A flying ship with wings, not often you see that soaring majestically through the heavens. Quite the sight, I an, if you ignored the screaming.
No one was expecting the ship to take off, least of all . The wings were quite large when they were unrolled but very thin and flimsy. You wouldnt have thought they could lift an enormous boat weighing several tons out of the water and into the air. The sailors on board certainly didnt think so.
They decided the best way to deal with this turn of events was to start screaming like kids trying to embarrass their parents in a supermarket full-on tantrum.
It probably didnt help that the ships timbers began creaking and splintering like they were about to co apart. And it helped even less when parts of the mast began falling off.
On the bright side and you know , always looking for a glimr of hope in the midst of the horror that is my life we easily rose above the tidal wave. Say what you like about the destructive power of giant walls of water, they cant fucking jump.
Controlling this monster with freshly grafted fairy wings was a Herculean task. Youve probably forgotten what kind of physique I have, perhaps you assu that with all the travelling around in the fresh air and running away from murderous foes I would have put on a few pounds of muscle. Tight, compact abs, oversized delt to give that Vin Diesel in a wife-beater look. Sadly, I had been skipping sessions at the gym of late and was still a weedy strip of piss.
The pull on my arms form invisible strands I could barely hang onto was imnse. The wings were beating fairly slowly, aiming us up at an angle of thirty to forty degrees, I would estimate, and everything around was shaking to pieces.
Barrels and crates slid past , so of them with howling sailors attached. They must have seen so terrible things during their ti at sea a Kraken or two, I would imagine but apparently a short sojourn into the wild blue yonder was enough to send them apoplectic with terror. It wasnt like there were sharks up here.
Yes, I know, inb4 attacked by sky-sharks.
Will you shut the fuck up! I scread at the people screaming. Ive got this. It was the sort of baseless claim I could make with great confidence since if I didnt got this, we were all dead and then what were they going to do? Sue for misrepresentation of the facts?
My calming and reassuring voice did nothing to calm or reassure them. The screaming continued (a good title for my moirs, volu two).
Once Id wrangled the ship over the wave, I felt like I had a little ti before the next problem. It seed to these nature-based attacks took so ti to set up. Of course, it wouldnt matter how long they took if the ship fell apart first. And if the wings gave out, I doubted wed be in for a soft landing.
Steering was hard. Simply pulling harder to the left or right didnt seem to do very much other than to put the hull under more stress. What I really needed was soone who understood the nuances of flight better than .
The most obvious person would be Richina. These were her wings, after all, so who better to operate them? With the doll controlling her, she could be told where to take us.
This idea struck as a good one, and we all know where that usually leads.
I got the ship to a decent height and levelled us off. The wings were stretched out and our flight path was steady, sitting us in a glide that didnt require constant trimming. The sailors had quieted down to a soft whimper, clinging to each other and taking sneaky peeks over the rail to see how far up we were, and then regretting it. The big wave had dissipated and the imdiate danger was over. The next danger, the imminent fall to our deaths, had already pulled up and opened its doors, ready for boarding.
I let go of the vines connecting the wings to and stepped back. The crew couldnt see the vines, but they knew I was the one controlling things one of the main causes for the screaming so they viewed walking away as so sort of portent of doom. Sailors are a superstitious bunch.
Its fine, were just going to glide around for a bit, like a big bird, you know, like an albatross. That probably wasnt the bird you wanted to use as an example when talking to sailors, but I doubted many of them had read Coleridge.
The ship was holding position quite well but it was going to start losing altitude fairly quickly without here, and I wanted to go get Richina. I could have sent soone, but the sailors didnt look like they were going to be able to detach themselves from each other until we were back on solid water.
Stay here, dont touch anything, Ill be right back.
Its not often anyone looks at like they dont want to leave, so it was touching how sincerely the crew panicked at my departure. It really ant sothing.
I ran back into the ship and hurried to the captains cabin. The ship did lurch about a bit, but you have to expect a little turbulence when youre at five hundred feet in a wooden galleon.
I got to the corridor that led to the cabin and stopped. I had a very peculiar premonition that sothing wasnt right. It was the kind of creepy feeling you get when youre alone in a house at night, and it isnt your house. All sorts of strange sounds and movents in the corner of your eye start to freak you out, even though you know its nothing.
Please, no It was a high-pitched feminine voice, so my first thought was Dudley.
Oh, God! yelled soone else. Oh God, dont do it!
I should have run in to save the day, but for whatever reason (lets just call it cowardice) I couldnt move. The strange thing was that I wasnt afraid. It wasnt like I had no way to protect myself, my body just wasnt used to running towards danger. Its all very well stating your intention to be a good dependable sort of fellow who will do his utmost to be a proper person, but the mont you look in a mirror and see how skinny your arms are, it kind of takes the winds out of your sails.
If you think I was being ridiculous, I would agree. There were far worse things to worry about than soone shouting on the other side of the door. For all I knew, they were having a big orgy with Dudley and Damicar working through the girls from either end. Now I was really unwilling to open the door.
There was a deeper voice saying sothing unintelligible. It didnt sound human, it sounded like an animal in a cave, growling and preparing to launch itself out of the darkness.
It was almost like soone was feeding fear into . I was untouchable, so that shouldnt have worked, but I was also ignorant of how my powers truly functioned, so what the fuck did I know?
What I did still have, though, was my common sense. I didnt have to be afraid of things behind closed doors. Not because I was tough or strong, but because I had an escape hatch always ready.
