I’ve met royalty from all around the world.

I’ve only ever met one King, though.

King, yes, capital letter, full bodied, everything embodied by the imagination when one conjures up the word. I’m to understand that in the old world, a less enlightened age, before the great unification at the hands of the glorious church — what academics call the BE period — we were stuffed to the chin with Kings. Figures who, through force of strength, charisma, and will that rivaled even the greatest and unconquerable elements at nature’s command, cultivated land and people and created entire political and cultural universes with themselves at the center, the nexus of gravity around which all things orbited. These Kings, the historians say, were a stable force in a world of relentless change. Strong, if temporary, bastions where the common folk could find a community, a purpose, and something bigger than themselves to serve. And once that King vanished, chaos once again reigned, until another figure could rise, overcome the forces that sought to divide us, and unite people once more via a newly minted name on a new, enclosed line on a map.

The Church can be credited with many things, including bringing purpose and stability to generations without the need for a strong arm to violently rise to power, but one area in which it falls short is that the world it has created is softer. Too soft, it seems, to make an adequate anvil on which to forge the kind of person who, in the days of old, could become a King.

With one exception.

The current, largely powerless monarch of Cohenlay, King Trenton Krosnoble.

I don’t know exactly what crucible transformed this man into an old-world King: I suspect, as many do, that it was the Dawn Harvester attack. But I do know that sharing a room with the man is terrifying. On stage, walking among his public, he has a well-versed charm that marks him as likable, if firm. Like a grandfather who never gives you candy, but still expects you to chop wood for your dinner. His smile, chipped and withered as it is, seems genuine and affectionate — proud of his people in a way that implies he had a much larger role in their growth than the politics would imply. But when the stage lights fade, so does the light in his eyes, and the smile on his face. His footfalls become heavy, his shoulders too firm and proud to slouch, broaden, harden, and make his frame far stiffer, that of a mountain more than a man. Those grandfatherly lines darken and deepen, as do his eyes, casting shadows both over his own face and any who have the misfortune of being within his sight. His voice cracks and hollows. The frigidity of his tone — which only grows colder when he’s feeling angry — could freeze a man dead on the spot. I misspoke at one of our meetings, and the stare he gave me was enough to force me to excuse myself and try to warm up with a hot bath.

He is a man who has never apologized, and has never done wrong. He is a man who would sooner wait for the sun to erupt in the sky than bow his head to it. He is a man who has never taken a step backwards in his life, and has only glanced that way to see if the people behind him are able to keep up. He is a man who, if his nation were to crumble beneath his feet, would step over his despair to patiently begin the work of piecing the earth back together with his own bare hands, for his nation is perhaps the only thing he truly loves.

It’s little wonder, then, that he is a man his soldiers worship, his people admire, and his enemies fear.

But we are left to wonder why such a man would work so hard, and focus so completely, on keeping his own son as far from his side as is possible.

“Whew. Here we go.”

Nathan took a deep breath and glanced at the bow in his hands.

It might seem odd to use a bow and arrows in an age of guns, but Nathan’s bow was different from anything you’d see in a battlefield of old or a sporting competition. First, the length of the bow, from the tip of each limb, was a full head taller than its wielder, who was a respectable 177 centimeters tall. It was also unusually broad and thick, which was necessary as the string of the bow was an steel wire cord, strung as tightly as it could be. Normal arrows couldn’t be fired from such a bow, as the nocking point was too thick. Special arrows had to be made by hand, which were wide enough to nock into the cord and long enough to bridge the fistmele: which meant they looked like and functioned as harpoons.

Smiling at a few memories his monster of a weapon inspired, he notched one of his few custom-made harpoon-arrows and looked down at his target, a dummy at the other end of the ship. Missing would cause considerable damage to the ship, but it already needed fixing after Bes and Kamel’s fight, and, more importantly, he typically didn’t miss. This part of their training day was just to make sure that was still true.

Fingers wrapped neatly around the notch, he pulled, forcefully twisting his wrist to dramatically increase the tension of the cord, and demand more give from the already obnoxiously large arms of his weapon. He pulled further back, the steel creaking and moaning in resistance, his triceps nearly erupting out of his skin as they strained to both match and overcome the monstrously fierce resistance of his bow. But this was a battle he had fought and won many times before, and he was prepared to win it again. With the help of his obnoxious muscles, he pulled the cord back as far as it could go, a whine of steel and the near-audible crackle of potential energy surrounding him like an aura of death.

His eyes narrowed as he patiently adjusted his aim, ignoring the deathly hiss of the steel in his hands and the pained roar in his arms. It was just pain. And when had pain ever hurt anybody?

If he wasn’t so focused, he would have heard the whimpering cries of a certain prince crawling up the side of the ship, getting louder as he got closer to the top. But he didn’t. And right when he confirmed his aim was true was when the Prince finally stuck his head out from below the deck, his frenzied panic only looking slightly relieved by the sight of a flat, ground-like facsimile before him.

“Nathan! Nathan please-”

Nathan glanced away just as he released his fingers: the snap of the bow and the string combined created a small shockwave around him, causing hair and loose clothes to splay wildly. Whatever noise of relief the bow itself might have made was dwarfed by the whistling scream of the arrow itself, which, with the help of its own shockwave, collided with the dummy and splintered it, wooden chunks flying through the air as if it had been hit by a grenade. Of course, the arrow itself continued to spiral into the blue… or it would have, if Nathan didn’t yank on the leash tied to the end of the arrow, quickly reversing its trajectory and forcing him to catch the shaft with his free hand, which he did with the casual finesse of an experienced professional. Like the world’s deadliest, pointiest yo-yo.

Those arrows are expensive, after all.

“Oh!” He smiled at Geth, who was stunned at the moment, chunks of wooden dummy sticking in his hair. “Did you come up for lunch? Lunch is almost ready so if you did your timing is really good. But you should know we don’t normally, or rather, typically we lower the food down for the people who are working hullwatch, which is you today, right?”

Well, that had certainly knocked Geth’s fear of heights out of him for a moment. He slowly blinked himself back to reality while Nathan pulled him on deck, having put his bow down as he had neatly proven he still had all the talent he needed. As he finally got a hold of himself, Geth couldn’t help but crack into a smile, looking at Nathan with a newfound excitement.

“The heck was that?!” He asked with bewildered enthusiasm.

“Oh, uh, we call that the ShipSlayer. It’s, uh, for balloons, you know, to make sure anyone who wants to fight us… can’t,” Nathan chuckled awkwardly, a little unaccustomed to people being impressed by him. “Anyway, you can stay for lunch, but I think Bes would be mad if-”

“-I’m literally right here and I am mad,” Bes called from the other end of the deck, neither looking nor sounding unusually angry. “Getherald, get back down below the hull.”

“I will! I just need to talk to Cornelius for a little bit. It’s important.”

Bes walked up to the two of them: she looked a little beat up, and more than a little annoyed. What exactly had been happening up here while he was with Abbigale?

“If it’s important, you talk to me.”

Oh shit. Right, he needed to think before he spoke.

“Not, uh, important in that way, no!” Getherald blushed. “It’s important in a… personal way, like, um… uh…”

He looked at Nathan, as if he would somehow provide an assist. Unsurprisingly, Nathan did no such thing.

“...it’s… girl… trouble.”

“Judath told me you were gay.”

“I am gay! I’m also… not gay.”

“There’s a word for that.”

“Well I’m that, then. And now I’m having girl troubles so I wanted to talk to Cornelius about them.”

“...are the girl problems with Abbigale?”

“Sure.”

Bes didn’t believe him. It’s not that she didn’t think the publicly wholesome and lovable prince was actually a bisexual sex fiend who was attracted to women who attack him — in fact, she found that incredibly likely — but she couldn’t see why he needed to talk about this now, when he had a job to do. Not that his choice for a tutor was a bad one, as Cornelius was probably the most prolific lover on the ship…

“I don’t want you disobeying orders for stupid reasons,” Bes sighed. “But it’s not as if you’re a real member of the crew. Sure, eat lunch up here. Then you’re going back under the deck to apply what you’ve learned. From Cornelius. To Abbigale.”

“Thank you!”

She didn’t justify that with an audible response, just a shake of her head and a turned back, heading below deck to where their lunches were waiting. Nathan, meanwhile, fidgeted while Getherald tired to find the man who would be his tutor in love.

“So… Abbigale, huh?”

“Mhm sure. We can talk about it later.”

With a polite nod, Getherald excused himself and slid past the cook, walking up to Cornelius with a confident, authoritarian gait: he had been trained from a young age on how to compose himself like a dignified royal and he wanted to call on that training now to impress upon Conelius that he was approaching him as his superior, not a scared young man. It might have worked, too, if his face wasn’t still wet and red from his near-constant sobbing as the hullwatch.

“Cornelius? Can we share a word? I have something I want to talk about and you’re the only person on this ship I trust.”

That was almost true. It wasn’t so much that Getherald trusted Cornelius— he absolutely didn’t in a vacuum — but he had to trust somebody if he was going to maneuver out of this situation, and a former navy man who still called him ‘sir’ was his first choice on a very short list.

“I wouldn’t be so fast to give that trust away, sir,” Cornelius relaxed his grip on the wheel, checking a gauge on the wheelbox before giving most of his attention to the royal in front of him, “But for what it’s worth, I’m flattered to have yours regardless.”

If Getherald had been able to climb up the side of the ship normally, he could have used that time to plan out exactly what it was he wanted to say. But as it was, he was forced to think on his feet, which was far from his specialty: in fact, he had to stand there for a few dozen seconds before he finally made up his mind on phrasing. Cornelius waited patiently. Almost. The longer the silence lasted between them, the more patronizing Cornelius’s gaze seemed to become.

“...I don’t want to leave the ship. There was a reason I left home, and while things have gone very wrong, I feel like if I went home now, all the suffering I’ve caused up until now will have been for nothing.”

Cornelius didn’t say anything but at least his gaze sharpened back to respectful. Getherald continued.

“But as long as I’m here, it’s very likely more people are going to try to rescue me, which means more people are going to get hurt. And I really don’t want that to happen either. So right now I’m trying to balance completing my mission with not letting anyone else die because of me.”

“That sounds difficult.”

“It is. Especially because, uh, Abbigale tells me several transport autos have been following the ship since this morning. They’re probably full of people who are going to try to rescue me later today and I’d really like to avoid that.”

Cornelius didn’t react much to the news outside his gaze punching through the prince to some section of sky beyond him. He was thinking, most likely, and not unfairly: Getherald was aware he was putting the man in a bind by approaching him. But his considerations were taking a little bit too long, so Getherald continued.

“...I already have a plan.”

“I see.”

“All I need is your help to go down there without Judath noticing. Once I explain the situation and that I’m not being kidnapped, they’ll leave and not attack this ship.”

