Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Six - Crash Scene Investigators

We spent the night hiding from the storm within the ship. The worst of it took an hour or so to arrive, then hung above us for twice as long. There were constant booms as lightning stuck nearby and the ground shook almost constantly with the echoing explosions.

Calamity pointed to something glowing in the distance at some point and said that part of the grasslands was on fire. Apparently that was pretty common during storms like these. I could barely see it at all, but I took his word for it.

I was mostly impressed that anything could burn in the pelting rain, though it did disappear after a few minutes.

We drew lots for the order of watches, then settled in for the night. Thanks to my Cleaning magic we didn’t need to freshen up as much, so we mostly all just slept in our gear on a blanket or three.

I slept fitfully, but it wasn’t the worst sleep I’d ever gotten. It helped when I had my friends close so that I could use them as warm pillows to keep away the chill.

Awen cooked up a simple breakfast in the morning with a few chunks of the ship’s floor as kindling. The storm had passed but there was still a faint drizzle outside. Nothing at all like the deluge of the night before.

“The rain will pass in a few hours,” Calamity said. “We’ll be a bit muddy and wet, but we’ll manage, I think. Let’s finish up eating first though. Let the earth soak up more of yesterday’s rain.”

That would've been a good idea. I stepped out of the ship after breakfast to see the wreck from the outside--since I didn’t actually look all that hard the night before--and almost immediately lost a shoe as it was slorped up by a patch of mud. After ripping it out and tying it a bit tighter, I found that the best way to move was to step on the grassiest patches.

The ship was called the er’s Eye. Or at least, that was the part of the name that was left. The rest was probably on the other half of the airship, wherever that was. It was, as I suspected, a bit wider than either one of the Beaver Cleaver’s hulls, but not wider than both. It also wasn’t nearly as fancy, though there was a beautifully carved figurehead of a harpy girl with her wings spread wide wearing a very windswept dress. A chunk of one wing was outright missing.

I noticed something on the hull. A long metal harpoon was jutting out of the side, the metal bent and a cut off rope dangling from an eyelet at the back of it.

Someone had jammed that in there, probably before the ship crashed.

It had been attacked!

When I reported my findings to my friends, I got some other possibilities. “That’s plausible, but it’s not unheard of for ships to harpoon each other in times of need,” Amaryllis said. If this ship was loosing ballast, for example, it’s possible an allied vessel harpooned it to prevent it from rising too quickly. Or to tow it in an emergency. Both unlikely, but plausible explanations. It certainly lends credence to there being an attack, but it’s not a sure thing.”

“No bodies either,” Calamity said. “Some blood here and there, but honestly, I imagine the folk onboard this thing took quite the tumble on the way down, so it’s anyone’s guess if they were hurt from that or from an attack.”

“Did anyone find anything salvageable?” Awen asked. She’d packed up most of our things, then she’d loitered around one of the rooms currently above us: the mechanic’s room, which I imagined was meant to be connected to the missing engine room.

Calamity nodded. “Yes, but nothing worth taking now. Plenty of provisions, some tools, a few odds and ends. All the stuff I guess you’d expect to find on a ship. The hunters are going to love scavenging this thing. Usually we bring back meat and pelts, not finished goods.”

“I found the mechanic’s log,” Awen said. “It has details on all the recent repairs and maintenance. There was a mechanic and two apprentices. Um. The maintenance log seems pretty up to date? Unless the mechanic was lying or cutting corners, then this ship should have been in decent shape.”

“Which doesn’t rule out mechanical failure, but does make it unlikely,” Amaryllis concluded. “Let’s head out. Maybe the other half of the ship will tell us more.”

We did just that, climbing onto Blinky, Tassel, and Shanks and heading out of the wreck. We didn’t try to hide that we’d been there. Maybe another adventurer walking by would use the firepit we’d made. I kind of liked the idea of the wreck being turned into a landmark.

Calamity had us riding outwards in a strange sort of spiralling pattern that had us sweeping out, then turning around and ranging further out in a sweep in the other direction. It was a little weird, but an hour or so after we took off, the pattern proved its worth.

We found the other half of the airship, and another ship besides.

They were both planted at the junction between two hills, where they would be somewhat hard to spot from afar, especially once the grass straightened up post-storm. The rear of the first ship (which from the stencilling on the side I could now guess was called the Hunter’s Eye) was jutting out of the side of the hill. It was planted straight down in something of a crater.

The other ship had crashed more gently. The balloon's internal was slumped across the top of the hull, metal ribs jutting through the torn fabric. Even though it was half-crumpled like a soda can, its shape was still recognizable, so I guessed the landing wasn't as harsh as it could've been. The ship had crashed atop one hill, ploughing down the side of it until it came to rest at the bottom, tilted at a good thirty-degree angle.

Planks and bits of its keel radiated out from the scar in the landscape.

“Engine section first,” Amaryllis decided. “We’ll piece together what we can from the Hunter’s Eye before looking for clues elsewhere.”

“Alright,” I agreed. It was closer anyway.

