Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Five — Abomination Against Engineering and Good Sense
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Five — Abomination Against Engineering and Good Sense “So should we just visit the hotel then?” I asked.“Without the others?” Amaryllis replied. “That seems needlessly risky.”I nodded. “You’re right, It’s more fun with friends.”Amaryllis didn’t even react. “Of course,” she said before turning to the old guys. “I’m assuming from the way you two are geared up that you intended to come?”Tharval snorted. “What, you came here begging for our help, you know? Think we’d just let you walk into the lion’s den on your own? Bah! You folk are so green it hurts to see. I can’t imagine any of you making it out of a fight with your heads still connected to your shoulders.”“But my head’s more connected to my neck than my shoulders,” I said.“I don’t think we came here begging for help, as you so eloquently put it,” Amaryllis said, a bit tetchy. “We came here asking for some basic assistance. Besides, we’re not useless in a fight. All of us are in our second tier.”Tharval sniffed. “That’s the bare minimum to become... not even an explorer, more like the person who carried the explorer’s bags.”“Now, don’t be that way. We both know that different guilds have different entry requirements. Not all of them are as rigorous as the Stormtower and Snowlander Exploration Guilds.”“Is it hard to become a member here?” I asked.“Most are in their third tier, and if they are not, then there’s a year-long training course that we usually insist upon,” Willowbud said. “It takes prospective members to a couple of local dungeons whose difficulties are easy to manage so that new members can learn the ropes, so to speak.”“Hmph, maybe the other guilds have the right to it. Take raw recruits and toss them into the smelter. If they don’t melt right away then they might be worth forging into something usable. I dare say half the new members we get are a bunch of flower-sniffing morons who don’t know their boot from their ar-”Willowbud patted Tharval on the head. “That’s quite enough. I’m sure Amaryllis, Broccoli and their friends aren’t that sort. They made it all the way here, didn’t they?”“Hmph. Get your hand off my head, you-”I clapped my hands, both to distract them from the oncoming scuffle that I felt was about to start, and because I was a little excited. “You can come and see the Beaver Cleaver! That’s our airship. He’s the best ship that’s ever flown!”“He?” Tharval asked. “Ships are meant to be fine ladies.”“Well, I think the Beaver’s a he,” I said. “But honestly, I don’t know how to tell, really. Which bit of the ship gives away its gender?”“Well, what’s the figurehead look like?” he asked.“Oh, there’s two! They’re both furry ducks with tophats.”The dwarf didn’t seem to know what gender ‘fur-covered duck’ was, so he dropped the subject with a grunt. With that done, we left the guild as a small group, Willowbud taking the lead once we were out of the guild proper with Tharval trotting along with the rest of us.“So, I saw that you don’t wear any proper armour,” he said to Amaryllis.“I’m the team’s mage,” she replied. “And I’m a harpy besides. Armour weighs us down.”“You can’t be the team mage if someone pokes a few holes through your gut,” Tharval said. “Now, what you need is some proper plate and to give up on all that silly flying business. If you were meant to fly under your own power you’d manage it just fine, but seeing as you can’t, then you might as well strap on a few thumb-thick steel plates.”Tharval regaled us with the advantages and glories of proper plate armour while trampling over Amaryllis’ objections and ignoring any cultural misapprehensions she might have about it. It was a little rude, but also kind of funny to see Amaryllis trying and failing to get a word in edgewise. Her huffs grew increasingly huffy as we went.Eventually though, we reached the docks, and in far less time than it had taken us to get to the guild. Willowbud knew all the shortcuts, it seemed. Once we arrived, we circled around the edge of the tower, and Tharval finally changed tracks.“Now, this place took twenty years to build, you know! Had to grab steel from seven different mines and stone from two quarries. It wasn’t just getting the materials here that was hard though. We needed to invent entirely new ways of building things just to get this place started. Not to mention all the stigma of building a place like this.”