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ORIGINAL DRAFT - PRE-EDITING

This story was written as part of the 2016 National Novel Writing Month. It was written without edits between 12:01am, November 1st and 11:59pm, November 30th.

This story was written by David J Rust, aka Sylvan Scott, and is in a pre-edited state. The characters, situations, and concepts herein are property of the author and may not be distributed or altered without express, written permission.

Skylands: the Scorpion Spear, Part One - "Saeldrin", Chapter Nine: Barriers And Beyond

©2016 Sylvan Scott

"Urdon: provides!" Cyan's shout, accompanied by her scaled arms being flung wide as she stood in the aggressively rapacious winds at the bow of the ship, overcame even the rolling of thunder. Further, it merged with it--overwhelmed its resonant base with her triumphant tones--and echoed across the sky. Five miles had fallen behind them, already. The tearing shreds of cyclone broke against the fluyt's slender, buckling shell of air but more pierced it than were deflected. Bennet, below decks, must have been throwing every rune and conjured glyph he could into the The Seeker's air crystal. But Marek, as he struggled to help keep the center mast from twisting in the storm, doubted even the arcane scribe's work could match what the jessai'id deroni was calling, now.

As she clapped her hands together, visible undulations reverberated outwards, over the deck and prow, to smash directly into the raging winds. Momentarily, they parted, forming a corridor. Keerg and Reita guided the ship with all alacrity towards it as they had dozens of others.

But as quickly as the respite formed, it collapsed. The fluyt bucked and pitched, sending Marek toppling into snapped ropes and tattered sails. He caught a fistful of fraying sail lines and stopped himself from going over the edge. Looking up, he saw the top third of the mast start to snap. Ravaged by winds, for more fierce than any Break, the sails were in thin, shredded strips. But their sigils still glowed and, in their frantic passage, Marek could see them constantly trying to stitch themselves back together.

Bennet, wherever he was, deserved every ounce of thanks.

It was thanks, however, Bennet was not sure he would live to provide.

"By balance, be calm! Betwixt and between: let calm prevail!"

Another deific command.

Another crack of thunder overwhelmed by Cyan's voice.

Another pitch and yaw into a momentary patch of fractionally calmer wind.

Marek dragged himself to his feet. The lashing ropes in his hands, he quickly tied them off to one of several steel cleats, fastened to the deck's edge, beneath the rail. Then, neither pausing for breath or thought, he began pulling his way back towards the mast.

Whip-like, other ropes slashed at his face and chest. He grabbed what he could, secured the rigging strand-by-strand, and tried to follow the instructions Keerg had given him about providing support to the mast. Passing the ship's heart, he moved on climbing up the angle of the tilting vessel towards the cleats and opposite railing. Above him, he heard another splintering crack.

The top quarter-or-so of the mast gave away. Ropes went with it. Marek let go, just at the right moment, to prevent himself from being pulled back and over the edge into the maelstrom. The only rope he held, now, was connected to the midpoint of the mast, above him.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled with all his might.

Inch by inch he forced himself to approach a semi-secure block and tackle, now loosened by part of the mast's departure. Not thinking he could make the more secure cleat, he instead gripped the outer strap and began to force the last rope he held through the wheel of the block. It took three tries before he managed it. The ship tilted further and further from the level.

With a grunt and snarl, though, Marek managed it at last. Gripping the threaded rope and looping it around his hands, he pulled back. The bending of the mast was lessened somewhat but still creaking with the threat of a second break. Above, the self-mending sails were getting confused and tangled: merging with one another in a patchwork quilt of chaos. He didn't know if he could hold on much longer.

He heard Keerg shout something to his sister. Abruptly, then, there the gryphon was. At his side, wings folded against his leonine back and foot-talons digging deep furrows into the deck, Keerg grabbed Marek around the waist and helped him pull the rope back, further, through the block. Then, as Cyan cried out another exaltation of Urdon, the two managed to tie the rope down: stabilizing the mast for at least a short time, further.

"This ... is ... 'getting weaker'?" he shouted.

Keerg did not respond.

Marek didn't mind. He saw Keerg had called his sister to take the wheel and abandon the rudder. She had fixed its position with heavy chain and its fan-like sails were holding together much better than those of the confused middle mast. No one could monitor the side-sails, jutting out from the lower hull, but Marek couldn't conceive that they were faring any better than those top-side.

They had gone in when Cyan had proclaimed it their best chance. The storm had been weakening for some time by the point Keerg had steered them parallel to the outermost gusts of the stormwall. But if this was 'weak', Marek didn't want to know what 'strong' was.

Two galleons--larger, more powerful airships with three masts down their center-lines as well as two, each, angled down to port and starboard--had hung back from the small fluyt as it entered. One had even flashed a lantern at them, warning them to not make the attempt. But Cyan and The Seeker's crew were committed.

