Chapter Three Hundred and Forty — Redemption Arc
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty — Redemption Arc “Awa, the, um, Smooth Sailing,” Awen proposed.I thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t a bad name. Very sweet. Cute, even! But I wasn’t entirely sure if it fit the ship. It was too metallic and sharp for that name, maybe.“And here I thought you’d ask to name it something like the Rose’s Lips, or something,” Amaryllis said.Awen blushed while a storm of denying “awas!” escaped her.“Am I missing something there?” Calamity asked. “By the way, clearly this beauty ought to be called something properly enticing. The Dagger or maybe the Sky Meowderer.”“I’m not sure about that last one,” I said. “What about the Friend-Ship?” I asked.“Vetoed,” Amaryllis said. “We won’t abide pun names. We could call it something like the... hmm, it’s a warship. The Strongly Worded Letter?”Awen made a noise that was very close to being a huff. Was she trying to get back at Amaryllis? “That’s too long. It wouldn’t fit on the side. And Broccoli, this is a boat more than a ship.”“I’m guessing the Friendboat is out too?” I asked.I got three nods in reply.“We need something a bit more fierce than that,” Calamity said. “Like some sorta predatory animal?”“The Angry Moose?” I tried.Amaryllis frowned. “What in the World is a moose?”“Is it like a mouse?” Awen asked.I shook my head and gave up on the name. “No, nevermind.”“Well, how about the Hermeowne?” Calamity asked. “It’s the name of this girl I was sweet on for a while.”“Let’s not name our new boat after one of your no doubt many failed romantic conquests,” Amaryllis said.“Maybe we can name it after something it is?” I asked. I trimmed the sails a bit. We were picking up some speed, but I was pretty sure we didn’t want to be moving quite so quickly.Awen clapped her hands. “Ah! I know. It was a pirate boat before, wasn’t it? And now it’s ours, and we’re the opposite of pirates. Or near enough. So the vessel’s being reformed. We could call it the Redemption!”“That’s properly intimidating,” Calamity said. “I vote aye on that one.”Amaryllis considered it for a moment before replying. “It’s suitable.”“I like it!” I chimed in. It was also nice that everyone seemed to agree about the ship’s name too.With that done, we got back to work piloting the newly named Redemptionacross the grassy plains. Awen stood fixed at the back of the wheel for a while while testing the various controls, but eventually she called me over to take the wheel. I had the Captaining skill, which was the only airship-related skill anyone in our group had, at least as far as piloting a ship went.It didn’t take long for me to get a hang of the controls. They reminded me a bit of a car’s, actually, but without the foot-pedals. There were airbrakes in the form of flaps that could be pulled up, and the throttle wasn’t any more complicated than the throttle on a riding lawn-mower.Amaryllis and Awen checked our position, with Calamity giving a few pointers towards local landmarks, and then we turned south and west a bit, straight towards the hunter’s camp.If we were going to keep the ship, we obviously needed to get the ponies somewhere safe, and we’d need supplies in any case. Once we were prepared, we could head back out and meet our sylph friends up in the air and figure out where to go from there.I was a smidge worried about that last part, actually.The diplomats had been taken by pirates. Actual, hardened pirates. They hadn’t issued any ransoms that I knew of, which was worrisome. Were they being treated well? They’d better be! Pirates were cool and all, but only the nice sort who worked to destabilise mean governments and spread art that was otherwise unavailable.The Redemption was a pretty nice boat. It didn’t fly as evenly as the Beaver Cleaver. I had to fight it to stay even, and every big gust of wind sent us flying off track. Once we skimmed a bit close to the top of a hill which had us dialling back the speed, just in case.Still, it made up for its strange flight characteristics by being pretty zippy and manouvrable. With a practised pilot at the wheel and a few good crewmates, I was certain the Redemption could fly circles around some of the larger airships I’d seen.“Smoke ahead and... uh, which one is right?” Calamity asked.“Starboard,” Amaryllis replied. “I see it. About forty degrees, three klicks as the harpy flies. We might want to slow down. I imagine the hunters below would rather we come in slowly and peacefully rather than spook their horses.”