Cornelius seemed like he had a sharp mind, so he didn’t need much time to respond to that plan of attack.

“With all due respects, sir, that’s not a very good plan.”

Ah, there he went. Despite what he said, there didn’t seem to be much respect in his gaze now.

“What do you mean? They’re chasing after me because they think I’m in danger! Once I assure them that I am here of my own consent, they have no reason to try and rescue me!”

“Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t you here in the first place because they disapproved of this journey to begin with? Your consent was never the issue, the concern was always with your safety.”

“...w-well, no, you’re, uh, not wrong” Getherald coughed. “But, look, hold on, I just forgot to tell you the rest of my plan.”

Perhaps anticipating a long and painful conversation, Cornelius took a deep breath and tried to reset his expression. It didn’t work so well. Getherald continued.

“I need you to come down with me! I’ll introduce you as a Left Hand agent, and say that everything was just a terrible misunderstanding and that I’m perfectly safe and doing things according to plan.”

Cornelius had seen Left Hand agents before, and had even joined a few in parades: they were all beautiful men, dressed in ornamental armor, said to have been trained to the peak of human mental and physical perfection, serving as “superior human specimens”. Most of their missions were top-secret deals, but a few were made public, and every time they were completed, the capital would host a party and a parade and they would show off all those beautiful, skilled agents to the public and talk up how amazing they all are, and how they directly served under the king, who wielded them deftly to keep the whole country safe.

He found himself fishing through his pockets for a cigarette, but sadly, he had quit smoking seven years ago, so his pockets were empty. Old habits.

“I would never call myself an ugly man, your highness, but I lack the ornamentation these agents typically use to signal their rank. It feels like it would be a difficult deception to pull off.”

“Nonsense! Left Hand agents only look all prettied up during those parades and national holidays and stuff.”

“Exactly. How often do you suppose bar boys from the countryside would see a Left Hand agent in any other circumstance?”

Now that Getherald thought of it, not only would most people not see them outside of those parades and national holidays and stuff, even he had only seen Left Hand agents inside of those avenues. He had only directed a Left Hand agent once, after all, and on top of failing to ask his agent’s name, he had also forgotten to ask him to send a photograph. Lao could send anyone to him claiming to be his agent and he’d have little room to doubt it at a glance.

“...I also hesitate to point out, sir, that not only would Judath never approve such a plan, it would put me in considerable risk as well. I understand you trust me because I’m a former servant of the people, but that was many years ago. I’m a pirate now, and I would be liable to be arrested on the spot.”

“I would make sure you’re not arrested but you make a valid point.”

“Allow me to make what I hope is another: you’ve put me in a very difficult spot. I do like and respect you, your highness. These old bones still have the echoes of a younger man’s respect for authority, and I want to see you both safe and happy. Yet, professional and self-interested obligations implore me to report what you just said to Bes. Not only would I hate to lose my portion of the significant bounty I’d get by returning you myself, but more importantly, it sounds as if these bar boys are a threat we need to address. There are people I care about on this ship I don’t want to see hurt.”

Getherald had not understood this, but as soon as Cornelius said it out loud, he understood it with painful clarity. With this newfound clarity, the flighty prince very suddenly found himself trapped between two very difficult and unmovable realities. He either had to risk hurting more people to continue his mission (and, in turn, bring meaning to the sacrifices others had already made for his rescue), or he had to act fast — perhaps even immediately since he couldn’t trust Judath would be as cool with his escaping as Abbigale had been — to avoid a bloodbath.

It was a horrifying choice for him, but it was also a fairly easy one. He could find a way to redeem the sacrifice of those who had already died some other way: and even if he couldn’t, giving purpose to the already dead was never worth sacrificing more lives.

“Right. I understand.” Geth said, taking a slow step backward. “Um… why don’t you do that while I-”

He took another step backwards, and Cornelius, with a sigh, took a much more forceful step forward and put his hand on Geth’s shoulder. It wasn’t hostile, but it was plenty forceful: the way he gripped his shoulder made it clear he wasn’t going to allow for any retreat.

“The sad thing about decisions, your highness, is that other people get to make them too. Whatever you’ve decided, I’m afraid I’ve decided something else. Please don’t hold this against me, sir, but I have to do what I think is right.”

Oh, well. Right. That was exactly why he shouldn’t have trusted Cornelius. Maybe Nathan would have been cooler about it all.

Getherald was escorted, gently yet forcefully, below deck, where most of the rest of the crew were already halfway done with their lunches. Bes took longer to eat than most, so she was still only a few bites in when she shifted her gaze, saw them together, then noticed the unusually tight grip Cornelius had on Getherald’s shoulder.

“Mickey’s Tongue says it wasn’t girl problems, huh?”

“I’m not sure where you got that notion, but you’re correct” Cornelus sighed, while Getherald did everything he could to not look at the second-in-command. “Getherald and Abbigale spotted transport autos following us.”

“...sounds like something the captain will want to hear,” Bes nodded, putting whatever anger she might have aimed at Getherald aside for now. “Cornelius, get Abbigale. Zelda, you’re on hullwatch duty now. Eat fast.”

“Aye!”

“Aye…”

---

The most frustrating thing about autosteams is that no one understood how they worked.

Sure, every engineer knew how to make them: you start by coating the nub of a missing limb or body part with a special mix of carbon, liquid hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and iron. Once dried, you cover it with a universal interlocking socket that secures itself, somehow, to the coated stump. Then all you have to do is create a functional, but inert steam-powered prosthetic, which you then lock into the socket, and… there you go. As long as you provide the limb with steam, people can control it about as well as they could control their organic limbs, with basically no adjustment period. If you had an autosteam limb at the ready, and a vat of the very precise but not difficult to make chemical mix, the operation took all of ten minutes.

But nobody knew why.

They were the invention of Malarone, the Genius, and in the famous Trials of Holiness Constance, she tried and failed repeatedly to explain how they work to a jury of collected engineers. But the concepts were so ahead of her time (and today’s time) she had to invent terms that didn’t exist yet to explain them accurately. At least, so she claimed. It was every bit as possible she just couldn’t be bothered to explain it in a simpler fashion, as that was consistent with the chaotic whimsy of her mind. Nobody knew then, and nobody knew now.

But what they did know was that if they followed her instructions and did everything as written, you’d get a working steam-powered prosthetic almost every time.

Almost. There were cases where the prosthetic wouldn’t work, and in the intervening century, engineers had at least been able to troubleshoot what those outlier cases were. The first was that autosteam couldn’t replace a limb someone wasn’t born with: if you came out of the womb without an arm, autosteam wouldn’t be able to replace it. Secondly, if you weren’t capable of experiencing a “phantom limb” — or the limb had been missing for at least two years — then the autosteam replacement wouldn’t work either. Finally, an autosteam replacement wouldn’t work if it was dramatically different from the shape of the original limb, or if you tried to just add a limb to your body that didn’t already exist. So an arm with a saw attached to the end would work, in theory, as long as the mechanism that made the saw activate was manual — but a shoulder-mounted gun, or a snake-like arm that extended several feet, or giving yourself three extra legs, would not.

At this point, Judath had a lot of experience working with arms. As his fortunes waxed and waned and his situation changed, he would periodically update or adjust his arm to be a more perfect fit. Weight, temperature, steam consumption, utility, material, intricacy, padding, protection, aesthetic, all elements that could be adjusted and changed to create an arm that did everything he needed it to do, while reducing the downsides. The arm he just lost had been his best work to date, a near-perfect balance of combat effectiveness and minute precision that made it perfect for fights as well as work. He didn’t regret destroying it, or mourn its loss: rather, he tried to view this as an opportunity to drop the ‘near’ from the description with his next attempt. An attempt that would have to wait until after he was done with the hull-breaching arm, which was starting to really come together. The skeleton was finished, and more-or-less worked when he attached it to his universal socket, although it wasn’t strong enough to actually lift the hefty blades that were attached to the end. That was an easy enough fix, but it would mean the external plating would need to be uncomfortably thin, since he needed to cut as much weight as he could from the final product.

The door opened behind him.

“Watch where you step. I already got lunch.”

“This isn’t about lunch, captain.”

So it was Bes. He had been expecting her to come back about the Parkens thing, but judging by the formality, she had other people with her. With a stiffening sigh, he finished sliding a gear into place before turning to face his visitors, who also included Getherald and Abbigale, of all people.

His bored, distracted expression immediately sharpened into intense attention.

“What’s the situation?”

“Three transport autos, same make and model, each big enough to probably fit twenty well-armed men in them, have been following the ship all day. I’ve even seen them drive off-road to stay in sight of us.” Abbigale reported, keeping her posture straight and her eyes forward.

“...must be bar boys,” Judath muttered after a few seconds, “I can’t see any criminals getting that many men or transportation autos for a random boarding attack.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Abbigale nodded. “What I haven’t figured out is why they haven’t attacked yet. If they have eyes on us, they must have seen Getherald hanging from below the hull and known that was the best time to strike.”

“Could they be waiting for more backup?” Bes asked, to which Judath shook his head.

“Couldn’t be. Sixty men is already way too much, that many balloons in the air is a liability.”

“Waiting to attack at night?” Abbigale suggested.

“That’s insane. Trying to reach an unlit ship in the dark of night is suicidal. They’d need insanely strong spotlights, which would both wake us up and be easy to shoot out."

“They could be waiting for us to stop moving,” Bes also added, to which Judath shook his head.

“That’s the most likely explanation, but honestly, I actually don’t care why they haven’t attacked yet, it doesn’t matter. We’re just gonna go down there, explain the situation, turn Getherald over, and collect the bounty money we’re owed. They’re probably just panicking because we’re headed the wrong direction, but once everything’s been tanned a little bit we can get the prince home while stuffing our purses ahead of schedule. Saints, I’d even call this good news for all parties involved.”

Getherald breathed a sigh of relief: that was, indeed, the best outcome he could have hoped for at this point. He was crushed that he would have to give up on his mission, and still heartbroken over what this mistake had cost him… but at least more people wouldn’t die.

…and he could work on actually killing that bitch, Kamel.

Bes and Abbigale nodded while Judath hopped off his desk, twisting off his current arm — which was lithe and delicate, perfect for engineering work — and slapping in a nearby replacement that was thicker and more battle-ready.

“Bring the ship to a stop. I want Bison, Cornelius, and Zelda to join me. Fully armed. I’ll shoot a flare if there’s an emergency and we need backup.”

“Understood, sir.”

“As for you,” he turned to Geth: excited, but at the fringes of his expression were the hints of sadness, “Looks like you have to be thrown off this ship one more time.”

“I’m ready for it.” Geth smiled through his lies.

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

---

The trucks stopped moving when the Albatross did, which was as good a confirmation as any that their suspicions were right. Abbigale flagged them down, communicating that they were going to send people over — she would have been too small to see with the naked eye, but it was assumed that spy glasses were trained on them. There was no reply, which was concerning. But they confirmed someone stuck their head out the window and saw it, and at least no balloons were being sent up after them.

