When I awoke in the morning, I felt like I had been kicked by a horse. I tried to ignore it as I used the bathroom, cleaned myself up in the shower, then walked out to the great hall to see if the others had eaten everything already. Bran and Elle were sitting on one side of the biggest table, and Mira was sitting on the other side. Elle was reading from the notebook on the golems and ship, which I presumed Mira had purloined from my room. Bran was reading from the other notebook about Stonekeep, Bandit was reading from some book that was bigger than she was, and Mira had a thick book open before her that must have been from the Pirate King’s collection on magic.

  “Good morning, everyone,” I said.

  “It’s closer to lunchtime,” Mira said as she looked up. “We thought you died in your sleep. In fact, I’ve been pondering how to get your inheritance, and now you show up, just as I had it all worked out.” Mira wore that impish grin that I really liked.

  “Sorry to ruin your nefarious plan,” I said. “Is there any breakfast left, or did you eat it all, like you did to my poor steak sandwich?” I rubbed my temples a bit.

  “I ate it all, of course,” Mira said, leaning back in her chair, stretching.

  She patted her stomach in feigned contentment. I had my eyes on her figure as she stretched. I just couldn’t help myself. As I walked past, I had the feeling she was flirting a little bit. Having never had a girl flirt with me before, I really couldn’t be sure, though. I remembered how Nalimea and Hamot flirted sometimes, which ended with Nalimea punching him, and I hoped Mira wasn’t going to take after Terran ladies. I walked into the kitchen at the other end of the room and found some oatmeal still in a pot. The embers of the fire were still warm, so I put the pot back on the grill. There was a fruit of a kind I had never seen before on the counter next to where the pot was sitting. It must have been one of the ones from the cube, and I wondered who left it for me. That was nice of them to think of me. When my oatmeal was warm, I ladled it out into a bowl, grabbed a spoon from a little bucket, and brought it out to the hall with the fruit.

  Mira was pretending to be reading the spellbook in front of her, but I had the feeling that she was watching me in her peripheral vision as I set down my breakfast next to her and began eating.

  “Thanks for the fruit, Mira,” I said.

  “How do you know it was my idea?” She asked innocently.

  “Well, Bandit couldn’t lift it, Bran would have eaten it himself if he saw it, and Elle would have given it to Bran already. That only left one person,” I said, spooning up the first mouthful of oatmeal.

  “Very astute,” she said, pausing. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Sort of. I didn’t have very good dreams. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I slipped into your room to get the notebook, and you looked like you were fighting in your sleep,” Mira said. “It had me concerned.”

  “I don’t think it’s something to worry about,” I said dismissively. I took another bite and swallowed as I thought. “It taxes me greatly when I use a lot of magic. There’s a price to be paid for that, however necessary it is at the time. The dreams are just recollections of things I have seen. You know, skeletons and corpses trying to claw out my throat and stuff like that. No big deal.”

  “You realize that most people go through their whole life without seeing anything worse than their parents dying in their sleep, right?” Mira asked. “You’ve been through some pretty terrible things already in your short life, Jeron. I think it affects you more than you realize.” She seemed genuinely concerned.

  I thought about it for a minute as I chewed. “We all have. You guys deal with it, and so can I. There’s nothing to be done about it but soldier on, though, is there?” I said around a full bite.

  I offered Mira half of the fruit, which she accepted happily. I finished off the oatmeal quickly, but the fruit slowly. It was very sweet, and I savored every bite.

  “Has anyone else studied the notebook well enough to command the Pirate King’s golems and operate the Unseen Blade?” I asked.

  “I took a long look at it,” Mira said. “I don’t know it well enough to be confident when a golem is charging me, though.”

  “I have it here, and I can say the same,” Elle said. “I don’t feel I can take control of a golem under pressure. I need more practice with the Arborean parts.”

  I recited the commands that I knew, which included the ones about getting a golem to stop whatever it was doing (the most important one, in my opinion), the one about attuning someone to a golem to keep it from attacking a certain person, the one about embarking on the ship, the one about guarding the ship, the one about loading cargo, and the one to attack a target. My memory was pretty good. I could still visualize exactly what the pages looked like, even though I read it last night.

  “You seem to have it memorized. That’s pretty impressive, brother,” Bran said.

  “My memory seems to be improving somehow,” I said. “It wasn’t always like this, as you know.”

  “I can’t recall,” Bran said with a smirk.

