Shipshape

by Trey Myr

  It took us a couple of hours to reach the hill I’d seen, and the closer we got the more I felt that I was indeed looking at an artificial structure. The hill was bigger than it looked from further away, and I estimated it at around a hundred meters across. Once we got close enough to see details, I turned to port and circled around it, and about a quarter of a circle in I saw a tunnel big enough for two people to walk in side by side leading into the hill.

  We landed near the ruins and disembarked with four of the Deckhands and all four Archers, and I had the remaining Deckhand take the Swift back up, along with the two Hawks. I sent two of the Deckhands into the entrance first, followed by two of the Archers, than Marjory and myself, the remaining Archers and two more Deckhands as rear guard. I couldn’t help but contrast what was essentially a small war party with the two Hounds I started with, and I thanked my luck that I’d managed to find the Boat Pattern, without which I would still be struggling to get the gold for Shaping.

  The tunnel we were going into was too low for any of us to walk upright. Marjory had to stoop a little to fit, but I, and my Shapes, had to crawl to fit in. The tunnel looked too regular to be something carved by a stream of water, but was just as clearly not man-made. I was fairly sure some kind of beast was responsible, and I hoped we’d reach the actual ruins before running into whatever it was.

  Luck was still with us, apparently, and the tunnel opened up after only a couple of meters. There was still enough light coming from the entrance to see a regularly shaped corridor build in a seamless whitewashed style I recognized from previous old-world ruins I'd explored. We entered from what was once a wall, and the corridor continued to the left and right before being swallowed by the darkness. As soon as we could stand, I took out two torches from my backpack and lit them up, giving one to each of two Deckhands.

  The light revealed that while the walls were somehow still in an almost pristine condition, other than the hole we came through and what looked like a high-water mark indicating that the place had flooded at least once over the centuries, the floor was scuffed by the passage of countless inhuman legs. I couldn’t tell what was responsible for the scuffing, but the scratches on the floor were done by something hard and tough.

  We set off towards the left, since the floor was more scuffed in that direction and I preferred to meet whatever was living in the ruins head on rather than having it sneak up on us. Before we started, I placed one torch bearing Deckhand in front and the other behind us and drew a left pointing arrow on the wall with a piece of chalk. Making an actual map of the ruins would slow us down too much, and I wanted an indication of where we were going.

  A few meters into the corridor we came upon an opening in the right hand wall, but the room beyond it had obviously suffered greatly over the years. Spots of dried up fungi marked places were water pooled after flooding the room, and whatever furniture used to fill it had long since rotted to almost nothing, leaving behind piles of useless debris.

  Less than a minute after leaving that first room we ran into the ruins’ inhabitants. The first indication that we had company was a rhythmical clicking sound, like stone hitting stone. The sound was coming closer, so I raised a hand to signal Marjory to stop and wait. Not that she needed it, since when I turned I saw her already in the process of heating up the boiler of her steam cannon.

  The source of the sounds came into view shortly after. About the size of a large dog, the giant ant was covered by chitin that appeared more crystalline than smooth. Each of its six legs was tipped with what looked like granite, and the sound of those tips hitting the floor was what we heard. Large, vicious looking mandibles gave the warped insect a menacing look, and while a regular ant would probably have ignored a group of larger animals, warped were always a lot more aggressive than their mundane counterparts, and as soon as I saw the ant I knew it would attack.

  My Archers were the first to fire on the ant, and I winced when I saw the arrows glance harmlessly off the hard exoskeleton. Marjory’s shot was more effective, and crunched part of the ant’s left mandible, but it, too, did a lot less damage than I expected.

  “Tough little bugger, aren’t you?” Marjory grunted, already prepared to fire again.

  “I think it’s earth aligned. Those leg tips and the armor look more rocklike than organic.”

  “I can work with that.”

  She took longer to fire the next shot, but when she did I saw that the lead was white hot and it splattered on the ant’s chitin and started to melt a hole through it.

