Chapter Five Hundred and Eighty-Five

I don’t know where it was, but I had heard that the most dangerous part of flying in an airplane was the landing. The take-off was dangerous as well, of course, but there was time to abort that. A bad landing was... pretty much always really bad.

The same rule held true for airships, in a way.

We brought the Beaver in towards the docking tower under Clive’s careful piloting, and it became immediately apparent that we’d have to fight against the shifting winds to make it to the castle.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as in the storm, of course, the winds in here were far softer, but they kept shifting directions seemingly at random, and that made moving forwards a bit of a fight.

“So, Broc, what’re we gonna do once we get there?” Calamity asked as he came over. He was stringing his bow, and had a quiver-full of arrows by his hip already. He clearly thought that this was going to be a fight of some sort.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But hopefully they’ll be reasonable?”

“I feel like that’s an unreasonable thing to expect, but what do I know?” Calamity said.

Hmm, maybe he was right? But I think that there was still a good chance that we’d be welcomed... well, if not nicely, then at least they'd be cautious? “Let’s just be careful, then,” I said. “Everyone! Prepare for landing! I need ropes ready to lash us down and I need everyone ready for trouble!”

I wished we had a little bit more time to prepare. Landing after a light meal, and maybe some time to dry off after the storm, would have been ideal, but as it was, we would just have to land looking like a bunch of wet cats. 

Amaryllis darted off to get dressed, and Bastion nodded to me before following her down to the lower decks, probably to go and equip his full suit of armour. 

Once they were back, I went down myself and tried to dry off with a towel in my room before equipping as much gear as I thought was reasonable. That meant my breastplate and Weedbane and all the rest of my gear. I hesitated between my captain’s hat and my trusty old kettle helm, then decided to keep the captain’s hat on. It was better for the task at hand.

Sometimes a captain might need to negotiate and deal with people, right? And that’s kind of what I was getting into. 

The last thing I did was hook that Black Avatar knife around my neck so that it hung over my breastplate. I wasn’t sure if anyone here would recognize it, but... maybe?

I climbed back up to the main deck then glanced over at the castle. It was much closer. Enough so that I could just about see through the slit-like windows and into the castle itself, though it was quite dark in there. No lights. Did that mean that no one was home? Maybe there was enough light to see by at this time of day even with those narrow windows?

A part of me was worried that we were about to walk into a ghostly, abandoned castle. But no, there was that skiff, and those other ships moored against the docker tower. This had to be a place that was still being used, at least a little.

The next few minutes were kind of chaotic as I moved across the deck, helping where I could. We had stowed away a lot of the equipment we needed to dock, so now we had to un-stow it all in a hurry. Fortunately, Clive was at the helm, and he brought us in slow and smoothly. 

We unfurled some sail and set the main propeller to spin the other way around, slowing us down further just as we came in close to the docking tower.

Then Steve and Gordon jumped off the side of the Beaver, winged arms open wide and rope held in their mouths. They landed on the dock with a clatter and soon had our mooring lines wrapped around some wooden pillars.

We tugged the ship in from the side and the Beaver gently bumped against the dock. 

I ran to the back of the ship and looked up. The skiff was still out there, but it was circling the castle some ways off. It looked like they weren’t ready to get too close.

“We’re going to have to leave some friends on the Beaver to keep him safe,” I said. 

“Wise,” Amaryllis said. “So who is going to visit the castle, then?”

I chewed on my lower lip. “Um... I’d like to go?”

“That much is obvious,” Amaryllis said. “You’re our translator. Otherwise I’d insist that you stay on the ship.”

“Oh.”

“I’m coming,” Caprica said. Next to her, Bastion nodded. Of course he would come if she did. I glanced over at my other friends. I didn’t want to say no to anyone. And fortunately, it didn’t really come to that.

“Ah, I’d like to go, but maybe later?” Awen said.

“I don’t mind waiting a little. I’m certain you can pave the way for us, Broccoli,” Desiree replied, he tails flicking behind her.

“Ah, well, shucks, guess I’ll stay, then,” Calamity said. “If that lil’ skiff causes trouble, I can snipe it out of the air. Give them something to worry about.”

Well, that made it easy. So, with only three friends to accompany me, I hopped across the gap between the Beaver and the dock, then turned to help Caprica and Amaryllis and Bastion across, only all three of them were pretty well equipped for a short flight. 

We started downwards, only to stop a level down as we came alongside one of the two smaller airships docked below. “Give me a moment,” Amaryllis said.

“Sure? What is it?”

She knelt down, then squinted at the ship. “I see. Look, the name is there. No registry information, no flags. But that’s normal enough. This one’s a Pyrowalkian ship, I’m sure of it. That one over there, however. I think that’s an older Snowland design. It’s older than any of us.” She looked at Bastion. “Most of us.”

Bastion blinked slowly, and I felt a bit bad for him, catching strays like that. 

“So, what does that mean?” I asked.

“I’d usually point out that any group that can keep multiple ships afloat, even smaller ones, must be of means. It’s expensive. But this group in particular has a flying castle floating in a nearly-impenetrable storm, so I don’t think the usual measures of wealth apply here.”

I giggled. She wasn’t wrong. “Let’s find the entrance?”

That was relatively easy. The lower sections of the dock had a sort of wooden palisade wall that blocked the wind and which sorta hid a large entrance door into the tower itself. The door was heavy wood, with a few thick iron bands across it, but after fiddling with the handle, it opened with a creak.

“They didn’t lock the door,” I said. I wasn’t sure if we could just enter, but there wasn’t exactly a knocker, or a ‘pull this cord to let us know you’re here’ sign or anything.

The interior of the tower was a narrow, dark space, but there was a desk to one side and a thin slit of a window with some old glass over it let in a bit of light. I itched to let loose some Cleaning magic, to wash the place up, but I held back.

We found a spiraling staircase at the back and started down in single-file, with Bastion and Caprica at the lead.

The stairs went down for a while, but eventually led into a small room with some shelving to one side and a few cupboards. They were filled with very normal ship stuff. Ropes, pulleys, a few well-worn tools. There was another door too. 

Bastion pushed it open and we stepped out into what was obviously some little side corridor, not a space meant for guests, but more like a passage at the back or something. At least, that’s the impression I got. No paintings on the walls, and the only light came from a scone hanging from the ceiling with a few glowing crystals left within that splashed a pale blue light across the room.

At the end of the corridor was another, this one far wider with a higher ceiling and with armoured statues every few metres in their own little alcoves. Paintings did hang off of these walls, of people of different races and species, staring off into the middle distance. 

I wanted to pause and examine then, but my attention was pulled towards an approaching sound. The clunking of metal on stone.

A figure rounded the corner, then came to stand in the middle of the passage. They slowly pulled a long sword out of a scabbard. It was black, like the knife, only as long as I was tall.

“You tresspass,” the man said, voice muffled by their full helm. “Explain yourselves.”

***