by Trey Myr
Even worse than the wiping out of the old-worlder’s civilization was the shattering of the world. The scholars claim that the continent was once one big mass of land, surrounded by unimaginably huge bodies of water. When the old-world was destroyed, the continent was shattered and its fragments were flung into the sky, where they float ever since. Arianor stood on the largest flying island we knew about, and there were hundreds of smaller islands floating around, above and below us.
We didn’t know how large the island was, so we couldn’t estimate how much of it was settled, but nobody doubted that the wild parts were far larger than the settled ones. And the wilds were populated by bandits, beasts and monsters.
The distinction between which was not always clear cut. Vim was generated by every living thing. A healthy human would generate about one unit of vim per year, and could hold up to twenty. Other creatures had different generation rates and capacities, with larger creatures generally generating and holding more vim than smaller ones.
In most cases, excess vim would dissipate into the surrounding. In some extremely rare cases, however, the excess would remain inside the creature, and when enough of it accumulated, the creature would change in a way that let it hold more vim, becoming what was known as ‘warped’. The giant spiders I’d fought in the ruins were a good example. At some point, a single spider in the ruins must have accumulated excess vim, and the excess enlarged it. Its progeny inherited its size, and within a few generations the ruins were overrun with giant spiders.
The same could happen to people, of course, and it's an accepted theory that vim excess gave rise to the elves, dwarves and other humanoid races we’d run across. It was even possible for a person to intentionally take in an excess of vim through Shaping, harvesting and Unshaping and artificially induce changes, though actually controlling those changes was chancy at best.
The bottom line of all this is that in the hundreds of years since the old-world fell, the beasts in the wilds had more than enough time to change, and you could never know what you might run across. This was part of the reason that settling the land was such a slow process. You couldn’t just build a village where fire breathing cows might run over it. You had to clear the dangerous warped before you could bring people in.
The thing was, the kingdom maintained manned outposts at the borders with the wilds. But the soldiers stationed in them weren’t there to clear out the warped. They were there to stop things from crossing into the settled lands. It generally took a rich man with a lot of private guards or a powerful Shaper to clear out land, after which they’d get the title to that territory and the kingdom would build new outposts at the new border. But between expansions, the kingdom was content to guard the borders.
Which meant that the warped were free to roam about and breed, unless somebody entered the wilds to thin them out.
And that was the job I planned on doing, at least for a while.
The closest Outer Outpost to Gerald’s Rest was two weeks away on foot, which translated to about two days of sailing. As was becoming my new habit, I stopped the Cerulean Swift out of sight of the Outpost and approached on foot, accompanied by my Hawks and one of the Deckhands. As I was coming from inside the kingdom, the guards didn’t seem alarmed to see me and let me approach.
Outer Outposts were always located at the border between land that was ‘cleared’ of dangerous warplife and the wilds. They were placed a day’s ride from each other, and constantly patrolled to ensure that nothing dangerous could enter the settled lands.
They weren’t always successful, of course. The occasional lucky beast or crafty band of raiders would manage to get past the patrols and strike at a town or village, like the ones that raided Gerald’s Rest and killed my parents and Darren’s grandfather.
“State your name, origin and purpose,” one of the guards asked when I closed enough for conversation.
“My name is Jack Baker, from Gerald’s Rest. I’m a Shaper and seek to enter the wilds and fight for vim.”
“Are you now?” the guard asked with a raised eyebrow. “We haven’t had a Shaper in this part of the kingdom since old Gerald Forrester cleared out the territory for his town.”
“Well, I’m not quite up to that level, but I figure I can help you thin things up a bit and improve my Shapes while I’m at it.”
“Well, I certainly can’t fault your timing. Been heating up here lately, and we can definitely use some assistance.”
“Any chance you could tell me what the trouble spots are?”
“I can give you some of them, at least. There’s a pack of warped wolves roaming out there that have been trying to give us the slip and go towards Gerald’s Rest. We’ve got some kind of warped flying lizard snatching up people and eating them, and there’s a band of raiders based somewhere in the vicinity.”
That was definitely worse than just “heating up”. You’d usually hear about a single large warped or a group of smaller ones at a time. Two groups and a band of raiders was probably running the guards ragged. It would also make things harder for me, since at least two of those groups would have the ability to attack the Swift.
Of course, that also meant more sources of vim and a large probability of gold, since warped tended to be worth a lot more than regular beasts and raiders tended to accumulate both warped humans and goods.
“Thank you for the information,” I told the guard. “I’ll see what I can do to make things easier for you guys.”
“You sure you want to head out there? Far be it from me to tell a Shaper what to do, but you seem a little underpowered for what’s out there right now.”
“Your concern is appreciated, but I have more available than what you can see.”
“Suit yourself, Mister Baker. Good luck out there.”
“And to you as well,” I replied and turned back to head towards the Swift.
Of the three possible targets the guard told me about, the raiders would be the most lucrative in terms of gold. On the other hand, the warped would offer more vim, and would probably be easier to hunt. As I had enough supplies for a month, gold with which I could buy more and a cargo of whitesteel I could sell when I ran out of gold, the warped were clearly a better target. And of the two different types of warped I could expect in the area, the wolves were probably the easier target.
