Unbound

"Mana engines are clear!”

“Sails and lines are set!"

Vess stood on the prow of the ship just behind the regal tenku figurehead and just ahead of Pit himself. He'd shifted into his Dire Hound form so as not to crowd the deck—the other soldiers did a good enough job of that. Dozens of Legion, Dawnguard, and Chanters were on his ship, with their fair share of the Frost Giants as well. The rest were split among the other eight vessels as best they could manage. The ships might have been big, but there was only so much room, and the crew needed room to maneuver.

Vess ran her hands across the walls at the edge of the ship's decks—the wales, Pit recalled—and a soft vibration rose up from beneath her touch. She lifted a hand, rubbing her fingers together curiously. "Helmsman.”

The Henaari Dawnguard at the helm straightened. "Yes, my Lady?"

"Take us out, slow and steady."

The helmsman saluted before pressing his fingers into the polished orb of amethyst that sat before him. It took the place of the modern wheel that usually marked the helm, though it was close to the same size. It was a Belais crystal, internally faceted so it shone with a purple light quite apart from the Mana that imbued it, and its surface was inscribed with a bunch of glyphs. Each one did something a little different, from adjusting the various sails to altering the output of the Mana engines below. In skilled hands, it effectively reduced the crew requirements down to one: a pilot.

The helmsman tap-twisted, each touch sending a chiming note into the air. In response, the hum that rolled through the ship sharpened, and the Mana engines below growled to life. Power surged through the deck, illuminating the tiny lines of sigaldry that covered every board and beam.

The ship rose up, higher than its brethren by nearly ten feet. Pit’s ears popped as air Mana rushed around them, catching the wisps of light pouring from the sails like cyclonic clouds, forming a roaring shell of incandescence. The howl rose to a fever pitch before the sleek hull rang like a bell, cutting through the noise and reducing it to a bare whisper. Illumination faded, the wisps no more than an ethereal glow upon the pale decks.

The ship slipped forward slowly, moving off the support of the magical dry dock at a glacial speed. Free of the buoying effect, however, the vessel immediately dipped forward, and a collective gasp tore through them all. With a muted curse, the helmsman pulled back, tilting the sails and sending waves of magic to the forecastle to push it back into alignment. The ship bobbed and rolled like cresting a wave before steadying.

Pit glanced back. The Henaari pilot was sweating a lot.

“Helmsman—?” Vess started, but the man’s face firmed.

“I have it under control, my Lady.”

“...Very well. Proceed.”

Slowly, but with increasing speed, they pushed out of the wide doors and into the sheltered cove beyond. Now free of its dry dock, Pit was surprised at how smoothly the ship moved—far more so than any normal Manaship he’d ridden before. The smell of salt and the faint rotting of seaweed rose over them, almost drowned out by the empty cold of rainwater just beyond the ward. It fell in a deluge, a veritable wall from above that only stopped as it met the surging, ten foot waves—the whisper of which rose as they approached that invisible line.

“Increase speed," Vess commanded. “Brace yourselves!”

They slipped through, and immediately the prow cut through the topmost edge of foaming spray. The waves roared in Pit’s ears, their fury no longer quenched by magic, and the sea took it out on the breakwater ahead. Whitecaps crashed against the prow again and again, throwing a salty spray onto the deck, even as they hovered fifteen feet above the surface.

The sharpened rocks loomed ahead, closer than Pit expected. Lightning lit up their jagged contours in grim detail.

"Pull up!" Vess ordered, manifesting dozens of gleaming glaives.

The Dawnguard was already on it, his hands twisting atop the control crystal. The ship lurched again, throwing many off their feet as the deck shot out from beneath them and into the gray-blue evening air. It shot upward this time as well as forward, smearing gray and blue into one continuous color—but not before something scraped against the hull. Pit felt it as much as heard it, but it passed quickly. He peered through the low drainage holes cut into the wales, down into the sea that fell away from them at speed—they had cleared the breakwater, if only by a few tumultuous feet.

They rose up into the bruised skies and distant lightning until they drew level with the ruin containing the Shadowgate at the top of the cliff. Something like six hundred feet in less than three seconds. Pit’s stomach had climbed somewhere into his throat, and he trilled with laughter. “Again!”

The storm howled around them, sheets of rain obscuring the distance just as before, but now its fury was muted. That shell of wind and light still spun outward from the sails, encompassing their entire vessel. It protected them from sound, gusts of wind, and even the rain was having trouble finding the deck.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Now that's useful," Evie said, hands on her hips. "Maybe we won't have to huddle below decks after all."

The other ships joined them soon enough, though it seemed their pilots were watching closely; they had little trouble maneuvering out of the cove and into the air above. Soon, they had the entire fleet swaying side by side, nine entire ships, filled to the brim with Team Flight. All but the guards watching the Shadowgate, that is.

"Are we ready to go?" Pit asked, looking back at Vess with barely restrained excitement.