Any doubts about enemy action faded as we approached the ship’s rear. There was a gaping hole in the side of the ship that poked right through the top-deck and into the officer’s quarters beneath. There were scorch marks too, so whatever that had been was hot, probably some kind of magic.

There was some netting caught in the propellers at the rear. The ropes were tangled into the shafts and looked like they’d done a good job of seizing up the propulsion.

Because the Hunter’s Eye was standing up on end, we couldn’t get inside easily, and Awen pointed out that it was probably not a good idea anyway. The storm hadn’t tipped it over, but if we poked around inside it, we might jostle it loose and bring it down on our heads. Unlike the forward section, this half was resting at a precarious angle, with all the heavy parts at the top and nothing but dirt below it.

If it was the only ship to explore, then maybe we’d take the risk, but it wasn’t.

The second ship was a short pony ride away. Its name was the Remiges Crown, and I suspected it was a warship from the moment it was designed. The ship wasn’t too much longer than the Beaver Cleaver but its middle section bulged out, giving the impression that the ship was rather chubby.

The reason for that was the ballistae platforms on either side. They weren’t just little ones either. Each bowstave was half again as long as I was tall. There were more of the bows at the aft of the ship, but they were much smaller.

“That’s a corvette,” Amaryllis said. “An older model at that. Half of these have been retired or sold to the independent cities by now.”

“The prop of this one is also tangled in a net,” Awen pointed out. “I’ll have to look at the net, but it’s probably the same kind.”

The ship had a ladder set into the side, little handholds cut into the wood, so when we reached it and finished tying off the ponies, it only took a bit of jumping to be able to climb aboard.

Walking on the deck was strange since it was tipped to one side at a bit of an angle, but it wasn’t impossible.

“More blood,” Calamity pointed out. “There was fighting on this one.”

“And casting,” Amaryllis said. She gestured to the deck where a long scorch mark had darkened the wood. A bit further on, the wood’s grain was burned in a strange, zig-zagging pattern which looked a bit like lightning forks. An electric spell?

There were broken railings on the side, and a few grapple-hooks were abandoned hanging to the side of the ship.

“Someone boarded this vessel,” Amaryllis said. “I think they were repelled though.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The ship’s in decent condition other than the obvious. If someone had boarded it to steal it, they would have taken it, I think, or scuttled it. This ship crashed slowly. The lifeboats are missing as well.” Amaryllis pointed to a pair of racks in the centre of the deck where I imagined a pair of long boats were supposed to sit.

“Maybe the people boarding the ship took them?” I asked.

“That’s possible, I suppose,” Amaryllis said.

As it turned out, she was probably right. We couldn’t explore most of the decks on the ship--the bottom-most one was ripped apart, and the main deck was a mess of broken floors and splintered wood, though it was possible to travel through it. There weren’t any signs of fighting though.

Awen spent a few minutes at the captain’s door with a few tools before she finally unlocked it and opened the door wide for us.

Calamity whistled when he entered the cabin. It was quite nice, with drapes over the shattered windows and a beautiful desk in the centre of the room. Latched cabinets with glass doors were stacked to one side filled with maps and there were expensive navigational tools strewn across the floor.

There was a door past that leading to a few rooms. On one side was the captain’s quarters and across from those were two smaller rooms for the officers.

“Nice!” Calamity said as he returned to the main room with a sword in hand. The grip looked like it was designed for a harpy, but it was still usable. He swung the cutlass around a few times, grinning all the while. “Think I might keep this one.”

“We’re looking for something a little more important,” Amaryllis said. She checked around the room, clearly looking for something that was hidden. I poked around too, but there wasn’t anything too shiny. I did find a nice hat, but it was the First Mate’s and I preferred my Captain’s hat over it.

“I think I found it!” Awen called back.

She had discovered a hidden compartment built into the desk in the centre of the room. Within it was a thick leather-bound book and some writing implements.

“It’s soul-bound,” Amaryllis said as she inspected the book. “The ship’s log. Bound to the captain. I think these are linked from captain to captain.” The book had a heavy clasp on its front.

“Can you open it?” I asked.

“Only certain people can,” she said. “In case the book falls into enemy hands. You need the blood and mana of a willing person taken from a relatively short list. That includes the captain and first mate, who are added to the records, a few admirals, and of course the person who originally made the vessel. It keeps a continuous record of the ship’s voyages and actions which can’t be tampered with. Well, unless the captain themselves do so.”

“Oh,” I said. “So we’ll need to find an admiral to open it?” I asked.

Amaryllis shrugged, then made a small cut along the back of her hand where her talon started. She dripped a drop of blood onto the clasp and it glowed faintly before popping off. “Or, you could find a direct blood-descendant of the person who built the ship,” she said.

“That was anticlimactic,” I pointed out.

“Yes, well, let’s not complain about being lucky one of the few times that luck’s on our side,” Amaryllis said. She opened the manifest which turned out to be pages and pages of carefully penned notes and navigational information. She leafed over to the last page with writing on it, then stared. “Huh... I wasn’t expecting actual pirates.”

***