As the ship shook and started to tilt back in the other direction, Marek ran forward to check on Cyan. Keerg did not re-take the wheel. Rather, he started climbing the mast towards the tangle of self-repairing sails, apparently intent upon pulling them from their chaotic configuration.

"Cyan! How much further?"

The jessai'id had a look of almost ecstasy on her face. More, her eyes were glazed and surrounded by a corona of light that made her seem mad; possessed.

"Not ... much ... longer!" she shouted. She never took her eyes from the clouds, ahead.

Beyond them, they had started to change. Marek squinted as terrain came into view. In the distance, he could see the new land. He let out a low breath at the sight. Before the ship, past the approaching inner edge of the storm wall, he could see the wintery world that was entering theirs. There were vast marshes clad in ice and snow. Deeper in, ridges and hills rose towards peaks and, farther away, conical mountains. To one side, a tumbledown, sparse forest was intermingled with cracked hills and badlands. Opposite, on the far side of the dividing hills and mountains, was an ice blue tundra stretching off as far as the eye could see. In its entirety, it had to be hundreds of miles across. From where they were attempting entry, they couldn't see the far side; not even close. It was a desolate, wind-wracked landscape.

Marek was uncertain that, even should they made passage without losing their ship and lives, they would find a safe place to land.

Again and again, Cyan shouted invocations to the sliver of godly servant lodged within her soul.

Again and again, the winds reverberated with the power she raised.

Wood creaked and splintered. The rudder tore and re-wove itself in the wind.

Keerg finally got the sails untangled and dropped to the deck. He winced upon landing but nodded in assurance to both his sister and Marek. Reita handed the wheel back to her brother and raced back to the chained rudder. A stroke of lightning lit their eyes and blinded them, a deafening boom resounding afterwards as splinters from what had once been the starboard, lower-deck mast exploded.

After images of glowing coals burned past his face. He felt searing pain in the side of his face. He smelled burning fur.

He tore out handfuls of the charring hair, gritting his teeth against the pain.

Looking to the bow, he saw Cyan, too, was wounded. In her case, however, it wasn't a lightning-struck mast that had ripped into her flesh. Instead, The Seeker's old figurehead--a carving, somewhat appropriately, of the goddess of wisdom, Rydia--had become untethered in the wind and crashed back over the forecastle. Planks ripped free with it and two had struck the jessai'id in the head and chest.

Marek started to run forward when a shadow fell over him.

Reita, roaring with a gryphon's charge, had leaped into the air and unfurled her wings. She soared against the current and passed her brother at the helm in seconds. Marek watched as she hit the deck, hard, and reached to grab Cyan.

Over the wind, he couldn't hear her bones break but he could see her wings snap back in the wake of the wind.

She cradled Cyan in her arms and shouted something Marek couldn't hear to her brother.

Keerg, grim-faced, nodded and cranked the wheel. He shouted something to Marek and, then, repeated himself when Marek did not appear to understand.

"Bennet!" the gryphon cried. "It's all on him!"

Marek understood.

Ignoring the burning splinters of wood down his right side, he ran to the below-decks door. Tearing it open, he ran into the dark.

"Bennet! Cyan's wounded! We need you!"

"She can heal herself," came the thaylene's voice from the darkness. Few lamps had been lit for fear of starting a fire in the turbulence. A single, emerald green rune glowed on the wall of the ship's crystal chamber. Within it, the mouse-like man was frantically scrawling on papers, sending them up in flames and ash, bringing rune after sigil after symbol into being to augment the straining crystal.

"No! Not healing. We need you to get us--"

Another boom. The ship lurched. Marek struck a beam with his head and was subsequently dashed to the floor. He smelled smoke and his ears were ringing.

Bennet, had not moved. He stayed put as if glued to the floor. He spared a momentary glance over his shoulder at the wolfen and nodded in understanding.

Marek dragged himself to an upright support column of the below-decks framework and hoisted himself back to his feet. His head swam and pain clogged his vision with red stars. There was a ringing in his right ear and the grey fur beneath his right shoulder felt heavy, sticky, and wet. Nothing could be done, now, except watch.

The scribe pulled strips of parchment from a book and swiftly scrawled symbols down their length. One, he slapped on the floor before him. It stuck as if adhered by glue. The other, he slapped on the multi-faceted air crystal embedded in the floor of the chamber. Its sigils glowed piercingly bright before the crystal did the same.

The ship lurched forward and dropped, abruptly.

Marek's feet came off the deck as he felt himself in momentary freefall. Then gravity resumed and his knees slammed into the deck. He grimaced but held himself steady. His stomach churned and he felt the ship lunge forward in ever-increasing velocity. The wind outside was howling louder and louder. His grip on the support was growing weaker and weaker. Then...

