Chapter 141: Transitions
With Jane in tow, they wound back toward the harbor, cutting through streets that had shaken off the night and were well into the full swing of a busy day of business. The Foolish Endeavor sat at her moorings among ordinary boats, looking like a fairy tale crammed into the pages of a more mundane book. In the lead now, Elisa didn’t break stride as they reached the water.
She angled for the nearest pier, where a guard leaned against a bollard, wearing male and looking highly bored in the easy, practiced way of someone who expected to stand in the same place all day, just as he had done the day before.
“You posted here for a long time?” she asked.
“Sunup to sundown,” he said.
“Good.” Elisa set the stone in his hands. Up close it showed the lace of etched lines on both faces, a geometry that seemed to shift when you didn’t look straight at it. “If there’s trouble of any kind, let us know. Horns, shouting, strange sails, whatever. You know the drill. Just put this flat on the planks and tap it once with a blade. Or with a hammer. Anything made of steel.”
The guard looked skeptical. “And that does what, exactly?”
“It wakes its partner,” Elisa said. “Ours. We’ll feel it aboard The Foolish Endeavor and come running.”
He weighed the rock in his hand and gave her an odd look. ”And why should I do that? I don't know you. I've seen the little one around before, but the rest of you are new to me."
"Oh. Right," Riv said. "Go run and ask your captain real quick. He'll know."
The guard gave him an annoyed look, but obeyed. He walked over to a nearby guardhouse built into the wall, cracking the door and saying a few words while motioning towards the group.
"Why should his captain know about us?" Marco asked. "We haven't met him either."
"Oh, it's just that my dad said he'd talk to someone. He tends to play it down, but when either of my parents talk to anyone, things tend to happen. Not huge things, but just enough. It's just how they are."
The guard let out a loud exclamation near the guardhouse, then looked over at the group with a newfound respect before making his way back to them.
"I'll do as you say. Do you need any assurances from me?"
“Just your word.”
“You have it.” He glanced to the ship, then to Riv, then to the town behind them. “If you could, I'd appreciate you not telling anyone I questioned you too much. I promise I won’t leave this spot.”
Marco nodded. “That’s enough. We won't make trouble for you.”
They left the stone in his keeping and stepped back into the flow of the pier. The stone was just one small barrier against a sea of unknowns, but it meant the island wouldn’t have to burn before they knew. It was just enough to give them the confidence they needed to circle the island.
The actual journey didn't take much time. Even at the slower speed they used in shallower water, they were halfway around the island in just fifteen minutes. Nothing had actually gone wrong in that time, either, if you didn't count Riv following Jane around the deck like she was in terrible danger of falling overboard. Jane, to her credit, let him, tolerating all the overprotective behavior as if it was an expected, minor inconvenience at its worst.
"These are interesting," Jane said. "These blocks. I can almost feel the heat coming off of them."
"Heat?" Riv said. "There's no heat. They are just paper."
"Maybe to you, but you also don't have much in the way of magic you can link up with other things. I do. I can tell these blocks are a lot like me. They help this ship do things."
"And that means?" Riv asked. "Is it significant in some way?"
"Not really," Jane said. "It's just interesting. I've never seen anything like it before."
They got near to the cave, and Marco and the crew climbed into the outboat, letting it propel them silently toward a small mouth cut into the cliffside. The sea echoed as they slipped inside with waves slapping against sheer stone walls. The narrow tunnel opened after a few moments into a cavern wide enough that the sound of their boat felt swallowed by the air. Elisa lifted her hand and conjured fire, the orange light spilling across the space, then spread it out as far as she could, illuminating a much larger area than she could in the past. By that glow they spotted a broad stone platform, set like a shelf above the water. They guided the boat onto it, pulled it ashore, and stepped onto solid ground.
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The cavern floor felt too even to be entirely natural, though rough enough that centuries of erosion might have been responsible for blurred lines between natural and worked stone. In the center of the platform stood a small temple. It wasn’t enormous, not like the ruined giants they’d sometimes seen looming over island jungles, but it carried the same unmistakable shape and precision of construction.
The walls were made from the same smooth black stone, and a simple peaked roof rose above the building. Facing them, the doorway sat open without a door, only a threshold crossing over to the dark within.
They stood together on the edge of the platform, the sea lapping softly behind them, and looked at the black-stone temple in silence before moving closer. Even the excitable Jane stayed speechless as they approached.
"It's not activating in any loud way. Are you getting anything yet, Marco?" Elisa looked around the dead temple, trying to find anything noteworthy. She held a pen and paper in her hands, ready to hand it off to Marco if the need arose. "Any messages?"
"Something's coming, yes." Marco winced. "I can feel it scratching at my mind as we speak."
