Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Six — Crash Scene Investigators
Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Six — Crash Scene Investigators We spent the night hiding from the storm within the ship. The worst of it took an hour or so to arrive, then hung above us for twice as long. There were constant booms as lightning stuck nearby and the ground shook almost constantly with the echoing explosions.Calamity pointed to something glowing in the distance at some point and said that part of the grasslands was on fire. Apparently that was pretty common during storms like these. I could barely see it at all, but I took his word for it.I was mostly impressed that anything could burn in the pelting rain, though it did disappear after a few minutes.We drew lots for the order of watches, then settled in for the night. Thanks to my Cleaning magic we didn’t need to freshen up as much, so we mostly all just slept in our gear on a blanket or three.I slept fitfully, but it wasn’t the worst sleep I’d ever gotten. It helped when I had my friends close so that I could use them as warm pillows to keep away the chill.Awen cooked up a simple breakfast in the morning with a few chunks of the ship’s floor as kindling. The storm had passed but there was still a faint drizzle outside. Nothing at all like the deluge of the night before.“The rain will pass in a few hours,” Calamity said. “We’ll be a bit muddy and wet, but we’ll manage, I think. Let’s finish up eating first though. Let the earth soak up more of yesterday’s rain.”That would've been a good idea. I stepped out of the ship after breakfast to see the wreck from the outside-since I didn’t actually look all that hard the night before-and almost immediately lost a shoe as it was slorped up by a patch of mud. After ripping it out and tying it a bit tighter, I found that the best way to move was to step on the grassiest patches.The ship was called the er’s Eye. Or at least, that was the part of the name that was left. The rest was probably on the other half of the airship, wherever that was. It was, as I suspected, a bit wider than either one of the Beaver Cleaver’s hulls, but not wider than both. It also wasn’t nearly as fancy, though there was a beautifully carved figurehead of a harpy girl with her wings spread wide wearing a very windswept dress. A chunk of one wing was outright missing.I noticed something on the hull. A long metal harpoon was jutting out of the side, the metal bent and a cut off rope dangling from an eyelet at the back of it.Someone had jammed that in there, probably before the ship crashed.It had been attacked!When I reported my findings to my friends, I got some other possibilities. “That’s plausible, but it’s not unheard of for ships to harpoon each other in times of need,” Amaryllis said. If this ship was loosing ballast, for example, it’s possible an allied vessel harpooned it to prevent it from rising too quickly. Or to tow it in an emergency. Both unlikely, but plausible explanations. It certainly lends credence to there being an attack, but it’s not a sure thing.”“No bodies either,” Calamity said. “Some blood here and there, but honestly, I imagine the folk onboard this thing took quite the tumble on the way down, so it’s anyone’s guess if they were hurt from that or from an attack.”“Did anyone find anything salvageable?” Awen asked. She’d packed up most of our things, then she’d loitered around one of the rooms currently above us: the mechanic’s room, which I imagined was meant to be connected to the missing engine room.Calamity nodded. “Yes, but nothing worth taking now. Plenty of provisions, some tools, a few odds and ends. All the stuff I guess you’d expect to find on a ship. The hunters are going to love scavenging this thing. Usually we bring back meat and pelts, not finished goods.”“I found the mechanic’s log,” Awen said. “It has details on all the recent repairs and maintenance. There was a mechanic and two apprentices. Um. The maintenance log seems pretty up to date? Unless the mechanic was lying or cutting corners, then this ship should have been in decent shape.”