Cornelius was the most conventional of the three escorting party members: he was dressed in his navy best, armed with a humble six-chamber pistol and épée, which was only one step removed from being entirely ceremonial. He looked more like a sailor than a pirate, which was probably why Judath brought him along — it gave them an air of credibility they otherwise lacked.

Zelda, on the other hand, looked entirely like a pirate, with crude leather wraps protecting her joints and her vitals while a half-meter crossbow was slung on her back, a wooden instrument that looked as intricate as it did needless. Getherald wasn’t exactly a weapons guy, but he could see it had a clip the way modern autoshots did, although long enough to hold whatever kind of bolts this weapon was armed with.

Bison, finally, just had a pair of auto shotguns. Normally you’d need both arms to barely control one of those lead-belching dragons of death, but Bison had arms that were larger than most people’s heads, and if anyone could use both at one time, it would be him.

Judath was the last one to emerge from below deck because he insisted he had to change. Now, he was in an absolutely dapper blue tailcoat, unbuttoned at the top so a frilled undershirt could puff out his chest and neatly cradle an emerald brooch. A matching blue satin top hat accompanied the tailcoat, left side lined with peacock feathers. Paired with white dress pants and tall black boots, one would think he was on his way to an opera, not a meeting with the Bar Boys.

At least he was armed for a fight, with not one, not two, but three pistols on his hip.

He stepped up to the edge of the deck, parachute in his arms, and looked to Geth.

“You’re jumping with me. We’ll be sharing a chute.”

“Um, sure, but why?”

“So they can’t shoot me on the way down. It’s the same reason you’ll need to stay close to the others.”

“Oh, alright. That makes sense.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Each waiting for the other to do something.

“...you’re taller than me, so…”

“Oh, I should be in the back?”

“Yeah, I’ll need to… strap myself into you.”

“Will that be weird?”

“Only if you make it weird…”

It was already kinda weird.

Getherald secured himself into the parachute while Judath secured himself to his chest. The size difference between them was noticeable. He almost looked like an incredibly oversized baby swaddled up to Getherald’s chest, which did a wonderful job undermining the effect of the suit. Still, Judath didn’t seem to mind much, and when he was as secure as he was going to get he pointed to the edge.

“Alright! Let’s go!”

The others stepped up to the ledge, treating this as a routine day in their swashbuckling lives, but Getheral paused. Not just because he was petrified of heights, but because he was coming to terms with the fact that his adventure was about to come to a close. He would be going home soon. He’d be going home to a bruised ego, a serious and admittedly justified chastising from Nigel, and a conscience forever stained with the people he’d gotten killed on the Cloudwalker. The now-familiar nausea churning in his stomach seemed to develop a new kind of flavor with that added ingredient tossed into the mix, and to be honest just about every part of him was screaming to step away from the ledge. Not just out of a fear of the drop, but because he didn’t want to surrender this fight.

He wanted to keep going.

But there was no turning back now. Both emotionally, because he knew he had to do what he could to save the lives of the people below, and literally, because Bes ingloriously pushed him off the side when he hesitated too long.

“You’d better not scream so much!” Judath’s cutting words managed to tear through the howling wind to reach Geth’s increasingly pink ears.

“A-Aaah!! AAA-”

Judath, anticipating he’d need to save as much patience as he could for the upcoming negotiation, spared none for Getherald right now, and responded to his incoming screams by reaching behind him and clasping the side of the prince’s head.

“Listen to me!”

Geth had no way to signal to Judath that he was, but the pirate carried on as if he could.

“What are you so scared of?!”

Getheralds attempts to thrash his head to the side, as if he could somehow rattle himself to safety, were thwarted by Judath’s firm and unyielding grip. And yet, in that grip, the feeling of warmth radiating from his right arm, and the cold from his left, he almost felt calm. Or at least, it was enough to stop him from trying to tear himself apart in his terror.

“D-Dying?!” Getherald finally answered, his voice hoarse and wet from all the screaming his throat had prepared him to do.

“Are you dead yet?!”

Getherald’s gaze alternated between the rapidly approaching ground and the corner of Judath’s eye as he craned his head to meet Getherald’s gaze.

“N-no b-bu-”

“-There is not ‘but’!” Judath cut him off with a smile. “You’re not dead, and .ou have everything you need to stay that way, both on your back and in your head. So take all this time you would spend screaming over nothing and actually see where you are right now!”

Getherald, still somewhat calmed by Judath’s hands, took his advice and turned his eyes up for the first time, and looked out over the horizon.

This…

…this was actually pretty amazing, wasn’t it?

Was he still scared? Of course. Did he still feel sick at the idea of giving up his quest so early? Sure. Would he have to cope with guilt and regret and the fallout of this adventure for years and years to come? No doubt.

But at this moment — this exact moment — he was in the middle of the air. A vertically challenged world-famous pirate strapped to his chest, surrounded by outlaws and killers. They were thousands of meters above the tallest trees, the mosaic of fertile fields and rivers that made up his country, and the thousands of common yet extraordinary people living their lives on the ground as he spoke. He was above them all, challenging the inevitability of gravity and physics with a few pieces of rope, cloth, and sheer human moxie.

The fear. The anxiety. The adrenaline. It all blended itself into a single slurry of emotion that almost felt like peace.

Right now, he was doing the incredible. The impossible.

He was creating a story for himself he would retell many, many times in the future. Both regretfully, and joyfully.

It wasn’t that bad, was it?

“You get it, right?!” Judath asked.

“...Y-yeah,” Getherald nodded, oblivious to the tears rolling off the corners of his eyes and vanishing into the blue above. “I think I do.”

“Great. Then could you pull the chute? We’re close enough to the ground.”

Getherald, still in his dream-like state, looked down and holy shit they were super close to the ground.

He woke up.

“Wha- lead with that you dumbass!”

With fumbling hands, Getherald grabbed the chute and pulled, releasing the parachute to slow their descent to the earth. They were definitely closer than Getherald would have liked, but it was more than enough time for them to get their bearings and prepare for landing. And in fact, it seemed the convoy of transport autos was finally getting ready for their arrival: three women and one man, dressed in the official outfit of the police, had filed out of their transport, which were parked in a semi-circle in a muddy patch of ground just outside a grainery. But something about them had caused Judath to seize up in visible worry, and his eyes to dart around in fearful anticipation, as if trying to plan several steps ahead.

“Geth,” he muttered, “something’s wrong.”

“...no shit, why did you wait so long to have me pull the-”

“It’s all so muddy down there. If we land wrong, it’ll ruin my clothes.”

“...really, Judath?!”

“I’m gonna try to land on top of one of the trucks,” Judath licked his lips as he adjusted the steering toggle, putting them slightly off-course with everyone else. “Hold on tight.”

Judath expertly weaved through his fellows, turning the long trailer of the cleanest-looking auto into a makeshift runway. The landing was less than spectacular, with both men tumbling over themselves on the slippery, slick aluminum roof of the trailer, crashing with some loud and inelegant bangs. But they did land without getting any mud on them, which was exactly what Judath had wanted.

Judath unclipped himself from the prince, stood up, and bushed himself off. Getherald, now that he had been snapped back to reality, was dizzy from the fall and trying very hard not to vomit. It seemed their sudden landing must have upset whatever was inside the truck, though — the whole thing was rattling, like bees swarming around the inside of a nest. It also smelled rather strongly as well: sticky, acidic, earthy… with some bite to the nostrils that was entirely unpleasant.

Shit. It smelled like shit.

Weird.

“Please get off the truck.” The leader of the bunch, a wood-faced man who covered half his face with a plaster mask — likely covering up some wound he received at the Barricade — shouted up at him.

“It was necessary,” Judath replied, carefully sliding off the back, landing on a comparatively dry patch of solid earth. “As you can see, I’m not dressed for a tumble in the mud.”

“I suppose not,” he replied, eyes narrowing as Getherald followed after him.

Cornelius, Bison, and Zelda converged on Judath’s location, each taking a spot behind him as he closed the distance between himself and the four Bar Boys. All armed, but no one had a hand on their weapons, or even an eye on the hilts. That would be too dangerous a signal for such a relatively precarious position. If there were fifty-six other armed people waiting in the wings, hidden in the trucks, then a fight would inevitably mean the death of Judath and his crew. But not before the four Bar Boys in front of them dropped.

So neither were probably looking for a fight.

“When we heard that the prince had been retrieved by the… ‘mercenaries’ we contracted to help with the search, you can only imagine how distressed we were when we heard you were going the wrong way.”

“I understand,” Judath shrugged. “I never planned to keep him, though. I just had urgent business I needed to handle before I dropped him off.”

“It must have been very urgent, if you were willing to risk his and your own life in the process.”

“Or maybe I just knew they’d send someone to pick him up.”

“This brings me to a point I feel we need to clear up from the start,” the bar boy said, only now resting a hand on the wooden hilt of his pistol. “Do you think we have the money promised on us right now? We thought this was a rescue mission, so we didn’t bring any coin.”

“No. I can’t imagine you would,” Judath smiled back, before glancing at Getherald from the corner of his eye. “But I trust the Prince. He hasn’t been on our ship for long, but he was kind and forthright, despite everything we put him through. He’ll make sure the coin gets to the right account.”

“Aw…” Getherald couldn’t help but squeak, his cheeks glowing a faint shade of red at such kind words. He would have likely been less charmed if he knew that Judath only kind of believed his own words, as the pirate mostly just wanted to placate the prince so he wouldn’t have a royal enemy in the future.

“I see. Well, we’re happy to hear you’re so understanding,” he nodded, a slight smile cracking on the side of his face that was visible. “And for what it’s worth, I’ll try my best to ensure you do get paid, as thanks for your cooperation. Now, if you’ll just hand the prince over, we’ll take it from here.”

Getherald turned to face Judath completely, the afterglow of his compliment still hot in his cheeks. Judath, too, turned to face Geth, the two of them locking eyes in one of the few rays of sunshine during this otherwise mildly cloudy day.

“...the truth is,” Getherald sighed, “I’ll… never forgive you, I don’t think. For what you did to Markus and his crew. But I understand why you did it, and it is… also my fault. For forgetting who I am, and putting Nigel in that position, and… ugh, this is a lot of words.”

“Nathan must have rubbed off on you.” Judath chuckled.

“Yeah, I guess. All I’m trying to say is, I’ll… make sure you get paid, okay? And when I do, um…”

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Look, because when I…”

He was trying to find the right way to eloquently say ‘when I send people after Kamel I’ll try hard to make sure you don’t die too’. He wanted to phrase it in a way that it wouldn’t be perceived as a threat, or unfairly warn him about his plans, while also giving him a fair heads up that Kamel, at least, would have to face the consequences of what she did. But while he struggled with that, Judath had found himself looking past the prince, towards the transport auto they landed on.

