Chapter 23

  The clatter of boots scrambling up stairs was so loud that, for a moment, Nick thought there might be more dragonkin on their way, rushing to the deck to take flight off the crashing ship. Then the Black Witch's forces, knights clad in dented armor and mages with singed robes, emerged from the below deck, led by Sir Aldric Ironhart.

  Sir Aldric took one look around, his eyes lingering on the bodies of the dragonkin captain. He shook his head in disbelief. “We needed you to hold them off while we worked. I never thought you’d . . .” After trailing off in stunned silence for a second, he turned his attention to Nick and got back to business. “We’ve blinded the eyes of the dragonkin information web. They won’t be able to tell that the ship is crashing or know where it crashes, but now we need to leave.”

  Nick nodded. “That’s why—”

  Suddenly, the ship lurched, and the angle of the deck sharply increased, forcing him to change his stance so he didn’t topple over. Everyone reached for handholds as loose items and more than a few corpses slid past them and went overboard. One of the mages shouted in alarm as she struggled to maintain her footing on the unstable deck, but then a knight reached her and helped her steady herself.

  Nick quickly called his team over their comms, ordering them to return to the deck from the missions he’d sent them on all over the ship.

  “We need help getting people off the deck,” Nick shouted, pointing over to Lou and Elizabeth: “The paralytic toxin—they can't move.”

  Sir Aldric nodded, gesturing to two knights. They moved swiftly to where Lou and Elizabeth lay rigid, their bodies still locked by the wyvern’s toxin.

  As one knight lifted both of them up with a surprising amount of grace given the urgency, a mage right next to him cast a spell, exclaiming, “Feather’s Descent!”

  The spell created a soft golden glow around the knight and the two warriors, and then the knight just jumped over the side of the ship with them. Lou’s eye twitched, and Nick could swear he saw the paralyzed gym bro’s mouth crack open in panic, but whatever fear Lou was feeling seemed to cease the moment he, Elizabeth, and the knight started to float, their descent measurably slower than the ship’s.

  “Feather’s Descent!” the mage cried out again as four knights, all holding hands, accepted the spell before jumping off the ledge as well.

  That mage apparently wasn’t the only one with the spell either, as two of the other mages were chain casting it on their allies one after the other, prioritizing Adele and the wounded first without even being told to, before then moving on to Nick’s people and the uninjured knights, eventually leaving only Sir Aldric and Nick remaining, Seo-ah even departing before her husband.

  As the last remaining mage rushed over to the two leaders, Aldric took Nick’s hand and stared directly into his eyes: “You have proven yourself once more as the greatest Avatar the Goddess has ever chosen! It is my privilege to be with you!”

  As his words finished, the spell from the mage completed, and a strange effect immediately took hold of Nick. He felt an odd sensation of weightlessness, like he had been tossed into a pool, wash over his battered body.

  Before he could adjust to the sensation, Sir Aldric had yanked him by his hand and jumped off the side with him and the mage in tow.

  “We all saw that, right? We all saw that deep stare, right?” Topaz, who had gone before Nick, cackled above him as they slowly descended in the sky.

  “I saw it,” Maria replied, laughing along with Topaz. “Just don’t let anyone else tell Seo-ah.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’d been wondering what Nick and Reggie were doing in the forge till late hours in the night, coming back hot and sweaty sometimes . . .” Seo-ah, in an overly dramatic fashion, threw her head to the side, looking away from Nick.

  “Nnn,” Stacy commented, giving Nick an odd eye, Amanda immediately hopping in to translate as the two of them laughed: “She says she’s glad that Seo-ah is so approving of the little slash—I mean, slice of life notes—the world provides.”

  “It’s just for a spell! Don’t make it so weird,” Nick quickly responded as he looked over at Seo-ah, who seemed to be giving him the “sure sure, it’s okay” approval for something he didn’t even want or consent to.

  While they were still laughing at Nick’s expense, a terrifying cracking sound like a gunshot echoed across the deck below them as another explosion sounded from within the falling ship, letting Nick know that they had gotten off just in time. His relief felt like a momentary balm against the persistent pain from his burnt shoulder. They had all survived—battered, wounded, but alive.

  Beneath them, the ship gave a final shudder. It tilted one more time as the engines exploded, and the vessel rolled to the side like it had been capsized in the sea instead of the air.

  Then, with a shattering roar, it broke apart mid-air, each piece of debris plummeting toward the green forest below like a tiny meteor.

  The moment they touched the ground, Sir Aldric turned to Nick, still holding onto his hand. “The Black Witch will want a full accounting of what transpired, particularly regarding the demise of the captain of the dragonkin ship, so you will have to excuse us. This is where we part ways.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Of course,” Nick told him, retracting his hand from Sir Aldric’s as he turned to Seo-ah, frowning as he saw the girls still giggling at his expense. “We can also finish tending to your wounded if you want before you leave though.”

  “I would take you up on that, but none of them are still in critical condition, and we have facilities to treat them back at the citadel,” Sir Aldric informed him. “May the Goddess watch over you.” With that, he raised his hand and gave a signal to his troops. A moment later, he had departed with the rest of the Black Witch’s knights.

  “It’s so nice to know my troops are all competent. I ask them for a full accounting, and they’re coming back to give me a verbal one, instead of securing the goods and bringing those back as well,” Nick heard the Black Witch’s voice in his mind, her exasperation clear. “Oh well. They brought some parts. I’ll let your people have the rest of them.”