“Which doesn’t rule out mechanical failure, but does make it unlikely,” Amaryllis concluded. “Let’s head out. Maybe the other half of the ship will tell us more.”We did just that, climbing onto Blinky, Tassel, and Shanks and heading out of the wreck. We didn’t try to hide that we’d been there. Maybe another adventurer walking by would use the firepit we’d made. I kind of liked the idea of the wreck being turned into a landmark.Calamity had us riding outwards in a strange sort of spiralling pattern that had us sweeping out, then turning around and ranging further out in a sweep in the other direction. It was a little weird, but an hour or so after we took off, the pattern proved its worth.We found the other half of the airship, and another ship besides.They were both planted at the junction between two hills, where they would be somewhat hard to spot from afar, especially once the grass straightened up post-storm. The rear of the first ship (which from the stencilling on the side I could now guess was called the Hunter’s Eye) was jutting out of the side of the hill. It was planted straight down in something of a crater.The other ship had crashed more gently. The balloon's internal was slumped across the top of the hull, metal ribs jutting through the torn fabric. Even though it was half-crumpled like a soda can, its shape was still recognizable, so I guessed the landing wasn't as harsh as it could've been. The ship had crashed atop one hill, ploughing down the side of it until it came to rest at the bottom, tilted at a good thirty-degree angle.Planks and bits of its keel radiated out from the scar in the landscape.“Engine section first,” Amaryllis decided. “We’ll piece together what we can from the Hunter’s Eye before looking for clues elsewhere.”“Alright,” I agreed. It was closer anyway.Any doubts about enemy action faded as we approached the ship’s rear. There was a gaping hole in the side of the ship that poked right through the top-deck and into the officer’s quarters beneath. There were scorch marks too, so whatever that had been was hot, probably some kind of magic.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.There was some netting caught in the propellers at the rear. The ropes were tangled into the shafts and looked like they’d done a good job of seizing up the propulsion.Because the Hunter’s Eye was standing up on end, we couldn’t get inside easily, and Awen pointed out that it was probably not a good idea anyway. The storm hadn’t tipped it over, but if we poked around inside it, we might jostle it loose and bring it down on our heads. Unlike the forward section, this half was resting at a precarious angle, with all the heavy parts at the top and nothing but dirt below it.If it was the only ship to explore, then maybe we’d take the risk, but it wasn’t.The second ship was a short pony ride away. Its name was the Remiges Crown, and I suspected it was a warship from the moment it was designed. The ship wasn’t too much longer than the Beaver Cleaver but its middle section bulged out, giving the impression that the ship was rather chubby.The reason for that was the ballistae platforms on either side. They weren’t just little ones either. Each bowstave was half again as long as I was tall. There were more of the bows at the aft of the ship, but they were much smaller.“That’s a corvette,” Amaryllis said. “An older model at that. Half of these have been retired or sold to the independent cities by now.”“The prop of this one is also tangled in a net,” Awen pointed out. “I’ll have to look at the net, but it’s probably the same kind.”The ship had a ladder set into the side, little handholds cut into the wood, so when we reached it and finished tying off the ponies, it only took a bit of jumping to be able to climb aboard.Walking on the deck was strange since it was tipped to one side at a bit of an angle, but it wasn’t impossible.“More blood,” Calamity pointed out. “There was fighting on this one.”“And casting,” Amaryllis said. She gestured to the deck where a long scorch mark had darkened the wood. A bit further on, the wood’s grain was burned in a strange, zig-zagging pattern which looked a bit like lightning forks. An electric spell?There were broken railings on the side, and a few grapple-hooks were abandoned hanging to the side of the ship.“Someone boarded this vessel,” Amaryllis said. “I think they were repelled though.”“How do you know?” I asked.“The ship’s in decent condition other than the obvious. If someone had boarded it to steal it, they would have taken it, I think, or scuttled it. This ship crashed slowly. The lifeboats are missing as well.” Amaryllis pointed to a pair of racks in the centre of the deck where I imagined a pair of long boats were supposed to sit.“Maybe the people boarding the ship took them?” I asked.