Fell Champions

Shortly after, a slightly disturbed Vex disconnected the call, but only after promising she would not interrupt whatever madness that was Otter’s plan. She wouldn’t wake her up, or foul it by telling anyone what Otter was doing.

Sami had no way of telling if Vex would keep her word beyond blind faith. She had no assessment of her as a person, and neither Otter nor Rua could vouch for her under the circumstances.

She’d just have to hope for the best, a feeling she didn’t particularly enjoy. Optimism wasn’t pragmatic enough for her likely. It was too easily foiled by reality. 

Lacking other options, she went to see if Everett would accept her help with the Sandskimmer, only to discover he was just finishing up.

“Just about ready,” he said from the driver’s seat, which looked a lot like a motorcycle without the wheels attached to the hull like a horse would be to a carriage. 

“Does it work?”

He gave her an annoyed look, and then flexed his hands over the handlebars. The engine thrummed to life with a soft hum that caused the sand under it to ripple. 

The whole machine looked like a giant boat that hovered three inches off the sand, with the driving component being a single seat portion you had to climb onto from behind. All total, maybe seven people could fit in the vessel, but it’d be a tight fit.

“How long does it take to convert to a Waverider?” Sami asked. 

“Instructions said ten minutes. Just need to move a few parts around, adjust the runes to travel on water and not sand. Sounds more complicated than it is. So, about Kershaugn…”

Sami sighed. She’d been waiting for this. “We set him free.”

“I was thinking, maybe we take him with us.”

“Absolutely–”

Everett raised his hands. “Only as far as the shore. He just needs to follow it to get to a town from there. We won’t even need to give him any of our water in that case.”

Sami looked in their prisoner’s direction. “You’ve been talking to him.”

“Yes,” Everett said, lifting his chin and puffing out his chest. He was getting ready for a fight. Lucky for him, she had no intention of giving him one.

“Fine. But we drop him off where we choose. We don’t take his directions.”

“But he said he knows a nice cove, a good place to convert the ship where no one can see.”

Oh, poor, sweet, dumb Everett. She loved this man, but sometimes she wished he was a little smarter.

“I’m sure he did, Ev. And I’m sure it’s filled to the brim with friends of his waiting to kill us and take our things.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.” He looked a little sheepish, and then smiled. “Good thing I have you around, I guess.”

“No, Everett. It’s a good thing I have you around.”

How easy it would’ve been to just cut Kershaughn’s throat and leave him to die in the desert sun. Worse, she would’ve greedily taken his soul crystal, too, and never once thought of what that made her.

They set off not long after that, their prisoner secured in chains while they rode. He tried to engage both of them in conversation the entire time, probing with gentle questions, but both were of one mind. They weren’t going to kill him, but they weren’t helping him beyond that, and they most definitely were not sharing further info about themselves or where they were going.

There wasn’t much complexity to the steering of the Sandskimmer, and Everett, an avid motorcyclist and outdoorsman, and best of all, player of a variety of racing sims, was right at home. There was still a learning curve, and more than once Everett hit a sand dune a little too quickly and nearly bottomed them out, but he didn’t capsize them, and seemed to be enjoying himself. 

Sami tried to look impassive and stoic the entire time, a leader burdened with the knowledge she might have to be an executioner. It was an act for Kershaughn. In reality, she wanted nothing more than to hang her head over the side of the vessel and vomit violently from motion sickness.

How embarrassing. She’d spent a long time overcoming this particular weakness when it came to video games, but apparently when the game had become real, it was no longer just in her head, or caused by her vision. The way the ship jolted as Everett picked up speed, or rocked to the side as he turned, was enough to make her stomach flop every which way in an effort to try to void itself. 

It took them two hellish hours to get to shore. Two hours that Sami prayed her weakness didn’t show that her face wasn’t turning green in front of their prisoner. 

They converted the ship first, Sami taking note of what Everett did while keeping an eye on Kershaughn. She refused to forget that not too long ago he’d tried to kill her for no better reason than that she’d been in his vicinity. 

Everett removed his chains while Sami kept a hand on her sword. The entire time, Kershaughn had a small smile on his face.

“It’s shorter sailing if you go due north from here,” he said.

“You don’t know where we’re going,” she pointed out.

“Ah, well, about that–”

Whatever he was about to say, she didn’t let him finish. As soon as the last of the chains dropped off him, and Everett was clear, she kicked him solidly in the chest, sending him tumbling over the side of the Sandskimmer. 

He made a sound of pain, and she kept from laughing at the sight of him planted facefirst in the sand. Doing so out loud would’ve been terribly crass and impolite. 

“Take us south,” Sami said.

“Clever,” Everett said as they pushed off. 

“Predictable,” Sami responded, watching the coast. Once she was satisfied Kershaughn could no longer see them, she said, “Now switch us due north, then after an hour, bring us west.”

