Shipshape

by Trey Myr

  “Works for me, as long as we don’t leave it behind. You might be in this for the vim, but I would like to get paid, and there might be decent loot behind.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m still a scavenger, and we don’t leave any rocks unturned.”

  We backtracked to the intersection and went deeper in. The heart of the ruins seemed to be nothing more than a stairway leading up to the second floor, and we went straight up. On the second floor, the stairway was located in another otherwise empty room, and when we left we were in an intersection almost identical to the one on the floor below. There wasn’t any dirt wall blocking any of the directions, and the scuffed floor showed that the ants mostly used the corridor on our left. Once again, I chose to go away from the insect’s preferred direction first, and turned right. It was immediately obvious that the water never got to the second floor, and when we reached the first room on our left it became clear that it used to be a bedroom.

  The remains of a single large bed dominated the center of the room, the wood and linens rotten but still recognizable. A small, broken down wardrobe was located on the right side of the room, and what might have once been a writing desk took up space on the left. We quickly searched the wardrobe and desk, but couldn’t find anything of value.

  The rest of the rooms were probably the mirror images of the first before the passage of centuries. Time, however, did not treat them all the same way. Some had almost whole beds and piles of debris instead of wardrobes. Others had nearly pristine desks and a pile of dust for a bed. But all had once held the same furniture in the same layout.

  “I think this must have been an inn of some sort,” I mused aloud. “Though larger than any I’ve seen in modern towns.”

  Marjory just grunted instead of a reply. We’d been searching every room we came across, and had so far found nothing other than a few old world coins. I could tell that the dwarf was getting antsy, but I knew that I would never get her out of the ruins without properly searching them in their entirety. Not that I wanted to. I wanted more vim and loot too.

  We’d almost finished going all the way around when we came upon a large hole in the floor. A dirt ramp led from the far side of the hole back down into the first floor, and I could see the ants’ scuff marks starting at the very edge of the ramp.

  “Looks like we won’t have to tear down the blockage,” I told Marjory. “This must be the ants’ way of keeping their nest dry when the first floor is flooded.”

  “We’re going down there now. I’m bored of these ruins, and I want to see if there’s anything left to fight in the nest. We can check the rooms on the outer ring on the way out.”

  I didn’t have any reason to argue with the hotheaded dwarf, and the hole was small enough that we could pass around it and reach the ramp without backtracking again.

  We followed the dirt ramp down to the first floor and straight through another hole, leading us into a dirt tunnel barely high enough to walk in, and too narrow to proceed in anything other than single file. The tunnel split soon after, with one branch leading further down and another horizontal branch leading forward. We followed the horizontal branch to a large circular room filled with hundreds of dead animals. The bodies were covered by a thin crystalline shell which must have protected them from rotting, and I could see both regular beasts and warped in what was obviously the colony’s food storage.

  There didn’t seem to be anything of use for us in the room, and neither of us wanted to search through the grisly pile, so we backed up and took the tunnel leading further down. We passed through a few more similar storage rooms on our way down before we reached what must have been the heart of the colony and the queen ant’s room.

  The queen’s chamber must have been at least a hundred meters long, and its walls were covered with mounds of eggs. I couldn’t get an accurate count in the dim light from our torches, but there had to be at least as enough eggs to fully restore the colony after our topside battle. The queen ant lay roughly in the center of the room, and a pair of ants was in the middle of transporting yet another egg away from its abdomen to the edge of the room

  The giant ants we’d been fighting before had been about the size of a large dog. Next to the queen, they looked like regular insects. It was the same brown as the ground the nest was burrowed into, and it took a while before I could make sense of it. The giant insect was twenty meters long and four across, and rose to a height of two meters. Its mandibles must have been as long as I was tall, and could probably tear an armored knight in two.