  “Nice work,” I complimented my gunner and ordered my Archers to aim for the weakened spot.

  “Can’t do too many of those,” my gunner replied. “Takes significantly more vim than a regular shot.”

  My Deckhands had caught the ant’s mandibles and were wrestling with it to prevent it from biting any of my Shapes, and my Archers were still peppering it with arrows. The immobilized ant couldn’t really do much, but it still took long minutes to wear it down and kill it. Eventually, one of the Archers scored a lucky shot to the melted part of the exoskeleton and killed the warped insect.

  “That was fun!” Marjory exclaimed once the ant was down. “I haven’t used the heated ball trick in years, and never in a real battle.”

  “That’s quite a trick. I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.”

  “Takes a blue hair to do it, so it’s not something most dwarves can do. And like I said, it takes a lot more out of me than a regular shot.”

  “Still a very nice trick, and it saved us a lot of trouble here”

  “Thanks,” the dwarf smiled warmly at me.

  “But it does bring us to a small problem,” I said.

  “Yeah. Ants tend to come in swarms, and taking on a large group of them will not be easy.”

  “We can retreat. There’s no telling if there’s even anything worthwhile in here.”

  “No blasted way. This is the most excitement we’ve had since the ghoul. Besides, lots of ants mean lots of vim for you, doesn’t it?”

  “There is that, yes.” My Deckhands had finished draining the ant of vim, and I got them back into formation. “Let’s move on then, shall we?”

  “Aye aye, Captain!”

  The corridor turned to the right about ten meters later, and I guessed that we’d reached the corner of the old-world facility. We passed and checked two more rooms before the corner, but found nothing more than the same debris and signs of flood from the first room. A second ant reached the corner at the same time as my Deckhands, and managed to bite through its arm before I realized what was happening. This was probably the greatest weakness of Shapes. They could be set tasks and would perform them tirelessly, but changing the task required the Shaper to give a different command, which made their reaction time slower than that of the warped.

  Higher ranked Shapes could be given more complex orders, such as ‘walk in the corridor and if you see an ant attack it,’ but at rank I it was either ‘walk’ or ‘attack’. Shapes made for specific tasks could overcome some of the limitation, such as my Deckhands performing complicated jobs on the Boat or my Hounds coordinating their attacks and responding to threats without input from me, but the Deckhands weren’t combat Shapes and needed to be controlled directly.

  I ordered the second vanguard Deckhand to grab onto the ant’s mandibles and keep them closed, and called up the Deckhands from the rear to aid it. The Archers opened fire on their own as soon as they identified the ant as hostile, but just like the first ant their arrows were almost entirely ineffective. Marjory, on the other hand, went directly to her heated shot trick and the molten lead started eating into the insect’s armor.

  The damaged Deckhand still had its right hand, and being a vim construct and not a real living creature, it didn’t really feel pain. Barely hampered by its missing arm, the Shape followed my orders and stabbed at the ant’s eyes while the Archers tried to hit the damaged part of its armor. The warped ants weren’t as strong, relatively, as their regular cou
nterparts, and the ant couldn’t shake off the Deckhands holding its mandibles. It still took several more minutes to deal enough damage to kill the giant insect, but my Shapes didn’t take any more damage during the battle.

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to handle more than one of these things at a time,” I told Marjory while my Deckhands drained the dead ant’s vim.

  “First thing you learn as a mercenary is that you don’t get paid if you don’t push forward,” my gunner answered.

  “What about not getting paid if you die?”

  “Most of us don’t ever learn that one until it’s too late,” she admitted.

  “I’ve got a map of the area. We could mark the hill and go back later when we’re better equipped for it.”

  “The ants are probably the reason there are so few warped in the area, and you’re not likely to be getting any vim until we leave it far behind.”

