Swamped

The room shakes violently.

"We've been hit!" someone shouts. "And it felt real close!"

"Looks like it struck two levels down," somebody else calls out. Seems they ran to a window. "Maybe they were aiming for us and undershot. Might be good to move, in any case."

Two levels down? Hold on a minute.

"There were some sailors chanting two levels down," you say. "I think they're a cult of some sort. They might have taken the hit. Even if they didn't, they've basically taken over that level as things stand."

There's some murmuring.

"Look, we may not be that young any more, but it's not as if we don't know how to fight," Resk says. "I suggest we head down and take care of this matter ourselves. Not like we have a good way to relay orders if he's right about this cult."

"Afraid I can't go," Wiz says. "Not unless you want me to drop the barrier around the bridge entirely, and it'll take time to gather enough mana to cast a new one."

"In that case, we'd best handle this quickly," Resk replies. "Assuming the captain approves, of course."

"Don't see much choice," the captain grumbles. "But I'll have to stay here, and I may need a few more hands available."

"I should be able to help out, as long as it doesn't involve heavy physical labor," says the wizard. "Maintaining the spell is a lot easier than casting it."

"Hmm. Should cover most of it." The captain glances around. "One more person here should do it." His gaze settles on you for a while. "Not our flaming messenger, he's probably better served showing you lot where to go. So who else stays behind..."

Something about the way he's asking makes you feel like he wants a suggestion from you. But you don't really know who any of these officers are. Though you suppose you could point at someone who doesn't look particularly suited for fighting.

Does anyone you see strike you as better served staying here?

The gal with the cane, perhaps?

Well. One person catches your eye.

"Pardon me, madam," you say, turning towards her. "Are you walking well? You seem to be holding yourself up with your cane a bit."

"Some clumsy oaf dropped a barrel on my foot," she mutters. "I'm a little slower than I ought to be."

"Seems you might be better served staying here, then. Could be a fair amount of running around, not to mention the stairs may be a little rough for you."

The captain turns to her.

"Well, I'll be! Hadn't even noticed the cane, Ms. Bertha. You've been working as hard as ever."

She seems a little annoyed.

"It's not as if sailors ever stop needing a little discipline, is it? Frankly, if it were up to me, I'd be down there giving orders instead of up here. But no, first mate's got to be focused on the strategy of the situation," she grumbles.

First mate? You're surprised, considering she looks younger than most of the others here.

"Well, I'll not have you putting needless stress on your foot," says the captain. "You stay here while Mr. Resk and the others deal with the situation below. And that's an order."

"Yes, Captain," she says, sounding a little bit sarcastic. You feel like you're missing something.

But you suppose you don't have much time to think about it. The rest of the officers are looking at you expectantly. Mr. Resk, in particular, has the sort of look that suggests you get moving. And you're the only one who can lead them to the cultists, you suppose.

Hopefully you won't see your father again along the way. Once was bad enough. You head out, with the officers behind you.

As you pass by the quarters on the level below, you pause briefly.

"Incidentally, the cook seemed interested in a map in the navigators' quarters," you say.

"You mentioned something along those lines. We'll look into it later," says Resk. "For now, keep moving."

Fair enough. You head down the stairs. The guard you knocked out is still unconscious; you feel a little guilty, knowing that some of them were merely bribed.

"He was watching the stairs," you explain to the officers. "I knocked him out. Not sure how involved he is in the mess, he might have just been offered something to keep watch."

"Right. Once we've secured the area, we'll have him sent to the infirmary," says Resk. Then he pauses. "Hold on. We've got a problem."

What's he talking about?

Something about the way the ship is lilting... Are we sinking? Or... Elevating?

"We're rocking less than we ought to be," he mutters. "Which means something's funny about the way the ship's moving. Like we've hit land, or something."

You can't say you noticed - the ship's still moving enough to make you a little uncomfortable. But then, he's been at sea quite a bit longer than you have.

"Not much we can do about that from here," a particularly muscular officer replies. "Not until we've checked out this level."

"Indeed. Though they can't be watching it very carefully if they've left a lookout unconscious."