“A few of them are pretty good shots,” Calamity said. “Might turn us into pincushions before we have time to complain.”I pulled back on the throttle until we were basically only moving on momentum. I turned us so that we weren’t pointing right at the hunter’s camp, which meant I could actually see it. The Redeemed’s bow was too tall for me to see out ahead, which was maybe something of a design flaw. As we turned a smidge, Icould make out the camp. Dozens of tents, some carts, and plenty of people moving around, most of them atop a wide hill surrounded by pressed-down grass.“Ahoy!” Calamity called as he hung off the side of the boat and waved his hat about.His pals below shouted back, some waving, others masking their eyes from the sun to see us better as we circled the camp in a tight loop and settled down next to the camp. Awen undid the latch on the anchor and a pair of chains rattled out of the Redeemed’s rear to hold us in place.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.We lowered the landing gear and gently reduced the strength on the gravity generator until the boat touched down with a lurch. “I think that went pretty well, for a maiden flight,” I said.“It wasn’t a maiden flight,” Amaryllis said. “Unless you consider it this crew’s in which case... it still wouldn’t count.”I puffed my cheeks out. “Well, I don’t know what it is then, but it went well. The boat handled things with no trouble.”“We burned a lot of fuel,” Awen said. She closed one of the engine compartments with a hard thump. “We wouldn’t have been able to fly for much longer. Maybe another hour or two?”“We’ll have to see about that,” Calamity said with a grin. Then he glanced over the railings and grinned. “Heya there, Savan! Come to see my brand new ship?”A familiar cat-like head poked up from the edge of the ship. Savan was gripping onto the railing, her legs around one of the anchor chains. “Pretty,” she said. “But you can’t eat ships, Calamity.”“I know, but I bet you can hunt all sorts of things from the skies,” he replied. “Is everyone at the camp?”Saven rolled up onto the edge, then bounced to her feet. She looked about as she spoke, obviously curious, “Two of the teams aren’t back yet. We lost a pony to a cockatrice. It stared into its eyes and Mey was catapulted off when it dropped. But she’s fine.”“Hah! I’d’ve loved to see that,” Calamity said. “Too bad about the pony. Speaking of which, want to help me unload these three?”With Savan helping us, then the other catpeople and cervid from the camp who came to loiter around, it wasn’t too complicated to unload the ponies. Calamity was the hero of the hour. He told a greatly exaggerated story about us braving the storm and discovering huge destroyed airships, then the four of us valiantly working together to piece the Redemption back into working order.The story was mostly truthful, at least in the broad strokes. I would have complained, but Calamity was having fun, and his hunter friends seemed happy to rib and call him out for exaggerating.I turned to Amaryllis and Awen once we were all back on firm ground. “Now what?” I asked.“Now we ensure that no one steals our ship from us without proper remuneration,” Amaryllis said. “And we need to relay our location to the sylph again. They might not want to meet in a place with so many strangers.”“We could hunt for more clues,” Awen suggested.We turned to her, and she squirmed."We know the diplomats were attacked by pirates, but at that point the trail goes cold."“That seems like a good idea to me,” I said. “We need supplies, too.”“I can help with that.” The three of us jumped and turned to find Savan standing really close to us. She grinned. “I know where to find all the stuff. What are you looking for?”“Uh, fuel, mostly,” Awen said.Savan blinked. “I don’t know how to find that stuff,” she admitted. “But I know the people to ask. Come on!”With that, Savan led us towards the camp proper. It was a loose collection of tents, some large, some small, with a few buildings made of wood and tarps set up here and there and some carriages parked on the flatter ground that had little homes built atop them. It looked like a few of those more temporary buildings had been knocked down by the storm, but they were being fixed in quick order.There was a large grazing area to one side surrounded by a picket-and-rope fence where horses and ponies were plucking at the grass, and a few roads cut through the camp. They were all made of stomped dirt, packed down by hundreds of passing hunters.A few of the temporary buildings stood out. One had a mobile forge in it where a pair of cervid were working the bellows while another held tongs clenching a red-hot bit of metal. Next to that was a small shop with a cat person on a carpet surrounded by things for sale. Finally, Savan brought us to a small general store of sorts. She pushed the tent-flap door aside and stuck her head in. “Hello? Do you sell fuel?”We ended up meeting a nice elderly human of all things who didn’t have much airship fuel, but who did have some oils that Awen said would work in a pinch.Then we crossed over to a set of tents set downwind of the camp where hunters were working at butchering their catch. They were more than willing to sell us a few tankfuls of grease and fat which Awen had some use for.