I couldn’t wait to get the people of Gerald’s Rest, and most of all my brother, Richard, off of the Cerulean Swift. The ranked-up Boat had provided communal crew quarters in the forecastle, which I placed at their disposal for the journey to the flying island where I hoped they’d be able to settle, at least temporarily.

The surviving townspeople had all been warped by an excess of vim, their bodies distorted into inhuman shapes in a process that should only have affected a fraction of the population, but had somehow been artificially triggered in each of the twenty people we managed to find. We still had no idea who was behind the attack on Gerald’s Rest and the kidnapping and warping of every single person between the ages of eighteen and twenty eight, and the slaughter of everyone else. We also had no idea why anyone would go to such extremes.

We did know that we only found about a fifth of the victims, and that the rest of them had already been teleported somewhere else before we found the base of the raiders who attacked the town. We also knew that among the missing people were a pair of dwarves, who were the brothers of my gunner and lover, Marjory.

The dwarf in question was pacing back and forth in front of me, as if she could make the Swift sail faster by sheer force of will. She was about a hundred and twenty centimeters tall, but had shoulders wider than mine and a well-muscled physique. Her hair was the light blue of very hot fire, shading into a bright yellow at the ends and braided into a thick braid that reached down to her large and firm butt. She was wearing her battered leather coveralls, and the only part of her deeply tanned skin that was visible was her oval shaped face, which was wider than normal for a human but which I’d always found attractive. Generous lips were pursed in impatience under a large, yet perfectly shaped, nose. Her eyes were as bright blue as her hair, and usually sparkled with a mixture of curiosity and determination, but were now narrowed in anxiety.

“Can’t we sail any faster?” she asked for what must have been the tenth time since we’d set sail an hour earlier. “We were a lot faster before the rank-up.”

“We had enough crew members before the rank-up,” I answered. I was getting annoyed at having to answer the same question again and again, but I knew that the dwarf was worried about her brothers, and was more than willing to forgive her. “We needed two people on the rigging and one on the wheel for the cutter, but the caravel needs at least seven to use her sails properly.”

The Cerulean Swift was a Shape, or a solid construct fashioned from vim, the life force generated by living beings. When I first Shaped her, she was a ten meter long single-masted cutter. After her recent rank-up, however, the Boat had turned into a much larger three-master caravel. She was now twenty meters long with a beam width of four meters, and her three masts needed thrice as many crew members as she did before.

I was handling the wheel myself again, with my Marine Shape on the poop deck, where the Swift placed her arbalest. The rest of my Deckhand type Shapes were manning the rigging, but the three Deckhands and one Sailor could only managed two of the three masts, leaving us sailing at a far lower speed than the flying Ship was capable of.

“We could get the townspeople to do some work. After all, they’re the reason we had to rank Swifty up, and they’re the reason you can’t Shape us some new Deckhands.”

The problem was that she was absolutely right, of course. The two of us were perfectly fine with sailing on the rank I Swift, and if I didn’t have the passengers to take care of, we would probably still be sailing the fast flying cutter. And since I didn’t know all of the passengers, and didn’t really trust them, I really didn’t want to reveal the fact that I had a Pattern on board the Ship. The Patterns used to create Shapes were all artefacts left by the old-worlders, and were worth fortunes. Add that to the raised aggression caused by the warping, and I wasn’t willing to risk a mutiny by Shaping any more Deckhands until I got them off the Swift.

“None of them has any experience with sailing, and they’d probably just slow us down more.” Not that I had any sailing experience before I Shaped the Swift, of course. But the Boat had provided my with the Captain’s Attire that gave me the skills needed to pilot and captain her. “And I would really prefer to minimize their contact with Doreen.”

Doreen Forrester was one of the kidnapped townspeople, but was currently very unpopular among them. A member of the Forrester family, she should have been a powerful Shaper, and her family should have been protecting the town of Gerald’s Rest, which was founded by Doreen’s grandfather, Gerald. The Forresters, however, had turned out to be extremely negligent of their duties, and their neglect left the city vulnerable to the attack that destroyed it and lead to my passengers having been kidnapped and warped.

Dressed up as a man and using the name Darren, Doreen was my contact with the Forrester family when I needed access to their Patterns, my fence for old-world artefacts scavenged in ruins, and my friend. I still hadn’t had a chance to talk to her about the reason she was masquerading as a man, but I could guess that it had to do with inheritance issues and the fact that she was her father’s only child.

Considering the intense anger the warped townspeople felt towards Doreen, I gave her access to my own cabin in the sterncastle, where she was currently keeping watch on the still unconscious Mable.

“Speaking of which,” I continued, “you should probably go to the cabin. I don’t think Mable would be able to recognize Doreen, and I don’t want her waking up with nobody she recognizes around.”

Marjory’s gaze turned to the heavy steam cannon mounted in front of the Ship’s wheel, and I knew she was reluctant about abandoning her station while we were sailing in the wilds.

“We’ve got the arbalest and the Archers in case we get attacked,” I added. “They should be able to hold anything we encounter off at least long enough for you to get back here.”

“It’s not just the things we might encounter I’m worried about,” she muttered, but still turned towards the ladder leading down to the main deck, pausing to grab and squeeze my butt on her way. “I’ll come back to replace you for at sunset. As much as I’d like to try out the new bed Swifty made for us, we need to keep a watch until our passengers are off.”

I didn’t mention the fact that we were sharing my cabin with an unconscious serving girl-turned-mage and a warped dragon girl, since I had a feeling it wouldn’t really stop her anyway.