Chapter Three Hundred and Forty-Two - Message Delivered

Before we could take off again, I had to do a few quick things. The Redemption had a bunch of supplies on board, but we were lacking a lot of essentials. Water wasn’t as much of a problem on the ground when there were plenty of streams to draw from, but in the air we’d have to use magic to pull water out of the air and that was both tiring and inefficient... also I couldn’t do that spell yet.

Food was also a minor concern. We had plenty of hardtack and such, and some sylph MREs still, but those weren’t exactly tasty.

Other than that, we needed a few knick-knacks to make the ship feel more like a living space, like a small carpet before entering the crew compartment so that we wouldn’t track mud in.

With that in mind, and with Awen telling us that while her oil-making gizmo was working it was also really slow, I checked my money pouch to make sure I had a good amount of change, then I set off.

Amaryllis stayed behind to contact Sylphfree and Calamity was sitting on the ship, looking around and sighing wistfully.

It was weird, heading out all on my own. A few metres away from the Redemption and I paused, looking back at the ship and second-guessing myself. Did I really need to head out? I could stay with my friends...

But no, they’d be fine without Broccoli for a few minutes. And I’d be okay too. It wasn’t like I’d lose sight of them, what with the airship’s balloon towering above the camp.

So I headed out, though maybe with a bit of a hurried pep to my step.

The first stop was the small market-ish part of the camp. The hunters didn’t seem to have much use for a market, what with most of them being here as part of a job, but there were still a few carriages of hangers-on who came with supplies and stuff to sell to a hunter in need at a steep mark-up.

That’s where I found most of the things I was looking for. Different fruits and grains wrapped in a sort of papery leaf and tied up with long strips of tough grass, a tiny bit of salted meat, because I was pretty sure Calamity ate meat and so did my friends.

I got lost looking over some pelts, then poked at a big bucket full of long, sharp-tipped feathers that were plucked from a cockatrice. They were part feather, part scale, almost.

With a bulging bag full of stuff, I started to head back to the ship when I overheard two cervid talking.

It wasn’t my fault that I eavesdropped. With ears as big as mine that was naturally going to happen, whether I wanted it to or not. Most of the time I just ignored it, or listened in on tiny snippets of other’s lives, aware, in that little moment, that they had entire lives going on that I wasn’t part of, a whole heap of stories I hadn’t heard, from the mundane to the extraordinary.

“Come on, I can help,” a rather small cervid said. He didn’t look young, at a glance-- he just wasn't a very big guy. He was tailing after a cervid woman with a thich gambeson on and with a few spears hooked to her side.

“No, Deiter, you’ll only get yourself in trouble.”

I blinked. “Wait, Deiter?” I asked.

The couple were deeper into the camp already, so I had to jog to catch up to them. It looked like the girl Deiter was talking to was giving him an earful.

“Hey! Sorry, wait up, please!” I called out. The two of them half-turned, as if to see if I was talking to them. I bounced up ahead of them and smiled my best smile. “Hi! Sorry, my name’s Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch, and I was recently over at, uh, Riverstart.”

Deiter winced, hard. It was almost a physical blow the way he flinched back. His companion though didn’t seem to notice. “Yes, and?” she asked.

“Right, sorry. While we were there we ran into this... nice... lady who was looking for Deiter.”

The cervid woman quirked an eyebrow, then half-turned to Deiter. “A wife you haven't told me about?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry, so I imagined they weren’t in a relationship.

“What? World no! That’s probably my mother. She, ah, lives in Riverstart,” he said. “Just a quiet old homebody, wouldn’t disturb a fly.”

He was really bad at lying.

“Anyway, she was worried, so she asked that if anyone saw you, they’d, uh, ask that you write a letter or something. I understand that sometimes you want to make space between you and your family, but if they’re not terrible people, then maybe stay in contact... I guess? I don’t know how families like that work.”

He glanced to the side, biting his lip, then seemed to rally himself. "Uh, yeah, sure. I can do that," he said. “Thanks for the message,” he added before slipping past me.

I blinked after him, but I wasn’t about to pursue if he clearly didn’t want to continue chatting. I gave a wave in goodbye to the woman he was with, then stepped aside. “Well, that’s not how I expected all of that to get resolved,” I muttered.

Maybe the anticlimax was good though. One less thing to worry about. With that done, I hitched up my bag of provisions and headed back to the ship. The day was carrying on, what with all the travelling and exploring we’d been up to.

I had picked up some food from the marketplace, not provisions, but already-cooked meals that a cervid chef was preparing over a big cast-iron pot that had to outweigh me twice over.

Juggling four bowls (which I had to pay extra for, but I figured they might come in handy,) I returned to the Redemption and climbed up the gangplank onto the ship. “I have lunch!” I called out.

