Butcher of Gadobhra Chapter 204 Rough Draft (Patreon)

Really rough. I started writing and about three thousand words later this was on the screen. It's 2am, and I'm getting some sleep.

Captain Woodrat

You have slain a beast of the   void. The bodies of these creatures may differ, but what they represent is a   primal force of hunger.
 You have earned 1000 experience that may be used for Smoke Eating or Swordsmanship.
 You have earned 10 points to be spent on Core Skills

 You have earned the gratitude of the Pod of Nequeshan.

Mr. Ozzy

You have slain a beast of the   void. The bodies of these creatures may differ, but what they represent is a   primal force of hunger.
 You have earned 1000 experience that may be used for Smoke Eating or   any Hunting Skill
 You have earned 10 points to be spent on Core Skills

 You have earned the gratitude of the Pod of Nequeshan. They promise to bring   you many more sharks to kill.

Woodrat was at the tiller they had managed to fix temporarily with some shark hide strips and wooden pegs. The shattered railing, decking, and other bits of wood were piled on the remaining deck. Ozzy had to stay on one side of the ship to keep things balanced until they could repair the damaged supports on the right side of the ship that the shark had splintered.

"I've been meaning to ask you, where did you learn about hunting sharks and woomeras and such things? You even seem to be getting along with porpoise and talking to them. But I know you never spent time on a real ship before."

Ozzy thought about how to explain things. Might as well start with the big question. "Do you have gods here in the smoke?"

Woodrat spat overboard. "Of course, we have gods! What kind of question is that? They aren't friendly, and they don't care if we live or die, but a man has to have a god to pray to when things get bad. I only know of a few of them. There's Evergreen, she lives on the Islands and tends to the growing green things that live there. The Burning man has dominion over heat, and takes a special interest in the people who lose control of their furnace. His priests are said to have beards and eyes of fire. He incites ships to go to war."

"Let's see, there’s Palaimon, beloved of shipwrecked sailors. He gets a lot of prayers and sometimes sends a current to put a man in the path of a ship to rescue him. At this point you'd think I'd be pretty friendly with him, and maybe I am. I've been lucky a time or two."

"Old Smoke is who made this whole place. The legends say he was a creature of fire that got lost in the Skye and breathed in too much air. Unhealthy stuff. He coughed and coughed for an age and created the smoke. Every time he breaths out we get more smoke, and he get's a little smaller."

"Aeto'le is the goddess of hunting, especially whales, sharks, and kraken. She has an enchanted Harpoon that always returns to her. She's worshipped on all the big hunting ships, especially when they go after kraken."

"There's a few more, but I don't spend time on the islands much, so as far as gods go, I'm pretty much just for saying prayers to Palaimon when I can."

Ozzy listened as Woodrat told him about the gods in the smoke, then continued his own tale. "Well, in the Conjunction, we have a goddess of the hunt named Artemis. She blesses hunters who go out to kill beasts in the forests, either for protecting their village for food.  I helped to restore one of her shrines.  The shrine would grant a hunter new skill for completing hunts of the beasts in the forest. Shark Hunting and Woomera were two of those skills, but I never had much chance to practice them until now."

Woodrat scratched his head. "Sounds a little like Aeto'le, although I only half understand that story. But you should sacrifice that heart to your Artemis then. If she's like Aeto'le, she'll appreciate it."

Ozzy doubted he was going to find a shrine floating in the smoke. "A little difficult. How do you sacrifice to Aeto'le?"

Woodrat pointed at the heart. "Take that, and add heat until it glows. Think of something you want, and throw it into the sky. Supposedly the farther your throw it, the better the chance of getting your wish."

Ozzy did as Woodrat suggested, and wished to hell he could go home. A few points of heat made the heart glow brightly, and he threw it as far as he could. The little speck of light went high in the air and flew out of sight. Neither Woodrat or Ozzy could tell where it came down. Ozzy felt a little let down when nothing happened. Woodrat saw his face and clapped him on the shoulder. "The gods don't answer that quickly lad. Maybe something happens, maybe it doesn't. But it’s always good to offer up a prayer, you never know who is listening. Now, let's get back to work. You've got sharkskin to work with and I've got some wood to fix.

The sharkskin had turned out to be ideal for hide crafting. There was nothing like tanning here in the smoke, the shark hide was essentially already tanned. It was tough as an unsplit hide of cured sedge beast leather. Ozzy spent some time making himself a butcher's apron from the hide to gain some armor from it, and a pair of paints to replace the set he was rapidly wearing out. The rest he rolled up for future projects or cut up into long strips that were useful for temporary repairs to the ship.

