Calypso sets down a short distance from Erenmoor once again, and this time Emily doesn’t leave the ship. Instead, she sleeps for six hours, pletely resting all of her cores ready for the final break for the border.
After, she wakes up and heads towards the engine room to meditate till lift-off. On her way, she hears faint gunshots from the front of the ship and so makes her way over to che them. She arrives at the mairad finds Ating at the top of the stairs with a clockwork rifle, firing potshots at three passing sand stalkers, a fourth lying a dozeres behind them in a pool of blood.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Emily asks, leaning against the doorway behind her and ign the beasts.
“Something like that,” Ange says, lining up another shot and catg the lead stalker in the leg, knog it to the sand. “I’m not used to sleeping when it’s light and I saw these guys running by, so I decided to get some practi. Just in case.”
“Hmm,” Emily hums, her hand moving down to rest on the Spitter as the beasts close in oairs.
Ange mao hit one of the st two stalkers before it reach them, but her der runs dry as the st pces its front paw onto the metal below her.
“Shit,” she mutters.
Emily draws her gun and flips it around in her hand before tapping Ange on the shoulder with the handle, it to her.
“Just flip the little swit the side up ond shoot away.”
“Thanks.”
Aakes the offered pistol, aims it straight dowairs and does as she’s told, squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet into the head of the stalker that’s now charging towards them.
“Nice shot,” Emily ents as she takes the gun bad fires two shots into the heads of the two bleeding stalkers still alive on the sands before heading dowairs to harvest their tongues and move the corpses away from the ship.
Ange remaied, watg Emily with a flicted expression until she starts back up the stairs to board the ship again.
“Hey, Emily,” she says, a look of resolution fshing across her face. “Do you do it on purpose?”
“Do what?” Emily asks, dropping down to sit oop step beside her.
“Scare people off.” Aakes a deep breath, pausing and gauging Emily’s ck of rea before tinuing. “I’ve been looking for it since we left Ashdon, and you said I should rightfully be scared of you. You know, most normal people, no matter how dangerous they really are, would reassure people that they won’t hurt them if they want to get along. But you seem to do the opposite. I know you be friendly; you’ve showhat plenty. But instead, you make idle threats that you don’t seem to have any desire to follow through with. Hell, you even came out of yht against that elemental covered in your own blood and you chose not to it until you saw us. I refuse to believe you just fot, you’re not stupid…”
She trails off, turning to Emily with a questioning gaze and waiting for a response.
“Okay, that one I bme on the bat high,” Emily says, fshing Ange a small grin. “I really enjoy killing things.”
“See, like that.”
Emily shrugs, pushing herself off the stairs as her face drops back to ral again.
“What I say? Some of it’s iional, yeah, but some of it’s just me. I’ve spent long enough cultivating a retionship that could never work because of our differences,” Emily says with a wistful tone, walking into the ship under Ange’s watchful gaze before turning her head back to finish. “You see, I do mean it when I say you should be scared of me. If being around me doesn’t get you killed anyway, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill most members of this crew myself if it would be me. If it’s true, what’s the point in telling you otherwise?”
Ange shivers at Emily’s cold, detached admission, turning away to stare out into the open sands with her face twisted in a plicated blend of emotions as Emily disappears into the ship without another word.
***
A few hours ter, as the sun is approag the horizon ready to set, Emily opens her eyes in the engine room. The crag lightning that dances across her skin as she meditates fades, and she stands up to leave the room with purpose. Podriotices the faint crackle disappear and rises from his own light meditation, not deep enough in a trao pletely block out his surroundings, and follows her out.
“Go make sure the others are prepared,” Emily says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We take off in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Podrick chirps, turning and running towards the crew quarters.
Emily winds her way through the twisting corridors of the ship until she arrives at a crawlspace close to the tre of the hull. She slips into the tight spad shimmies towards the tre of the rge-scale array she’s worked into the ship’s upgrades.
She quickly reaches the five empty sockets left there and summons five crystals to fit them: two normal wind, two normal earth, and one greater wind. She pces the normal crystals oher side of the tral socket with each element opposite its corresponding partner, before slowly l the greater wind crystal into p the middle.
“Let’s hope I desighis right,” she mutters as the crystal locks into pce. “Or I’m going to be hit with a nasty backsh being stuck this close to the power source.”
The eg els between the crystals suddenly light up with a magical glow that stays tained within a few metres as all five crystals pulse rhythmically. Emily holds her breath with expectation, waiting for the tenth pulse. The moment it arrives, the light from the crystals suddenly spreads, lighting up the rest of the runes visible in the crawlspace.