…it was still moving. A lot.

As if something inside were trying to break out.

“Say,” Judath cut Getherald off, looking back at the man with the mask. “What’s in the autos, anyway?”

He seemed taken aback by this question, if only for a moment — he composed himself just as quickly, ensuring the left side of his face matched the plaster cover over the right.

“That’s not really your concern anymore, is it?”

“No, this is all… curiosity.” Judath shrugged — a very casual expression, amused and unthreatened. “My crew and I were having a lovely debate on the ship as to why you didn’t attack us sooner. Maybe you could bring those arguments to the dot.”

His eye, for a moment, glanced at the rocking transport auto, before slowly matching Judath’s cocky little gaze.

“He was hanging from the bottom of your ship, obviously. One wrong move would have sent him plummeting to the ground.”

“We gave him a parachute!”

“Did you? We couldn’t see it. And even if we had, eh, why trust a pirate’s parachute?”

“One got him safely to the ground just now, but fine, fine. You still haven’t told me what’s in the auto.”

“Because it’s not your business.”

“Explain to me how, exactly? I trust the prince, but I don’t trust you to not attack me and my crew the moment we hand him over. Knowing why your transport auto is so violently shaking would give me a lot of peace of mind.”

Getherald wasn’t quite sure why Judath was so hung up on the transport autos himself. This was supposed to be their cinematic farewell after their adventures together. Heck, Judath wanted to get rid of Geth more than Geth actually wanted to leave. But the more they talked about it, the more curious he was getting as well.

“It’s a state secret, I’m afraid. A… special weapon we’ve been working on for emergencies,” The man replied. “If we can avoid word of it getting out, we will. I’m sorry if that doesn’t help, but, there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“Oh, come on. Just tell him. I’m curious myself,” Getherald decided to join the fray, staying close to Judath’s side. “And it’s not as if anyone would believe the word of a pirate even if he did tell anyone.”

By now, the rocking of the transport auto had settled down a little bit, but Judath couldn’t help but notice a thin wisp of gas leaking from between the cracks in the back. Probably a sedative agent… but for visible plumes of it to escape through the back, it must have been a lot of sedatives. This gave Judath an inkling of what it might be, but he wasn’t sure it was possible.

The man in the half mask glanced between his three companions. Words were whispered in tones nobody could make out. One of them jogged over to the auto leaking the sedative gas, while he turned back to Judath.

“Alright, if you’re going to insist — it’s War Bats.”

Okay, so, Judath’s inkling was way off.

“...the hell is a War Bat?”

“It’s basically a cow bat bred and trained for war.”

“That…” Judath gasped, his eye going wide and glistening with excitement. “That sounds so amazing! Can I see them? Can I buy one from you?!”

“Captain.”

A large hand, nearly as large as Judath himself, anchored the redhead in place before he could take another step forward. Bison had something to say, it seemed, and it was urgent enough to disrupt Judath’s latest attempt at securing a mascot and pet for the Albatross.

“You’ve seen a cow bat before,” Bison said.

Judath had, in fact, seen a cow bat: they were bats, but they were also six feet tall, horned, and had four sets of clawed legs instead of two. They were named after the animal they primarily hunted, cows, although they have been known to attack and eat the odd human, while swarms of the monsters had occasionally torn through unsuspecting, unlucky ships at night. The scenes left behind these incidents were so gruesome, at first, people assumed it was the work of the Devil himself. For those who had survived and reported the truth behind these grisly incidents, it might as well have been.

“So what? I want to see another. They’re cool.”

“No, Judath,” Getherald stepped closer to Judath, looking oddly terrified? Why was he so pale? Don’t tell him the prince was scared of bats, too, “I heard about this from my father, this was a failed experiment. Cow bats can’t be trained. They can only be… directed.”

“So what? As long as they…”

…wait.

…oh.

…oh…

The man with half a face took a step forward, his smile undefeated, if wavering slightly.

“You know what, I forgot: I don’t have good coin on me, but I do have my checkbook. If you hand over the prince now I can write you a good check for that 100k coin you’re owed. How about that?”

A good check, which was identified with a watermark and a stamp from the bank, was as good as having the cash in hand — it was a check the bank could not refuse to pay, and it would always come out of the account of the person who owned the check book, even if they didn’t have the money for it. They were convenient, but frightening to walk around with: all someone would need was the checkbook, an idea of what your signature looked like, and your bank code to rob you blind, and probably force you into debtor’s slavery. Fortunately, banks only gave these special checkbooks to people who have the money to spare, which a typical Bar Boy absolutely shouldn’t have.

“Are you serious?” Judath pressed.

“Yeah. 100k right now. Just hand Getherald over. The alternative is a fight.”

Judath blinked a few times. 100k right now, in his hand, plus the chance to get the prince off his ship, and thus, out of the crosshairs of all the other people who were likely mobilizing to rescue him.

“Sounds good!” Zelda spoke up first, trying to push the prince out of their little huddle — but she found it difficult, as Getherald clasped onto Judath’s hand, almost by instinct, squeezing it with the same desperation as he had the night before, when they had fallen out of the sky together.

Judath’s heart might have skipped a beat.

“...uh…”

“Comeon! Money now! Forget the prince!” Zelda pressed, hissing loud enough that it barely counted as a whisper, “If they want to feed him to bats it’s not our damn problem!”

“I…”

“Captain, you need to say something,” Cornelius whispered as well, his hand inching towards his pistol, “...are we surrendering the prince or…?”

Bison just stared a hole in the back of Judath’s head. But all of their words (or lack thereof) just seemed to slide off his back. Judath didn’t feel pressure, or panic, or even the excitement of a big payday and the chance to see his dream of killing Sherspire come to fruition without any more complications waiting for him on his ship. The only thing he could honestly say he felt was that soft, sweaty, cold hand pinching his own. Squeezing with all the hope and trust a man could dream to muster.

“...alright, so I guess we’re doing this,” Judath sighed.

“Doing what?” Getherald asked fearfully — only for his question to be answered by Judath drawing his pistol with a motion so fast and smooth Getherald’s brain could barely register what was happening, shooting the woman who was about to open the auto that had been pumped full of sedatives, before spinning on his heels and pointing his weapon at the other three, who were all drawing their own weapons in response: Judath’s eye darted between them — his mind racing with calculations as he visually recreated their guns, the bullets in the chamber, the trajectories they would fire at — finding solutions to calculations and recreating it perfectly in his imagination at a speed that dwarfed even the speed of their fingers. And while he was in the middle of adjusting his aim, he finished figuring out the math: One of the masked man’s consorts would miss her first two shots before she hit the third, while the other would hit his shoulder with her first shot, which was why he was already adjusting his stance to avoid the path of her bullet.

He fired his second shot at the same time as the other two bar boys — one bullet whizzing past his shoulder while the other woman’s bullet went wide, whizzing past Getherald’s head. The woman lacked Judath’s keen eye, however, and dropped when his bullet slammed into her nose, unable to predict where Judath was aiming. Which meant the final woman only had time to fire another worthless shot, which grazed past Bison, before Judath gave her a brand-new breather to enjoy.

The man with the mask was the last one standing, and while Judath fired a cursory bullet in his direction, an erratic jerk of the neck allowed him to avoid the shot: he was not going to go down easy.

Just as well. Keeps things interesting.

“Let them rip, boys!” the man with the mask called, and another officer, from one of the parked autos surrounding them, emerged from behind the auto and threw some kind of grenade at them. Judath, instinctively, shot the man on sight, and then tried to shoot the grenade out of the air — but the trajectory had been set. And instead of an explosion ripping through the sky above them, the grenade shattered, causing a brown, indescribably smelly substance to rain down on the five people on the ground.

And then two of the three autos — the ones that hadn’t been pumped full of sedatives — began to rock violently, the sound of monstrous screeches and talons ripping through metal giving them a very clear idea of what was about to happen.

“What the hell was that?!” Zelda shouted, fumbling to pull her crossbow out.

“Our ticket to the armada,” Judath replied grimly. “I’ll take care of the walking corpse. You guys protect Getherald.”

“I’m not dying to protect him!” Zelda protested, only for Cornelius to put a hand on her shoulder and shake his head.

“You don’t have much choice, I’m afraid.”

The transport autos were bulging now, huge chunks getting ripped out by the maddened animals: through the recently-made rips in the metal, they could see a furious horde of frenzied yellow eyes, talons thick enough to rip an arm off, and mouths large enough to swallow heads whole. It was demonic, almost calculatingly terrifying, which was the only reason Zelda hesitated before firing her crossbow into one of the recently-made tears.

The bolts of her crossbow were slightly larger and longer than an old-fashioned bolt. It also flew slower, and less accurately, despite all of Judath’s best efforts when designing the thing. But those were unavoidable issues when each bolt was tipped with a live grenade, its pin pulled as it was ejected from the rail. The following explosion, from deep within the stomach of the transport auto, was followed by waves of pained, furious screams from the war bats trapped within: maybe dulling their numbers, but only fanning the flame of their ferocity. She pulled back the lever to load the next bolt into place, but by then the walls of both autos had been savaged enough that the war bats were starting to crawl through: largely ambivalent towards the tiny pistol bullets that Cornelius was pumping into their thick heads.

Judath couldn’t marvel or tremble at the spectacle: his eye was locked on the masked man.

They exchanged a few exploratory shots at each other: Judath, as before, judged where each bullet would go and reacted before any bullets left the chamber, giving him the time to position himself to avoid every bullet before any came out. The man, on the other hand, wasn’t looking at the barrel of Judath’s pistol: his ability to dodge each shot seemed intuitive, the body acting before his mind could realize what it was doing, and his mind trusting in that instinct entirely. The two were able to empty their chambers without hitting the other once, despite the open field and lack of cover.

There was nothing inherently unique about this masked guy. Judath had fought people like him before, and he had always been the one to walk away: the complication in this case was the two trucks that were moments away from belching out a swarm of War Bats that were determined to rip him and his companions apart.

He couldn’t even call for backup: anyone parachuting down would be ripped apart instantly by those same monsters.

Well, why let those flares go to waste, then? While the masked man (with an admittedly skilled hand no doubt trained by years of experience) reloaded his pistol, Judath dropped his in the mud, pulled out one of his other pistols, and fired: if it had been a bullet in Judath’s chamber, he would have dodged it just fine. But it was a flare. A flare bright enough to blind him and cause the war-bats to screech and thrash even louder, terrified as they were at that bright, burning light.

Judath pulled out his third gun, loaded with normal bullets, and unloaded it towards the masked man — and he probably hit him once or twice, but only enough to stagger him as he retreated behind one of the trucks, out of sight and out of the war-path of the incoming bats.