  We all groaned at his attempt at humor.

  “Any way we look at it, if we want to get off this island anytime soon, it’s got to be me that goes down the stairs,” I said.

  “Suppose so,” Bran said unhappily. He’d rather take the risk on his own. That’s just who he was, and we all loved him for it. I was like that, too, though.

  “You know, we should clean this place out before we leave,” Mira said. “We could use a couple of bunk beds, and all the books, and some furniture, and all the pots and pans.”

  “And the tools in the smithy and the lab,” Bran said. “They’re very well made.”

  “All right, then. Let’s plunder this place,” I suggested.

  There were nods all around. It took us a couple of hours, but we started with the bunk beds we needed. Bran and I were strong enough together to lift the frames by ourselves, and Elle opened a portal right next to the bed. The portal somehow enlarged when the bed we were carrying got close to it, allowing the beds to fit inside without a problem. The books in the common area took us the longest to pack up, as there were a lot of them. We made sure we got all the furniture in the common area, too. I could feel that each piece had faint magic on it when I concentrated. The protection magic they possessed made them very valuable. The interdimensional space seemed to get bigger when we put things inside it somehow. I’d love to know how it worked. Maybe notes on the creation of the cube were in the library. That was a mystery for another day, regardless.

  “Is there anything we’re missing?” Bran asked.

  “We’ve got everything I know about,” I said, thinking. “I guess it’s time to try out the command words and get off this rock. I’ll give it a go.”

  “Are you sure you’re ready?” Mira asked. “If they’re like the golems at Stonekeep, you’re as good as dead if you fail.”

  “I think I’ve got it,” I said. “To be safe, we’ll keep you three at the top of the stairs where we know it’s safe, and I’ll go down by myself. I can always run.”

  “Don’t screw this up, bonehead.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Mira stayed at the top of the stairs as I went down. The stairs were ten feet wide, just like the hallway, and they went a long way down, switching back on themselves a few times. At the bottom of the stairs the light was much dimmer. A short corridor with a slight downward slope opened up into a huge cavern filled with sea water. There was a ledge going all the way around the side of the cave I was on plus the side to my right. The side to my left was open to the sea through a narrow opening that looked like it was barely big enough to get a cog through.

  In front of me, tied to a couple of short stone pillars, was the Unseen Blade itself. It was about one hundred and fifty feet long and was painted a light gray color. Unlike most boats I had seen, it had a very pointy prow, and it had a large, two-story cabin in the center of the ship with no mast or sails of any kind. I wondered for a moment if the mast had disintegrated in the centuries the ship was moored here or if it had been removed for maintenance, but my thoughts were interrupted by a metallic shriek on the left and slightly behind me. I cursed myself for my lack of situational awareness.

  It seemed like the maker of those sounds was right next to me, so I leapt back into the corridor to try to get to a safe place. A giant sword whistled through the air above me as I dove, barely missing me, and I rolled to a crouch as I hit the ground. I could see it now. The Terrifying Unpiloted Reaper of Destruction (T.U.R.D. for short) was leaning down to get through the doorway. It had four legs and four arms. The upper two arms ended in large scimitars, and the lower arms ended in circular saw blades that spun rapidly. I said the command for the golems to cease attacking loudly and clearly, hoping that I had the pronunciation correct. The golem paused with one of its circular saw blades spinning six inches from my neck. The golem made a buzzing sound that must have been its attempt at communication. I had no idea what the golem was trying to say and didn’t care so long as it stopped attacking.

  I was so relieved. Then I said the command that attuned the golem to me to recognize my other commands. It adopted a more relaxed posture, and the saw blades stopped spinning. I looked more carefully for any other golems and found another one closer to the ship, standing in the darkness of an alcove, so I gave it the password to attune it to my commands, then stand down. I commanded them both to board the ship, which they did by means of a gangplank that was an impressive invention in and of itself. It looked to be made of solid steel and it was attached to the deck in such a way that it could adopt many different lengths and elevations. It would be very good for boarding piers and other vessels, and it was strong enough to support the weight of two very heavy golems, something I didn’t fully consider before ordering them to board the ship.