Dinner was shark, as would the next few meals. It was better than most other fish, and saved time fishing. With nothing distracting him, Woodrat was able to get most of the repairs done in a day and they sailed onward, Woodrat navigating by some system of reading the currents of the smoke that Ozzy simply couldn't grasp. He chalked it up to one more thing he didn't understand about the smoke.

The monotony was starting to get to Ozzy. He was used to working, but not to just holding a tiller or staring into the smoke for what was going to attack them next. He made an idle wish for something a little more exciting to happen. Unlike his other wish, this one came true very quickly.

The sound hit them first. A massive explosion that shook them to their bones. Both men had been fishing and were knocked prone by the blast. The sail was destroyed from the force of the sound tearing through the air. Ozzy saw a ball of light that had to be a mile away come up from the deep smoke. When it got to the surface, fire and light shot into the air hundreds of feet high and then fiery bits came back down, falling all around the plume of fire. It reminded Ozzy of a fountain...no, a volcano. It was like a volcano in the smoke, a place without land. And then as a dark peak thrust up out of the smoke, with rivers of fire running down its flanks, Ozzy revised that notion. Somehow that really was a volcano!

Woodrat stared at it. "Oh, by all the gods, this is bad. So very, very bad. I have to get a sail back up and keep us moving. Tie everything down and save some strapping to tie us to the mast."

"What's going to happen? A huge wave?"

Woodrat crafted a new sail and they started moving, directly away from the volcano. "Several waves. The smoke will be forming into some huge ones, over and over as the turbulence sends them out. But the worst is coming soon. A wave of heat and fire. That cone will get big, and then it will erupts again, and that's when we need to be further away. I'm not sure we can out run it, and that's the only way we survive.

The captain poured his own heat into the sail, and they skimmed over the waves for a minute, until another blast from the volcano destroyed the sail again and nearly capsized them. "Dammit. With no sail we're dead in the water, and if I keep wasting my heat, I'll just be dead."

Ozzy could only look back at the volcano that was growing and growing. He saw movement in the smoke. They weren't the only things trying to get away. Pods of porpoise were racing by, alongside sharks, predator and prey not paying attention to each other as they fled mutual death. Something bigger leaped into the air, coming down with a splash as it down back into the smoke. It was heading in the same direction as them, and looked to pass them by.

"What the hell is that, Captain?"

Woodrat had a third sail made and spared a look. His eyes got wide. "Whale, a damned big one. Luckily, we aren't in the way."

Ozzy looked at the whale and then turned the tiller. "Then we need to get closer. Help me steer a course that puts us next to it. It's moving a lot faster than we are."

Woodrat took hold of the chains connected to the sail and guided them to a new course. "You're insane! But I like the idea. Most likely it will crush us or eat us and we won't die to the heat!"

Closet the whale came, swimming through the smoke. Ozzy estimated it at over two hundred feet long, twice the length of a blue whale. It had multiple large fins along it's wake and a huge tail. It was just below the surface of the smoke, racing along and making everything else move out of its way.

Woodrat maneuvered the Splinter until Ozzy could have almost reached out and touched the leviathan. He had his chain ready. A thick cable ran from the mast to a harpoon. He was aiming for a spot 20 feet away, and the whale was bigger than any barn. He wasn't worried about hitting it, but he was worried about what came after. He only had one shot before the whale would out of reach.

The throw was good, backed by all his strength. The harpoon suck in just behind one of the huge dorsal fins, and Ozzy held tight to the chain, pouring smoke into it and bracing his body against the most. Woodrat had taken any wood not already in use and reinforced the bottom four feet of the mast with heavy braces. Both he and Ozzy were tightly lashed to the mast with lashings of shark hide.

The jerk was as bad as Ozzy had feared. His arms nearly dislocated as he did his best to keep the chain in one piece. The ship bounced twice across the smoke and then was towed behind the whale, directly on top of it. The whale moved up and down, sometimes even lifting the ship from the water. Other times going deeper and the angle of the chain became steep. Ozzy had the odd thought that this was the best fishing story ever.

