Path of transcendence om.., p.22
Path of Transcendence Omnibus II, page 22
After the fleet passes by and heads toward the southeast, out over the open ocean, Vili stands there, staring at the shifting grey mists. While I cannot see those airships any longer, I have the feeling that Vili can still see them.
"Why did you have us hide from those LjosAlfar faggots?"
Vili turns his angry gaze on Brand. "That barge wasn't something that belonged to Alfar. There were thirteen little worm Transcendents on it. It would have taken a lot of effort for me to kill them all. You would probably have died from just the shock waves."
"Would they have attacked if they spotted us?"
Vili laughs. "There isn't much that a little worm hates more than Dvergar."
Vili waves his hand and hurricane force winds abruptly fill the Night Raven's sails. The bow angles downward in a sharp dive until the helmsman gets control of the ship again.
"Set every sail we have on this bucket! Helm, take us up to our previous altitude!"
As the crew scramble to obey Vili's commands, Duncrik and the first officer stare at him with aggrieved expressions, but Vili, as always, could not care less what anyone else thinks. He turns to stare at where the LjosAlfar and Dragon ships have disappeared.
Over the years since the Massacre, I have seen Vili act a number of different ways. Normally, he is an obnoxious asshole. The way he was when he talked to Brand was almost like he was a teacher with his student. Now, this Vili is something I have never seen. A Vili with a serious and almost worried expression leaves me feeling more than a little afraid.
Looking over the airship's gunwale, I see the mass shadows from the ground streaking by. I am not sure how fast we are moving, but it is, at least, several times faster than we were moving before, which should have been around 450mph or maybe a little more.
Even though the crystal airships are gone, the poop deck has descended in to silence. No one seems to be in the mood for talking. Everyone is just silently staring out into the dark mists in various directions. I do not know what anyone else is thinking, but most likely, it is related to those crystal ships.
Time seems to pass quickly, but it still takes close to two hours for a greyish light to appear on the horizon. As we rapidly move closer, I see that the light is the result of living creatures. Vili showed us how to identify the location of living things when we first entered the Aether. Plant life just appears as a lighter black to dark charcoal grey, but animal life is greyish. Vili said the stronger the life-form the brighter the grey, with Transcendent beings gleaming like silver.
There is no visible action by Vili, but the wind dies. As the Night Raven sharply decelerates, he looks at Brand. A thick, folded square of cloth appears in his hand, and he holds it out.
"This is the battle flag of the Star Clans. As long as you're flying it, those needle-dicks holding the teleportation arrays won't dare to get in your way. It may be almost a million years since the War of Slaughter ended, but those cults haven't forgotten who we are.
"You know how to use the ripper. Use it and get back to Taereun's plane. When you go back to Yggdrasil, don't use the Aether. If the little worms are active, the chameleon field won't stop them from finding you without my Power to shield you."
Brand glances to the southeast before looking back at Vili. His voice has an inquiring tone. "You're going after the little worms?"
Vili frowns. "If that many are acting together, I want to know what they're doing. Just one Transcendent is enough to crush every nation on your Earth and exterminate all life. That group is almost as powerful as I am. If they're looking to fuck with any Dvergar, I'm going to kill them all."
Without another word, Vili disappears.
Startled, many people look around to see where he is, but Brand just stares toward the southeast. "He's gone. Angelique!"
"Yes, Master!"
Hearing an earth-born human calling someone "Master" rubs me the wrong way. I cannot understand why she would do that with Brand and his Wytch. What the hell is wrong with her?
"Give us an easy wind. Make it just enough to get the Night Raven moving."
"Yes, Master!"
As Brand turns toward the stairs to the main deck, The Wytch touches his shoulder. "I will activate the dimensional ripper."
"Okay."
Brand watches the Wytch's swaying hips as she walks away. The way that DokkAlfar slut moves is sinuous, like a snake. Though, you can probably trust a snake a lot more than her.
After the Wytch is gone, Brand turns his attention to the grey light to the north. He gives the impression that nothing is wrong, and he is in complete control. Who knows, that might actually be the truth as he sees it.
