten the deal, but I’m sure he can be convinced.”
“Bribe him with whatever is necessary,” Keolah said. “Just get him here.”
Calto had never ridden on the back of a floka before. It was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. The sturdy leather harness kept him from slipping off and falling screaming to the ground far below, but that did nothing to block the view, short of simply closing his eyes. And even if he were to do so, he’d still feel the wind all around him and the movements of Narcella’s powerful muscles beneath him.
“How are you doing back there?” Silver asked.
“Fine,” Calto shouted back. “Just fine.”
He’d heard of some groups of gnomes trying to make zeppelins practical. That hadn’t really been an area he’d ever been interested in. He liked being out on the water. He wasn’t made for flying. Why had he agreed to this again?
<Judging by how much he’s clinging to me for dear life, I would say that he is not fine,> Narcella commented.
Silver chuckled. “Well, just hold in there. We’ll be there soon.”
Narcella wasn’t strong enough to carry so much weight in a single jump, over such a long distance. Calto had always imagined floka as being able to fly forever and cross oceans without pausing. Maybe some of them could. He didn’t know. As it was, Narcella had to stop to rest a few times atop cliffs in the Thorndelle mountains. Calto really wished she’d stopped to rest on flat, solid ground instead. Silver didn’t seem particularly bothered by spending the night high up in the mountains, but Calto, for his part, tried to rest as far away from the sheer drop as he could, and didn’t think he even managed to get to sleep at all regardless.
When they finally, blessedly arrived in Scalyr, Calto almost kissed the brick streets. This must be what Sedder felt like sailing. And yet, Sedder did not seem to hesitate getting back on another ship when necessary. Calto wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to get back on a floka. Maybe a zeppelin. At least he could stand on a zeppelin. Still, it got him where he was going in a timely manner. He, and doubtless the others as well, wished that they had simply returned to Scalyr after Torn Elkandu rather than walk across the continent. But they had expected to simply be able to get a ship from Hrackston, and it was much closer to Albrynnia, simply a short trip across the Sea of Stars. Calto felt it strange that fear and superstition should outweigh the greed of people.
The Careful remained docked in the Scalyr harbor, just where they’d left it. Calto had to wonder if Captain Zenk was still doing another round of repairs following the crossing of the Mirandarine Ocean. Or if he just didn’t want to set off again without his engineer. Calto honestly didn’t think the ship could hold together for half a mile without him.
“So, you’re back,” Sarom said as Calto approached the ship. “Did you finish what you set out to do already?”
“Well, no…” Calto said.
Sarom groaned. “Let me guess. You need my help again.”
Calto smirked. “You love the attention and you know it.”
Sarom grunted. “Well, out with it already, then. What do you need?”
“Passage to Albrynnia,” Calto said.
“You can’t be serious,” Sarom said.
“I’m totally serious,” Calto said.
Sarom groaned again. “If you hadn’t noticed, Albrynnia is on the opposite side of the continent from us. Do you expect us to sail around the Dragonspires in the east, or the Cliffs of Sky in the west?”
Calto shrugged. “Either would work, I suppose.”
Sarom shook his head in disbelief. “And just why am I going to agree to this?”
“Wealth and glory?” Calto ventured. “Power beyond the comprehension of mere mortals?”
“No,” Sarom said. “I’m going to agree to this because you asked me to. You arrogant, self-important, smug engineer.” His words were without rancor, and the smirk that crossed his face seemed almost to be of genuine companionship.
“Hey,” Calto said, chuckling. “I’m not smug.”
“You know, if you guys want to go back up to Rascalanse in the meantime, it’s just a short walk up the valley,” Delven said.
“No,” Kithere, Keolah, and Hawthorne all said in unison.
Delven held up his hands in surrender. “It was just a thought.”
“Let’s just take the opportunity to organize our notes and go over what Amanda and Yennik learned while we were out visiting our families,” Keolah said. “As wonderfully productive as that was.”
“Can we just… not go back to Rascalanse?” Hawthorne said. “Like, ever?”
“I’d thought things hadn’t gone so badly between you and your family,” Kithere said.
“By ‘not badly’, you just mean that my mother is no longer attempting to get me to marry my second cousin,” Hawthorne said.
