by Jez Cajiao
I stretched, cracking my back, and checked on Tang again, before walking over to Jian, looking down at the mess of controls and frowning.
“How are we doing?” I asked him, and he started, having been lost in the complicated controls.
“Ah!” He cried, jerking back, and making the ship shudder before he grabbed the sticks again and got it under control. “Damn, boss, don’t do that to me!” he said, shaking his head. “What did you say?”
“I asked you how we were doing?” I said again.
“We’re okay… not good; don’t get me wrong, but whatever Frederikk and his people have done, it’s resulted in a serious cut to the loss we were suffering. We’re using about one percent every two hours now, as near as I can tell, but they’re still gaining on us. The rest of the fleet disappeared into the storm up ahead about twenty minutes ago, though, so it looks like we’re on our own. Best we can hope for is that we can lose our pursuers in there, maybe change direction and see how close to shore we can get? Land and make a run for the Tower on foot?”
“Not a good option there,” I said, shaking my head. “We’d be hunted from above and followed by their forces. I doubt we’d last long.”
“Could the gnomes not make us something to ride to escape them?”
“Possibly, but it’s heavy trees and thick underbrush down there for what, a few hundred miles to the Tower? I don’t see us riding something the gnomes made and controlled for that long, do you?” I arched a questioning eyebrow at Jian, smiling wryly.
“Well, no… besides the ship, I mean,” he said, unconsciously adjusting his crotch, and I nodded in understanding. The ride to the ship itself had been an absolute ball breaker for me too.
“Besides, they used their manaengines as explosives to take out the barricade earlier. They might be able to cobble something together, but it’d still need power, and I don’t have any we could use,” I said simply. “How much longer do we have?”
“We’re down to nine percent, so if we don’t have to make any fast bursts of speed, maybe eighteen hours.” Jian said uncomfortably.
“And how long to the Great Tower?” I asked, and immediately catching the way his shoulders slumped.
“At this speed, and the direction we’re going, following the fleet and all, I’d think at least fifty-five to sixty hours. Probably closer to seventy, considering the wind is against us, so we can’t use the sails either…”
“So, we’re fucked,” I stated after a minute of careful thought.
“Yeah, seems that way,” he replied quietly, keeping his eyes on the display.
“Well, that’s a kick in the teeth,” I muttered, shaking my head, and looking around the bridge, as though expecting an answer to just pop up.
“Yeah, I asked Tenandra, and she said that she would look into options, and then she vanished. I know you might not like her, but she’s really helped me so far…” Jian said hesitantly, and I looked at him in confusion.
“Who…” I started to ask before noticing that the Core sat on the deck, seemingly dull and lifeless. “The wisp?” I asked and he nodded.
“Okay…” I said absently, examining the Core more closely. This damn thing had taken a charge before, hadn’t it?
I was turning the Core over and over in my hands when the wisp‒Tenandra, I supposed‒reappeared.
She looked haggard, but she gave me a polite nod before giving Jian an altogether more friendly, if weak, smile.
“We may have an option, but it will not be easy,” she offered hesitantly and looked at me.
“Go on,” I encouraged her.
“The storm ahead,” she said, gesturing into the oncoming clouds. “The rest of the fleet has altered course to ride the outermost edge for safety…”
“Seems a bloody good idea to me,” I admitted.
“We don’t,” she said simply. “Instead, we dive deeper into it, and the gnomes repair a mana collector for us, connecting it to the stones that are almost dead. Some will shatter, I have no doubt, but some may survive and accept the high-density mana concentration found in the storm’s outer ring, but we cannot go deeper, not if we want to survive,” she warned soberly.
“That’s not sounding like a very safe solution…” I said carefully, frowning slightly at Tenandra.