“We won’t have enough to get far, but this is more than what we had to begin with,” Awen said as we lugged the tanks back to the airship.On our way back, we met with Calamity who seemed to have tired out his buddies with his stories. “Heya. So, are we heading out again?”“Not quite yet,” Amaryllis said. “We wanted to see if anyone here knows anything about the pirates.”“You’ll want to chat with old lady Three Hooves then,” he said with confidence. “Come on, she knows everything and everyone. If anyone knows anything, it’ll be her.”We finished storing what we’d picked up on the ship, and Awen volunteered to stay behind. She wanted to turn some of the blubber we’d bought into oil, which meant she needed to create a little machine to get everything going.Calamity led us up the camp’s hill towards the topmost part where the nicer carriages were parked. One of those had its sides open to reveal an old cervid woman resting on three legs atop a stack of well-worn cushions and blankets. For all her age, she looked like a tough old cookie, especially with the eyepatch covering half her face.“What sorta trouble did you bring me here today, Calamity?” she asked.“Hello, Three Hooves,” he said with a bit of a bow. “Just wanted to introduce my new friends. This is Broccoli, and this is Amaryllis. They had a few questions you might be able to get to the bottom of.”
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Chapter Three Hundred and Forty-One — A Little Bird Told Me
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty-One — A Little Bird Told Me “Hello!” I said with a little wave to the old cervid lady. I wondered if it would be impolite to ask about her missing limb and the eyepatch she was wearing. It probably would be, but I bet there was an interesting story behind that. Then again, maybe those weren’t the best of memories, and it wouldn’t be nice to bring it up.“Hello,” Three Hooves said. She cracked a smile for us. “So, what are your friends going to ask me about, hmm, Calamity?”“Ah, well, I think I maybe ought to let them talk to nya,” he said before backing up a step.I shared a look with Amaryllis, and she tilted her head a tiny bit towards me. I nodded back and then faced Three Hooves. “We just have a few questions,” I said. “My friends and I came over here looking for some lost ships.”“Not many ships in the plains,” Three Hooves said.“They were airships. Apparently they got blown off course and ended up passing by a bit to the north of here. Uh, I don’t actually know how far away, exactly, but yeah. Calamity helped us find them.”“That’s hardly surprising. He’s lived his life with his head in the clouds, that one.”Calamity cleared his throat and looked a bit peevish about that, but I suspected that maybe it was a little true.“Oh, don’t lose a shoenail about it,” Three Hooves said. “You know it’s true. Now, ships. Did you find what you were looking for?”“Kinda,” I said. “We found crashed ships, some of those we were looking for, but not all of them. We also found a smaller boat that wasn’t part of those. Uh, it’s a pirate’s boat, but there weren’t any pirates around, so I guess it’s ours now. Well, ours and Calamity’s.”“Oh-hoh, well, that’s one of his dreams come true,” Three Hooves said. “I imagine you want to know what we know about the fight?”“That would be nice,” I said. “But more than that, I think we want to know about the pirates. They had to be pretty well-equipped, and that means a lot of people working for them, which means a big group. Maybe you know something?”The older cervid rubbed at her chin in thought, then nodded along. “I keep abreast of most things. This old body of mine isn’t what it used to be, but my mind’s never been sharper. I listen, you see. Something you younger folk aren’t too apt to do, I’ve noticed.”I pouted. “Have you seen my ears, ma’am, I’m perfectly good at listening.”