“Stigma?” I repeated. “People didn’t want to build the tower?”Willowbud fielded that question. “Our nation, young as it is, is rather divided in some ways. The elven people are used to living aboveground in large, open communities, but the dwarven folk escaped the cold of the north below the earth. There were, and still are, entire groups that don’t like leaving their underground fortresses.”“Most have reconsidered things,” Tharval said. “The Storm Tower’s the shining jewel of the Snowlands. It’s hard not to want to be close enough to appreciate its lustre. Besides, you don’t think a building this grand could be built without reinforcing the ground beneath, do you? There’s nearly as much tower underground as there is above.”“Whoa,” I said. “How big is it, really? Because this place is huge already. It might be the biggest dock I’ve ever seen.”“Hmm, no, the docks back home are larger. Or some of them are,” Amaryllis said. “But none of them are enclosed. The best we have are airship ports tucked away in crags and between mountains. Even the shipyards tend to be partially open.” She gestured over the side of the nearest guardrail to the depths at the bottom of the tower. “It looks like you have entire factories here.”“Just for assembling,” Tharval said. “Most of the proper manufacturing is done by the coast and brought over by train. Then the shipwrights put things together down there.”Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.“You know, I never expected to see dwarves on airships for some reason,” I said.Tharval chuckled. “Oh, we’re awful at flying!” he said, seemingly quite proud of the fact.“I wouldn’t say awful,” Willowbud said. “Dwarves hold the records for longest flights, highest heights reached, and even the records for fastest flight.”“May Roberry the Rocket rest in peace,” Tharval said solemnly.“Dwarves are hardy folk,” Willowbud continued. “Tough and surprisingly nimble, and of course generally quite mechanically-inclined. But, ah, we elves have certain biological advantages.”“Tall bastards,” Tharval grunted. “Sneaky and quick too.”“We are more dexterous, as a rule, and perhaps better suited to the work of piloting modern airships,” Willowbud said. “Most Snowlander craft have mixed crews though, taking advantage of each others’ natural advantages.”“Oh, that’s clever,” I said. “But, ah, I don’t recall seeing many Snowlander ships about. And people say that the Snowlanders are a little isolationist.”Willowbud considered that, then nodded. “That’s probably not wrong. As a rule we’ve been focused on building a better world for ourselves, impervious to the cold and more recently there’s been a great push towards discovering new machines and contraptions.”“Lot’s of pride to be found if you’re the first to invent some new thingy-whatsit,” Tharval said. “Especially if it actually has a use of some sort. Now which one of these tugs is your ship?”I squinted across the docks, then pointed. “That one!” I said. It was still on the fifth level, where we’d left it. I could see tiny forms on the deck, some of the Scallywags, maybe? It was hard to tell from so far away.Tharval peered at the Beaver then back to me and Amaryllis. “What in the world is that?”“Uh, our ship?”“It’s got too many hulls!” he said.“I think it’s a neat design.”“Let me see this thing from up close,” he grumbled before stomping off. We jogged to keep up, the old dwarf surprisingly fast when he wanted to be. When we did catch up, he was waiting next to the catwalk leading onto the Beaver’s deck. “Well, going to give me permission to come aboard and poke at this thing?” he asked.I laughed. “Sure. Welcome aboard, Tharval, and you too, Willowbud!”The two stepped onto the Beaver, though Tharval didn’t linger on the main deck for long. He practically teleported to the rear, staring at the space between the decks and muttering up a storm. He even threw up his arms a couple of times.Awen walked onto the deck, looked a lot more awake than when we’d left. “Broccoli!” she said. “And Amaryllis.”“Nice to see I’m still mentioned,” Amaryllis muttered. Awen blushed, then smiled slightly and hugged Amaryllis first.“You’re my friend,” she beamed before turning to me and Willowbud. “Hello, Mister Willowbud,” she said with a slight bow.“Hello, Miss Bristlecone.”“Awa, please just call me Awen? You were uncle’s friend, so I guess that kind of makes you, um...”“A family friend?” I asked.“I guess so,” Awen said.Willowbud chuckled warmy. “Why thank you. I’d gladly consider myself your friend. Ah, but speaking of friends, Tharval might start taking things apart if we don’t stop him.”That got Awen to stand up straighter. “He’s going to do what?”We found Tharval in the Beaver’s engine room, poking at the engine with a wrench that Awen quickly yoinked out of his hands. “Interesting configuration you’ve got here. Terribly inefficient, but I’ll give you points for being different.”