Two things happened at once, then. First, some sort of rune-comprised message started to pop into Marco's awareness, one that he started to write just as before. But second, and more alarming, was when Marco's pocket began to buzz.
"Oh. That's inconvenient," Marco said. "Ow. We need to get back, Elisa. I'm not sure I can copy this down."
"Yes, you can. Riv, pick him up. Marco, write. I'm so close to breaking this entire language open. This could be what we need to do it. Jane, I'm sorry, but that's all the time we have for sightseeing."
"I understand." Jane started walking back to the boat. "I'm just glad to have seen it. I wouldn't be much of a citizen if I was okay with my own town getting trashed, anyway."
On the boat ride back, Marco was able to finish writing down the last of the runes. Closing the window made the pain go away just as quickly as it had before. As they leapt aboard the ship, Marco ran to the wheel and put every bit of power he could into speed. They might arrive a bit weaker that way, but it was hard to conserve when other people might be in danger.
"Is this the fastest you can go?" Jane asked. "I'm worried."
"It's the fastest I can go while still having anything left for the fight. Believe me, you want to have something left for a fight like this. We aren't any good to the town if we get sunk."
"Hm." Jane looked around the deck thoughtfully. "You want to try something?"
"Try something?"
"You'd have to add me to your crew," Jane said. "At least temporarily. But if you did, I might be able to do something with those rune blocks. Maybe with the battery, too."
Marco glanced back at his crew. Elisa and Aethe seemed to not have an opinion on the matter. Riv looked worried, but absent a direct reason, he didn't see how he could say no. Sparing the minimum amount of attention he could, Marco opened his ship management screen and added her to his crew list before returning to putting all his weight behind managing the ship's speed.
It wasn't long before Jane figured out where she fit in the scheme of the ship, and the difference was immediate and dramatic. Marco could feel the power flowing through the ship start to smooth out even as it intensified, like someone was adding to it at the same time they controlled it.
"Woohoo!" Jane yelled, stooping down and pressing her hands to the deck. "I can feel every vein of power running through this thing."
"Is that normal?" Elisa asked. "For your class, I mean?"
"No idea!" Jane whooped again in joy. "But I don't care. It's so fun."
The ship seemed to approve of her interference, in any case. Marco could feel the rune blocks swelling with power as the ship surged forward, jumping to a pace that would cut several minutes off their return trip. Given the new math in play, Marco put just a little more power into the process himself, thrilled at the increased return on his investment Jane seemed to be adding to the process.
Even before she had started to contribute directly, Marco had felt a little bit of a boost from Jane's presence. Now, he was afraid he'd get addicted to it.
Pushing hard, it was no time at all before they made it back to the general region of the docks. Unsurprisingly, there was a ship there, though it was not obvious what, if anything, it was doing to the shore.
"I'm steering towards it anyway," Marco said. "Just because we can't see something doesn't mean nothing is happening. They called us for a reason, I bet."
"Yes. I think I see something, too." Aethe was at the bow with the spyglass out, looking not at the enemy ship but at the shore. "Something's happening to those guard walls. It's like they are swelling outward."
Marco couldn't see what she was talking about, but it didn't change his plans much. He'd ask the other ship what they were up to if they were peaceful. If not, he'd blow them out of the water.
They drew closer, and Marco’s neat plan fell apart immediately. He had expected to chase the enemy down, which was a specialty of his ship that normally gained them an advantage. The problem was, the enemy ship wasn’t maneuvering. It sat motionless, not from lack of wind but as if a hand had clamped around its hull and was keeping even the waves from affecting it. Past it, the city’s seaward wall was failing, falling in chunks to the water below. Whole lengths bulged outward and tore free, sliding down with a grinding roar into gray water. A few sections were already gone; crowds ran along the gaps, tiny figures against stone and spray.
Marco shoved power into the wheel. The Foolish Endeavor surged even faster, the bow carving white foam from the sea as they pushed closer. For three heartbeats the ship answered like it always did before the speed started to bleed away without any explanation at all. As the ship ground to a halt, the hull shuddered as if stressed. If not for the lack of a crash or bump, Marco would have thought they had hit something. He poured power into the ship again, trying to force things to move again. Nothing worked.
“Again,” he hissed, bearing down. The rune blocks thrummed, lines on the deck faintly prickling beneath his boots. Nothing. They hung in the water at a knife’s distance outside the range where Elisa’s fire usually reached.
“Something’s stopping us,” he said. “Elisa, what's stopping us?”
Elisa lifted her hand and cast a thin sheet of flame forward, a test more than a strike. It crawled a few yards and sputtered, spreading out like it was hitting a wall.