Rhys spent the rest of the morning in the markets centred near the docks. He made each sovereign go as far as he could as he bought the things they needed. After some initial thought, he also invested in some trade goods to test the waters, if nothing else.

Arn Creth wasn't known for the size of its spire. After all, they had only one city and a scattering of farming and logging communities across it all. What they did have, however, was an abundance of ironwood tree groves. The towering ironwoods could be found all over Arn Creth. The gigantic trees were actively cultivated for their lumber and sap, which were integral to cloud shipbuilding.

Rhys had only left Arn Creth a few times in his life. Each time had been in the company of a senior artificer, so he'd had little opportunity to explore and take in the sights. Still, he knew that ironwood was a valued and expensive commodity elsewhere. Some spires were unable to grow the trees at all and were entirely dependent on imports. Given that ironwood was used in almost every type of construction, that was an expensive proposition.

With that in mind, Rhys bought three shipments of unprocessed ironwood. Each shipment was ten standard units of ironwood and took up enough space for two pallets. All three shipments cost him eight sovereigns, which was a tremendous amount. When he considered that his lunch was ten bits and a sovereign was a hundred bits, spending eight sovereigns on just ironwood made him feel a little ill.

The only positive to it all was that the merchant threw in delivery to the Endeavour for free, saving Rhys a logistical headache. Booking it in for delivery first thing in the morning, Rhys paid a deposit and moved on.

Zaxx had asked for raw materials, so Rhys would take a log or two for the Endeavour and sell the rest elsewhere. He just hoped he was right about the price of ironwood in other spires.

He found a different vendor specialised in ironwood sap a few minutes later. With the thought of trade goods still in mind, Rhys bought six flasks with delivery for a sovereign and a half. He was confident the flasks would sell well to other artificers if no one else. The vendor also referred him to someone dealing in ship supplies, and four sovereigns later, Rhys had bought enough consumables for a several-week voyage. The expense was painful, but it covered the crystals needed for fuel, the morcal fluid to process them, and things like food and drink for him. Rhys even bought more crystal than was suggested, preparing in advance for the increased appetite of the Endeavour that Zaxx had warned him about earlier.

It was difficult to really judge how long the crystal stocks would last, but he wanted to make sure he had enough to get to another spire and back, at the very least.

With the essentials and some basic trading goods sorted, Rhys spent a few hours visiting some of the artificer shops near the dockyards and buying up any supplies they had going for low or reasonable prices. He'd do some work on the journey there, and if in doubt, they'd make good emergency trade items. Metal, for instance, was always at a premium. There would always be someone looking to buy some at a good price. A trick that Rhys had used in the past was to buy up scrap and failed artificed devices, then reclaim the resources used to make them. It was dull and repetitive work, but he'd made a tidy profit from it.

Fifteen sovereigns down but much richer in goods, Rhys returned to the Endeavour and spent the afternoon settling in. He decided he would take the larger cabin for himself as captain. Rank hath its perks, after all. With that in mind, he took two small tables from the other cabins and added them to his own, making a rudimentary workbench. He wasn't sure how busy he'd be when travelling between spires, but a place where he could practice his runework or work on a project would be nice.

'You realise I could have done that for you once I claim the ship?' Zaxx's slightly mocking voice whispered into the back of Rhys's mind, making him start and drop the box of parts he was carrying straight on his foot. The box bounced and landed on its side, sending the parts scattering everywhere as Rhys hopped and clutched at his foot.

'Damn it! Give a man a little warning, please?' Rhys winced as he felt the throbbing pain coming from his foot. The impact had been quite heavy, and he just knew that it was going to bruise. Gingerly setting his foot down, he looked over the scattered parts and sighed, grabbing the box they'd been in and starting to pick everything up once more.

'I'm sorry, I didn't expect you to be so… jumpy.'

'Yes, well, I just, kind of forgot about you,' Rhys said, a little embarrassed by the admission. Part of him wondered if that had been a deliberate pun, but he doubted it.

'You forgot about the eldritch being that you'd made a pact with, the same one that now exists within your ship?' Zaxx said in a mocking tone.

'Well, more that I forgot you would be everywhere in the ship, not just in the engine room,' Rhys qualified, picking up the last of the fallen parts and putting the whole box on his makeshift workbench. 'What were you saying anyway?'

'I was reminding you that once I have claimed the vessel, I will be able to arrange the furniture to your satisfaction directly. I can also add any basic missing pieces desired if you provide the raw materials. All I need is your will to allow it.'

