It had been two weeks since I departed Saint June, in search of what, I wasn’t quite sure yet. Action and adventure I guess. Or maybe just the ability to see something new was what I needed.

My path took me across the eastern parts of South America but I didn’t linger or stop long. There wasn’t much to speak about in the area, it had been devastated by something. War or some calamity had left the once dense jungle barren and blackened. I’m pretty sure the area I was in was the former country of Brazil but it was hard to tell. I saw the remnants of a few cities. The houses looked like they were gutted by a monumental blast but there wasn’t the telltale sign of fire or the lingering radiation of nuclear weapons.

The damage was also quite old. I was able to determine this by the fact that new plants were already growing in the area of destruction. It also didn’t look like the destruction caused by those magical insects we ran across on our flight to assault the Black Dragon. Those things left nothing but bare dirt in their path. Not like here, where there were still stumps of broken-off trees and the villages.

Seeing as this was the first interesting discovery I had come across, I decided to map it out. The area of destruction wasn’t uniform, with some areas spanning miles farther out. It didn’t take long to find the epicenter of the blast thanks to the angle of the debris though.

I didn’t go down and look, satisfied to view it from a distance. What I could see from the ship was a small object that looked like a statue, sitting in the exact center of the devastation. Even from a thousand feet up I could feel a sickly crawling sensation in my mind when I looked upon the object. From what I could see, it looked like a slightly melted humanoid figure with six grotesque arms of differing sizes and two mismatched legs.

Each arm held a different wicked-looking weapon. Remembering what happened with the dream crystal, I decided to leave the area, not even trying to use Identify on the strange statue. I was almost certain whatever it was, it was responsible for the lack of life below. I had been tempted to blow it up with my ship's weapons but decided against that, in case mana was what activated its power.

The statue was also a good reminder that there were far more terrible and dangerous things in this world. I really needed to get some sort of item that gave me general knowledge about the multiverse. ‘Where is a hitchhiker’s guide when you needed one?’ I lamented.

I followed the eastern coast of South America until I spotted something across the ocean in the East. It wasn’t quite clear what it was even with zooming in as far as I could using the Retribution’s viewer.

I had to search my memory to recall if there were any islands off the coast. I knew the Falkland Islands were near the southern tip but I wasn’t that far south yet.

Figuring it was worth a look I turned the ship and headed in that direction. I was in no hurry so I set the ship to quarter speed and set it to alert me if anything hostile approached. Then I headed off to my cabin for some rest.

***

I was awoken from a dead slumber by the blaring ship alarm. I stumbled out of bed and ran to the command room without even getting dressed. By the time I arrived the alarm had shut itself off.

“Ship, show the reason for the alarm!” I said, confused. I thought maybe the control system was having a fit. It wasn’t like I had tested it for these conditions.

A small red indicator popped up and stopped at a blank section of the sky.

I groaned, it looked like it was an error.

Well, since I was already awake, I sat in my seat and started going over the log to see if I could fix the error.

I was halfway through the log when the ship rocked violently and I was nearly tossed out of the seat. I managed to grip the arms of the chair before that happened.

“What the hell was that!”

The screen started populating with dozens of red boxes. I realized it hadn’t been a glitch, but whatever it was, I couldn’t see them. I quickly turned off the cloak and switched to the shield. Another explosion rocked the Retribution but this one was less severe as the shield took the brunt of the impact.

I checked the shield integrity and paled. One blast had taken off ten percent of the shield. Whatever was attacking me had more firepower than a mana cannon. And now the ship was surrounded by the things.

***

“Sir! We have reports of an explosion in the gossamer field,” one of his spotters stated.

“Oh? Get me a viewer and let's see who was stupid enough to enter their hunting grounds.”

A moment later a thick piece of glass, that looked like the end of a broken bottle, was handed to Captain Grulaine. Grulaine flicked his long feathered ears in annoyance as he looked for his target. His ship the Forsooth was hidden amongst the clouds, using them as cover to repair from recent damage in a raid. It had been a profitable haul but he wouldn’t turn down another juicy target, especially one dumb enough to fly directly into the deadly floating creatures called gossamers, they had a tendency to explode.

He quickly spotted the ship as another explosion rocked its shield.

“Hmm, it's not a design I am familiar with. Looks like maybe a fast courier type of flying ship. No dirigible to keep it aloft so it isn’t Guild, nor wind magic like our ship. I wonder if this is some new vessel from the dormians,” he pondered out loud.

“The bird folk, sir?” his second in command asked.

“Why not, they are the only ones I know that would be dumb enough to fly into a gathering like this.”

Grulaine put the viewer back in its case and handed it to the waiting crewmember. “Prepare the ship, we will follow from above and behind this foolish ship. Once they clear the gossamer field, we will strike. I want to force them to land on the water so we can secure that ship.”

There was a round of aye, aye captain as everyone ran about to get to their stations. Normally Grulaine would avoid a confrontation, being that his ship was already damaged from one attack but this was too good to pass up. Besides, he had the element of surprise.

***

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” I screamed as the ship rocked for what felt like the hundredth time. The shields were holding and recharging slowly. All I could do was hold on and pray I made it through this madness alive.