Hmm. Your father ought to have run past the lookout, shouldn't he? Meaning he should have done something about it. You find yourself unsurprised he didn't - it's almost disappointing to realize you had that little faith in him.

Regardless, all you can do right now is lead them towards the room where the sailors were chanting.

As you get close, though, you feel weird, in a way you're not entirely sure how to describe at first. It's as though everything's become lighter?

And then you find yourself rising to the ceiling.

"We're floating!" Resk shouts, as he rises himself. "I mean, not just us, the whole ship! The momentum's sending us upward!"

You aren't quite sure if that makes sense. All you can tell from here is that the door's open, but you can't see anybody beyond it. They might still be in there, or they might not. You find you can push yourself off from the ceiling, but you've got no idea what's awaiting you.

So how do you approach this?

You'd feel better with a weapon of some sort.

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that you should be ready for a fight, and unarmed fighting really isn't your strong suit. You've got raw strength, but you don't know much about technique. Which is to say, you could punch someone hard but you'd probably hurt yourself in the process.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of places to grab weapons around here, and most of the officers don't seem to have anything either. You see a few with swords sheathed, and two with crossbows, but the others don't have anything you can see. Not like you expect to get anywhere with asking them for a weapon; and even if they were willing to share, you don't exactly have a lot of sword training either.

What would be really nice is a good mudpike. Barring that, you'd settle for a half-decent club. Maybe there's a loose board you can break off, that would be better than nothing...

That's when you notice the door's hinges aren't holding up too well. A bit large for a club, more of a shield really. But you can probably do something with it.

You leap at the door and grab it, pulling it off its weakened hinges. Then you attempt to make your way in. It's a bit disorienting when your feet aren't staying on the floor consistently, but you manage somehow.

That's when you see the hole in the wall, and a bunch of unconscious sailors on the ceiling. You can't see the actual cannonball, though.

The wind coming from the hole is pretty powerful, so you block it with the door as everyone else rushes in after you. Mr. Resk looks up at the unconscious crew and frowns.

"All these people were at the party," he says, mostly to himself. "What in the hells is going on here?"

You wonder what he means about a party, but you don't have much time to reflect on it. He orders the other officers to get the sailors down, then turns to you and asks a surprising question.

Did you hear a bird noise just now?

"Did you hear a bird just now too, or am I imagining things?" he asks.

You didn't... but you do a moment after he asks. Not just any bird, though - a crow.

You were thinking not that long ago that messenger crows shouldn't be in common use yet. So that makes the noise even weirder - why would a crow be all the way out here otherwise?

While you're puzzling over that, though, Resk seems even more confused.

"And now it's gone quiet," he mutters. "Am I going mad?"

"Perhaps not, sir," you reply. "What sort of bird would you say it was?"

"A seagull. Why?"

Now that's really confusing you.

"Because since you asked me about it, I've been hearing a crow. Wondering if it's some kind of magic and you passed it on to me by asking."

"Magic," he grumbles. "I'm not in a mood to deal with magic. And things seem under control now, so why don't you go back up and have a word with Wiz about it?"

You suppose that might be for the best. But before you can reply, the crow noises start getting louder. Loud enough that it's a bit painful.

You're struggling to think amidst the increasing noise, but your instincts are telling you that the cause is somebody here. Maybe even somebody you can't see.

Would be nice if you could figure out where that person is, and maybe get them to stop it.

Start frisking the cultists. Maybe one of them is just faking unconsciousness, or maybe one has a magical item or something that's making the noise. A dead man's switch?

You glance at the unconscious cultists, who have just fallen down to the floor. You really hope whatever's going on settles down soon.

"Maybe it's something on one of them?" you ask. "Might be worth checking if they've got anything weird."

Resk glances at one.

"This fellow was quite popular at the party. By which I mean, just about everyone else here was talking to him at one point or another. Probably pretty important in whatever they've got going on."

He leans down and rummages through the man's pockets. There's a small money pouch, which he opens up to confirm it does, indeed, contain money. The other thing he finds is a severed bird's foot. It seems to be closed; he forces it open, and suddenly you find you're not hearing a crow in your head.

He frowns.

