They leave port immediately after everything is secure on board and confirmed to be operational, then continue cruising up the chain in MDC patrolled waters before finally breaking off at sunrise, heading directly towards the signal.
A good wind is with them, allowing for the sails to be used in the air. Otherwise, they would have to use the ship’s magic for propulsion as well as levitation, which would rapidly build up discreteness and force them to stop about once a day. Well, either that or risk alighting and boating over deep, or even abyssal, waters – something they would do only in the most desperate of circumstances.
They sail on for several days, during which Allia bothers the gnome with her questions, which they seem to answer annoyingly freely. Naturally, nothing she wants to know is forbidden. She even seems more relaxed each time after leaving them, spending more and more time engrossed in half occluded conversation with each encounter. People comment on it, to which she gets increasingly defensive, especially to the two boys who immediately relent after the first sign of serious pushback.
Eventually, though, the shadow effect starts to diminish, and individual words can be made out in a grating, hissing voice, but Allia is still the only one who can effectively communicate about any but the simplest concepts. Even written communication proves inefficient, though not impossible, as the effect does vanish a few hours after it’s written. Apparently, this had been the method J had planned to use had Allia not ‘miraculously’ not needed to acclimate. Just asking sets of questions and waiting hours for the answers to become apparent.
How tedious.
Soon after the first words are heard (or rather understood) by the others, they near the signal and the leaders of the expedition gather on the bridge to see what they can see.
“Nothing?” Allex asks.
“We expected as much. Did we not?” J answers.
“Sure, but if the ancients are going to go to the trouble of dragging us here, they might as well raise the island to receive us. Right?” He speaks with an irate emphasis, then half laughs, letting the others know he speaks in jest. Just nonsense prompted by nerves.
Allia shrugs, smiling faintly at his attempt at humour. “Well, we can still run some…”
“Flecks on the horizon!” One of the crew, a young man staring out the window with a distortion of a lensing spell filling the space in front of his face, shouts and everyone tenses, breath abated, as he chants a second lens over the first one. “Harpy flock confirmed! Estimating visible numbers at 5 digits, rapidly rising.”
The captain slaps the intercom symbols on his console and shouts, “All passengers, brace for hard turning." Then, without waiting for orders, the crew at helms rapidly spins the ship astern.
Sarrah, and a few others who don’t manage to brace in time, stumble from the sudden turn. Emil, seeing her about to fall, teleports to her side and catches her. Seeing who helped her, she visibly breathes in as if suppressing her natural reaction, then gives him a quick smile and nod in gratitude, prompting a beaming smile in response.
“Did they see us?” Allex asks, rushing to the rear window to look at the flecks only barely visible to the naked eye.
“Of course they saw us.” J sneers. “They have natural lensing spells and highly acute natural ocular systems. We may be only a speck to them, too, but they have tens of thousands of eyes to spot us.”
“Better question then,” Sarrah says with barely concealed amusement at J’s need for posturing in this situation. “Will they chase us?”
J grimaces, clearly not wanting to admit ignorance, but seeing no way out of it. “That, I do not know. They have a fascinating communication method. Some call it singing, but I don’t prefer the term. But if enough saw us and raise the hunting cry, drowning out the prevailing ‘chorus’, then the flock will turn… Sigh. It is a pity that my proposal to send a team to study their auditory properties was rejected as being too dangerous. We could have learned…”
“Flock turning to pursue!” The crewmember with the lensing spell shouts over whatever she was about to say.
Everyone looks grimly at each other, except J, who immediately walks over to the coms console and fiddles with the chatterbox before clicking the button to start a message. “This is the LV Mirror of Tranquillity, calling TDS.F Autumn Leaf. We’ve reached our destination, but encountered a flock of harpies. Requesting assistance. Copy.”
Allex gives Emil a confused look, as if asking if he knew anything about J’s message, but receives only a shrug. Everyone waits, breath abated as J receives only silence, then sigh in relief for reasons they don’t fully understand when the chatterbox crackles to life after about ten seconds.
“Mirror, this Autumn Leaf, we read you. Diverting course to intercept. We’re about a half day away, but our skiffs should reach you in a quarter of that time… I guess you found something after all, Jai. Hope it’s what you wanted.”
“Same.”
They then exchange more detailed coordinates, which she suggests to the captain to adjust course towards.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
“What was that about?” Allex asks, confrontationally.
J shrugs. “A fall back plan. I tried to get the MDC to send a cruiser to escort us, but it seems my… ‘strings’ are not as robust as some seem to think. The most I could manage was a pair of frigates promising to divert their patrol slightly to stay in communication range.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Allex asks.
J throws her hands in the air, clearly exasperated at his constant pushback. “Must I tell you all of my contingencies?”
“It would be nice, yes.” Allex’s beat doesn’t miss a beat.
“Well, keep waiting. I see no reason to tell you things that likely won’t happen just to ease your feelings, especially when they may expose other people’s secrets.”
“Enough!” Allia shouts, stopping Alex’s reply. “We don’t have time for this. Captain, your assessment, please.”
The captain, a middled age man with a grizzled countenance that looks exactly like how one imagines a captain of a dreadnaught of old, nods silently as he rolls out a chart on a table for them all to see.