  Not seeing any other guardians on the ledge around the cavern, I boarded the ship. There were two doors leading from the rear of the ship into the central cabin. One was a large door, about twelve feet in height next to a smaller, human-sized door. The golems took positions on the rear deck and stood there patiently, their heads spinning continuously in a circle. I tried to open the bigger door on the left, which was made of some kind of glass, it felt like. It was locked, and there was no keyhole. I realized that the ship was not painted at all but was made of a solid piece of glass that had particulates in it that made it appear a light gray color. I’d bet it was unbreakable just like the crystal scrollcase that my mother sealed her letter inside. I remembered, then spoke, the command word to open this door. Without the Pirate King’s notebook, we would not have been going anywhere if we even got this far.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The door opened to reveal a ten-foot-tall metal figure thrusting a sawblade at me. Those damned T.U.R.D.s! I dodged to the right, out of the way, and said the command word to make it cease attacking. When it stopped attacking and made its buzzing noise, I tried to slow my heart rate, then said the command to attune it to my commands. The golem straightened back up and stood at its station inside the door.

  I slid along the wall around the golem, which was pretty cramped, and saw that this doorway led to a ramp going down under the deck to another level. The corridor glowed with a very soft light, and I made my way down. There was an empty cargo hold down here that was divided into three sections. In the center were four B.U.M.M.s standing silently, holding onto a rail in the ceiling. I said the command to attune them to my commands and they buzzed a bit, then continued their silent vigil. There was a passageway down that had a thick, tightly fitting door. I decided to leave that for another time, as the others would probably be getting worried. Not seeing another place that a huge golem could fit inside, I made my way off the ship and back over to the stairway.

  “It’s all right to come down now!” I shouted.

  “Oh, thank God! We thought you got shredded or something!” came the faint reply, followed by footsteps. Mira was the first one down, and I could see she was really worried.

  “I’m all right! Everything’s fine,” I said reassuringly.

  Mira slugged me in the arm as she walked by. “Would have served you right,” she said.

  “Don’t get too close!” I said. “I set them to guard the ship, and come to think of it, I should have ordered them to stand down in the hold or something.”

  The others stopped in their tracks, knowing how dangerous the golems were. I approached the ship and said the commands to attune each person to the T.U.R.D.s. When it was safe, I beckoned the others to follow behind me as I repeated the process for the golems inside the hold.

  “Now that it’s safe, let’s see what secrets this vessel holds,” I said.

  “Sure. You first,” Bran said sensibly.

  I walked over to the smaller door next to the big one leading to the hold and said the command word that opened it up. Inside was a short hallway with two small cabins on the right, a bathroom on the right that was next to a steep stairway going up, and then presumably the captain’s quarters at the end of the little hallway. I went up the stairway, which led to a larger room with slightly shaded glass windows on all four walls. The staircase came up in the center of the room. On the back wall was a ladder going up to a hatch in the ceiling. The room had leather seats going around three of the walls underneath the windows. In the front of this room was a chair with adjustable footrests and armrests situated in front of a large wheel with pegs sticking out around the outside of it. It must be the rudder. Unlike the cog we sailed, this wheel was perpendicular to the floor, and on closer inspection, it looked like it could be held in place by a little lever on the front.

  Next to the captain’s chair were two tables attached to the floor. The one on the left was not really a table at all. On its surface it had a small map of the whole continent on it with a light that looked like a little blue dagger where our position was in the Sunset Isles. It had little yellow lights where there must have been cities, and the rivers were clearly marked. Very nice. The other table on the right was just a table with little rails built into the sides. It had a circular place carved into the table that looked like it was just big enough to hold a tankard of ale, and there was a spyglass resting on it that had two tubes. I had only seen a spyglass that was a single tube before, so I picked up the one here and tested it out. It was a lot easier to see from this one. I set it back down. On the left-hand side of the captain’s chair was a large golden lever coming from a box on the floor that had several positions notched into it. That must be the speed controller I read about. There was a smaller lever next to it that was in the “off” position. I wondered if that was the “sneak controller” the Pirate King mentioned in his notes. The hatch above led to an observation deck with crenellations.

  “Very nice,” Elle said. “It’s so much more comfortable than our cog was. We didn’t even have a chair.”

  “Yeah. The Pirate King sure had style,” Mira said.

  When the others were done looking around here, I led the way down to the hold, then down again to what turned out to be the lowest level of the ship. Down here there were bunks for a lot of men of different sizes, a galley, a mess hall, and some storage lockers. Set halfway into the floor, there was a very large, translucent, glass tube running the length of the ship, from front to back, with a few tubes perpendicular to the keel along the length of the ship, and a chamber in the middle of it. There were no openings in any of the piping or chamber except for a single, flat, transparent porthole looking into the chamber. Curious, I looked into it, and saw only swirling water in there. On second thought, there were a couple of darker spots in the water that looked a lot like eyes. I waved, just to see what would happen, and eyes seemed to blink.

