The skyship was slow at the moment, and that was about the only reason Swick was permitting its deck to remain heavily used. Felicia was glad. To face her thoughts in the open air, with winds seeming to snatch them away behind her, was bad enough. Facing them cooped up down under the decks, surrounded by grunting pirates, would’ve been another thing entirely.

  A plank creaked behind her, and she whipped around to find Swick himself- her new captain- leaning against a railing. For all his…Offness, the man seemed entirely at home on the decks, not seeming to sway in the slightest even as turbulence rocked the entire vessel. The benefits of long experience, she supposed. It made Felicia wonder how the fuck he’d gone and crashed his ship in the first place.

  “Coin for your thoughts?” Swick asked, not coming any closer. He had a way of speaking that made him easily heard, despite the wind howling as fast as a man could run between the five or six feet between them. Again, Felicia imagined it was practice. This one was more at home miles in the air than she was on land. Than anyone she’d ever met was on land.

  “We’re coming back without Nemo.” She noted, and he nodded. “That’s a failure.” Felicia added, expecting an argument, a falling face, expecting, at least, that the captain would make something of the fact. He just shrugged.

  “Kid made his choice. You made yours first.”

  Felicia bristled, began to argue. Then paused. He wasn’t wrong. She’d insisted on not sending another note to Sphera, she’d been the one to push Swick on it. She still wasn’t sure why he’d conceded to her, maybe wouldn’t ever find out. But when she’d made that decision, she hadn’t meant…

  What, for anyone to die? Except for Sphera, yes. She’d underestimated Nemo, Felicia realised. Failed to consider that the boy was as kind as he was. Kind enough to throw himself into a city under attack for the sake of one woman, at his own expense. Suddenly she felt a hundred times worse about herself.

  “We can’t go back.” Swick told her, replying to Felicia’s question before it could even be asked.

  “We can.” Felicia replied.

  “We shouldn’t then.” Swick shrugged. “You made your choice, Nemo made his. Now I’m making mine. This isn’t the ship that tore apart that battlefield, not now, we don’t know how many magi are there, how powerful. For all we know Mafari himself is waiting to blast us out of the sky. If you told me to swoop in and rescue someone guarded by a hundred trebuchets I’d do it, but I won’t do this.”

  Felicia ground her teeth, fighting futilely for some semblance of calm amid her own thundering thoughts. She needn’t have bothered, it was nowhere to be found.

  “I don’t want the kid to die.” She scowled. Swick’s eyes softened a fraction.

  “He has that Demon with him.” The captain reminded her. “Most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Or, well, maybe…Fifth.”

  Felicia couldn’t help cracking a grin at that. “Fifth?”

  “Well there’s Silenos, obviously.” The captain shrugged. “Then the Dark Lord, then Lilia, then Galukar. Xekanis makes the top five but…Damn, it’s odd that he’s that low.”

  “I can’t believe you have a tiny woman above my father.” Felicia giggled. Swick looked suddenly defensive.

  “She eats people!” He snapped. “And I’ve heard stories about that battle, let me tell you, tens of thousands turned on their own allies at a single word from her, maybe more. Mark my words-”

  Whatever words, mark-worthy or otherwise, Swick would have uttered, Felicia never got to hear. The black man appeared before them before he could finish.

  For one moment, the world seemed to slow. Swick’s eyes went wide, hands blurred into motion as Felicia opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out, the air was simply ripped out of her lungs and she dropped to cough and gasp on her knees as the man deftly stepped back from Swick, who now slashed at him with a face frenzied by unexpected battle.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “ENEMY ON THE DECK!” He roared, and Felicia had never been so pleased to see the man’s optimization for flight in action. His voice cut through the winds like they were still air, carrying well down into the under-decks.

  But it would still take an age for mundane or lightly-Vigourous men to reach them. She sucked in reluctant breaths, forced herself to rise and splayed her hands out.

  Bombs flew forth from them, miniature things of foreign construction. Sourced by the same people who provided all her knowledge over mechanisms. They flew well, surrounding the black man a moment before detonating and shaking the vessel itself with the force of it.

