Chapter Sixty-Seven - Fairness

“Ouch,” I told the ceiling.

“Did we die?” Amaryllis asked from somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see her on account of all the dust and stuff in the air. “Did Abraham die, at the very least? That would be fair.”

I groaned and pushed myself up, then blinked through the haze as I realized that I was no longer aboard the Shady Lady. At some point I must have been ejected from the ship because I was now on some sort of deck that I didn’t recognize.

Coughing, I pushed a bit of cleaning magic into the air around me in a sort of bubble. The worst of the dust vanished and unveiled the Shady Lady’s figurehead embedded into a wooden walkway, cracked planks and splinters all around the ship’s prow.

The air cleared a little more when some wind slipped in from where the hangar doors had been at the very back. There was a nice big hole there, roughly Shady Lady shaped, though it looked as if the balloon hadn’t made it into the hangar with the rest of the ship.

“Haha! We didn’t die!” Abraham shouted a moment before bursting out from a pile of junk with nary a scratch on him.

Raynald was the next to appear. His goggles had a crack running along them and his suit had a few new stains on it, but he seemed fine otherwise. “We’re still alive? Joy.”

“That was brilliant flying, Mister Raynald!” I said.

“Yes, well, zank you,” the grenoil said as he looked around. “It seems as if ze Shady Lady will need a bit of maintenance before she can take off again.”

“Bah, that’s no problem. We’re back home! Once we’re done with all the backstabbing and suchlike we can see about hiring some lads to patch the old Lady up. Maybe I can get that niece of mine to give her a look-see, she always loved the Shady.”

Amaryllis hopped off the Shady Lady, tossed a bag that I recognized as my own to the side, then shook herself a little. “Right. Well I’m never flying with any of you again,” she declared.

“Ah-hah!” Abraham laughed. “Another young lady ruined by Abraham Bristlecone!”

My harpy friend stared at him for a moment, she looked around until she found a nice big piece of wood. Then, with noble poise and grace, she walked over to Abraham and started whaling on him with it.

“Ah,” I said.

Raynald shook his head. “Let her bleed off some energy. We can look for ze exit in ze meantime.”

“Alright?” I said. Amaryllis did seem to be having some fun, and the wood didn’t seem to hurt Abraham at all. A product of his level, or maybe a skill? Or maybe knocks to the head just didn’t do anything to someone like him.

Raynald and I moved to the back of the hangar. It was relatively small for a place to store airships, with walls of smooth stone that looked like something bored out with a huge machine. I ran my hands against the smooth surface, curious as to how they’d managed it.

At the back were a few small cages with tools within and, much to my surprise, a sort of lift platform with railing that ran all the way up a dark, angled tunnel. Too steep to climb, but not enough that any platforms coming down the lift would be coming straight down.

“Here it is,” Raynald said as he found a large machine with a pair of chains running beneath it. A panel on the front was covered in a bit of dust that flew off when the grenoil man made a slight gesture with his hand. “Let’s see if zis still works.”

“I hope we won’t be stuck down here,” I said.

“Wiz ze amount of fracas we made coming in? I doubt being stuck will be a problem. Being left alone will be a much larger concern.”

He pressed a hand to a rune on the machine and it began to make a rattling noise, then the chains beneath started to move, one being pulled in, the other pushed out. It had to be some sort of motor, maybe.

“Ah, Miss Bunch, do you have mana to spare?” he asked.

Health 111/120

Stamina 124/130

Mana 101/115

“More than a hundred points,” I said.

“Good show. Place your hand where mine is, and push your mana into ze rune, if you would please? I will fetch some of our zings in ze meantime.”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug. Soon Raynald was off and I heard him confiscating Amaryllis’ stick and telling her to go wait by my side before he dragged Abraham over to the wreck of the Shady Lady.

I did hope that they repaired the Shady Lady, she was a nice ship.

Soon I was joined by a dirty and rather huffy Amaryllis who was poking at a hole in her shorts and scowling. “Are you alright?” I asked. Pushing mana into the rune hardly required much focus.

Amaryllis huffed and crossed her wings. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little... irate. Forgive me. It’s hardly noble of me to be acting this way.”

“It’s okay. An airship crash is a bit of a, um, harrowing experience, I guess.” I thought it had been fun, but it wouldn’t help Amaryllis any if I said as much.

“I’m sure,” she said. “I suppose I imagined adventuring to be a little... safer?”

“Um,” I said.

“You’re thinking that--for once--I’m the one being a moron,” she said.

“No?” I said. She looked at me, and I knew that I hadn’t sounded all that confident. “Maybe a little? I think the whole point of going on an adventure is... well, it’s not just about getting something out of it. Or maybe it is that, as long as you count experiences as something you get. We’re out here risking our lives to discover new things, sure, but we’re also bettering ourselves, filling our minds with new ideas, and challenging the world to see how much we can take. That’s where the fun of adventure is, seeing how strong your bonds of friendship can be by overcoming challenges together!”

