Gareth was somewhat shocked at this. “Do you mean to tell me your race harvests this enzyme from their own kind to sell to the other races?!” he asked incredulously.
Tralnis waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing like that, dear boy. We produce so much of the enzyme, usable amounts are found in our urine,” he assured Gareth.
Izzy turned green when she realized what Tralnis was saying. A couple years ago, she had been bitten by a coral snake while swimming off the coast of the Southern Continent. Her life was saved by drinking the famous elixir. “Are you saying that when we drink Dwarvish All Purpose Anti-venom, we’re really just drinking…” she started to ask, but couldn’t get herself to finish her sentence.
“Bottled Dwarf piss? Yes, that’s exactly what you’re drinking. We add some honey to make it taste better, but that’s about it,” Tralnis admitted. “Now if you two are done questioning me, I would like to administer the anti-venom to save the Captain’s life. She can’t swallow, so I’ll have to pour the anti-venom directly onto the wound,” he stated. Tralnis started to undo his belt buckle and then looked up at Izzy in embarrassment. “I can’t do this while you’re watching. I have a bashful bladder,” he admitted. “Don’t worry. Elizabeth will be fine in no time,” he promised.
Gareth held Izzy’s hand after they turned around to give Tralnis some privacy. Relief flooded through them (and Tralnis) as they heard the unmistakable sound of someone taking a tinkle. Tralnis even managed to whistle a jaunty tune while he did his business. A contented sigh was the sign that Tralnis had finished.
“That feels better. I didn’t realize I had to go so bad,” Tralnis muttered to himself. He rolled Elizabeth over onto her back, and felt for her pulse on her neck. “Good. Her pulse is starting to get better already,” he pronounced. Looking a bit sheepish, and more than a little frightened, he added, “If it’s all the same to you two, I would rather Captain Scary here doesn’t find out how I got the anti-venom to her. I’m rather fond of that part of my plumbing, and don’t want her ripping it off in a moment of anger.” Gareth and Izzy both promised to keep the secret of the anti-venom safe.
After a few minutes, Elizabeth began to stir, and then wake up. The first thing she asked was, “Why do I smell like a urinal at smashball stadium?”
Gareth was the first one to come up with an answer. “You had so much of the duck’s venom in you, our good doctor had to use much more than the usual dose of Dwarvish All Purpose Anti-venom. It must be interfering with your sense of smell,” he lied. He stepped back, and offered his left hand to the Captain so she could use her good hand to help pull herself up.
“Just so we are clear, what happened in this chamber stays in this chamber. I don’t want anyone else to know I was bit on the ass by a venomous duck,” Elizabeth decreed. Her stern expression softened when her sister gave her a rib bruising hug. Izzy let go of her hug, and stepped back with a playful gleam in her eye.
“Well, if we can’t mention the duck, can we at least say you were poisoned by fowl play?” Izzy asked impishly.
Never one to turn away from a punning challenge, Tralnis got in on the act as well. “Now, now Izzy, be nice. For all we know, the creature that bit the Captain might have been a wereduck. We’ll need to keep her under observation for a few weeks,” he stated. With a smile, he added, “Captain, let us know if you are feeling a bit down during the next full moon.”
Elizabeth clenched her fists in anger, both her biological and mechanical one. Gareth put a calming hand on Elizabeth left arm. “Relax, Captain, it’s nothing to get your feathers ruffled over,” he said with a smirk.
Elizabeth spun around, and stormed down the hallway were the venomous duck had lived. She kicked random bones out of the way, and wondered if it was allowable under airship law to toss a crew member overboard for being a punster. Elizabeth was so occupied with day dreams of having Gareth walk the plank a mile above the sea, she didn’t notice the others had joined her at the end of the hallway. The large tan stone block in front them was blank except for a small bit of writing, and a small, round hole a little below waist height.
Gareth stepped to the front of the group to look at the runes. Color drained from his face as he reread the runes, and looked at the hole. He swallowed once, his throat suddenly becoming dry. Izzy saw his look of discomfort, and asked, “What’s wrong, Gareth?”
Pointing at the hole in the wall, he replied in almost a whisper, “It says, and I quote, ‘Put your rod in the hole’.” Thoughts of traps with spinning blades and venomous ducks made him want to pass out.