I was somewhat lacking in combat ability. I needed two Deckhands to run the Swift, but I couldn’t man the wheel and arbalest at the same time. Which basically meant the Boat would be stationary while I was firing, making me an easy target for the flying lizards. This was not, of course, an insurmountable issue. If I had another Deckhand, I could have it take either the wheel or the arbalest. I had a hunch, based on what the Attire was telling me, that a Deckhand wouldn’t be very good at those tasks, and that I’d need to rank it up to make it more effective, but it would be better than nothing.
With only the two Deckhands, however, going after a ground bound target like the wolves was a far better option. Which just left me with the small problem of finding them. Fortunately, warpwolves had much of the same needs as regular wolves, and chief among them was the need to find food. And the easiest place for a carnivore to find food was near water. I raised the Swift up high so I could see further, and went in search of a water source.
I found a river quickly enough, and half an hour of flight brought me directly above it. I sent the two Hawks to scout around me, and started following the river, confident that I would locate a pack of warpwolves in next to no time.
Three days later, I was no closer to finding them than I was when I left the Outpost. There was plenty of wildlife along the river, and I was able to bring down a deer with my arbalest early on the second day, which gave my Deckhands a very small amount of vim and provided me with some fresh meat to alleviate the boredom of dried rations, but there didn’t seem to be anything hunting them.
The river I was following took me away from the border and deeper into the wilds, and I was at about the edge
of the area I felt comfortable hunting in with my current Shapes. Close to the border, the guards would kill anything that tried to cross into the settled lands, and people like me would periodically cull the warped. Further away, the warped were free to grow bigger and more numerous, making them that much more dangerous.
I turned the Swift around to head back in the direction of the border, but instead of following the river, I cut across at a narrow angle to cover new ground. I was now flying over an almost featureless grassland, dotted here and there by small clumps of trees. Before long, I could see a smudge to on the horizon to starboard, and turned my bow in its direction. The clump had just resolved into a line of trees that must have marked the edge of a forest when one of my Hawks screeched.
It seemed that while I was busy hunting for wolves, something else was busy hunting me. It was about half as long as the Swift, from snout to tail, and covered with green scales. It had a wingspan of five meters, and I could see vicious talons on the joints of the leathery appendages. Its legs looked strong enough to carry off a horse, and tipped with more talons. A long, reptilian head and a mouth full of dagger like teeth completed the rather terrible vision, and I knew that I’d just found the flying lizards the guard told me about.
When I imagined fighting the flying lizards, I imagined coming at them head-on, and having to abandon the wheel to take up the arbalest and shoot them, and that was not a fight I wanted to find. The reality of fighting them was much worse, as the lizards did not have the decency to come at me from an easy to shoot direction, but were instead coming from above me, one from port and the other from starboard.
The only silver lining to the whole debacle was that the lizards didn’t seem intelligent enough to figure out that the Swift wasn’t an animal, and were aiming at the sails rather than at me. This gave me the opportunity to take my arquebus from where it lay next to me and prepare to fire.
My Hawks, under orders to defend the Swift, were harrying the lizards, which was enough to throw off the starboard warped’s aim so that it smashed into the deck instead of the sails. It hit hard enough to break through the deck and into the hold, but also hard enough to stun it, which gave my Deckhands a chance to close in at attack with their daggers.
The second lizard tore a hole straight through the main sail and tore at the rigging. It kept on flying for a few more seconds, but then started flapping its massive wings to regain its altitude for another pass. The warped was much slower on its rise than it was on its dive, and I had ample time to aim at it and fire. In what I found to be a very fitting turn of fate, my bullet passed through its wing and left a matching hole to the one the beast tore through my sail. Unlike the Swift, however, the lizard couldn’t stay in the air with a large hole in its wing, and once I made sure that my Deckhands had taken out its wingmate, I brought the Boat down to finish off the wounded beast.
With both of the lizards down, I let my Deckhands syphon their vim and went to inspect the damage to the Swift. The main sail was completely useless, and the rigging was torn to shreds. Even worse, the lizard that smashed through the deck damaged the starboard wing sail, and the Boat would be grounded until it was fixed.
Every Shape I’d ever heard of could heal itself when it got hurt, and even reform after being destroyed, and I could see that the Swift was no different, and was already starting to repair itself. I estimated that it would take an hour before she could hover, and another half an hour for the main sail to be fit for actual sailing, and I set to reloading the arquebus and waiting until I could continue.
Which was naturally the precise moment that the wolves decided to show up.
As it turned out, there was a reason I had trouble locating the wolves from the air. The entire pack must have been descended from an earth aligned warp, which manifested in green coloration which made them virtually invisible in the tall grass. There were five of the beasts approaching me, and since I was already grounded I sent the Deckhands to meet them while I went to load the arbalest. The large weapon had a firing arc that covered a half circle in front of the Swift and could be raised to fire almost vertically if needed, but had limited downward mobility and if I wanted to use it on the wolves, I needed to keep them at least ten meters away from the Boat.
