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Ingots of metal had been laid on long pallets of wood in a massive, open courtyard, and soon the delegation and their escorts arrived.
Eliot rapidly began setting up an oil factory to pull carbon from the atmosphere to make plastics. Sally helped. Soon, Eliot started making everything on a very long list. First came new generators for everyone, which was at the top of the list. Through the coordination of the Raptor Guard, locals came out and went away with new generators that burned wood and boiled water, which were two resources in abundance. Fresh water came from springs located at the top of the claw, which Ariku explained was due to how the bone naturally soaked up water, so all they had to do was drill down to the quick, and then they had springs in Raptor.
“Well, not us,” Ariku clarified. “The people who lived here long, long, long ago.”
Mark nodded.
Meanwhile Nomvula was coordinating efforts with the Raptor Guard to locate people who were heavily injured, and then those people started showing up. Mark let Lola and Derek heal people, while the Chief coordinated efforts with Eliot and their Shipwright, Liang Wen.
Meanwhile, Andria was over there in some flower shop with Tartu and David, talking to locals about food and trade. Andria was incredibly enthusiastic about some small flowers, and so was Tartu. David seemed ambivalent. Mark would figure out whatever that was about later.
Isoko sat on the edge of a roof of an unoccupied tower, way up there, 50 meters up there. She was in Full Platinum and fully enjoying everything about this entire experience, just sitting up there and staring out at the world. Mark was pretty sure she was just looking at everything, which seemed like a fine way to spend some hours in a place like this.
Nomvula ended up standing by Mark, mostly to keep him in check. They didn’t talk much.
That was fine.
Mark felt like he was here to keep them in check, too, because this was their land and Mark and them were strangers, their arrival only heralded by a dragon telling them to get ready to receive visitors. Mark was sure he didn’t understand the significance of that sort of thing, but for these people, it seemed serious. If Mark and them had been total strangers then they probably would have been shot on sight.
Or the dragons would have descended.
Small talk began when Mark wasn’t expecting it.
Nomvula explained, “We want every house to have a generator and the wiring to connect them in case some go out. That’s very important here. I hope you have good lights on your ship.”
Mark offered, “I’m sure Eliot would be happy to wire up the place if you want.”
“No no. We can do that ourselves.”
“… That works, too.” Mark decided to ask, “Do people go swimming in the deep ocean? Because even I’m scared of that sort of thing.”
Mark was ‘scared’ in the way of ‘I want to fight whatever was down there’... but sometimes it was good to be normal.
Nomvula laughed. “Of course we swim! But we stay out of the depths. Would you wantto venture to the depths?”
“Kinda.”
Nomvula said, “Stay in the light, in the brightness.”
“Do the dragons go swimming into the depths?”
“Not really.” Nomvula changed the subject, looking over at Lola, who was healing a guy’s nearly gangrenous foot. “That one… You are all priests but she is a priest, yes?”
“Close enough; yes. Lola Turner is my mentor. Priest of Freyala. Do you know of the New Pantheon?”
“No, but I would hear of it, if they actually grant power.”
And she really, truly meant that, in a way that Mark did not understand at all.
Mark began, “Well there’s Freyala…”
Mark spoke for a while, and Nomvula asked questions about gods and Powers. It was a light inquisition, but that was fine with Mark, and Nomvula recognized that it was fine with him quite quickly so she got into nuances about Worship and tithes, all of which Mark had no experience with, and which Nomvula seemed to be skirting around once she realized Mark didn’t have experience with that, which made her even more interested.
But also wary.
Nomvula did not mention the dragons at all, and when Mark asked about the dragons she kinda changed the subject. Mark wasn’t sure what that was about, so he almost asked her straight up about all of that, but then a problem arose.
Derek asked to go exploring, and until then he had been keeping his multi-man capabilities in check, which was part of the plan. The Chief soon agreed to let Derek go exploring, which was a bit of a trick against her, because Derek split into a few tens of people, going every which way and being excited about everything.
Ariku kept it together in the face of yet another display of overwhelming physical force as she sternly told Mark, “What is this.”
Mark said, “It was a bit of a trick, and I apologize for that, but you would have said no, and he’s a paladin. His powers will literally be stripped from him if he violates Freyala’s mandates. He’s not going to hurt anyone; I swear it.”
Ariku glared.
Nomvula was ready to pounce, though. She said, “I would add some weapons to Eliot’s list in recompense.”
“No,” Mark said, “No weapons, at all. Do you guys even have monsters to fight here? We don’t see any on our scanners.”
