Ferenike 26 - Hunting Flight
Ferenike sat on the aft of the
Silver Liesun, legs hanging over the edge, and smoked her pipe as she looked down at the propeller blades churning the air. Lightning arced between them, leaping out from the back of the ship into them, snapping and booming every second or so and it made the air tingle on her skin. The most impressive things to her were the arrays carved into the blades and the immense amounts of energy that thrummed through them, causing them to glow a bright orange-red as they cut the air. The wind roared behind them with the power in the propellers, and it rippled in their wake as they flew faster than most birds.
She remembered how it had looked when the propellers had started and they had set off. After throwing off the anchor lines there had been a hiss of steam and the booming thump of thunder beneath her feet. Heat had expanded in a wave from the aft along with a strange zesty, citrusy, smell. Her hair had frizzed in the static filled air and then there'd been a heavy
ka-chunk and a roar as the propeller started up. The wind had shrieked as her feet had lurched beneath her and qi rushed to the sails, and she'd seen sparks arcing up and over the aft to snake through the air like serpents.
Now, she looked back up, scanning the dunes beneath her which were undergoing a slow transition from gold to brown to red as they neared the mountains, the sun beating down from overhead. When her posts allowed she'd been spending time watching the propellers, but the desert out here was a fantastic view in its own right. The setting sun had sometimes seemed to light it on fire as rays of light had bounced off of the sands.
A little part of her was jealous thinking about how birds must constantly be able to marvel at the sight. Feeling the wind of their passage whip through their feathers, like it whipped through her hair when she pushed back her hat, and seeing such wonders. Not the sort of thought she was used to, but it just added to the overall experience.
They'd only been sailing for a few days and they had already crossed more than a thousand kilometers, faster than she ever could on a mount. Training her eyes behind the ship she looked out, circulating her qi under the pounding heat of the sun, and listened to the passage of orders and movement of sailors on a ship underway.
With a squint she thought she could see a brief flicker of the
Shafufen off to the starboard side and several li behind them. When she'd been told they'd travel with the
Shafufen she'd thought they'd be within shouting distance of the other ship most of the time, but that wasn't the case, as their formation called for room to maneuver and weapons clearance.
And they both definitely had weapons beyond their cultivator compliments. In her moments below decks she'd seen the rows upon rows of scorpion ballistae meant to fire massive bolts as tall as her in synchronized barrages, and stranger array devices that shot fireballs and blasts of cutting wind. Some were also placed along the railing of the main deck, and on the top of the aft structure, with three on each side of the flat area behind her. Her own estimation was that the cultivators onboard were the main defensive force though, largely given sheer variety and power, but like other weapons the emplacements were useful tools.
The ship's wheel and navigational bridge were also present up here, currently manned by a helmswoman who spent her time entirely focused on the compass and other devices affixed on a plinth near the wheel.
She heard someone as they clomped up the steps and over the decking. Ferenike shifted slightly and stood, turning so she could keep one eye on the sky behind the ship while she looked at the person approaching. One of the crew, a shorter girl who sat at the seventh heavenstage, with a short and poofy brown haircut, thin and wiry limbs, bronzed skin and a pair of glasses perched on her nose in front of brown eyes. She was sweating in the heat and looked rather miserable.
"Shen Li? You draw the short straw this time?" Ferenike asked, tone moderately commiserating. She liked it up here in the sun, but barely anyone else did.
The girl flopped against the back railing and huffed. "How in all the hells do you actually like it up here Golden Scorpion. Did the sun cook your brain as a girl?" The other girl complained.
Ferenike burst out laughing. "Gods, maybe! Dunno, it'd explain some of the things I've done. Used to be I was bothered by it as much as anyone but-"
"Then you did what cultivators do, and cheated." Shen Li finished with a vaguely jealous pout. They'd had this conversation before.
"Yep!" Ferenike said and then made a gesture out over the side. "Shafufen is over there, but the only other interesting thing to look at up here is the sand."
"Joy. Well anyway save me some wine for when you come back to share the watch." She said as she pulled a hat over her head and tried to stand in the shade of the mast to escape the pounding heat.