  Felicia winced, but didn’t stop her motions to keep attacking. From her coat she pulled out her next device, the double-handed repeater that spat iron bolts out so fast they almost shattered on impact. They shattered now, that much was certain. Splintering apart against…

  A shield the black man had wrapped around himself, and perhaps the strongest Felicia had ever seen. Her arrows were a match for Ranger bolts, able to penetrate stone walls, and here they were turned aside like nothing at all. The man flicked his wrist, and Felicia shot backwards with a cry.

  Her power was not just in knowledge, nor in Vigour- though Felicia had both. It was Reason. That strange, grounding force so many feared as the antithesis of magic. They were right. Where magic undid the world’s natural laws, Reason enforced them. Reduced entropy, weakened random chance, made every design less subject to the million unknowable imperfections which a being without such preternatural connection to the world would be forced to create.

  No human could fly without magic, and precious few with. Felicia was no exception, yet, but she could glide, and glide well. At a single gesture her false wings emerged, catching the winds and tossing her back onto the ship’s deck to tumble and roll.

  The fight had already degenerated even then, one mast snapped and great holes punched into the decks where attacks had failed and missed. The black man stood amid twenty others, weapons hurled at him to be deflected without effect, face still and contemptuous. Swick was not furious anymore, merely…

  Terrified.

  That fact terrified Felicia herself, because she’d not seen half so much fear on the pirate’s face since they fought the Dark Lord. Now he looked as if half his body’s weight would leave him as sweat.

  Finally, all at once it seemed, the black man appeared to grow tired of letting them fight. He gestured once and the ship tilted downwards, casting men off its decks and sending Felicia to roll along it. Even swick fell, his intimacy with the skies counting for nothing against such power.

  Every tumbling body halted, twisted, shot up and then smashed back down into the deck. Felicia was among them. She felt the hard wood shatter beneath her, stars danced in her eyes, and when she finally regained her bearings she was staring up at the black man, and finding eyes upon her that were colder than any she’d ever seen. Regarding her as less than a person, a thing. When he spoke, his voice bore a contempt to match.

  “Your father has moved against me.” He said, low, calm, controlled. “He will regret that, and you will be how I make him.” Without another word the man reached out, grabbing Felicia’s head before she could repel him. Her limbs were bound by her sides by some invisible energy, keeping her from it even if she tried, and she gasped as something wormed its way into her mind.

  Felicia didn’t realise what had happened at first, not even after he released her to drop down.

  “Tell me.” The man instructed. “What is fluid pressure?” Felicia frowned, obviously-

  Obviously…

  Her heart lurched, throat tightened, stomach twisted. She was going to puke, Felicia stared up at him in horror.

  “You know nothing about engineering, nothing at all.” He said simply. “Less than an ignorant peasant, but I have left your passion for it, and the memory of how skilled you once were. Consider this a warning. Do not cross me again, or I shall do far, far worse the next time.”

  The black man did not leave, he was simply there one moment and gone the next. Felicia just lay there, even when the pressure around her subsided. She stayed still, trembling, breathing. Thinking. She tried to recall the devices she’d used, her bombs and glider. Tried to recall how she’d made them- and found the physical acts of doing so were clear as ever in her memory.

  But she knew nothing about why they’d been necessary, had no idea about what they’d achieved. Couldn’t even begin to guess at what each step had done, why it had done it, how it might have been done better later, or worse if she attempted it too lazily again.

  A sob escaped Felicia. She fought it back, for one moment. Then gave up the next, let her lungs take over and empty themselves with more gasping, retching, blubbering heat as the tears began to well in her eyes and the weakness began to radiate through her pores.

  None on the deck said a thing, all just looked at her. Felicia didn’t meet their eyes. It wasn’t contempt she feared, or apathy, or disgust. There was something worse than any of that aimed at her now, she was certain.

  And she couldn’t bring herself to meet their looks of pity.