"This is neither a crow nor a seagull," he says. "Looks more like a chicken of some sort." He stares at it for a while, then hands it to you. "Go and show it to Wiz, see if he can make any sense of it."

You feel a little weird taking orders from this guy, but you suppose you're not really in a position to object. You put the foot in your pocket and leave, then start going up.

But you think you hear a noise as you pass one of the officers' rooms. Could it be Azel going for that map in the navigator's room?

No, wait... he gave you directions. The navigator's room is on the other side. Then what's this?

You weigh your options, and decide to take a quick peek in before proceeding to the bridge.

There are children on this boat?!

It's some sort of glowing rune. Probably has something to do with the cult problem.

SpoilerShow

Finally got caught up entirely. Good read.

The first thing you notice is that there's a small bunk bed with two children napping in it. Hard to believe they're here at all, let alone asleep at a time like this.

But you suppose that six months in, it's not exactly easy to send them back. Even if you complained to the captain, what could be done about it?

They don't seem to be snoring, though, so that's not what the noise was. However, you happen to turn your eyes down to the floor as you feel yourself lifting in the air again, and that's when you see a strange symbol carved into it. The knife that carved it is still there, stuck in the floorboards.

And the symbol is glowing. You don't know what to make of that. It's probably nothing good.

You think about asking the wizard to take a look, but on the other hand, it might be dangerous to the children. Maybe it would be best to get them out of here first. Only, they won't recognize you, so that might go poorly.

You're going to have to think about how best to proceed.

Well, did the runed knife make the noise you heard all on its own, or is someone hiding nearby? It would be irresponsible to leave the children in slumber when knife wielding rune carvers are on the loose in their bedroom. On the other hand, if the knife is unattended and there's nobody about, then get to the wizard asap

Well. You still don't have an explanation of the noise, so you think a bit more carefully.

If it wasn't the children, could it have been whoever made that glowing symbol? Then why did they leave their knife in the floor?

Maybe they heard you coming and decided to hide. And maybe this symbol was important enough that they rushed to finish it first, but were in too much of a hurry to pull the knife out afterwards.

But there was a big crowd of officers here just a little while ago. Why wouldn't that have made them hide? Did they start on this afterwards? Or did they panic at that point, and the noise was something completely different.

Well. The important thing is, there might be a desperate person hiding in a room with two children in it. And if that's the case, they might try to take hostages.

You don't think you can take that chance. You should at least try to figure out if there's anyone else in the room. You open the door and slip in. You look around for signs that either someone's here, or of what else might have made the noise.

And then you spot something. Something that you couldn't see from outside, but that's even stranger than the glowing symbol on the floor.

Nasty... It looks like a bunch of bugs

It looks like a mass of bugs. Dead bugs, at that. They've somehow formed a vaguely human shape, but it's not moving. Just standing there.

Didn't the medic say you might have been exposed to glaxin? Maybe the hallucinations are finally kicking in. Hells, maybe the symbol's a figment of your imagination too.

On the other hand, you're apparently seventeen years in the past, on a ship with Bigfoot and Carma and your runaway father and gods know who else you might recognize. Nothing here is nearly as unlikely as that. Maybe the officer in this room just has some weird ideas about art.

Yeah. That would be a real comforting explanation if it were true. But you see the bell on the wall, specifically the one that's been smashed. And you see the hammer just a few inches away from the mass of dead bugs. You don't know what in the hells that thing is, but you definitely don't want to turn your back on it. And you don't want to leave it alone with these children, either.

But if you wake up the children, they might panic and things could get out of hand. Though they seem to be sleeping pretty deeply, considering they don't seem to mind when their bed floats up to the ceiling.

Oddly enough, the mass of bugs seems completely unaffected by whatever's pushing the ship around. Weird. You don't know what to make of that.

Well, best to figure out what you're doing, and do it quickly.

Maybe this is actually a good time to panic. Alert the children.

Well. Whatever's going on with the bugs and that glowing thing, this ship is under attack. You're supposed to look like a sailor, so the kids will probably understand if you say there's an emergency. After all, the old saying about sinking ships is "children and caregivers first", so they've probably been told.