Ferenike waved behind her as she left the other girl to her watch. "Will do!"
She smiled slightly. It was a bit like the Legions oddly enough! And thus it was incredibly comfortable, because as it so happened sailors and legionnaires complained about rather similar things, so she could just pick up the old complaints and join in like a fish in water. People opened up when you could bitch together.
She clanked quietly down the stairs, stepping onto the main deck. To her right the mizzen-mast sprouted up out of the deck like a huge tree. At this time of day while they were just cruising most of the people were up in the rigging or under shades where they could be. There was one carpenter by the main mast working under an awning with a spar of wood he had set on one knee and was carefully shaving down with a chisel. Beside him one of the cooks was working away at a metal soup pot with a heating array. Other sailor disciples were laying down caulking between the deck planks, scrubbing the boards, checking knots and a dozen other small activities.
A moment of thought and the fact that she was off-duty for the next few hours spurred an impulse to turn away from her usual route below decks. Her feet carried her right, around the mizzen-mast and to the door into the aft structure, and down the stairs beyond it. As she walked the heat decreased and the humidity rose.
The door at the bottom of the stair had a circular glass porthole placed in it and through the foggy surface she could see the silhouettes of people moving about. Popping the door open she stepped out into the below decks. Down here was a maze of cooled halls two people wide bustling with disciples, lamps and arrays providing light along with portholes in the sides.
She hadn't been in this section of below decks very much however, so she took her time dodging around the various people moving about. Some carrying crates and other objects to and fro, as she made her way towards the likely location of the engine room.
She had sensed lines of qi moving through the ship's superstructure multiple times over the past few days, and when she started following them it seemed that they were flowing from a space near the aft. And she could feel the heat intensifying again, as did the citrusy smell. She could feel the muffled booming of thunder passing through her feet and lightning tingled on her skin.
After a handful of turns she came across a Spirit Steel door with small vents on its surface and a porthole that was obscured by steam. More fragrant steam curled around the edge of the partially open door. Grabbing the hot edge she pulled it open a bit more and ducked her way into the room on the other side.
It was a large rectangular space divided into an upper balcony and a lower floor reachable by ladders descending from the balcony. In the center was an humongous cast iron soup pot, big enough to swallow a man, filled to the brim with roiling clear fluid that glowed a weak blueish-white through the column of steam rising from it. That column was lit up with a constant stream of lightning also rising from the soup. The citrus smell was nearly overpowering. Half a dozen disciples were spread about the room, maintaining prayer wheels and arrays as they murmured spells. One was using a long wooden spoon to stir the soup as she stood on a stool.
The Qi was so dense in here Ferenike felt like she was almost drowning. She could see a bundle of spirit wood burning below the soup pot in a shielded bed of metal and ceramic bricks, with several Spirit Stones slotted into power drawing arrays in the bed which seemed to be part of the source. The other was obviously the soup itself, rich with powerful ingredients releasing their Qi.
Passing through the middle of the room above the pot was a huge shaft, which she realized was the propeller shaft. Right above the soup pot it seemed to grow fins, creating a turbine that caught the lightning, steam and qi to cause the shaft to spin with a deep rumble and investing it with enormous energy. Leaning over the railing she looked down and saw that the shaft went into a gearbox of sorts mounted on the forward wall, moderating its rotation.
Near the gearbox was a bank of levers overseen by an engine man and a gauge measuring their speed. Speaking tubes sprouted near him and around the room, the various stations each having one.
"Ah Golden Scorpion, wondered when you'd go poking around here." A voice said right beside her. She felt her heart try to leap out of her mouth as she flinched away from the sudden appearance of Huan Wei. He leaned against the railing, clasping his hands and looking down at his crew.
"What do your Devil eyes see, hmm? Any interesting tidbits?" He teased.
She relaxed, partly. "Not much honestly, the array work is unusual enough that only the basic theory is understandable." She said. "The rest though, even though its right in front of me I can't really make heads or tails of it. What kind of soup is this?" She decided to throw the ball into his court.