“The Beaver is a very nice ship,” Awen said. “He flies... well, and is very comfortable, even if he has a few little deficiencies.”Tharval hmphed. “Well, the engine’s much larger than what you’d need if the ship only had one of its two hulls, but probably too small for the twin setup you have. And I can’t imagine the bracing between the two being up to spec. There’s a bridge between the two halves. A bridge! It’s a wonder this thing isn’t falling apart under the strain of flight.”“I keep him well-maintained,” Awen shot back.Tharval snorted, but there was no denying that. The engine itself was covered in a nice layer of oil, but Awen had every tool tucked away in its place and she’d asked me to help her clean it once some time ago, so the engine compartment was basically spotless.“Awa, did you want to see, ah, my repeating self-loading anti-air emplacement?” Awen asked. “It’s illegal in most countries, from what I was told.”That necessitated a detour to the cargo hold where Awen’s repeating crossbow turret was still folded into the ship. Tharval hemmed and hawed over it, then started pointing to bits and pieces that weren’t well made, or parts that could be improved if approached from a different angle or with a different method.I left them to it while I ran off to fetch Caprica and see if anyone else wanted to come track down Vonowl with us. I found the princess in her room, dressed in a long blouse that we’d bought the day before and which I supposed could count as a nightshift.“Is everyone else awake?” she asked. Caprica looked like she had used every spare minute of rest afforded her, and like she could use another couple of hours.“We have been for a bit. Amaryllis and I went to fetch Tharval and Willowbud, and we’re going to invade a hotel later!”“Oh. Well, let me get dressed in something more appropriate for that kind of event then,” she said.“Okay! Join us on the deck when you’re done!”Calamity was easy to convince. There was trouble around, and he liked the idea of that, I suspect. And so, within a few minutes, the whole bunch of us were ready.
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Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Six — Doorbuster
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Six — Doorbuster “So, how are we going to do this?” I asked.“Do what?” Amaryllis asked right back. The bunch of us, plus our new friends Tharval and Willowbud, were ambling along through one of the upper-level corridors of the Storm Tower. The elf and dwarf both seemed to know where they were going, so the rest of us just followed along, even if that meant going up stairs, then down stairs, then across catwalks, then through maintenance passages and even ducking through the backrooms of a shop at some point much to the consternation of an employee who wasn’t aware that one of the walls could pop out to reveal a secret passage.It was neat how well the two knew their way around, but I supposed they were around while the tower was built, so they had the home field advantage.“I mean, how're we gonna capture Vonowl. Do we barge into the hotel and demand that he surrender? Do we go in all sneaky-like and try to catch him unaware? Maybe we can ask the nice hotel people to help us get him... or the police. Does the Storm Tower have police?”“Not really,” Tharval said. “We have guards. They’re hired by the tower directly. They might help, but I doubt it. We never get along well with them.”“We might have if you ceased antagonising them,” Willowbud said.“Bah! They’re a bunch of rockheaded fools who sold out for a bit of gold.”“Is that so wrong?” Amaryllis asked.Tharval nodded. “Of course it is! Sure, you need a bit of gold to keep the belly full and your toes warm at night, but there’s more honest ways of doing it. Are they pursuing a dream? Fighting for what they think is right? Nah, just walking around with little sticks and looking tough. Ain’t right. Now, a proper explorer? They have principles. They’re going out there to see what hasn’t been seen yet, to discover things. Same for a proper tinkerer. They’re making new things, pushing what they know. It’s art, and it’s a whole lot more valuable than looking tough for a fraction of an ounce of gold every hour.”“Is it so important to have an ideology?” I asked.“Don’t you have one?” he asked.I ran my hand through the length of my prosthetic beard as I thought. “I don’t know. I just want to make friends, explore the world, and be happy. I don’t know if that’s complicated enough to be a whole ideology.”“Well, it’s the start of one, at least,” Tharval mused.