CHAPTER 50: FOGGY CALAMITY

  Elias had been told that all of Sailor’s Rise had come out for the final round of The Emerald Cup, crowding every open dock and viewpoint across the city. It was not only locals either. Thousands of people had traveled here from all across the Great Continent, and they were standing out there too, alongside his friends and neighbors. Unfortunately for many in attendance, nature had decided to cast a last-minute curse upon their grandiose affair, turning it into a more intimate one as dense fog settled over the mountain metropolis.

  Elias sometimes found fog comforting—a dimming blanket in a big, bright world—but today he wagered the effect would be more suffocating. Fog meant reduced visibility both for them and the officials whose job it was to keep the race’s worst offenders in line.

  For now, he could still see some faces in the crowd, particularly those near the starting line. Bertrand had already spotted his family, waving like an island survivor at Irvin, Mable, and Sorea, ultimately to no avail. Elias had probably wasted five minutes searching for Abigail—inadvertently discovering Jalander in the process, somewhat to his surprise—and almost gave up until he noticed her tall, pale father standing on a private balcony. Abigail appeared beside him a minute later with another woman he assumed was her mother.

  Elias did not need to wonder where the son in that equation stood. Edric’s vessel was squarely in front of their own. The arrogant Graystone had already looked down upon The Sapphire Spirit from the tip of his stern like a scorned lover. “She’s the fastest airship you’ve ever seen,” he had claimed that night at Mr. Grimsby’s dinner party, right before Elias challenged his challenger and set in motion the events leading up to this unlikely one. Edric was prone to exaggeration, but his resources were undeniable. His would be a fast ship.

  Elias could not help but see the vessel’s name floating conspicuously ahead of them. The Gray Gargoyle, it read in a stately cursive.

  “It’s a stupid name,” Bertrand commented.

  “It has an alliteration,” Elias replied.

  “Aye,” the other man admitted. “Still stupid.”

  Stupid or otherwise, it was not the only ship that worried Elias. He had overheard others gossiping about the vessel presently floating next to their own, though this was the first time they had ended up in the same race. Even still, there was no mistaking it. He had only ever seen a Valshynarian airship once before—deep inside a sky rift—and while this one was considerably smaller and sleeker, it was no doubt the offspring of a shared family. Its golden hull had that same scale-like quality, while its few sailors evidently employed the same tailor.

  But once again, the absence of any sort of balloon was what caught Elias’s attention this morning just as it had when he’d first laid eyes on Valshynarian technology. He knew so much more now than he had two years ago, and yet the mechanics at work still entirely eluded him. Nothing he knew as a collector, no book he had pored over, built any sort of bridge between his enlightened education and what he saw in front of him. Indeed, new knowledge only deepened the mystery. To stand in ignorant awe was easy and ephemeral. To know but not know was a recipe for obsession.

  He did at least recognize one of them. Just as he hadn’t expected to see a Valshynarian airship racing in The Emerald Cup (it simply seemed beneath them), he similarly did not expect to match eyes with Lucas Dawnlight. He could see him clearly enough without his telescope, their ships hovering in parallel, and he imagined Lucas had sharp eyes too.

  “Hello, Elias!” The Valshynarian waved. “Such a small world this Great Continent is!”

  Elias waved back. “Nice to see you again!”

  “And you!” The ponytail of his long flaxen hair offered a second wave, swept up in the late morning wind. Lucas had not been beneath fighting in the colosseum, Elias recalled. Perhaps it made sense that he wouldn’t be beneath racing in The Emerald Cup. He was somewhat surprised the Valshynar allowed it, however, considering all that Jalander had told him about their restrictive ways. Either Lucas had a lot of leeway or Jalander’s perspective was only one side of a debate Elias had never engaged in himself. What did he really understand?

  “Do you know that guy?” Briley snuck up beside him.

  “We met in Azir,” Elias said honestly. “You had just laid eyes on Zeyna, and Bertrand was playing Sirens. I ran into him with Abigail Graystone in the Garden District. He was ambushed, but it didn’t work out so well for his ambushers. It was an eventful night. I’ve told you this story before.”

  “It is ringing a bell for me now.” Briley was squinting. “Why does he look familiar?”

  “The colosseum,” he said.

  Her eyes went from squinting to widening. “Right. Well, I like our odds a little less than I did a moment ago.”

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  “Forget about him.” Elias turned toward the ship’s wheel. “Let’s focus on winning.”

  Alas, it took longer than either of them expected for the man in the emerald suit to finally make a much-anticipated appearance. Elias was not sure whether they were starting late or if his internal clock had slowed. The world of gray fog seemed to exist outside of time.

  Stopping at the end of his pier, the slender official pointed his pistol skyward and savored the moment. The hushed anticipation of an audience like no other. The power he held, however briefly, over ten of the finest ships on the continent and their eager crews.

  The gunshot echoed far and wide.

  The final round of The Emerald Cup had begun.

  They fell into a practiced routine. Briley held the wheel and Elias the telescope, watching for danger—and whatever else his sight revealed to him—while Bertrand relayed messages between the crew, including his own. Iric, meanwhile, was ready to take orders, offer muscle, and cleave whatever needed cleaving, his brand-new axe hanging from his hip. Gabby was already below deck and ready to overpower the engine as soon as needed, having likened The Sapphire Spirit to a tamed animal: she knew now the way she moved, what she needed, and how she would respond to just the right amount of cobrium. As for Islet, Briley had confirmed three times that morning that their cat was indeed safely stowed inside the great cabin, where she would remain.