'Oh, okay,' Rhys said to the empty room, rubbing his head absently as he considered Zaxx's words. 'We really need to have a conversation about what you can and can't do.'

'Then let us complete our preparations and leave. I long to stretch myself out and occupy the full ship. Once the claiming is complete, I can provide practical demonstrations of what abilities I can manifest.'

'And I will still be in command?' Rhys tried to make it a statement, but the words came out in a questioning tone despite his best efforts.

'We are bound, you and I. I can do nothing without your intent to guide me, and you are stuck here without your ship. Put your faith in the pact if nothing else.'

Rhys had to admit that the whispering voice in his head was compelling, which may well be an issue in itself, so he dropped the point for now. He still had concerns, but chief among them was getting the Endeavour stocked up and leaving Arn Creth behind. He still worried about someone asking about the ship core that he'd gotten his hands on.

With little else to do, Rhys idled away the rest of the day, spending his time working on some runes he'd only recently learnt. Every rune had to be the correct shape to work properly, which wasn't an issue for the simple ones, but it was a nightmare for the more complex shapes. Once you got down it, though, it was all a matter of practice and muscle memory.

-**-

'Rhys, awaken.' Zaxx's voice jerked Rhys awake, the young artificer almost falling off the chair he'd fallen asleep in. 'The shipments are arriving.'

'Uh, thanks,' Rhys said, yawning as he got up and headed down toward the cargo hold. He'd gotten a little carried away last night and had fallen asleep while working, but it wasn't the first time that had happened, and he doubted it would be the last.

Sure enough, when he opened the hatch and looked outside, he found a group of men piling his goods onto the cargo area. Heading down to them, Rhys forked out ten bits to each man for them to load the ship itself, the extra work costing him bits, or half a sovereign, in total. It was annoying to lose extra money on something simple, but there was no chance Rhys was getting the heavy boxes and barrels, never mind the ironwood logs, up there by himself. Thankfully, Zaxx didn't need the processed end material to make his repairs, so the logs that Rhys had bought could be used directly by the eldritch entity, which he hoped didn't require him dragging them to the engine room.

'There we go, boss, all done,' one worker said, placing the last of the water barrels alongside the cargo bay wall. 'Anything else you need from us?'

'No, that's all thanks,' Rhys said, somewhat impatiently. He just wanted to get moving now.

'Alright, let's go then, boys,' the man waved a hand and rounded up the rest of the workers before heading back down to the docks.

Rhys watched them go before resealing the inner and outer hatch. He took a moment to ensure that the seal was tight and the lock was in place. This would be a particularly bad time for it to fail after all.

Grabbing a flask of the morcal fluid and a sack of akast crystal from the supplies that had been delivered, Rhys carried them down to the engine room. Upending the sack of crystal into the grinder's chute, Rhys took a moment to make sure it was free from obstruction. Satisfied that the crystal would be worked steadily, Rhys broke the wax seal on the flask and poured the white liquid it contained into the fluid tank.

The Endeavour was still powered, so the two systems worked automatically, with freshly ground crystal sprinkled into the fluid. Over time, the morcal fluid would break down from use, but that was a distant problem right now. Rhys had bought enough to last him for quite a while.

New energy thrummed through the ship a moment later, sending a shiver of excitement down Rhys's spine as he all but ran back up to the top deck and the rear of the ship. It was time to get going.

'Have I missed anything' Rhys muttered softly, taking his position on the raised platform right at the rear of the ship.

'Not that I am aware of, but this is as new to me as it is to you. The anticipation of new experiences is delicious, but I am ready for us to leave now.'

‘Me too,' Rhys said, translating Zaxx's words to mean "hurry up and get going" in his head.

The pilot's area was essentially the ship's wheel, several levers for various functions, and a few basic instruments. Rhys had done his homework years in advance, knowing which lever was which and the proper order to do things in. Sadly, none of that helped dispel the anxiety that was clawing at his insides.

The Endeavour was sat in a docking slip currently, so Rhys activated the ship's runes first of all. The massive runes carved into the ship acted to lighten it and make it easier to move. Some larger vessels required a full suite of runes simply to fly, which would have an incredible drain on the energy of the cloudship.

The Endeavour had four vapour thrusters, one large one at the rear, one small one at the front and two medium ones underneath the ship, one fore and one aft. Slowly pushing up the lever for the ventral thrusters, the ones underneath the ship, Rhys felt a thrumming vibration run through the Endeavour, one that only got stronger as he slowly pushed the lever higher.

