Chapter One-Hundred-and-Forty-One |
“We were just following the mimic, when suddenly he ran to his strange airship and dove down below the settlement. Ellen kept me from jumping on board his ship, but she wasn’t able to stop Cathy,” Jabari said, speaking quickly.
“That was truly foolish,” Lasse remarked.
“If we lost sight of him, then we might never have found him again!” Jabari argued. “He knew I was onto him. Just like how I had whispers in my head telling me he was near, he too must’ve heard something, because he was watching me really closely.”
So I was right, he did hear whispers when he found the mimic. That’s good to know. I thought that maybe the mimic would defend itself, but perhaps it’s too attached to its role to want to give it up, or maybe it’s not as strong as a human mimic?
The Cloud Skimmer ship swerved right around an island and disappeared from sight. Thanks to Adam’s ability to sense all of the people on board, except for the mimic, he knew they had come to a stop and were lying in wait for them on the other side.
“Why are you slowing down??” Jabari asked Adam.
“Get to the cannons,” he told them. “Julie and Lasse stay on the main deck and prepare to take out the pirates.”
Jabari looked poised to say something, but Ellen quickly dragged him below deck.
Adam slowly coasted them around the left side of the island, gliding the Hippogriff sideways so that its bow and starboard cannons would have full visibility of the enemy ship.
“Cathy is alone inside the captain’s quarters,” Adam called down to the cannon team. “Focus your fire on the rest of the ship.”
The moment they came around the side of the island, the strange airship came into view. Since they had clearly expected Adam’s crew to shoot past them, they were caught off-guard as the Hippogriff’s entire starboard broadside opened up on them. The sounds produced by the cloud cannons were laughably underwhelming though, each shot sounding like nothing more than a loud puff. When the cannonballs struck however, the results were quite something. The round cloud balls instantly expanded to ten times their size, eating large holes in the hull and deck of the Skimmers’ ship, eliminating many of their ballistae before they could fire a single bolt.
Pirates with long crossbow rifles ran up onto the deck and trained their weapons on the Hippogriff, but flowing blades of blood and feathered arrows quickly took them out.
“Hold the cannon fire!” Adam shouted and sped up the cloud ship to ram the enemy vessel.
The impact left no visible damage on the Hippogriff, though a big dent formed in the Cloud Skimmer airship.
Adam ran onto the ship, with Ellen and Jabari coming up from below deck to join him, while Julie and Lasse remained on the cloud ship.
A few remaining pirates surged up from the bowels of the airship, but Jabari cut them apart with his large sword and Ellen bashed in the heads of the rest. Adam continued on to the helm where ‘Davies’ manned the wheel, though some important part of the ship’s controls had clearly broken, because it was going nowhere despite the force with which he pushed the throttle down.
Adam launched his Spidersilk Needle into the Half Mimic, leaving a hole in his torso and exposing his dense metallic flesh.
“Leave me alone!” the mimic screamed, his voice a distorted alien sound.
A blade of blood slashed against his head, but it left only a shallow cut. An arrow struck as well, but had little effect.
I forgot to ask Lasse to use his ice arrow against the mimic…
Jabari came forward with a loud roar, his two-handed sword held high. The mimic’s arms transformed into sickle-like blades, and it looked like he was about to leap for the Warrior, but then Ellen shouted something that made him turn to look at her. Jabari’s sword slammed into the mimic’s neck, digging in deep. His body gleamed with a grey oily sheen and Adam realised he had activated his special skill that quadrupled his defence.
Ellen slammed into the mimic as he reeled from Jabari’s attack, smacking her mace into his head and leaving a big dent. But, like a human mimic, the Half Mimic was incredibly tough.
Adam ran down to the main deck with all the bodies and shouted for Lasse to use an ice arrow. Then he activated Princely Raiment as he manually cast the Beckoning Crimson spell. The blood around him was pulled in to heal his Health as it was sacrificed to create the raiment. Then the flesh of the dead pirates pulled up around him, mixing with the blood armour formed by the beckoning spell once it had healed him back to full.
