Fortunately, we were close enough to the ground that the fall was only enough to stun me for a couple of minutes. I got up, groaning at the pain from my bruised muscles, to see the giant porcupine sniff about itself in confusion at its foe’s disappearance. A quick glance around showed me that the girls were also getting to their feet, seemingly unharmed except for minor scrapes and bruises. The contents of the Swift’s hold were strewn around us, but interestingly enough, everything we’d bought that might have been considered part of the Ship, such as Mable’s cooking paraphernalia and Marjory’s steam cannon, was missing.

“We need to get out of here before that thing realizes where we are,” Mable whispered.

“I think I’d prefer to lure it away,” Doreen answered. “We’re going to want to reload everything once the Swift reforms, and I’d rather not let it have our supplies. I can fly just ahead of it so it chases me, and then once it’s far enough away I’ll fly out of its reach and come back.”

“Shatter that!” Marjory snarled quietly. “That thing hurt Swifty, and it needs to die.”

“Are you insane? That thing took the Swift out with just its tail. How are we going to kill it from the ground?”

“The same way we should have done it from the start,” I answered. “I never should have brought her low enough for it to attack.”

“You had to,” Marjory argued. “The arbalest and cannon can’t aim lower than the deck, and the lightning staff has a limited range. You’d never have killed it with just the Longbowmen.”

“No, but I could have done it with the Beetles.” The porcupine was starting to sniff in our direction, and I sent the Sailors out to harass it and try to divert its attention from us. “Just keep the Swift out of reach and send them down as soon as they reformed. Unfortunately, we can’t bombard it from safety right now. Doreen, I need you to lure it away like you suggested. Meanwhile, I’ll Unshape the Deckhands and make some more Beetles. It’ll take a while to Shape all those Beetles, and we need that thing to ignore us while I do it. Mable, Marjory, you two are on guard duty with the Longbowmen. We don’t know what else lives around here and might want to make a meal out of us.”

“Aye aye captain!”

I’d never seen Doreen try to lift off without jumping out of the Swift, and while I’d never mention it to her, it was certainly not a graceful sight. She started off running, flapping her wings as fast as she could, and soon shifted to long, hopping strides that took her a meter or two high, covering about five meters with each hop. It took her nearly a hundred meters to gain enough speed to lift off, and she was still flapping furiously for long minutes until she got high enough to start gliding on the wind.

By that point, the porcupine had caught up to the Sailors and tried to eat them, getting more and more frustrated with each Shape that dissipated into nothingness in its mouth, and Doreen managed to catch its attention without any effort.

With the beast’s attention firmly away from us, I went to the Blast Beetle Pattern, which had fallen to the ground with us despite having been hung up in my closet. I had no idea why it was here while others items we’d brought on board had dissipated with the Swift. The best guess I had was that it hadn’t been on board long enough for the Ship to consider it a part of herself, but that was pure speculation.

I straightened the Pattern down on the ground, and set to work Unshaping Deckhands and using the vim to Shape more Beetles. It took forty minutes to Shape four new Beetles, and I knew that Doreen had to be getting tired by the time I was done. I knew precisely where the porcupine was, since I had my Hawks keep an eye on it, and I sent the Beetles after it.

Fortunately, the giant Warped didn’t seem to have any ability to heal itself, and it, too, was getting tired from the battle and chasing Doreen. It was also so much bigger than the Beetles that it wasn’t even noticing them, and I sent all six in to attack it at once. As far as it was from us, we could still hear its pained squeal when the Shapes exploded on its hide, but while the attack left it grievously wounded, it still wasn’t enough to kill it.

Doreen, seeing that I’d started my attack, flew up high, and the hurt and confused beast spent the next ten minutes looking around in anger and fear, until the reformed Beetles reached it again. This time, I only sent five of the Beetles to attack, keeping the last one in reserve, and when the porcupine opened its mouth to squeal, I sent the last one in to explode from inside its mouth. This was finally too much for even the giant Warped, and the now headless beast fell down dead.

The three of us collapsed down in relief, joined a few minutes later by an exhausted Doreen. Unfortunately, the beast was too far away for my Longbowmen, Sailors and Marine to reach in time to harvest any vim, but the Hawks where both on site, and the Beetles had reformed fast enough that I could have them back fast enough, which meant that I once again had some surplus vim to work with, once the Swift was back and I had the Deckhand Pattern to use.

I did send the Sailors and Marine over to the corpse, and they got back a couple of hours later with enough fresh porcupine meat for a very nice dinner, as well as a few dozens of its large quills. I didn’t have any particular plans for those, but I might be able to sell them when we got back to civilization.

Giant porcupine, as it turns out, is tasty. There wasn’t anything other than grassland around us, but the wood meant for the Swift’s oven worked just as well for an open campfire, and Mable’s spices were all available and intact. The meat was similar to pork, but sweeter, and very good when roasted over the open fire.

We were grounded until the Swift could reform, which meant we had to stand watch during the night. The Shapes, while tireless, weren’t very good at reacting to changes without someone to order them around, but they could be ordered to obey people other than myself, which meant that whoever had the watch would have the muscle to handle most of the things that might attack us. We were all hoping that the giant porcupine didn’t have a mate that might come seeking revenge during the night, but I was sure we could handle just about anything else.

The Swift was back by morning, approximately twelve hours after she dissipated, and after a couple of hours spent reforming the Deckhands and reloading everything and putting the hold in order, we were once again sailing in the direction of the dwarven mountains.