Fine. Masked man later. Judath scooped up his other pistol from the mud and stepped back towards his companions, standing back to back to face down the first wave of War Bats, who were already charging them down — a few taking to the air, while others, who either tore their wings on the metal of the trucks or who couldn’t be bothered — charged, using their wings and hind legs to crawl across the ground at unnervingly fast speeds. These would be turned into mush by Bison’s MT44 auto-shots, which had been adjusted slightly by Judath so they could be wound ahead of time, rather than cranked.

They entered a rhythm fairly quickly: Bison was the main defense, spraying bats that got too close. Those that slipped through were impaled through the mouth by Cornelius, either killing them or repelling them for a few precious seconds. Judath focused on the ones in the air, shooting their wings out from under them so they’d crash to the ground, while Zelda fired into the largest clusters, her weapon being the only one effective at disabling the cow bats from a distance. They ducked, weaved, and fired between each other with a synchronized agility that only barely kept them abreast of the wave of meat, muscle, and fur that was charging them from all sides.

It was effective, but the autoshots made up the backbone of their defense. So when the roar of both guns was replaced with empty ‘clicks’, Judath and Geth alike felt a terrified shiver run down their spines.

“I’m out,” Bison said, throwing his weapons aside just in time to catch two charging War Bats, both of whom were digging their teeth into his hands. He was able to crush their skulls fairly easily, but killing two War Bats by hand took a lot more time and attention than it had with the MT44’s. Cornelius got flanked, a bat biting into his ankle while another was being impaled. Judath had to hold one off with his false arm, needing to fire into its skull from point-blank range to actually kill it. And with the skies unguarded, Zelda had no way to protect herself from the War Bat that swooped in from above and grabbed onto her shoulders, digging its enormous claws deep into her body.

Everyone else was too busy to notice… except for Getherald.

With the first sweep of the bat’s wings, it tried to carry her screaming body off the ground, but Geth latched on tight, squeezing onto her legs to try and keep her grounded. At first, this only had the immediate effect of making its talons dig deeper into her shoulders, but it gave Bison just enough time to throw away the War Bat he had been wrestling with to punch Zelda’s would-be abductor square in the jaw, snapping its head back with a violent ‘crack’ that caused the beast to crumble on the ground.

Zelda fell with it, pinned under its heavy body: alive, but unable to use her crossbow, which meant even less ways to kill the beasts.

They wouldn’t last long at this rate. Swarmed, at least four were ripping through Bison faster than he could rip through them, as every bat he tore apart was replaced with another eager combatant. Cornelius couldn’t maneuver, and while expertly placed shots and jabs into eyes had been able to keep the beasts at bay, all it took was one missed stab before his blade glided past the animal’s hard skull, allowing the beast to bowl him over. Judath turned to give that bat a shot in the head, while punching another bat in its open mouth and grabbing its tongue, jerking it around to body-block the other War Bats vying for a turn.

And of course, in the corner of his eye, he saw the masked man emerge from the corner, unblinded with a fully reloaded pistol.

“Bison, we need space!”

“Hmph.”

At his captain’s command, Bison grabbed two of the bats currently ripping out mouthfuls of his own back muscle, and with one in each hand, started to spin, knocking the others back. Normally, the tactical usefulness of this maneuver would be questionable, as it did a very bad job of killing Bats, which was Bison’s primary goal right now. But as the horde briefly dispersed, Judath was able to shrug off his once-beautiful blue coat and make a sudden, mad dash towards the man with the mask, who replied by firing several shots at the redhead, all of which he was able to sidestep, or block with the rolled-up coat wrapped around his artificial fist.

And as Judath ran, some bats followed, drawn by the scent on his clothes. But he was able to keep just ahead of their snapping at his heels, only long enough to reach the masked man, who had expended his last bullet in a futile effort to stop him, and punch him, hard, with his balled-up jacket: spreading some of that sticky, brown smell all over the bat’s “handler”.

Now the bats were everyone’s problem.

“Judath!”

The captain turned, sidestepping a gang of bats that were charging down the masked man: Zelda had emerged from under the first war-bat that had tried to abduct her, but another had taken its place. Getherald was busy being protected by Bison, who was starting to struggle from both exhaustion, the many chunks of flesh that had been ripped out of his body, and the smattering of bat-gore he was drenched in. Cornelius was pinned, and was only being spared having his face eaten due to Getherald rapidly kicking the beast in the head.

Something had to change, and fast.

Judath sidestepped a charging bat and reached for his flare gun, hoping that maybe someone from the ship could drop down while the bats were drawn to the sticky brown juices that coated everyone here, but then he paused for a moment — just barely a moment — before turning on his heel and punching the bat he had just avoided, who was now trying to rip apart the man in the mask.

The punch itself was weak and left the bat unphased — but his jacket, still slick with that brown, sticky juice, spread some on the bat’s back. And in turn, it found itself beset upon by the bats flanking it, suddenly drawn to slaughter their one-time comrade as quickly as they turned against their former human master.

…they had a way to survive this, now.

And he took a deep, cold breath as he prepared to do it.

Judath left the masked man to deal with the bats that had swarmed him and charged at his own people: he was small and agile, and used those strengths to weave through the maelstrom of reaching claws, snapping teeth, and buffering wings, striking each bat as he navigated this chaotic labyrinth of limbs. The bats that were already directly attacking his crew were largely unaffected by the attacks, but the others — the ones still in the air, or the ones trying to push through their other bats to reach the besieged humans — were more than willing to start digging into the scent-marked bats if they were the only targets they could reach.

As the bats warred among themselves, Judath was almost confident he could get them out of this alive.

Until he saw Zelda, had been taken up into the air again by an unmarked bat.

But this time, Getherald couldn’t reach her, as Bison had formed a protective wall with his own fumbling body to keep the prince safe from what remained of the bats.

Cornelious was pinned under a freshly killed bat, and was too out of breath to try and wiggle out from under the surprisingly protective corpse.

And Judath? One gun was empty, and he couldn’t reload while one hand was wrapped up in his improvised, scent-infused boxing glove. The other was unusable, the barrel warped after being fired too often, too fast. All he had was his flare gun, which he fumbled for in some desperate hope it would do the trick.

But the bats were too mad to care about the flare now.

Zelda could only scream as her scalp was ripped apart by the bats' overeager hands, stab at the beast’s legs with her knife, and give her captain the most accusatory, scornful glare she could before her head was ripped clean off.

“Fuck!” Judath screamed: the bats had torn her apart in a matter of seconds, leaving little more than a bloody torso and a third of her head, which dropped to the muddy ground with a wet, heavy flop: not that he had much time to register her death, not when the bats that tore her to shreds rushed to him, their ravenous bloodlust unsated by just one unfortunate victim. He did his best to navigate the torrent of animals that swooped on him, ducking, dodging, and jabbing at them to spread the scent around, but there was only so long one could avoid a wall of angry flesh, no matter how nimble or small Judath was. Inevitably, one of the larger bats managed to finally find purchase on the redhead, its maw latching onto his shoulder. He cursed, and drew a small knife from his hip, stabbing at the side of the bat’s head. But their bones were thick, and when he pulled the blade out to try again, he found it had already been bent and chipped by the creature’s unaffected skull.

It flicked its neck, sending Judath flying behind it, his metal arm snapping off in the creature’s mouth. As he slid on the ground, the animal took no time to gloat or roar — it pounced on Judath’s prone body, tearing through his clothes with all four claws, using its wings to stand over Judath and envelop him in a tent of fur, leather, and blood.

It only tried to maul Judath long enough to dull his thrashing: then, it opened its mouth…

…and exploded.

Well, not literally. An explosion erupted behind it, knocking the bat forward while turning its back into giblets of bone and leather. It released one last frenzied hiss as the life slipped out of it, and collapsed. Allowing a bloodied and battered Judath to see Getherald, holding Zelda's old weapon, looking utterly relieved that his aim had been true. Judath would have been sharing a similar relief if he wasn’t in horrible pain and the last bat of the batch wasn’t swooping down to grab him. Another shot from Getherald took care of that, though.

The frenzy started to wane as what few healthy bats remained continued to tear into each other, lost completely to the scent and the fervor of battle, and the remaining four of them realized they were standing in the middle of a carpet of dead and dying bats. Zelda’s bleeding torso was a few meters away, and they could see bits of her body in the eviscerated stomachs of more than one of the bats. There were also some pretty big chunks of Bison’s flesh scattered around the battleground, but he stood as proud as he ever did, despite the fact he was going to lose a child’s worth of blood every minute or so.

“Are you okay?” Bison asked Getherald, who was covered in blood, but none of it his own.

“Um.. a-are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Bison said, glancing at the bowling-ball sized hole in his shoulder. “I heal quick.”

“Wish I could say the same.” Cornelius sighed: he managed to avoid losing any major chunks of his body, but he still had more than a few deep lacerations. A normal man might panic, but Cornelius just started calmly making as many tourniquets for himself as he could using whatever he could find, which was mostly torn clothes and bat intestines. Maybe he was a little too used to being in situations like this.

“Judath!” Geth called over to the captain. “Are you okay?!”

Judath didn’t know. He could feel bruises swelling and cuts bleeding. There was a chance a rib was cracked from being thrown, as well. In any other situation, he could laugh it off and just park the ship for a bit while he got himself back in prime fighting condition. But he couldn’t afford to miss Sherspire. He’d survive this, he knew, but what he didn’t know was if he could actually fight the important battle that came next.

“I’m not going to die,” he called back after a second. “Unless I think too hard about what those bastards did to my outfit.”

A break.

“And I guess I’m not thrilled Zelda is dead,” he called again.

Another break.

“...so why were your own people trying to kill you, Geth?” He called a third time.

“That… is an excellent question,” Getherald paused, only to glance briefly at Bison. “...I’d love to find out. Is that masked man alive?”

Judath slowly turned his head in his direction to see for himself: it was hard to tell, exactly, as when Judath saw him last he was swarmed by bats like the rest of them. Those bats appeared dead or unconscious now, though, which meant he at least put up a fight, but he couldn’t see a human body anywhere in the mess. Slowly, he pulled himself up and hobbled over to the pile, and seeing at least one unusual lump, he kicked a War Bat out of the way, revealing the masked man underneath: missing quite a few chunks of his body, notably lacking more neck than a person could typically survive losing.

He was no exception, it seemed.

“...nope,” Judath sighed as Getherald walked over: the prince was drenched in red, a cocktail of Bat and Bison blood, splattered on almost every available inch of his skin. And all things considering, he was coping with that pretty well.

“...well, then,” Getherald said after a slight pause, “...let’s talk more on the ship, after Trevor’s had a look at you.”

“Before we go… what do you think the odds are we could…” Judath’s eye started to glint, his gaze lingering on the third auto, the one full of sedated bats that would have absolutely finished them off if they hadn’t been forced asleep earlier. “I mean, if I trained it really carefully and-”

“-With all respect sir, I would kill you.” Bison said.

