Shipshape

by Trey Myr

  “Alive, but battered and unconscious. I think she’ll be OK, but she’s going to have to sit the rest of this out.”

  “Probably better this way. I can’t fault her courage, but she’s really not much of a warrior. We’ll have to change that if she’s going to be staying with us.”

  “If she’s going to be staying with us. I’m hoping this will convince her to stay someplace safe after we’re done here.”

  “She’ll stay. There’s steel in that girl.”

  I kneeled down to look at Marjory eye to eye and grasped her shoulder. “Don’t pressure her, Marjory. I won’t force her off the Boat if she wants to stay, but I don’t want you convincing her.”

  “I would never do something like that!” the dwarf said indignantly.

  “You have a way of stating things as if they’re already decided and done. You’ve done it when you hired yourself to be my gunner, and you did it again when you declared that Mable is staying as our cook.”

  “You… You’re right.” Marjory looked down to avoid my eyes. “I do get carried away like that. I’ll try to restrain myself and let her decide on her own.”

  “Thank you. Now let’s get down there and deal with that caster.”

  The crestfallen look vanished from her face almost instantly, and I sent the Deckhands down, followed by the Marine and Longbowman, with Marjory and myself bringing up the rear.

  The stairs led down to a room that was almost identical to the one above, except that it only had the one staircase going back up, and that the door leading out was reinforced with heavy steel bands.

  Marjory and I stood aside, where anyone standing on the other side of the door wouldn’t be able to see us, and I had one of the Deckhands try and open the door. I expected to find the caster beyond the door, and had no doubt that the first thing they’d do when the door opened was to blast whoever opened it with a lightning bolt, and if I had to sacrifice one of my Shapes to take that hit, the Deckhands were the only reasonable choice.

  Not that it mattered, because the door was locked, and while I had picked up some skill in lock picking over the years of scavenging old world ruins, I had a feeling that this particular lock would be beyond my ability to open.

  Which left us with the dwarven approach to opening locked doors, which involved stuffing the key hole with a truly unreasonable amount of my precious blast crystal, shoving in a piece of rope to act as a fuse, lighting it on fire and getting behind the staircase before it blew up.

  In Marjory’s defense, it worked. The door was blown wide open, clanging loudly against the wall and announcing our presence to anyone who might be waiting inside.

  There were clouds of smoke covering the doorway, and we took advantage of its concealment to rush into the room and look for cover.

  The room beyond was larger than the building above, and looked like something out of a playwright’s fevered dream about the old-world.

  The entire room was lit by glowing crystals set in the ceiling, which was itself painted a blinding white. The walls were a light green color, and seemed to be better preserved but otherwise identical to the walls of the building above. Square columns of stone painted the same light green helped support the ceiling, and provided us with welcome cover from the spell caster, whom I still couldn’t see. The floor was made of large squares of what looked like marble, and colored the same blinding white as the ceiling.

  A huge crystal, as tall as a man and at least a meter wide stood in the center of the room. I couldn’t be sure without touching it, but I was willing to bet it was made of solidified vim, just like the elemental stones I’d used to give the Swift and the Marine their elemental alignment. My guess was reinforced by the lines of glowing blue metal etched into the floor and leading towards large glass tanks that were placed in regular intervals against the walls to the right and left of the entrance. The tanks had a circular base with a diameter of about a meter, and rose tall enough to reach the ceiling three meters above.

  Glowing blue clouds filled the tanks, transparent enough that I could see the outlines of humanoid shapes inside, but opaque enough to hide any details. Nonetheless, I was certain that we’d found at least some of the missing people from Gerald’s Rest, and I had a really bad feeling about the purpose of the tanks.

  Any further investigation of the tanks had to wait, however, as Marjory must have seen something on the far side of the crystal, and was waving at me to follow her. We darted from column to column, hiding from an attack that never came, and a few seconds later it became obvious that the caster was far too busy to strike at us.

  I breathed a little easier at the sight of our enemy, since they were obviously alive and not a Shape. He or she was about as tall as myself, and wearing a long hooded robe that hid away any potentially identifying details. It was impossible to know if they were warped or not, but the long staff held in their right hand looked to my experienced eyes as an old-world artefact, and I could guess that it was the lightning bolt spell, and that the caster’s vim was limited to a normal human’s and therefore exhausted from the two earlier spells.

  He was also standing inside a circle made of glowing blue metal that was still in the process of drawing vim from the large crystal. I raised my arquebus to fire, and could see from the corner of my eye that Marjory and my Longbowman were doing the same. All three of us shot at once, but the vim circle must have reached its full charge, and a flash of blue light blinded me just as I felt the recoil from my shot.

  The flash of light lasted for at least a couple of seconds, long enough for me to clearly hear a scream of pain followed by a cluttering sound of something hitting the floor. I didn’t recognize the voice, which meant that at least one of us must have hit the cloaked caster.

  I hastily wiped away the tears caused by the blinding light, but it still took a few more seconds of rapid blinking before I could see again. There was no sign of the caster, only a circle of blackened ash on the floor where the vim circle used to be and a few drops of blood scattered just outside of it.

