My sleep was rudely interrupted by the loud roar of the Flying City sailing overhead, casting a long shadow over our camp.

Oh wait, you probably wouldn’t know about the Flying City because it’s not really Flying anymore, and the City part kind of ceased to be not long after. Let me explain.

So the Flying City was a relic from a lost civilization from hundreds or thousands of years ago. Yeah, we’re not really sure on the specific timeline. Somehow an ancient civilization figured out how to use a mix of magic and technology to create a city that…well…flew. I’m not really sure what happened to the civilization that built the city since, obviously, they’re not around anymore. I’d love to peruse any records from the city itself, but as it turns out, they didn’t survive the fall of the city either. We’ll get to that later.

And for once, this was something I didn’t have to have Trakban or Fortuna explain to me! I mean, minotaurs and shapeshifters are rare species, but you don’t exactly miss a giant freaking city sailing above you. I can’t begin to tell you how refreshing that feeling is, that even after less than a day of having everyone have to spoon-feed me all the information I probably should have known beforehand, I at least understood one thing that was happening around me.

Somehow Trakban slept through the flyover, and by this point Fortuna was already building a fire, warming up my frypan to prepare a breakfast of some birds, mainly pheasants, she’d shot on her watch. “It wasn’t that hard,” she said, shrugging. “I figured it might be a better breakfast than another meal of trail rations. Those might be better for lunch. I bet if we move quickly enough we’ll be in Kokiraki before nightfall!”

“Well well well!” I said, grinning. “Where did all this enthusiasm come from?”

Fortuna shrugged. “It just hit me last night that the next time I wake up, it’s not going to be back in Khiet’s to start another long day of cooking and cleaning. It’s…liberating!” she exclaimed. “Maybe I’m finally starting to see why my parents called me Fortuna.”

“Oh, is there a particular reason they called you that? I mean, it’s kind of an unusual name,” I said somewhat thoughtlessly.

“Tell me about it,” she replied, sighing. “I’ve never really understood it either. My mom always said I was her little good luck charm. I guess things always had a way of working out around me as a kid. As if I’d ever noticed, to be honest.”

“I see…” I said, unsure of what to say next, before offering to help with breakfast.

Eventually Trakban joined us in the world of the living and asked, “Will Fortuna not wish to rest a bit before we take our leave?”

“I’ll be fine. I slept longer and better last night than I have in months, to be honest,” she said cheerily.

I blinked, quickly doing the math. If she took over my watch without waking me up, that would mean that she only got three hours of sleep. “Uh…are you sure? Three hours of sleep isn’t a lot, especially for someone like you who is still growing…right? I mean, you are still growing, right?” I asked, sizing her up. True, she was already taller than me, but I was never sure when humans (or rather, shapeshifters in this case, I guess) stopped growing.

“I wish I knew,” Fortuna sighed, looking up to the sky. “Unfortunately I haven’t really had any opportunity to talk to another shapeshifter about what I can expect from being a shapeshifter, especially if it means any distinct differences in growing, aging, and…erm…developing, though I guess some of the normal things that happen to human girls when they start growing up have happened for me, sure.”

I made a note of this. If she was going to end up having a growth spurt, it would certainly change a lot of things, not the least of which being the fact that I would no longer have someone somewhat close to my height. I folded my arms and scowled at the thought, before it dawned on me that it would open up some more doors with her shapeshifter abilities.

Once we’d finished our breakfast and packed away our camp supplies, it was once again back on the road. Well, I guess “road” was a bit of an exaggeration, since we were currently traipsing across a seemingly endless field, grass, flowers, and hills as far as the eye could see, the green eventually broken by the walls of a port city in the distance.

On the horizon, I could see a handful of figures, people, most likely, moving towards us. Sure enough, as they closed the distance, a group of five soldiers from the common races slowly made their way into view. Eventually the shortest one, a dwarf, raised her hand, shouting, “Ho there, travelers! Did you perhaps come across the Great Bridge of Brightdale?”

