“Now let’s hold on a second,” Rialta whispered to John and Remmy. She cleared her throat and raised her voice as she said, “Er, can we have a minute to discuss this, Mister Jack?”
“But of course,” said Jack with a gentle smile. “And no need to be so formal with me, by the by. Just ‘Jack’ will do.”
Rialta offered Jack a cursory smile in return, then pulled John and Remmy into a tight huddle.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Rialta whispered. “This all feels really wrong to me. The pay is way too high for the work he is requesting. We cannot possibly run into any trouble in these waters. This zone is already protected by the navy. There are not any pirates between here and there, and even if there were, the navy would obliterate them before we could manage to lift a finger. Why would he need to hire us?”
John raised an eyebrow. “You’re complaining that he wants to pay us too much for an easy job?”
“No! That is not the problem. Think about it, John. I am not upset about the pay—”
“Are you allergic to grammatical contractions or something?” John asked tersely.
Rialta took a slow, calming breath. “As. I. Was. Saying,” she said. “It’s more that I’m upset that the pay doesn’t make any sense. Why in the world would this guy pay so much money to have three mercenaries stare at a bunch of boxes for a few hours for seemingly no reason?”
“Well, who cares?” Remmy asked. “It’s all the same to us, isn’t it? He could pay us ten gold or five hundred, but the work wouldn’t change. All we have to do is sit around on this ship and possibly chase away a stray boat or two. No big deal, right? Quick round trip and we all get a few hundred gold richer. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
Rialta frowned, craning her neck to get a better look at the ship. She read the text on the ship’s backside and her eyes widened. “It’s called the ‘S.S. Swindler’!” she hissed under her breath.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Jack, who had apparently overheard her. “Really inaccurate, that name. It’s not a steamship. She runs on twin diesel engines.”
“Well I say we go,” John said. “Are you guys in or what?”
Remmy shrugged. “Why not?”
Rialta sighed. She couldn’t articulate any valid reason not to go, but her intuition was nagging at the back of her mind. Other than the ship’s silly name, she couldn’t put her finger on any one detail in particular that gave her pause. Still, the terms of the quest seemed completely bizarre. But what was the danger in going? She, Remmy, and John were nobodies, useless as hostages. There was no value in capturing them, and Jack hadn’t even known who they were until a few moments ago. What motive would he have to lead them into a trap?
“I suppose we might as well go,” Rialta finally said.
“Excellent!” Jack said. “Right this way. I’ll show you to the upper deck.”
They proceeded to follow Jack onto a rickety ramp connecting the ship to the dock. There were dozens of huge, unlabeled wooden crates on the lower deck of the ship. It appeared that whoever was responsible for loading the ship had made a very sloppy job of it. The cargo was haphazardly strewn about the deck without any apparent attempt at organization.
“This way, if you please,” Jack said, pointing them all toward a set of wooden plank stairs leading to the upper deck and bow of the ship. They all followed Jack onto the deck, which was lined with a few rusty metal benches and surrounded by an equally rusty metal railing.
“All right,” Jack said, “I need you to stay up here for the duration of the voyage. This spot will give you a decent view of all the cargo on the ship during the journey. Use any force necessary to keep this cargo safe, okay? The ship is enchanted to take you precisely where you need to go. You don’t even need to navigate. It’s completely idiot-proof.”
Rialta shot a furtive glance at Remmy, but she did not say anything.
“Any questions?” Jack asked.
Rialta raised her hand.
“No? Excellent,” Jack said, and with one fluid motion, he ran and leapt over the railing of the deck, landing softly on the dock beside the ship.
Rialta gasped. “Wait! What happens if—”
“Good luck!” Jack called, and with a little wave, he turned and scrambled back up the docks and out of sight. Rialta felt a sinking sensation in her stomach as the engines roared and rumbled beneath her feet. The ship took off with a sudden lurch. She just managed to stagger forward to keep her balance.
“I guess we’re off,” John said.