"The Lightning God's Breath Soup. One of the special techniques of my Sect. Not easy to brew unless you have a Dao of Soup and some of our unique specialties." He said with a smile twisting his lips.
Not surprising. It didn't matter too much if most folks saw this, especially if it required specialized sect knowledge to even brew. A name, a smell, some qi senses, entirely unmentioned ingredients, and the knowledge it needed a Dao of Soup? Too much effort for most to go through to steal, especially that last point. Much like how the secrets of the Clan's formations were locked behind specialized Legion training and conditioning, they could not be copied simply by observation.
Plus they both knew there was little point for the Clan to waste time trying to steal it. It was essentially already under their control in the only instance they'd want it, moving war material to and from the front.
"Hmm." She pulled out her pipe and with a flick of her fingers lit it, taking a pull that pulled in a bit of hot steam too. She smiled. "Well, your teasing aside, I did have another reason for seeking you out." She opened.
He quirked an eyebrow and turned to look at her. "Oh? What do you need of this senior then?"
Her smile got wider. "Well I know your comment about Poison Belching Vultures couldn't have come from nothing. What do you expect as we approach the mountains and go beyond, really?" She said, watching his face become thoughtful.
He shrugged and then got up, uniform straining across his wide shoulders. "Come on then, some stuff I need to show you if we're going to talk about that." He turned and bent as he walked out the door. Ferenike followed him, leaving the fascinating device behind her.
Their trip took them down another hall which passed through storage rooms full of various foodstuffs and water barrels, down some stairs and then through another hall to a room she thought was between the mizzen and main masts, part way across the length of the ship near its middle.
The door popped open under Huan's touch and she was led into a room with a scroll shelf on each side and a wall with a large porthole pointing out the starboard side. The room was dominated by a desk carved from an ornate dark wood and the low seats arranged around it. Pinned to the center of the desk by hunks of white jade was a chart depicting the northern parts of the Simmering Soup Sect's lands.
He went around the desk as Ferenike stood at rest in front, and sat. He gestured for her to follow suit and waved a hand over his map.
She sat and took a moment to examine the map. It had two small markers carved in likeness of the
Liesun and
Shafufen placed upon it, close to his side of the desk and the southern edge. "We're going to travel between the Spider Gate and Poison Waterfall Fields, which are marked here and here." He said, indicating them on the left and right sides of the map respectively.
Taking up the northern expanse were drawings of the mountains, curves she recognized as topographical lines denoting altitude marked across them. In the expanse between these four boundaries was a sea of sand, and dotted across that sea she saw small sketches and scrawled names for a variety of landmarks. .
Migratory patterns of birds and crawling spirit beasts, nests of more notable flying beasts. Small settlements with such names as Iron Sand Oasis, Eternal Sandpit, or Four Rivers Gorge. Monuments left by forgotten peoples or the Clan in the ancient past.
These led in a winding trail up to the mountains and an outpost of the Soup Sect right upon the border of the Yuan Clan called Tempering Soup Valley. Huan Wei pointed there. "This is where we'll stop off for a few days to resupply and do some maintenance. There won't be any stops in Yuan lands, the tariffs to take an airship through their lands are exorbitant enough already and negotiations for a landing base have been understandably rebuffed with all possible politeness."
Ferenike nodded. That'd be too much of a vulnerability, she idly noted while considering the outpost they would be stopping at. Given its placement and traffic which only really picked up when the Qiguai Doorway opened she had a feeling only the Sect and Yuan Clan paid much attention to this place. Bandits would find it rather difficult to assault the airships unless they had flight of their own and great power so most wouldn't bother.
"After that we'll be in the foothills proper where the wind changes, and birds of many species make their nests, including Poison Belching Vultures as one of the bothersome varieties. There's rumors of other larger birds in recent years but we don't have any confirmation of it, which is why I hired you and those other three Traveler-Guards." He continued quietly. Then he sighed. "And after that is the rest of our course over Yuan lands..."