  “You know, I think you’ve got a point there. But the other side of that argument is that if this is the ants’ nest, and if they’re responsible for clearing out most of the other warped in the area, then they have to leave it to gather food. We probably missed them leaving early in the morning, but we could set up outside and wait for them to come back.”

  “Won’t work. We would have seen them out and about over the past week.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Marjory. They can’t be responsible for decimating the warped population without leaving their nest.”

  “You may not have noticed it while wearing that fancy magical coat of yours, but it’s almost winter now, and probably too cold for the ants. It’s definitely too blasted cold for me, without anything or anyone to warm me up.”

  I had to stop and think about that for a moment. It had been late autumn when I found the Boat Pattern, and it really should have been getting towards winter, but I’d been feeling so comfortable that the weather hadn’t been registering at all.

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “I haven’t noticed the cold lately, and it does make sense for ants to be in winter mode. But that means we can’t expect to catch them out in the open, and we definitely can’t go deeper into the nest.”

  “Blast it,” the dwarf cursed, and continued into a string of profanities, most of which was completely new to me. I waited patiently for her to calm down, knowing that dwarves, as warped, were naturally more aggressive than humans and that retreating could not be easy for my gunner. Eventually though, the stream of swearwords petered off, and Marjory stalked angrily back towards the entrance, so I gathered my Shapes and followed her.

  Marjory had mostly calmed down by the time the Swift dropped to pick us up, and went to the stern to return her cannon to its mounted position. But my Deckhands had barely began to furl the sails when an ant erupted from the tunnel and skittered towards the Boat.

  Marjory’s cannon was still indisposed, so I ordered one of the Deckhands to take the Swift up a couple of meters while I ran towards the arbalest. I managed to shoot at the ant before it left the firing arc, and the heavy bolt proved sufficient to pierce its exoskeleton, crippling the insect and giving me time to reload and fire again. The second shot was enough to kill the ant, and I sent one of the Deckhands down to drain it when another ant charged out of the tunnel and chomped off its head, followed closely by more of the insects.

  “I think we got our wish!” I yelled to Marjory. “The ants must have found the bodies and decided to hunt down their killers.”

  “I’m almost ready here. Just get them into my arc and I’ll do the rest!”

  I got back to the wheel and turned the Boat away from the nest, pointing the now ready aft steam cannon at the attacking ants. I couldn’t actually see what was happening behind us, but the loud woomph! of the steam cannon and Marjory’s laughter were enough to let me know things were working out.

  When the group of ants was all dead, I set the Swift down and sent two of the Deckhands to gather the vim, since I didn’t want to be left on the Boat without enough of a crew to get out if needed.

  “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” Marjory came up from the stern to stand beside me. “The mounted cannon is heavy enough to crush their armor.”

  “Good to know. It’s a pity we can’t take the Swift into the ruins. Both of her weapon mounts work a lot better than anything else we have.”

  “You think there might be more of them coming?” my gunner asked hopefully.

  “No idea. But we can certainly wait a while and see if they do.”

  The Deckhands were done draining vim and back on the Boat by the time the next group of ants left the nest. I didn’t even need to be at the wheel during the second attack. Marjory’s cannon was firing heavier balls than her mobile version, and firing faster, since the Swift could create the Ephemera ammunition inside the barrel and save her the time needed to load it. I just stood next to her as she laughed gleefully while she took the ants out long before they could reach us.

  By that evening, we must have killed dozens of the giant insects, my Deckhands were all maxed out on vim and I’d started on filling up the Archers.

  “I think I need to go and rank up some of my Shapes,” I told Marjory when half an hour had passed since we’d seen any ant activity. “Yell if you see any more of them and need me to move the Swift.”

  “Aye aye captain!”

  I had five maxed out Deckhands, giving me two hundred vim to work with, and I would need a hundred to rank each of them up. I could Unshape three and rank up the remaining two, but that would mean Unshaping the ranked up version next time I needed to Shape anything. A better option would be to Unshape two of them, rank up a third and have enough vim to Shape two new Deckhands. This would also leave me with two maxed out Deckhands which I’d be able to use to rank up one of the Archers, once I got some more vim.