We only have a few minute wait before a tear opens in the space in front of the Night Raven. On the other side, a nighttime vista awaits us.
Brand looks at Duncrik. "Take us though the tear, Captain."
"Aye, Master. Steersman, steady as she goes. Aim for the center of that tear." Duncrik no longer has that angry aura about him. For whatever reason, it looks like he has accepted Brand as his superior.
Freeport
*** Freeport - Taereun ***
Return: Day 324
(Thorrin)
After we exited the Aether, Brand left the chameleon field running, and we continued north along the coast toward Freeport. For the past hour, we have been sitting some ten or so miles south of the city-state.
I have been to Freeport three times, and I never wanted to return. It is the cesspool of the southern coast of the Ocean of Dawn. For thousands of years, the outcasts, murderers, rapists, and general scum that were driven out of the more civilized cities to the north have congregated in this open sewer on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Freedom. The Gulf of Freedom is formed by the Freedom Peninsula, which is connected to the mainland of Sudnel by an isthmus.
Despite all the grand sounding names, Freeport and the Freedom Peninsula are the home of some of the most brutal slave traders in the entirety of the Sudnel continent. The only reason that I ever set foot in Freeport was to search for survivors of the Massacre that had been enslaved by the orcs. A number of the Freeport slave traders have extensive contacts with the orc tribes and hordes that roam the southern part of Sudnel. After discovering this, we have been sending an expedition to Freeport every year, but the last few years they have been coming back empty handed.
Brand turns to me. "You said you've been to Freeport. Did you ever see a Temple of Yggr?"
As I stare at Brand in a bit of surprise, I cannot stop my eyes from narrowing slightly. "There is a street called the Street of Gods. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of temples, churches, chapels and whatever else for just as many gods. Why do you want to know about a Temple of Yggr?
"Jinmu has become a shit-fucking Priest of Yggr."
My stare reveals my blatant incredulity. "Why do you think a Priest of Yggr would help you?"
Brand's smile is just as nasty as one that Vili would make. "Because his shit-fucking god is terrified by Woden having Yggdrasil's main drive. Yggr has already told the back-stabbing bastards in his clergy to help me. At least until we get the drive, Yggr has nominally allied himself with Boran."
The idea of Boran allying with Yggr disgusts me. It is no better than making a deal with the devil, and I thought the Dvergar were better than that. Well, other than Vili, I though the rest of the Dvergar were better than that. Despite their violence and brutality in battle, the Dvergar race has a sense of nobility to them that the human race so often lacks.
I sigh. "There is probably a Temple of Yggr on the Street of Gods. That place is filled with the worshipers of hundreds of gods I never heard of inside Yggdrasil."
"There's a temple to that false god on the Street of Gods. It's near the north end. There are thousands of the heathen bastards in Freeport that worship him." Farnulf speaking up is a surprise. He barely talks to Dacbold and myself anymore. Since the Dvergar, basically, kicked him out of South Watch for obsessively trying to convert them to his brand of Christianity, Dacbold has had a mountain on his shoulder when dealing with Dacbold or myself.
Brand just stares at Farnulf for a few moments. From the way he acted around Farnulf when he was Talon, I do not think Brand much likes Farnulf. To say Talon was disgusted by any and all religion would be putting it mildly, and Farnulf would sometimes go off on tangents of biblical prejudice when we dealt with Priests or Priestesses during the Great Fuck Over.
"Show me where it is after we enter the city! The only reason I'm here is to get what I need from Jinmu." After speaking, Brand turns his back on Farnulf, ignoring him.
Farnulf bristles angrily, but there is fear in his eyes at the same time. In the end, he does nothing and stalks off the poop deck.
* * * * *
As the sun starts to peak over the horizon, Brand reaches into the wheelhouse and kills the chameleon field. The faint distortion like a heat shimmer disappears, and the world around us becomes crystal clear again.
"Captain, take us to Freeport."
"Aye, Master."
"First, set three-quarters sails."
"Aye, Captain!"