Nomvula eyed Mark, evaluating him in odd ways, different from before. Mark had no idea what was going on with her right now, but Mark was pretty sure this was an example of someone looking at something that they had no idea how to even begin to approach. It was kinda like ‘disbelief’.
Ariku paused in a much clearer-cut notion of disbelief, then she said, “We have monsters at night, which is about 3 hours away. The discarded dreams of Kabberjaw. They stay in the water, and they are located in areas of deep shadows, always, but they are easily dispersed with the barest of light. Our weapons are light-based. I am not sure of your idea of weapons, but that is what we want; light projectors. And we also want nuclear generators to power them.”
Nomvula glared at Ariku, now; Ariku was telling most of the truth, but not all of it.
“Oh,” Mark said, pretending not to notice Nomvula’s reaction. He looked at the air and Quark brought up the list that Eliot was working on. Flashlights were on the list. A lot of lights, actually. Mark didn’t realize that the lights were important. Did Eliot know they were important? “Are the lights you have asked for not good enough?”
Nomvula spoke up, “We want spotlights and lasers. Purple Palace will not trade enough of them to us, and we want lasers.”
Ariku said mostly to Nomvula, “We want spotlights. Notlasers. The dragons do notlike lasers. Lasers can reach them, and we do not want to reach them.”
“Seems sensible,” Mark said, mostly to himself...
Because the women were glaring at each other in a very tight manner.
Nomvula said, “We can keep them in reserve.”
“No, Nomvula,” Ariku said, “Absolutely not. Anything that bridges the gap between dragon and human is not allowed.”
Both of them were lying about their need for lasers, but only partially; There was a lot of subtext that Mark simply did not have. Mark considered busting down that subtext, but that would be too rude.
“There’s another problem, anyway,” Mark said, “If we give you a nuclear generator then what happens when it breaks down? Those things require constant maintenance.”
“Liang Wen can do it, if he has the base items,” Nomvula said. “We simply lack the capability to make the things ourselves and Stronghold keeps a stranglehold on us, but if we have a true generator then we can finally break their grip and become independent.”
Ariku softly, desperately said to Nomvula, “Raptor Guard Leader.”
Nomvula told Ariku, “We will NEVER get this chance again. We should take it.” She told Mark, “And the lasers, too.”
Ariku suddenly went internal, thinking deeply, eyes darting to Mark, then to Quark floating behind him in his sphere, and then back to Mark, and then to her people currently getting handouts from Eliot. She was about ready to say something argumentative, Mark thought.
So Mark forestalled other arguments, saying, “We’ll think about handing over a nuclear generator… but I have another question. We’ve seen a third place here. Skybones? Should we head there, too? Give them stuff? Because we don’t want to disrupt whatever is going on here too much; we just want to help everyone.”
“This is the greatest disruption we have ever had to our fortunes,” Ariku said, quietly, and in a deeply-concerned-yet-good kinda way.
Mark realized what he was seeing between Ariku and Nomvula.
Ariku was scared of Raptor being too good, for some reason. She was scared of success.
Nomvula was scared of being preyed upon, so she wanted to take Mark and them for everything she could get so that she would never be hurt ever again. Nomvula also didn’t know what to make of Mark at all, and she was constantly having to update her thoughts.
Nomvula stared as if Mark was stupid, and then she took a mental step back, reevaluated, and explained, “Skybones is full of zealots. If you go there and proclaim you’re representatives of other gods they will give you a long walk off of a short walkway.Do it anyway. I like the idea of them asking you to walk off the edge and then you do, and you fly.”
Mark grinned a little. “You guys don’t get many visitors at all, do you?”
Nomvula’s vector turned dark. Hateful toward something. “No. No, we do not.”
… Well that was a weird reaction.
Ariku started thinking deeper.
Mark asked, “Is it that strange for people to help each other, here?”
“Strange?” Nomvula snorted. “No. But you are truly sincere, and thatis strange beyond measure.”
“Of course we’re sincere.” Mark asked, “You’ve been using emotional and other kinds of scanners on us to figure that out, yes? I hopeyou didn’t blindly trust us on the word of a dragon.”
Maybe they didn’t have scanners, but they certainly had locals with powers like Knacks for Knowing People, and stuff like that. Mark counted at least three of them, hanging out around the place. One was in the flower shop with Tartu, Andria, and David, the others were on balconies out there, looking down at the happenings.
Nomvula arched an eyebrow, wondering how much Mark could tell about their defenses.
