by Deck Davis
Crosseyes relaxed a little now, and he guided the ship in a gentle descent, cutting through the multi-coloured sky and getting low enough that Charlie saw birds flapping across the sky in the distance.
“Are we still being followed?” said Crosseyes.
Charlie looked around. He couldn’t see any sign of Mia’s galleon, nor of any ship-destroying comets. “I think we’re good.”
“Where are we?” said Larynk.
“I had to take a few turns in the tunnels. There was no time to plot a route, I had to lose Mia. I took whatever turn felt right.”
“So, we’re lost.”
“At least we’re alive.”
“Let’s head back into the tunnels,” said Larynk. “As long as we don’t take any of the popular routes, Mia won’t find us.”
“My shield is shot to shit. We better land first so I can fix it.”
“We don’t know where we are or whose planet this is. I certainly don’t recognise it. I’m not landing on a planet when I don’t know which god created it.”
“I’m taking her down, and that’s all there is to it. My ship, my rules. Think I’m gonna risk another hit without shields?”
“I guess we’re along for the ride, then,” said Larynk. “How are you guys holding up?”
Flink’s gnomish face was set in a grimace, her skin was pale. The heights didn’t agree with her, and Charlie didn’t blame her for it.
When he looked around, he felt woozy too. He’d never travelled much in his life, yet here he was on another planet entirely. It used to be that going out of his home town made him anxious, and now he was some kind of interstellar tourist.
He’d never imagined that places like this could exist; other planets with multi coloured skies, with giant birds that looked like…
Wait a god damn second. As he watched the birds flying toward them from the distance, he realized something. The closer they got, the more his stomach turned over. They weren’t birds.
“Dragons!” he said.
“What now?” said Flink.
Larynk dashed over to Charlie and leaned forward, peering into the distance. “Holy hell, he’s right. Dragons.”
“Screw it – we’re landing this second,” said Crosseyes. “If Thunder takes one more hit she’s done.”
He turned the wheel, and the ship pointed downwards toward the ground. The change in direction made Charlie’s stomach turned to water, and as much as he wanted to get the hell of this ship, the land was rushing at them at a dizzying pace.
He was ready for it this time, and he’d gripped the deck as soon as Crosseyes approached the wheel. Before long the ship’s gravity readjusted again, and despite the searing plummet, he was the right way up.
Not that it helped. The dragons swooped closer now, enough that he saw their awe-inspiring size. From the tips of their spiked heads to the ends of their tails, they must have been thirty feet long. They cut through the air with the ease of an eel gliding in water, the clouds parting against their spiked heads, sunlight glittering on their scales. They could almost have been beautiful, if they didn’t resemble giant sky dinosaurs, if they weren’t hulking serpents of death with claws bigger than a car.
One dragon flew at the head of them all; a black dragon lined with spikes, its scaled skin glowing green in places. The other dragons were big, but this one was mountainous, a behemoth of spikes and fury with a swirling tail that could have downed a jumbo jet, and spikes that looked like they’d repel a nuclear warhead.
Sitting atop of it was a man; he held reins attached to the dragon’s head, guiding it toward the ship. He had a bald head and a face set in utter concentration, like a fighter pilot locking onto an enemy in a do or die battle.
The dragon opened its mouth and sent out a burning ball of fire. It fizzled through the air, before smashing into the ship. The barrier exploded for the final time, then evaporated.
The wind hit them now, a freezing blast of it, enough to knock Charlie to his feet. He frantically cast Mend, but the spell didn’t work. He checked his mana and saw that he had enough for the spell, so what was happening?
Another ball of fire crashed into the ship. Flames lapped across the decking, cutting through the mast ropes, their roar blending with the rush of wind into a song that sounded like death to Charlie’s ears.
Something thudded against the bottom of the ship, shaking it so violently Charlie thought it would rip him apart. Wind rushed through a hole in the decking and below it, he saw a dense patch of forest miles away on the ground. That’s right; he was looking through the bottom of the ship. He wasn’t much of a sailor, but that didn’t seem good.
“Can you get us down?” he said to Crosseyes, straining to compete over the flames and wind.
“I can try.”
Crosseyes spun the wheel again, and they fell faster this time. Charlie felt like his heart was going to dislodge from his chest. He gripped the deck until his knuckles turned white, and he closed his eyes against the wind that rushed in his face, stinging his broken nose.
Flink cried out, Longtooth squealed. Charlie wasn’t too proud to join them, and the noise he made came somewhere in-between, but he couldn’t help it.
When he opened his eyes, he saw trees rushing at them, an expanse of thick, green leaves as far as he could see, their leaves giant and way, way too close.
He gripped the decking tighter, and he held in a great breath and hoped it wouldn’t be the last one he ever had.
“Hold on!” shouted Crosseyes, in the most redundant command ever.
The ship smashed into the trees, tearing through the treeline and thudding into the ground with a boom, shaking it violently to the side.