Izzy grabbed Gareth’s arm, and pulled him away from the wall. She had been thinking along the same lines as Gareth. “While our relationship hasn’t progressed to that point yet, I do have plans for what it’s asking you to sacrifice,” she told him.
Tralnis just moved his hands in front of himself to protect his groin. “Sick bastards,” he moaned.
Elizabeth smacked her forehead, and shook her head. Without saying a word, she reached out, and pointed at the Void Rod on Gareth’s hip. Gareth looked at what she was pointing to, and blushed with embarrassment. “Or they could be speaking literally,” he conceded. He pulled out the Void Rod, and noticed it was the perfect size to fit in the hole. With a gentle push, he slid the rod into the hole. The wall shimmered and disappeared, leaving a now familiar jet black altar. The fourth tablet rested on top.
Izzy grabbed the clay tablet, and smashed it against the side of the altar while Gareth pulled out the other tablets and his trusty notebook. He took the tablet from Izzy and quickly deciphered the coordinates. He dropped all four tablets along with his notebook. “No… no… NO!!” he shouted in disgust.
“What’s wrong, lad?” Tralnis asked.
Gareth pointed down at the fourth tablet in disgust. “This one gives a set of coordinates located in the Southern Continent. It’s where the University team found the first tablet. The damn things lead in a circle!” he spat.
Izzy knelt down next to the tablets, and looked at the markings they had earlier thought were just for decoration. By placing the tablets out of order, the markings matched up in the center and formed a perfect circle. When she tried to pull the tablets away, she found they had fused together. “Gareth, come look at this!” she shouted excitedly.
Gareth looked over, and then knelt next to Izzy. Aside from the circle, the new alignment of the markings made a single rune, the rune for blood. “Tralnis, hand me your knife!” Gareth ordered. When his father handed over the knife, Gareth made a small cut in his index finger. Hoping he was right, Gareth reached down, and smeared some blood on the circle in the center.
The fused tablet accepted the blood, and rose from the ground all by itself. A glowing purple map was projected out of the circle. Gareth held his breath as he leaned closer to the map. The purple projection showed an island he had never seen on any map, next to a set of numbers and more runes. He quickly grabbed his notebook off the floor, and wrote down the coordinates for the Island of Mascal.
Chapter 27
Gareth stood in the wheelhouse behind Pilot, barely able to contain his excitement. The Glorious Dawn had been airborne for almost a month since leaving the Nexus Volcano. They were finally closing in on the coordinates for the Lost Island of Mascal. Using the sextant and maps Elizabeth had loaned him, Gareth determined the island they were looking for was probably somewhere up ahead of them. Unfortunately, a nasty looking storm cloud seemed to have settled over exactly where they wanted to go.
Elizabeth stepped into the wheelhouse with them. She extended her spyglass, and observed the lightning streaking from cloud to cloud. “What do you think, Pilot? Should we chance it, or try to wait the storm out?” she asked the Roehus.
Pilot reached up to stroke some of his head quills. “To be honest, Captain of the Glorious Dawn, I think we should wait. I’ve seen many storms while piloting this ship. There is something about that storm that makes my quills want to stand on end,” he told her.
Elizabeth nodded her head. “I agree. That storm looks chancy, and I won’t risk it while we still have plenty of provisions,” she decided. Elizabeth turned to look at Gareth. “Sorry, Professor, but it looks like you’ll have to wait a day or two more to find whatever it is you’re looking for,” she stated. Putting the spyglass back to her eye, the Captain looked back at the storm that made her feel so uneasy.
Sheldon walked up to the wheelhouse, but decided it was too crowded in there to join the Captain. Instead, the left eyestalk yelled out, “Hey, Captain! What’s small, gold, and flashes red a lot?” it asked.
Elizabeth took in a slow breath to calm herself. She never could decide which she hated more: puns or riddles. “Sheldon, I don’t have time for riddles right now!” she snapped.
Sheldon shrugged his large shoulders, and turned to go back into the cargo hold. The left eyestalk called back to Elizabeth, “Fine, we’ll just go put this… whatever it is… back where we found it!”