  Fortunately for us, she was also weighted down by a huge egg sack as big around as the Swift and seemed incapable of moving. The four ants attending her, on the other hand, were under no such constraint and the pair that wasn’t burdened by an egg charged at us as soon as we entered. Marjory’s molten lead shot hit the one on the left before it could take more than a couple of steps in our direction, and I sent two of my Deckhands to wrestle it and keep it away from us. The Archers’ arrows still bounced off the ants’ exoskeletons, but a lucky shot took out one of the already wounded insect’s eyes. I sent the third Deckhand and my single Sailor to attack the second warped, and while my rank I Shape couldn’t do more than keep it at bay, the Sailor’s heavy cutlass left deep cuts in the ant’s body wherever it struck.

  A second shot from Marjory started to burn another hole in the left ant’s armor, and the Sailor had managed to severe the right ant’s head from its body, and I was starting to believe that the battle was completely one sided when the second pair of ants abandoned its burden and raced to join in. On their own, they wouldn’t have made much of a difference since the original pair was dead by the time they were close enough to be a threat, but the queen herself chose that point to add to the chaos.

  Immobile and about fifty meters away from us, we both assumed that the queen wouldn’t be able to aid her drones, and concentrated all of our attacks on the more mobile workers. A large ball of acid hitting the Sailor and causing it to immediately dissipate proved us wrong, and in a single second we found ourselves facing two healthy ants with one of our only two effective attackers down.

  The queen spat a second ball of acid at one of the Deckhands, but I was ready for it and managed to order the Shape to dodge. Marjory landed a shot on another ant, but I knew that at best she could empower two or three more attacks, and would then be left helpless until she could rest.

  “Back away!” I yelled at my gunner and started to retreat towards the corridor.

  “No blasted way!” the dwarf yelled back, still charging for another shot. “I am not running away from a bunch of insects!”

  “Neither am I,” I answered and had one of my Shapes dodge another ball of acid, this time at the cost of getting its leg bitten clean off by the ant it was holding. “But we’ll have a far easier time fighting these two out of range of the queen’s acid!”

  She fired another shot at the wounded ant and managed to finish it off, then grudgingly began to fall back, keeping even with myself and the Archers. The last remaining worker ant finished off the wounded Deckhand and started to follow us, and I had the remaining two grapple it and keep it away while the rest of us retreated. I lost another Deckhand to an acid ball before I lost sight of the queen because of the rising corridor. I felt the last Deckhand dissipate, though I couldn’t tell the precise reason, and assumed that the ant would follow us soon.

  “How many shots do you have left?” I asked Marjory.

  “Just one more, and then I’m out of vim. Should be enough for one ant, if your Archers can hit the hole I make in its armor.”

  “Should be, but I think I’ll prepare the arquebus in case we need something extra.”

  It was starting to become a habit, unfortunately. Any major fight we had ended up requiring me to use one of my precious charges of blast powder. I only had enough ammunition for nineteen shots, and nowhere to get more for at least a few more months.

  I didn’t usually enjoy being proven wrong, but I was really not
going to complain when the ant followed us into the corridor and Marjory’s shot splashed on its head, blinding it and giving my Archers a perfect target. Four arrows hit the insect’s newly vulnerable spot, piercing its brain and killing it instantly.

  “Ugh,” I sank down to the ground and set the arquebus besides me. “I think we need to rest up before we go after the queen.”

  Marjory didn’t say anything in reply, and just sank down to sit across from me and closed her eyes. I knew she’d probably exhausted all of her vim on that last shot and would be extremely tired until she could restore it, so I set the Archers to guard us while I waited for the Deckhands to reform and for my gunner to wake up.

  ✽✽✽

  It took half an hour for my Deckhands and Sailor to reform, and for Marjory to recover from her vim exhaustion and wake up. I knew that a normal human would be fully recovered after half an hour of rest, but dwarves were warped, and could hold a lot more vim. They’d still need to accumulate it at the normal rate of one vim per year, unless they use Shaping to drain it from other living beings, which meant that I could guess that Marjory had about twenty vim, but I couldn’t actually be sure without getting into conversation topics which I’d always been told were impolite.