Amaryllis stared at me, her head tilted to the side like a bird that was staring at a piece of toast and wondering if it was on the menu. “Your world must be downright bizarre,” she said. “Where did you learn that kind of thing?”

“H-hey,” I said. Laughing at all the cartoons and manga and such I had devoured wasn’t nice. They had important lessons in them.

“Haha! Broccoli is right! The life of adventure is the only way to live a proper manly life!” Abraham said as he stomped over. He was carrying the ship’s engine under one arm. An engine that had to outweigh him three times over. At least it was super clean thanks to my cleaning practice the night before.

“That’s right!” I cheered. “If we go on tons of adventures we’ll be the manliest, don’t you want that, Amaryllis?”

“You absolute moron,” Amaryllis said. “There isn’t enough time left, or effort remaining, for me to beat the dumb out of you.”

“Hey!” I said. There was nothing wrong in being the manliest girl ever if it meant having a life full of adventure and friends. Plus, some boys liked girls with muscles. And I was sure that if I worked hard enough, I’d be able to get rid of the Cute skill and replace it with something like Cool.

“I’ll take it from here,” Raynald said as he moved to my side.

I let him take over, my mana was dipping into the low forties already and I had no doubt he had a whole lot more to work with than I did.

The chains started to rattle a little faster and from the hole above came a large wooden platform with metal rails all around it. When it stopped at the bottom, Raynald stepped up to it and opened the front to allow us all aboard.

“Zis zing makes quite ze racket,” Raynald said as he moved over to a second panel that was stationed on the platform and pushed his hand onto a rune there. “We should expect some trouble when we get to ze top.”

“Bah, nonsense,” Abraham said. “I’m sure it’ll just be a few guards and maybe that butler my brother loves so much. He ought to have married the man instead of that shrew.”

“Isn’t she a countess?” Raynald asked.

“That’s the thing with shrews, they can be more than just one thing, haha!”

The platform shifted and started to climb back up where it had come from, and for a moment I was nervous as we were swallowed by the dark. I kind of wished we had a light. Then I realized something. “I forgot Orange!” I said.

“You moron,” Amaryllis said.

“Ah, the poor thing, she must be so worried,” I said. “Did you see if she was hurt after the crash?”

“She’s a spirit cat,” Amaryllis said. “A little crash like that wouldn’t even begin to scratch her.”

“Oh, oh good,” I said. I really didn’t know all that much about my kitty companion. But that was okay, we had plenty of time to learn about each other as time went on. “I’m going to resummon her, will that do anything to the platform?”

“It shouldn’t,” Raynald said.

I nodded and, under Amaryllis scrutinizing gaze, pressed my hands against my collar and pushed some mana into it.

A ball of orange magic appeared before and, and just as it did last time, it resolved into an unamused Orange.

“Orange!” I said as I extended my arms for a hug.

Orange padded over to Amaryllis and sat on her shoulder.

“No...” I whimpered.

Amaryllis huffed, and it was an evil, smug huff. One that meant that she thought she was better than me.

I didn’t have time to cry or lament the loss of my kitty friend to my birdy friend because the platform rumbled to a stop and I noticed that we were no longer in darkness. There was a slit of open sky, one that began to widen as hands gripped the edges until a pair of sliding doors were pulled aside to reveal a dozen men in shiny plate armour with halberds lowered to point right at us.

My hands reached for the ceiling. I knew what to do when the police were around. Be nice and ask to see your lawyer.

There were two people that stood out from the bunch, one a straight-backed man with a face whose main expression seemed to be placid resignation, and a guard whose uniform was a lot more colourful and who was wearing a helmet with a bunch of feathers sticking out the top.

They eyed us all, then locked onto Abraham.

The butler-looking man closed his eyes and sighed.

The guard... Captain, I guessed, started to tremble.

“Hahaha! A king’s welcome!” Abraham said as he stomped off the platform and batted aside the nearest halberds. “Albert! You sly old dog, you’re still alive?”

“Yes, Lord Bristlecone,” the man in the neat suit said with a short bow. “A pleasure to see you returned to our fair lands. You look... well.”

“Never been healthier Albert you dog. Who's the boy pissing himself next to you?”

“This is Gerald. Commander of the Western guard,” Albert said as if reporting on the fact that it was currently sunny and rather on the warm side.

“Well, tell him that shaking in his boots won’t intimidate anyone,” Abraham said. He tossed the ship’s engine to the side where it landed in the grass with a dull thump and didn’t so much as bounce, though it did make all the guards jump back. “Come on girls, Albert here makes a great tea! Sometimes it’s not even poisoned!”

“That was a mistake, Lord Bristlecone,” the butler said.

“Bah! It didn’t do anything more than make me want to take a piss anyway. Now, where’s that cute little brother of mine? Oh, and get someone to look at the Shady Lady’s engine here. It exploded this morning so we had to coast in for a landing. The hangar’s in a bit of a state too! Haha!” I looked over to Amaryllis, but she just shrugged one shoulder. Judging by the awed looks on the faces of all the guards, Abraham was a known quantity around here. “Come along now! No time like the present to muck up the old mansion!”

***