Ariku looked at Mark, and said, “You act too strong. Too much like a dragon. You are not a dragon. It is unbecoming.”
Mark snorted. He almost laughed a whole lot. But... “… yeah. Sorry about that.”
Ariku didn’t catch Mark’s specific reaction. She just nodded in acceptance.
Nomvula caught everything.
Nomvula’s vector was suddenly full of caution, but also some sort of small, distant hope, as she deeply asked, “Who are you?”
Mark almostanswered something like, ‘I am probably one of the most famous people in the Two Worlds right now,’ but that seemed like a bad idea. He briefly considered saying he was the brother of Addavein, or that maybe Addavein was his brother; he wasn’t sure about that, either.
Instead, Mark asked, “Do you all get much contact with the outside world? We caught radio stations playing music from the 1980s, but that was about it.”
Nomvula spoke tentatively, “No. We do not. The little music we have is on repeat all the time.”
Ariku said, “273 records were amassed by a woman by the name of Bethany, 60 years ago. All of it was donated to her, or she paid for it, buying records from those who had them after the Reveal stranded a new generation into this land. Bethany went on to make Radio Tower Bright, located in the Left Eye. Sometimes some dragons donate more records to her. Some have play lists that they curate themselves.”
Mark laughed once, loudly. “The dragons have radios?”
“It is one of the best ways for them to talk to each other without actually Speaking to each other, or getting near each other and risking a fight,” Ariku said, “Kabberjaw doesn’t allow other Speakers in his presence, so this land is rather calm for that reason.”
Mark laughed a little… Maybe Addavein talking on the phone wasn’t so strange after all.
The conversation fell into silence.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Soon, Mark walked over to Eliot, Sally, and the shipwright, Liang Wen, as the final load of metal trash came in on some of Wen’s personal hoverbots. Metal crashed onto the dusty ground, and Mark asked, “Are the people of Raptor capable of maintaining a nuclear reactor?”
Eliot said, “We were just waiting for you to talk about that. I think they can.” He said to Wen, “But you wanted something more like a mana crystal burner, yes?”
Wen said, “We can grow mana crystals ourselves, so a crystal burner is better for us. Less powerful! But that’s fine.”
Eliot was excited as he told Mark, “They grow crystals with these little flowers. Biological crystals. The yield is lower, but they’re a lot easier to grow because the petals replace themselves with solid mana, and they’re resistant to jostling. Andria is all enthused about them and I am too. I think Tartu wants to try growing some of his own, so we’re taking some samples with us.” Eliot asked, “So I’m going to make them a crystal burner generator?”
Mark nodded. “Go for it.”
Soon, Eliot was done with that, and one of Wen’s personal hoverbots took the metal-boxy-spinny-thing up and away, up into the sky, moving it somewhere else on the island.
Eliot asked Wen, “You guys reallydon’t want me stringing some basic cables through the place? Make it a lot easier to make a power grid.”
Wen was all kinds of giddy, saying, “I have never made a proper power grid, but I want to! This is just what we need to get that done! … But maybe we need more. You say your God is Castellan, yes?”
“Goddess and her name is Hearthswell and the Power she grants under the Chosen System is the Natural Power of Castellan,” Eliot easily said, and then he raised a hand and turned some scrap into an icon of Hearthswell, into his hand. It was a short tower made of black stone with a tiny gold glass flame atop the parapets. He flipped a switch at the base of the little stone tower and the ‘flame’ lit up with a bright golden light, as he handed it over. “It’s a rather basic icon of Hearthswell. I made it with a remote charger, so you only have to set it on top of a generator and it’ll charge back up, but, if you choose Hearthswell, then you can charge it up with Castellan.”
Wen took the small sculpture like he was taking a treasure. His voice was strong, but small, as he said, “Thank you.” And then he looked at Eliot and Mark and he rapidly bowed, saying, “Thank you.”
Soon, others started bowing.
The Chief and the Leader of Raptor Guard bowed, too, saying their thanks as well. There was a lot of that, and it made Mark good to hear. It made him feel grounded, in a nice way. Mark and them said their ‘your welcomes’ in turn, and then it was done.
Soon, Mark and his team started walking away, back down the streets and then toward the dock, where the Dreadnought awaited. Some people had kowtowed, all the way to the ground, along the team’s path toward the ship.
Mark bowed at those people in turn as he walked by.
Soon they were back on the dock, mostly alone, and Mark was hovering over the water.