The whale had thousands of times the mass of the Splinter. They weren't going to slow it down. The question was could they hold on. They were aided by the fact that the Splinter was the smallest of ships and sailed on top of the smoke without a deep draft. Added to that, the sail was down again. They were simply a small chip of wood connected to the whale by a magical chain and anchored by the harpoon in its flesh.

It was getting hotter, and the waves of smoke crashed and rolled. They were unaffected, the bulk of the whale crashing through anything ahead of them, and shielding them from anything behind. Woodrat had both hands on the deck, and Ozzy could swear he was fixing cracks in the wood as soon as they appeared.

Woodrat looked up at him. "Replenish your smoke! Burn your fuel and don't worry about your heat. Your furnace will be picking up extra. Don't let your smoke go low!"

It was good advice. Ozzy hadn't spent a life in the smoke, only a couple of weeks. His heat was up, and going higher! And he was so low on smoke, he might have died if Woodrat hadn't yelled at him. He took a little of his concentration off of the chain and started burning fuel to make smoke. Woodrat handed him a large chunk of raw shark, and he chewed and swallowed mechanically.

Woodrat yelled and pointed ahead. Ozzy looked up and was amazed at what he saw. It was a ship. A huge ship. She reminded him of an English Ship of the Line, with three masts and several decks. He idly wondered if they had cannon here in the smoke. The massive sails on the ship were tattered and most were missing. She was limping along on only partial sail. Ozzy could see a hundred men running around the decks or in the rigging. Two-dozen were lining the rails nearest them, pointing and staring.

As Ozzy and Captain Woodrat raced past the huge ship, riding on the back of a whale, Woodrat leaped to Ozzy's shoulders, holding onto the mast with one hand. He pulled out his sword which burst into flames, and he slashed a salute at the other ship. A dumbfounded Captain on the upper deck saw him and saluted back. Ozzy took just a moment to wave with one hand before putting it back on the chain that their lives depended on. Woodrat jumped down, and checked that he was still secure.

"They may have a bigger ship Mr. Ozzy, but we have the faster one!"

Ozzy was still watching the ship behind them, with the volcano in the background, when the horizon turned red, and once again the volcano exploded. Nothing was left of it, and a wave of heat poured out across the smoke. Ozzy tore his eyes away, and paid attention to the whale. Would it dive deep? Did the smoke provide any cover from the heat?

Woodrat yelled and pointed. "Ships ahead, several of them. What the bloody hell?"

Ozzy looked to where he pointed. He saw several ships, but they looked like dark hulks, with no sails and few masts or spars. Many sat too low or were tilted at angles. The area around them didn't look like smoke, and there were no waves.

"Salad! Dammit. That's a Sargasso. A sea full of Salad and dead ships." Woodrat wasn't happy to see it.

The whale was though. It turned towards the dark mass floating in the smoke as if it was going to ram into it. "What the hell do we do, Woodrat?"

"She'll dive deep! The whales going to go under and use the salad for cover, it goes down far in the center. When she starts her dive, let us loose!"

Sure enough, as they approached the graveyard of ships, the Whale started down. The chain between them changed angles, and Ozzy released the Trammelian chain from the harpoon. What had been a chain became smoke that wrapped around his arm and became a tattoo once again. The splinter was back on the smoke, skimming along faster than they could ever go with sails.

"Let out some chain Mr. Ozzy, and moved to the back of the boat, we have to shift the weight, and make her lighter up front!" Woodrat had made his own chain and moved back to the edge of the railing. Ozzy did the same. He felt the boat shift, it's from coming up from the smoke. As they hit the mass of sargasso weed growing tightly packed in the smoke, the catamaran's pods lifting up and the splinter skidded across the top of the Sargasso, slowly losing speed. Woodrat tried to use the rudder but it broke off as it caught on something. The ship bucked as they hit debris, and then came to a shuddering stop.

The heat was nearly upon them. Ozzy grabbed Woodrat and threw him on the deck, covering him with three layers of sharkskin before laying down on top of the smaller man. The captain took offense to being manhandled. "What's the meaning of this, you bug lug?!"

"Begging the captain’s pardon, but I'm trying to save your damn life. In the Conjunction I can ward off fire from myself. None of your here have the skill. You need the fire. Except when a damned volcano shows up. I might survive, you won't."

Ozzy tried to remember how he had used his Active Fire Resistance. It was like a man missing an arm trying to flex it. He was still trying as a wave of fire roared across them, killing the top layer of salad that was even now sending tendrils up to grasp the splinter and strangle it's two crew.