Ferenike nodded, and listened as he outlined in more detail their future course, her thoughts bent to what she might find in Yuan and beyond it, in Qiguai.
It was dark by the time she made it to the mess hall and ran into the other Traveler-Guards at a table by the door, contentedly consuming bowls of rice and some wine.
A short man with black hair in a long braid down his back and a long straight beard looked up at her and a smile appeared on his face when he saw her. He was traveling under the name 'Magic Bell-Sword'. He stood in the eighth stage, though she suspected he was hiding some of his power.
"Ah, Golden Scorpion! Come in out of the heat and share a drink!" Bell-Sword said cheerfully as he held up a gourd and his cup. The other two Traveler-Guards at his table also waved her over and saluted her with their drinks.
She sauntered over and took a seat.
"Good, good! Here let this junior help you." Said the Traveler-Guard she had sat next to, one Ao Long as he handed her a cup filled with wine. Ao was a lanky man with green eyes and no hair on his face or what she could see of his body. He wore heavy beads in a necklace around his neck and his power rested at the ninth heavenstage. On his belt he carried a horsetail whisk.
The third person sat across from her, next to Bell-sword and they were another man, this one also short but much more plump than the other two. This was Jianjiao Sha. He had ropes wrapped around his fists and forearms. He had reddish-brown eyes and short brown hair, which seemed to blow slightly in a faint wind that followed him. He sat in the ninth heavenstage as well. And given how dangerous she had heard the Secret Realm was, it made sense why they were all near the peak of the Qi Condensation realm.
None of them were Clan. She figured they probably had considered opposing her in Qiguai, possibly even together. The mosaic models she always carried now in her mind laid it out pretty simply. On this ship they were her allies, and off it her enemies.
Probably. They likely thought of her in the same way, which was honestly a pity. A part of her had started to wonder what it'd be like if she could hold a simple conversation with anyone she met, debating in peace under the sun.
She'd have to see which path they took. For now she would simply enjoy wine with them. There was little reason to make things miserable for herself.
So she drank her wine happily, and listened as they restarted their conversation. "As this humble master was saying, the recent spate of Blood Path rebels in the Sect's grounds is unconscionable. Just last week I had to kill one after it tried to steal and eat my horse!" Jianjiao said irritably, which seemed to be his usual state of being.
There were huffs around the table and a grimace from Ferenike. She hadn't encountered many, but training kept her paying attention.
"And how potent was this 'Horse-eater' demon Brother Jianjiao?" Magic Bell-Sword asked. He sounded doubtful to her ears but Jianjiao apparently missed it.
He laughed. "Pissant in the hmm fifth… no! Sixth heavenstage. I crushed him with ease, no match for my Silver Rope techniques."
"Mmmm, I'm sure my Dune-Breaking Whisk could give three such monsters some trouble Brother Jianjiao. Meticulously refined for five hundred years, they are the pride of my temple." Ao Long said with an easy smile.
Jianjiao huffed and crossed his arms. "Eh, hmm. Well the only way to settle that would be a competition under the heavens." He said and then chuckled. "Though I of course would bet on my own, refined as they are for seven hundred and twenty years."
Ferenike interjected with a snorting chuckle. "This senior thinks you both are far too humble. You could probably slay a solid dozen if you worked together, and isn't it best to kill as many as possible?"
All of them started laughing, caught up in her own amusement. "Ah, Senior Scorpion is kind. Maybe the wine is better than we thought, to bring us such blessings as your regard!" Ao Long said cheerily as he passed another cup to her. A sly glint appeared in his eye. "But then how would we split the gains? By weight? By proportion of how many enemies are slain? These are important questions!" He said as he slapped the table, causing it to shake.
And at that the table devolved into a regular topic. The splitting of loot and boasting about techniques. Ferenike laughed and joked with them about it and shared minor tidbits of her own boasts as they did.
A tense, somewhat awkward exchange but that was how it was out here, far away from any kind of community or the Clan. That brought a quiet seed of melancholy to her mind. More and more it hadn't been sitting right with her.