"Steersman, set a course of ninety-five hundredths.
"Aye, Captain!"
There are airship mooring towers on the west side of Freeport, and Duncrik seems to be well aware the fact. The DokkAlfar have never been trapped inside Yggdrasil. The gods they worship are more or less in control of the thing, and the DokkAlfar mostly come and go as they please.
Brand takes out a suit of plate armor that is forged from a black metal. I cannot recognize what the alloy is, but the workmanship is very high quality. It looks better than my own work.
Without the least bit of hesitation, Brand strips naked where he is and stores what he was wearing in a dimensional storage ring. He does not show any sign of modesty or embarrassment to be standing bare-ass naked in front of everyone.
He struggles a bit to squeeze into a gambeson and leather pants. Even the leather socks sewn to accommodate his toes individually seem a little tight. To fit into the armor, he has to loosen the straps. After twisting, flexing, and adjusting the armor for a few minutes, Brand frowns.
"I think I put on some weight since the forging of this armor."
That Wytch of Brand's smiles lasciviously. "Like this, your body is a match for that thick human cock of yours."
God damn! Does that slut ever stop thinking about sex? It seems like she only sees people in terms of those you hate, those you use, and those you fuck.
Brand takes the weapon harness from his Wytch, who has been holding it while he changed clothes, and straps it on over his armor.
Just walking around in a loincloth, Brand is impressive as hell. You almost never see that kind of muscular development on a human. I look at the six gladiators on the main deck. Okay, in most places, you almost never see that kind of muscular development on a human. Gladiators in the DokkAlfar's arena might all be freakish exceptions. Looking at Brand, wearing that plate armor, he is downright intimidating. He could easily be the end boss in some old japimation from around the turn of the millennium.
*Have you looked at the pattern of that armor?*
I glance at Dacbold. *No.*
*Do it.*
"Steel is stubbornness." I whisper the words under my breath. I do not need to vocalize mnemonics, but the habit was already so ingrained before I developed the understanding to not need to that I have never broken it.
With the casting of pattern sight on my eyes, the world around me turns into a kaleidoscope of energy flows. I hate using pattern sight. Seeing the world in this way always gives me a headache.
The only ones who burn brighter with Power than Brand are Dacbold and that Wytch. If he is not Coalescent, how does he have so much Power? No matter how I look at him, Brand is a total freak of nature.
I focus on his armor, it does not show much Power, but the complexity of the patterns is absolutely ridiculous. I do not recognize the purpose of the sub-patterns but the style is definitely Dvergar in origin. That Patterning of that suit of armor is a work of art. It is not exactly an Item of Power, but with that pattern, it should be stronger than most lesser Items of Power. It probably would not take much to push it over the boundary into becoming an Item of Power. If that happened, it would be worth a king’s ransom. Where did Brand ever get that armor from? It does not look like Vili's work, and I do not think Boran would ever make something so simple.
"Who made that armor?" Dacbold being curious enough to ask the question himself is unusual.
"I did. Why?"
I lose control over my pattern sight, and the world returns to mundane solidity, again. Dacbold and I look at each other, and we are mirrors of each other, with our jaws hanging slightly open.
"What the fuck is wrong with the two of you?" Brand's burgeoning anger hits me almost like a physical blow.
I am pretty much Psi dead. Everything that a Psi does always feels muted, but Brand's emotional projection seems to hit me full force. What would it be like for a human to get hit by his projected hate or rage?
When my reaction to that impact snaps my attention back to Brand, that Wytch is clinging to his arm with a "this is mine" attitude about her. I think I understand why that Wytch is so willing to follow him around. Brand is not a Renaissance man, but he is an all-round powerhouse with nearly inhuman talent in Making.
"You Patterned it yourself?"
Brand focuses his hostility on Dacbold. "Yeah. Why?"
Dacbold actually shows a faint smile. "That pattern is incredible. Where did you learn how to do it, and what is the purpose of those two sub-patterns in it?"