That got everyone’s attention.

We ate sitting on the deck right in front of the wheel, and my friends filled me in on what they’d been up to since I ran off. I, of course, told them about meeting Deiter and how we probably didn’t have to worry about that particular sidequest anymore.

“Ah, well, I’ve managed to make a whole gallon of oil, and I think it’s within the engine’s burn tolerance. I don’t really have a way to test that, but mixed in with our other fuel, it should be fine. It only adds up to about a tenth more fuel than what we had to start with, it’s really not a lot.”

“So our range is going to be very limited,” I said.

Awen nodded. “If we fly high enough, with less wind resistance, and don’t push the engine too much, we might be able to fly for six or seven hours.”

“Which won’t even get us a quarter of the way to Sylphfree,” Amaryllis pointed out.

“Is that where we’re headed next?” Calamity asked.

Amaryllis nodded and tapped the ring Caprica gave us. “The sylph want us back. Besides which, what can we do against a properly large installation of pirates? Invite them out for tea and hope that they’ll give us the delegates back?”

“I guess,” I said. I really did want to burst onto the scene like a big hero and save everyone, but Amaryllis was probably right. Just the four of us and one tiny boat wouldn’t exactly win the day when it came to fighting a whole heap of pirates. “So, we’re returning to Sylphfree?”

“To Goldpass, actually. It’s in the northernmost end of Sylphfree. A little further on the map than the capital, but with fewer mountains to navigate around it’s actually quite a bit closer,” Amaryllis said.

“Ah, we can’t go that far,” Awen said. “Not unless the wind is with us the entire way and we find more gas for the balloon. Or we could walk, I guess.”

Amaryllis sniffed. “I thought of that, of course. We’ll be meeting a group of sylphs in mid-air this evening. They’ll track us by the ring. I told them to bring fuel for the Redeemed, and you know how good they are with following instructions. I’ve no doubt they’ll bring plenty.”

Well, that settled it. “We should head towards them, then,” I said. “We’ll cut the amount of time it takes to meet them short, and if they don’t show up, then we can always just land as soon as we start running low.”

Once lunch was tucked away and we cleared the deck of anything that might get in the way, we were pretty much ready to head out. Calamity asked for just a few minutes to say his goodbyes, and since we weren’t in any big rush, we of course let him climb down the boat and go chat with his friends.

He came back soon enough, and I couldn’t tell if he was more sad at the goodbyes or excited to get going. On the ground Savan and a few of the hunters stood by and waved as we weighed anchor, started up the engine, and then lifted off the ground with only the slightest of lurches.

We floated straight up for a while, letting the wind carry us as it wanted as long as we were still rising. It was coming in from the south, which was neither good nor bad, really, though it might be troublesome later when we had to head due east.

Once we were high enough that the hunters below were nothing more than pinpricks and the air had that familiar chill that came from being so far off the ground, we adjusted the sails and took off east-bound.

Calamity asked Awen a question about the ship which launched her into a long-winded, rather one-sided discussion that had too many technical terms for me to follow it entirely. Calamity was listening intently though, and I think he was hoping to learn as much as he could.

The flight continued at an easy pace for the next couple of hours. We didn’t want to push the Redemption much, so we allowed the wind to carry us along with just a nudge from the main propeller in the right direction.

By the time early evening rolled around I found myself a bit restless behind the wheel while regretting not bringing something a bit warmer to wear.

“I see something!” Amaryllis called out from ahead. She was in that little basket at the very front of the ship, with the repeating crossbows. “South a few degrees.” She pointed and I squinted that way.

It took a moment, but eventually I caught on to what she was seeing. Three vague forms so far off they were little more than shadowy smears at a higher altitude than we were at.

Wyverns? If so, then that was probably the sylph we were supposed to meet. My identify skill marked them as wyverns soon enough, and Awen whipped out her telescope and confirmed that they were being ridden.

We adjusted our sails and after checking to see if we still had a good amount of fuel, we picked up the pace and pushed against the wind a bit. Soon enough, we crossed paths with three familiar wyverns.

I recognized Greencrest, of course. A girl ought to not forget the first wyvern she flew on. There was Bloodfang too, but the third wyvern wasn’t one I knew. I imagined the rider was different too, though it was hard to tell the riders apart with all the gear they had on to protect them from the cold.

“What now?” I asked Amaryllis.

“Best to land, I don’t fancy transferring things in midair,” she said.

So we landed. It wasn’t hard to find a big, flat space on the open plains. Once we dropped anchors and cut the engine, the wyverns circled around a final time and landed nearby.

I saw Winnow pulling down her hood to reveal a professional smile. “When you set out you were on foot. Now you come back with a trophy ship. Paladin Bastion must be right about you three and your capacity for shenanigans.”

***