Chapter 68: All Aboard (Patreon)

Riloth, with the help of his sisters, created the humans, who embodied the storms of Kaltis that Riloth created and loved. They had the capacity for great power but left destruction in the wake of their passions. Eager to see what else he could create, Riloth asked his sisters for another try and this time the orcs were born. Like humans, the orcs were a people ruled by their passion, but the orcs were not as covetous of wealth as their siblings. Instead, the orcs hungered for glory, driving them ever toward conflict.

-Unnamed Dwarven Text

—

"Good morning class!" A chipper Underbrook greeted them when he walked in. "Let's get started, we'll go by class ranking."

As the first-ranked team, the Ice Picks, gathered their gear for their shot at the dungeon, Kole stood around with his friends.

"Did you guys hear about the flood?" Zale asked them.

Kole turned to Zale, a serious expression on his face.

"I grew up in a subaquatic city forced to isolate itself from the world for 700 years. Of course, I've heard of the Flood."

The joke earned a snicker from Doug and a groan from Rakin.

"Ha. Ha," Zale said, unamused. "There was a flood in the Dahn. One of the classrooms filled up with water, when the professor went to open the door, it all poured out. Some weird crab-fish-tiger monsters came out and some of the adventurers stationed on campus took them out."

"Tiger-crab-fish?" Kole asked.

"Crab-fish-tigers," Zale corrected.

"That's weird. Like the rat-goblins I fought."

"Goblin-rats," Doug corrected, earning a grin from Zale and a glare from Kole.

Kole sighed heavily, really wishing he'd gotten the order right the first time.

"Can we talk about the crazy-extra-dimensional incursions and not adjective orders?" When no one corrected him, he continued, "Does this happen every year?"

Zale and Rakin both looked at each other and shook there heads.

"Not that we've heard of," Zale said. "And we definitely would have heard of it. Mom does seem a little stressed out lately."

"Should we be concerned?" Kole asked.

"Probably? But what can we do? The place is overrun with adventurers, and Uncle Tal-len is still around and he's... pretty formidable."

They discussed the topic as they picked out their gear. They took a large supply of ginger and some other alchemical products meant to combat sea sickness. Much of their—well, Doug with Amara's aid—research went into finding cures for seasickness that didn't hamper one's combat strength or react poorly with other more commonly used potions.

Rakin knew he would need the treatments on the sea, and Doug had never been aboard a ship to know, so they were playing it safe. While Amara had finished Kole's new blasting rod, complete with self-repairing runes, Kole had yet to master the rune intent. He'd had to spend far more time catching up on his other classes and hadn't been willing to spend any of his remaining time away from working on his spells.

The newest rod could cast ten bolts by Amara's estimate before falling apart. On handing the rod to Kole, Amara told him to bring it back in one piece or he could make his own next time. With his capacity around forty Will, and each blast of the rod costing 4, Kole had to keep close count or risk destroying it.

Hopefully, this won’t be another long run. He thought.

When the Ice Picks left the ready room, everyone fought to catch a glimpse of the party as they were escorted to their debrief. They looked haggard, but everyone always looked exhausted after leaving. Kole couldn’t make out any clues as to what they went through.

“Gravely shite,” Rakin cursed. 

“What?” Zale whispered to the dwarf.

“The Forsaken, you’re up!” Underbrook announced before entering the debrief with the Ice Picks.

“Ekord’s beard wasn’t braided when they went in,” Rakin said, “They must have been in there a while.”

Kole reflected on the dwarf, and couldn’t recall the status of his beard.

“I’m guessing that’s not a mid-battle-dwarven ritual,” Kole said.

“No,” Rakin answered simply.

It was too late for them to change their plan, so Kole did a quick check to make sure his spellbook was in his bag before stepping into the ready room. If they were going to have some extra time on their hands, he was going to make good use of it.

***

When they stepped through the door, they found themselves on a dock, about to board a rather large trading ship—well, large by non-ship clan standards. Compared to the Willowbrook, the towering ship the Damsel’s Dragon was merely a skiff. The quartermaster at the gangplank greeted them as if they’d been contracted adventurers for the journey.

“You sure you want to wear that aboard?” the salty old sailor said to Zale, eying her very shiny and very heavy metal armor. “You go overboard, yer staying overboard.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Zale said, “I have my tricks.”

“Yer funeral—though there won’t be a body for an actual funeral I suppose,” he said and then gave directions to their lodgings.

They’d been given a section of the hold with four hammocks and retractable privacy screens between them. While the space was cramped, they at least didn’t have to sleep stacked atop each other like the lowest-ranking crew.

“You know,” Zale began, looking around the damp hold, “when Mom talked about the glamorous life of being an adventurer, she left out the part about the lavish quarters.”

They spent the first day getting acquainted with their surroundings. There were two additional teams contracted to guard the ship, and they had rotating eight-hour shifts of responsibility. Being the last to board, they’d been tasked with the night shift. The journey was expected to take around six weeks, sailing from Hawk’s Nest to a floating mat out in the ocean.

