
For some reason, (possibly nereids) the river trip past the swamp had very low visibility. Fall chill filled the area and mist wafted off the water. Alex thought he might have heard a pig shorting out in the mist somewhere. Weird.
They continued through the mist, down to where Yvne’s barnony stood. It was quiet, eerily quiet. Alex thought that they might have to be careful avoiding imps that were investigating the abandonment of the city but that didn’t look to be the case. When the toy boat pulling the bathysphere came to the next town it was similarly abandoned. The people didn’t go out in the river because of the perception that it was dangerous. But not being able to hear anything felt weird.
The rest of the day passed similarly, the river got wider and deeper. They passed more small abandoned harbors. The next day they found something floating in the water face down. It was the fading corpse of an imp. The little red demon was becoming transparent. Having been defeated, it was slowly leaving this dimension and going back to hell. They left it behind, hopefully the fishes wouldn’t turn into demon fishes for munching on it. Some lamprey had attached to the body and were having themselves a little feast.
“Ugh,” Alex’s stomach wretched at the parasite-mouthed fishes stuck to the imp. She was able to keep from puking with some force of will.
“You all right?” Ariel stuck her head in the bathysphere.
“Yeah,” Alex shook her head. “I just wasn’t expecting to find dead people.”
“Calling demons people is a bit too generous in my opinion.” The sea elf scrunched up her face. “Besides, they are not really dead. They are just being sent back to their home plane minus a big chunk of their cultivation ripped away in the process.”
“Hell sounds like a harsh place.” Alex considered that perhaps low cultivation demons might be greeted with a death sentence when they returned. From other sources, she knew imps had short lifespans so they needed to reach the next tier before they ran out of time. “That is not enough for me to feel sympathy for those demons though.”
Ariel agreed. “They don’t belong here.”
Alex went back to possessing a doll and doing her best to steer the toy boat’s helm. She tested the bathysphere a bit. There were some hand pumps to fill or empty the ballast tanks. Also, there were secondary pumps on the outside.
Merumeru could submerge the submersible from outside. It didn’t have any propulsion though. So other than the little submarine which was attached by a chain or something else to tow it the strange craft could only go along with the current. Luckily, they sailed downstream so it wasn’t too much of a problem. They just had to keep it in the deeper parts of the river.
Not that that always worked. Several times they got stuck on the shallows and the bathysphere functioned like a giant anchor. Luckily, turning the mini sub and the bathysphere into a card freed the beached metal sphere from the mud. Less luckily, they had to do that several times.
There were other learning pains. Alex could turn the helm okay by using possess doll. But trying to raise the sails or lower them required using animate dolls to do. Alex had to stand on top of the bathysphere and dance for a few minutes to get things to work out.
As they passed the next town, sounds of fighting rang out through the mist. More drowned imps bobbed in the water and explosions shook the ground. The group decided to lay low and try to slowly sneak by whatever was going on. Eventually they made it past the last town before the capital. However, when they were trying to find a good spot to hide the bathysphere near the harbor, Ariel came back holding a blackened skull with a makeshift helmet on it. The skull has a single dimly glowing red orb in one of the eye sockets.
“Where’d you get that?” Alex asked the sea elf.
“The nereids gave it to me.” The blue-haired magical girl frowned. “Said that he was an unwavering warrior that would never stop his fight.”
“Are you sure it is not some kind of undead?” Alex thought the skull gave off a similar feel as the hero doll.
Merumeru, and the two flamingos gathered around the part of the bathysphere sticking out of the water.
“That is definitely not a normal undead skull.” Fufi’s feathers puffed up. “Though I’m not an expert on necromancy.”
“I’ve got an idea.” The black-haired magical girl looked around but only saw mist. “Is there a big enough flat area to deploy the carriage? I can’t see much of anything through the thick mist.”
Merumeru and Ariel could cheat and navigate from under water. So they found a sand bar island and used the bathysphere as an anchor for real this time to head ashore. After finding a rather large area (The trailer was still attached to the carriage) Alex plopped the card down into the sand and the combination vehicle appeared.
“Let me test something out.” Alex took the skull and headed into the doll section of the carriage, followed by Fufi. “Undead is not considered alive right?”
Fufi nodded her beak. “Yes, Why?”
Alex looked around for a place to set down the creepy skull with the glowing eye socket. “How about you keep Hiroshi company for now?” She set the skull in the lap of the fancy-armored doll with clockwork sawblades and repeating crossbows.
“You want to ship the skull and the cursed doll?” Fufi puzzled.
“I just want to test something out.” Alex exited the carriage.
Using the power of the card, the carriage returned to the card form and appeared in Alex’s hand. She checked the area on the sandbar to see if the skull fell out but it didn’t
“Neat.” Alex blinked in surprise. “I guess undead don’t count as things that can’t be stored in card form.”
“That’s not very nice.” Ariel glared at Alex. “You effectively just sealed that skull in stasis. You want it to have a grudge against you or something?”