Then the ship dropped.

The Seeker dropped like a stone.

Marek bit the inside of his cheek and cursed the pain and coppery taste of blood. But through the ringing in his ears, he heard something different.

Or, rather, he heard something no longer there.

The raging, grasping winds ripping at The Seeker's hull, had gone. The ship was still shaking, but the roar of the stormwall was no longer imminent.

Bennet had pitched forward and was holding himself up by leaning against the flickering crystal.

"I'll ... I'll keep it fueled," he said. "Go find ... the rest. Tell them ... to land."

Marek nodded.

Up on deck, he saw what his other senses had already told him.

They were through the wall and descending, rapidly to the frozen swamps he had seen, before. Cyan was conscious, but barely. Reita had pulled her away from the bow, back below the partially-smashed forecastle, and was trying to rouse her. The gryphon's wings were askew and clearly broken in several places. Keerg was straining with the wheel, and trying to right their rapid descent.

"Bennet says to land ... quickly!"

"Landing quickly isn't the problem," the gryphon snarled. "Keeping us in one piece, however--"

The ship lurched and rose. Marek was slammed to the deck, once more. He slid back, barely able to grab a tangle of the ropes he had strung, earlier, to keep the center mast, stable.

"Watch Lady Cyan," Reita shouted to him. She ran across the deck, talons piercing and gripping the wood. She reached the port side and, with an agonized cry of pain, slashed at a cluster of ropes with her talons.

They cut after the third strike and, from below decks, the port mast folded against the hull.

The ship righted itself.

Keerg shouted thanks to his sister and began guiding the craft lower. Marek ran to the bow and looked over the shattered remnant of the railing through which the figurehead had crashed.

The winds still howled beyond The Seeker but the air shell was solid, once again. More, their descent was now controlled, albeit fast.

Fallen and frozen trees whipped past beneath them. Several times he heard and felt some of the below-decks sails snag and tear free. But the ship did not crashed. It slowed.

Snow, almost tranquilly, swirled around the contours of the damaged fluyt as it passed the edge of the frozen marsh's northern terminus and approached the rising ground.

The hull shuddered as it impacted rock and ice and frozen earth. It bounced into the air once, and came down again. Once again, it struck, sending shudders and booms through the craft. Again, it rose but only to come down once more at Keerg's urging.

Then, with the groaning of magically-protected wood reaching the limits of its protection, the hull settled into the ground, digging a furrow in snow and ice. Fifty yards became a hundred. A hundred became two. Then, listing and shuddering, The Seeker came to a halt.

They had landed.

"Someone check Bennet," Keerg shouted. He sprinted to the aide of his sister, hefting her up and avoiding contact with her wings.

Cyan was already rising but looked stunned and out-of-sorts. She was also shivering as, apparently, the warming of their air had stopped. Marek ran to her and, straining with all his strength to shift her mass, helped her slither towards the below-decks door. He got her down there, into the still-warm air, and looked at her through a red miasma.

"Lady: are you well?"

She coughed and said something in her native tongue before shifting to the trade language. "So asks ... the half-blood-covered wolfen." She forced a smile and Marek returned it.

"Stay here; keep warm. I've got to check on Bennet."

She nodded.

The guide made his way through scattered belongings and past a hole that looked out onto the icy pools, below. He ignored that and found Bennet, unconscious, gripping the air crystal. Carefully, he lifted the tiny man in his arms and brought him back to Cyan.

"I don't see any blood and can't find any broken bones," he said.

She nodded. "He was never an arcanist," she said, "but I think he must have been channeling the energies through himself, towards the end, rather than his runes." With that, she put her hands upon the sides of his face and began a low, shaking prayer.

Within minutes, his eyes fluttered open. His whiskers twitched as he nodded to her. "Are you ... all right ... Lady?"

A smile was her only response.

Marek caught his breath, suddenly feeling the pain all down his right side. He reached, experimentally, into the sticky mass of fur and painfully withdrew a blackened shard of wood. He cursed at it and turned to the derroni.

"I need bandages, lady; you have some in your--"

A crack--a boom of a firearm--interrupted Marek's urgent plea. He turned towards the hole in the hull. He ran towards it with Cyan, still carrying Bennet, shortly behind. The three of them looked out across the northern edge of the frozen marsh.

Hills rose, pierced by arroyos and canyons. But there, where they widened out and flattened along the banks of a frozen river, was a battle.

Wolfen, of a strange albino fur, were fighting against strange giants--towering beasts with heavy antler and curved, wicked horns from beneath their jaws--paying no attention to the skyship that had just crashed on their doorstep.

"My Lady," Marek said, "it seems we have stumbled into a war."