  Nick, still trying to get his geographical bearings after landing, unable to figure out how far they’d travelled from the herbivore camp, took a moment to survey the ice-crusted landscape around them before calling out orders. “Alright, everyone. The ship crashing doesn’t mean we don’t still have a job to do. Remember: Allen, I’m still going to need you to analyze what you can thoroughly. We want to know as much as we can about their tech, right? Taejo, don’t forget you’re on rune duty. Everyone else, I need you to start collecting the essences from the enemy corpses no matter where they landed, and look for anything of value—anything. That debris scattered a bit, so this is going to likely be a full-day operation. Got it?”

  Then, turning to Topaz, he added, “And I need you to figure out how to get Lou and Elizabeth moving again. If they can’t lift weights by tomorrow, Dad’s gonna kill me.”

  “‘Dad’? Not ‘their dad’? Just ‘Dad’? Are you treating Old Man Walters like your dad now?” Seo-ah questioned, noticing the language choice and immediately teasing him about it.

  “That’s adorable,” Topaz remarked with a grin. “Don’t worry about his Father’s Day card, boss. I’ll help you pick out a good one.”

  “Ah, well—” Nick scratched the back of his head for a moment. “Let’s not waste time on idle chat. We all have a purpose, people. Let’s get moving!” he shouted, imbuing his voice with magic and his Pep Talk skill before he even realized what he was doing, as if it was the same as breathing.

  As Nick, side by side with the others, was going through the wreckage while Adele was still working on the healing, Allen came up to him. “Hey . . . Nick, we have an issue.”

  “What’s that?” Nick asked as he turned around. Allen pushed a strange tablet at him with some markings all across it. “What do you mean, we have an issue . . . Wait, is this a map?”

  “It’s exactly that. I can’t really make out what is on the map, as I still can’t decode the runes, but based on the topography of the region we’re in and this particular symbol, which . . . seems to mark the exact location of the item you’re holding, like it’s using a magical GPS or something, there are a lot more ships floating around the regions near us,” Allen explained.

  “That ship is pretty close if I’m reading this map correctly . . .” Nick said, frowning as he saw the markings on the tablet.

  “It would seem that way,” Allen agreed.

  Nick continued staring at the map. “Wait, what’s this rune next to the ship?”

  “I’m afraid we won’t know till we scout it out,” Allen replied with a shrug.

  “Well, what’s the range of those drones of yours?” Nick asked.

  “If I were to change out the battery and give ViVi a fresh charge, she could easily go ten miles and back,” Allen told him confidently. It didn’t seem like a long distance to anyone who was used to thinking about travel ranges in cars, but for a consumer quadcopter, this was actually incredible.

  “Alright then. That’s what we’re going to need from you,” Nick told him. “We’re going to gather these parts up, organize the crew, and get back to the base for training. You’re going to need to scout that spot and find out what that rune means. Don’t get close enough to be spotted, and get back as soon as you have a report. And let’s get volunteers to keep you safe on the mission.”

  “But . . .” Allen frowned as he looked at the map. “With that distance, I’ll still need to get closer and be ready to intercept it on its return. What if we get jumped?”

  “I’ll go with him,” Rosemary chimed in, surprisingly, being the first one to step up.

  The moment Rosemary had volunteered, Allen’s face blushed ever so slightly red. He immediately stopped complaining and said, “Okay. That’s good. I don’t need too many people.”

  “I’ll go as well,” Oliver volunteered.

  “Same,” Maria said, throwing her hat in the ring.

  “I’ll join them too,” Derrel volunteered, turning the scouting party into a five-man group Nick was more than confident could handle themselves.

  “Alright then. We’re going to keep salvaging parts and then head back after. I need to consult with our wonderful Lady Ingenga and organize a way to take down these ships, but I’m all open for ideas and planning before we execute any strategies,” Nick told them as he thought about just how many ships were in the zone.

  “No ship can stay out indefinitely. They need to be resupplied and maintained. I think we know that they’ll be heading back with reports at least,” Seo-ah said as she stared at the map. “I mean, those runes that are changing next to each marker look like a countdown till they either move to the next destination or file a report or something, right? We just need to get them before they change location. It’s not like the map is registering the fact that this ship is down after all . . . It still thinks it’s right here.”

  “That’s . . . That’s true. Then that gives us a lot of time to work with,” Nick said, checking the map numbers.

  “I know those runes. They are indeed numbers,” the Black Witch’s voice told him. “You have two and a half weeks. Do you think that much time will make a difference?”

  It will, Nick replied to the witch in his head. Every well spent today is a chance that tomorrow will be even better. I’ll build that future using every minute, every hour, and every day I get.

  Assured in his conviction, he issued out the orders to his people: “Alright then. Allen, you and your crew get a move on. I want to see that footage of what you find and have you back at our base by nightfall. Adele and Topaz, good luck on the healing. Make sure you heal up the survivors that we’ve rescued from that village. Everyone else, this was a big ship, so we won’t be able to take everything. It’s best if you start sorting things by what you think is and isn’t valuable—and taking what you can. Anything with a symbol, bring to Spencer, Taejo, and Clarissa. We need to decipher their language as soon as possible, and we need to get out of here and back to base by nightfall. I do not want to imagine how lost we’ll be if we try to navigate the frozen tundra during the night.”

  It was only after he finished giving the orders, and he watched the speed at which they began to move, that he realized he’d once more used Pep Talk without realizing it, only able to take solace in the fact it wasn’t Cloak of Madness.