“Well, if that’s the best that can be hoped for…” Kithere said.
“You’re lucky,” Hawthorne said. “At least your family was never trying to make you get married against your will.”
“I have three uncles,” Kithere said dryly. “Continuing the family name was never really much of a concern for me or my sister.”
“Well, I guess that would do it,” Hawthorne said. “And nobody’s trying to make you marry one of your uncles’ sons, either.”
“Let’s not even joke about that,” Kithere said, making a face.
“Hey, on the up side, running off freaked my mom out enough that she even forgot to bitch at me,” Hawthorne said.
“Maybe it’s just as well that we didn’t tell her everything that had happened since you left,” Keolah said.
“Yeah, probably,” Hawthorne said. “She’d probably try to lock me up and I’d have to sneak out of my room through the window in the middle of the night.”
Keolah snickered. “That seems unlikely.” She turned to Yennik. “So, what have we got?”
“We haven’t fully translated everything yet,” Yennik said. “But we’ve at least catalogued a general summary of what sort of material each of the books covers. This includes every Talent I’ve heard of, and a few I haven’t. I don’t know if even the League of Wizards worked with some of the things they went to so much trouble to translate.”
“Well, we can do things better than the stupid League of Wizards, then,” Hawthorne said.
“You think we can?” Keolah asked.
Hawthorne grinned broadly. “I know we can. Because we’re totally awesome.”
Keolah chuckled. “How can I argue with that confidence?”
“Most would call that ‘arrogance’,” Yennik said.
“The only difference between confidence and arrogance is whether you can actually deliver or not,” Hawthorne said.
“That’ll remain to be seen,” Yennik said with a smirk. “Someone’s got to stay realistic around here. Torn Elkandu is awesome, granted. These books are amazing, quite true. But who’s to say that the same things that wound up being the downfall of the League of Wizards won’t happen to us? They tore themselves apart!”
“We won’t,” Hawthorne said.
“Are we planning to keep this all just between the handful of us?” Yennik said. “That might be possible. Maybe. But if we expand, if we fill up that city, if we recruit, there will be conflict. You get enough people together for anything, there will be conflict. Maybe not violent, maybe not destructive, but I won’t count on it not to be. Because not everyone can always agree on everything. That’s just the way of things. And we have to be prepared for that.”
“Seems a little premature to worry about it just yet,” Keolah said. “We don’t even know yet when or if we’re going to be able to get the Nexus working.”
“It’s something to think about, though,” Yennik said. “Who do we want to have access to the Nexus? Who are we going to allow into Torn Elkandu?”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Keolah said. “I’m not going to start distrusting any of you.”
“Suit yourself,” Yennik said.
Keolah hadn’t forgotten how Sedder and Yennik had, at various points, intended to betray or abandon her. But she’d prefer to think that she’d made friends of them and earned their trust. Life would be a terrible thing if one could never really trust anyone and had to constantly be suspicious of one’s friends.
The Careful left the Bay of Scalyr and rounded the Doralisian peninsula to the east, followed the coast past the mouth of the River Hlusina, and made its way around the mountains of eastern Hlusinia. The mountains were ‘officially’ named the Dawnspires, but were often called the Dragonspires. It was said that the dragons had built great cities in the mountains, but few elvenoids ever ventured there who might have seen them. Calto gazed off at the mountains as they sailed by, squinting to see if he might be able to make out the outlines of any buildings or archways from this distance.
“Pay attention to the engines,” Sarom groused. “This isn’t a sightseeing tour.”
Calto snickered. “I really don’t need to spend every waking moment staring at them. That’s what we have a crew for.”
“And half our crew is currently on the other side of the continent,” Sarom said. “We had to hire on a few random humans just to make up a skeleton crew. You couldn’t have just brought everyone back?”
Calto shrugged. “It would have required walking across Kalor again. They don’t have trains here yet.”
Sarom snorted. “Some enterprising gnomes ought to get on that, then. Build railroads to crisscross the continent. Get the place up to the fifth millennium already.”
“You’ll hate seeing Albrynnia, then,” Calto said. “I hear they don’t even have roads.”
Sarom groaned. “I can see why nobody wants to go there, then.”
“You’d think someone would be willing to take money for it, though,” Calto said.