“...I’ll concede that’s a fair reaction.”

---

Bison did, in fact, heal quick.

In fact, by the time they were almost at the ship, he had stopped bleeding entirely. Granted, he looked pale, and was visibly shivering from the cold, but his myriad of wounds had mostly closed themselves in the five minutes since he received the last one.

Bes, Trevor, and the rest of the crew — sans Parkens — were waiting for them at the edge of the ship.

“What in the saint's good name happened?” Bes asked. “Where’s Zelda? Why is Geth still here, what were you doing with those flares?!”

“Yeah, we’ll get to it.” Judath groaned. “Trevor, start with Cornelius. He’s going to bleed out soon.”

“We should be so lucky,” Trevor grumbled, using a blade to remove what remained of their helmsman’s shirt and starting the process of immediately stitching what could be stitched. Judath slouched on the ground next to him, holding his own wounds shut as his eye met with Bes’s.

“Uh, yeah, good questions, all… three?”

“Four.”

“Okay. One at a time.”

“What happened?”

“I remembered that one.” Judath grinned, greedily taking the cup of coffee Nathan offered and taking a big sip. “We were set to hand Getherald over. But something was weird… weird with the trucks. We found out they were full of barely-trained cow bats.”

“Cow bats?” Bes repeated. “That can’t be right. They’d rip Getherald apart too.”

“Hence why the prince is still with us,” Judath grunted, “if they killed him, no bounty money for us, right?”

Bison gave Judath an odd stare, but didn’t accompany it with any words.

“I suppose so. But they were Bar Boys, right?”

“No mud in my eyes.”

“So why were they going to kill Getherald?”

“Yeah, why were they trying to kill Getherald?” Judath turned to the prince in question, who had been roped into helping sew up Cornelius. Unsurprisingly, the royal was quite good at first aid, and only afforded the two curious bystanders a short, slightly irate glance before returning to his work.

“I don’t know,” Getherald murmured. “Could be terrorists. Maybe one of the Dukes or Duchesses doesn't like me. Maybe an industry baron hates the monarchy.”

“You don’t seem very concerned.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Getherald replied with a little more force, still giving most of his attention to Cornelius. “We can’t interrogate them and we’re still on our way to Sherspire, right? Are you going to let me go to the ground and telegraph my father about it? Or talk to my contacts in the Right Hand about conspiracy and sedition?”

“Well, no-”

“-Then why ask?”

“You might have known something!”

“If I knew there were plots of treason stirring in my kingdom, do you think I’d have tried going on this stupid journey?!”

Bes took this as a clear enough sign that the prince knew nothing and their line of inquiry would go nowhere. Judath, on the other hand, fumed silently for a moment — just one beautiful, self-aware moment — before he started fuming out loud.

“Sure, maybe! You haven’t exactly shown us you’re great at making smart decisions.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, what, are you going to pretend you didn’t hear me?”

“I heard you, I’m just wondering what your problem is!” Getherald turned around fully this time, hands still holding a few of Cornelius’s wounds shut.

“My problem is that you went on and on about not forgiving me for what I did, but everything that’s happened, from being captured by me to getting attacked by these traitors and shit, all of that has been the result of your shitty planning! So if you told me you left the capital while a known traitorous plot was underway, I’d believe it! And now, because of all this, my outfit is ruined! And Zelda is dead!”

Paul, standing nearby, uttered a muted but still very audible ‘thank the saints’.

“Look, I’ll admit, I made a few bad plans, but Zelda dying is not my fault! You were the one who opened fire and started that whole thing!”

“To save your life! I haven’t heard a ‘thank you’ for that yet, by the way!”

“I saved your life too and you haven’t thanked me!”

“You- you didn’t save shit! I had the situation under control! And even if you did… then, ugh, I would have only been in that position because I was in the middle of saving your life so it cancels out the need to say thanks!”

“That is not how it works! And how dare you say I didn’t save your life! Bison, you saw, I saved his life, right?”

“Probably,” Bison said.

“That’s as good as a yes!”

“Bison is not a reliable witness.”

“Could you two shut up?!” Trevor finally snapped. “We all know how tiny your dicks are! This is just excessive now!”

“Hmph.” Judath snorted, getting to his feet and staggering towards his quarters. “Whatever. I said what I needed to say.”

“You’re a real asshole, you know that?!” Geth shouted after him as he vanished below deck, before turning back to Bes — still a little angry, but trying to control it with deep breaths.

“...I’m sorry about Zelda.”

“Damn, yeah, I liked Zelda.” Kamel interjected, making Getherald just a little less sorry about the whole situation. “She was the fun one.”

“It is unfortunate,” Bes sighed. “She’s been with us for nearly two years now, and she was good at what she did.”

“Neither you nor Judath seem that eaten up by it…”

“Death in the sky works differently than death on the ground,” Bes looked out over the increasingly gray landscape before her, slowly but reliably becoming dominated by clouds, her one good eye growing half-lit in contemplative thought. “On the ground, a death is a weight on your chest, and you cry and you mourn and you process until that weight stops squeezing your heart so hard it can’t function. Then you keep going, and time slowly wears down the weight until you can sometimes forget it's even there. In the sky, you skip to that second part. You keep on going. The weight doesn’t go away. Your heart tries to adapt to the pressure. It shrinks. It numbs. And you help that along with drugs and alcohol, if you like. But as the deaths and the weight add up, eventually the whole thing implodes. Either you die physically or mentally. Either way, you fall out of the sky, and if you still draw breath at the end of it all, you spend the rest of your life trying to either ignore or repair a shrunken, pained heart that can’t be fixed no matter what you do.”

She cast a glance to Kamel, who was already trying to grab Bison’s penis, despite how bloodied and clearly not in the mood he was.

“...at least if you have a heart to begin with.”

She stared out for a few seconds longer before turning to Cornelius.

“You alright?”

“If I’m not dead already, I’ll be fine.”

“Good. I’ll man the helm. You get some rest. Same to you, Getherald. When you’re done here, take the day off.”

“But I wasn’t hurt.”

Bes raised an eyebrow, turning to look at him just for a moment before heading to the wheel.

“Weren’t you?”

Getherald suddenly found himself back on the ground, staring at those officers who he had wanted to protect so badly he was willing to sacrifice everything he had done so far in order to make that happen. He was suddenly thinking about the fact that there must be something wrong with his kingdom, some undiagnosed cancer that was only showing signs in the absence of his father that he was now unable to do anything about. He found himself thinking how people he had been raised to trust and respect had tried to kill him in the most brutal way possible. And he found himself thinking — he’d be dead right now if he had taken Abbigale’s advice, and just jumped without first talking to Cornelius.

And every bit as suddenly as those revelations hit him, he found himself blinking away a few tears.

“...yeah, actually… thanks.”

---

They were raiding a party boat. A big, sky yacht owned by some industry baron in Kiliston who hadn’t paid or armed his security well enough. Judath rarely felt bad about the kinds of jobs he did as a pirate but he felt a special kind of joy raiding air yachts. It takes a certain thoughtless hubris to try and sail through the blue with a ship literally designed to showcase your wealth and luxury, and Judath just loved to humiliate and rob the brainless snotwads who somehow thought they were exempt from the law of the jungle just because they were immune to the law of the land.

It was supposed to be a wedding, and Zelda was supposed to be the bride. But she hated her would-be husband, hated the family she was going to get married into, and pretty directly hated her family for putting her in that mess. She was delighted when Judath and his crew stopped by, and begged to join them. Hell, she didn’t just beg, she actually paid them. Literally, a bribe to be hired. How could Judath say no?

Well, she was dead now. Four hundred good coin for a chance to serve two years on a pirate ship then get eaten by giant bats. She had fun, Judath thought. Probably would have had more fun if she hadn’t gotten eaten by giant bats, but she did know that was what air pirates did. They fought. They committed crimes. They died.

…when was the last time he had a member of his crew die?

Oh, right. Just a few days ago. He lost Olgen. But it was easy to forget Olgen. Olgen hated people more than Trevor did, and only wanted to be a pirate — hell, only specifically wanted to be a hullwatch — because it meant he could avoid people all day and get paid to do it. He probably would have been one of those Hermit Minstrels if he had a religious bone in his body, and was willing to subsist on that rice paste the church makes you eat. Nobody really missed him, which was probably the perfect way to respect his memory: he wanted to be out of people’s way, thoughts, and vicinity.

Zelda wasn’t like that. She wanted very badly to be loved. She would talk about how she was the princess of the ship, she would tell these stupid, asinine jokes, she put so much energy and effort while alive trying to endear herself to him, and his crew. And what did it all amount to? A slightly gloomy mood until dinner was finished? A ship full of dry eyes? She’d probably go mad if she knew how little her death was affecting everyone.

Or maybe not. If the Armada did exist — and Judath had no doubt it didn’t — she’d probably get right to work trying to endear herself to her fellow doomed crewmen. She wouldn’t miss them, would she? She was only trying so hard to be liked because she wanted to be liked — it wasn’t because she actually liked them, was it? Or that she wanted to feel like a part of a family she had lost on her wedding day?

Why didn’t he ask these questions when she was alive?

A knock on the door.

“Watch where you step.”

…

“...also, come in.”

The door swung open, followed by a plethora of barely-breathed swears mixed with a jumble of incomprehensible threats.

That would be Trevor.

“Bes insists I make sure you don’t bleed to death in your quarters.”

“Hm,” Judath glanced behind him, only realizing now there was a fairly noticeable trail of blood leading from the door to where he sat down: even his assorted trinkets and junk were stained from his thoughtless march towards his desk. “Ah. Well. I guess she’s right.”

Judath was still in pain, sure, but he had long ago, via a number of trials by fire, learned how to compartmentalize it. Pain was pain. Pain was just pain. Pain itself can only defeat you if you let yourself be beaten by it. And Judath knew his limits were far, far beyond where his pain thought they were.

“Go to the bed and don’t be weird about it.”

“Saints, you’re like this every time,” Judath rolled his eye, still mostly naked from when he stripped earlier. “If you were the last man alive I’d sooner take out my own ribs and suck my own cock than get close to you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“You’re straight, Trevor, it means a whole lot less when you say it.”

He sat on the edge of his bed, doing his best to not bleed on the sheets.

“I’ve known men to screw dogs when desperate enough.”

Judath briefly considered the lash, but put it aside for now: Trevor was exactly the kind of petty bastard who would use that as an excuse to backstab them when they needed him most, and he wouldn’t learn anything from it anyway. Given the current situation, and the fact they were alone, he could stomach whatever abuse his doctor decided he needed to regurgitate out.

“Sounds like some very accommodating dogs.”

“I never said they were alive,” Trevor cackled as he took a seat next to his captain, opening up a small case of bandages, sewing equipment, lotions and tonics.