  Regardless, I trusted her enough to accept that she’d recovered enough to fight the queen ant. In all honesty, I wasn’t that worried about the queen. She could spit acid at us, but she was still immobile and couldn’t even turn around. All we had to do was circle around and attack her from behind and she would be helpless without its workers.

  I sent two of the Deckhands into the queen’s chamber first, and had them jump to the side immediately. As I’d expected, the queen reacted by spitting a ball of acid, which my Shapes could easily dodge. The rest of us ran inside immediately after the attack, knowing that the queen would need a few seconds before she could attack again. The queen managed to shoot another glob of acid before we got far enough behind to be out of its reach, and then I ordered the Shapes to start attacking.

  The queen’s exoskeleton turned out to be a lot tougher than the workers’, and Marjory’s shot wasn’t enough to burn through it. The Archers were completely useless, since the queen didn’t have any weak spots from behind. I had to order the Sailor to attack the same spot Marjory weakened before we did any noticeable damage to the huge insect.

  The heavy cutlass broke the weakened chitin, but it turned out that the queen wasn’t quite as helpless as I thought, and one of its legs rose up and pierced through the Sailor’s right bicep. It wasn’t enough to take the rank II Shape out of the fight, but it wouldn’t be able to use its right arm until it healed.

  I sent the Deckhands to hack at the leg and try to release the Sailor, and a few seconds later managed to get all of them back to a safe distance from the queen. The huge insect was trying to turn around and face us, but it would take long minutes before we would be in any danger from her acid. I ordered the Archers to try and hit the break in the queen’s armor, but even the arrows that managed to pierce into its flesh did very little actual damage.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Marjory shook her head. “It’s too big to kill this way. We’re going to have to attack its more vulnerable spots.”

  “You’re right,” I answered. “I think we need to aim for the back of her head. You’ll start and then I’ll send the Deckhands to strike at the same spot.”

  Marjory inched to the side, trying to find a spot to aim at the queen’s head without being in her line of fire. I sent the Archers around to the front of the queen to draw her fire, since they weren’t of any use otherwise. I felt one of them dissipate after the huge ant hit it with her acid, and then Marjory fired and her own molten lead shot hit the queen at the spot between its head and neck.

  The giant insect hissed in pain and anger, but couldn’t turn fast enough to prevent my Deckhands from rushing at the weakened spot and slicing away at the damaged chitin, or my Sailor from attacking left handed and slicing off its head.

  The two of us took a few minutes to get our breathing under control after the battle, and I sent my Deckhands to drain the incredible amount of vim the queen had. I wanted another rank II Sailor to man both the wheel and arbalest, and then I planned on starting to rank up the Archers.

  “Now that’s what I call fun!” my gunner said with a wide smile. “Now how about we see if queenie here had some decent loot?”

  The ants must have taken most of the bodies from the hotel down to their nest at some point, and we found the remains of at least two dozen corpses. Marjory did not share my squeamishness, and I left her to sift through the pile of bones and went to look at the dead queen.

  Any living creature had a chance to become warped when it had more vim than it could hold, and a warped creature would give birth to others warped in a similar way. In much the same way an elementally aligned warped would have descendants with the same alignment. However, for an adult warped to gain an elemental alignment, it would need to be exposed to elemental vim. And if this queen was the original queen of this colony, and I felt that that was very likely to be the case due to its huge amount of vim, then it might have an earthstone somewhere on its body.

  It took half an hour of searching and all of my Shapes working together to roll the dead queen over, but my efforts were eventually rewarded when I pried loose a small black orb embedded into the queen’s abdomen.

  “I’ve got a nice haul of coins, and a couple of pieces of jewelry here,” Marjory called out from behind the body. “Anything interesting on your side of things? I thought you said you didn’t have the skills to remove useable pieces from that thing.”

