Chapter Eleven.

I realized after a moment that I might have a bit of a motif going. The unfortunate thought came to me while I was unpacking my jet-black clothing selection into the wardrobe in my now completely dark room. A creeping dread wormed its way into my mind and brought my hands up to my head in mounting horror.

Am… am I turning into an edgelord??

Taking all my strength, I fought down the urge to turn the creepy light back on.

It’s ok. Don’t think about it. Being an edgelord is about attitude— long as I don’t start ‘contemplating the void’ or saying cringey one-liners I’ll be fine.

Of course I immediately started thinking of all the cringe-inducing, edgy one-liners I could say, because my brain hates me and enjoys paralyzing me with imaginary embarrassment. Luckily, my self-torment was interrupted by a rap on the hatch of my cabin.

Grabbing on to the interruption like a lifeline to a downing sailor, I practically jumped over to the hatch and flung it open— ignoring the twinge of pain from my bruised chest. Leigh was standing there with his hand raised to knock again, though his eyebrows crept upwards in surprise at my sudden arrival— and probably the darkness of my room.

"Something wrong with the light?" He asked questioningly.

"You could say that." I answered, refusing to elaborate on my potential paranoia. Then I remembered I was pissed at him for happily ditching me to meet with the captain. He read my shifting mood instantly.

"Oh don't look at me like that, you were gonna have to deal with him on your own at some point, and regardless of his… abrasiveness, Grafton is the Captain's man through and through. I’ve met men like him all over the world, he'd never do something to break Teadran's word."

“You can be loyal to someone without being an ass to everyone else.” I grumbled to myself and glared at my traitorous guide.

Leigh rolled his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be the center of the universe or something? You’d think us ‘mere mortals’ getting uppity wouldn’t bother you so much.”

“I regret telling you anything.”

He laughed. “Ray, every mage thinks they’re the center of the universe, your Ideal just takes that more… literally. Come on, we’re departing soon and you don’t want to miss the view, do you?” Turning, he beckoned me to follow down the hallway.

Curious, I followed him back into the maze of passages until we made our way to a room labeled as the ‘Forward Observation Deck’. The hatch was propped open, letting in the early morning sun as we walked out into an ovoid, steel gondola. Armored shutters ringed the ceiling, ready to drop into place at a moment’s notice with the pull of a lever by the hatchway. I noticed the grooves for those shutters to lock in were very close to the handrails around the gondola’s edge, and couldn’t help the brief mental image of someone unlucky enough to have their hands— or anything else— past that edge when the shutters came down. Not wanting to get sliced in half by descending steel, I stayed well back from the open edges.

The ‘view’ I’d been brought up here for was pretty underwhelming, as we still hadn’t moved from the recessed trench the ship had been parked in. Honestly, the view had been much better from the air on my disastrous nighttime adventure. I gave Leigh an incredulous look.

“Give it a minute.” He said with an irritating smirk.

My response was cut off by the piercing wail of a steam whistle from our ship, followed up quickly by the rest of the departing ships in sequence. The deck lurched under our feet and I swayed slightly in place to compensate, a rumble echoing through the ship’s frame as I felt the engines below us ramping up. Curiosity overcame my earlier caution and I stepped to the side of the gondola so I could look down.

With a slow, ponderous motion, alternating sets of legs on each side of the ship raised up into the air, then crashed down to the ground with a muffled *boom*. Another quickly followed as the ship began to heave its bulk forward, gradually lifting itself up the ramp and out of the loading dock. More titanic footsteps rumbled out around us as each of the ships in line followed suit, building up to a fast walking pace as we carefully maneuvered our way around the guildhall and onto the main thoroughfare.

I was briefly worried that we were just going to waltz out into the early morning traffic of people and tram cars, but as we entered the street I saw that barricades had dropped off on the side streets and the tram cars had all diverted, leaving us a clear path out of the city. Small crowds of people waited behind many of the barricades with varying levels of enthusiasm, ranging from adults impatient to get to work all the way to over-excited kids pointing wildly at us and waving. I waved back to an excited cheer from a group of ten-year-olds that put a grin on my face.

