The Mists of Death are taboo; none who enter return, or so we were told by the local death spirits. We intend to challenge that notion. We have brought wizards, warriors, equipment, knowledge, and experience; no matter what dangers lie inside, they will not faze us.

However, in the unlikely case that we do die, we leave our travel log here for the future explorers of our glorious Kingdom.

For Alabaster,

Casius Esteban and the 17th explorer team

- A letter placed on a dusty, rotting notebook.

Axehand fell back on the deck, once again rocking the ship; and the whale, with its tail tip missing, released an ear-piercing bellow of pain as its flight destabilized, heading away from them and seemingly unable to turn around.

“Open the sails!” yelled Marcus, coming back to his senses. “We must ride the wind before it turns around! And Laura, don’t you dare let up!”

“I’m trying,” she replied through gritted teeth. Axehand looked over his shoulder, grunting a chuckle at everyone’s incredulous gazes, and the airship flew away. Behind it, the whale thrashed in mid-air, swinging its stump like mad as it struggled to balance without a tail.

Its bellows continued to fill their ears for a long time, but the distance quickly increased. They were flying with the wind, and the whale could barely keep itself afloat, let alone turn around to chase them.

“We did it!” Jerry cried out, panting. “We survived!”

“Technically, you are already dead, Master,” replied Boney, clucking a bit. “But yes. We made it.”

“Axehand…” Marcus made sure everything was in order before turning to the undead. “That… how did you even do that?”

The skeleton grunted, reaching for his flask and taking another large swig as if nothing had happened.

“Axehand is super strong,” replied Jerry. “And now, with this new overcharging trick, he’s even more so.”

“He sliced the entire tail apart,” Marcus intoned. “That’s way beyond the reach of his axes.”

“I have no idea either, but if it works, it works.”

“That makes no sense!”

“Can we focus, please?” asked Laura from the side, her voice strained. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”

“Do you mean we will fall to our deaths?” asked Boney, looking at the torn valve.

“Yes, so do something about it.”

“Oh, crap!” Marcus’s eyes widened. “We must land immediately. Men, keep the sails half-open. Laura, can you release fuel steadily?”

“The best I can do is small bursts.”

“Crap. Okay, do that. Everyone else, prepare for a rough landing.”

“There’s a swamp over there!” yelled Boney from the ship’s front. “We could land in it.”

“Let’s do that,” Marcus agreed. Laura dissolved and recreated her water bubble, making the ship drop a few feet like a rock. Everyone wobbled.

“Hang on to something,” she shouted, struggling to stay upright. Sweat was already tricking down her forehead. “This is the best I can do!”

“Boney, take the wheel,” said Marcus, rushing to the prow. “I see a mud lake; we’ll land there. Laura, lower us to thirty feet off the ground.”

“How the hell can I know that?!”

“Keep going until I tell you!”

The ship kept dropping a few feet at a time, slowly but surely descending. The swamp grew in their vision. The tallest trees almost scratched the hull.

“That’s enough!” said Marcus, narrowing his eyes. “Billies, raise the sails fully. We need to slow down as much as possible.”

They complied, but a ship’s momentum was hard to stop in mid-air. Thankfully, the airshipwrights had thought ahead, and they’d made the wheel work by opening two flat blocks of wood at the right and left side of the hull respectively.

“Goddamnit, we’re going too fast!” yelled Marcus. “Boney, prepare to turn right. Axehand, grab the left stopper and force it open when I tell you! You two must work together. With both stoppers open, we’ll have a chance at making it.”

Axehand stared back defiantly.

“Please!” said the treasure hunter, and the double-skeleton finally complied with a grunt. Reaching down from the left side of the deck, he grabbed the top of the stopper and prepared to pull.

“Are you ready?” said Marcus. “Three, two, one… Now!”

Boney turned the wheel at “one” so the ship turned sharply right for a moment before Axehand acted. The stopper resisted as he pulled, clearly not meant to work manually, but it was unable to resist his strength; something gave way and it swung open.

The ship rocked as it straightened and began to lose speed, both stoppers acting as their name would indicate.

“Keep them there!” said Marcus, looking down and trying to calculate the distance. “Laura, we’re thirty feet in the air. I’ll need three short bursts. Drop us in three, two, one… Now!”

The ship protested as it dropped, making everyone’s stomachs fly for a moment before they crashed into the deck. A moment later, the process was repeated, and by now, Jerry could see trees jutting out to their left and right. They were zooming by way too fast.

“I’m not sure this is a—”

The water bubble disappeared and hot air whistled out of the valve’s hole as the airship landed in the mud, its hull instantly crashing into the ground below and dragging through it.

The moment they landed on the deck, everyone flew forward again. Jerry rolled on the deck, almost crashing against the railing before Headless got in the way, taking the strike for his Master. Laura, too focused on controlling their descent, flew off before Axehand reached out with one hand, easily and gently stopping her mid-air.

Marcus cursed as he crashed against the base of the prow, while the Billies, somehow, remained glued to the masts. The entire ship groaned as its hull was grated off, and it toppled to the side.