  “I don’t,” I rounded the queen and smiled at the dwarf and showed her the stone. “I was hoping to find this.”

  “I have no idea what that is, but it doesn’t look nearly good enough to go digging around in a dead insect body for.”

  “This is an earthstone. It’s worth as much as the shield spell we found on the ghoul.”

  “Nice one. Are you going to use it?”

  “I’m not sure I have anything to use it on.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve got a dozen shapes now. There’s got to be something you can use it on.”

  “Not really. I mean, the Hawks are going to get bigger and stronger, but they’ll lose their flight ability. The Archers will get harder to destroy, but it’s not really a good enough change to be worth an elemental stone. Most people use fire or sky stones on them, if they can even afford a stone.”

  “What about the Deckhands? Or the Swift, for that matter?”

  “Can’t use it on the Swift. It’s already air aligned, and you can’t get two elements on a Shape. And the Deckhands are a total crapshoot, since nobody has their Pattern other than me.”

  “So you could be getting a huge boost from it?”

  “Sure. Or I could be burning a large amount of potential gold on something that will be barely useful.”

  “You can say that about every elemental stone, and then you’ll never see what your Deckhands can become.”

  “Or I could wait until I have enough gold that losing a stone wouldn’t be an issue.”

  “I like your caution, Jack. It’s a good trait in a captain, especially when you have dwarves in your troop. But sometimes you need to stop thinking so much and just grab what you want.”

  “I…”

  “Life won’t wait forever, you know. You’ve got to grab her when she’s offering, or you’ll lose out on that sweet, sweet kiss.”

  While she was talking, Marjory walked over to me, grabbed my coat as if to demonstrate her point, and gazed up at me intently.

  “Are we even still talking about the earthstone?”

  “I don’t know, captain. Are we?”

  The differences were a little strange at first. I had to lean down to reach, and her head was turned up in an angle that couldn’t have been comfortable. She was also a lot wider than any other woman I’ve met. And her mouth was
hotter than a human’s. But it was as sweet as any other woman’s, and when I sank down to my knees to reduce the height differences, her body pressed against mine and was soft and warm and womanly.

  “About blasted time,” She growled at me when we separated for some much needed air. “But we are not doing this in a nest full of dead giant ants.”

  I wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment, and we could barely spare the time to watch for an attack from any remaining ants on our way back to the Swift.

  We managed to keep control long enough to reach the surface and board the Swift, but not a second more, and I found myself sitting with my back to the mast and my legs straight. Marjory shucked off her cannon in record time and stood with her feet planted on the outside of my thighs. At this position, I only had to tilt my head a little upwards for my lips to reach hers, and I let my hands roam over her wide back and down to her smooth ass and heavily muscled legs.

  We’d only been kissing for a few seconds when she pulled away and started to fumble with the buttons holding my Attire closed. I tried to help her, but she swatted my hands away with a growl, leaving me with no choice but to lean back and let her undress me. When my coat was finally out of the way, Marjory went to work on my shirt, pulling it over my head as fast as she possibly could. Then her mouth was on mine again and my tongue was in her hot and sweet mouth, dancing with hers.

  I don’t know how long the kiss lasted, but eventually it wasn’t enough anymore so I pushed her away to get at the buckles of her leather outfit. Marjory held her arms sideways for me to push the overalls down from her shoulders and to her waist, and then held on to my own shoulders and raised one leg after another to help me remove the garment completely.

  I took a moment to admire Marjory’s naked form for the first time. Her short and wide body was heavily muscled from both her dwarven heritage and years of martial training, but still managed to be smooth rather than bulging. Her skin was deeply tanned all over and completely unblemished, and her wide shoulders led to strong arms that were still holding on to me and pushed together a pair of magnificent breasts. Each one of the large tanned globes was bigger than I could grasp, and tipped with large, dark, areolae and rock hard nipples.