“Hah! Maybe you are, at that. We’ll see. Now, as I was saying. I listen to folk’s problems and whip people about to get things done. I haven’t heard of these pirates of yours, and if they were recruiting, I’d have heard it. For that matter, I know what it’s like feeding a lot of folk and taking care of equipment. It’s a big job, takes all sorts of people and things. I can tell you that there’s nothing like that in the plains. How many ships are you talking about?”I glanced at Amaryllis, she’d know the exact numbers better. “At least six vessels. Possibly more than that waiting in ambush. We’re talking six decently sized ships, with crews of between ten and thirty aboard.”“And I imagine they’d need more folk back where they’re from, just like the hunters need camp folk,” Three Hooves said. “So call it two hundred folk, more or less. No, a group that big would leave a mark on the plains. Prices would have been different at the fort too if they were supplying from there.”“So you think that the pirates aren’t getting supplied from here?” I asked to confirm.“They’re pirates, couldn’t they just steal what they need?” Calamity asked.Three Hooves gave him a look which had his mouth clamping shut. “Fool boy, if they stole what they needed, the price of those goods would still go up. More so, even. Merchants aren’t keen on banditry. We would have more guards being hired to patrol the city and escort merchant caravans. Didn’t notice anything of the sort this season, so they’re getting their things from elsewhere.”“That leaves the north, and Sylphfree,” Amaryllis said. “Or a long trade from the harpy mountains. Well, thank you, that eliminates a lot of possibilities. We might just run into some pirates that are either state-funded by the Snowlands, or who are hard-up for resources after buying good Snowlander ships.”“You're welcome,” Three Hooves said. “Now, I’m not quite done with you. See, I’ve heard things that I haven’t had time to tell yet, so do yourselves a favour and listen to me for a minute.”We all agreed and came closer to listen properly.“There’s a story that’s been circulating around for a while now. I hadn’t decided if it was hearsay or some silly overblown rumour, but I’m starting to suspect that there’s a grain of truth to it all. That’s often how these things are. Stories of a pirate lord who has travelled from the far west, chased by the knights of Pyrowalk across the Endless Swells to come and settle on the edges of our lands.”“We don’t hear too much about the Pyrowalk Empire,” Amaryllis said. At Calamity’s confused look, she continued. “It’s far to the west, across the Moonstruck Sea, with the Endless Swells between us and them. They’re old. Ancient, even. Mostly human, but not like Mattergrove. Richer, more set in their ways, I think.”Three Hooves hummed. “As you say, little word of those distant places reaches us. This pirate lord might hail from there, but rumour has it he’s come here to escape the wrath of his old lords and to make a new name for himself in our lands. It’s been quiet, but some people have followed the rumours. Not the average worker either. People with very particular trades from the western end of the Trenten Flat’s land.”“What’s his name?” I asked, both as tantalised and curious as a bun could be.“Commodore Megumi. The Sky Killer.”“Whoa,” I said. That was a scary sounding name. They even had a cool title! I didn’t have one of those. I kinda wished I did, though maybe not something too close to the Sky Killer.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.Amaryllis crossed her arms. “What do you know about this ‘Commodore Megumi?’” she asked.“Very little,” Three Hooves admitted. “News from so far afield doesn’t make it here, like I've said. But it’s a name, and there’s a reputation attached to it. He’s supposed to be a terror in the skies. A man who has reached the third tier, at least.”So he was at or over level thirty, and had two other classes to boot. That was a lot of skills with a lot of potential synergies. Not to mention a lot of health and stamina and all of those other bonuses to go with it. Rainnewt was around that level, I thought, and Bastion too.“Thanks,” I said to Three Hooves. “Just knowing who we’re dealing with will be worth a lot.” I bet that the sylph had a file or two on him, even if he was located far, far away from their mountains. They seemed the sort to keep tabs on strong people, just on principle.Three Hooves nodded along. “I wish you the best. Though I do hope you won’t be running headlong into trouble. Though, if Calamity’s coming along, that might well be a moot point. Boy always loved making a mess, hmm?”“Hey meow, I’ve matured a pinch since my younger days,” Calamity said. But he said it while lowering the brim of his hat so that Three Hooves couldn’t see his eyes, which cast some doubt on his assertion.