“We’re going against the wind, and trying to tack will lose us too much speed. Using the lev orb at optimal speed will last us a day. 30% percent faster will cut that down to 3 hours. We’ll want the latter. Harpies have natural wind magic that’ll let them catch us in maybe 2 hours. Likely less. Variable cannon has 2 dozen shots in it. After that, we’ll have to connect it to the ship, which will cost us about 10 seconds of running time per shot. That doesn’t account for what our passengers can absolve, but it also doesn’t account for replenishing shield damage, so I’ll call it a wash. I don’t like our odds, but we might have a chance with the right tactics.”
“Is there a need for complexity?” Allex asks, with a fully confident grin. “I’ll just fry those that get close, and that’ll scare away the rest.”
J shoots him down immediately. “The flock is miles wide, with nearly a hundred thousand already visible. You’ll get a lot, but they’re not wholly stupid. After the first ignition, they’ll spread out too much for you to make more than a dent.”
“Spreading them out is good,” the captain points out gruffly. “Their wind magic is cumulative, meaning they’re faster the closer they are together.”
J makes a face as if tasting something distasteful, but nods. “True, but it won’t be enough. Even their individual speeds would be enough to catch us. Although it isn’t all ‘doom and gloom’. The flock won’t reach us all at once. It’ll stretch out, with the fastest and closest arriving first in almost manageable numbers. But we must keep them engaged, lest they regroup to make more coordinated strikes.”
“Will they retreat if we show them we’re not worth the losses they’ll take?” Sarrah asks, a glint of hope in her voice.
J shakes no. “The aggression phenomenon is stronger than with most species, both for us and them. They will not retreat unless we show ourselves capable of destroying their flock entirely, at which point we would not care if they stayed or not.
“On that note, those without either extensive combat experience or a powerful manifestation should go below deck after a certain point. Everyone who can should operate the heavy wands while they’re still approaching, but once the first ones make contact with the shield, the inexperienced should leave, as facing the aggression phenomenon from so many sources can result in unpredictable mental breaks.
“Likewise, the noise will be deafening. Everyone should have audio filter spells to preserve hearing. Their cries occur in a broad frequency, but don’t quite reach the lowest frequencies of human hearing, so it will be easy to set up spells to protect ourselves from that danger while retaining communication ability. Though those with higher pitched voices may wish to cast a voice modulation spell as well.”
Allia nods sharply before anyone else can make a response. “Good advice. Does anyone have any more suggestions?”
“Yeah,” Emil interjects. “The way I see it, the thing we need to do more than anything else is to find the fastest way to kill them. As J said, they’re too dispersed for most of our methods to work very well. In that case, why don’t we lure them closer together?”
“You have an idea?” Allia asks, taking his suggestion seriously.
“I do,” he nods, then gestures out the window towards one of the yacht’s two skiffs. “The skiffs are a lot faster than this boat. Maybe faster than the harpies. I’ll take one and a few passengers for protection. We’ll fly around and harry them a bit. Then, right before they get me, I teleport away, skiff and all, and Alex can fry them while they’re all bundled together. Then I’ll do it again until I’m fully discrete.”
“How many times do you think you can pull that off?” Sarrah asks, an odd hint of worry in her voice.
He shrugs with a carefree smile. “Don’t know. I’ve never teleported a skiff before. Though I’m certain I can do it at least once. I’ll have a better idea after that.”
Allia glances to the side, thinking it over, then nods. “Good idea, I’ll go with you.”
“Ah, no, you should stay with the ship,” Emil says immediately, seemingly without much thought.
Allia’s look is baffled. “Why? The longer you last without getting overwhelmed, the more you’ll lure in, and I’ll be able to hold them off far longer than anyone else on board.”
“Er, yes, I suppose, but, well… I mean.”
“We don’t know what’ll happen if you die with the orb inside of you,” Alex says, voice confident but with a faint suggestion of eagerness as if he was looking for a reason. Emil, who was obviously trying to do the same, gives him a grateful look.
Allia snorts with a confused grin. “I’m not going to die. In fact, I’ll probably be safer than those on the ship.”
“But we don’t know if you being so close with the orb will have an interaction…”
“We don’t about how the orb will interact with anything. You’re being silly. It’s decided, I’m going… We have two skiffs. We should do something similar with the second. Instead of sending it directly towards them, though, we should equip it with some heavy wands and have it harry from a distance. If we’re lucky, some might chase after it first. It should be faster than them, so it’ll be as safe as the rest of us.”
The others glance about, and, finding no obvious flaw in the tactic, nod in agreement. After that, they spend a half hour making minor plans, deciding what everyone will be doing in more precise terms.
“I want to go with you,” Sarrah says to Allia near the end, but before she can answer, J speaks.
“I would not advise that”
“I need to protect her,” Sarrah insists.
J chuckles. “Yes, yes. I’m certain you’re a good shot, but anyone going with the lure team needs to be either experienced or have a powerful manifestation to ground their confidence. You may not be a bad shot, but the security team are experts. Even if your mind held, she needs people who can shoot accurately with snap shots. Anything else would be useless weight.”
Sarrah looks like she wants to object, but just chews her lips and mutters, “That’s not… never mind,” and glances at Emil before looking away.
Once they’re done, they disseminate instructions to the rest of the crew, who then bustle about making preparations. Ensuring that everything vital is fully absolved, and anything loose is tidied away. An hour after that, the harpies enter combat range.
Do you think you know what's going on with the weird naration shifts?