“That’s possible, I suppose,” Amaryllis said.As it turned out, she was probably right. We couldn’t explore most of the decks on the ship-the bottom-most one was ripped apart, and the main deck was a mess of broken floors and splintered wood, though it was possible to travel through it. There weren’t any signs of fighting though.Awen spent a few minutes at the captain’s door with a few tools before she finally unlocked it and opened the door wide for us.Calamity whistled when he entered the cabin. It was quite nice, with drapes over the shattered windows and a beautiful desk in the centre of the room. Latched cabinets with glass doors were stacked to one side filled with maps and there were expensive navigational tools strewn across the floor.There was a door past that leading to a few rooms. On one side was the captain’s quarters and across from those were two smaller rooms for the officers.“Nice!” Calamity said as he returned to the main room with a sword in hand. The grip looked like it was designed for a harpy, but it was still usable. He swung the cutlass around a few times, grinning all the while. “Think I might keep this one.”“We’re looking for something a little more important,” Amaryllis said. She checked around the room, clearly looking for something that was hidden. I poked around too, but there wasn’t anything too shiny. I did find a nice hat, but it was the First Mate’s and I preferred my Captain’s hat over it.“I think I found it!” Awen called back.She had discovered a hidden compartment built into the desk in the centre of the room. Within it was a thick leather-bound book and some writing implements.“It’s soul-bound,” Amaryllis said as she inspected the book. “The ship’s log. Bound to the captain. I think these are linked from captain to captain.” The book had a heavy clasp on its front.“Can you open it?” I asked.“Only certain people can,” she said. “In case the book falls into enemy hands. You need the blood and mana of a willing person taken from a relatively short list. That includes the captain and first mate, who are added to the records, a few admirals, and of course the person who originally made the vessel. It keeps a continuous record of the ship’s voyages and actions which can’t be tampered with. Well, unless the captain themselves do so.”“Oh,” I said. “So we’ll need to find an admiral to open it?” I asked.Amaryllis shrugged, then made a small cut along the back of her hand where her talon started. She dripped a drop of blood onto the clasp and it glowed faintly before popping off. “Or, you could find a direct blood-descendant of the person who built the ship,” she said.“That was anticlimactic,” I pointed out.“Yes, well, let’s not complain about being lucky one of the few times that luck’s on our side,” Amaryllis said. She opened the manifest which turned out to be pages and pages of carefully penned notes and navigational information. She leafed over to the last page with writing on it, then stared. “Huh... I wasn’t expecting actual pirates.”
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Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Seven — Piracy in the High Skies
Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Seven — Piracy in the High Skies “Pirates?” Calamity asked.“Pirates,” Amaryllis confirmed.“Pirates!” Calamity cheered.“Pirates!” I cheered with him, because it was fun.“Pirates?” Awen repeated.Amaryllis huffed. “Okay, enough of that. I’m aware you’re all excited, but can we please take this seriously? This is an important matter.”I nodded along. That was a fair thing to ask, even if the news was quite exciting. “So, what does the book say?”Amaryllis held the manifest open in the crook of one wing and ran her talons across the other page. “Alright, let’s trace this back a little,” she said as she flipped back a couple of pages. “Here. This ship was one of the first to meet with the main delegation vessel. The Royal Plumage. They took off from Fort Sylphrot then headed north. They collected new crewmates at Farseeing and waited two days at dock for the fleet to assemble. There are some notes from the quartermaster.”“I think we can skip those,” Awen said.Amaryllis nodded. “Alright, here, the ship left Farseeing and headed north again. They stopped by Walker’s Rest where they picked up a few more nobles and another couple of escort ships. The Hunter’s Eye was one of those, as well as its sister ship, the Hunter’s Fang.”I nodded along. I could more or less trace the trajectory in my mind. “How many ships does that make?” I asked.“Including the main delegation ship, which was a government yacht, there were two corvettes, two frigates, and a single cruiser.”Calamity whistled. “That’s an awful lot of ships,” he said.“More escorts than you’d ever expect for a commercial venture, but for a political one, this is more or less par for the course.” Amaryllis tapped the page. “This ship, the Remiges Crown, I think it belonged to a noble of the Canary family. So not a Nesting Mountain Navy vessel but a privately owned and operated warship.”I looked around the deck, noting all the weapons on it. “Really? This is a private ship?”