The System Seas

“I knew you’d be going on to something more. Outer sea, though? Never thought it. That’s just legend, really. Even when you hear about someone going, you almost never hear about them coming back.”

The big man was a builder and repairman, someone who could slap up a shed in a single day while still making it the kind of structure that would last a hundred years. Marco had carried rocks for him, mainly because he had a deal with the quarryman for an almost endless supply of them in enough sizes that Marco could challenge himself every day.

“You should have seen him. First day, he gets stuck under a rock. He tries to carry something near the maximum of what he can lift two miles, falls backwards, and gets pinned down by the thing. I was working, ran out of rocks, and went to find him and box his ears or something. He had fallen off the side of the road, and I hear, Help! Mister, help me!. Just a whisper. It’s all he could manage.”

“What happened then?” Aethe was on the edge of her seat. “Tell me more about how he was dumb back then.”

“I lifted the rock off, he stood up, caught his breath, and then carried the damn thing the rest of the way into town. I had never seen anything like it. Just the sheer rocks on the kid, in every sense. He got an advancement on an achievement for it, too.”

“Sounds like him,” Riv said. “Although I do most of the rock carrying now.”

“I see that. I have a good sense for Sturdy classes, what they are good at. Mine is telling me not to mess with you much, if I can help it. Not the usual message I get from looking at another worker type, really.”

“Riv’s strong,” Jane said. “I’ve buffed his stats and I can tell. He might have the most points in strength of anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“Thanks.” Riv patted her hand. “Where are you working today? If it’s close by, I can help. Free of charge, if you need it.”

“I don’t like to need it, but I’d sure like to see it. It’s okay with your captain?”

“We don’t work like that,” Marco said. “Riv can do what he wants. Just make sure he can go if he needs to. We might need him quick.”

“I’m going too,” Jane said. “If they want to see someone be really strong, they might as well be really, really strong.”

That left Marco and Aethe. He was grateful for that. Keeping up a bright face for everyone was hard, and it wasn’t really how he felt right now. He had been tiring out quickly through the process.

“You know you don’t have to do that,” Aethe said, as the last of their team besides them moved out of earshot. “Nobody expects you to be happy about all this. Not even Jane, and she hardly knows you. She can still understand.”

“I thought about that a bit. I think I know that, even when I’m doing it.” Marco leaned into Aethe and put his head on her shoulder. She moved to support it, sun-warmed and comfortable. “It’s more something I think I’m doing for myself. It’s like if I can convince all of you I’m fine, I’m fine then. Everything is okay.”

“But you aren’t convincing us, and you aren’t completely fine, and you shouldn’t even be fine in the first place. That makes this stupid.”

“True,” Marco said. “But it’s also not that bad. And I don’t do it to you when it’s just us. So there is that.”

“There is that. So what’s the plan for when these people arrive? Kill them all?”

“Not unless we have to,” Marco said. “I can’t imagine anyone with any real power will be coming. I’d just like to lock them up, if I can. Something like that.”

“It won’t be like that. You’d have to build a prison that could hold them first.” Aethe reached her arm around his opposite shoulder and gave him a little squeeze. “Don’t worry. There’s always some good choice, somehow. You’ve usually been pretty good at finding them.”

Marco could hear what he suspected was Riv in the background, or at least some force that was shifting absurdly large loads of materials in one place, going silent for a while, then letting them crash into the ground in other destination sites. Between that and the occasional cheer of a work team, he knew he’d be close by when he needed them.

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That turned out to be sooner rather than later. Aethe saw it first, and Marco knew exactly when by the subtle shift in her tension. She kept quiet about it until Marco could see the same thing she could glittering on the horizon. The widow hadn’t been joking about the extreme poor taste of the ship’s design. It was like someone had polished a piece of ivory, studded it with mirrors, and floated it down a river to bother fishermen. Or it would have been if it wasn’t the size of several good-sized ships crammed together, much larger than it needed to be for almost any decent purpose.

“I think the real problem with that ship is not fighting it,” Marco said. “It’s not all that fast. I doubt it’s all that strong. It’s another thing.”

“It holds too many people,” Aethe said. “That’s a big enough ship to hold a mob. If we let them land, they’ll be able to just jump down into the water and fight us. I don’t like that.”