“There are no safe options,” the wisp sighed, shaking her head. “This will gain us the power needed, but it is far from safe, and if the mana floods the crystals too quickly, many will shatter. We can only hope that it is not essential crystals that are lost. This, I estimate at a thirty-two percent chance of success, while the next most promising, at eleven percent, is boarding one of the enemy ships in the storm and looting their mana crystals, then swapping them out while we fly and hoping the ship survives…”
“Oh, well, that’s a joyful thought.” I grimaced. “That’s a pretty shitty percentage of success, either way. Are there other options?” I asked, and she shook her head regretfully.
“None above a six percent chance of success,” she sighed, watching me closely to gauge my response.
“What about this?” I asked her, hefting her Core.
“What about it?” she repeated with clear hesitation, eyeing me distrustfully.
“The Cores are designed to be charged and recharged, right? Could we charge the Core and connect it to the ship? Like a battery?” I suggested, surprised at the look of horror on her face.
“No, please…” she begged, shaking her head desperately. “I understand I have not endeared myself to you… but… you would kill me like this…?”
“I’m not trying to kill you,” I protested, holding my hands up quickly. “Oracle, whose form you took when you first showed yourself to me, she’d bound herself to me directly, rather than the Tower, as she was trying to save me when we first met. Could you not transfer yourself to something? Like the ship?”
Silence filled the wheelhouse for several seconds, before she moved, blurring with inhuman speed. As she shot forward to hover before me, her eyes searched mine for a sign, a twitch, anything to suggest I was hiding something…
“You would permit this?” she asked me eventually, her voice filled with wonder as she continued to search my face. “You would permit a wisp to become this ship? To be able to bond to something so… so free?”
“Yes,” I said truthfully. “You’ve already accepted me as your master, and as a Scion of the Empire. You’re compelled to be loyal to me and my aims, even though I’d rather you offered such loyalty willingly. I understand that trust has to be earned, on both sides.” I held her gaze, wondering if I was making a huge mistake. “If you bond with the ship, is it permanent?” I asked her, and she nodded quickly.
“If I bonded to the ship, I would be required to spread out my essence‒my soul, if you prefer‒to permeate the ship. Removing myself after that would be very… painful, not to mention resulting in a permanent lowering of my capabilities.”
“How did you manage with the Prax, then?” I asked, and she gestured to the Core.
“I was bonded to the Core. When things became grave, I was removed from the Prax’s control Citadel and interred in the Vault instead. My main control facilities were cut and only a local variant was permitted. It was to ensure that the Prax could be repaired once it was retaken, in the event of an attack being successful.”
“So, look… I might be misunderstanding this, but let’s get this very clear: if I allow you to bond to the ship, you will remain bonded to this ship, and only this ship, for life?” I asked, wanting to be absolutely certain that I understood, and she nodded in affirmation. “Dammit,” I grumbled.
“This is a problem?” she asked, an edge of coldness and sorrow leaking into her voice.
“Yeah. Well… no, not really,” I corrected myself. “I was thinking that we’d be better off bonding you with the Battleship. It’s still being built, and it won’t be ready for a while. That was it, in the middle of the fleet, before we lost sight of them, but we truly need you in here, I gu
ess.” I rubbed my chin, considering immediate versus long-term needs.
“The Battleship?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah; I bet if you can gain control of her the way that Seneschal has the Great Tower, it’d make an amazing weapon…” I muttered.
“What about my Prax?” she interrupted quickly. “What if I could be removed from this ship, and instead inserted into the Prax later; would you permit that?”
“You just said you couldn’t…” I fixed her with my best glare. “Okay, you’re hiding something. Gimme.”
“‘Gimme’? Oh. Well… I’m capable of spreading myself out; my essence, as I said…” she explained haltingly. “But once I spread my essence out, I can never get that back. If the ship were to be integrated into another, though, such as your battleship, or better yet, my Prax, I could possibly spread out further? It would take time, and I would no longer be what I am, but I could… evolve…?”
“You could become a city?” I asked with surprise, wanting further clarification. “If I allow you to join with the ship now, as long as the ship itself was integrated into the Prax later, you could spread yourself out and claim it? Resurrect the sleeping Golems, repair the city, get it back into the air?”
