RavensDagger

  Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Two - Befriend Them with Lasers?“ we expect them to be violent?” Bastion asked.

  “We suspect they will not stop themselves from ag violently against the little shard. They may eveend that violeo you, though they should refrain from killing you. The g Mountains have an amicable retionship with Wallwatch; we would not want to disrupt that over an internal matter.”

  I trahat for Bastion even as I rao the bed and tugged the sheet off the top. It was a bit raggedy, but not that bad. A big red b made of woven cloth. “Moonie, I’m going to cover you in this. Maybe if we’re lucky, they won’t notice that we’re carrying you.”

  Moonie bobbed up and down. “That seems amusing.”

  I grinned as I tossed the covers up and over the cry, then pulled them snug around them. It didn’t take long to tie it all up in a bow around Moonie’s side.

  “Good thinking,” Bastion said. “Mister... Blue, perhaps you should leave as soon as we’ve left. I’ll give you a signal. Try to keep them occupied for at least half a mihat should be enough for us to get a good lead.”

  “We uand,” the rger cry said. They hovered over to the door, while Bastio his wings and climbed closer to the ceiling.

  “You might want to leave some silver behind, for the window,” Bastion said.

  “Huh, why?” I asked.

  “Close your eyes,” Bastion ordered.

  I ducked my head and squeezed my eyes shut a moment before the window above exploded and sheets of gss rained down onto the floor. A few pieces thumped against my captain’s hat and my ears, but I flicked them away with a twitch.

  “Let’s go!” Bastion called. He had his sword half uhed. I suspect he’d used the pommel to break the gss.

  I nodded, hugged Moonie close, then jumped up and out of the top.

  “Mister Blue, go!” Bastion said a moment before he flipped out of the room. The Walled Inn’s roof was all tin with windows cut into it for every room. I saw some flickering dle light from a few of them. They didn’t all get sunlight, not with another set of homes right above the inn.

  I gnced up at the huge iron struts keeping the floor above in pce. “Which way?” I asked.

  Then something hummed behind me and I half-turo see one of the cry floating up. It glowed, and before I could process, a scarlet ser fired out of it and right at me.

  It met a crystalline wall that snapped ience right in front of me. It was like a huge, spiky snowfke that bouhe ser off and allowed it to cut a slito the inn room some metres away.

  I gasped. That had been close. I could recall using ing magic to kinda dissipate a ser before, in that Gss Dungeon, but this ser was faster... somehow, and I wasn’t expeg it at all.

  “We are afraid that we ot allow you to harm the broken shard, nor the soft ones,” came Blue’s crystalline voice.

  “Let’s go!” Bastion said.

  The sylph took off, heading not in the dire of the docks, but right towards the huge wall.

  I eyed a few beams holding up the homes and structure above, the out after him. “Bastion, the Beaver’s that way!” I said with a nod to the west end of the city.

  “We o lose them first,” he said.

  Was it that bad?

  I jumped, aiming for the roof of what looked like a shop. I never made it since Bastion rammed me out of the air.

  I eeped, then gasped as a ser zipped by so close I felt my tail warming up. I pushed my ing aura out, hoping that it would at least dampeacks a little the ime they came so close.

  We fell down a level, narrowly avoiding a catwalk before crashing onto a busy road, right in front of a bunch of people who gasped and squawked at our nding before them.

  I rolled to my feet, ign the bit of disfort from the rough nding. “You okay, Moonie?”

  “Yes!”

  “e on!” Bastion said.

  I patted down my skirt with one hand, hugged Moonie closer to my side, then followed after Bastion as he cut into the crowd.

  It wasn’t really much of a crowd, which was unfortunate because I saw one of the cry flying closer, with a dozen snowfke disks around its middle that were glowing and sparking. It spotted us running a floor below, and dropped down to be on our level.

  “Duck!” I called out before a pair of reddish beams snapped out and burned some holes into the wooden walls of the buildings behind us.

  Most of the people oreet never even noticed, but some did, and they started to scream and run away, which got everyone else moving too.

  “Up!” Bastion said. He poio some carts ahead with little tin roofs over them. They were selling bolts of cloth and some tools and all sorts of kniacks.

  I jumped after him, running across the top of the carts, then Bastio onto the roof of a nearby shop and I followed after him. The cry swooped down after us, but Bastion dropped down the opposite side of the roof and I followed him before I could get sered.

  There wasn’t much of a road here, just a narrow catwalk, a grated floor and some wooden rails overlooking the couple of levels dowy.

  “Faster,” Bastion said.

  I took a few big gulps of air. I was ier shape than I’d ever been before, but this was still a lot of excitement for me.

  Bastion pointed up a level once we were behind a fairly tall building. “That strut, then up there,” he said.

  I squinted up, and saw the strut he was talking about. A big metal X that repeated over and over down the length of the city. Above that was another road, with a muicer rail around it.

  Bastion took off and flew straight up, sword ing out of his sheath.

  I hopped up onto the rail, bunched my legs under me with a hefty k of stamina, then shot up to the strut above.

  My shoe gripped onto the edge of the beam and I immediately unched myself up a level.

  A gnce back revealed Bastion flying in a quick loop around a reddish beam sent his way by the cry. Then he sliced a ser beam apart with a swipe of his sword.