He could feel the moment the thrusters gained enough power to start lifting the ship, the rest of the docks beginning to slowly fall away as the Endeavour rose majestically into the air. Grinning like an idiot, Rhys watched the patterns of the other ships taking off and leaving the spire, as well as those entering. It looked like standard practice was to fly forward and then left, out past the dockyards and into the open sky.

There weren't many ships moving around, so Rhys lifted the lever for the rear thruster once they were high enough, sending them moving slowly forwards. Rhys turned the wheel and shifted the rudder left, and brought the Endeavour into the correct area. Once the Endeavour was lined up, Rhys licked his lips nervously and increased the power to the rear thruster.

He had, of course, forgotten to turn the wheel and put the rudder amidships once they finished turning. This caused the Endeavour to turn more sharply left and out of alignment, Rhys cursing as he spun the wheel madly and overcorrected to the right, the cloudship weaving around a little drunkenly at first. Blushing and sweating more than ever, Rhys brought the ship under control and cruised out from the spire into open skies.

It was beautiful, the endless sea of clouds that stretched out before him giving it all a serene and peaceful look. Only the very tip of the spires came through the cloud sea, but that was still a hundred metres, or more, of rock and earth. The spires themselves seemed to poke out almost randomly, with a towering one being right next to one that barely made it past the cloud sea.

Some spires were miles and miles wide, like Arn Creth. Others were merely rocky points that could gouge the hull of an unwary cloudship. There was always someone in a tavern somewhere telling stories of hidden spire tips in the cloud sea that ripped through ships and sent them plummeting into the abyss.

An altimeter and a compass were built into the wheel's pedestal directly. The instruments allowed Rhys to set their altitude to one hundred metres above sea level and their direction to due-north. There was no particular reason for an altitude of one hundred. He just liked round numbers and wanted to be high enough not to hit anything. The spires around Arn Creth were well mapped, and their dangers marked with warning flags, but Rhys was as far from a confident sailor as one could be, so a slightly higher altitude seemed prudent.

The rudimentary maps he had pointed to a cluster of small and uninhabited spires north of Arn Creth, perfect for a place to let Zaxx "claim" the ship. Past the uninhabited spires was Arn Gol, a well-known trading spire, he would be able to offload everything there and look at maybe getting some crew on board.

Everything seemed so peaceful as they cruised onward, Rhys checking the compass on a regular basis to make sure they were on course.

A groaning sound like a mournful ghost filled the air, Rhys clutching the wheel instinctively before realising it was just a striss ray that the cloud sea had hidden. Locking the wheel in place, he walked over to the railing and peered over the edge. Far below the Endeavour, he could see a huge creature surface from the sea, a thick trail of cloud lingering behind it as it dragged the local part of the sea with it. A second and third ray slowly rose out of the cloud sea a moment later, groaning out their own sounds.

Striss Rays were some of the largest creatures that roamed the cloud sea. Rhys had seen a pod on his last voyage out from Arn Creth, the artificer becoming immediately fascinated by the huge creatures.

Seeing one again so soon could only be good luck. The three below him were particularly large, each with a forty to fifty-foot wingspan and a gaping mouth that could swallow a man whole. Four bulbous areas within their body showed where they stored the gas they harvested from the sea, helping keep their heavy bodies light enough to fly. Their wings were continuously undulating through the thick clouds as they dove back inside once more, leaving a trail of filtered clouds behind them.

Those in the know about such things said that both Striss Rays, and their smaller cousins, Skraa Rays, ate the morca present in the cloud sea. Considering that morca was filtered from the clouds and then used to produce both morcal fluid and cloud quartz, Rhys was intrigued by just how much of their diet was tiny pieces of crystal.

'What are you looking at?' Zaxx whispered into his mind, making Rhys start a little. He still needed to get used to that.

'I'm watching the rays fly through the cloud sea,' Rhys said, pausing as a thought occurred to him. 'Do you have any sort of sense as the Endeavour? How did you know what I was doing before?'

'I have little influence at the moment. However, once I've claimed the ship, I would imagine I will be able to sense everything within it. Our pact gives me more clarity where you're concerned, so currently, I can get a sense of what you're doing.'

'Hmm,' Rhys said, a little shiver running down his spine as he pictured Zaxx watching him while he slept. Intellectually, he'd known it would be like this, but every time Zaxx demonstrated his odd origins, it made Rhys a little nervous.

Moving back to the helm and checking their course, Rhys nodded in satisfaction. They would arrive at the cluster of spires in a few hours.