“A merchant escort. It explains why it’s so lightly armed,” Amaryllis said.This was lightly armed? It had a lot more going for it than the Beaver did. Then again, the Beaver Cleaver was an adventuring ship first and foremost. “Anyway, then what?”“So, all six vessels headed further north. They crossed to the east of the mountain range through Walker’s Pass, then they headed towards Sylphfree using a fairly circuitous route.” Amaryllis turned the page. “Ah, they hit a storm coming from the south maybe... a week ago.”“I remember that one,” Calamity said. “Nasty storm. Way worse than what we slept through.”“That threw the fleet in disarray. They regrouped to the west of Fort Middlesfaire and continued north. I think they were planning on slipping to the south of the Greenstone.”Calamity frowned. “That’s daring.”“What’s the Greenstone?” I asked.“It’s an area to the north of here, thataways,” Calamity said as he pointed. “It’s all dead. Like a small desert, with a nearly perfect edge. There’s this huge green pillar in the middle of it. All glowy and magical.”“What’s it do?”He shrugged. “Kills nya, mostly. Don’t rightly know who put it there or why.”“Giant mysterious pillar, got it.” I turned back to Amaryllis. “Then what?”“Then, the pirates. The fleet was trying to move at double-time but they ran into complications. Doesn’t say what. The log only says that they saw... well, here, read this passage at the bottom here.” She turned the manifest my way and pointed to the very last paragraphs, all done in a neat hand.0909h — Ships sighted. 340-345 North. Six vessels. No sight on flags.1017h — Ships approaching. Three vessels turning to intercept. No flags. Unknown vessel type.1037h — Alarm raised from the Concordance. Ships are Snowlander. Two frigate-tonnage vessels. Two corvettes. One cruiser. One heavy vessel (cargo converted?). Bearing on fleet.1100h — Flags raised. Pirates. Preparing for boarding and combat.That was the last entry. The rest of the page was all blank. I was kind of impressed by the steady hand of whomever wrote the notes. “So, pirates. For real-real,” I said.Amaryllis nodded. “And this ship and the Hunter’s Eye were taken out. They didn’t come down to salvage, but the looks of it. And this was a while ago. The delegation was going to be late because of the storm. This just made it worse.”“I guess they had bigger things to worry about than being late,” Awen said. “Like pirates.”Amaryllis nodded. “Their route is strange. This isn’t the fastest path to Sylphfree, not by a long shot. The timing isn't adding up.”“Think someone on the inside told the pirates?” Calamity asked. He was pretty excited by it all.“It’s possible, though I’d hope not. The last thing we need is a political element within the country consorting with pirates and scoundrels.” She snapped the manifest shut and locked it up. “We need to report this.”“Going to take a couple days to reach Fort Middlesfaire from here,” Calamity said. “Longer if we intend to loot the ship before we run off.”Amaryllis narrowed her eyes in thought, then shook her head. “No, that’s too long. I suggest that we use the ring we have to contact our friends in Slyphfree for pickup.”“They’ll be able to find us out here?” I asked.Awen nodded. “It shouldn’t be too hard to triangulate where someone is with that kind of ring. Not for a Paladin team, I imagine. Also, we’ll be telling them where we are, which should help.”Calamity slowly raised a hand to ask a question. “Sorry ny’all, but what are we talking about?”My friends and I shared a look, and I was elected the spokesbun. “Well, we came here to discover what happened to the delegation right?” He nodded. “Both Sylphfree and the Nesting Kingdom want to know. So we’re in contact with Slyphfree for this mission. They’re the ones who helped us get all the way over to here.”Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.“Oh,” he said. “Well, I’ll be. Proper spies from another land.”“We’re not spies,” I said.“It’s true. At worst we’re mercenaries,” Amaryllis pointed out. “But in reality it’s more that our goals happen to align with Sylphfree’s. It’s a matter of mutual convenience. The sylph need to know what happened to the delegation so that the harpy won’t be angered with them. Ideally, we’ll also be able to prove that the Trenten Flats are innocent in all of this.”“Innocent?” he asked. Then his eyes lit up. “Because the ships went down over the Flats. Right, I can see why that might ring some bells. Like discovering one of your hens died in the neighbour’s yard.”