  I blinked.

  That... wasn’t possible, was it?

  “Go! I’ll catch up!” Bastion said.

  I nodded and took off running.

  The big advantage of Wallwatch was that there was always an easy way to know which dire was which. The huge wall was kind of impossible to miss, and it was more or less to the north of the city.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Moonie as I ran ahead.

  “Yes! This is exg, if a little dark.”

  “ht, sorry,” I said. I tugged at the b, at least until I uncovered the top of Moonie’s... body. “Uh, where are your eyes?”

  “Cry have no eyes.”

  “Okay then,” I said. “ you see now?”

  “Yes.”

  That was good enough for me. I could ask a whole bunch of questions once we were safer. I found a stairwell and then raced up to the top until we broke out onto the topmost floor of Wallwatch. “There!” I said as I saw the Beaver sitting pretty in the docks; the ship’s bright blue balloon was impossible to miss.

  I skipped from roof to roof, the down onto the wooden pier and nded with a heavy thump o some sailors who recoiled in surprise. I called out my apologies as I sprinted for the Beaver.

  Amaryllis saw me ing, and looked terribly unamused as I jumped up and nded in the middle of the port deck. “Now what?” she asked.

  “We...” I took a moment to gulp in some air. “We o run, a little. Fast?”

  Amaryllis rubbed at the bridge of her he World hates me,” she said. “Awen!”

  Awen’s head popped out of the hole at the back of the other deck. She had grease stains on her nose and looked a bit fused. “Yes?” she called back.

  “Get everything ready! We’re heading out! Clive! Get everyone in position; we’re leaving right away. Broccoli, where’s Bastion?”

  “Uh,” I said.

  Looking up, I noticed a few red fshes in the air, and if I squinted I could make out Bastion weaving and diving in the air while a cry followed him, firihat Bastio dang around.

  “Right there,” I said as I pointed.

  “Oh, for the love of... put whatever that is away theo helping. You’re the captain, you should be ag like it!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” I said before darting to the back of the ship. “Hey, Moonie, I’m going to put you in my room for a bit. There’s a nice view out the window. Uh, try not to get into too much trouble, alright?”

  “Uood,” the cry said as I practically stumbled my way down to the lower ded squeezed past two of the Scallywags who were moving up.

  “Trouble above!” I said. “All hands on deck!”

  I stuffed Moonie in my room. It was a little rude not to give the cry the full tour, but there wasn’t any time for all that.

  “I’ll be bace things quiet down,” I said.

  Moonie bobbed up and down, which served to get that bo drop. “Thank you.”

  I grihen clicked the door shut before rag back out onto the main deck. Everyone was running around, unm the Beaver and prepping him to take off. I saw Steve struggling with one of the ropes and rushed over to help.

  The Beaver’s engine roared to life, and I saw Clive pulling on a few levers to keep us steady as we undid the st of the ropes holding us in pce.

  “We’re free!” Gordon called.

  A building nearby exploded, and we all gnced over in time to see Bastion flying out of the fire on a direct path for the Beaver. He nded on the deck, boots skidding across the wood until he came to a full stop and panted. “We should go,” he said, calmly.

  “Clive! Full reverse! Get us some height!” I didn’t know how high the cry could fly. Hopefully not as high as the wall, but I sorta doubted that.

  “Aye, aye!” Clive called a moment before we started to pull out of our m.

  “I’m going to go prepare the ballistae!” Awen said before she darted away.

  I blinked after her, but decided we had bigger s.

  Bastion swiped his sword along the length of his sleeve to it, then slid it bato its sheath. He looked unihough his pant-legs were a bit singed here and there from what had to be near-misses. “That was some good practice,” he said.

  “I hope the rest of us don’t o practice that much,” I said.

  The cry that had been after Bastion appeared by the docks, but we were already bag out pretty quickly, and there was a good hundred or so metres between us. Surely they wouldn’t...

  I ducked as a red beam fshed out and cut a bck line against the side of the Beaver’s hull. “Oh, shoot!”

  Lasers didn’t have a range.

  “Amaryllis! you do magic to protect us?” I asked.

  She eyed the cry, then grinned. “Sure,” she said.

  I had a bad feeling in my tummy a moment before she pulled her knife-wand out and poi ahead.

  I wanted a shield. Instead Amaryllis fired a thick bolt of lightning that snapped out with a boom so loud and strong my ears flipped bad I retty sure she gave the Beaver a bit of a speed boost.

  “Amy!”

  “It’s proactive prote!” she said.

  The dust around the dock cleared, revealing another crystalline snowfke shield. It dropped, and a red beam snapped out and punched a fist-sized hole into our balloon.

  “Oh no,” I said. “Steve, Gordoo that. Clive, more speed! Amaryllis, be a bit more proactive!”

  Amaryllis cackled.

  “But-but not too proactive!” I said.

  The Beaver tipped backwards, rear pointing towards the ground a moment before the engine burped, stopped, thehe propeller spinning iher dire.

  Amaryllis leaned off the side and flung magic back at the docks, enough to keep the cry busy shielding itself.

  I couldn’t help but ugh as we took off and shot into the sky as fast as our little ship could manage. Not the ideal start to an adventure, but certainly aing one!

  RavensDagger

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