For the next fifteen-or-so minutes we made our way down the avenue— barricades going back up behind our passage to let normal life resume. A double whistle sounded out from us next, and in the far distance I saw we were approaching a truly ridiculous wall that towered over our ship. In answer to the ship’s call, a thunderous bass note like a foghorn came from the wall, which split down the middle ahead of us and began sliding apart to reveal our passage to the world beyond.

Anxiety made a quick pass through my mind, but I did my best to smother it before it could take root.

No turning back now, you got this.

We passed through the titanic orifice of the gate at the same relatively sedate walking pace, the other six ships trailing behind us as I got my first look at the outside world.

Rolling hills of farmland spread out in front of us for kilometers, broken up by scattered groupings of deciduous trees. The river that curved around the city continued on a meandering path over the horizon, criss-crossing in front of us at multiple points. In the far distance to the north I could just barely make out the beginnings of a mountain range, but it was too far to make out with any clarity. The whole scene was oddly peaceful, considering the huge wall and the warship we were riding out on I’d expected something more… violent.

“Welcome to the Great River Plains, breadbasket of the Free Cities.” Leigh announced with a grin.

“Is it named that because of the river that goes around the city?” I asked curiously as the line of our ships slowly made their way out of the gate.

“The Telm river, and that’s actually a funny story.” Leigh began with a chuckle. “During the Achoran Unification, the Empire sent out scouts to make a map of the world. When they came here, they had a lot of trouble translating the local dialects and had to procure a guide. When they came across this river, they asked their guide for its name, to which he replied, ‘Telm’ so they nodded and jotted that down in the map.The next day they came across another river, and their guide said the same thing, ‘Telm’. Six times this happened, their guide getting increasingly frustrated at the repeated questions. The Achorai concluded this must be the greatest river on all of Haven, and so was named the Great River Plains. What they didn’t realize is that ‘Telm’ was the local word for ‘river’. So now there are seven rivers ‘Telm’ and everyone argues over which one is the ‘real’ Telm.”

I shook my head at the story while Leigh laughed.

Guess some things are a multi-universal constant.

When the last of the walking ships had cleared the wall it let out a final blow of its steam whistle. Our ship responded in kind, and the deck lurched beneath us again as we began to pick up speed, peaking out at what I guessed to be around forty kilometers an hour. It wasn’t exactly a blistering pace for somebody used to modern cars and trains, but considering we were in a land-walking, steampunk battleship, I was impressed anyway.

As we moved on, I noticed a dark line on the horizon where the farms all just… ended. I frowned and squinted, trying to make out what it was when a harsh buzzer sounded out behind me. Flinching, I whirled around but the only change was that a yellow light I hadn’t noticed before was lit up above the hatchway.

“It’s alright, Ray. That’s just the caravan going to ‘Alert’ status— we’re approaching the transition point for the city’s ward. If something really goes wrong those lights will all shift to red and the alarm will keep going. This is just letting everyone aboard know that we are no longer in safe territory.” Leigh piped up at my alarmed expression.

I chuckled nervously and turned back to observing the approaching darkness on the horizon.

Might be a little high-strung right now.

The closer we got to the ward’s edge, the clearer the stark difference in the terrain became. On the one side was a plowed field, some unidentified crop pushing its way up through the rich soil. On the other side, were the wilds.

Marshy wetlands alternated with wild tangles of brush and bull grass in an impenetrable wall that started incongruously just beyond the shimmer of the ward. Thick ground-fog spread its way inward from the ward’s edge, the early morning sun not enough to chase it away yet. Grassy hills peeked out from the dense fog like lonely sentinels, with scraggly trees growing in sparse clumps.

Basically, it looked like a haunted swamp.

“Didn’t you just say this place was called the Great River Plains?” I asked doubtfully.

Leigh just arched an eyebrow at me.