Andria had cleared out half of the ‘flower shop’, trading bits of mithril for flowers, and she considered it a good trade. “Oh my Goddess, Mark!” she said, as she carried her goods in little loops of mithril while she walked. “They’re mana condensers!”
Mark grinned. “Eliot mentioned that, but I’m not sure of the significance, but Eliot and Tartu and you are very happy about them.”
Tartu said, “They’re a technology only seen in Okuana. People have tried to smuggle them out for centuries but they’re always caught and… executed. So we’ll keep these under lock. Don’t tell people about them.”
Mark said, “Duly noted.” Mark glanced down for whatever reason, down at the waters… It was darker down there. A lot darker, actually. Mark asked, “Why is the water darker?”
Isoko floated down next to Mark, the water shimmering with platinum underneath her, as she excitedly said, “Sunset doesn’t come from the sky, it comes from the water.”
“What?” Mark asked. “I didn’t catch that— Who said that?”
Sally said, “Some of the locals.”
“There was a big ‘ol water clock a few city squares over,” Derek said. “The whole thing was pure clear water but a darkness was swelling up from the bottom, and the darkness was near the top.”
Lola said, “I was warned, repeatedly and with concern for my and our wellbeing, to not be out on the water at dark. We should take the ship out of the water for the journey to Stronghold, Mister Cybersong.”
“That’s what I was planning on,” Eliot said.
“So what’s with the water being the source of night?” Mark asked Isoko.
As the group trundled back onboard, off of the floating and moving dock and onto Eliot’s firm hoverstairs, Isoko said, “The veryuppersky is always light, and if we go high enough it would stay like that. Like, near the tips of the tallest skybones. Everywhere else has a 24 hour day/night cycle.”
Derek had a lot to add about that, which he did.
There were 2 hours of ‘full noon’, which is when the bottom of the ocean was visible, with all of its molten red cracks and deep depths. There were 8 hours of ‘morning’ and ‘evening’ on both sides of that ‘noon’, with the darkness in the ocean crawling up or going down, depending on the time of day. And then there were 6 hours of ‘night’, when the darkness of the ocean filled the air, the sky, and most of the entire layer of Kabberjaw. In that darkness, monsters crawled.
Only the 2 hours at midnight were the worst for ‘the nightmares of Kabberjaw’, and only if you were far away from Kabberjaw’s body. Kabberjaw’s skull, which was where Stronghold was located, inside, was the safest place for humanity in this land. It was always bright in there.
Soon the floating stairs slid into the side of the Dreadnought, and people on shore waved in thanks.
Mark waved back, but he asked his people, “So what do we feel like? Violating the dragon dominion of the sky and heading abovethe coming darkness, orhigh-tailing it to Stronghold, orsticking around to find out how bad the darkness gets?”
“How much time do we have?” Isoko asked.
Derek said, “If it was up to me I’d fight them— In fact! Can I get some light sources and a generator and hang out on one of the private hoverboats, Eliot? They’re just shadow beasts and light kills them.”
Eliot nodded, his vector going distant for a moment, and then he came back. “Cargo Hold 3. The machines will get it all there in a few minutes, and after we’re in the air you can open the hull.”
“Stay with us until we get closer to Stronghold though, Derek,” Mark said.
Derek’s many selves started agreeing but also moving, excited to fight the darkness.
“It’s a good thing at least one of us is incredibly resilient toward… death,” Tartu said.
“Wooo!” Derek said, still standing next to the team and smiling, but also moving about downstairs.
Tartu told Derek, “I suspect the nightmares are weak next to the ‘land’ but super strong in the open waters.”
“I will be testing that theory!” Derek happily proclaimed.
“That’s not exactly… what I meant,” Tartu said.
“All ship systems patrol!” Eliot called out.
As everyone started piling into the castle of the Dreadnought, Derek began a full once-over of the ship, looking for stowaways or anything out of place. David helped.
They found nothing.
The team mostly came together in the observation deck, at the top of the castle, and soon they were underway, gently pulling away from Raptor. Mark and Isoko remained outside.
“About 49 minutes to dark, according to some measurements of my own and clocks in Raptor,” Eliot said, “Since we’re 650 kilometers from Stronghold, we can get there in 30 minutes if we push Brightspeed. It’s about the same distance to the top of the sky, so it doesn’t matter if we try to get to Stronghold or the top of the sky.”
“Race to Stronghold,” Mark said.
David raised the wheel and soon the Dreadnought rose out of the ocean, waters spilling, waves crashing, dock rocking but still there, still stable, and then they were in the air. Some dragons looked their way, but David leveled it off, keeping the ship just above the waters. The dragons were still looking, and one of them even flapped their wings. A threat display? Who knew!