“Wait! Stop! What are you talking about?” Elizabeth demanded.
From his hip pocket, Sheldon pulled out a small disk made of gold, with a red crystal set in the middle. The crystal flashed with an internal light about once every second as he held it in his hand. “See, it’s just like we described,” the right eyestalk said. “We were shifting around some of the empty crates, and found this wedged in between the floorboards and the wall,” it explained.
Elizabeth shot out of the wheelhouse, and ran to where Sheldon stood. As she got closer, her frown deepened. She couldn’t be certain, but it looked like the interval between flashes was getting quicker. Elizabeth held out her good hand, and Sheldon handed over the disk. She flipped it over, and felt fear start to creep down her neck when she saw magic runes were engraved on the back of it. “Professor, get over here now!” she ordered. When Gareth stood next to her, she handed over the disk. “What type of runes are these?” she asked, afraid she already knew the answer.
Gareth traced his finger along the runes, worried the disk was some sort of sabotage device left behind by the pirates. He frowned in confusion when he figured out what the magic runes did. “That’s odd. These first runes are just a simple lighting spell. It’s what is causing the crystal to glow every so often. The second set of runes are part of a spell used to enact a bonding ritual, but I have no idea why you would want to bond two gold disks like this together. It’s not like you could use them to communicate, or anything like that. The lighting spell is even woven into the binding ritual. The disk would only be able to stay lit if it was near its mate. Sort of a dumb design if you ask me,” he stated.
After a second, the color drained from Gareth’s face. “Unless that’s exactly the effect they are looking for,” he muttered. Gareth pinched the bridge of his nose when he put the pieces together. “I think we’re in trouble. It wouldn’t be hard at all to use a pair of these to track someone. The closer you got, the quicker the crystal would start to flash,” he explained. Looking down at the disk, they all saw it was now flashing about three times over two seconds.
Gareth had confirmed the Captain’s fears. She grabbed the disk, and threw it as far over the side of the ship as she could. “Pilot, tell Izzy to fire up the Aetherium furnace, and be ready to burn whatever Aetherium ore we have on hand!” she ordered. Elizabeth brought the spyglass back up to her eye, and looked behind them. “Damn it!” she swore as she was able to make out four white shapes in the clouds that were far too regular to be natural. She twisted the spyglass tube, and was able to increase the magnification. “Flaming dragon shit!” she cursed before running back to the wheelhouse and handing the spyglass to Pilot. Pointing towards what she saw, she commanded, “Tell me what you see there.”
Pilot took a moment to look through the spyglass before he dropped it, and spun the wheel in an effort to use the wind to gain more speed and distance from what he had seen. “I saw what looks like a destroyer, with three frigates as escorts. None of them are flying any sort of colors to show what country they are from. It seems as though the pirates have found us again,” he finally replied.
Turning to face Sheldon, Elizabeth raised her mechanical arm, and pointed towards the bow of the ship. “Sheldon, man the cannon. It probably won’t hurt them much, but I won’t go down without a fight!” she said angrily. “Pilot, get us out of here!” she ordered.
Pilot didn’t reply, he just spun the wheel to change their orientation to the wind even more. The Glorious Dawn shuddered a bit as her large sails billowed fully. He also reduced power to the Aetherium tubes in an attempt to use the dive to gain even more speed.
The whine of a 16 pound cannonball rushing through the space they had just occupied told them the pirates realized they had been spotted. The three escort frigates broke off from the destroyer, and spun their double propellers into overdrive. A second shot from one of the destroyer’s huge cannons missed, but only did so by a small margin. Pilot reengaged the Aetherium tubes at full power, causing Gareth to fall over as the Glorious Dawn shot back up into the sky. The third cannonball whistled harmlessly through the air below them.
“The destroyer has three main guns on deck. It will take them a couple of minutes to reload,” Pilot announced, as he spun the wheel again to try and confuse their pursers.
The door to the lower decks burst open, and Tralnis poked his head out. “What in the hells are you people doing up here?!” he demanded to know. The closest of the frigates fired both of its four pound cannons loaded will ball and chain shot, smaller cannonballs attached by a heavy piece of chain in the middle. The first shot shattered the doorframe above Tralnis’ head, peppering his arm with wood splinters. The second shot ripped through the center of their main sail, leaving a large tear. Tralnis picked the largest splinter out of his arm, and yelled, “Never mind!”
