“Evelyn, there you are! Look at you; you’ve grown since the last time I saw you,” a voice shouted.
A wiry, tall man jogged towards them. He hugged Evelyn, and then Karena and Hadrian. He was dressed in a grey shirt, fireproof pants, a tailed jacket, and dirty boots. His helmet looked as though it had taken some heavy hits judging from the dents in it. Black stubble was becoming a beard across his jaw.
The man asked, “Who are your friends?” He beamed at Evelyn, clearly happy to see her again.
Evelyn introduced them. The man was Garth. Karena hoped that his airship was more put together than his wardrobe. Evelyn explained to him the situation. Garth visibly sweated.
“From all of the blow darts that those savages are going to fire at it, my airship is going to look like a porcupine,” Garth tried to joke. Despite his joke, he looked distressed.
Evelyn extended her left wing and touched the crest of it to his shoulder in an effort to comfort him. It was a sweet gesture, almost like a touch on the arm. “I’m sorry to ask this of you, but as I said, it’s urgent and a man’s life is on the line,” she said.
Garth nodded. “I have nightmares of people like the ones that live in the swamplands, where they’re trying to kill me and such because I’m a gearcrafter. And it’s not only my life that will be put in danger, but my crew’s as well,” he said.
“I understand, but if we do go down in the swamps, we won’t leave you until we all make a safe return to Banesvale as a group.”
“This airship is the best one I’ve built so far. It should be able to handle the distance. I’ve called it the Phantom’s Cloud.”
“What happened to the Challenger’s Nightmare?”
“Oh, it exploded two thousand feet up in the air and crashed. But not to worry, everyone survived,” Garth cheerfully said.
Karena’s mouth gaped open. “Will this one explode too?” Karena asked.
Garth looked at the airship sitting behind him. He said, “Nah, I don’t think so.”
Garth turned his attention back to Evelyn. He said, “I’ve only ventured into the swamps once, and it was by accident. The engines failed, and we drifted out there. It wasn’t a pleasant experience to say the least, especially at night, which is when that places comes alive down there with all sorts of nasty creatures. Even though we were higher than the tree canopy, we had things trying to get onto the ship. It was a sleepless night, and the hull was chewed on, and the wing brakes and sails were badly damaged. I can take you to the outpost. It’s nine miles shy of where the Serpent River meets the Ranarra River. That’s the best I can do.”
“No, Garth, we need you to take us all the way. We have less than a day.”
“Crashing and burning in the Markhan Territory wouldn’t be good at all. I don’t know what would be more dangerous, the cryptids or the people. The people outside of the Sundarin Nation don’t take kindly to gearcrafting at all. They rely on horses and gas lamps, and see anything mechanical as demonic possession.”
“I know that you’re apprehensive, and don’t want to go, but you’re the only one who has the means to take us to the Cattail ruins, which is underneath the keep of the Cattail Fortress. If you don’t take us, then no one will be able to make it. Our only option then will be to pray and hope that they find that book that locked Asher’s soul into the spiritual realm. Asher was a childhood friend of mine before my parents began their travels. He means everything to me, and especially to Karena here. He’s her boyfriend.”
Garth glanced at the ground and then at Evelyn. He swept the back of his hand across his forehead. “Okay. I was hoping I could take you halfway, not all the way. Your dad is going to kill me,” he said.
“No, he won’t. This is my choice, and that’s all there is to it. He would be proud of your work. You have built something that defies all known means of transportation in the Sundarin Nation. I hope that he can visit you soon so that he can see what you have done and tell you himself what he thinks of your airship.”
Garth grinned. His apprehension vanished and was replaced with a radiant glow. Karena could tell that Evelyn’s dad’s opinion meant everything to him.
“I brought gear and food aboard for everyone just in case the worst does happen,” Garth said. He stuck his hands in his pockets, suddenly unsure of himself.
“We’re ready to go when you are,” Evelyn said.