Eventually, several hours later she begged away from the group as they got more and more thoroughly drunk and took a jug of wine and brought it up to the deck. Climbing up the ladder onto the main deck she felt the cool refreshing wind of the night sky with the stars glittering far above her head. The moon sat like a queen amongst them and painted the desert silver and white.
A quick jaunt up the aft stairs and she found Shen Li leaning against the rails with a monocular in one hand as she scanned the horizon. She didn't move from her watch other than to wave a hand as she heard Ferenike walk up behind her. She strode up next to the girl and shook the bottle, causing its contents to slosh, watching Shen Li's expression shift from a serious frown to an ecstatic smile.
"Yes!" The wine jug in Ferenike's hand disappeared as Shen Li shouted gleefully. The cap popped off and sailed over the side as she gulped away at the drink.
"You are a godsend." Shen Li said as she lowered the half empty jug and sighed.
Ferenike half-shrugged. "Not much to do out here but wait, watch and drink. Be rather terrible if we couldn't, right?" She asked rhetorically.
That got a laugh out of her friend as she leaned back against the railing and looked out over the port side. Then Shen Li's nose wrinkled and a strange smell reached Ferenike on the wind. Thin, diffuse, but what she could smell was pungent and reminded her of feathers.
They both had their weapons in their hands in the next moment. "You recognize it Shen Li?" Ferenike asked quietly as their eyes circled the ship, looking for the source.
"No. But a bird isn't good sign up here." The other girl responded.
There was rustle and Ferenike saw a shadow swooping over the aft of the ship. Her arm slammed into Shen Li, pushing her out of the way as the shadow filled her vision.
"Shit!" Ferenike shouted as flashing talons came slashing out of the darkness at her. She had a split second to set her stance and jam glass spikes into the deck from the bottom of her boots. The claws smashed into her, bending her ribs with the force and forcing out her breath with a painful squeeze as it trapped her left arm against her body, the force tearing up the decking as it pushed her back half a step.
"Beasts! We're under attack by beasts!" She heard Shen Li shout behind her. Then Ferenike found herself being yanked up and
off of the deck by an incredible force as the massive black feathered bird flapped its wings and yanked her into the sky. Wind ripped at her hair and stung her eyes as her view spun madly. Below she could see the lights of the ship, half understood through her surprise.
After her moment of surprise she could feel it in her senses now, something in the ninth heavenstage. That moment of clarity was interrupted again as the other claw started grasping at her.
Her spear struck out, glowing a bright red as her glass flashed into existence around it and stabbed into the meat of the foot. Golden scales parted around her blade and then red blood poured out in a stream that glimmered in the light surrounding her.
The bird's shriek deafened her for a moment, as her vision was obscured by a mass of black feathers and then she felt warm carrion breath on her face as she was shoved into a beaked mouth.
Ferenike found herself stuck in the beast's throat, spear awkwardly poking out of the side of the beak along with a leg while her upper body was squished into its throat. Sharp spines and hard plates ground at her bronze flesh and glass armor, doing thankfully little besides covering her in thick and nasty smelling spit.
Her shouts and struggles were limited, the beast's tissues failing to give way before her strength to her surprise and frustration. And she was still sliding down its throat, her spear hand bent uncomfortably far back in its attempt to keep hold of her damned spear and her joints were complaining terribly as she was bent into an incredibly uncomfortable position.
She'd had quite enough of this. Taking breaths of the fetid air in here she closed her eyes and marshaled her inner forces. Legions marched beneath her skin, stars were pulled out of storage and linked to the great rivers of her qi.
Holding the power in her body was a dance on the knife's edge as she built it higher and higher and higher. Her skin became lit from beneath by red light, so bright it seemed like her suit of armor contained a person made of furnace flames.
Then she threw herself off the metaphorical precipice and screamed with all her might. Her eyes snapped open and shone like beacons as a terrible conflagration expanded from her, igniting flesh and foreign qi in a sudden explosion that ripped the bird clean in half and conjured a fireball a third the size of the
Silver Liesun in the night sky above it.