“True, I suppose,” Sarom said, then stared off at a point in the sky. “What… is that?”
Calto peered off in that direction. “I don’t see anything.”
“A bird?” Sarom asked.
Calto frowned. “Birds don’t have four legs.”
“Oh Abyss,” Sarom uttered.
With gleaming scales the color of copper, a vast reptilian creature swooped down out of the mountains and made for their ship. Gnomes and humans alike panicked.
“Calm down!” Sarom bellowed. “If it really wants to sink us, there’s no good panicking is going to do.”
Calto had never seen a dragon up close before. He’d spotted them flying in the distance in the mountains around the Valley of Gal, but none of them had ever come close. Not that he knew of, at any rate. The copper dragon circled the ship close, making tight, agile turns, before coming around and swooping down straight on top of them. The crew, having calmed down slightly at Sarom’s words, proceeded to panic anew, some of them even screaming aloud and cowering. Calto stood staring, frozen in place. What Sarom hadn’t said outright was that if the dragon wanted to attack, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Some of them were mages, sure, most of them had some sort of minor magical training. But none of them were trained battlemages of the sort of caliber that could knock a dragon out of the sky. This wasn’t a damned warship. He braced himself. At least if the worst happened, he knew he was good enough at Wind and Water Magic that he wouldn’t drown.
Just as the copper dragon’s talons touched down upon the deck, rather than capsizing it, its form warped and twisted in on itself, and shrank down to the size of a gnome. The dragon had transformed into a copper-skinned gnome with gleaming ruby eyes and a tangle of black hair on his head.
“Um,” Calto said, unable to form words.
“You’re… a gnome?” Sarom managed.
The dragon-gnome laughed. “No. But it’s difficult to chat while in the air, and I didn’t want to destroy your fascinating vessel.”
“Well, thank you, then,” Sarom said. “I appreciate your not capsizing my ship. I am Captain Sarom Zenk, and this is my chief engineer, Calto.”
“Um,” Calto said.
“You can call me whatever you like,” the dragon-gnome said. “A dragon never tells a stranger his true name.”
“Can you please assure my crew that you’re not going to hurt them?” Sarom said. “I believe some of them already may need to change their pants.”
“No offense,” Calto said hurriedly. “Copper?”
“That’ll do,” said the dragon-gnome cheerfully. “Uncreative, but it’ll do. So! Tell me about your ship. I’ve never seen one like it before.”
“Well, it’s the only one like it on Lezaria, actually,” Sarom said with a touch of pride.
Copper started looking around and poking his nose into everything. Calto was half afraid now that the dragon would capsize them accidentally just through his inability to keep his hands off of anything. Not a wonder that he’d chosen to take on the form of a gnome! Could dragons choose their form? Were most of them able to shapeshift, or was that just Copper’s own ability? He had no idea how dragons worked. He doubted the dragon had ever even seen a gnome before. Calto ran around the ship after him, trying to explain what everything was and how it worked, and keep him from doing too much damage. The crew slowly calmed down again as they realized the dragon was just curious and not aggressive.
“Are all dragons like you?” wondered one of the humans. Tom, Calto thought his name was.
Copper just laughed. “Are all humans like you?”
“Well, no, I guess not,” Tom said.
“Let me tell you, then, dragons might love you, or they might hate you, or anywhere in between,” Copper said. “Mostly, they don’t care about you at all, anymore than you care about the personal lives of goats.”
“I’m sure goats are very important to people who raise goats for a living,” Calto said.
“Exactly,” Copper said. “And most of the dragons who care about non-dragons are shapeshifting and living among them.”
“Really?” Sarom wondered.
“You might never even know they’re a dragon,” Copper said. “I bet you’ve known dragons before in your life and never even realized it. We don’t tend to advertise it. We don’t have to. We have nothing to prove.”
“That’s kind of a scary thought,” Sarom said.
“Okay, I’ve seen enough,” Copper said. “Have fun with whatever it is you’re doing!”
Copper leapt into the air and transformed mid-jump, narrowly managing to avoid capsizing the ship anyway. Curiosity satisfied, the copper dragon flew back toward land and disappeared into the mountains.
“Well,” Sarom commented. “That happened.”