“All right!” Remmy shouted. “Here we go!”
His enthusiasm was short lived. Not counting the initial kick of the engines on their departure, the ship was incredibly slow. The wind was still, and the waters were calm. The ship coasted gently through the bright blue ocean as it crawled toward the distant island. The first ten minutes of the trip were uneventful. So were the next twelve minutes. And the four minutes after that. Also, the next five minutes.
“Been a pretty boring thirty-one minutes,” Remmy said, slouching on one of the benches.
“Yeah, well, so much the better,” Rialta said. “I have to say, I was pretty uneasy about this whole ordeal at first, but it seems like—”
The trio jumped in tandem as a massive explosion issued from beneath the ship’s floorboards. The ship gave a heaving lurch, then hurtled forward with newfound speed. Remmy fell from his bench. “What the hell was that?” he shouted.
“No idea,” said John, who’d stood up and frantically began inspecting the ship for some sign of damage. “Were we just attacked by something?”
Rialta’s eyes widened in horror. She had heard that sound once before. She automatically looked up toward the sky.
“Look,” Rialta said, pointing upward. She had meant to shout, but the word came out as a whisper. The sky above was morphing and blurring from its typical pale blue to a bizarre, unnatural green. A searing panic tore through her as she realized what was happening.
“We need to jump!” she shouted, running toward the railings surrounding the ship. She looked back to find Remmy and John, each of whom gaped at her before they finally caught on and stared, horror-struck, up at the sky. The engines screeched in protest as the ship started to move faster. Soon they were rocketing over even the smallest waves, crashing up and down across the water. It was nearly impossible for them to keep their footing.
“It’s a mana engine! The ship has got a mana engine! These crates aren’t cargo, they’re fuel! We have to get off before it teleports us!” Rialta screamed. “We’re being kidnapped, or taken, or—or something! Come on!”
The fear in her voice must have been evident, as John and Remmy immediately ran to join her without another word. Rialta tried to grasp the ship’s railing, but some invisible forcefield prevented her from reaching out any further than about a foot from the edge of the ship. Her panic mounted as she frantically searched for some weak spot in the invisible barrier. She slammed her fists against it to no avail. She then took a step back, took out her wand, and fired every spell she knew toward the impassible shield. Chaotic streaks of fire and electric arcs of every color fountained from her wand and the open palm of her free hand, but the spells harmlessly ricocheted off the invisible barrier and flew upward into the sky.
Without warning, the ship was engulfed in a blinding light. For a moment, it appeared as though the ship existed on nothing but an infinite plane of flat, blue water. John, Remmy, and Rialta were all thrown to the floor of the ship as it came to an abrupt stop. Rialta felt her head slam hard onto the deck, and her vision darkened around the edges. When she was finally able to see clearly, she found herself staring directly up into a dreary green sky.
Chapter 8
H
“What happened? Where the hell are we?” John asked, grasping his forehead. He stumbled as he attempted to get up from the deck of the ship.
Rialta struggled to get to her feet as well. “I told you, this ship must have a mana engine.
” A horrible nausea seeped up from her stomach and gripped her by the throat. “We’ve been taken to another dimension.” It hurt to say the words, to admit that it had happened.
“Which one?” Remmy demanded, staring up at the sky.
“Oh, sure thing, Remmy,” Rialta said, pretending to look thoughtful as she tapped a finger on her temple. “Let me just consult my encyclopedic knowledge of the literally infinite number of dimensions and get back to you on that, shall I?”
“Oh, good,” Remmy said with a sigh. “At least you can tell us where we are.”
“Of course I can’t!” Rialta shouted. “You two are absolute idiots,” she said as she began to pace up and down the upper deck in a fruitless effort to collect her thoughts. “What are we going to do now?”
“Take it easy,” John said. “Panic will get us nowhere.”
“How am I supposed to take it easy?” Rialta demanded. “We’ve just been kidnapped and taken to some unknown place in time and space, and there is a very good possibility that we will never see Ro ever again!”