"Just about." The woman gestured to the helmsman. "Bring up the Navigator."

The helmsman fiddled with something on his crystal. A venting of Mana vapor poured upward from the deck before them, filling the air. It formed into an illusory globe chased with details in gold and silver. A map manifested in three dimensions, rotating slowly. The Navigator function had been one of the first things the mages found on each vessel—an etheric construct tied to the Belais control crystal.

Vess stepped up to it, and Pit realized that the illusory orb was larger than her entire body. She reached out and pushed at it, the orb rotating as if it were a 3D globe. Within, they saw a spinning view of the endless seas, clouds, and fractured cliffs that dominated Sunara.

"Storms and sea. It’s endless,” a soldier said.

“Pit," Vess called. "Might we have your map?"

“Sure.” The rolled-up parchment was pinned to the floor beneath one of his paws. He’d planned ahead and retrieved it prior to boarding, otherwise he would have had to shift into Tyrant form to access the pouches of his barding. Pit picked it up in his mouth and walked hesitantly to the glowing projection. "Do I just put it in?"

"Yes. The Navigator should do the rest," Tzfell said. "I think."

Pit gave the Chanter a long look before shrugging. He spat the rolled-up parchment into the haze of vaporous Mana. It flew straight through the orb’s surface before it was seized, floating as the magic thickened around it like luminescent fog. It rippled, the parchment unrolling as shimmering lines of light peeled from the paper itself, and the orb twisted and shuddered. The parchment fell back to the deck, smoking ever so slightly, and an overlay of several images pulsed across the orb. The surface flickered with symbols in silver and gold until a sharper version of his map formed across the orb, featuring a pulsating line of crimson that pushed forward into the storm.

"It looks like we have our heading," Vess said.

The map is good. I knew it.

Ari cleared his throat. “Is this sorcery able to view what lies before us? Or is it simply a complicated snow-searcher’s tool?”

“It can,” Yin answered for the Dragoon. “Henaari.”

The helmsman fiddled with the crystal again, and the projection turned from a rotating orb to something Felix's memories called a video feed. They gazed through a window into a hazy horizon filled with clouds far more monstrous than those immediately ahead of them—these flashed with near constant lightning. Then the horizon blurred, and Pit felt as if he were lurching into a vast distance before things stilled, and the image became grainy and flickering. A swirling cyclone filled the window, and Pit swore he spotted something moving in the lightning-lit hurricane.

The window crackled once before it guttered out completely.

“Can’t do it well,” Evie noted. “Can you bring that image up? I thought I saw somethin’.”

The helmsman jabbed his control orb, but the Navigator had returned to map-mode. He shrugged.

"We must tread carefully," Tzfell said. Thunder rolled around them, too close for comfort.

Evie frowned. "What’re you talkin’ about?"

"This is an advanced artifact, Commander Aren. That the storm is obscuring the Navigator at all speaks to its terrifying power."

"So big, scary storm. Got it."

"More than that.” Tzfell walked closer to the illusory orb and spun it. “We are still understanding how the enchantment works, but it is interacting with the Grand Harmony in a way I cannot comprehend. It reminds me a bit of one of my Skills, one that utilizes magnetic harmonies to layer targets on enemies' backs."

"I've seen it at work.”

"My Skill took me a great many years to understand and utilize properly, and it doesn’t come close to the complexity of this ship’s least convoluted artifact. This ship, and the others, too, are all built on a level I have never seen before."

Laur cleared his throat. "It's not using sigaldry, except on the receiving end here. There's a number of Crescian Bronze fins below deck that are pulling in all sorts of Mana, and I think that might be what is causing the interference. It’s absorbing pieces of the storm around us.”

“The sails, too,” Loquis said. “They’re pulling in Mana, even as they put out the wind ward.”

"Yes, I agree," Laur said. "Good eye, Lieutenant.”

The Half-Orc smiled.

Evie held up her hands. "So, break it down for me. The storm is bad. We knew that."

"It isn't a matter of intensity," Tzfell said, "but makeup. What lies beyond these cliffs, what we feel? That’s merely the edge. It's not just a storm. It's a magic storm."

"Can the ships handle it?" Vess asked. "We have responsibilities that must be met, and we cannot dawdle here any longer than we already have. Will our wind ward be enough?"

"That is our hope," Tzfell admitted. "The mosaic depicted many storms, and the ships flew through them without apparent issue. Based on what we've seen of this fleet's enchantments, they should survive."

"What about us?" someone muttered near Pit. It was a soldier, and while he had barely breathed the words, his Spirit was not the only one that quivered in fear.

Vess was still talking. "Share this with the other ships. Yin, update the crew on guard at the Shadowgate. We'll be gone for a time."

"As you wish." The Drake dove off the deck, and the Dragoon looked to everyone else.

"The rest of you, prepare yourselves. We fly in a quarter glass."

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