Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Five - Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

The warm afternoon turned into an early evening that wasn’t much cooler. Some grey clouds rolled in from the west, travelling towards the Sylphfree mountains to our right. They looked like they were heavy with rain, but for the moment all we got was rising humidity to go with the heat we had.

We stopped by a rivulet along the way and after Calamity checked around it for predators, we let Blinky, Tassels, and Shanks have turns at drinking some water. We did the same, emptying our waterskins before refilling them in the stream with some Cleaning magic thrown in to keep the water pure of gunk and stuff.

Once our break was over, we continued on. Calamity kept up a good chunk of the conversation, talking about his experiences as a hunter while occasionally asking questions about airships.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised, but I still kind of was--Awen was being a lot more sociable than usual. It was nice seeing her break out of her introspective nature for a bit. I think it mostly had to do with the topic at hand; Awen loved talking shop and Calamity was a huge fan of airships, so they were on the same wavelength when it came to that.

The trip continued, with the four of us charting a zig-zaggy route across the plains. Calamity seemed to know where he was going, and he had hinted that he had a skill that prevented him from getting lost out in the open.

Then, just as Calamity finished saying that we were only an hour out, the sky opened up.

Something touching my ear had me wincing. I reached up and noticed that it was a bit wet. All day, a few flies had been buzzing about me, but usually a quick flick of my ear was enough to send them off. The thwap of another raindrop smacking my helmet told me it wasn’t a bugging bug.“Huh, I think it might be raining soon,” I said.

A half-second later the skies opened up and it was as if a million buckets had just been flipped around over our heads.

Awen squeaked and Amaryllis squawked as a deluge came pouring down atop us. Calamity reached up to hang onto his hat and the ponies shifted under us. “Well, looks like that storm’s come around. You ladies good to ride through this or should we look for shelter?”

“What shelter? There’s nothing but grass around here!” Amaryllis shouted.

“There’s always something,” Calamity yelled back. I had a hard time hearing him over the constant rush of water. It was like standing next to a waterfall. Or maybe under it. I was pretty sure if I tilted my head back and opened my mouth, I could drown just standing still.

“Let’s find shelter!” I called out.

“Right! Stay close!” Calamity said. He reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a length of rope and tossed both ends at us. I caught one and Awen, on the other pony, grabbed the other. “Tie it to the saddle,” he shouted while looping the middle around the horn on his saddle.

We did as he asked. I think Awen’s knot was much nicer than my own, but it wasn’t time to compare that kind of thing. I didn’t have time to ask why we’d done that, but it became obvious as Calamity rode forwards and the lines went taut. I could only barely see him out ahead of us through the sheets of rain.

My armour, which had a lot of padded cloth to it, was soaking up water like a sponge and clinging to me in an icky way, and I felt way heavier than usual as my ears flopped down, they were too waterlogged to stand.

Once it stopped raining, someone would have to hang me out to dry for a while at this rate.

A strong gust of wind whipped by, making the water swell around us in great big sheets. That cleared things up for a bit, and I could make out the open plains around us for just a moment before the rain returned in force. The grass was forced down flat and there was a fog rising from the ground.

We pushed into the rain, Calamity leading us despite the constant downpour, though he had a hand on his hat the entire time to keep it from blowing off.

A bright light flashed in the distance, then, maybe some ten seconds later, a heavy rumble washed over the sound of the rain.

“Thunder!” Amaryllis shouted.

“There’s a proper storm coming,” Calamity said. “We’ll need to find cover sooner than I thought!”

“This isn’t a proper storm already?” Amaryllis asked.

Calamity’s laughter carried back to us. “Ladies, this is just a light shower! Now hang on, we’ll be moving a trot faster.”

Calamity “Nyah’ed” and the ponies started to move much faster, with a pace that had us bouncing on the saddles. We reached the end of a cliff that I hadn’t seen coming and Calamity turned, then had us follow the edge until the hill until we descended into a gully. A stream ran down the bottom, full to bursting with rapid water that we crossed with plenty of splashing.

As we started to move along the edge of the cliff, Calamity pointed ahead. “Look!” he shouted.

I squinted, then brushed a lock of sopping hair away from my face. There was something out ahead, but I couldn’t tell what it was. There were poles and bars loomed out of the downpour at odd angles and something that looked like a house-sized boulder, but I couldn’t make out many details.

As we came closer though, the details became clear.

It was an airship. Or half an airship, at least. One that was tilted onto its side, entire chunks of its hull ripped out and Some of the main beams were half-driven into the earth like lawn darts.. The tattered remains of the balloon lay across the wreck, just as sodden by the rain as we were, while some lighter material flapped wildly in the wind.

“That’s one of the ships you saw crashing?” Amaryllis asked.