Emily feels a delicate hum of mana surround her as the array activates, and a proud smile spreads across her face.
“Perfect!”
She extricates herself from the tight passage and pces the c panel ba pce before making her way to the bridge. The engine kicks into motion as she’s walking and, by the time she ehe ship’s are, the balloon is fully infted and ready to carry it up into the skies above.
“Are we good to go?” Anton asks, gng back as she steps into the room.
“Yep,” Emily responds with a nod, fixing her eyes oimeter on his dashboard. “The array has been activated. Time to test it out.”
“You heard the woma’s get going. We have a try to flee!”
Ange and Tony chuckle, the fng over her shoulder and fshing Anton a pyful smile as she responds.
“Aye aye, captain!”
The ship shudders slightly as the propellers turn on, tilting slightly down to give them a kick off the ground, and they quickly begin to rise.
“Damn!” Ange excims, double-cheg her readings and quickly adjusting the steam flow to the balloon. “I don’t know what yic did, but by Goddess is it w. We’re rising almost twice as fast as we normally would.”
“Haha,” Emily chuckles. “I should hope so. I used some valuable materials on this. The array both reinforces the armour on the hull against physical and magical attacks, and reduces its weight. I spshed out a little on the crystals p it, so it should be pletely self-suffit and automatically refuel faster than it uses mana unless we’re hit by multiple strong attacks.”
“So…” Ange says, finishing her adjustments to ba the reduced weight and turning back to fsh Emily aed grin. “We’ll go faster?”
“Yes,” she responds with an eye roll. “We’ll go faster.”
As if to prove her point, they reaal cruising altitude and divert all propellers to push them forward through the air. Everyone in the bridge marvels at the ship’s newfound speed as the sands rush by beh them, and after a few minutes, Ash and Podrick finish up in the engine room and joio ent on the speed as well.
As the excitement from the ship’s improvements begins to fade, a tense siletles over the bridge, with everyone waiting and watg the horizon for danger as they head towards the sea.
The sus as they pass to the south of Erenmoor, just out of sight of the city’s walls.
“How far to the coast from here?” Emily asks, breaking the silence.
“About five hundred kilometres,” Tony answers her.
“And how fast are we going right now?”
“Almost one hundred and thirty kilometres an hour,” Ange ahis time. “Yrades have done wonders for our speed! We’re about four hours out from hitting open water.”
Emily nods, falling bato silence.
If they know we’re ing, they’ll probably start gathering now.
An hour ter, nothing has happened so the tension in the bridge eases a little and the crew start quietly discussing the possible ambush awaiting them. Emily remains silent, not joining in with their versation. She stands still as a statue behind Anton’s seat while staring out of the window ahead, with one of her cores watg through her bird’s eyes above.
Two hours ter, they spot their first sign of enemy movement. Floating in the air far ahead of them, they see the faint lights of five small ships, less than half the size of Calypso, their outlines barely visible in the light of the moon. With her enhanced eyesight, Emily easily make out their designs, seeing a dense mass of propellers mounted in a ring around the back of each of them, and four long pipes, two oher side, half-embedded in the ships’ hulls pointing straight forward.
“Five scout ships approag straight ahead!” Anton announces, straightening up in his chair and raising a looking gss to peer through befng up at Emily. “ you deal with them?”
“Easily,” she responds, turning and heading straight for the droch.
She opens it up and drops out, stepping on the air and ung herself around their fast-moving ship to stand above the bridge with air walk. She hears five faint pops in the distance as she slides to a halt on top of the hull, and four fist-sized balls of metal fly past the ship. The fifth catches the ship in a gng blow, sending a shudder through it and leaving a long scrat its armour.
Emily whistles in appreciation as she pulls out the Whisper and drops into a seated position.
“That’s some impressive range,” she mutters, raising the sight to her eye and flig the firior to full. “My turn.”
She pulls the trigger and, with a silent kito her shoulder, the Whisper sends a bullet rocketing into one of the scout’s balloons. The projectile rips a small hole in the reinforced fabric, but the scout tinues forward ued.
“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue, rag the bolt on her gun and firing again.
She sends six more bullets into the same balloon, aiming to keep them as close together as possible, widening the existing hole until the ship starts to slowly lose altitude. However, the moment the ship starts dropping, she sees a strange white foam spraying out of the hole through her scope. Within a few seds, the foam solidifies at the edges of the tear, slowly shrinking it until a solid white stopper has pletely blocked the leak.