Karena interjected to say, “Garth, thank you for agreeing to help us and for taking this risk. I can’t begin to tell you how appreciative I am.”
Garth nodded. “I’ve never taken an airship across such a large distance before,” he said.
“We’ll make it,” Evelyn said. “There and back.”
Garth took a deep breath, gave an insecure smile, and glanced at the three of them there. “Right this way. The Phantom’s Cloud is warmed up and ready for lift off,” Garth said.
He led them to a mobile, metal staircase that had been rolled to the side of the airship. They climbed up it, and walked onto the main deck of the airship. Garth took them to the steering wheel, which was flanked by levers, knobs, and dials. He pressed a button, and a horn blared. Crewmembers scrambled to make the final preparations.
The ceiling of the hangar was cranked back so that they could rise into the sky. Someone ran up to Garth to inform him of the current wind speed and direction. The whirling noise of the airship increased. His wife, whom they didn’t get a chance to meet because of the constraint on time, came over to kiss Garth goodbye and left. The metal staircase was pushed away from the hull and the horn stopped blaring. The deck shuddered under their feet as the airship began to lift.
“Grab onto one of the railings,” Garth said.
Karena noticed that there were a lot of railings. They lined the deck and stairways at waist-height. She grabbed onto a section of railing and hoped for the best. The deck tilted, first one way and then another. Fear seized her. If they crashed, at least it would be fifteen feet above the ground.
Despite the airship rocking side to side, they continued to ascend. The opened ceiling didn’t look large enough for them to fit through, yet somehow they squeezed through and made it into the early morning sky. The airship stabilized, but Karena’s nausea didn’t. It felt as though she was back at Dragonhouse Point and experiencing vertigo again. Of course, Evelyn was undisturbed by their increasing ascent. She was balancing on top of the outer railing nearby, completely unburdened by the thought of falling because of being blessed with wings.
Just before they touched the low-lying clouds, the airship stopped and hovered for a moment. Garth cranked some levers, and blasted another horn. It was a command to his crew, but for what, Karena didn’t know. They began to rotate in the air until the bow pointed eastwards. Garth blared the horn again, this time longer. A minute later, as the engines fired up and seemed to adjust with loud clanking sounds, they began to move forward and pick up speed.
“The wind is in our favor,” Garth said. “We should reach our destination just after nightfall.”
Nightfall would be around seven o’clock. As long as nothing went wrong, they would make it, but Karena didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief yet. Nothing was guaranteed to go right.
Beneath and behind them, the town of Banesvale was a distant, twinkling dot. Her thoughts tried to make sense of how it was possible to lift a ship’s hull and keep it afloat in the air. She didn’t see the value in even trying to make it happen, but obviously Garth did.
As the sun began to make its presence known, the clouds thinned and the horizon became lighter and lighter with the new dawn. It was a dawn that held a much different reality than yesterday’s. She sat down, drew her legs up against her chest, and closed her eyes to steady her stomach.
She hoped that Asher was alright, and that he was making his way towards the ruins too. What if he couldn’t get there in time? But she had faith in him. He would find a way.
Karena tried to focus on how pleasant the air felt on her face and not on her worries,
but she couldn’t help but think about how twisted Tristan had become. He had been a necromancer for years and had kept it hidden. She shuddered from the thought of it. Because he had hurt Asher, she knew that it was very likely that Hadrian would’ve been Tristan’s next victim. And then he would’ve come after her, and kept her a prisoner. Luckily, that book had disabled him and he had been apprehended.
Hadrian’s chatter reached her ears. There was an energetic quality to it, which wasn’t strange, but what was strange was that it was devoid of humor or sarcasm. She glanced over to him. Hadrian was trying to ask Evelyn about her travels, but Evelyn was ignoring him or giving him frustratingly short answers as she stared out at the scenery below them. The more she watched, the more Karena realized that Hadrian fancied Evelyn. He should’ve been sitting down next to her or roaming the deck, but he wasn’t.
