CH118 To the Jass Capital
For some reason, (possibly nereids) the river trip past the swamp had very low visibility. Fall chill filled the area and mist wafted off the water. Alex thought she might have heard a pig snorting out in the mist somewhere. Weird. The black-haired girl thought about the transformed imps and Professor Copperpot’s experiments until the sounds passed.
They pressed on through the mist, reaching Yvne's barony where an unsettling silence hung heavy. Alex had anticipated encountering imps investigating the deserted city, but the area was eerily devoid of any such activity. Upon reaching the next town, the toy boat pulling the bathysphere found it similarly abandoned. The locals, deterred by the river's perceived dangers, had avoided it. The complete lack of sound was profoundly disquieting.
The day continued with the river steadily widening and deepening, revealing more small, abandoned harbors. The following day, they discovered an imp's decaying corpse floating face down in the water. The small red demon was gradually turning transparent and dissipating into mist, a sign of its defeat and slow return to hell. They left it behind, hoping the fish wouldn't transform into demon fish from feeding on it. Several lampreys had already attached themselves to the body, enjoying a small feast.
“Ugh,” Alex’s stomach wretched at the parasite-mouthed fishes stuck to the imp. She was able to keep from puking with some force of will.
“You all right?” Ariel stuck her head in the bathysphere.
“Yeah,” Alex shook her head. “I just wasn’t expecting to see a dead demon floating past.”
The sea elf scrunched up her face. “They are not really dead. They are just being sent back to their home plane minus a big chunk of their cultivation ripped away in the process. Just think of them as summoned monsters.”
“Hell sounds like a harsh place.” Alex considered that perhaps low cultivation demons might be greeted with a death sentence when they returned. From other sources, she knew imps had short lifespans so they needed to reach the next tier before they ran out of time. “That is not enough for me to feel sympathy for those demons though.”
Ariel agreed. “They don’t belong here.”
Alex examined the bathysphere, noting its hand pumps for filling and emptying ballast tanks, as well as secondary pumps accessible from the outside.
While any water-breather could submerge the submersible externally, it lacked propulsion. Attached to a small submarine by a chain, the strange craft could only move with the current. Fortunately, their journey was downstream, so this wasn't a major issue, provided they stayed in the deeper parts of the river. Traveling upstream would be impossible without the ability to transform the sub-bathysphere into a card.
They frequently encountered shallow areas, causing the bathysphere to act as a significant anchor. Luckily, transforming both the mini-sub and the bathysphere into cards freed the beached metal sphere from the mud, a process they had to repeat several times.
Alex faced a steep learning curve. While manipulating the toy boat with [possess doll] was straightforward, raising or lowering its sails required the separate [animate dolls] ability, which Alex had to activate by dancing atop the bathysphere for several minutes.
As they approached the next town, sounds of combat, bobbing drowned imps, and ground-shaking explosions filled the misty air. The group opted to proceed cautiously, hoping to sneak past the conflict. They successfully navigated beyond the last town before the capital. However, as they searched for a suitable hiding spot for the bathysphere near the harbor, Ariel returned, holding a blackened skull adorned with a makeshift helmet. A single, faintly glowing red orb pulsed in one of its eye sockets.
“Where’d you get that?” Alex asked the sea elf.
“The nereids gave it to me.” The blue-haired magical girl frowned. “Said that he was an unwavering warrior that would never stop his fight.”
“Are you sure it is not some kind of undead?” Alex thought the skull gave off a similar feel as the hero doll.
Merumeru, and the two flamingos gathered around the part of the bathysphere sticking out of the water.
“That is definitely not a normal undead skull.” Fufi’s feathers puffed up. “Though I’m not an expert on necromancy.”
“I’ve got an idea.” The black-haired magical girl looked around but only saw mist. “Is there a big enough flat area to deploy the carriage? I can’t see much of anything through the thick mist.”
Merumeru and Ariel, utilizing their ability to navigate underwater, discovered a sandbar island. This time, they genuinely used the bathysphere as an anchor to go ashore. After locating a sizable clearing, Alex placed the card in the sand, causing the combined trailer-carriage vehicle to materialize.
“Let me test something out.” Alex took the skull and headed into the doll section of the carriage, followed by Fufi. “Undead is not considered alive right?”
Fufi nodded her beak. “Yes, Why?”
Alex looked around for a place to set down the creepy skull with the glowing eye socket. “How about you keep Hiroshi company for now?” She set the skull in the lap of the fancy-armored doll with clockwork sawblades and repeating crossbows.
“You want to ship the skull and the cursed doll?” Fufi puzzled.
“I just want to test something out.” Alex exited the carriage.
Using the power of the card, the carriage returned to the card form and appeared in Alex’s hand. She checked the area on the sandbar to see if the skull fell out but it didn’t
“Neat.” Alex blinked in surprise. “I guess undead don’t count as things that can’t be stored in card form.”
“That’s not very nice.” Ariel glared at Alex. “You effectively just sealed that skull in stasis. You want it to have a grudge against you or something?”