You have to wonder about their caregiver if they're letting the kids sleep while there's a pirate attack, though. Even if they're busy with whatever duties they have, they ought to have sent someone up here.

Wait - maybe they did. The cultists were keeping people away, after all.

Well, you suppose it's not really your business to figure that out. What you'd like to do is figure out how to get back to your own time and your own problems. You really don't want to get stuck worrying about things like whether it'll somehow mess with the history you know if you save this ship.

You head over to the bunk bed. The kid on the lower bunk looks a bit older, so you shake him by the arm until he wakes up.

"What's going on," he mutters, then he glances at you and his eyes widen. "Who are you?"

"There's an emergency," you say. "If it gets worse, you might have to abandon ship soon. Could you wake up your sibling?" Better not to risk scaring a younger kid.

The kid looks worried, but stands up and climbs the ladder.

"Hey, Sidney," he says. "We've got to get to the lifeboats."

The other kid just mumbles and mutters weakly, but they do climb down after a bit. The older kid glances at the bugs.

"What's going on over there?" he asks. "What is that thing? And what's that symbol on the ground?"

Well, they're not panicking, thankfully, but you're not sure how best to answer that question. It's not like you know either.

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't touch it. There are a lot of weird things going on right now. I'm on my way to alert the wizard.

"Something for the wizard to deal with," you settle on. "I'm going to head up and tell him about it."

"You aren't going to help us get to the lifeboats?" asks the younger child.

It's probably best not to leave the children unattended.

"I'll take you up to the bridge first. It ought to be a quick conversation, and if it's not, I'm sure the captain can arrange something."

The kids look at each other, shrug, and start heading for the door. You follow closely behind, keeping an eye on the weird bug-thing the whole while. Just in case.

You head upstairs to the bridge, thankfully without further incident. Though you're surprised to see a grebling on the bridge who wasn't there before.

"AAAHHHH! Fire! Fire!"

But before you have time to think about that, you realize that the kids are screaming because you forgot about the business where you look like you're on fire when you come in here. Everyone turns to you at the noise, and the grebling starts screaming too.

"It's just a magic trick," the wizard sighs. "No actual fire. Why did you bring children here?"

The children and the grebling seem to calm down. The older kid whispers "cool", but you ignore it as best you can and answer the question.

"I found them in their beds, asleep. No one else had come to fetch them, I guess. They ought to be ready to evacuate, just in case, right?"

"Children and caregivers first," the captain agrees. He gives the grebling a look. "Could you take them to the lifeboats? I think it would be best if you were ready to leave, too."

"I'm not a caregiver," she grumbles back. "I'm a scientist."

"The point is, you're not crew. Which means you're not involved in the fighting, so if it goes wrong you ought to escape."

She seems annoyed, but soon walks over.

"Right. Come along, kiddies. Hopefully we won't need to actually leave, because I still have things to talk to the captain about."

She takes their hands and walks out. Good, you were kind of hoping to have plenty of time to talk to the wizard.

But you don't get a chance to explain any of the weird stuff you found before he starts saying something to you.

He already knows about the rune, given the massive ether field around it.

"Did you see a symbol like this while you were downstairs?" he asks. He traces it out with his hands. By the time he's halfway through, you're pretty sure you recognize it.

"Yeah. Carved into the floor in the room where I found those two kids. And glowing."

"I thought so," he says. "That's a rune of flight. It's making the ship raise, but something must be interfering because it keeps lowering to the water again. I imagine you've noticed things have been rather unstable."

"So are you going to do something about it?"

"Well, I'm going to have a look at it, but I don't plan to disable it until I can work out the cause of the interference. Otherwise it might push us under the waves."

That does sound pretty bad.

"I'll come with you. I have a lot of questions and you seem like my best bet to answer them."

He frowns.

"As long as you stay quiet when I'm doing my work, I suppose I can lend you an ear."

It's a reasonable request, but you can't say you care for the attitude he's putting behind it. Still, not like you're very picky right now.

"Of course."

"Then let's get going. I may need some help from you, too."

He starts walking, and you follow closely behind. As you start walking to the door, you think about what to ask him first.

Well, you've got Carma, the bird foot, and the dead bugs. Let's try the bugs first.