“About the right place!” Calamity called back. “Is it one of the ones you’re looking for?”

“We’ll see,” Amaryllis replied.

We did see, once we got closer. The ship had been, if I had to guess (which was made hard since half the ship was missing) about half the size of a Beaver Cleaver in terms of width. Its hull was still much larger than either of the Beaver’s own hulls though. It had a main deck and a bilge deck below that, both of which had been crushed into the ground on landing.

We made our way around to the back of the ship, where the entire aft section was conveniently missing which left a large opening for us to wander into.

Amaryllis and I cast some light balls ahead to illuminate the interior, in case something had decided to make their home inside the wreck. Fortunately, other than a few creepy-crawlies, the ship was empty of anything alive.

We pulled the ponies in after us, and all let out contented sighs as we finally got out of the constant downpour. I placed a hand against my breastplate and pushed it in, which squished the gambeson underneath and sent water pouring out of me. “I think I’m soaked through,” I said. “I’m like, eighty-percent water now.”

“Well, at least no one’s thirsty,” Calamity chuckled. He removed his hat, then ran his hands through his fur. “I’m going to smell like wet cat all day now.”

“Should we, ah, look around?” Awen said with a gesture to the crashed ship.

“Before that, we need to tend to the ponies,” Calamity said. “I imagine we’ll be waiting the storm out in here, and at this hour, I don’t fancy riding back to the hunter camp. Unless nya really want to brave the storm, it’ll be best to wait in here.” He walked up to Blinky and started to undo the straps on the pony’s saddle, which was just as waterlogged as the rest of us.

I rolled up and twisted the side of my skirt to wring out some water, then gave up and went to help.

Soon, we had the ponies set up in a corner of the wreck, far from the hole we’d entered from where they could stay nice and dry. The food we’d brought for them had stayed mostly dry thanks to the leather of the satchel it was in.

Our food wasn’t so lucky. The packages were in our bags, which were more canvas than leather, and not quite as water-proof. The packages the food came in were somewhat better, but not by much.

“We’ll eat those that got hit the worst,” Amaryllis said as she stacked the food to one side. Awen was collecting bits of wood and stacking them along the wall while Calamity and I dragged a big metal plate over. I think it was once part of the baseplate the anchor’s pulley was fixed to, but now it was just a big bent chunk of metal. Good enough for a makeshift firepit.

We didn’t have to worry about the smoke pooling above us, the side of the ship that was now the ‘top’ had a few shattered portholes. At the moment they were letting in plenty of rainwater, but after the soaking we got, it was nothing.

It took a good twenty minutes to set up a makeshift camp. In the end, we cleared out a space for a pair of tents and had some actual benches to sit around our firepit.

“This is definitely a harpy ship,” Amaryllis said once we sat down. Awen was handling the cooking while we tried to dry up. A cord strung across the ship was being used as a clothesline where a lot of our clothing was left to dry.

“You recognize the design?” I asked.

Amaryllis nodded and pointed to the ceiling of the hold. “The trusses there, the way they’re jointed, that’s one of my family’s techniques. This ship was made in our shipyard. It’s a patrol frigate, I think.”

“Think we can find out more about it?” I asked.

“We’d need the logs for that,” Amaryllis said.

"There's still a lot to explore," Calamity said. He was quite excited to look around. We’d checked for survivors already, but didn’t find anyone, living or otherwise. There were bunks though, and storage rooms by the keel. They were on their sides, but that just meant it was trickier to look around.

Amaryllis shook her head. “Those will be in the officer’s quarters which should be right about... there.” She pointed towards the big chunk of the ship which was missing.

“Oh,” Calamity said.

“The engines would be there too,” Awen said. “And most of the heavier sections of the ship. Most harpy ships are back-heavy.”

“We compensate for that,” Amaryllis said.

Awen shrugged. “It’s probably why the ship was ripped in half. I’m guessing here, but I think this part still had the balloon hooked to it when it crashed. It would have slowed it down a little. But the gravity generator and other equipment would be in the back where they’d work best.”

“Would they be far from here?” I asked.

“Maybe, if the generator was still working when the ship broke in half, it could have flown off for quite a ways,” Awen speculated.

“Most of the crashing bits I saw fell near enough to each other,” Calamity said. “But that was near-enough from a long ways off. Nya can’t judge distances well like that.”

“We can look around once all of this clears up,” Amaryllis said with a gesture to the storm outside. The flashes were a lot more frequent now, and there was a constant bassey rumble occasionally accentuated by a loud crack-boom that made the ground shake.

I nodded. “I’d rather not be out there right now, no. We can look around in the morning! I bet we’ll figure the whole thing out, no problem!”

***