“Sorry, the land has changed a bit in the last eight thousand years.” He said sarcastically. “The name just stuck, and hardly anybody speaks low Achoran well enough to know the difference anyway.”

Fair enough. Though I think I may have just found a disadvantage to my [Soul Tongue] ability— I can’t tell languages apart. I still hear some names though… I wonder how that works?

Discarding the idle thought, I tried to pierce the fog with my enhanced eyes to no avail. The ward itself shimmered softly with familiar pale blue light as we got closer, and I couldn’t help a quiet shudder as I remembered a similar barrier locking me out in the Void. I took a deep breath as the ship’s bow breached the ward, my muscles tensing involuntarily as the wall of light passed over us with a slight tingle and a ripple from the powerful magic. Forcing myself to exhale, I took my first breath of air outside the wards on the surface— and promptly gagged as the fetid air of the swamp flooded my nostrils. Even Leigh winced, his eyes watering as he forced out a cough.

“Ugh, yep. That’s the ripe old smell of freedom for you.”

I glared at him blearily until I noticed a flash of movement in the swamp ahead of us. A brief debate warred in my head as to whether I should say something, and common sense ultimately won out.

“Do you see something down there?” I pointed out to Leigh.

He squinted for a moment and then nodded.

“Urrken, likely, the frog-men are thick in this marsh. Probably a hunting party, just bad luck for them they picked today to hunt here.”

“Bad luck?” I asked.

“They’re suicidally aggressive little bastards, look they’re already throwing spears at us.”

Sure enough, the shapes in the mist resolved themselves into squat frog-men hopping angrily towards us. I felt a brief pang of nostalgia and curiosity— the Urrken were one of the first things I’d eaten back at Veris’s underground hideaway, and had given me the ability to speak by absorbing their pattern into my oozey flesh. The nostalgia died when the little turds did just as Leigh described and started hurling spears at us with surprising accuracy— and force.

With a thought, small hex-shields popped up in the path of the incoming spears, many of them shattering at the impact but still deflecting the incoming barrage. Using the spell caused burning pain to flash through my mana-abused body, nerve-endings raw from the colossal amount of magic I’d channeled to escape the marshals. I hissed, gritting my teeth and giving Leigh a worried glance.

“Shouldn’t we tell someone we’re under attack??”

He guffawed loudly.

“Under attack? Kid, a ship like the Duchess has armor so over-enchanted it might as well be a meter thick of steel. That—” He pointed at the hopping Urrken. “Is a dozen frogs with pointy sticks. Besides, I think your little display with the shields might have attracted some attention.” Leigh said with a glance back towards the ship’s middle section.

I had time to wonder what he meant before a beam of fire lanced out from somewhere above us on the ship with a hungry roar. The Urrken had no time to dodge or defend themselves, the beam hit them like someone had taken the term ‘firehose’ a bit too literally and just… disintegrated them on the spot.

“I’m guessing that’d be our ship’s core tender, Master Zaraiah. I understood her to be quite the pyromancer, but still. Impressive.” Leigh remarked with raised eyebrows at the destruction.

“I guess Grafton wasn’t just messing with me when he said not to bother the other mage.” I mumbled, observing the carnage below. The fire stuck to the ground like napalm in an almost perfect circle of surgical precision, obliterating the frog-men and any evidence they’d ever existed.

“I’d have to agree with him on this one. For all his… unpleasantness, he certainly doesn’t lack for sense.” Leigh nodded seriously, but paused to sniff at the air. “Oddly enough, this is making me hungry for some reason. To the mess hall?”

I gave him a flat look before ultimately shrugging.

“Guess I’ve eaten in worse conditions…”

“That’s the spirit!” He clapped me on the back and sauntered off into the ship. Staying for a moment, I couldn’t help but look back at the burning circle of earth. Fire clung stubbornly around the impact zone, and looking into the flames I felt a familiar sense of wrongness— the same I got from the lights on the ship.

Core tender huh? Well. Looks like I have a lead.