Strawberry's Descent

The rumors started within days of the announcement, new faces scattered across taverns and market squares in every kingdom, travelers who'd apparently arrived from nowhere in particular, trading half-formed stories for drinks and attention.

Some of it was clearly nonsense. A merchant in the Human Kingdom swore the storms had hidden an entire floating continent, kept aloft by ancient magic no living scholar remembered. An elderly dwarf in the Republic insisted, with total conviction, that whatever lay beyond was populated by dragons who'd simply grown tired of being disturbed and would eat anyone who came looking.

But some of it, buried among the obvious exaggeration, had the specific, textured detail of something closer to truth.

"...Metal people," Nettle reported back, having spent an evening at Tabula Rosa's busiest tavern specifically fishing for information. "That's the consistent thread, across at least four separate travelers who don't seem to know each other. Not golems in the constructed-servant sense we already know. Something that builds and repairs itself. One of them apparently claimed to have overheard something referring to its own arm as being a completely different age than its leg."

Arista looked up from her notebook, genuinely intrigued. "...Different ages. Like it's been repaired, part by part, over an enormous span of time."

"That was my read too. Nobody could confirm actual distance or direction, though. Every traveler's account of how far varied wildly: some said weeks, some said it felt impossibly close once the storms actually cleared."

Arista filed that away, cross-referencing it against her own growing collection of half-verified rumors, letting the picture assemble itself slowly rather than trusting any single account outright.

Word came, separately, that the Low-Key guild had already begun construction on a proper oceangoing steamship, Nettle's own initiative, moving fast the moment the announcement dropped, guild members mobilizing hull frames and boiler specifications with the same enthusiastic energy they'd once brought to platform benches and station merch.

"We're building for the water approach," Nettle explained, showing Arista the guild's rough ship schematics. "Steam-driven hull, proper displacement design, enough cargo space for a real expedition crew. If the storms cleared and there's genuinely a route across open water, we want to be ready to sail the moment coordinates are confirmed."

Arista studied the schematic, nodding slowly, already thinking several steps beyond it. "That's good. That's exactly the kind of practical, ready-to-deploy asset this expedition needs." She tapped her own notebook, a very different sketch already forming. "But before anyone commits a whole crew and cargo hold to open water in an unknown direction, somebody needs to actually confirm what's out there, and where. I don't want to send a ship blind."

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"...Aerial recon."

"Most of what I actually need, general direction, rough distance, some sense of what we're even sailing toward, that's information you get far more efficiently from the air than from a ship's deck, especially over open ocean where there's no landmarks to navigate by." Arista was already sketching, the shape of an entirely new kind of vehicle taking form under her stylus. "A zeppelin. Steam-driven, obviously, same core principle as everything else I've built, but this time the goal isn't speed or cargo capacity, it's altitude, range, and staying aloft long enough to actually map a route before committing a full expedition crew to sailing it blind."

Nettle leaned over the sketch, a long, heat-buoyant envelope, steam engine mounted in a gondola slung beneath it, propellers angled for controlled directional thrust rather than raw speed. "...You want to fly out over open ocean, alone, toward a landmass nobody's confirmed the exact location of."

"Not alone. I'll take a proper crew, same as always." Arista grinned, the old, familiar restless energy fully returned. "But yeah, air first. I want eyes on whatever's actually out there before I send Low-Key's entire ship crew sailing four days in a direction we're only half-sure about."

She sat back, surveying the sketch, envelope and gondola and rotor design all beginning to take proper shape, a project entirely different in character from anything she'd built before, not infrastructure, not a weapon, not even a carnival ride, but something built purely for the sake of discovery.

Nettle lingered a moment longer than necessary, watching Arista's zeppelin sketch take shape, something warm and slightly complicated crossing her expression before she finally spoke.

"...You know I lo—" She stopped herself, catching the word half a beat too late, and recovered with the smooth, practiced ease of someone who had clearly not meant to let that particular sentence start in the first place. "—am fond of you. Genuinely. This past year and a half has been the best thing that's happened to my career, my guild, probably my entire time playing this game."

Arista glanced up, something soft crossing her own face. "...Nettle—"

"But this time," Nettle continued, straightening, the warmth in her expression sharpening abruptly into something considerably more competitive, "we are not friends. Not for this part. It's a race, Strawberry. Air versus water, your zeppelin against my guild's ship, whoever actually confirms the new landmass first." She held out a hand, grinning now, all business. "And it's one I fully intend to win."

Arista stared at the offered hand for a moment, delighted despite herself, then shook it firmly.

"...See you on the other side, then."

Nettle held the grip a second longer than a purely competitive handshake required, then let go, turning on her heel and walking off toward the guild hall with brisk, purposeful energy, already shouting orders about accelerating the hull timeline before she'd even fully cleared the workshop door.

Arista watched her go, grinning, and then, unable to resist, cupped both hands around her mouth.

"YOU WERE TOTALLY GOING TO SAY YOU LOVE ME!"

Nettle didn't turn around, didn't break stride, but her shoulders visibly stiffened for one telling half-second before she raised a single hand overhead, middle finger extended without a single word of denial.

Arista laughed, loud and genuine, echoing across the workshop courtyard, and turned back to her sketch with a considerably lighter heart than she'd had five minutes earlier.

"...Race it is, then," she murmured, already sketching faster, the zeppelin's frame taking shape with renewed, competitive urgency. "Let's see who actually gets there first."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!