“We sure did!” I shouted back.

The group looked at each other in excitement. “Would you happen to know anything about the Heroes? Is there any chance they’re heading this way?”

I panicked. I didn’t remember anything in the prophecy saying they’d go out of their way to solve every problem in their travels, and surely the Gems were the priority quest right now, but had the king sent word of their travels out? Were these soldiers expecting the Heroes to rout the pirates?

I shook my head. Of course they would be expecting something like that. “Unfortunately, they’ve already left via ship from Brightdale to Plauros,” I responded. “We’re actually trying to follow them, but none of the other ships in Brightdale were willing to make the journey to Plauros after them, so we were hoping to try our luck in Kokiraki.” Naturally I couldn’t fill them in on the specifics of our plan, but I saw no problem with keeping it general.

The dwarf of the group of soldiers narrowed her eyes. “You’d best avoid that cursed place. Those pirates have the run of the city, and there probably isn’t anything there for you.”

I grinned, “Yeah, we’ve heard about the pirates. We’re working out how to deal with that. What can you tell us about the situation in town?”

The dwarf explained that they’d mainly just holed up in the local tavern, drinking the place dry and causing general mayhem. I listened closely, a grin coming to my face. If they were just drinking and partying, stealing the ship would be a lot easier than I’d even considered. Maybe we’d luck out and not have to fight anyone.

“If they’re just strung out drunk like that, why don’t you guys do something?” Fortuna asked, unconvinced.

The dwarf frowned, before one of her companions, an elf woman, spoke up, “Would that there were more of us to do something. The pirates outnumber us three to one!”

That could be a problem. Even with us helping them, the pirates would still basically double us. I looked over to Trakban. “Say things get a little hairy, how confident are you in your magic?”

“I might be able to distract them or briefly incapacitate them, but surely you cannot mean to just attempt a frontal assault?” he asked in disbelief.

“Of course not!” I quickly replied. “Just…you know…in case things get out of hand, we might need all the help we can get.”

“What do you intend to do?” the elf asked, folding her arms.

“We’re gonna take their ship!”

“Excuse me?!”

“We’re taking their ship!” I repeated enthusiastically. “It’s one ship, one crew, right? Well, if we take away their only means of escape, there’s no way a crew of fifteen pirates can really do anything against a town full of angry sailors, right?” I grinned, as if to say, “Right? Right?” desperately hoping my enthusiasm was infectious enough to get my point across.

The dwarf rubbed her chin. “Y’know, I think the little one is onto something.”

I narrowed my eyes. She just had to bring up my height. Hypocrite. She was only a couple inches taller than me!

“You do realize I’m not a child, right?” I found myself asking, before quickly covering my mouth in embarrassment.”

“Yeah yeah, yer a gnome, I’ve met plenty o’ gnomes,” the dwarf replied, grinning. “Gotta get my shots in when I can, understand?”

No, I didn’t. “Sure, I guess.” I quickly changed the subject. “Okay, I’ve got an idea. Think you can get us a place to rest? We can detail the plan there.”

—

The soldiers invited us into a small barracks at the edge of town that, like the rest of the surrounding area, smelled strongly of the sea, even more so than Brightdale had. I was surprised to see the fact that the pirates were still letting the soldiers do basically whatever they wanted, which the dwarf, Captain Caskminer (she didn’t give me her first name) clarified. Apparently the pirates left people alone unless they did something that directly interfered with their fun, at which point they were made an example of in some horrible, humiliating way that I’ll spare you the details of. Just know that it’s not pleasant. Even thinking about pudding now makes me shudder.

Captain Caskminer brought us some food from her home, which freed us up to rest and discuss our plans.

As it turned out, most of the crew was just crashing in the tavern, refusing to leave until they were satisfied with their plunder and shoreleave, which was fine by me. They would spend the better part of the evening drinking themselves into a rowdy stupor before eventually passing out, before rising late the next morning to continue moving things aboard their ship and preparing for another long night of drinking.

Which was extremely fortunate for us.