“Not the analogy I’d use, but yes, something like that,” Amaryllis said. “I need a moment to pen a response.” She glanced around. We were still in the officer’s quarters, which happened to have desks and writing implements. Most of the latter were scattered across the floor, but they weren’t far.“Want to keep snooping around while she does all that?” I asked Calamity and Awen.“Sure, I’d love ta.” We left the cabins at the rear of the ship and made our way to the centre of the deck where a staircase led to the main deck. “So, are nya really an airship captain?” he asked.I nodded. “I am! I’ve only been one for a couple of months though.”“Busy months,” Awen said.“Oh yeah, very. This won’t be our first run-in with pirates.”“You’ve seen pirates before?” he asked. “Like, in the air?”I nodded. “Awen was kidnapped once!”“I get kidnapped a lot,” Awen noted with a heavy sigh. “Twice since I met Broccoli. But the first time it was by Broccoli, so I’m not sure if it counts.”“I think it technically needs to be involuntary for it to count,” I pointed out. I hardly needed Calamity to start thinking I was some sort of evil bun mastermind, kidnapper of cute friends and hug thief.“That’s incredible. You must know a bunch about airships then, like, ah, what kinda loot we can find in one of these here airships?” he asked with a gesture around himself. The lower deck of the Remiges Crown was fairly open, with netted shelves to the sides and an area near the fore that was filled with hammocks“Uh, I guess food, some normal supplies, maybe weapons?” I asked. The Beaver didn’t have much by means of treasure on it. Maybe a few personal items, but that was it.“A ship this big might have an armoury,” Awen said.As it turns out, she was right. We found a heavy metal door at the rear of the ship with three big locks on it. None of them were actually locked though, and the door was left half-open. I imagined that the crew had grabbed what they needed when pirates showed up and were a bit too busy to lock up on the way out.The room was narrow, shoved up against the side of the engine as it was. One wall was entirely made up of racks which had held a bunch of weapons once. Now it was down to a few that had been left behind. Calamity was still excited about it though. “Oh, crossbows. And grapples.” He picked up a cutlass, then compared it to the one he’d grabbed earlier.I looked around at things too, but I wasn’t super interested in weapons, and there wasn’t much else there. The kitchen proved a lot more interesting. It was also at the rear, and seemed nearly intact.That made some sense, all the food was in cupboards with strong latches or in racks that were meant to endure a good bit of turbulence. There was a magical rune-empowered fridge at the back filled with all sorts of goodies, and the stove was also powered by mana.Awen and I started cooking, mostly noodles with whatever sauces we found in the fridge. It would let us save up some of our other supplies in case we needed them.“You’re getting the hang of cooking, huh?” I asked Awen as she mixed a pot-full of a tomato-like paste.“It’s not too different from assembling something, in a way. And... I like it when you and Amaryllis are happy that I cooked something nice.”“Aw!” I cooed before grabbing her for a quick cheek-squishing hug. “I like it when you’re happy too!”Amaryllis came down a few minutes later with a bit of a frown on her face. “Ah, there you are,” she said. Calamity was in what I guess was the mess. Though the table was clearly meant to fold up against the wall to be out of the way. “Are you cooking?”“Early lunch!” I said.“I suppose there’s no point in letting anything go to waste. Anyway, I finished contacting Sylphfree. They can have a flight of wyverns here to pick us up by tomorrow afternoon.”“That’s a long ways off,” I said.“We’re not exactly close by. Though I had hoped they would have a ship ready for departure with less delay than that,” Amaryllis said.“So, we hang around here until the sylph arrive, then I lead the ponies back?” Calamity asked.“No, not quite,” Amaryllis said. “They want us to keep investigating things in the region. Calamity, you said you only saw two ships coming down, right?”“Yeah, but it was from afar. I don’t doubt my eyes, but I know their limits.”“Then maybe we can find a vantage and look around, just in case. We have time to kill before the sylph take off, and they can home in on us. We don’t need to sit around and wait.”“That sounds fine,” I said. “But first, let's get something warm into our tummies, huh?”Amaryllis rolled her eyes, but when Awen came out with a big bowl full of steaming noodles and sauce, she didn’t complain any.A small break, then a pinch more adventure. Just what we needed to cap off the day!
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