Brand looks more than a little taken aback and stares at Dacbold for a few moments. "Thrall showed me the sub-patterns. He just gave them to me as part of training me in modifying and repairing patterns. They're nothing but children's scribbles compared to what he does."
It feels like Brand kicked me in the balls. This Thrall of his is a Transcendent Smith, one who is seen as a god by the DokkAlfar, and he is actually comparing his own work with Thrall's thinking there should be parity? I should be laughing at him for being egotistically arrogant, but it just makes me realize how pathetic my own ambitions, or maybe, lack of ambitions, are. I think I see why Vili is always so acerbically sarcastic with me.
Brand was once Talon, but Talon is not Brand.
"Thank you."
"Huh?" With blatant confusion on his face, Brand stares at me.
"Don't worry about it. Just, thank you."
The smirking Wytch drags Brand over to the gunwale, or maybe, Brand lets her drag him. He is as attached to the skinny piece of ass, as she is to him.
As the Night Raven approaches Freeport, silence settles on the poop deck.
* * * * *
With all our sails furled, the Night Raven drifts closer and closer to the walls of Freeport. The port office sends out a port official riding on something that looks more or less like a science fiction hover disk. They seem to be built with the similar principles to airships for their counter gravity, meaning some weird use of Elemental Air, and are propelled by fans that run off the rider's Power. The small ones are only single person, but they have bigger ones that can carry five or six people. The City Watch uses them for guard patrols, as well.
As the port official rises into view next to the poop deck, he looks like a sacrifice waiting for the axe to fall, but when he sees all of us on the poop deck, his self-pitying expression turns into one of complete shock. You never see DokkAlfar, Dvergar, and humans together on a DokkAlfar airship, unless the latter two are prisoners. Shock turn into confusion as the official looks around, trying to figure out who is in charge. His eyes eventually settle on the popinjay captain.
"Welcome to Freeport, Your Worship. Are you seeking to dock at our humble city?" The official's obsequiousness is not terribly surprising. Freeport may be a mighty sea power, but they have no real air navy. Other than Haven and the Alfar kingdoms and Empires, no one has any real air power, and no one, not even the Freeport Council of Lords, is foolish enough to offend those who do have real air navies.
Duncrik looks at Brand. "Master?"
"You're the captain. You deal with this toady."
"Yes, Master."
The port official's eyes nearly pop out of his skull as he stares incredulously at Brand. His expression is so comical that it makes me want to laugh at him, but you cannot really blame him for being gobsmacked. A Half-Alfar captaining DokkAlfar ship calling a human "Master" is unprecedented to say the least.
Duncrik turns a menacing glare on the port official. "We require a berth away from other airships, and we need it until we choose to leave."
"Yes, Your Worship. The southernmost tower is unoccupied. We can assign that one for your use."
Duncrik stares at the tower for a moment. The northernmost and southernmost mooring tower are set a bit further apart from the others and are more heavily built. They look like they are designed to accommodate the heaviest of cargo ships, but the weight of a human-built, wood-hulled airship pales in comparison to the Night Raven.
"That will be barely acceptable."
The port official seems to be relieved. "Please approach at your leisure. I'll go ahead and have a mooring crew stand by."
As the port official streaks away at the fastest speed his hover disk can manage, its fans make a loud buzzing noise.
"First, set one-eighth sail. Steersman, aim for the southernmost mooring tower."
"Aye, Captain."
"Aye, Captain."
In spite of the enormous mass of her obsidian hull, the Night Raven is anything but slow or lumbering. She approaches the mooring tower nimbly, and the dock workers throw mooring lines to the ship's crew. As soon as the ship's crew secures the lines to mooring cleats at the bow, the dock workers use heavy winches to pull the bow of the Night Raven tightly into the mooring bumpers. Another set of mooring lines are passed to the ship's crew, but these are attached to bollards secured to the ground below. The ship's crew ties them tightly to mooring cleats at the stern of the Night Raven, to keep the aft end of the ship from being blown around by the heavy winds. With the ship securely docked, gangplanks are hooked over the gunwale on both sides of the ship, giving easy access to the mooring tower's wharves.