  The route for round three was less straightforward, but there were still only three checkpoints throughout the entire race, meaning they would be out of sight for longer stretches—a fact certainly not helped by the fog.

  Even still, Elias hadn’t expected the violence to commence so quickly.

  It started with a ship practically beside their own. The Sapphire Spirit was in third place when the first bolt was fired, though little distance had been created between the ten racers in the early minutes of the competition. It was this very closeness that caused such calamity.

  The bolt struck the nearby ship and, just as abruptly, a parachute came flying from its tail, catching the wind. The impacted vessel lurched and twisted and became equally bad news for the next competitor in line. Their hulls collided. Wood splintered. The first airship tilted like a boat about to capsize.

  Elias was observing the event closely—and then even more closely as the second ship swerved toward them. He sprinted over to Briley and told her to send them upward. She was already on it. He raced back to the bulwark and watched the vessel veering toward them, still too close for comfort. He could have jumped overboard and landed easily upon its hydrogen balloon.

  Mercifully, the only thing that bounced off said balloon was the bottom of their hull. The bump rattled the crew and rocked their ship like a giant cradle. It wasn’t a perfect dodge, but they had evaded catastrophe. They would not be the third domino in this path of destruction.

  The two unlucky vessels had suffered considerable damage, however, adding both drag to their airships and danger to their respective crews. For all intents and purposes, this meant they were already out of the race. Unable to win, they would turn around or seek a safe landing as soon as possible.

  But a great sin had been committed, and the transgressor could not go unpunished. A cannon erupted. The airship that had fired the parachute bolt (and a few others in previous races) absorbed the hit, then took another. They were firing at its balloon—an evil deed for an evil deed.

  The first cannonball did not break through. Almost every ship in The Emerald Cup was equipped with a spider’s silk balloon—the entry fee alone weeded out vessels of a lesser caliber—but resistant to cannon fire did not mean impenetrable.

  Fired at close proximity, the second cannonball ripped through one side of the balloon if not quite out other. It would nonetheless be enough to sink them, albeit slowly.

  The aggressive ship did not cease its aggression even in the face of defeat. It fired back. A second bolt missed the other’s hull, instead piercing a crew member like a javelin thrown by an angry god. The bolt impaled the man’s chest, sent him flying overboard, and opened up on its way down. The sailor’s corpse floated into the fog, dangling from its parachute, drifting earthward to a gentle grave.

  The next shot came quietly, slowly, as subtly as an errant spark escapes a campfire. By the time Elias realized that this particular projectile was a flaming arrow, there was no missing the explosion. They had launched fire into an open wound—a wound gushing out hydrogen.

  Flames engulfed the entire balloon almost instantly. They spread everywhere: down ropes and beams, across the deck and its panicked crew. The fiery vessel did not merely lose altitude. It plummeted. Soon, Elias could no longer discern details of the fallen airship. Swallowed up by the ever-present fog, it faded into a blossom of orange before wilting away.

  Three ships had been removed from the race before anyone had even reached the first checkpoint. Elias was on the lookout for any bolts, cannonballs, or fiery arrows that might be zooming toward The Sapphire Spirit, but fate had spared them the worst of it.

  Bertrand’s morning metaphor felt almost prophetic. “May the gods of good sense give us another pass and fire their arrows upon our hapless opponents,” Elias recalled him saying. Misfortune had missed them only to strike three others, but their race was far from over.

  They gathered at the wheel, everyone except Gabby, who was still waiting in the engine room.

  “Now would be a good time to overpower the engine,” Briley said. “The way’s clear, and we’re going as fast as I can get her.”

  Gabby had told them they could only overpower the engine once per race and for no more than thirty minutes. It was on them to choose the most advantageous window of opportunity. This one seemed as strategic as any. They remained in third place and had actually created more distance between The Sapphire Spirit and those behind them, though it was a smaller number than five minutes earlier. Not far ahead were Edric Graystone and The Gray Gargoyle in second place and Lucas Dawnlight and the unnamed Valshynarian vessel taking first.

  “I’ll go tell Gabby,” Bertrand confirmed.

  “Maybe ready the cannons as well,” Elias added, “just in case.”

  “Just in case,” Bertrand reiterated skeptically.

  “I will come help,” Iric offered.

  And as the northerner and their chief business officer headed below deck, they finally saw the first checkpoint: a crowded airship coming into existence along the foggy horizon. So much had already happened, and yet three-quarters of the final round of The Emerald Cup still waited ahead of them, its perilous path unseeable amid the deep gray.

  Elias had Edric in his sights—and his promise to Abigail weighing heavily in his heart.

  ? Tick Tock On The Clock ?

  [LitRPG Deckbuilding with Time Ticking Down]

  The hourglass breaks, the debt comes due—will fate claim you, or will you break through

  Life was stolen, time was rewound—will you rise or stay Timebound?

  What to expect:

  This story is a healthy blend of ORV, The Devil's Cage, and MTG.