I should’ve expected they had ways to protect their ships against being shot down. How many more times you do that I wonder?
Emily fires again at the same time as all five scouts unload a sed shot each, and she watches as five more heavy projectiles sail towards the ship. This time, Emily raises one of her hands and pours out mana, f it into fe, green magic circles. All of them are a modified form of wind barrier, and they create a long, ft barrier of powerful winds pulling straight down.
The five oversized bullets smash into the wall of wind and instantly arc down, sailing under Calypso and smming into the sand behind it with five heavy impacts. Emily cels her spells and checks to see what her shot did, seeing the solid foam stopper has been knocked out of pce, but more fresh foam is rushing back to repce it.
“Damn. I guess taking them down quickly with normal bullets is out of the question,” Emily says to herself, quickly dropping the magazine from her gun and reag into her pouch to pull out a new one.
She sms home the new magazih an engraved fme on the side and lines up another shot. This time, she aims for the top of one of the scout’s hulls before squeezing the trigger. The bullet sms accurately into the ship and explodes, sending a wave of fmes up to engulf the balloon, and creating a sizeable hole in the ship’s metal hull.
However, the fmes on the balloon quickly die out, uo burn through the resistant material, and Emily gets a system notification that immediately draws her attention.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
-Leave the try without killing any of your pursuers (Failed)
_____
“Oh, e on,” she growls in frustration. “To die in that you’d have to have been stood directly u!”
Sighing, she shakes her head.
Ah well. I robably going to fail at least onyway. I may as well use this as a ce to work out what I’m fag and how I get through it without causing ahs.
She ges her target, aiming her explosive bullets at the propellers at the back of the ships instead. It takes her five carefully aimed shots to pletely remove the propellers from one ship, and it stops advang as she does, being stuck h in one spot after its speed dies out.
“That works at least,” she mutters, juring ane wall of wind to bloother volley of shots as the four remaining ships close in on them.
Emily pces the Whisper away and stands up, calling upon her e with lightning and charging forward into the open air to meet her oppos. She reaches the ships quickly and sends a powerful, arg bde of charge towards one of their balloons. It burns a long gash into the fabric that the repairing foam ’t respond fast enough to fix as all of the held steam is released.
The targeted scout plummets to the ground, crashing into the sand below with a harsh impact that crumples the front half.
“That probably killed everyone inside,” Emily muses with a frown. “Maybe I create a wind cushion when I drop the ships to stop anyone dying?”
, she casts four wind currents directly below one of the scouts as a hat the side pops open and a lightly armoured man leans out with a rifle in hand, aiming it up at Emily. He fires, but a small twitch of her lightning-charged legs dispces her several metres to the side, dodging with ease. She points a fi him, sending a small bolt of lightning into his chest that scorches his armour and freezes his muscles, before sending ane lightning bde into the balloon of his ship, sending it careening down into the waiting winds below.
The ship shudders as it falls, moving unstably in the powerful updrafts, but it hits the ground with less force than its predecessor and only a few small segments of armour fold inwards as it does.
It drains more mana than I’d like, but as long as there aren’t too many ships waiting for us, this should work.
With a light nod, Emily pulls in the crag charge surrounding her, pag it down into a small orb before releasing it in a powerful wave of lightning that knocks the remaining scouts from the sky. She returns to the ship and sits above the bridge again before releasing her lightning-charged state.
A short while ter, the glistening blue expanse of the open o es into view, momentarily taking Emily’s breath away. Her admiration quickly fades though as her eyes focus on the rge force awaiting her.
Dotting the shoreline are several rge, grounded ships. Emily ts fifteeal behemoths, covered in powerful light crystals that light up the surrounding ground troops. The people on the floor are standing in formations, carrying an assortment of le onry ranging from rifles te, threatening, unwieldy metal tubes. There are ten other, more plicated ships with their balloons pletely removed, lying in the sand behind them, and their bodies butterflied open, secured to the ground to support the rge artillery ons within that are poi the approag Calypso.
To top it off, Emily ts around thirty-five ships still in the air. Half of them are rger than the scouts she took down, with an assortment of ons poi her and several magical lights, and the rest are smaller and lightless, with a mixture of two designs, both g any obvious onry.
“Well shit,” Emily mutters in disbelief, aed grin stretg her lips. “This is gonna be fun.”
KeroKeron
