Chapter 5: Chapter 5

On a clear afternoon, the world around the skyship was almost dull. Brilliant blue air as far as the eye could see could only surprise you at the first instant, and after that, there was a disturbing lack of cloud shapes at this altitude to catch your attention. Sky islands weren't as common as people liked to think—no, not by a long shot—and neither were pirate ships, merchants, or even sky monsters.

But by evening, it became enchanting. The full spectrum of twilight color, freed from the walls of the cloud cover passing underneath the ship, unfurled across an endless stretch. Then the stars came out, earlier than expected, when the air was darkening but not yet indigo.

No wonder so many employees of the Known World's Fair had their breakfast, lunch, and dinner on deck, drinking in the infinite atmosphere. After tonight, the deck would be officially opened to the Fair's guests, so this practice would either be ended altogether by Sir Huxley, or made uncomfortable by the clashing of upper and lower class. Ah well. They'd known this was coming.

As evening turned to night, everything on the ship's deck went black. Lamps existed onboard, but they would remain deactivated until tomorrow night's festivities. For now, the only lights would come from portable lanterns powered by aetham and dynam.

A fishing rod dangled from the stern. It'd been hanging there since about four o'clock, hardly moving, never getting reeled in. Up at the top sat a man in a bucket hat with the napkins and crumbs of his lunch beside him. He admired how there'd been so little wind today.

Finally, with a commonplace yawn, he got the feeling that it was time to go. He reeled in his line. When it was all gathered up and the hook plopped into his hand, he put his glasses on and squinted.

Though there wasn't much light at all, he could still see, just barely, what he needed to see: tiny crystals all along the fishing line. They speckled it like confetti, dust-mote pricks of light that were basically white but sometimes leaned orange, yellow or blue.

Magic crystals stuck to everything, but they loved metal the most, metal wire included.

He slipped on a glove and, with care, slid it across the line. Crystals rolled off, sticking to his glove and falling in a cup that used to hold tea. By the end, he had a pile of sand that, if it were tea, would have been enough to brew a single ounce.

The fisherman had never used magic before. Imagine what he could do with it! Fishing and hunting would be so much easier, even fun, and on holidays—

"Excuse me," said a young woman not far behind him.

He looked over his shoulder. It was a maid, an unfamiliar one, carrying a lantern in its bulky, squarish case. Next to her was a stern young man. His clothes were vaguely royal, but the overcoat made things confusing, the fisherman thought.

While the deck was far from empty, with clusters of people scrubbing the floorboards or just shooting the breeze here and there, it was so vast that nobody was close by but these two.

"We've been told by Sir Huxley that you would be able to guide us to the central primary ignition chambers." Pip turned to Jacob and whispered, "That was the place, right?"

"Yes," he all but groaned.

Now the fisherman got to his feet. He set the rod down and carefully avoided spilling his "tea." "Hello," he said, slowly and with a thick Zuusean accent that suggested he wasn't fluent in Common. "I am only fishing," he added with a wry wink.

"Your secret is safe with us!" Pip said without hesitation.

"Sure," Jacob said noncommittally.

From this angle and with the dim light of the lantern, Jacob could see what was shining inside of that cup, and he knew just how the man had gathered it. He wasn't afraid of it, though, because he had a good sense of magic crystals' limitations.

Systems were as separate from magic as magic was from science (and science from systems). While all three governed this world, they never seemed to intersect unless a human mashed them together by force. Jacob had dabbled in science, but magic crystals had fired his mind ever since one of the first harvests came into his hands as a boy. Unlike science, magic studies were ever-explosive and brand-new. And unlike systems, of course, he'd been able to use them for years, always experimenting.

But the cup. First of all, what the man had in there wasn't any one kind of magic. The three known "flavors" of magic were dynam, friam, and aetham—or, put simply, fire, ice, and electricity. When they mixed together in random proportions (like the batch in the cup), they produced nothing but a brief flare-out, almost purely photons. Mixed carefully and made to activate at the right moments, they could power a leviathan-sized ship like this one, and Jacob was sure that a factory's worth of expertly coordinated pipes were churning twenty-four-seven under their feet.

It was on their own, however, that they were at their most powerful—pure, unadulterated elemental energy. With a fist-sized cluster of dynam, you could decimate a house. Enough parcels of dynam pooled together could wreak unimaginable destruction. What made them deadlier than regular flame was how easy they were to set off all at once, with nothing but a touch and a wish.

Aetham and friam had stranger effects, things that people who didn't actively study the materials had no idea about. Obviously friam could freeze and aetham could release an electric bolt, but there was more to the story—as proven by the fact that Sir Huxley's windows became one-way with the power of well-manipulated electricity and cooling.

Unless the fisherman was interested in making a silent, low-power flash bomb (which did have its strategic uses, he conceded), the mixed dust in his cup wasn't good for much of anything. Wouldn't even sell for much. But even mixed magic had unbelievable potential if pressurized like diamonds over the course of centuries...or crushed together in labs, a process that some geoengineering geniuses were in the process of mastering.

All this to say, Jacob did not bother the cup, but if Sir Huxley happened to ask...he wouldn't hold back either.

The fisherman led them back toward the center of the deck. Wood creaked beneath their feet, concealing metal. The great masts of the ship with their billowing sails stretched overhead, though on nights like this when there was no turbulence, they had nothing to do but look pretty.

On their way, Pip gasped and said, "Look!"