“Maybe we should move a bit further out to sea,” Calto said. “And hope no dragons spot us who might be less friendly.”
Sarom nodded tersely. “Make it so.”
As they put some distance between the ship and the coast, some of the humans were muttering about damned shapeshifters being bad luck.
The Careful sailed into the harbor of Hrackston none too soon for Keolah’s taste. Sure, they’d gotten a lot done in the meantime, but they were starting to drive one another crazy with all the waiting. At least sailing to places felt like they were getting somewhere and making progress. Here, they just continued organizing their notes, because they didn’t have access to the books themselves. Not to say that it wasn’t productive, of course. But some of them wished they’d stayed back in Torn Elkandu. Keolah could only guess that, once they got the city really up and running, there would be plenty of people who would just never leave. She couldn’t really entirely blame them if that was what they chose to do, though.
Even Sedder didn’t utter a word of complaint when they boarded the Careful again, though he looked a little sick at the prospect. Some nearby sailors overheard that they were planning on sailing to Albrynnia, and alternately made derisive comments about their sanity and gestures to ward off evil while backing away slowly.
“So!” Sarom said. “Everyone ready to go? No other detours or delays or anyone changing their mind about being on this boat?”
The humans Sarom had hired on as extra crew in Scalyr were all getting off in Hrackston, to a man. Not a single one of them wanted to sail to Albrynnia, even on someone else’s ship. That, of course, left Keolah and company back to handling their jobs again.
“Finally, getting something done again,” Hawthorne said as she situated herself at her post. “Although mostly, what we’ve been getting done is walking all over the place.”
“But just think,” Keolah said. “If we can get the Nexus working, we can walk all over the place on other worlds.”
“What if those other worlds have oceans?” Calto said.
Sarom seemed to consider that for a long moment. “Might be interesting. I wonder if anyone else has discovered steam power yet?”
“Or maybe they’ve discovered something amazing and wonderful we haven’t even imagined yet,” Calto said.
“I just find it funny that all those humans you brought along pussied out,” Hawthorne said. “Is Albrynnia so damned scary? Seriously?”
“They think so,” Delven pointed out. “If you imagined you’d get eaten by monsters just for getting within sight of the continent, would you want to go there?”
“Bring them on!” Hawthorne exclaimed.
“Why did I know you’d say that?” Delven groaned.
For all the doomsaying of the humans of Kalor, the Sea of Stars was calm and peaceful, at least at first. Out of clear skies, the winds began whipping up as they traveled. The steamship didn’t use wind to travel, but if it had sails, they’d not be making any headway into this. As it was, the propeller just kept turning without regard for what was going on up in the skies.
“Hah!” Sarom said. “Look at that. We can just keep sailing into the wind.”
“The wind’s picking up, though,” Calto said. “We won’t have the mana to keep the wind barriers up for much longer, if this keeps up.”
“I can supplement it with Zarnith, if need be,” Hawthorne said.
Calto looked off into the distance, focusing with his magic. “I think we’re sailing into a hurricane.”
“Oh,” Hawthorne said. “Batten down the hatches!”
“We don’t have hatches to batten down,” Calto said.
“Well, that’s just shoddy gnome design, then,” Hawthorne said.
Calto rolled his eyes, but didn’t reply, opting to just shout orders at the gnomes instead, and resorting to gnomish handtalk when the wind started howling too much to be readily heard. The wind screens were buckling. Hawthorne held aloft Zarnith to try to keep them stable so that the building storm didn’t tear apart the ship or pick up the crew and toss them into the water. Intertwined cyan and magenta mana gushed out to form a shimmering dome over the ship. It didn’t stop the wind, but it at least slowed it down to the point where it didn’t do more than howl and blow small objects around.
“Alright, I think we’re going to get through this,” Hawthorne called.
“What’s that?” Calto yelled back.
“I said I think we’re gonna make it!” Hawthorne shouted.
Calto made a few gestures.
“Are you insulting me?” Hawthorne asked.
Calto made a few more gestures.
“Just because I said I wanted to learn handtalk doesn’t mean I actually did, you stupid gnome!” Hawthorne screamed.
Calto made a gesture of a raised middle finger.
“Oh, that is it,” Hawthorne snapped. A weave of Wind Magic, like a giant finger, flicked Calto and knocked him back off his feet.