“Well, I haven’t matured and I don’t plan on it,” I said. “But I think I still know better than to just run up to someone called Sky Killer and cause a fuss.”"No, you'd run up to him and ask him to be your friend." Amaryllis grumbled. She turned to Three Hooves and gave the woman a quick bow from the waist. “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate the information. Rest assured we’ll put it to good use.”With that, we said our goodbyes and then stepped back and away from Three Hooves’ carriage to a spot where we could chat with a bit more privacy. The camp was a busy hive of activity, especially since another group of gatherers were returning with all the goodies they’d found on the plains.“So, we need to tell Sylphfree about Commodore Megumi,” I said.“Obviously,” Amaryllis said. “They might be able to relay things back to us. Something’s fishy about all of this though. An infamous sky-pirate moving to the Snowlands just in time to cause trouble for the harpy delegation?”“Nya think it’s suspicious?” Calamity asked.Amaryllis nodded. “Of course it is. The delegation was a big deal. It was well-guarded, more so than any normal trade convoy, and yet it probably carried less valuables than the average trading ship... well, perhaps it did. There’s no accounting for what a bunch of nobles would think to bring along, but those kinds of goods can be difficult to fence.”“But the nobles themselves are worth something, no?” Calamity asked.“Yes, that’s true. It could just be a pirate, new to the area, trying to establish themselves as a big player by capturing an important and valuable bounty. But something tells me that’s not the whole of it. The Redemption would be worth as much as a small corvette under the right conditions. If the entire pirate fleet is made up of valuable ships like that, then they’re not spoiling for more riches. They aren't advertising their deeds, so it's probably not a play for reputation or fear-mongering. Which leaves... politics.”“Oh no,” I said. I’d gotten my fill of those lately. I was hoping that our secretive adventures in a foreign land at the behest of a foreign king to save foreign nobles would remain nice and non-political.“Well, I ain’t know nothing about that,” Calamity said. He stood up taller, which wasn’t all that tall, really, and puffed his chest out. “But as one-quarter captain of the RedemptionI think I ought to accompany you on your quest. To keep my investment safe, nya see?”Amaryllis huffed the sort of huff that was almost a laugh. “Uh-huh. I’m sure you’re not coming along because you have misplaced dreams about fighting sky pirates over the prairie like some dashing prince out of a children's book.”“More of a dashing rogue than a prince, really,” he said with a grin. “But I wouldn’t mind meeting a princess or two.”“Eh, princesses are mostly just normal girls,” I said. “They run around, plot crimes, and do shadowy things in secret just like any other girl.”Calamity blinked. “I think we’ve been spending time around a different quality of girl, you and me.”I glanced at Amaryllis, then gave her a shrug. “I’m okay with Calamity coming. He seems strong, and I think we’re going to need every friend we can find if we end up having to fight an entire crew of sky pirates.”Amaryllis shook her head. “I’m voting nay. He’s another variable to calculate, and there's no guarantee he will be useful.”“Hey now,” he said.“You were a great help in the plains,” Amaryllis placated. “But I don’t know if your skills will translate well to the sort of trouble we tend to land ourselves in. We can let Awen cast the deciding vote.”Calamity grumbled, but I had the impression he thought the criticism was fair enough.We returned to the Redemption which was still parked next to the camp. A few tents had been moved away, and a few more had popped up nearby. It looked like the camp was constantly changing as new people showed up and others ran off. The airship was a novel change though, judging by the people giving it curious looks.When we found Awen, she was on the ship’s deck with a complex device in front of her that was burning some lamp fuel to heat up a glass bulb which had some liquid pouring into a container to one side. It looked dangerous, but Awen was being pretty casual about it.When we asked her for her vote, she gave Calamity a long, searching look, then shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”That, of course, meant that it was time for a round of congratulatory and celebratory hugs!
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