I sent the Hawks to harass two of the wolves and distract them, and pulled the large lever that cocked the large crossbow. A thick, meter long bolt shimmered into existence as soon as the string was caught. The wolves were coming closer, and I could see that one of them was larger, colored a darker green and covered in what appeared to be rose vines. When my Deckhands were five meters away from the beast, it stopped its advance and shuddered, and a stream of flying thorns peppered my Shapes.
I could tell that the Deckhands weren’t badly hurt, but that barrage would cripple the Hawks if it hit them, and I certainly didn’t want to be on its receiving end myself. The rose-wolf stayed back while its pack mates leaped towards my Deckhands, and I took careful aim with my arbalest and fired at it. The rose-wolf must have felt something, since it tried to dodge at the last moment and what was meant to be a killing shot instead just clipped its shoulder.
My Deckhands, meanwhile, were subjected to the same tactics my long gone Hounds used against the giant spiders. Whenever a Deckhand was facing one of the wolves, a second beasty would attack from behind, going for the legs in the hope of crippling the enemy. Unlike the giant spiders though, my Deckhands had air support in the form of the Hawks, and the flying Shapes dove at the attacking wolves in order to force them to abort the attack.
So far, neither the wolves nor the Deckhands had taken any significant damage, but I could tell that the larger rose-wolf was preparing for another thorn barrage. I cranked the lever as fast as I could to reload the arbalest, and was ready to fire by the time the wolf started to shudder. Once again, the large beast somehow felt my attack and managed to dodge at the last second, but it had to abort its own attack to do it. And this time I was ready for it to dodge and followed the bolt up with a shot from my arquebus. The wolf tried to dodge the lead ball just like it dodged the bolt, but was still unbalanced from its first leap and my shot hit its front left leg and shattered its bone.
The now much slower wolf howled in pain and tried to retreat from what it now saw as an unwinnable situation, but I was already reloading the arbalest, and the wolf was no longer capable of evading my third shot. It still took two more bolts to bring the large warped down, which gave the remaining wolves enough time to hamstring and eliminate one of my Deckhands. The four canines were now focusing on the second Deckhand, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they managed to kill it. But with the large rose-wolf out of the picture, I could turn the arbalest on the smaller beasts, and these wolves didn’t seem to share their leader’s uncanny dodging ability. My bolt took one of them just as it was leaping towards the Deckhand, and the Hawks managed to distract its pack mate from performing a follow up attack.
The Deckhand was fighting completely defensibly and not even trying to strike at the wolves, and the Hawks would need to score a hit to the warped’s vulnerable eyes to do any significant damage. Fortunately for me, the wolves weren’t smart enough to understand where the bolts were coming from, and I settled into a rhythm of firing and reloading. The range was short enough that most of my shots landed, and before long the last of the wolves was lying dead in front of the Swift. Only one of my Deckhands was still standing, and I made it syphon the vim from the fallen enemies. The wolves, just like the flying lizards, were bigger and stronger than the spiders I hunted in the ruins, with the one significant exception being the larger horse-sized spider, and I felt that the Deckhand was maxed out before it finished syphoning the vim.
I was planning on having my Deckhands get most of the vim from my targets for a while, since I needed to Shape more of them. Most rank I Shapes were similar to the Hounds in their vim requirements, which meant that in order to rank up one maxed out rank I Shape I would need to Unshape two more, leaving me with ab
out twenty vim. Alternatively, I could Unshape three maxed out rank I Shapes and have enough vim to rank up two more. What it came down to was that I needed more Shapes before I could start ranking up, and since I couldn’t Shape more Hawks without going back to Gerald’s Rest, I wanted most of the vim I harvested to go to my Deckhands. Unfortunately, by the time my second Deckhand finished reforming the remaining vim would have dissipated, so rather than lose it I had the Hawks split the leftovers between them.
I now had to wait for both the Swift to repair itself and the Deckhand to reform, but I also had things I needed to do.
The first thing I did was reload the arquebus. I hated using the expensive ammunition for the weapon, but it had already saved me twice today, and I was not about to be caught with it empty. I really needed to Unshape the maxed out Deckhand and Shape four more in its stead, but I also really didn’t want any more wolves to find me while I was grounded and with nothing but the Hawks for protection, so any Shaping would have to wait until the Swift was back in the air.
Fortunately, both the wolves and lizards seemed to be territorial, and I didn’t encounter any more of them. It took half an hour for my Deckhand to reform, and another half hour before the Boat’s wing sails were in a condition to take off.
With Swift back in the air and the Deckhand reformed, I felt safe enough to do some Shaping, and went into the aft cabin. Once I had five Deckhands I could start working on ranking one of them up to serve as a gunner.
Five warpwolves and a pair of warped lizards weren’t enough to give the soldiers at the Outpost significant issues, and I assumed that there would be more of them around. Fortunately, nothing bothered me while I Shaped the new Deckhands, and by the time I was finished the Swift was back in shipshape. Before I continued searching for more warped, I made sure to reload the Swift’s arbalest and leave it prepared to fire in case I ran into more lizards. It was yet another advantage of using Shapes, since a mundane crossbow would be ruined if kept under tension for long.