“I… I think so?” she responded uncertainly. “It has never been done…”
“Why not? Hell, why bond wisps with the Great Towers, centers that were meant to be the greatest citadels in times of war, but refuse to allow you the same in the Prax?” I asked her.
“Because we were captured slaves, with our natural affinities suppressed. Our ability to draw in ambient mana was burned from us, and we were forced into an eternity of servitude,” she replied grimly.
“But why?” I asked, confused, thinking over the rules against slavery that Amon… Then I paused and searched my memories, feeling his silence and his grim shame.
I reached in deeper, searching. Forcing him to share what I knew was there, somewhere. I held up a hand to Tenandra, stopping her as she started to talk, as I wanted to know this for myself, to understand it as only one who had made the decision could.
I remembered then, as Amon grudgingly gave it up, the memory surfacing slowly.
It had been early in the Empire’s history, literally thousands of years ago, long before the Empire that people now regarded as ancient history was born. In those days, it had just been Amon and his followers.
Back then, things had been quite different, despite what the history would say later. It was Shustic that had mellowed Amon’Ita , that had taught him right from wrong. When he’d started out, he’d not been a noble man, sacrificing to rise the sentient ‘good’ races out of the quagmire that life was in those days.
He’d been a conqueror, a greedy warlord, a man who’d been named the Demon of Dai’Shiier after he’d put every man and every second child to death for defying him. He’d not been trying to save the innocent; he’d been demanding the supplies the town had labored over to feed themselves through the winter.
He’d forced the survivors to serve him, in his army and in his pleasure houses, and it wasn’t until he’d had his forces smashed in detail, his followers slaughtered in retribution, that he’d seen the truth.
I remembered his first meeting with Shustic, after he’d lost everything, staggering through the fierce winter snowstorm up to the great dragon’s nest, barely alive, dead inside, and almost out, and he’d demanded a bond from her, demanded the ability to kill his enemies, in his unbelievable arrogance.
For reasons all her own, she’d agreed, but she’d made him serve her first: thirty years in the nest, learning at the clawed feet of the Elder Dragons, the Greater Dragon’s leaders, even as the Lesser Dragonkin, Wyrms and their ilk, had mocked and belittled him.
As the years passed, he was broken and reforged anew, no longer the merciless conqueror with a heart of stone, not after Shustic used her magic, forcing him to live the lives of those he’d oppressed.
He’d seen the world through their eyes, lived the nightmare of his invasion and depravity, until he’d been truly broken. Then he was gifted a rescued elven child, a child who no magic could save, who was dying of a rare condition, incapable of knowing the touch of magic. The child would never reach its tenth birthday, he was told.
This child was to be his, his penance and his reward, and he spent the following years raising the boy, making him the best he could be.
When the child, named Shel’Aviir, or ‘Repentance,’ in the old tongue, died finally, Amon sat over his still body and wept tears of fire and ice. The final part of Amon’Ita, Demon of Dai’Shiier, had died that day along with his adopted son, and the man that was left, Amon, rose to conquer the known world.
In the beginning, there were corners cut; the laws he would uphold were bent and broken frequently, and he hated himself for it, burying the truth under layers of golden lies.
He did things, or gave orders for others to do them, such as the subjugation of the wisps, seeing them as necessary evils for the greater good. He hated it, but he assuaged his fears and self-recriminations with the old line that it was for ‘the greater good’.
“You sanctimonious asshole,” I shot at him, and I felt his anger, and his acceptance of the title, even as I shut him away and reopened my eyes, looking into Tenandra’s in turn.
“Amon did it. He hated that he did, but he believed that, for the ‘greater good,’ it was necessary, as was forcing you to serve and obey the Imperial line. I crossed that line when we first met, and I ordered you to obey because we didn’t have time for a discussion. For that, I’m sorry. I’ll make you a deal, though, if you’ll have it?” I offered, and the look of curiosity was clear on her face.