  “What are the chances that he burned himself to a crisp?” Marjory asked. She’d been on the other side of the crystal, and it looked like she’d noticed something I didn’t, since she headed further into the room and picked something up from the floor.

  “I sincerely doubt that we were that lucky,” I answered. “This scorched circle looks suspiciously like the larger one outside, and I don’t think he’d have tried the same thing twice if the first attempt incinerated everything inside.”

  “A girl can hope,” She said and came over to hand me the artefact staff that the caster was holding. “What do you make of this? It’s trying to draw on my vim, but I don’t think it likes the taste of it.”

  I took the staff and instantly felt the familiar draw on my vim. It was far weaker than a Pattern, but still noticeable and recognizable. Of course, I didn’t have any vim for it to draw, so it wasn’t working any better for me than it did for Marjory.

  “Yeah, it’s definitely trying to draw vim. It might be the lightning spell, which would fit with it not liking your fire aligned vim. It’ll probably work best on air aligned vim, but will be able to use unaligned as well.”

  “Looks like Mable is getting a weapon to go with her shield.”

  “Marjory…” I started, but was interrupted by the dwarf’s raised hand.

  “I know, I know. I won’t pressure her into staying. I’m just saying that she’d be able to use it.”

  “Once. And even that will reduce the number of hits the shield can absorb.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, actually. Swifty can replenish my vim a lot faster than usual when I’m using the cannon on board. She might be able to do the same for the staff.”

  “The Swift can do what? You never mentioned that before.”

  “I didn’t think it was that important. I mean, she can use vim to fire the arbalest, so why not help me with the cannon?”

  “Because a Shape refreshing anyone’s vim is
absolutely unheard of,” I shook my head to clear it. “Never mind. We’ll talk more about this when we’re safely back on board. We need to see who's in those tanks, and if we can get them out.”

  There didn’t seem to be any exit from the basement other than the one we came through and we didn’t know for sure that we’d killed all of the raiders, so Marjory went upstairs to bring Mable down where we could watch over her while I looked more closely at the glass tanks.

  The lines etched into the floor were very similar to the ones making up the Patterns, and were clearly transporting vim. The mysterious caster was using them to charge what looked like a teleportation circle. They’d been mentioned in several books that survived the old-world’s destruction, but I’d never heard of one being used in recent times. From what I did remember, the circles had to connect to a specific destination artefact, which could be anywhere in the world.

  There was no way to tell the direction of the vim flow from just looking at the lines, but I was willing to bet that it was flowing into the glass tanks and the people inside them. A look into the closest tank certainly seemed to support it, as I could see more glowing blue fog blowing inside, and slowly seeping into the woman standing inside.

  She was completely naked and locked into metal restraints that held her upright and immobile. Her eyes were closed, and I could see her chest rise and fall in the even rhythms of sleep. I didn’t recognize her, but she could have easily been one of the missing townspeople from Gerald’s Rest, except that she had visible webbing connecting her fingers and what looked like gills at the side of her neck.

  I moved from tank to tank, and every single person inside them was warped. There was neither rhyme nor reason to the warping. Some people had only minor changes that seemed to be cosmetic only, and some had major changes, up to one particular woman who was covered head to toe in glistening silver and blue scales, had a long reptilian tail, clawed hands and feet, large crest-like fins surrounding her ears and a pair of large scaled wings.

  I’d checked out almost all of the tanks when I came into one that I instantly recognized. He’d grown to a height of two and a half meters, and had grey skin that looked like it was made of stone, but underneath the jutting tusks and sail-like ears, I could still recognize my brother Richard.

  I’d already assumed that these were the people taken from Gerald’s Rest, but seeing my brother confirmed it. I stood staring at Richard for long moments, and it was only when I heard Marjory’s voice calling out to me that I realized that I’d seen no trace of her missing brothers.

  Chapter 13 - Warped

  “Is that your brother?” she asked me after setting Mable down next to the big crystal.

  “Yeah. I’m guessing the rest are at least some of the missing people from Gerald’s Rest, but all of them have warped.”

  “They shouldn’t have though. Even if you fill them up with vim, most of them should still release it without changing.”

  “Yesterday I’d have said you’re right, but yesterday I’d have said that teleport circles are a myth, that elemental stones fit in your hand and that force feeding vim to people was impossible. But that’s not even the important question, really.”

  “Yeah. I can’t think of a reason to force people to warp, but it can’t possibly be good.”

  “We need to wake these people up. They might have heard something from the raiders about what this is all about.”

  “And where the rest of their force, and my brothers, might be.”

  The main problem was that this was the type of old world device that nobody had ever even heard of, let alone seen, and I had no idea how to shut it down. The glass tanks all had doors that should be able to swing open, but those doors didn’t have any handles. There were also no visible locks, but the doors resisted any attempt to open them.

  I was beginning to think that we might have to try Marjory’s suggestion and smash the glass when I noticed that whenever one of my Shapes stepped over the glowing vim channels it pulled the vim into itself and the part of the line leading into the tank would turn a dull silver, indicating that no vim was flowing in it.