Once all sound in the tavern died down, the operation began.

And by operation I mean we casually strolled onto the ship, released the mooring, and shoved off with the miniscule crew still sleeping peacefully below deck, though the sudden movement returned the singular pirate left on watch duty in the crow’s nest to the world of the living, and his frantic, panicked shouting brought his buddies up from downstairs.

All told, instead of having to deal with fifteen pirates, there were five. Which could be troublesome, but was doable. Especially with the bottleneck they’d unintentionally stuck themselves with.

I took my position above the ladder going below deck, smacking pirate after pirate in the face with my frying pan, just leaving the poor guy in the crow’s nest to be picked off by a quick burst of air from Trakban. I think. I dunno, the guy just got blasted out of the crow’s nest, falling into the sea below.

I looked below the deck into the innards of the ship to check on the four pirates I’d just…well, I wasn’t sure, but I probably killed them. Anyway, I thought I saw something else scamper out of the small amount of light offered by the moon. I blinked. Surely nothing else was down there, right? They wouldn’t have just left five pirates behind to watch a ship with a monster aboard, right? I looked back down there and thought I saw one of the pirates slide away out of sight.

I gulped. This had to just be my imagination. I quickly waved the others over and explained what I thought I saw. “Look, I don’t want to go down there alone, but if there’s something there, we need to deal with it,” I said, trying to force myself to believe whatever bravado I was trying to pass along to my companions.

“It is probably nothing,” Trakban said. “You may just be imagining things.”

Fortuna shook her head. “I dunno, the sea is a scary place. Something could have gotten aboard before us.”

Something. Yeah. That’s what I wanted to hear. Nothing specific, just…something.

Trakban shrugged. “I suppose we can go check it out.” He tapped his staff, and a bright light began to emit from the knob at the end of it. “I will go first, but I will not go alone.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re right behind you, Big Guy!” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “Er…right, Fortuna?”

“What?” Fortuna asked, startled, as if she’d been thinking about something else. “Oh, right, yeah, behind you, sure,” she said quickly.

We slowly made our way below deck, and sure enough, there was one fewer pirate there than I’d hit with my pan. Naturally, my heart rate skyrocketed, especially as I noticed the trail of blood leading into another room. I felt like I was going to be sick to my stomach, and my head started spinning. However, before I could faint, I could feel Fortuna’s hands on my shoulders, and I could hear her voice saying, “Stay with us Ilala, we’re with you.”

I mustered up a nod, and, looking back at the pirates, noticed some better weapons than I was currently carrying. I settled for an older looking sword near one of the pirates, a saber from the look of things, just a simple single-edged cutting sword a little over a meter in length, almost as tall as myself, sure, but it gave a lot more range to my strikes than my dagger or even my frying pan.

We walked over to the now closed door where the blood streaks ended, nodded at one another, counted to three, and burst in on a scene that I’m still not convinced wasn’t just a weird dream that I’d had before leaving Guawk’s place in Brightdale, except that Trakban and Fortuna were there with me.

We burst in to find a single lizard person wearing a bib over what seemed to be a raggedy hemp potato sack fashioned into a simple dress seated at a table by their lonesome with a lit candle, about to bite into the pirate’s corpse. I awkwardly raised my new sword, saying, “Step away from the pirate, foul beast!” in a shaky voice that did absolutely nothing to convince this lizard person I meant business. “I…I warn you!” I continued.

The lizard glared at me with those piercing, reptilian eyes, stood, revealing her height to be…well…really tall, up to Trakban’s eyes, and then it opened its mouth and started speaking. “Arzias do nothing wrong! Arzias just eat corpse! Pirate no use body anymore!”

I awkwardly blinked before looking at Fortuna and Trakban, who both shrugged.

“You no worry! You not dead! Arzias no eat living people! Too much work! But these pirates, they no longer need body. It fine!” The lizard licked its teeth and lips. “You want some?” it asked, offering a place to sit, and I shook my head before awkwardly leaving the room.