Chapter Three Hundred and Forty-Eight - Onto the River and Through the Woods

With Admiral Orange’s assent, Caprica and I figured out a formation that our fleet could take as we travelled. The Beaver Cleaver as the fleet’s flagship, got to sit pretty in the middle of the formation, with the slightly-faster Featherfall ahead, and the Lunch Box behind. The idea was that we could create an area with less pressure for the Lunch Box to keep pace with us.

The two sylph frigates kept pace on either side of the formation. They were the best-armed ships in our fleet and could outpace even the Featherfall when they pushed themselves a little.

The Royal Pride split from the formation relatively early on. It was going to head west, then circle north and wait for Caprica’s signal to fly past the place where we suspected the pirates to be. That was our big decoy.

As for us, our heading was north-northwest which had us fighting a cool wind from the northeast.

The first day of the trip was simple enough. After a few hours of figuring out optimal speeds and getting used to flying in a formation, we made good progress towards our ultimate destination.

As night fell, the air grew colder and I found myself switching out from behind the wheel to let Clive have a turn, though I made sure to bring him a warm blanket because I didn’t need him catching a cold.

When it became too dark to see, we slowed down, descended, and came to a stop above an area barren of any sort of grass or shrubbery.

According to Calamity, that was because of the Greenstone. We weren’t in the area of its effect, but we were close enough that there wasn’t anything growing here. It was safe to stay, but not for a long time.

I was a little worried about that, so I kept my Cleaning aura up to make sure the ship stayed clean. It was surprisingly hard to do that though, and after asking around, Amaryllis conducted a test with some spells that showed that the mana in the area was much, much lower than it should have been.

Maybe that explained why nothing was alive around here?

It didn’t really matter. The next morning saw us pulling up our anchors and taking to the skies once more under Grand Admiral Orange’s careful watch. If everything went well, we would be reaching the Snowlands a few hours before nightfall, hopefully a good ways east of where the pirates were located.

That’s when I got a pleasant surprise.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Captaining skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!

Rank D is a Free Rank!

That was a heck of a boost! I wouldn’t say no to it, especially not now that we were working with so many other ships.

It gave me a bit of pep to my step to know that I was improving, and I worked extra hard to keep everything in tip-top condition. It wasn’t too hard though. The sylph troops aboard the Beaver were already on their best behaviour since they were sharing a ship with a princess and a paladin.

The day passed surprisingly quickly. There was a million-and-one things to take care of, but I still had a few moments to take in the scenery as we continued flying on. There was something nice about the smell of spent fuel in the crisp-cold air. The world below was spread out far and wide, huge plains eventually giving way to old-growth forests.

The biggest change though, happened when we reached a sheer cliff-side. It was like the whole world was split apart, with a sheer wall of stone rising up a hundred metres off the ground. Above that rise was another forest, but this one was different to the one below.

The trees were much larger around, and significantly taller. They reminded me of maple trees on a scale that dwarfed even a redwood, and I ended up ordering us to climb a bit higher to avoid brushing too close to their tops, even if that meant dealing with slightly thinner air.

It was colder here too. Some of the trees further north had brushes of snow on their topmost leaves, and the ground I could spy between them was covered in a white blanket protected from the sun by the canopy formed by the trees.

“The pirates should be to the west of here,” Caprica said. She had a clipboard out, with a map of the region on it. “If they have as many ships as we think, then they’ll need a place to dock them, and the only place like that nearby is the Lightning Watch.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s an old Snowlander keep. From what I remember of their history, they used to live to the north of here, but they moved into these woods at some point. Then, for some reason, they moved westward and settled their capital near the Bay of Storms.”

“For some reason?” I turned to Caprica..

All she gave in answer was a shrug. “I don't have any better information than that, sorry. It's not like I'm carrying the palace library around with me. I could write a request back home.” She tapped her ring.

Amaryllis nodded. “That might not be a terrible idea. If we intend to approach this keep on foot, then we might as well learn what we can about the environment.”

“I’ll pen something in a moment then,” Caprica said.

We continued across the forest until a fog started to collect on the ground around us. It was probably the sun’s warmth touching the few snow-covered rivers we were passing, combined with a warmer breeze from the east.

One of the lookouts on the Featherfall signalled back to us that there was a glade, so I ordered the fleet to slow down to quarter speed, and we coasted ahead until we came to a large river bank.

Two rivers met below us, both shallow, but fast-moving, especially where they met and the competing currents splashed against each other.

“Seems like a good enough place to make landfall,” I said.

Orange hissed at the ground, but I think it was mostly the idea of taking a dip in all that water that didn’t amuse her.

We parked ourselves as close to the ground as we could, lowering ladders to splash into the river’s edge while our anchors fixed themselves onto the stoney ground. The clearing was only barely large enough to fit all of the ships, but we managed to squeeze them all in.