“Ack!” Calto cried.
Keolah put her face in her palm. “Let’s just focus on getting through this, shall we?”
“What?” Hawthorne yelled.
Keolah gestured over to Sedder, who was alternately snickering and rolling his eyes.
<You are all idiots,> Sedder tepped.
“Oh, very funny,” Hawthorne groused. “Now get out of my head.”
<I’m not in your head,> Sedder insisted.
“Then how can you tell what I just said?” Hawthorne said. “It’s too loud to hear me from over there!”
<More like on your head, I suppose.>
“What?” Hawthorne wondered.
<That is just surface thoughts,> Sedder said. <When people are speaking aloud, they’re generally echoing their own words in their surface thoughts at the same time. That’s not the same thing as reading their mind. Besides, like you just said, you wouldn’t be able to understand me from over here if I weren’t using telepathy.>
“Oh, shut up,” Hawthorne said.
The wind battered the barrier, and Hawthorne struggled to keep it up. Hours passed, and it felt like the storm was never going to let up. The water rocked the ship and probably would have flipped them right over if some of the gnomes hadn’t been Water Mages and were straining themselves to keep it stable. Still, all of them were running into mana exhaustion before they finally started getting to the far side of the hurricane.
“Ugh,” Hawthorne uttered as the wind died down to a level the barrier could mostly stop again. “Can I pass out now?”
“I can keep it up from here,” Calto said.
“Thanks,” Hawthorne said, and promptly passed out. The remnants of the cyan-and-magenta dome wisped out of existence, leaving Calto’s sky blue mana alone there.
“I think we’re through the worst of it,” Sarom said.
Keolah had felt useless during the entire ordeal. There was nothing her Talents could have done to help the situation. All she could do was make use of her hands and try to avoid getting blown away. Though maybe there was something she could do to help. She could make potions. They hadn’t really been in a situation where they needed to expend so much mana continuously, but maybe she could get her hands on some ingredients that might help.
“Calto, do you know if there’s anything in this ocean that can be used to brew mana potions?” Keolah asked.
“This ocean?” Calto said. “I don’t know. But we can sift some stuff out of the water and you can see if anything will work if you like.”
“Let’s do it,” Keolah said. “I’d rather not get caught with our robes up again. Hopefully we won’t even need them.”
Once they’d rested up a bit, the Water Mages on the crew picked out a variety of fish from the ocean. Normally, Keolah worked with plants more, but that wasn’t really an option out here. Sure, she could fast-grow some herbs in a flower pot, but that would leech the nutrients out of the soil so quickly that it wouldn’t get her very much to make into potions. She took the ship’s alchemy equipment and experimented a bit, producing several foul-smelling concoctions until she came up with a mixture that did what she wanted.
“This is what you came up with?” Hawthorne asked, holding aloft a vial of brackish blue liquid and looking at it dubiously.
“It tastes terrible, but it’ll restore your mana,” Keolah said.
“Good enough, I guess,” Hawthorne said. “I’ll just put a ward over my tongue so I can’t taste it, just like I always did when my mom made me eat broccoli.”
Three days later, it happened again, although at least it wasn’t as bad that time. Then another minor storm rolled past on the fifth day.
“They should have called this place the Sea of Storms and not the Sea of Stars,” Hawthorne commented grumpily. “Unless there’s a Sea of Storms somewhere else that’s even worse. Is there a Sea of Storms?”
“I don’t think so,” Calto said. “There’s the Sunrise Sea, the Great Northern Ocean…”
“Calto!” Sarom yelled. “I think there’s another storm blowing up!”
“Valissa’s breasts,” Hawthorne muttered. “Here we go again. How did the Albrynnians ever conquer half of Kalor if this is what they had to deal with?”
“Magic, I assume,” Delven said, shrugging helplessly.
“We’re using magic, and this is still a pain in the butt!” Hawthorne yelled.
“I managed to whip up a few more mana potions during the last lull,” Keolah said.
“You know, that would be great if I weren’t too busy using Security Magic to keep us from getting blown overboard to ward my tongue.”
“Oh, just take the potions,” Keolah said with a smirk, going to find a place to brace herself again as the ship plowed into the storm heedlessly.