The first cloud in a cloudless expanse had appeared, black and menacing. It was growing.

The fisherman nodded. "Yes, they are coming. You cannot worry, you have to fight..." He stooped and pointed to a hatch. "You go in here," he said.

Jacob looked at the cloud, then back at the hatch. "But it's sealed," he said.

"It does not matter. They get in—fwoosh!" The man mimed the bats' movements with flattened hands, weaving them through the air.

After confirming that Jacob was royalty (and giving him a rather apologetic, deeper bow), the man passed his maid a big long net and a spear. On another planet in another era, the tools might've been used for cleaning pools and trash-clogged parks, but here they were for catching and releasing animals. "But if you like," he noted, "you kill them."

All this time, the cloud had been growing, naturally. Ambiguous black shapes became a mass of pointy ears and wingtips, illuminated by the bats' own glow—their chests had yellow, bio-luminescent patterns. "Magi-luminescence" would perhaps be a better word.

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By now, Jacob and Pip were beyond ready. "Adieu!" the fisherman said once the bats were so close they could hear their cries as a faint, nauseating buzz. He jogged away, the better to get below deck before the monsters arrived and wrought havoc. Everyone else aboard had done the same.

As Jacob opened the hatch, Pip watched the bats and couldn't help but chuckle. "You think anyone left their chairs up here?"

"I'm not going to let you lounge up here as a swarm of face-eating bat creatures engulfs the place," he said, not even looking up. With a few jerks, he pulled the hatch free, then began the process of wrenching the round cover upward.

Pip shrugged. "Well, I tried." Five seconds later, she gasped a little. "Wait. Don't you want to see what they look like? Not because it would be a beautiful spectacle or anything, but because—for strategic reasons?"

"I have seen what they look like. Big, purple cat-sized things. V shapes on their stomachs. I'm about to see them again."

Pip's expression soured. This was exactly the kind of adventure she'd dreamed of—a spectacle one could only witness in the sky—and she wasn't about to let Jacob ruin her chances of seeing it.

"Come on, prince!" she cried, shaking her fists. "I don't seriously want to sit up here so long that they claw my face off! I just wanna be here long enough that I see, y'know, how many there are and how horrible their screams are. Then, moments before they actually get within proximity of my face, I'll jump down the hatch! Okay?"

The hatch squeaked open. Jacob gave her a tired, okay-you-won't-get-over-it-but-I'm-basically-already-over-it look.

He said slowly, "You climb in, keeping nothing but your head above the rim. Then when the bats get too close, I'll say 'go' and we'll climb in together. You'll have to do it fast, because if you don't, I will not only step on you, but shove so hard you'll find the boot print stamped upon your skull."

"Okay." Her response was quick and nonplussed, but at least she'd get a piece of what she wanted.

Jacob kicked the net and spear, and they clattered down the hatch. Presumably Pip wouldn't need them, but, just keeping up appearances here. Pip got herself into position, he crouched right next to her, and...

Celestial bats incoming. Words and sketches could not have conveyed the viciousness of those too-wide jaws, the faces so mashed and gnarled that nothing but their eyes could be made out. Past their heads and glowing chests, their bodies were hairless, with skin so tough they could've been dragons.

And the howls were so ear-piercing that it's a wonder Jacob and Pip weren't given earplugs.

When the celestial bat cloud reached the very tip of the ship's stern, they covered the horizon, hid the sky above and below.

From a certain point of view—i.e. Pip's—it was marvelous.

Stomp.

"Ack—okay, sir!"

Within seconds, Jacob was climbing his way down the steel ladder in the hatch. With a tug at the cover, he secured it—but not before a wild, writhing bat got through.

Jacob bit off a "dammit!" but wasted no time. With his body leaning against the ladder and his feet secure, he could spare his hands. Quick swipes at his pockets brought out what he needed: a switchblade in one hand, friam in the other.

It wasn't much friam, only about the size of a stud earring. It had to be held carefully or else it'd slip through the fingers. Jacob wielded it like an expert, not between thumb and forefinger but nestled in his palm, the way a street magician would handle and conceal it. And while this required his palm to fold slightly over the crystal, holding it in place, at the moment of impact that palm would flatten out—

Slamming a burst of freezing power into the monster's body.

He'd hit the bat on the side, between wing and neck, scratching his own cuff on the wing's claws in the process. He'd withdrawn just as fast, letting the friam do its thing. Frost bloomed to life on a full half of the bat's body, spreading from torso to right wing and leg in less than a second.

Maybe the crystals consuming the bat weren't as big and flashy as dynam flames would've been. Maybe they weren't as bizarre, scarring, and downright impressive as aetham lightning.

But what Jacob loved about friam was how controlled it was, how it played so much nicer with his own body, its risk of freezing his own hand so much lower than equivalent flames or shocks.

How it kept its worst damage on the inside.

The bat's howling withered and died, as its body soon would. The thing lost its power of flight and plummeted, crashing against the hatch's edge on its way down. A meager light embedded in the chamber, along with the V-shaped light, made the shape more ominous. Soon they heard the hollow thump of the bat's body on a tinny floor.

Pip watched it with wide eyes and mouth. Jacob watched her with neither.

"Wow! That was—"

He shushed her harshly. They had no idea how many people were down here. Best to keep silent for a moment.

Well, if anyone asked how the prince killed his bats, at least they'd have one chill-slain corpse to show off with zero suspicion.

The clean-up crew climbed down, battle plans brewing in their heads.

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