“I will listen… but I am required to obey you…” She said haltingly.
“Yeah, well… the deal is this, same as I offered to the others, of any of the races: swear fealty to me, to accept me as your lord, and I’ll do my best to rise you up, to make you into the best version of yourself you can be. You can’t disobey me, so I won’t ask you for an Oath of any kind. Instead, I’ll give you one.” I took a deep breath, then injected my mana into my words as I spoke them, forcing them to bind to me and to reality as I made a declaration for the entire realm to see.
“I, Jax, Lord of Dravith and Imperial Scion, swear that I will not cross the same lines that my ancestor did, in harming the wisps, for ‘the greater good’. I will strike those down who oppose me, but never will I enslave the innocent and force them to serve for eternity. Furthermore, if they can be healed and freed, then, provided they assist in developing a replacement for their role, I will free them, but unless they swear to me, they will not be permitted to retain physically bonded items.”
I felt the mana being burned from me, examining the words as I spoke them and searching my heart for hidden meanings. Finding none, the Oath was affirmed, and Tenandra stared at me in shock.
“I’m sorry to have to add in the last bit…” I said, taking a seat and catching my breath. “But if I let you bond with the Battleship, or the Prax, or whatever, and then I free you, I’m going to need to keep the damn thing. I am at war, after all.” I shrugged and forced a smile. “Seriously, though, I am sorry, both for forcing you to obey, and for the shit that was done to you in the past. I need your help, Tenandra. Will you join me?”
“I… will,” she replied slowly, nodding her head to me, becoming more animated as she went on. “I will join you, Lord Jax. At least with you, I have a chance of freedom one day, and by the Oath you just gave, you would not further enslave our kind. If we were to find others in the wild, with you, they would be safe, instead of bonded against their will. In fact…” She took a deep breath. “I will agree to serve you, willingly, and provide everything you need, and I will ask only two things in return: first, that you agree to preserve, protect, and defend any wisp clans that you find out about…” She paused, watching me intently and looking relieved when I nodded my assent. “… and secondly, that you allow me to roam the s
kies again, but no longer as a mere passenger and assistant. Allow me to join with a ship, and if we rebuild it, a Prax. Let me evolve into the greatest form I can imagine! Let me be free to roam the realm, protecting my kind, and all those who would be enslaved… make me an instrument of destruction and rebirth, of freedom and fear. Make me truly into the Prax ‘Glorious Retribution’!” She spoke with passion in her tiny voice, almost shaking with the desire to be more than she was. To no longer be constrained by the Core she lived in, or to be locked away again in a vault to wait out the years and centuries for someone to demand her servitude once again.
“I agree,” I said simply. “We need you to join with this ship for now, and if we decide there is a need later on, then you can, I guess, integrate this ship into the superstructure of the Battleship, or the Prax, if we can repair it in truth?”
“I can,” she said firmly. “I will bond to the ship, but it will take time, and we will need the gnomes to cease their infernal tinkering with my new body, and to instead concentrate on the Core and the Manastones, not to mention, rigging collectors…”
“Good point,” I said, nodding grimly. “Giint!” I shouted, making the semi-comatose gnome in the corner start in terror, almost jumping out of his skin as he awoke from his drug-induced somnolence. “Get your ass in gear and find me Frederikk and any of the other Elders you can. Get them in here, right goddamn now, as fast as you can!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Giint sprinted for the door, his determination to prove his usefulness only slightly diminished by his frantic attempts to ‘push’ on a ‘pull’ door. It took him a few seconds to calm down enough to realize what was wrong, and then he was gone, pausing only as I shouted at him to send in Yen as well.
She was the first to arrive, of course, having been outside on the deck already, and although she coughed a little at the fumes coming off the alchemy set, she was quick to smile when she saw that Tang had regained a little color, not to mention the collection of potions next to him, ready and waiting.