“What?” Remmy interjected in a panic. “Surely there’s some way back, right? Can’t you do a spell or—or something?” He sounded desperate, frantic.
“Do you know how much raw power and skill goes into teleportation magic?” Rialta shouted at Remmy. “I cannot even manage to create portals within dimensions, let alone open rifts between them! Even if I theoretically had the raw skill to do it, we would need…” She paused, looking at the now-empty deck of the ship. “An unbelievable amount of mana fuel,” Rialta continued, shaking her head. “By the gods, I cannot believe I was so stupid as to not even bother checking that little rat Jack’s ‘cargo’ before we left,” she added, slapping herself on the forehead.
“What are you talking about?” Remmy asked.
“Look!” Rialta said as she pointed to the lower deck. The massive crates that had been there only moments ago had all since vanished. “It was fuel. All fuel. It was consumed the moment we teleported to this place. And now it’s gone. Even if we had it, I would have no idea how to calibrate this thing to get us back home.”
Remmy adopted the expression of a beached fish—wide-eyed, his mouth opening and closing without managing to say anything.
Rialta turned away from him, and the horrible dread surging deep within her became too much to bear. Shouting at Remmy had only provided a momentary reprieve from the fear and anxiety crashing down upon her. She felt as though she was going to vomit. With nothing else to do, she took a moment to look around this strange world to better get her bearings.
The ship was somehow perfectly docked beside a small pier which led straight onto a very narrow beach in the distance. The beach itself was a thin strip of light-brown sand, which immediately led into a steep, craggy hillside covered in a lush growth of wild, spiraling vines of a type Rialta had never seen before. On the hilltops, tall trees with violet leaves swayed in the wind. As the wind swept down the hillside, Rialta only just noticed that her bare arms were covered in goosebumps. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered violently. This place was much colder than Laelynn.
“Come look over here,” John said. To Rialta’s surprise, he was already standing on the pier. Rialta had been so worked up in her own thoughts that she’d failed to notice John disembarking. He was pointing to a massive support pillar sticking up out of the pier, on which a piece of battered parchment was fluttering in the breeze, anchored in place by a rusty nail. Rialta leapt out of the ship and approached the note. As she did so, she noticed a wooden chest peeking out from behind the massive pillar. She grasped the piece of paper and tore it from the nail.
To my hired mercenaries,
You are clearly stranded. I will get you back home if you follow my commands precisely. If you complete all my tasks, you will be returned to your home world, along with far more gold than the three hundred pieces you were initially offered. Otherwise, feel free to languish in this foreign land.
Your first task is to find the village simply known as ‘the Chasm.’ To get there, follow the path immediately in front of the ramp down to the beach. There are some supplies in the chest beside this note. Help yourselves.
-H
Rialta opened her mouth to make a sarcastic quip or a clever remark—anything to belie the seriousness of the situation—but something within her was keeping her from speaking. She let out a noise, something between a sob and a laugh, and then tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She turned away from John to hide her face.
“What’s that note say?” John asked. Rialta heard his heavy footsteps clunking along the pier as he approached, and she knew that he had seen that she was crying. She silently handed him the note. John reached out a hand as if to grasp her shoulder, but he hesitated. He opted to simply take the note from her instead.
“Oh,” John said as he finished reading the note. “Well this sucks.”
“Yep,” Rialta said, wiping away her tears.
At their words, Remmy frowned. He ran down the steps of the upper deck, crossed the lower deck, and ran onto the pier. He took the note from John and read it for himself. By the time he finished reading, he’d turned a light shade of green. “We’re trapped here?” he asked.
“Looks that way,” John said as he kicked open the wooden chest beside the pillar. Inside the chest were several backpacks, some thick wool cloaks, cooking utensils, water canteens, torches, rope, and two canvas tents. “And it looks like whoever this ‘H’ is, he plans for us to be here for a while,” he added.