“...if someone is ever willing to put their dick in a dead dog, then that person would always be willing,” Judath briefly winced as Trevor started slathering his wounds with disinfectants.

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s not important.”

Neither men were especially interested in small talk — particularly Trevor, as long as casual insults weren’t involved — so they sat quietly as the healer went about his healing ways. There was nothing particularly impressive about it, he just applied disinfectant to the cuts, sewed up the ones that needed sewing, and bandaged the rest, but that was just as well, as Trevor wasn’t actually a trained doctor. You’d be hard pressed to find one of those on any ship in the sky, pirate or otherwise. He just had a steady hand, some time to read up on the subject, and lots of people who had no choice but to let him practice on them. And for what it was worth, he was still the best doctor Judath had ever had on board, which was a big reason he tolerated the rotten tumor of a human being that Trevor was.

…this was taking a while. Just how many scratches did he get?

“How’s Cornelius, anyway?”

“He’ll live.”

“When will he be back in fighting shape?”

“He’s not a freak like Bison or you. He’ll need time.”

“I take it Bison is doing fine, then.”

“Last I saw he had already stopped bleeding and the smaller cuts were already healed.”

“He’s from up the Path, for sure.”

“Just another monster in a sky full of ‘em.”

Back to silence.

Judath wasn’t used to being alone with his thoughts this long. Usually he was working on some contraption, some plan, or talking with someone in his crew. The only time he ever sat still without his hands doing anything was when he was trying to sleep, but he could fall asleep the moment the lights were out. One of his better qualities, by his own estimation. So just sitting here, being in pain, staring ahead with nothing to do in front of him… ugh. He kept going back to Zelda. How she looked at him before she died, deciding to spend her last moment on this earth to tell him as best she could that she blamed him for this. Or how she struggled so desperately up until that point to not die. How often did he think about that? How hard people try to not die. The way she was flailing, that tiny knife was stabbing… a part of her had to know that little knife would never save her. Not against a monster like that. And yet, she still tried, grabbing and squeezing that tiny, impossible hope that maybe she would get lucky, and she could have lived another day. She wanted so badly to see the next day she did everything in her power and it still wasn’t enough.

Not unlike the way he also used a knife-

-Well it was hardly the same, that wasn’t fair. He was never at risk of actually dying. His use of the knife was tactical. Even if Getherald hadn’t shot the attacking bat, he could have survived. All he would have had to do was… um… well, wait until the bat opened his mouth, and then shove his fist, knife included, into the bat’s mouth, and kill it really quickly before it ripped off his real arm like it ripped off his fake one. It would have been easy. Effortless, even. In fact, yeah, Getherald shooting the bat with the grenade bolts was downright dangerous — imagine if his arm had been in there before he fired. He could have lost an arm due to Getherald’s reckless use of Zelda’s old weapon. Heck, even with his arm not in the bat’s mouth, the fact that his untrained ass fired that crossbow twice in his direction: it was stupidly risky. To say he ‘saved him’ was an entirely unfair thing to say. No, he would have been much better off if Geth hadn’t picked up that weapon.

That said, to see a man like that staring at you, caked in sweat and blood and a deep concern, his chest heaving and his lips parted, trembling ever so softly with adrenaline…

“Oh, fuck, gross! Judath! The fuck are you doing?!

“What?” Judath blinked back to reality, and subsequently realized why Trevor was freaking out. “Oh. Oh, sorry. Don’t worry about it, it’s not for you.”

“Who the fuck are you thinking about, then?! Because as far as I can tell I’m the only one in the room!”

“I was-”

Judath blinked a few times, and a trace of red to match his hair found its way to his cheeks.

“You know what, nevermind. Get out of my sight, you’re done here.”

“How’d you even pull that off with all the blood you’ve lost anyway?!”

“I said go!”

“I’m leaving!”

---

Bes told Geth to “take the day off”, but there weren’t that many ways to actually relax on this ship, so in the end, he wound up just helping make dinner again. Better busy than bored, as his favorite maid liked to say, and at least this way he could take a break from sandwich and sandwich-adjacent meals. He decided to cook a whole pumpkin today, stuffed with seasoned ground meat and the leftover bread from lunch, and pair it with some fruits he found in storage. It seemed a full-bodied meal would do the crew some good, considering what everyone had been through today. Nathan, too, came down to help after a bit, but the two struggled to talk at all: Geth had too much on his mind with the assassination attempt (plus, nearly dying two days in a row can be pretty exhausting), and Nathan seemed to be the only person on the crew to be really devastated by Zelda’s passing — or unable to simply ‘deal with it’ the way Bes did. Neither could help each other with anything but the cooking right now, so they didn’t even bother.

Still, cooking a pumpkin took time, and the sun had set well before it was ready to eat. When dinner was announced, everyone was in the mess already, with even Abbigale and Victor having retired from their jobs to relax the rest of the night, which gave them a rare chance to sit down as a full crew and eat together.

When Judath was summoned from his quarters to eat, he wasn’t looking his best: swaddled in a thick robe with his third-best backup arm (which was not a good arm) shoved into his universal socket. He looked tired and pale, likely a result of his casual acceptance of dangerous levels of blood loss, and once he got his plate he simply slouched on the wall of the deck and started picking at it. Clearly, they were not going to get a speech tonight.

At least, not from Judath.

“I think it would be prudent to make note of the fact we lost a valued member of our crew today,” Bes stood up at the end of the ship, commanding attention simply by virtue of speaking louder than everyone else. “Zelda was good at her job and didn’t deserve to die the way she did. But her ticket has been punched to the Armada so we’ll probably see her again someday. If you take to that kind of thing. I do.”

She looked over a small puddle’s worth of blank faces, before nodding once.

“Alright then. I’m done.”

She sat back down, and everyone returned to their meals. Getherald included, although he only got a few bites in before Abbigale suddenly took a seat next to him, having moved away from whatever conversation Paul, Victor, and Nathan had been having.

“Geez, they didn’t give the guy I killed a speech.”

“I wouldn’t really call that a speech.” He tried to smile at her, but he was finding it hard to muster even that much energy.

“It was something at least.”

She took a bite of her pumpkin slice, carefully balancing as much of the stuffing on it as she could. She failed at the final stretch, and a bunch landed back on her plate just before she could scoop it up with her mouth.

“You seem bummed.”

“I am bummed. Shouldn’t you be avoiding me, though? I thought you didn’t want to look weak in front of your new co-workers.”

“What? Did I- where did you get such a silly idea? We’re buds! The sole survivors of the Cloudwalker if you don’t count all those other people who lived! We gotta stick together!”

A very intentional beat followed. She was going for a gag, and he was going to let her do it.

“Plus these guys are dicks.”

“They’re pirates, Abbigale. I’m told that’s part of the package.”

“I dunno, they’re not all dicks. Nathan seems nice, usually. Bison was pretty cool today, too.”

“You were watching?”

“Course I was,” she spoke while chewing, tapping on the spyglass still roped around her neck. “I saw the whole thing. Didn’t hear shit, as you might expect, so I’ve had to board some trains to figure out what exactly happened, since Bison ain’t talking.”

“Not much to it,” Geth sighed, “they said they wanted to rescue me, but their ‘plan’ was to attack the boat with War Bats and for me to die in the process. They wanted me dead, and I’ve been trying to figure out all day who they could have been working for.”

“We’re flying over the Duke of Eleven’s territory right now, right?”

Cohenlay was split up into thirteen distinct and semi-autonomous districts that were ruled by a Duke or Duchess whose official title was reflected by the number of the district they ruled. Unlike the Cohenlay king, Dukes and Duchesses were supposed to be elected officials. But this was a recent development in the history of the country, enacted fifty years ago, and as it so happened, lobbying from the existing Dukes and Duchesses kept extending the term of their ‘office’ every couple of years. In fact, in Getherald’s lifetime, the only actual ‘election’ he saw was when the Duke of Six died in a train accident seven years ago, and even then, setting up the election was such a messy affair (although nobody got time off from work to vote anyway), in the end the Duke of Six’s daughter took the reins, inheriting the position like in the days of yore, and nothing actually changed.

In any case, the Duke or Duchess ran each district with the authority of a king, and although they served at the actual king’s “pleasure” on paper, in practice it was they who ultimately steered the vehicle of government. What power the king did have was mostly to command the country’s special ops (the Right and Left Hand), call for the Dukes and Duchesses to assemble, to take command of the country in the event of a dire, existential crisis (such as war, or the Dawn Harvester attack twenty-one years ago) and to be a figurehead of unity among all the people across every district. In theory he also commanded the joint army, but the army was so tied up in the Barricade it had been a long, long time since any king had the ability to exercise that power.

“That doesn’t mean he did it. Any of the Dukes or Duchesses could mobilize troops or officers across their borders in the case of an emergency, which this would be. Besides…”

He sighed.

“The Duke’s and Duchesses on the western side of the country are… well, they’re mossy logs. They had no involvement with the project that tried to create the War Bats, and I doubt they would have heard about it later. The Duke of Ten, Three, Twelve, Thirteen, and Seven, on the other hand, were involved. It would be easy to blame it on Three or Seven, since their regions are the only areas these Cow Bats are native to, but… the War Bat project was just a few years old. Those could have easily been the original test subjects.”

“Well, you can say it wasn’t Thirteen or Twelve,” Abbigale shrugged. “You were reported missing, what, four days ago? Five? They’d have had to pack up those bats right away and drive without rest to even get close to us, and even then they’d have had no idea where you are.”

…wait, how many days had it been? So much shit had happened Getherald had genuinely lost track of time. He drove all night the first day, spent one full day with Markus, they got attacked the next day, and he spent the night in the jail cell… first full day on the Albatross was terrible, was forced to cook, tried to seduce Judath, got thrown off the ship… that was last night, so today would be… the fifth day?!

“...it feels like I’ve been here a month.” he leaned back, running a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, trauma has a way of really slowing down the arms.”

She smacked her lips. Not because she was eating, but because she couldn’t really think of any other noise to make, despite the overwhelming urge to make some.

“Yeah. I guess,” Getherald finally added, “so much has happened. I feel like I haven’t really processed it all.”

“Ha! You should do my gig more often, then! I get loads of alone time to process my emotions. It’s no accident I’m such a well-adjusted, emotionally stable person.”

She laughed, but it was short and joyless. She sighed in nearly the same breath, and looked out over the rest of the crew, her eyes losing a bit of focus.

“No one here really cared about Zelda, huh?”

“Nathan seemed to.”

“I mean, shit, I didn’t know her. We were literally on opposite ends of the ship, and I never got the time to talk with her after hours. I never realized it was urgent to sit down and have a conversation, I didn’t… like, who was going to tell me I was on such a strict time limit?”

Geth shrugged, and she sighed again, folding her legs into her chest.