Hiding five airships just wasn’t really doable under normal circumstances, but the trees here were so tall that it might just be possible to go unnoticed if we sat the ships low enough.

Because I was the captain, I had to be one of the last ones off, at least according to the sylph. The Beaver Cleaver’s normal crew--which meant our harpy friends and the Scallywags--were left onboard, as well as a team of six sylph who pulled the short straws. Every ship had a small crew and a number of soldiers onboard to defend them. The last thing we wanted was for someone to come around and steal our rides back home.

My shoes hit the water with a splash and I gasped as water raced around my legs. It was cold!

I raced to the river bank, sloshing through water that ran all the way up to mid-thigh in places. I used that trick to warm myself up as I left the water... and then I realized that I could have enbiggemed myself once I was on the opposite shore and felt quite silly for not thinking of it earlier. On the shore, a sylph gave me a hand, and I noticed that a few of the soldiers were wet all the way to their shoulders. Their packs were dry though, so they’d prioritized keeping their stuff warm. Some of them were burning mana in their off hands, using self-heating spells that warmed their clothes enough that the water soaked into their armour was wafting off as a light steam.

“I haven’t been this cold in a while,” I said with good cheer as I found my friends to one side.

“It’s not too bad, it gets colder in Goldenalden during mid-winter,” Caprica said.

Awen didn’t say anything, but the clatter of her teeth spoke volumes about what she thought of the forest’s temperature.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulder to share some of my warmth. “You’ll get used to it,” I said. It was a partial lie, it took a while to get acclimatized to this kind of cold.

Amaryllis huffed and tugged her jacket tighter. “We should get moving. We have half a day of travel time left if we pace ourselves. We couldn’t see the keep from the air, so it’s going to be a good distance away.”

Bastion nodded. “I’m sending scouts ahead. We don’t have many, but those we do have are pretty talented. They’ll give us the lay of the land. Otherwise, I suggest we move as a single group. A three-long formation.”

“A what?” I asked.

As it turned out, the sylph had a lot of formations and such that they trained. A three-long was a long row, with three soldiers walking side by side. The one in the centre would look ahead, those on the sides would look to the sides. Each threesome stayed within weapon’s reach of the one ahead, so as we started to walk into the tall forest, we did so as a long, thick snake of people.

I ended up somewhere in the middle, with my friends by my side and Caprica just ahead, flanked by two of the more experienced royal guards who’d come along with us.

The forest was wild, but there was far less underbrush than I expected - instead, we had to cut our way through fallen branches to walk in a more or less straight path.

The size of the trees made me feel absolutely tiny, and I wasn't even using Proportion Distortion. These weren’t the big maples and such I was used to seeing back home. They had more in common with sequoia than anything else. If an animal came out from around a tree, I imagined that it would have to be enormous just to be relative to the trees.

But we didn’t see anything.

Not even a squirrel or a wild bird.

In fact, now that I was paying attention, the forest was eerily quiet once we were far enough from the river that the murmuring of the water was far enough back that I couldn’t hear it anymore.

“Where are all the little beasties?” I asked.

“Hibernating?” Awen suggested.

I shook my head. “Not cold enough for that.”

“It’ll get even colder?” Awen asked, aghast.

“Broccoli’s right, there’s nothing but plant life around. And insects,” Amaryllis said. She swatted a few little bugs away with a sweep of her wings. “Nothing bigger than a beetle.”

“Could it be that Greenstone thing?” I asked.

Calamity, who was in the group right behind us, spoke up. “I doubt it. The Greenstone’s effect doesn’t go that far, nor in this direction, I don’t think.”

“Do you know this area?” I asked.

“Nah, sorry. If I knew nya’d drag us here I’d have asked around a bit more. Heard some stories, but mostly about how the forest is filled with monsters and ancient dungeons.”

“Oh,” I said.

Monsters and ancient dungeons. Neither sounded good at the moment. We didn’t have time to go exploring a dungeon. Especially not an older one, which would undoubtedly have more floors and more dangerous challenges.

I imagined that a dungeon in a forest like this, so far from anything, might have gone unchallenged for a very, very long time.

My ears twitched around, and I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck rising. Was something watching us? I looked around, and noticed some of the soldiers doing the same.

At the very front, Bastion raised a hand and made a few quick gestures.

“Quiet,” Caprica muttered for our benefit.

The soldiers carefully shifted, hands casually alighting on hilts and shield arms moving as if to make sure they were limber and ready to move. Any chatter down the line, which wasn’t much to begin with because they were professionals, died down to nothing at all.

We didn’t stop moving though, not until something stumbled out ahead of us and we came to a stop without anyone communicating that we should.

One of the scouts returned, covered in sweat, with a gash on his forehead and his wings buzzing loudly in the quiet as he came for a hard landing before the group. “Sir,” he gasped.

“Report,” Bastion ordered.

“Spiders, sir. Big ones.”

***