Rialta balled her hands into fists as she considered their situation. Her sadness and fear quickly began to morph into anger and righteous indignation. Hesitation invited fear and anxiety, and she had to refuse to welcome them. She hurried over to the chest and snatched a backpack from within. She immediately began to load it up with some of the gear provided by the mysterious ‘H.’ She grabbed one of the canteens and she was happy to find that, small comfort though it was, it seemed to already be full of water. She added it to the pack.
Rialta paused in her packing as another chilly breeze swept across the sea. She took one of the wool cloaks from the chest and stood upright to fling it over her shoulders before returning to the chest to see what else she could find.
“Wait, hold on,” Remmy said. “What are you doing, Rialta?”
“Packing myself a bag,” she replied, willing her voice to remain even and calm. “I suggest you both do the same.”
“But shouldn’t we try to see if we can get the ship running again just in case?” Remmy asked.
“We cannot,” replied Rialta. “Like I said, I haven’t the faintest clue about how a mana engine functions, let alone how we would configure it to get us back home. And no offense, but I doubt the two of you are experts on mana engines, or otherwise know of any other way to get us home. This H fellow apparently does, however.”
“And you’re seriously just going to trust this stranger?” John asked, snatching the note from Remmy and waving it around.
“Of course I do not trust him,” Rialta said. “But we really do not have any choice, do we? We can either see if he will make good on his word, try to discover some other way to get back home, or rot here on the beach until we starve to death. If he is a liar, maybe we are stuck here forever. If he’s not a liar, we go home after we take care of whatever it is he wants from us.”
John grimaced. “How do you know about teleportation and mana engines and all this—this stuff?” he asked.
Rialta paused, staring up at the sky again.
“Rialta?” John asked a bit louder.
“I just picked up some basic knowledge about them when I was studying my own school of magic. But it makes no difference now, does it? Are we going to hike this path or not?” Rialta asked.
John turned and traced the path to the horizon with his eyes as he considered Rialta’s words. Slowly, he nodded.
Remmy stared at John in disbelief. “But—but there’s got to be another way
to get home from right here. Right here on the beach, right? Using the ship? There’s got to be a way we could, we could—”
“We could what?” Rialta demanded.
Remmy shook his head. Tears had started to form in his eyes. “We could just… we could…”
John walked forward and put his hand on Remmy’s shoulder. “Remmy, bud, we’re going to be fine, okay? Just collect yourself and relax. We’re going to take this whole situation one step at a time. We’re going to figure it all out.”
Remmy took several long, shuddering breaths before he finally nodded. Soon both Remmy and John followed Rialta’s example, each packing up a backpack. John, seeming to accept that it was his duty as the strongest of the bunch, grabbed both tents, and fastened them to the top of his backpack with a small length of rope.
Rialta took a hesitant glance toward the vast, empty sea behind them, then turned and looked toward the pier and ramp down to the beach. Indeed, as the note had indicated, there was a dirt path just beyond the ramp leading up into the hills. The path stretched into a wide, grassy valley dotted by pockets of tall grass, shrubs, and weeds. It disappeared on the horizon at the base of a broad expanse of hilly terrain in the distance.
“Let’s go,” Rialta said. With that, the three of them took off along the dirt path before them in abject silence.
Chapter 9
The Trail to The Chasm
“Aaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuggggghhhh!”
Remmy’s groan was so sudden, so loud and so over-the-top that Rialta jumped as the three of them walked along the path.
“What?” she spat.
“This suuuuuuuuuuucks,” Remmy replied, throwing his head back and flinging his arms limply to his sides.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Rialta said flatly. “All the same, it seems like you have cheered up a bit. Or at least you have calmed down. You cannot be scared if you are bored.”
Remmy only grunted in response.
“Come on Remmy, let’s keep going,” John said. “I’m starting to get really hungry, and I’d really like to find something to eat before nightfall.”
A Quest for Chumps (Departed Dimensions Book 1) Page 5