Charlie lost his balance and smashed his head against the decking, sending pain ringing through his skull. As the ship splintered and cracked around him his eyes closed of their own accord, and the world turned black.
Chapter Six
Light flooded into his eyes when he blinked. His brain shook itself back into consciousness, and with it came a stinging flood of agony from his smashed nose. He sat up. Through the tear in his trousers he saw that his thigh wound had reopened, and blood was crusted around it.
He got to his feet but his legs didn’t feel like they wanted to support him yet, and he stumbled back to the ground. He felt the crash flood back to him; the rush of fire from the dragons, the land hurtling toward them as Crosseyes tried to escape the onslaught. The screech of the air and the unescapable feeling that he was going to die either in the smash into the ground or in a ball of flames.
He’d never been in so much as a car crash, and re-living the descent made him want to heave. It was like being at the tip of a rollercoaster plummet, except without the knowledge that it was just a ride. He’d thought he was going to die, that he was living his last precious few seconds of life in a hellish plummet to the ground.
There was no point hiding it. No point trying to be tough and manly. His nerves were shot to hell, his body felt like it was falling apart, and his once-tight grip on sanity was now just a light pinch as shock overtook him.
Someone groaned nearby. Ahead of him, Crosseyes ship was smashed along the ground, wedged between a thick grouping of trees that it had torn apart. The galleon’s decking was smashed, its masts torn. At least now it looked like a sea vessel; it looked like one you’d see at the bottom of the ocean, a wreck resting on the sandy bedding. Except this pirate ship wasn’t in the sea, it was in the middle of a forest.
The trees themselves were like nothing he’d ever seen. Their trunks were five times wider than him, and they towered way above, their leaves swaying in the wind and forming a canopy all around, except where the ship had crashed through. Blue glowing squares were set into the bark of each tree, and blue lines spun off the squares and linked up from tree to tree.
Well, if the dragons weren’t a big clue, then this sealed it. It sure as hell wasn’t earth. This was new planet number two, making it the third Charlie had ever been on. Techn
ically, that made him the leading space explorer in the human race.
Rather than bask in the new title he’d given himself, he had other things to think about. His thigh cried out at him, and he felt like stumbling to the ground with the pain of it.
Summoning his mana, he cast Heal, but nothing happened. He felt empty, like all his mana had left him. When he tried to go deep inside his mind, where normally he’d have been able to see how much mana he had left, he saw nothing. Everything was gone – his mana, his hit points, his skills, his spells.
Damn it. Was it the crash? Had it jumbled him up a little, screwed around with his mana?
More groaning came from his right. He needed to make sure the others were okay, and then he could process this later. Following the sound, he located Flink and Longtooth, who’d landed in a dense, thorn-filled bush.
Flink’s red leather coat was ripped, and blood crusted around her gnomish nostrils. When Longtooth stood up, dozens of razor sharp thorns were sticking from his fur. He touched one and winced.
“Are you guys okay?” croaked Charlie. He stumbled over to them, his thigh wound burning.
Flink got to her feet. Scratches covered her face, blood welting where her skin had ripped. Her staff was strapped to the look on the back of her coat, but a chunk of wood was chipped near the metal tip. “We’re okay,” she said.
That was good, but there was no sign of the othrs. Worry fluttered inside him. Where were Apollo and Gully? If something had happened to his friend…
In answer, paws pounded along the ground, and Apollo emerged with Papa Gully on his back. The old man seemed fine; in fact, he’d held up better than any of them. The only sign of the crash was a twig threaded into his snow-white beard.
Apollo ran toward Charlie, and he braced himself for the animal to leap on him. Instead, Apollo let out a mewing sound, a noise that was unmistakably of pity at the wound on Charlie’s thigh. For a lion-serpent hybrid, Apollo really was a softie.
Charlie kneeled and pulled him into a quick hug, then separated. “Don’t worry, pal, I’ll live.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” said a voice, behind him.
Larynk stumbled out from the wreckage of the ship. His marble face was cracked, and he was covered in mud and twigs. His white shirt was smeared with mud, and his long fringe was a wild tangle of twigs, soil, and leaves.
“You okay?” said Charlie. “Wait - can a god even get hurt?”
“When I’m low on sphere power, yes. My threshold is higher than you guys, but I’m not invincible. But don’t worry about me; I’ll heal.”
Crosseyes leapt down from the ruined ship, his metal feet making a clanking sound on the ground. The sunlight shone over his golden skin armor, and his long, trailing coat was covered in mud.
“My god damn ship! Ruined! My Thunder Struck baby splintered and wrecked. This couldn’t have gone worse!”
“Don’t worry; we’re fine,” said Charlie.
Crosseyes put his hand to his face, and his red face lines changed into mock surprise. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did my life-saving emergency landing hurt you?”
“Forget him,” said Flink. “Are you okay, Newchie?”
Charlie touched his thing wound, and he winced. “I’ll live.”