“Neither do I. I think we should probably stop them out there, or else we’ll be fighting a swarm of them. And I want to leave most of them alive, in case any of them know things we want to know. I think that means we need Elisa.”

“I thought we might.” Aethe stood up. “Did you know my tracking skills never stopped getting better? They hardly level anymore, but they follow the same stats my archery does. It’s handy right now.”

“I hate to ask you to go get her or to break up what she has going on with her dad, but we do need our artillery. I’ll stay here.”

“Gonna unmoor the ship? I can get Riv.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. For what I have in mind, we shouldn’t have to move.”

—

With Elisa installed in the Arbalest and Marco standing near the head of the ship, they were ready. For once, Marco didn’t have his hands on the wheel but instead had planted them on the deck at the intersection of two of the rune blocks and the magical golem-core power storage. He had long since noticed that the circulation of power around the ship preferred some avenues more than others and treated some arteries as more primary than other smaller tributaries of force. This was the biggest one available from the deck, at least, and he was about to juice it for all he was worth.

“I think this should help give it a little range,” Marco said. “That’s all I’m doing. The ship isn’t even moving. Does it feel any different?”

“Yes. Weird, but feels like it might work. Here we go,” Elisa said. “I’m glad we won’t be close to this.”

Marco watched as Elisa loaded a bit of every magic she could put out into the bolt, then loaded some more, then even more. A normal bolt worked a certain way that seemed planned and designed. Simple fire flew like it had spin on it, drawing a direct line to its victims. So would lightning or ice. As this shot left the arbalest, it crackled and wobbled through the air like a thrown egg.

Even so, the enemy ship was so large it was a hard thing to miss. With every rune in the blocks associated with accuracy and range flaring out at once, the bolt was just corrected enough to nick the side of it. With a normal bolt, that would have meant a glancing blow, the kind of thing that made a scorch mark but did little damage beyond that.

Today was a different day. Elisa spent every day thinking of nothing but magic combinations, generating force, and messing with its parameters until it broke, fizzled, or something burst. Doing so had given her a close, intimate understanding of just what different amounts of power could take. She had refined it even further from there with math, then showed it to her dad, who organized her notes on new paper and gave her a new eagle’s eye view of the whole project.

So the unstable, multi-colored bolt that should have done nothing burst apart with a noise and light that almost startled Marco from more than a mile away. The next one flew out after it a few seconds later, then another, then another. Big sheets of whatever white material the ship was clad in cracked, peeled off, and even sometimes burned away as Elisa mercilessly barraged the ship.

“Incredible,” Marco said. “Just keep it going. Remember, cripple them. Don’t sink them.”

“No problem,” Elisa said. “With this much power… oh, gross.”

Marco felt it too, although he didn’t think that gross was quite the right word for it. The white ship was getting closer and closer, and a white-robed man had taken position at the very front of the ship, holding a gold-colored staff high. A bright, holy-looking light began to gather at the top of the staff, circulating in a large, whirlpool like motion in the air above the priest.

It would have been magnificent if the visual was all there was to it, but the feel of the situation was another thing entirely. Marco’s stomach lurched like he was going to be sick, which was probably the grossness that Elisa felt. With his sky-high Charisma, he felt more. There was something in that light that was bending reality, or something close. Marco knew no class should have been able to project force anywhere near that far, but the priest didn’t seem to care. The light shone across the sea at them, and the moment Marco began to recover from the sheer unnatural feeling of it, he began to become aware of something worse.

Elisa fired a bolt as Marco tried to put a pin in what was happening to them. The bolt helped, in a way, by being the first of Elisa’s shots since they started that missed.

“What’s happening?” Elisa said. “That fell short. Did you stop fueling the runes, Marco?”

“No. Of course not. You aren’t running out of power?” he asked back.

“I shouldn’t be. So how did we lose so much range?”

“He’s sapping us. Or something. Aethe, what do you think?”

“Aethe isn’t here. She went to get Riv and Jane.” Elisa fired off another shot, which fell even shorter than the last. “That shouldn’t be possible, Marco. The enemy ship is closer now. What’s happening?”