Out of that blaze she fell like a comet, plummeting towards the decking, which was being swarmed by a flock of dozens of birds. Black and grey plumage fluttered upon the deck and in the night sky around the ship. Distantly she could see another kind of bird, long necked reddish vultures with bulbous wattles filled with poison.
The crew was already beating off the birds on board, but the vultures were momentarily unchallenged by the scorpions, as their crews couldn't man them while swarmed. A breath and more focus and Ferenike slashed an arm out as she fell through the air. Gleaming red spears flew and punched right through half a dozen of the weak vultures. Another rotation and more fell to the desert below.
And then she was right above the deck and slamming into a bird, splattering it into burning offal. The decking was a chaos of explosions and lightning and spell fire. Shen Li was handedly beating off some of the birds, ravens she could see clearly now, with a bejeweled staff. Other members of the crew were also holding their own, including one man who was particularly memorable as he beat birds to death with massive kebab skewers and spit them on them for later cooking.
Ferenike waded into the scrum, flinging spears to clear space and let the crew man the scorpions. She also heard below Huan Wei commanding the gunners on lower decks, and the
Liesun began to spit lightning and fire and cutting blades of wind she could barely see in the dark except when they split birds in twain.
Several minutes of burning feathers and crushed meat later and the flock was dead. A moment of listening and hearing only minor groans of pain told her from experience that most of the casualties would probably be light.
She let out a relieved sigh and then examined herself, absolutely covered in gore and spit and burning feathers. Ugh. Thankfully her small quarters had cleaning arrays.
With the memories of that incident happily put behind her the trip to Tempering Soup Valley took another week. The sand soon became entirely red, dotted with green and blue oases here and there. Sometimes she caught the scents of strange spices and ingredients being cooked in the lands below, but at other times it was simply the scent of the desert wind mixed with rock.
And then the sand began to climb. Up and up and up into hills that became ridges and then a mess of canyons and gullies which led into mountains until they were flying with rock on either side. Red as wine the rock whistled with the wind as they passed through it, holes carved over eons by the passage of wind and water wearing stone smooth.
In the sun it sparked gold and crimson, a striking shimmer gleaming on the smooth walls studded with shards of glass.
It took her breath away.
Nestled in the cliffs of the mountain their destination was a wall strung between two mountains with three towers rising from it with great bells in their steeples. The walls were gold and bronze and shone brightly with reflected sunlight as they crawled up the valley walls. Beyond it was an expanse of greenery, plateaus and mountains climbing ever higher and higher. Small balloons and dirigibles floated here and there and she could hear the sounds of a bustling city rising up to meet them as they descended towards a large platform sticking out of the wall.
The Soup Sect side of the wall was covered in a growth of houses and buildings and other structures clinging to the wall and spreading out onto the valley floor at least a li below like some kind of creeping plant. All of this was secondary to what she could see beyond the wall, dozens of kilometers away at the other end of the valley.
A massive mesa thrusting up into the sky like a god's anvil carved of reddish grey rock. Dozens of waterfalls fell into it and fed the massive crystal blue lake at the base of the mesa. Atop it she could just see the gleaming towers of one of the Yuan Clan's cities. They almost looked just out of reach from this perspective, tiny children's toys even though they were supposed to be massive.
She would not be visiting them on this trip, as they would sail on, but she'd drink in every sight she could see from the air and she resolved herself to riding back through this clan's lands. The immense geography called to her in a way the desert hadn't, all her life as her brain was filled with images of climbing those mesas, leaping up those waterfalls and looking at the world spread out before her like a tapestry.
Looking at all of this, her worries and troubles faded away, and in the sensation of being so small she found herself laughing and working with the crew freely as they settled in to dock.
*noncommittal noises*
Managed to finally be responsible and motivated enough to write this up. This fought me because I had to completely scrap the arc I was going to introduce here and go for something a lot different.
@occipitallobe, going to ask for Tribulation Boost of better understanding of her Dao for Turn 7. Not sure I'll actually be able to get to it by the time Good Seed Reports start being made what with the holidays.