“Whether you’ll live, and whether you’re hurt are too different things, Newchie. Stop being so stubborn about it. Quit try to act manly.”
“When I complain about pain you call me a baby, and when I hold it in, I’m too manly. I can’t win, can I?”
“Nope. Sit down.”
He did as the gnome ordered. That was one thing he’d learned; don’t cross an easily-angered gnome girl.
Flink opened her coat. Inside it were dozens of loops, each designed to hold potion vials securely. The coat lining was caked with crusted glass from where the vials had broken, and all manner of globules and liquids stained the felt. Only two vials had survived.
She held one of them up. “Poison antidote,” she said, putting it back and then grabbing the other. “Aha! Healing potion.”
It was a tiny vial, barely bigger than her thumb. “It’s not enough to heal us all,” she said. “So, who’s the worst? You seem fine, Mr. Metal man. And Gully…you’d survive ten cataclysms. You must be lucky.”
Larynk traced his fingers along the crack in his marble face. “I’ll take the potion, thanks.”
“Will it even work on you?”
“Maybe, who knows? I’d like to try.”
Flink shook her head. “I don’t think so. Charlie is the worst of us. Look at his big nose,” she said. “It’s smashed to bits.”
Charlie grimaced, and the expression sent a tremor of pain through him. “I don’t have a big nose. Gimme the potion.”
He grabbed the vial from her, and then paused. He felt the blood crusted around his face, and although his thigh wound had stopped bleeding, the slightest touch would make it gush. More than anything, he wanted to use the potion and get rid of the pain.
But then he looked at Longtooth. The rat was sitting on a rock, a pitiful look on his face, his chipped tooth poking out from his lips. There weren’t just a dozen bush thorns in his fur; his albino fleece was dotted with so many of them he could have made a decent attempt to sneak into a giant hedgehog convention. With his little rat hands, he pulled one thorn out, and a spurt of blood stained his paw.
Charlie handed him the potion. “Take it.”
“What about your thigh?” said Longtooth.
Charlie turned to Flink. “Can you patch me up and stop it from bleeding?”
“I’ll need to see what leaves and herbs there are, but stopping bleeding is usually easy.”
“Then Longtooth can take the potion. Here you go, buddy.”
Longtooth gave him a toothy rodent smile, which was a scrunching of his nose and curling of his lips so his overhanding teeth stuck out even more. That grin was enough to make giving up the potion worthwhile.
Crosseyes took off his coat, and Charlie saw that he hadn’t escaped the crash unscathed. A ten-inch metal rod had pierced his shoulder armor, so that it went all the way through and stuck out behind him. With one heave he wrenched it out and threw it on the ground. Light shone through the hole in his shoulder where the rod had been, so that Charlie could see the forest behind him.
“Does that hurt?”
“Don’t worry,” Crosseyes said. “It’ll grow back.”
“You can do that?”
“You get to choose a power when you become a demi-god,” said Crosseyes. “Self-regenerating metal skin seemed cool. I just have to take care in the rain, unless I want to rust.”
“So, we’re all okay, if a little battered and bruised,” said Charlie. “It could have been worse. How’s the ship?”
“What do you think? It’s not at its best,” said Crosseyes.
He walked along his ruined ship, wincing as though seeing each different piece of splintered and damaged wood physically pained him. It lay on its side on the forest ground, with the starboard side showing. The darkened oak was cracked in some places and completely destroyed in others. The Thunder Struck words painted on the side were so disfigured by cracks that they read ‘under truc.’
“We’re stuck then, aren’t we?” said Charlie. “The question is, stuck where?”
Everyone looked at Larynk now, but the god shrugged. “I saw as much as you guys. A bunch of dragons, some fire, and the ground hurtling toward me. We’ll need to explore a little.”
“I’m not leaving my ship,” said Crosseyes.
“It might not be safe here,” said Charlie.
“I don’t see any dragons in the forest. Looks like they’re all in the sky.”
Dragons. The word hit him in the stomach. After everything he’d seen since leaving Earth, he still couldn’t get used to it. How could dragons exist? How could gods and demi gods exist, and how had he become wrapped up in it all? Suddenly, his boring office job didn’t seem so bad.
It would have been easy to feel
overwhelmed by it all. He knew that if he really thought about it, about dragons and spacefaring demi-gods and seductive, but mean-as-hell space pirate women, it would swallow him up. He’d be a gibbering wreck, full of anxiety.
He wouldn’t let that happen. Everyone here had something; Flink had her hunting and potions, Gully had his magic, Crosseyes his guns and his swords and his ship. Charlie wasn’t going to be a dead weight.
He turned to the others. “Let’s try and make sense of this. First…”
Crosseyes kicked his ruined ship. “How about first, a little gratitude. I got us a soft landing, and without me, you’d all be dead twice over. First with Mia, and then with the dragons. Secondly, after you’re done thanking me, it’s time we mourned my beautiful rig.”