“Don’t encourage her,” Amaryllis said. “She’ll start a religion.”I nodded. “Huggism,” I said.“I think I need to point out that while Sylphfree gives its citizens the freedom to express themselves and have whichever religious beliefs they want, we also firmly believe in the separation of religion, state, and military, and therefore I cannot join you in this particular endeavour,” Caprica said.“But we have hugs!” I said.“That is a rather tempting offer,” she admitted with a serious nod. Then her lips quirked up and I giggled along with her.“I’d join huggism,” Awen said. “It sounds nice.”“We’d do snuggle hour every day, and eat cookies,” I said.“I’m not sure if you understood what I was trying to say,” Tharval said. “But I appreciate your enthusiasm, kid.”I set aside my dreams of becoming a High Priestess of Hugs as we arrived at the hotel. I was expecting it to be a grand place, with big stairs and chandeliers and one of those super long counters, maybe with some elves and dwarves in fancy red uniforms behind it, but instead I found something entirely different. The hotel lobby was relatively small, with rounded walls all around and several plant-filled boxes along the sides.A small podium sat in the center where a staff member waited, and behind them was a spiral staircase leading up.“Hello,” the reception dwarf said when our group ambled in. “And welcome. How might I help you?”“Hmph, where’s that Vonowl guy?” Tharval grumped.“What my companion here means to say,” Willowbud cut in smoothly. “Is that we’re looking for Baron Vonowl. We have a meeting with him.”The reception dwarf didn’t seem convinced. He glanced over to my friends and I, and I gave him my most disarming smile, which I hoped would distract him from the fact that we were all armed. “Right, well, the good baron is staying in the penthouse suite, but he’s not currently in his rooms.”“He isn’t?” Willowbud asked.“No, he left the premises a few hours ago, along with some of his guards,” the reception dwarf said.“Do you know where he went?” I asked. Did we miss him because we stayed up late partying and then slept in? I didn’t expect there to be actual consequences to placing fun before work!“Yes,” the dwarf said. He pointed out the door, and we all followed where he was pointing. “He left through there, and took a right.”That was all the directions he had, which... well, it wasn’t quite as helpful as I might have hoped, but it was something. “Thanks, “ I said. Then I looked to the others, hoping for some sort of idea of what to do next.“I say we ransack his room, figure out where he went and maybe confiscate anything nice he has,” Calamity said low enough that his words didn’t carry.“We can’t do that,” I said. “It’s mean, and a crime, and just... not very nice.”“Well, we do need to know where he went, and there might be some hints in his room. I for one don’t want to spend the afternoon running around this entire tower just for the chance of running into Vonowl,” Amaryllis said.I pursed my lips, but she might have been right. Willowbud convinced the receptionist that we were just going to go upstairs to check on Vonowl’s room-maybe one of his guards or servants had stayed behind and could take a message for us-then we climbed up the spiral stairs to the floors above. As it turned out, each floor above the lobby was split into several small rooms, and the further up we went, the fewer rooms per floor.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.The entire hotel was basically a small tower rising out of the larger Storm Tower complex, and the topmost floors stuck out if it and probably had really nice views.Baron Vonowl himself was staying in the topmost floor, the penthouse where the entire floor was a single suite. I imagined it was a huge pain in the butt for the staff that had to carry food and stuff all the way up there. My legs were rather warm from climbing up so many steps and all I was carrying was myself, not a trayful of whatever.“So,” I said as I came to stand before the doors into the penthouse. “Should we knock?”“Going to try to pass yourself off as a travelling preacher?” Calamity asked.“I might,” I said. “But I think Baron Vonowl might be, uh, what’s the word for someone that’s not compatible with a religion?”“A heretic?” Amaryllis asked.I frowned. “No, in Huggism, we prefer the term snugglepunk.”