If a Fire and an Ice elemental could love each other, then so could an Earth and an Air. When it came to love, Hadrian had been as luckless as she before she had met Asher. Karena smiled. Change was happening. Even if Evelyn turned him down, just the fact that an Earth could be attracted to an Air, and was bold enough to convey such a feeling, was a great sign that foretold of a coming change in people’s attitudes towards one another.
Because she was amused by Evelyn’s lofty attitude, Karena continued to watch them.
Chapter 20
As they sailed over the miles, the land below them became increasingly speckled with bogs. When they crossed over into the Markhan Territory, a hush fell over the chatty crewmembers and Garth. Beneath them, the land flattened out for marshlands and thick, snarls of jungle-like growth. In the midst of manmade clearings, clusters of shacks huddled together, forming villages. Muddy roads and small wandering footpaths cut through the cryptid-infested terrain and linked one village to the next. Gone were the paved roads and any sign of modern living.
They followed the blue waters of the Ranarra River eastward. Karena looked at the land below with increasing fear and anxiety. This was her first time venturing outside of the Sundarin Nation. She tried not to think about what would happen if they crashed. The airship bypassed the life-threatening reality below. The cryptids weren’t their only problem. The villagers didn’t take kindly to foreigners, especially those that might be associated with demonic forces, which in their minds, included gearcrafters. She hoped, just like everyone else, that they didn’t lose altitude and have to contend with the life and death battle it would become if they were forced to flee back to the Sundarin Nation on foot.
When the first alarm bell shattered the air, Karena jumped.
“It’s overheating,” she heard a crewmember shout.
She was called down to help cool down the boilers. The Phantom’s Cloud hadn’t been designed to go so far, or else Garth would’ve engineered a cooling system to keep everything from overheating. Down in the hull, she hyperventilated, but forced herself to appear calm. Crewmembers scurried about to contend with the issue. Under Garth’s direction, she slowly lowered the boilers’ temperatures back down to a safe and functional level by chilling the air around them.
As the sun arced from the east and into the west, alarms continued to ring out every so often and the crew worked tirelessly to fix the mechanical issues that arose. Karena went below deck every thirty minutes to frost the equipment and prolong their flight. Stress lined everyone’s faces. The airship was teetering on the edge of complete mechanical failure. It didn’t help that everyone was tired from having had little sleep the night before.
When night fell, a full moon entered the sky. It was so close that she could see the craters on it and the large fissure on its right side. An ice-laden halo crowned its circumference. The full moon bathed them in a silver twilight. There wasn’t any need for an extra light source on deck. Karena didn’t think they would even need one when she, Hadrian, and Evelyn set foot on the ground below.
Because it was now night, bats, owls, fairies, and other winged creatures fluttered around the airship as they sped onwards. The Ranarra River glistened under the moonlight. Over the whirl of the turbines, she heard animalistic screams and blood-curling shrieks puncture the night. Willow-o-wisps chased each other below the hull of the Phantom’s Cloud, curious about what they were and if they could be lured to their demise. In the distance, a monstrous, four-winged creature broke free from the land and headed north. She couldn’t tell what it was except that it was as big as their airship. The nighttime was proving to be more alive than the daytime.
“Are you sure that you want to land?” Garth said at the steering wheel. His knuckles were white as his hands gripped the wheel.
“We have to,” Karena said. Though her lungs heaved due to anxiety, there was no other option but to put her feet on land. There was still time before nine-thirty struck.
“Ok. We’re getting close.”
Just then, alarms rang out. They sounded different this time. Smoke billowed from underneath the deck.
Garth shouted, “Mechanical failure! Evelyn, hold the steering wheel. Karena, come with me.”
She followed him into the smoke below deck. Next to where the boilers sat, one of the fuel tanks leaked the precious hydrogen liquid they needed to power the engines. One of the boilers whistled from overheating. A bolt whizzed by her ear after busting free from the overheating boiler.
“Shut everything down! Shut it down now!” Garth screamed.