Everyone landed in the mud as the airship reached the end of the mud lake and its prow tore into a thicket of short trees, uprooting some of them and locking the ship in place with a massive bang.

Everything came to a still, and absolute silence ensued, echoing in their ears harder than any sound had.

Marcus raised his upper body, taking a deep breath as he wiped the mud off his face; this small lake was less than a foot deep, apparently, and filled with floating waste—weeds, sticks, logs, and, most recently, broken planks.

“We survived…” he muttered before laughing. “Hah! Take that, Abdul. I told you I could fly an airship!”

“We survived, but I don’t think the airship did…” Jerry—perfectly safe in Headless’s embrace—spoke up. “It looks a bit broken. How will we return it at this rate?”

“What?”

“We borrowed it, remember? And you, you big goof…” He turned to Headless, whose head was missing, flung who-knows-where by the fall. “I could handle this fall myself. You didn’t need to do that.”

Headless did not respond whatsoever. He’d probably smiled, forgetting that his head was no longer with him.

“Is everyone okay?” asked Jerry, looking around him. The undead surfaced one by one, shrugging off the mud, except for Axehand, who seemed to have landed on his feet. He held Laura in a princess carry, taking care not to hurt her with his bones.

“You saved me, my hero,” she said, smiling gently. “Can you let me down now? Not on the mud, if you can.”

Axehand grunted, placing her down at the edge of the small mud lake. She turned to the others.

“Why are you lying down?” She smirked. “Stand up already, we need to hide the airship. That whale could return at any moment.”

Axehand grunted in displeasure, while Jerry laughed.

“We should find Headless’s head first,” he said. “Maybe he can’t drown, but being buried in the mud must be unpleasant anyway.”

Headless still didn’t respond—he was probably trying to nod. A moment later, he worked out the fact that his head wasn’t visible and gave a thumbs-up.

Marcus stood up and looked over himself, completely covered in mud. He glared at a pristine Laura. She smiled back.

“Let’s get to work, everyone!” said Jerry, uncaring of the mud all over him. “We must find Headless’s head, then quickly hide the airship.”

“How do you propose we do that, Master?” asked Boney.

“By searching this mud lake until Headless winks at us.”

“I meant hiding the airship.”

“Oh. We could throw trees all over it, I guess?” Jerry looked over at the ship’s prow, surrounded by uprooted short trees as it was—most barely reached ten feet in height. “Axehand can help out; he’s very strong. And if we don’t have enough trees, he can easily cut a few down. He’s not the world’s best lumberjack for nothing.”

Axehand grunted in pride, proudly raising one axe into the air.

Marcus facepalmed before he could think better about it. “Oh, great,” he said, “now I’m covered in mud again. This is going to be annoying, I can feel it.”

It was. The mud lake might have been small, but it was still a few hundred feet in diameter, and Headless couldn’t help them much as he couldn’t see anything. They all ended up trudging through the mud for a solid ten minutes, soaked beyond salvation, while Laura watched on from the side.

In the meantime, Axehand was throwing tree after tree over their fallen airship, hiding it from any eyes in the sky. When he ran out, he easily cut new trees with one swing each. He really was the world’s best lumberjack.

“I found something!” exclaimed Jerry.

“Is it the head?” asked Marcus.

“No, it’s a cool fish. Look!”

He proudly raised a small form into the air; it resembled a brown fish spine, except it was thrashing about.

“The Dead Lands even have skeletal fish. How odd,” he said, smiling.

“Better put that down, Jerry,” said Marcus, “or the little fucker will try to gnaw through your hand.”

“Nah, fish can’t do that. Look at how cute it is; I’ll name it Fishbone. What do you say, Fishbone? Wanna join us?”

The fish skeleton thrashed manically. Jerry could easily suppress its soul if he wanted to, but, just like with the whale, he felt such overwhelming chaos in there that there was no way he could tame it.

“Oh well,” he said, throwing it back into the mud, “goodbye, Fishbone. Have a happy unlife.”

The fish swam away at top speed, almost instantly disappearing into the mud.

“Why didn’t it attack you?” Marcus asked again, straightening his body. “I thought wild undead were berserk.”

“No idea.”

“Not all of them are,” replied Laura. “Some are quite docile. It depends on the species; the smaller ones are generally tamer, though I’m not sure why.”

“You sure know a lot, don’t you?” Marcus raised a brow.

“I’m a well-read girl.”

“Sure.”

“I found Headless’s head!” exclaimed Boney, raising the head before bringing it close to his own. “Look, Master; with two heads, I’m double as smart.”

“That’s still zero,” said Laura, drawing a few puzzled looks that quickly turned into amused ones.

“My joke was funnier,” said Boney.

“It really wasn’t,” she shot back.

Axehand was just finished with his personal project, having laid dozens of trees on the airship already, and he scratched his axes together in satisfaction for a job well done. Only a corner of the balloon was visible now, but he’d covered it in mud so as to be discreet.

Jerry smiled. “Great job, Axeha—Wait, is that log moving?”

On a floating log right next to Axehand, something shone like a row of gems. They were teeth; and in the next moment, the mud erupted as a large, reptilian form lunged out.