Strawberry's Descent

A few hours into the open ocean crossing, sky clear and endless above them, Bram sat at the gondola's forward observation post, Colm's finished spyglass pressed to one eye, a long, precisely ground brass tube, twin lenses aligned with the same obsessive care Colm gave every piece of his cartography work, magnifying the hazy horizon into something considerably more legible.

"...Huh." He adjusted the focus slightly, frowning.

Arista glanced over from the boiler readouts. "What is it?"

"Ship. Down there, cutting through the water, and it's moving. Faster than us, noticeably." He kept the spyglass trained on it, tracking its progress across the waves below. "Steam-driven, proper hull, decent size. That's not a fishing vessel."

Arista crossed the gondola quickly, taking the offered spyglass, and felt her stomach drop the moment she found the vessel herself, sleek, purposeful, cutting a clean, confident wake across open water at a pace that made their own zeppelin's careful, fuel-conscious cruise look positively leisurely by comparison.

"...That's Nettle's ship."

"You're sure?"

"I'd recognize Low-Key's flag pattern anywhere at this point." She lowered the spyglass, genuine competitive alarm creeping in alongside grudging admiration. "They're not just keeping pace. They're gaining on us, or at least matching our speed while carrying an entire crew and cargo hold's worth of supplies. That shouldn't be possible against a purpose-built aerial vehicle."

Claire, checking pressure gauges nearby, glanced over. "Could be current-assisted. If they've mapped even a rough version of the prevailing water currents already, riding a strong one could easily offset our altitude advantage."

"...That would track. Sixty people, working current data in parallel with hull construction." Arista handed the spyglass back to Bram, jaw tight with renewed competitive urgency. "They've had a considerably bigger head start on logistics than I gave them credit for."

Colm, still charting drift patterns from his own station, looked up with quiet interest. "Should we adjust course to shadow them? If they've found a viable current, following their path might improve our own accuracy."

Arista considered it for a moment, weighing pride against practicality, and, with only a small, grudging sigh, chose practicality.

"...Yeah. Let's track their heading for a while, see if it lines up with our own current data. No shame in confirming good information, even if it happens to come from Nettle beating us to it." She grinned despite herself, watching the distant ship cut steadily onward below. "Doesn't mean we're not still racing her, though."

Bram kept the spyglass trained on the distant vessel a moment longer, then lowered it, amused. "...You know she's going to find out we spotted her and use it as proof she's winning."

"She's not winning until someone actually reaches land first," Arista said, already adjusting their own heading to loosely parallel the ship's course below, sails catching a fresh gust of wind as the zeppelin picked up speed in response. "We've got altitude, unobstructed sky, and considerably less risk of running into anything solid at speed. Let's see how much that's actually worth."

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The water beneath Nettle's ship erupted without warning.

Bram, spyglass still trained on the distant vessel out of habit more than urgency, straightened abruptly in his seat. "...Something's happening down there."

Arista crossed the gondola fast, snatching the spyglass from him, and felt her stomach drop for the second time that day: a massive, serpentine shape had breached the surface alongside the ship, scaled and enormous, coiling with the slow, deliberate menace of something that had lived undisturbed in these waters for considerably longer than any of the five known races had ever sailed them.

"...Sea monster," she said, voice tight. "Of course there's a sea monster. Why would an entire fantasy ocean, previously unexplored, not have something living in it."

"Can they handle it?" Colm asked, leaning in to look despite not being able to see anything without the spyglass himself.

Arista kept watching, heart hammering, and then, slowly, felt some of the alarm ease into genuine, surprised relief.

The Low-Key crew wasn't panicking. Figures moved across the ship's deck with practiced, coordinated speed, spellcasters channeling visible arcs of elemental force toward the creature's exposed flank, melee fighters bracing along the railing with weapons already drawn, someone directing the whole defense with the calm, confident authority of a genuinely prepared combat team rather than a crew caught off guard.

"...They're handling it," Arista said, disbelieving. "They're actually handling it. Look at that formation, that's not improvised, that's a properly built combat crew responding to a threat they clearly trained for."

"Unlike a certain someone hoarding a thousand stat points," Bram said, entirely too pleased with himself.

"I don't need to hear this right now, Bram."

The fight below unfolded in clean, efficient bursts, the creature lunging once toward the hull, deflected by a wall of hardened water someone had conjured just in time, then struck repeatedly along its exposed side by coordinated melee strikes while the spellcasters kept up sustained ranged pressure. Within a few tense minutes, the massive shape sank back beneath the waves, defeated rather than merely driven off, the ship's wake settling back into its earlier steady, undisturbed rhythm.

Arista lowered the spyglass slowly, equal parts relieved and thoroughly chastened.

"...They actually allocated their stat points like sensible people," she said, mostly to herself. "Every single one of them. Combat-ready crew, prepared for exactly this kind of thing, because unlike someone, they didn't spend a year and a half refusing to engage with half their own character sheet out of stubborn principle."

"To be fair," Claire offered, checking the boiler readouts with her usual unbothered practicality, "you don't currently have a thousand unallocated points anymore either. You spent them on the hydra fight."

"I didn't spend them, I built my way through it with engineering instead of raw stats," Arista corrected, watching Nettle's crew calmly reload a properly built combat force below. "If something attacks us out here, my plan is currently 'fly higher and hope,' which is considerably less reassuring than 'coordinated spellcasters and melee fighters.'"

Bram accepted the spyglass back, watching the distant ship resume its steady pace, wake smooth and undisturbed once more. "...Maybe it's time to actually think about that. Properly, I mean. Not just 'fly higher.'"

Arista sat with that, glancing at her own character panel, the Blacksmithing stats that had carried her through every previous impossible problem, and the conspicuous, still-mostly-empty combat categories sitting untouched beside them.

"...Yeah," she admitted, quieter now, watching the sea stretch endlessly beneath them, unknown and considerably less friendly than she'd hoped. "Yeah, maybe it actually is."

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