Alex shook her head. “No, of course not. I was just doing an experiment. For science!”
Both the flamingos shook their heads and Ariel had an unimpressed look on her face.
“Fine.” Alex deployed the carriage again and took the doll with a skull in his lap out of the carriage and returned it to card form. “Sorry mister skull. I didn’t mean to seal you in stasis.”
Alex set the skull and doll in the sand. They looked and felt right together.
“Hmmm.” Alex pulled out her feather duster and dusted off the skull, it was still black but now had a bit of a shine to it. Sadly, the helmet was considered filth by the cleaning skill and evaporated into mist. “What do you gals think? Could they be friends.”
Fufi rolled her eyes. “Sometimes Alex you come up with the weirdest ideas.”
Funi considered the pair of disturbing figures. “She’s got a point though cousin. I think those two match quite well.”
“One is a creepy skull of some form of undead.” Fufi flapped her wings. “And the other is a creepy doll that is prone to killing hundreds of demons at a time.”
Ariel heard some splashing by the water and dove down to investigate. When she popped back up she added. “The nymphs think that they’d be a good pair as well. If you leave him alone for a while he’ll regenerate and go back to killing demons. They think that if he wants to take the doll with him then he’ll have made the choice to befriend it himself.”
Satisfied, Alex agreed. “We can leave them here to get to know one another.”
The doll and skull were completely motionless however.
“No pressure.” Alex sounded a little nervous. “Take your time and see if you have anything in common that you could bond over. If I were watching myself I'd think I’d gone crazy right now.”
The skull and doll of course remained as silent as the grave. Alex might have been imagining it but she felt that something passed between the two. Something that couldn’t be expressed with words.
“You better take care of Hiroshi.” Alex left some parting words.
After saying goodbye to the creepy couple, they continued their journey downriver toward the capital.
A palpable tension hung in the air on that final day, mixed with a thrilling anticipation, much like a spy deep behind enemy lines. In a way, they were, though the kingdom held no claim over the waterways, a fact underscored by the unimpeded passage of the two flamingos.
Night had fallen by the time they found a suitable spot near the main harbor. Merumeru submerged the bathysphere, maneuvering it toward a largely collapsed dock. She rigged a pipe as a snorkel, keeping the lower hatch sealed to prevent the sphere from sinking. It was a good harbor, likely chosen for the capital's location. Positioned near the bar and sheltered from ocean waves, with a sharp drop in depth close to shore, it must have once seen a flurry of large ships. Now, however, oceangoing vessels lay tied to docks that looked as neglected as the rest of the harbor, hinting at hard times for what was once a thriving shipbuilding industry.
Alex could tell this, because she’d used [possess doll] and took the mini cutter to pull into the harbor. Half expecting to be swarmed by demons, she lowered the gangplank and disembarked. The harbor guards were not impressed by the diminutive foot-tall doll that stepped off the boat.
“What the?” A man in a rusty breastplate gaped in confusion. “I thought you might be gnomes but you are smaller than imps.”
“Maybe it is a wood golem?” The other guard puzzled, holding up his lantern.
“Can you talk?” The first asked, squinting his eyes at the sailor-uniform clad doll. “Why are you here?”
The doll could in fact, talk, Alex had been practicing this part. “I’m here to meet with the master shipwright. This is a model of a boat I’d be interested in selling to the Jass kingdom.”
“You want master Donald to build you a boat?” They both laughed.
“Unless the royals decide otherwise, some fire clan imp will want to burn this thing down and use the flames for cultivation.” The guard shook his head. “It is a shame that it has come to that, word has got out in the maritime industry and we haven’t had a single ship come in that hasn’t gotten the king’s protection ahead of time.”
Alex tried a different approach. “Can I talk to the harbormaster?”
The first guard spat. “He’s asleep. Come back in the morning.”
Alex wanted to roll her eyes, but the doll didn’t have eyelids. “Then who can decide on the proposal?”
“Old Donald’s been down at the bar drinking himself to death and complaining that none of the wanna be shipwrites even get a chance because there is no work to speak of.” The second guard mentioned.
“Not like we can do anything about that.” The first guard sounded annoyed. “Look, Miss doll. Maybe this is some kind of joke but we don’t have any timber left to build boats. The price is so high because of all the fire clan demons snatching it up because they have a need to keep bonfires going 24/7 that there isn’t anything left. It is not like we can build ships out of sand and stone.”
“I have a source for lumber.” Alex offered. There were other materials other than wood that could make ships, but she wasn’t sure if sand and stone was one of them.
“What, you want to sell to the fire clan?” The man shook his head. “They are just as likely to take it and leave you with nothing. I’ve seen them do that and give lines like ‘if you want to blame someone, blame yourself for your own weakness’ then walk off all proud and arrogant.”
“Can I just talk to someone that can make a decision?” The doll put her hands on her hips.
“Yeah, you can stay docked here.” The guard shrugged. “You can meet the harbormaster in the morning. Best keep a lookout though. Imps like to start fires in the middle of the night though they don’t like coming close to the water.”