There was no turning around or going above or below whatever these things were. I thought they were floating mines at one point but I finally got a good look at one and it looked like an enormous jellyfish, only floating and explosive.

I had already made the mistake of firing my top-mounted mana cannon. It worked but the damn things seemed to be attracted by the magical energy so now the ship was getting assaulted by even more of the damn things as they floated closer. They were slow though so I would eventually outrun the creatures.

They were so thick in front of the ship that the control system was having a hard time pointing them all out.

The ship rumbled as multiple impacts shook the shield and everything went quiet after that. I breathed a sigh of relief seeing no more indicators in front of the ship.

“Ship, report damage!”

The ship didn’t have a voice prompt for most commands but it was more than capable of understanding simple instructions and displaying a view of the ship.

I noted one small black section along the front right of the bow. There were several red sections around it. Thankfully I had gotten the shield up before any other significant damage occurred. I would have to set down and repair it sooner or later. It was a good thing I brought spare parts and took some welding classes from Timothy.

I was just about to unstrap myself from my seat to go inspect the damage when the alarm blared again and the ship shook far more violently than before. I was jerked against the restraints, knocking the air out of me.

I groaned in my chair as I looked around for what the new problem was. The screen showed a big red bracket over a small cloud above and to the left of my current location.

I was confused for a second until I saw something poke out from inside the cloud. Reacting on instinct, I jerked the Retribution down and the large cannonball flew over the top of the ship. Another passed over as I flew lower.

I didn’t waste any time, activating the deck weapons and firing them all into the cloud.

The explosions from my mana cannons blasted a clear spot in the cloud and I finally saw my enemy for the first time.

It looked like an old-school steamship mixed with an even older sailing ship, minus the sails. The clouds were starting to dissipate around the top of the ship as the smokestacks stopped producing whatever it was it produced to obscure the vessel. I saw at least three decks of cannons facing my direction and swore.

These were not the elegantly designed mana cannons but a cruder if just as effective cannon. I fired off my weapons again as I glanced at my shield. It had recharged to eighty percent.

My weapons impacted the enemy shields shield causing it to rock wildly and the next shot to miss me completely. The only reason I could think that they hadn’t fired all of their weapons at once was that they wanted my ship. Well, fuck that!

I tightened my straps and jerked the steering yolk into a tight climb as I increased the power output of my thrusters to maximum output. I didn’t use the afterburners as I had dubbed the additional thrusters but I still climbed rapidly. My move must have surprised my attackers as their next shots flew off below me.

“You fuckers wanna fight, have a taste of this!” I yelled, activating all of my underside weapons.

***

“Captain! The target is rising too quickly for our cannons to track.”

“Bah,” Grulaine cursed, it should have been an easy target, weakened from the explosions and struck by surprise but the damn ship had shields comparable to his own at the very least. “I’m going to rock the ship, tell the gunners to fire a full spread!” he shouted.

“Sir!” the spotter yelled, “the target is deploying more weapons on its underside.”

“What!” Grulaine paled, it was bad enough that other ship had mana cannons, let alone that other weird weapon but to have even more. This must be a bait ship he realized. He furiously thought before giving an order. The Forsooth wasn’t fully repaired from its last encounter and this unknown vessel was posing far too much of a challenge. “Recall that last order, we’re leaving.”

Without waiting for a reply on his orders, Grulaine jerked the wheel to the left and pushed it forward. The Forsooth plummeted below a line of weapons fire released by the unknown vessel. Not all of it was successfully avoided, however.

“Shields are down, Captain. Reports are coming in of damage to the top deck and one of the cloud stacks.”

“Set the other stack to full power, we need to find a storm cloud and lose this enemy ship.”

***

My barrage had mostly missed and if it hadn’t been for my long-range targeting being a bit off still, even the blasts from the mana cannons would have missed completely. Keeping track of everything going on while flying and fighting the ship in an aerial battle was turning out to be way more difficult than I had imagined. But I wasn’t about to give up on seeking some revenge.

The problem was the enemy ship was heading in the opposite direction and I needed to turn around. I could flip the ship on its axis as it didn’t rely on conventional lift to keep it aloft but at the speed, I was going, that could cause more damage to the already damaged ship. I would have to try the maneuver out later to see if it worked but for now, I slowed down and did a wide turn, all the while the other ship was steaming away at probably half my speed.

It was literally steaming away, the stack on the deck, spewing more cloud stuff that wrapped around the vessel to hide it from sight at an astonishing speed. I saw their goal, a large formation of clouds off in the distance. I thought it weird at first, seeing clouds this low to the ground but who knew what was normal anymore, especially in this section of the world.

I did try to fire my mana lasers into the clouds but I couldn’t tell if my attacks were doing anything with all the clouds surrounding the fleeing ship. For all I knew, the beams were rendered useless by the scattering effect, similar to lasers.

I tried to catch up but the small cloud of the ship vanished amongst the huge dark stormcloud only seconds before I could get into range of my mana cannons. I cursed the bastards for slipping away but swung back around to continue on my journey. I kept a closer eye on the skies though, making sure no more small clouds were getting near me. I retracted my bottom weapons but left my shields up, repairs would have to wait until I landed somewhere safe.