A dense layer of flesh and blood surrounded him like a suit, and there was a shift in the melodies of Julie and Lasse who saw his transformation. Lasse’s melody indicated disgust and surprise, while Julie’s told him she was envious of his power.
But then Lasse regained his concentration and nocked an ice arrow, firing it over Adam’s head on an arcing trajectory as he returned to the fight.
Just as Ellen was pushed back by the Half Mimic’s arms which had transformed into long claws, Lasse’s ice arrow struck and made frost and icicles bloom to life in the monster’s flesh. Jabari swung his sword into the mimic’s neck and fully decapitated it. Then Adam came in with a heavy blow of his right hand covered in a gauntlet of hardened flesh and crystallised blood. The mimic’s torso split into chunks of metallic flesh, but Adam didn’t relent until it was fully torn apart into fist-sized chunks.
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Ellen and Jabari both jumped back a step as they saw Adam’s armoured form, but when he was done, he manually disabled the skill, shedding layers of organic armour onto the deck.
[Medium airship defeated.]
“Adam?” Ellen asked as Jabari ran back down the steps from the helm and opened the door to the captain’s quarters where Cathy had stowed away.
“Sorry about the scare,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if we could defeat the mimic or not, so I decided to go all out.”
“How many more tricks are you hiding?” she asked. Her melody indicated that she wasn’t upset, which Adam thought was reassuring.
“Only a few more,” he said with a grin.
They went down to where Jabari and Cathy reunited, and Julie and Lasse walked across to meet them. An Upgrade Chest had appeared on the helm of the ship, but Lasse seemed more concerned with looting the doubloons and valuables on board. Since she hadn’t gotten any upgrades so far, the chest went to Ellen.
Adam brought the remains of the Half Mimic back to the Hippogriff, and though the others gave him strange looks, nobody questioned it.
Since we’re going towards Iffenguard, I figured this might be a worthy offering to him, particularly since I consumed the pirates with my skill.
When everyone was back on board the cloud ship, Jabari remarked, “I’m done with my patron quest now. Where should we go next?”
“Redbeard told me there’s a noxious dragon hiding in the crater of Starfall Island,” Cathy said. “But I don’t know where that is.”
“It’s to the east of Windtop Cove,” Adam told her. “I saw it on the captain’s map.”
It’ll take us right past Shipwreck Isle though… It’s probably best I solo that so none of the others end up looting the cursed sword.
“The Judge is somewhere to the west of here, I think,” Lasse said.
Adam nodded. “Then we’ve got everyone’s quests figured out.”
Ellen didn’t say anything, but since the encounter with Rasal, she’d been very quiet.
“There’s a place called Iffenguard I want to visit,” Adam said. “It’s on the way towards Lenny’s Landing, which is another settlement.”
“Why do you want to go there?” Jabari asked.
“It’s a large island that’s below the floating point, so I figure it might be special,” Adam lied. “Since the Hippogriff can go up and down at will, we can easily explore it.”
“Do we need anything from the settlement?” Ellen asked.
“Not really,” said Adam. “But I think there’s a bonus reward for visiting all the settlements, not to mention, they might have another map to fill out what we know about this world.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lasse said. “We just have to get back to Windtop Cove by nightfall, otherwise the Golden Fortress might leave without us.”
The clouds were still tinged blue, so they had basically a full day before their meeting.
“We have plenty of time,” Adam said and put the ship into motion.
Lasse yawned. “Well, if that’s the case, wake me up when we get to Iffenguard.”
With that he went down below deck, and a moment later Ellen followed after him. Jabari and Cathy stuck around above deck for a bit, but then they too went downstairs, leaving Adam alone with Julie.
“You feeling better?” Adam asked her.
She nodded. “Ellen helped me overcome it.”
There was something about her melody that he couldn’t quite decipher, but he decided not to press her too hard, since she had been toning down the crazy after their fight with Rasal.