“I just wish it had been Kamel instead.”

“Yeah, fuck her.” Abbigale nodded, “We should kill her.”

Getherald looked at her without a hint of humor in his eyes. She matched his seriousness at every possible level. It was Abbigale who lost her courage first, though, breaking their conspiratorial stare after a few intense moments and nesting her chin into her knees and pulling them closer to her body.

“Look, sorry, it’s just… even that shitty eulogy got me thinking and…”

She closed her eyes, and for a moment, it felt as if the shell had fallen off her skin, and something a bit softer, and a lot more honest, was exposed to the night air.

“...I miss Markus.”

“Yeah,” Getherald agreed, lamenting both the man he spent a day with as well as the man he never got the chance to really know. “He seemed like a good guy.”

“But!” Abbigale made a sudden about-face, slapping her thighs enthusiastically and grinning as freely as she ever had: a brand-new exoskeleton for a brand-new woman. “Life is for the living, eh? I dunno what this Armada thing they’re talking about is, but if Zelda’s there it can’t be all bad, right? Maybe Markus is waiting there too.”

In truth, Getherald had no idea why they kept talking about an “Armada” as well. He assumed it had something to do with some kind of pirate religion.

“Well said.” Bes suddenly interrupted their conversation, taking a seat next to them — seemingly out of nowhere. It caught Getherald off guard, at least, but Abbigale seemed unphased by her arrival. “And you bring up a good point, Abbigale. If you’re to be a pirate, you should know what the Armada is.”

“Oh, is it storytime?” Abbigale flashed her teeth again. “I do love a good story!”

“Paul!” She called over to the other half of the ship, “You’re the former priest. Why don’t you tell the new girl about the Armada?”

Paul, the bags under his eyes much lighter than before — cheered, perhaps, by a mix of ale and one dead co-worker — slowly eased off the crate he had been sitting on and walked over to the increasingly large group, easing himself between Abbigale and Getherald.

“Hey. So, about, fifteen years ago, Cardinal Forrester wanted to do something about all the pirates in the sky, but, you know, he’s a Cardinal and they don’t know how to do shit. So instead of something useful, the dude pens up some fable about this special afterlife just for pirates: we don’t go to the normal hell of endless dust, we get something worse, or at least, something he thinks is worse. So he goes out to say that all the pirates serve the Devil himself in his great armada, where we’ll be forced to work and fight under their command for the rest of time, waging an eternal, losing war against the heavens. He prints out a ton of pamphlets, starts spreading the Truth According to Cardinal Forrester, you know, try to scare the pirates straight? But no, it does the opposite. We love it. We’re all super excited to go to the ‘Armada’ and get an eternity’s worth of opportunities to shoot a saint or blow up an angel. The Church has since said many times that the ‘Armada’ is not church canon, and Cardinal Forrester has been retired from his role, like, but who cares? We’re sticking with the Armada thing.”

“I had imagined you’d be a bit more theatrical and less literal about it,” Bes noted.

“I’m done preaching shit,” Paul got to his feet again, staggering slightly from the weight of his intoxication. “Just do what you want when you want to and if there’s a heaven you’ll go there or you won’t. Who knows?”

“Hm. Well, there it is, to the dot,” Bes returned her attention to Abbigale, who seemed rapt with attention.

“I see… well, slave in life, slave in death,” Abbigale chuckled with a shake of her head. “By Mickey’s Tongue, my angels have something of a cruel streak, huh?”

“You’re not a slave on this ship,” Bes noted dryly, as if it were a matter more of bookkeeping than reassurance. “Was there a misunderstanding with Judath? You’ll still get paid.”

“Yeah but that’s- I mean- er… screw it, sure! I’m free now! Hooray!” She cheered, trying to sound as non-sarcastic as she could, at least until she realized it was a lost cause and decided to embrace it. “Ah freedom tastes so good lemmie just breathe all that new freedom in.”

She loudly wheezed, helped along by her irreparable lung damage and the collar screwed into her neck. Bes seemed unamused.

“We could just turn you in for whatever paltry sum they’d pay for you, you know.”

“Ha, that’s funny, because, you see — I love explaining a joke — it’s the unending threat of being found, captured, or returned to my previous circumstances — which will kill me — that’s why I’m never actually free, right? And I have to cling to whatever stuff can keep me away from that regardless of if I’m paid or not?”

Abbigale was smiling as cheerfully as she ever was, but the underlying malice of her words was hard to ignore, and twisted the otherwise innocuous expression into something both slightly disturbing and, more importantly, radiating absolutely devastating amounts of sarcastic energy. Enough to soundly defeat Bes, who could only shrug in the face of it and excuse herself from the conversation without a word.

Her smile dropped like a dead bird from the clouds.

“I’m not in the mood for this tonight.” She took a swig of whatever was in her flagon. “Saints, is there a night I’d ever be in the mood for it?”

“You could just leave the ship when we cross the border?” Getherald tried to suggest, which got a crackling laugh from her.

“Yeah, sure, okay. Blue-haired escaped slave walks into your corner store and asks to work as a cashier. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t start being a criminal until after I was branded a slave for life’. ‘I only murdered a couple guys you can trust me with your store’. And then they get to reassure me they won’t turn me into one of those Trailkeepers the church has running around for sixty bad coin and a cheap iron medal they’ll lose behind their couch.”

Getherald had met exactly one Trailkeeper in his life: they were like special operations for the church. He had been told they heard the voice of Angels and could read the Path like a book, and were tasked with making sure people who have a destiny stayed true to it, usually using violence or coercion. The one he had met had been pretty terrifying, and realizing now that Abbigale was considered one of their targets, having rebelled against her ‘destiny’ as a slave, he couldn’t help but feel even worse.

“I guess it doesn’t really work.”

“Mhm. I’m a criminal now, man, might as well dance with the folks who brought me.”

She took another drink.

“Oh. Wait, wait, this is funny. I just realized,” she turned back to him, flashing an actual, if bitter, grin, “you don’t need to make up a tragic backstory anymore, do you? You have a real one now.”

“...ha. Yeah,” Geth smiled back, his gaze lingering onto his largely uneaten meal. “...yeah, I guess.”

“Congrats, dude, you’re one of us now,” she stood back up, an empty dish and mug balanced in her arms, “I’m gonna play some cards, you wanna come?”

“Nah. I need to mope. You know, take advantage of my new tragic backstory.”

“Fair enough. You earned it. Sorry you almost got eaten by giant bats by the way. I probably should have led with that.”

“It’s fine.”

She walked over to a table where Trevor, Bison, Kamel, and Victor were already playing, easing herself effortlessly into the table and grabbing some cards and chips for herself. A social fluidity that Getherald almost admired. But anxiety or awkwardness wasn’t the reason he wasn’t joining them for cards that night.

He had an appointment to keep.

---

It was a darker, colder night than the last. No stars— or at least, very few — populated the sky, as the Albatross was still lower than most of the clouds. While the mess was still awash with the crew, who were celebrating life and whatever fortunes tomorrow may bring, the deck was quiet, sans the howl of the wind and the echo of what came below. It was peaceful, it was cold, it was as terrifying as one’s imagination was willing to paint it, it was lonely, and ultimately, very alien. A very different sky from the one they sailed in, a very different world, even. And Getherald didn’t like it.

But it was the only world he could meet Alexander in.

“Good evening, your highness.” He cooed unpleasantly, making no effort to close the sizable gap Getherald left between them this time. “Enjoying your first midair funeral? I’m sure you’ll see quite a few more before you’re done with us.”

“I’m just here because I fulfilled my end of the bargain, Alexander. I’m not here for small talk.”

“Ah, now this is surprising. You were listening!” He chuckled darkly. “My, what a novel new experience for me, talking with someone who actually hears the words that comes out of my mouth.”

Getherald didn’t respond.

“Well. Yes. I’m not a man of my word, your highness, but my motives are as simple as they come. So I’d be more than delighted to ensure you get the chance to kill Kamel. Anything to put another thorn in my dear captain’s side.”

“So tell me then, I’m listening. How are you going to do it?”

“Oh, I’m not going to do anything, your highness. My mobility in such matters is, unsurprisingly, limited. But I have the unique ability to deduce the coming storm by the motion of the waves, and perhaps more pertinent, the reverse: to conjure a storm by creating waves.”

“The dot, Alexander. I’m not here for you to wax poetics at me.”

“Hm. Of course. Let me lend you my gift of prophecy then: I can guarantee you’ll get what you're looking for… if you try and kill Kamel.”

The feelings that sentence churned into Getherald made for a most exhilaratingly awful feeling. The idea of killing Kamel, at a guttural, instinctual level, was an absolute delight. But it only took a second longer for that sensation to sour into a growing fear at the idea of actually trying to cross blades with that monstrosity in human skin. The next second, he found himself revolted at his initial sense of joy at the idea, if only because it was implanted into him by Alexander, a man who no doubt only sows sour, wicked seeds: if this was something he suggested, exactly how good could it be?

He took a deep swallow of air to keep those nauseous feelings in check for now.

“You must have found some whitecaps to chew on. She’d kill me on the spot.”

“If you’re worried about that, my dear nobleman, you do not know or understand that woman at all.”

“Nor do I ever wish to. She’s repulsive on every level I can imagine.”

“And many more you cannot, I assure you. Yet you can’t fault her for inconsistency. She is a terribly thorough hedonist, and the things that please her are as abundant as they are hierarchical. Knowing her as well as I do, I can assure you that while she would take considerable pleasure in murdering you, there are other things she’d rather do with you that are higher on the list.”

Getherald found that concept unnervingly disturbing, but unfortunately, utterly believable as well.

“So you’re saying she’d torture me instead?! What kind of madness is this?!”

“I’ve always been a firm believer that to any sane mind, ‘madman’ and ‘prophet’ are synonymous,” Alexander cooed warmly. “Yet, truth that sounds mad is truth nonetheless.”

“Then explain to me how trying to kill Kamel will help me get to Lao, exactly?”

“Oh, I never said that,,” Alexander replied unhelpfully. “But be honest with yourself, your highness: you’d want to kill Kamel regardless, and I suspect you’ll try, regardless. You should be celebrating this revelation, not questioning it: it’s exactly what you want to hear… right?”

Getherald looked away, before turning back to the stairs. He was done with this encounter, this conversation, and this man entirely: he would entertain these thoughts and this madness no longer, and he deeply regretted giving this man the time he already had. Yet, he couldn’t just walk away: a little demon had caught him by the neck, and he found a horribly familiar venom seeping into his voice, compelling him to try and get the last word in.

“I don’t believe you, and you did not hold up your end of the deal. I’ll remember this, Alexander, and when Kamel gets her due, you’ll be next.”

“Finally becoming your father’s son, eh boy?” Alexander called after the prince as he headed down the stairs, trying his best not to listen.

“How proud he’d be if he could see you now…”