“We’re going to lose altitude. We can’t go down,” his assistant, Lucas, insisted. Sweat dripped down his face.
“We’re going to have to. We have to land and repair, or else we’re not going to make it back.”
“There isn’t any solid ground.”
“We’ll find it. Shut everything down, one boiler at a time. We’ll repair and try to get into the air again. Hopefully, it won’t take more than a few hours. We can’t be on the ground by daybreak or else those villagers will find us. Land now and repair, or limp along until we do crash,” Garth said, to which Lucas agreed and got to work.
The crewmembers rushed around, twisting knobs, jumping over the huge connector hoses on the ground, wrenching levers back, and watching the temperature gauges. It was a lot of work for a crew of only five people. Karena felt the drop in altitude in her stomach and in the lightness of her feet. They were descending fast. She threw out a chilling mist to lower the heat in there because everyone was perspiring. The smoke continued to choke her and sting her eyes.
After Karena did all that she could to help, she returned to the deck. Garth had taken the wheel from Evelyn. The deck pitched when one of the engines was shut off. Garth switched off the alarms, and turned on the ship’s bow lights in order to better see what was directly ahead of them. The tree canopy loomed towards them, threatening to swallow them.
“Hold on tight,” Garth said. “We’re going down.”
They dived down towards the Ranarra River and cruised above its surface. The aquatic creatures that had surfaced to catch bugs dove underwater out of terror. Those that were on the shore ran for cover. Garth struggled to steer. They veered left and right. Branches thudded against their hull and ripped some of their sails. The river had narrowed from its usual wide breadth. At any moment, they could plummet into the water.
Karena’s grip on the railing threatened to give due to the jerky motions that the airship was making.
“Can this thing float?” she asked.
“Nope,” Garth said. He grappled with the steering wheel, and used all of his strength to try to stabilize the airship.
Karena looked at Hadrian. His eyes were wide with fear.
“Set it down in mud. Look for a river island of sorts, or a mud bank,” Evelyn said. She had her wings out, and they oscillated up and down, out and in, to keep her steady without her needing to hang on to anything
“Right-o,” Garth said through gritted teeth.
As more power was cut below deck, the light at the bow shut off. Now Garth steered only by moonlight, but that was enough. A l
ong-necked cryptid reared its head out of the water. They narrowly missed hitting it. It roared in their wake.
The airship began to decelerate.
“I’m losing speed,” Garth said, panicked.
The hull cut through the water. Water sprayed upwards. The airship continued to slow down, and when it lost its momentum, it would sink to the bottom of the river.
Evelyn took off, and flew ahead, pumping her wings hard. They lost sight of her for a few seconds, but then saw her hovering in the distance and throwing her arms downwards. Garth slammed on the brakes. Even though they were going to come to a full stop in the middle of the river and surely take on water, he trusted the signal that Evelyn was giving.
They tipped starboard to port, threatening to capsize. As they used up the last ounces of momentum, they sank lower and lower towards the level of the water. Water washed over the bow of the airship. The entire airship trembled and shuddered, straining against its nails and bolts. The equipment below rattled. Then they skidded to a stop. Karena waited, expecting them to start sinking. The river had to be at least a hundred feet deep, or more. But nothing happened. She quivered like a harp string.
Evelyn landed next to them. “It looks like the mud is holding. We’re on a mud bank,” she said.
Garth gasped for breath, and steadied himself. Like coils that had come free, he released his hands from the steering wheel. He was as shaken as they were, with the exception of Evelyn, who hardly seemed perturbed by what had happened. Garth thanked her, and patted her on the shoulder.
Now that they weren’t moving, swarms of buzzing insects mingled around them.
“We need to get onto the south bank. The keep of the Cattail Fortress is over there,” Evelyn said. She pointed, but all Karena could see was a blocky, hazy form in the distance. It could’ve easily been a bunch of trees or a hill. Evelyn could see better than all of them due to her bird-like eyesight.
Gaze of Fire Page 15