  I pulled on the vim from the Deckhands, and felt the tightly woven Shapes start to unravel. The feeling of vim pouring into me was still unfamiliar enough to be a rush, but I couldn’t afford to get lost in it, since the extra vim would start to dissipate if I kept it.

  I had to concentrate to force more vim into a third Deckhand than it could normally hold, and I could feel it becoming steadily harder until I felt like the Shape couldn’t possibly hold any more. I kept the pressure going against the barrier, and after a moment I felt it pop like a soap bubble. I immediately stopped the flow of vim, and watched as the Deckhand began to blur.

  The Shape visibly grew a few centimeters in height and another few in shoulder width before it solidified again. The rank II Deckhand was still barefoot, but was wearing long canvas pants and a striped shirt. The same bandanna still covered its head, but its short knife had turned into a heavy cutlass. The whole process took ten minutes, during which nothing else happened around the Swift.

  “So this is the ranked up version?” Marjory asked curiously once the transformation was complete and I'd joined her back on deck.

  “Looks like it. I think I’ll call this one ‘Sailor’,” I looked at the new Shape carefully. “It should be stronger physically than the Deckhands, and I think that cutlass might be enough to pierce the ants’ exoskeleton.”

  “Does that mean we’re going back in?”

  “I’ll want to Shape two new Deckhands to replace the ones I’ve just Unshaped, but yeah. We’re going back in.”

  Dead ants, it turns out, have a very distinctive smell. It’s somewhat similar to vinegar, but somehow sharper. And utterly overwhelming when released by several dozen dog sized insects. We had to stop twenty or so meters away from the entrance and let the Deckhands clear the way before we could bear to approach. With the corpses moved away and the air somewhat clearer, we walked back into the tunnel and reentered the ruins.

  The bodies of the ants we’d killed inside the ruins weren’t there anymore, and I assumed that the ants cleared them away, probably while we’d been busy fighting on the surface. A little further from where we found the second ant the corridor split, with one side continuing straight
ahead at the edges of the structure and the other heading right and deeper inside. There was also a door in the left side of the corridor, but opening it showed us that while it might have once been the entrance to the facility, there was now nothing more than a dirt wall beyond. The ants’ trail led right, but I wanted to clear the ruins properly so we headed straight ahead, passing by several more debris filled rooms before the corridor turned right again at the corner.

  Following the corridor ended up returning us to the tunnel leading outside, still without running into any living ants. We went back to the intersection and headed further in. There was no sound in the ruins except for our footsteps, and I was starting to get creeped out a little by the emptiness. On the other hand, I knew that if we’d tried this before fighting the ants on the surface we’d have run into more of them by now.

  The corridor leading in was about ten meters long, and ended in another cross shaped intersection. The corridor to the right was completely blocked by a wall of dirt, and the scuffs on the floor showed that the ants came from straight ahead of us, leaving the floor on the left branch almost untouched. Once again, I chose to go left first, and we passed by more of the empty rooms on both sides before the corridor turned right. I was assuming that this corridor led all the way around just like the outer one, and that we’d run into the dirt wall at its end, but we only got three quarters of the way around before the corridor was once again blocked.

  Just like the previous one, the dirt filled the corridor completely leaving no room for even air to pass. There was no way that the blockage was the result of a cave in, and I could only wonder why the ants felt the need to seal off a part of the ruins, and I was really curious about what was inside.

  “Do we want to try and clear it away?” Marjory asked. “I like digging as much as the next dwarf, but this looks like a huge pain.”

  “I’m pretty sure the Deckhands can handle it,” I answered, “but I don’t think we should do it. Not yet, at least. I want to check the open areas first so we don’t find ourselves attacked from behind while the Shapes are busy digging.”