“Doctor, get Teesh and Henry down into the engine room with Izzy. It’s the most heavily reinforced part of the ship,” the Captain ordered. Tralnis nodded his head, and took the stairs down two at a time.
Sheldon’s eyestalks were in constant motion, scanning for targets in range. The eyestalks worked together to give Sheldon multiple depth perception pictures to work with. The Kwa-Kwa-Ur swiveled the cannon, and fired by pulling a string to activate the old flintlock mechanism. A two pound cannonball shot out, and slammed into the port side propeller of the nearest frigate, shattering the blades. The sudden loss of one its propellers caused the frigate to spin away to the left now that its propulsion system was no longer balanced.
Pilot cut power to the Aetherium tubes once again, but was unable to fully get out of the way of the second frigate’s guns. Their first ball and chain shot tore through their secondary sail, while the chain on the other shot sheared off the top of the secondary mast. The sail fluttered down to the deck in two large pieces.
The third frigate peppered the Glorious Dawn’s deck with grapeshot, several smaller metal balls fired out of the cannon instead of a regular cannonball. One of the smaller metal balls slammed into Sheldon’s back. While an Ur’s skin was strong enough to withstand that strong of a hit, the impact still sent him flying across the deck. He was knocked out when he hit the wheelhouse. Several of the other metal spheres crashed into the Glorious Dawn’s cannon, shattering the firing mechanism beyond repair.
The destroyer fired one of its main cannons below and to the right of the Glorious Dawn. Pilot was forced to steer away from the shot, and be corralled towards the two fully functional frigates. A second shot from the destroyer went through the same bit of empty air to reinforce where they wanted the Leyship to go.
The second frigate fired off two more volleys of ball and chain shot. The spinning chains sawed through the main mast ten feet above deck level. The large wood post fell sideways onto the deck railing, crushing it before sliding off of the ship. A few seconds later, the mast made a huge splash as it hit the ocean far below them.
Regular four pound cannonballs fired from the third frigate slammed into the deck in front of the wheelhouse
. Pilot was struck in the head by flying debris, leaving him lying senseless at the base of the steering wheel. Elizabeth fared no better than Pilot, and lay unconscious near the stairwell to the lower decks.
Gareth ignored the pain from the numerous small cuts he received on his arms. He dashed back into the wheelhouse, and tore open the top of the speaking tube that led down to the engine room. “Izzy, burn the Aetherium ore, and flood the tubes with as much charged Aetherium gas as you can,” Gareth yelled. He had watched Pilot steer the ship, and had been given basic lessons in how the ship worked by Izzy.
“Gareth? Where’s Pilot or Elizabeth?” Izzy asked, wondering why her boyfriend was giving orders.
“Hurt, and we’ve lost both sails and the cannon. Our only chance is to try and loose them in the storm,” Gareth replied.
Izzy paused for a second. “If I flood the tubes with that much charged gas, they could shatter,” she told him. Izzy didn’t think she needed to tell him what would happen if they lost their magical propulsion system that high above the ocean.
“And if we don’t, we might as well surrender to the pirates right now,” he countered.
“Understood,” Izzy replied. “I’m going to flood tubes now. We’ll be at maximum power when the needle on the gauge to your left goes into the red zone,” she told him. After a second, Izzy added, “If we get out of this alive and free, you and I are definitely going to take our relationship to the next level!”
“Aye-aye, Engineer!” Gareth said with a smile, despite how hopeless their situation looked. He waited while the magic energy in the Aetherium tubes built up to a near critical level. When the needle on the gauge entered the red markings, he threw the throttle wide open. The Glorious Dawn leapt ahead at a pace no dirigible could match.
Gareth made the mistake of heading for the storm clouds in a straight line. One of the destroyer’s gunners managed to lead the Glorious Dawn with his 16 pound cannon correctly, and sent the huge metal ball crashing through the Captain’s ready room and quarters. The impact shook the Glorious Dawn down to her individual timbers.
Gareth and th Lost Island Page 22