I left my body and the pressure on to piss myself eased. Well, it eased back down to regular levels. I floated through the wall, into the cabin, and found myself faced with a tableau that could have been painted during the Renaissance, if HP Lovecraft had been around then.
Richina was standing on the bed, one hand around Laneys throat. I had left the doll with Laney so she could keep Richina in check, but that appeared to not have worked as well as Id hoped. The doll was in Laneys right hand, the vines Id used to connect it to Richina frayed or broken.
There was also a new vine growing out of Richinas frozen mouth. It extended to Laneys mouth, and disappeared down her throat.
The others were positioned around these two, wearing various expressions of horror and revulsion. I was the only one who could see the vines, so what were they seeing?
What seed clear was that Richina was out of control and that she was doing sothing to Laney. I wasnt sure how this related to the fear Id felt, but the scene I was looking at didnt unduly scare . I could handle a little light mutiny, even if Richina managed to get everyone in this room to turn against . That was the beauty of running with a bunch of hopeless losers revolts were easy to put down.
I had another look around the room to make sure I wasnt missing anything. Biadet was lying at Richinas feet, out cold it looked like, while Flossie and Dudley were holding onto Laneys legs like they were afraid shed float away.
Damicar was by the door, trying to get it open. Judging by the extre level of effort on his face, he was having so kind of problem.
There was always the chance there was so supernatural influence involved, but I would expect to be able to see so sign of it. The good thing about the adjacent world was that even the most epheral form of influence took physical shape. The bad thing was trying to find it in the sea of vines that covered everything. Everything but .
I returned to my body on the other side of the door and imdiately felt the oppression weigh down on . However, like an unscrupulous womans cleavage, it beca much easier to deal with once you knew it was just there to frighten you.
I grabbed the doorknob, ready to smash it apart with my sword if I couldnt get it open, but found it imdiately gave after an initial tug in the other direction. Damicar, in his panic, had been trying to open it the wrong way.
The scene was bedlam as expected. What was less expected was the thick slimy tentacle going from Richinas mouth into Laney. That part, it turned out, wasnt an adjacent world vine, it was from right here.
Fairies really werent living up to the Walt Disney version Id been led to believe in (I wouldnt have clapped if I knew about this). I realise most fairy tales have far more vicious and objectionable origins (as, co to think of it, did Walt Disney) but thats because theyre mostly German. You expect sothing unflinchingly horrible from the Germanic imagination, but I was in the land of true fantasy creatures. They could have at least kept their clothes on while they went all third-act Akira.
Whatever was going on here to be perfectly frank, I wasnt really interested in finding out the details, pretty much what I would expect, Id guess I could have just cut off all the vines within reach when I was here a mont ago and then dealt with the repercussions as and when they caught up with (good luck with that).
I had decided it would be better to be in the room when I did it, as controlling others by attaching them to was my new ta.
You want to use this to control her? Let just reverse those connections and use it to control you.
The vine in question wasnt what I thought it was. It was very much a solid and unpleasant real world object, and it was making Laneys throat bulge.
There were a bunch of different options open to and I had to guess which was the best, or, as I like to think of it, make an executive decision. I left my body and swiped my sword between Laney and Richina to cut the throbbing tentacle in half. It might have existed in the real world, but it existed here, too.
The part attached to Laney shrivelled up. The other end retracted into Richina. I darted forward and grabbed it. The wriggling sensation in my hands was unpleasant. I dragged it across to my body and I shoved it in my own mouth.
What effect would this have? Only one way to find out. I returned to my body.
The tentacle had been cut here, too. Laney retched and vomited up the part remaining inside her.
Richinas end was now reaching into my real world mouth.
It was like the scene from Lady and the Tramp, only much, much more disgusting (also, co to think of it, like Walt Disney). Richina fell backwards onto the bed, I fell on top of her. She was naked apart from so thin strips of bedsheet, but there was nothing remotely sexual about the situation. Well, I did have her prehensile tentacle tongue in my mouth, but if Id been French that would just an I was saying hello.
The sense of fear and terror was huge now, and in my mouth. It made my lips tingle. But my attachnt to Richina went both ways. She was trying to take control of through this appendage, and I was trying to do the sa with the adjacent version. The outco was never in doubt. This was what we trained for.
The slithering in my mouth relaxed, and slipped down my throat, turning to smoke as it went. Richina stared at through empty, glazed eyes.
The ship shook, like when a plane hits an air pocket, and my stomach dropped inside of . Now was not the ti to throw up Richinas soul.
Get up, I said. Richina did as instructed. Follow .
I led her, and everyone else, up to the deck. The ship was aiming its nose down instead of up, and we were picking up speed as we approached the sea below.
Take us up, I said to Richina. She raised her hands and the wings grew bigger. We swooped away from the water and towards the clouds.
There were clouds now, lots of them. In the distance, flashes of lightning. A storm was approaching, sent by the Council, although maybe soone had French-kissed them into submission, too. It had taken them so ti to get their act together and launch this next attack, but it was a pretty good one. How did a flying ship avoid a storm?
Take us higher, over the clouds. Lightning only aims down, right?
Richina did as instructed. We broke through the clouds and were t by uninterrupted blue. Uninterrupted by nothing apart from the dragons flying towards us.
Flossie, can you handle it?
She nodded, then turned to Dudley and exchanged a look. Love? Trust? A promise to be together forever between two soulmates? I wouldnt know.
Then she ran to the front of the ship, her bottom wobbling as she skipped onto the top of the figurehead so kind of fish wearing a helt, I wasnt really paying attention and then she jumped off.
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