  I set one of my Deckhands on the line leading to Richard’s tank, and watched as the vim inside was slowly absorbed into my brother until none of it was left. When the air inside was completely clear, the restraints holding him up unlocked and the door to the tank opened up on its own. I rushed over to catch him, completely ignoring the fact that he must have weighted three or four times as much as me, but his eyes opened before I reached him, and while he staggered a little, he managed to catch himself and walk out on his own two feet.

  “Jack?” he asked in a confused voice that had a strange gravely quality to it and was at least a full octave lower than the voice I remembered, yet was still recognizable as my brother’s voice somehow. “How did you get here? What…”

  He reached his hand to me, and his eyes widened at the sight of the huge grey appendage.

  “What happened to me?” I could hear the rising panic in his voice, and motioned him to sit down before he fell.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered, “it looks like the people who kidnapped you used old-world artefacts to cause you to warp, but I have no idea how or why.”

  He looked around him, seeing the rest of the tanks.

  “Are these all people from Gerald’s Rest?” he asked, and I could tell that he was trying to get his mind away from what happened to him.

  “I think so,” I answered. “I haven’t seen anyone I recognize, but I haven’t spent all that much time in town the past few years.”

  I sent the Deckhand to block off the vim line leading out of the crystal, and the entire system went silver at once. I could actually feel the Deckhand slowly filling up. It would take hours for it to reach full capacity, but there didn’t seem to be an end to the available vim.

  “What happened to you, exactly? We found a survivor in town and know about the attack, but I have no idea what happened after they took you away.”

  “I don’t know how much I can explain. They tied us up and put us on wagons pulled by those huge monsters they used to break the wall, and just started to head back to the border. At the beginning, I could recognize the area around town, but then it blurred and we were somewhere else. We kept going like that, and the blur happened every half an hour or so.

  “I don’t know how long we were out there, but eventually we got to a building that looked like your stories about old-world ruins and their leader drew something on the ground, and most of the raiders, along with all of the monsters, stepped into the circle and vanished, leaving a burned out circle behind. Then they took us into the building and took most of us to a big room on the second floor where they left us chained. I don’t know what happened to the rest, but every few hours they took more of us, and the people they took didn’t come back.

  “I was part of the last group they took down here, and they stripped me and locked me in that tank over there, and the next thing I know it opened up and I saw you.”

  “Have you seen my brothers?” Marjory asked as soon as Richard stopped talking. “The two dwarves from the healer’s house?”

  “I think they took them into the big circle before we entered the building. There were no dwarves in the room where they put us, at least.”

  “Makes sense,” I pointed out. “If they need warped humans for whatever purpose they have, finding your brothers must have seemed like a stroke of luck.”

  Marjory just grunted at my words and went back to watching over Mable.

  “How many of them were there?” I asked Richard. “I think we fought about thirty when we raided the building, but that can’t be all of them.”

  “I didn’t really get a good count, but there must have been a couple of hundred of them, more or less.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Even with the Ogres, I don’t see how that kind of force was enough to raze Gerald’s Rest like that.”

  “It’s because we were lazy and compla
cent,” said a new, yet strangely familiar voice from behind me.

  I turned towards the speaker and found myself staring at a pair of small scaled breasts belonging to the fully warped dragon woman I’d noticed when I was checking out the tanks. She was a full head taller than me, very slender and just as naked as she’d been inside the tank, and I had to struggle to avert my eyes and not stare.

  Up close, her scales glittered in the old-worlder’s magical light and shimmered with her every motion. The glitter pulled my eyes all over her body, and I couldn’t help but see that she had a pair of long slender legs terminating in clawed feet that could have belonged to one of the flying lizards that used to be my bane, except for the webbing between her toes. Higher up, her hips flared just a little bit before narrowing into a thin waist leading up into small high breasts and narrow shoulders.

  She must have only realized she was naked when she saw me check her out, since she snapped her wings around to cover herself, and I finally managed to raise my eyes to her face. She was completely hairless, but had a tall crest that started from her forehead and went back all the way to the base of her neck. Her ears were tall and pointed, and protected by a pair of frills that started at the corners of her eyes and swept back around the ear and down to her jaw. I could see a purplish hue to the scales covering her cheeks and had a feeling that if she wasn’t covered in them she’d be completely red with embarrassment.

  Just like her voice, the face looked eerily familiar, but the scales and lack of hair made it nearly impossible to recognize, but after several seconds of awkward silence something clicked in my mind.

  “Darren?” I gasped out in shock.

  “Doreen,” she (he?) corrected me. “There’s not much point in hiding it anymore, is there?”

  “Is this… Did you get warped into…” I started.

  “No, I didn’t warp into being a woman, Jack. I’ve always been a woman. I’ve been pretending to be a man my whole life.”

  “I…”

  “Doesn’t really matter right now,” she interrupted. “You wanted to know how these ‘raiders’ were strong enough to defeat us.”