Alex shook her head. “No, of course not. I was just doing an experiment. For science!”
Both the flamingos shook their heads and Ariel had an unimpressed look on her face.
“Fine.” Alex deployed the carriage again and took the doll with a skull in his lap out of the carriage and returned it to card form. “Sorry mister skull. I didn’t mean to seal you in stasis.”
Alex set the skull and doll in the sand. They looked and felt right together.
“Hmmm.” Alex pulled out a feather duster and dusted off the skull, it was still black but now had a bit of a shine to it. Sadly, the helmet was considered filth by the cleaning skill and evaporated into mist. “What do you gals think? Could they be friends.”
Fufi rolled her eyes. “Sometimes Alex you come up with the weirdest ideas.”
Funi considered the pair of disturbing figured. “She’s got a point though cousin. I think those two match quite well.”
“One is a creepy skull of some form of undead.” Fufi flapped her wings. “And the other is a creepy doll that is prone to killing hundreds of demons at a time.”
Ariel heard some splashing by the water and dove down to investigate. When she popped back up she added. “The nymphs think that they’d be a good pair as well. If you leave him alone for a while he’ll regenerate and go back to killing demons. They think that if he wants to take the doll with him then he’ll have made the choice to befriend it himself.”
Satisfied, Alex agreed. “That sounds like a good plan. We can leave them here to get to know one another.”
The doll and skull were completely motionless however.
“No pressure.” Alex sounded a little nervous. “Take your time and see if you have anything in common that you could bond over.”
The skull and doll of course remained as silent as the grave. Alex might have been imagining it but she felt that something passed between the two. Something that couldn’t be expressed with words.
After bidding the creepy couple farewell, they set sail once more, their destination, down river to the capital.
Things felt tense the last day. A sense of excitement came over the group, like one the stomach flutters of a spy, deep behind enemy lines. In one sense they were deep behind enemy lines, but the kingdom could not claim the waterways. The fact that the two flamingos were not forced back proved that.
When they found a spot to set up near the main harbor night had fallen. Merumeru submerged the bathysphere and pulled it to a mostly collapsed dock. She set up a pipe that functioned as a snorkel and they kept the lower hatch sealed so that the sphere wouldn’t sink. The harbor was a good harbor. That was probably why the place was picked for the capital. Positioned close to the bar but sheltered from the ocean waves with a steep drop in depth not far from the shore, big boats must have come and gone from here in the past in large numbers. Now, ships that looked oceangoing lay roped to docks that looked as neglected as everything else in the harbor. If a thriving ship building industry lived here, then it was in hard times.
Alex could tell this, because she’d used [possess doll] and took the mini cutter to pull into the harbor.
Half expecting to be swarmed by demons, she lowered the gangplank and disembarked. The harbor guards were not impressed by the diminutive doll that stepped off the boat.
“What the?” A man in a rusty breastplate gaped in confusion. “I thought you might be gnomes but you are smaller than imps.”
“Maybe it is a wood golem?” The other guard puzzled, holding up his lantern.
“Can you talk?” The first asked, squinting his eyes at the sailor-uniform clad doll. “Why are you here?”
The doll could in fact, talk, Alex had been practicing this part. “I’m here to meet with the master shipwright. This is a model of a boat I’d be interested in selling to the Jass kingdom.”
“You want master Donald to build you a boat?” They both laughed.
“Unless the royals decide otherwise, some fire clan imp will want to burn this thing down and use the ashes for cultivation.” The guard shook his head. “It is a shame that it has come to that, word has got out in the maritime industry and we haven’t had a single ship come in that hasn’t gotten the king’s protection ahead of time.”
Alex tried a different approach. “Can I talk to the harbormaster?”
The first guard spat. “He’s asleep. Come back in the morning.”
Alex wanted to roll her eyes, but the doll didn’t have eyelids. “Then who can decide on the proposal?”
“Old Donald’s been down at the bar drinking himself to death and complaining that none of the wanna be shipwrites even get a chance because there is no work to speak of.” The second guard mentioned.
“Not like we can do anything about that.” The first guard sounded annoyed. “Look, Miss doll. Maybe this is some kind of joke but we don’t have any timber left to build boats. The price is so high because of all the fire clan demons snatching it up because they have a need to keep bonfires going 24/7 that there isn’t anything left.”
“I have a source for lumber.” Alex offered.
“What, you want to sell to the fire clan?” The man shook his head. “They are just as likely to take it and leave you with nothing. I’ve seen them do that and give lines like ‘if you want to blame someone, blame yourself for your own weakness’ then walk off all proud and arrogant.”
“Can I just talk to someone that can make a decision?” The doll put her hands on her hips.
“Yeah, you can stay docked here.” The guard shrugged. “You can meet the harbormaster in the morning. Best keep a lookout though. Imps like to start fires in the middle of the night.”