Over the next two days, Sami’s motion sickness evolved into sea sickness. She tried to be sparing with her water, but it was difficult when you kept throwing it up, and then had a large dragon man mothering over you and forcefeeding you sips from his own waterskin.

The nights when they were anchored were nice, pleasant even. In the desert, when she’d been so worried about bandits and slavers, she’d spent all her waking hours watching the horizon. On the sea, she could lie on her back and stare up at the stars. She’d been a city girl all her life, and had only really seen them while camping, or in a video game. And even though Fell Champions masqueraded as a game, the stars were infinitely more real. Real, and beautiful.

The night sky was more lit up than any she’d seen in her life. There was no light pollution from a city’s grid to obscure the view, no pollution coating the sky. It was just the infinite black of space, and the stars, but not just that. There was a mass of purple, green and red, a great nebula in the distance, forming a beautiful cloud in the darkness that kind of looked like a long-fingered hand reaching for the world. Eerie, but magnificent. 

Everett caught her staring, and smiled in a way that looked threatening on that dragon-like face of his.

“I couldn’t stop looking, the first time I saw it.”

He settled down beside her, taking up the remaining deck space. Maybe a little more with those wings of his. He didn’t look terribly comfortable. She eased into a hug with him, putting her head on his chest and giving him a bit more room. His heart beat in a steady, heavy rhythm.

“There’s beauty in this world,” he said. “I look forward to seeing more of it.”

“It’s too bad that we brought so much ugliness with us.”

“Not us.” He paused, as if to think. “Well, not all of us. Holt, certainly. And those fools, STI and Beast Infection and those like them, I don’t think they’ll be healthy for this place. But I like to think the rest of us are good by nature.”

She hesitated in her next comment. That they might have to do something about them. She knew how reluctant Everett was to employ violence, now that he knew he was no longer fighting video game characters.

They sailed for another day, finally making it into the area depicted on the clan map as the Silayan Islands. To distract Sami’s stomach, she practiced her Steelsinging, never quite activating the ability, but just singing a single long note, and listening for the response of nearby metal in her mind.

Each material had a different sound to her, but she didn’t have much to work with, just the pieces of metal that made up parts of their Waverider, and whatever weapons and tools they had on their persons. 

Everett tried singing along for fun. He wasn’t very good, but his heart was always in his effort, and that was all she could ever ask for. 

“Maybe you should drive for a bit,” Everett said. “Give me time to practice my Sungrifting.”

“Yes,” she said between notes. “A lovely idea. Put me in the driver’s seat and watch as I crash us into an errant rock when I begin vomiting.”

Everett barked out a laugh.

They weren’t too far from the main island, but as they travelled, Sami could hear something echoing back from her ability. She’d sensed bits and pieces here and there, usually deep underwater, but this one came from a nearby island in the distance. It felt different from the rest. Almost as if the steel were singing back to her.

She knew she shouldn’t, but it felt significant. Important, even.

“Ev, pull us over to that island.”

“That the mainland?” he asked.

“No, but… I need to look into something. My ability is acting weird, and I’m curious.”

He shrugged, but complied. He’d always been a good soldier. Question once, then follow orders. Rarely did he actually disobey. Sometimes she wished he had Mayumi’s fire, but was always grateful he didn’t have Il-Su’s treachery. 

Everett beached the Waverider on an island that had seen better days. Much of it smouldered, wisps of smoke still lingering from where much of it had burned. The two of them covered their faces with bits of wetted cloth, and made their way inland.

“What happened here?” Everett asked, indicating the remains of a burnt down forest.

“We’re in the general area Mayumi’s in, and you’re asking what caused a forest fire?”

“Ah.”

Out of the corner of Sami’s eye, she caught movement. Something small, very small, but green and brown in a sea of grey ash and blackened wood. She made a sharp gesture to Everett. He nodded once, and began to peel away, not towards the movement, but around it in a long loop. 

Sami hummed, trying to get a location of whatever it was that had moved. There was no sense of metal in the direction whatever that had been – and she was quickly beginning to realize exactly where they were – but she was getting a sense of something not too far off to her left. 

Well, it’d be better if she didn’t go directly towards the movement anyway. She might just scare it off. Better to have whatever it was think that it hadn’t been spotted.

She placed her steps deliberately, as quietly as she could. There was no escaping the fact that she’d been spotted by something, but there was no point in alerting the entire island to her presence, even if it looked like most of it had been consumed. 

She hummed again, and could almost see the vibration off a glint of metal in the ash. Somehow it remained shiny and new under all that soot. Gingerly, Sami picked it out from the burnt out shell of what had once been a fire, and balanced the piece of metal, which was the size of a dinner plate but three times as thick, in her hand as she hummed.

And as she did, she heard a voice respond to her Steelsinging, “Will you fecking stop with that caterwauling and fecking help me?”

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