David eased the boat forward and the ship moved out, a great wind flowing around them, pressing against the water, spraying behind them. The little boats of Raptor got wet with seaspray, but that was about it. Isoko helped that wind flow easier, waves evening out, and soon the golden glow of Eliot’s Castellan-empowered golden sphere flickered around the ship.
They pulled away from Raptor and David increased the speed.
The Dreadnought zoomed across the water, rapidly approaching 300 kilometers per hour, then 400, then 500. They still hadn’t activated any real power drains, but already the wind was flowing fast and the ocean broke at their passing.
Mark was utterly thrilled, racing a giant boat across a giant ocean, and he wasn’t the only one. Isoko roared out in triumph and joy, Eliot frantically repaired a few things and the ship went smoother, and Sally held on to a chair, smiling wide. It was almost like being back in Dad’s boat, and not like that at all.
The Dreadnought hit 750 kilometers per hour, almost the speed of sound above water. A large rib was straight ahead, so David barely adjusted the flight of the Dreadnought to sail to the left of the very, very large rib. So large.
Coming up close.
Dragons were looking down at them.
Mark said, “Hit it.”
David slammed a happy fist onto a big yellow and red button to the side, labeled ‘BRIGHTSPEED’.
Power systems flared to life and the ship took off, breaking the sound barrier and shattering a shockwave across the ocean’s surface. A hundred kilometers vanished in a joyful 5 minutes as David wove the ship far to the side of the giant rib. Some dragons fluttered overhead, so far overhead, rising into the sky and looking down at them as they passed far, far below them, and then under the giant rib.
A huge femur lay ahead and the Dreadnought soon passed to the side of that, and finally they saw Kabberjaw’s skull.
Mark looked back at the dragons overhead, and he didn’t see them anymore. The ones on this side of the giant rib looked at the big ship passing through, and they said nothing. Or at least they said nothing to them. Not directly.
Eliot had hacked into Dragon Radio, though.
“What is that noisything?” asked one dragon.
“That’s Mark Careed’s people!” said one excited dragon. “They just handed out a bunch of stuff to Raptor, too. Healed a bunch of the injured little guys, too. So precious!”
Another voice said, “Why are they moving that fast?”
Someone else said, “It’s dark in a few hours… or no! Minutes.”
“Ah! Bah. Tiny things scared of the dark? Ha!”
“What did they give Raptor?” asked another one.
The excited one said, “Lots of lightbulbs and generators, from what I was able to see.”
“You spend way too much time looking at humans, Betenala,” said an ornery dragon.
“You have to look or else you don’t know which ones to Contract with!” Betenala said, “Let that disappointment Nalamenca be a lesson for all of us. Just imagine one of your wards talking thatway to someone who forced Goblinhome to move! Odanci did the right thing, for sure.”
Mark felt weird about dragons talking about him.
As the gossiping continued, and people talked about Nalamenca at length, Mark asked everyone, “This is surreal, right? That they’re talking like this?”
“It is quite peculiar to me as well,” Lola said.
Tartu was practically beside himself with thoughts. No action. Just thoughts.
Stronghold loomed in the distance, nestled into the fallen skull of Kabberjaw. The jaws were below the waterline, but the nose holes were openings to an interior harbor and the eye sockets were airports. In the left eye socket, the one facing the center of the spiral that was Kabberjaw’s body, there stood a tower with lights at the top. That would be the radio tower that Ariku had mentioned.
“So cool,” Sally said, her vector full of wonder.
Mark felt the same way, as wind crashed against him and broke left and right. “Feels even better being out here in the open!”
Isoko cackled up there, flying fast alongside the ship, her laughter passing out into the sky.
But Tartu was all, “So we’re reallynot caring about the dragons? They’re just going to be… up there? Menacing?”
“We shall do as the people here seem to do,” Lola said, “We shall pretend that everything is fine.”
Sally snorted and elbowed Tartu, saying, “Not much different from having archmages in your midst, eh!”
“Oh it’s a bit different, Miss Wuthers,” Lola said. “Dragons are monsters you can actually see coming.”
“Ah, true!” Sally said.
Tartu said, “You know, if you all reallywant to change the world, we could forgo dragons andarchmages, and set up a system of ferrying people into Endless Daihoon to turn them into superheroes for the world.”
Sally’s eyes went wide, and everyone else had a smaller, if no less surprised reaction.
“… Huh,” Mark said.