Rakin let out a few choice curses at the discovery of that news. As soon as they left port, he grew ill and began to chew on ginger whenever he wasn’t actively vomiting. They’d only had enough points for three potions to completely counteract seasickness, but each only lasted a day, and were to be saved for battles. Thankfully, Doug handled the sea fine, except for when his antlers got caught in some low rigging. He spent as much time as he could on deck, marveling at the expanse of the open ocean. He’d grown up in forested mountain foothills and had never had cause to pass beyond the range and see the ocean. Kole, who too had lived a life of limited experience, was not as impressed by the sight, having done his share of gawking on his trip to Edgewater.

Why stare out at the sea when I could be working on a new spell? He thought.

The quarters were cramped, and Kole really wished he could cast Theral’s Floating Disk spell to create a better table than the broken crate lid he’d found and sat on his lap. While adventurers were valued on a ship, space was valued more, and he could find nowhere to set up where he wasn’t in somebody’s way. Thankfully, the ship—and really every ship that wanted to discourage candles—was outfitted with an abundance of Light runes, allowing Kole to at least see.

If only he could block out sounds like Zale to ignore Rakin’s piteous moans. After a few days, Rakin’s groaning lessened, as he began to try to fight the sickness with the arts he’d learned in the monastery. Kole wasn’t sure if the dwarf was improving, or just managing to hold in the pain better.

Zale quickly befriended the crew, and became quite popular, learning the rapier style of the sailors in their downtime. She forced Kole to spend at least an hour of his free time each day on the deck, training in some manner.

The other adventurers fascinated Kole. They interacted with them daily, far more often than with the villages of the last dungeon. He struggled to believe that they weren’t real people. Every one of them was a seasoned adventurer with their own knowledge and experience to share.

Zale and Doug spent the most time training with them, seeking their advice, but none were wizards and Kole eventually lost interest when the initial novelty of their existence wore off. The ship had one wizard, and he was a crotchety old man who only knew the spells required to keep the sails full and put out fires.

The party spent their nights from 8 pm to 4 am patrolling the deck on watch—except for Rakin who sat meditating to mitigate the sickness, potion at the ready should disaster strike. After their shift, they joined the crew for breakfast before going to bed.

They woke around noon, ate breakfast for lunch, and then trained with the evening shift of adventurers, and then Kole would sneak away to study his magic.

Well, not just his magic. If the school was teaching him anything—and it was teaching him a whole lot—he was realizing he needed to better control himself. Yes, he had a looming deadline by which he needed to learn a third spell, but he also had to pass his other classes, and with each day that went by it looked like he had a better chance to learn the spells than pass alchemy.

He dedicated an hour every day to reviewing his material for history and alchemy. While he didn’t have his textbooks or notebooks from those classes, he had something almost as good—well, significantly better depending on the context. One of his first tasks was settling once and for all whether or not his spellbook could produce more pages and the verdict—after counting the pages half a dozen times to be sure—was that it could. He’d ripped out a page, and still 200 remained.

He then numbered all the remaining blank pages to see what would happen if the book was full. When he tried opening it to the back, he found the last page blank, and when he turned back, he was on page 200. Labeling the last page 201 and recounting though still resulting in a count of 200. He experimented for a while and found that he if thought of every page number before turning the page, he could reach a count of 201, which was not useful in and of itself, but it did reassure him that pages wouldn’t somehow be lost. 

The study made him realize something he’d not noticed before. The book had always seemed to open to the page he’d intended, ever since he first started writing in it. Whether he was looking for a spellform or a new page, whenever he opened the book he opened to the page he wanted. While he was a fair hand at guessing the page to open to, the infallibility of the act ought to have alerted him to the book’s magical properties long before Zale’s revelation. 

So, confident that he wasn’t wasting his magical paper, he began to write down all he could remember of his lectures from his classes, and to his surprise, he found he could remember them verbatim.

Now if only there was a garden I could practice in. He thought, then immediately regretted it, fearing he’d just doomed them to a months-long stay on the floating mat they were sailing towards. 

The time Kole spent studying magic was split between his three spells, but he focused on Shield, trying to apply the advice Tal had granted him before the dungeon spat them out. If he could show he’d made such rapid progress, maybe he’d change his mind,

Though, maybe the whole time dilation thing will lessen the accomplishment. Kole thought.

The first four days of the voyage carried on in this simple pattern. On the fifth night on watch, Kole stood on a platform staring out into the blackness beyond. The platform sat just below the sails but a dozen feet from the deck meant for giving defenders an elevated platform. Doug sat with him, bow at hand, and Doug quizzed Kole about plants to keep themselves alert—though it was having the opposite effect on the wizard.

It was Zale’s cry that pulled Kole out of his plant-induced stupor,

“Activate the alarm!” she shouted, “There’s something in the water!”