“Please stop inventing lore for your dumb idea,” Amaryllis begged.I had to stifle a laugh as I tapped my knuckles against the door. My friends spread out a little, with Willowbud and Tharval staying pretty close by. The dwarf stifled a yawn.Someone opened the door a crack and a chain pulled taut, keeping it shut while a harpy man looked out. “Is this room service?” he asked. Then he looked over our group and the door started to shut.I was about to say something when I felt a gust of wind blasted past me. When I blinked next, the door was rebounding off the wall, the security chain had exploded into fragments that were skipping along the wood flooring, and the insensate harpy on the other side was gently being lowered by Willowbud while Tharval, now in the penthouse, finished his yawn. “Well, are you kids going to stay outside all day?”I had kind of forgotten, what with how nice they were, that Tharval and Willowbud were experienced explorers. They hadn't retired from adventuring due to age or injury — they'd quit while they were ahead, at the top of their game. They were bursting with levels, skills, and capital-E Experience.So, I shouldn't have been surprised that they could simply step outside the realm of physical limits. But I was. My brain couldn't keep up with the information my senses were feeding it. It took an act of will to get my head back in the game.For better or worse, my friends were equally stunned. Caprica seemed to be handling it best, probably because she had grown up surrounded by Paladins who were about as cool.Calamity jerked forward, seemingly trying to recover his equilibrium. "... This guy really likes his luxury stuff," he noted, running a hand along a porcelain vase. The whole place was spacious and richly appointed, with grand windows overlooking the top of the Storm Tower and the world beyond. In a place like the tower, where I imagined most homes were on the smaller side, having lots of open space was probably a great luxury.Calamity poked at the keys of a piano, producing a few random notes while I checked on the guard that Willowbud had knocked out.“Mah, nice place,” Tharval said as he looked around. “No sign of that fish of a baron though.”The penthouse had a great big entryway, with an open kitchen space to one side, a living room on the other, and what I imagined were bedrooms down a corridor past the living room. Caprica helped me drag the guard to the living room (he still had a pulse, but it looked as if Willowbud had cast a spell of some sort to make him loopy) where we put him on a couch so he could rest for a bit.“Alright,” Amaryllis said. “Calamity, check the kitchens, Caprica, come with me to the bedrooms, Awen, Tharval, do you think you two would be able to spot hidden compartments?”“Ah, maybe?” Awen said.“Obviously,” Tharval replied.Amaryllis nodded. “Good. Broccoli, keep an eye out on the door. Mister Willowbud, I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do.”“Hey now, but you’d presume for me?” Tharval groused.“Yes,” Amaryllis said without explanation, then she headed off towards the bedrooms, Caprica following after her while hiding a smile.I grinned at Tharval’s harrumph and Willowbud’s smug smirk. “Don’t forget to look in the bathroom!” I called out, just in case.I swished Weedbane around a few times while standing next to the closed door in an attempt to unlimber my muscles in case someone barged in. If I was going to be on guard duty, then I wanted to take it seriously. Mister Willowbud looked at me, amused, but didn’t comment on anything.“Awa, we found something!” Awen said as she returned from the bedrooms.“There was a hidden compartment?” I asked as I turned.“Um, no, these papers were just on a desk in the office,” Awen said as she waved a stack of papers about.Amaryllis poked her head out of one of the bedrooms. “Well, what is it?”Awen looked at the pages, scanning them quickly. “It looks like a contract? For, ah, weapons. Lots of them.”Willowbud hummed and walked to Awen and looked at the pages from over her shoulder. “I recognize that company. They’re dwarven smiths. Tharval would know more.”“He’s cracking a safe,” Awen said.There was a loud ‘thunk’ from the far end of the penthouse where she’d come from, then a lot of really rude words.“He might be having a hard time with it,” Awen admitted. “But I found this in the meantime and I thought it might be a hint?”“Good job, Awen!” I cheered.“Yeah, nice work!” Calamity said from the kitchen, where he was holding a butter knife covered in jam in one hand and a large slab of bread in the other. I gave him a look, and he shrugged. “I was looking for hints too. And I discovered a hint that I was hungry.”Well, at least we hadn’t wrecked the place.There was another big thump from the office and the guard on the couch groaned.I winced. Maybe if we left discreetly, the hotel wouldn’t be too angry with us?
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