“What will we find at Iffenguard?” she asked. “You were looking at it intently when we were shown the map.”
She’s paying a lot of attention.
“There’s a slug dragon there who has a quest I want to do,” he said, figuring it was best not to lie to her since it was likely she already knew. As he saw the look on her face, he added, “He’s friendly. So long as we give him an offering.”
“Is that why you brought the mimic’s body?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m hoping it’s enough,” he said.
“What’s the quest about?”
“We have to defeat the Golden Slug airship and bring it to the dragon,” Adam explained. “Defeating the airship is also a bonus objective.”
“What about my quest?” she asked.
Adam sighed. “It’ll be easy,” he said. “They’re flesh and blood, after all.”
“That thing you placed outside Morgan’s Rest, what’s it for?”
“That’s a secret,” he replied.
“Really?”
“It’ll help us eliminate the White Flags,” Adam said. “We won’t need to worry about it until the last day though. And I want to be able to visit their shops before we do it, since the rarity of their wares goes up every day, so we should see Epic weapons and Relics on the third day.”
“And Elle’s quest?”
“You’ve seen a feral dragon,” Adam said. “Now imagine it big enough that it can devour an entire island.”
The shift in Julie’s melody was unmistakeable. She could easily imagine that, and it scared her.
“What will you tell her?” she asked.
“The same as I’ve said from the start,” Adam replied. “I’m not sacrificing us all so that she can clear her quest.”
For once, Julie didn’t push him further.
Maybe she really has changed.
The Hippogriff flew through the Floating Sea as the blue clouds became gold-tinged and night turned to day.
Suddenly, Lasse emerged up from below deck, and his melody was a jumbled mess.
“What’s wrong?” Adam asked him from where he stood above on the helm by the wheel.
Lasse lifted his right arm. Although it had healed a bit and was starting to resemble his original arm, it was still a bit discoloured, but that wasn’t what he was showing Adam. No, the true problem was that it had visible veins of gold throughout.
“I just appraised myself and saw that I have an affliction called Gold-cursed,” he said after Adam jumped down to him. “Actually, I think it must’ve been building for a while. I suddenly got this weird urge to put all of the doubloons and valuables in my room… I think sleeping next to it was a bad idea.”
Adam nodded. “Let’s get rid of the money.”
“What!?” he exclaimed, before slapping his hand over his mouth. “Sorry, that wasn’t me.”
Adam put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, I should’ve warned you all about it since Morgan mentioned it. Does anyone else have the affliction? Did you check on Jabari and Cathy?”
“I, uhh, didn’t want to bother them,” he muttered.
“Seriously…” Adam replied.
“The sleeping quarters have doors, so, yeah… I figure it was inevitable.”
Adam shook his head. “What about Ellen?”
“She’s clear.”
“We caught it early then. I don’t think it has reached full effect on you yet,” Adam said. “But we’ve gotta get rid of it before it gets serious.”
Since Lasse knew he might put up a fight to Adam jettisoning the gold, he hid away in the tall crow’s nest.
Adam threw away all the doubloons and items made of gold that he could find in Lasse’s room.
He wasn’t kidding when he said he put it all in here…
It had been piled around the bed like a dragon’s hoard, so it was little wonder he’d almost immediately started to see signs of the affliction.
Still, Adam left the things that were clearly valuable but not made of gold, jewels, or anything that was close to a form of currency. It was the same thing he and Emelia had done after they’d taken over the Golden Slug.
Once Adam had cleaned up, using the gunports as trash chutes, he returned to the main deck and almost bumped into Lasse who was coming down.
“It’s already done,” Adam said.
“I wasn’t coming to stop you,” he replied. “I think our destination is coming up.”
Adam nodded. “Thanks. Go get the others and I’ll prepare the offering.”
Lasse moved past him down the steps, but then stopped at the bottom.
“Wait. What do you mean by that?”
Adam grinned. “You’ll see.”