  “I think we have another passenger on the ship,” I said, stepping aside and pointing.

  The others looked into the chamber to see what I meant.

  “Do you think this is what makes the ship move?” Elle asked. “I still haven’t seen any sails in storage.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what we’re looking at,” I said. “I wonder if this creature is like Cuddles, except made of water rather than fire.”

  “Seems like a good guess,” Elle said. Bran had told her all about Cuddles, of course, whether he’d promised the Terrans silence or not.

  “Looks like we should bunk up in the officers’ quarters,” Bran commented. “You girls can have the captain’s cabin, and we’ll each take one of the others. Sound fair?”

  “Sure. You two are probably too big to fit in the captain’s bed, anyway,” Mira said.

  “I’d like to have my armor and weapons nearby in case of trouble,” I said. “Mind if I get my stuff out of the cube?”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. All our eggs are in one basket right now,” Elle said.

  We went to the deck, where I commanded the golems to go down in the hold. Then we went into the officer’s part of the boat where we opened the portal and unpacked our critical belongings. Bandit was waiting for us in the steering room.

  “I think I know how to make this work,” I said confidently. “Bran, can you work the gangplank to retract it, then untie the lines, please?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bandit, when we get outside the cave, we’ll have to really look closely for rocks. Can you fly ahead of us and relay instruction back to someone on the observation deck above, who can tell me where to go, please?” I asked.

  “Aye, aye, Captain, sir!” Bandit said as she saluted cheerfully. She flew up to the hatch and had trouble opening it until Mira climbed up to help her. Mira then got up on the observation deck.

  “Elle, can you please get Chuck’s remains ready?” I asked.

  “Oh, my! I’d forgotten!” Elle exclaimed.

  She activated the cube, then retrieved the bucket and closed the portal behind her. Elle walked down the stairs as I climbed into the captain’s chair. I checked Bran’s progress. He had retracted the gangplank to our ship, then untied the rope in the back, and he was working on the front rope now. Coiling the rope, he waved to me. I put my right hand on the wheel and my left on the speed lever, then said the command words to activate the ship. I moved the speed lever forward one notch.

  When the Pirate King had docked last, he must have backed the ship into the cave. The prow was pointing to the only possible entrance, and we slowly and almost noiselessly made our way towards it. I could only hear a little bit of rushing water at the rear of the ship. The cave entrance was visible but looked dim somehow. I kept the ship in the center of the channel, and we left the cave without problems. Looking back, it appeared that we emerged from a solid cliff wall. The only thing marking the entrance was a single seagull’s nest on the cliff side where the keystone of an arch would be. I checked the map, but nothing had changed, really. With Bandit indicating directions, I kept going slowly out into deeper water, alert for a warning from Mira. I turned east and sailed around the point where the ruined villa overlooked the water, then north into the treacherous bay. Between Bandit, Mira, and I, we made our way through the bay and into the channels between the islands with only a couple of close calls.

  When Bandit deemed it was safe, I increased the speed another notch, and the ship accelerated a bit when we got to the less dangerous waters. I checked behind me, and both Bran and Elle were at the stern railing where Elle was saying a few words as she poured the Pirate King’s remains into the ocean. I concentrated on what I was doing. The last thing I wanted was to end our journey before it even began. Bandit and Mira came down into the control room.

  “Good job guiding us out, ladies,” I said.

  “It went a lot better than first time, I’d say,” Mira quipped.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t your fault. And look at us now. Everything worked out just fine,” I said encouragingly.

  Mira gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’m going to get a spellbook and see what I can learn.” She went down the stairs to her new quarters. Bandit flew over and sat cross legged on the small drink table on the right of the captain’s chair with her tulip petal dress spilling around her.

  “What about you, Bandit? How are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m doing all right,” Bandit said. “The ocean scares me, though. There are a lot of fish out there that can swallow me whole, so don’t expect me to do any swimming. I’d kill for a honey bun right now, too.”

  “Let’s see how fast we can get back to civilization,” I said.

  There were seven speed settings on the control lever. In all, there was a fast reverse, then a slow reverse, then a full stop, then four settings for forward movement. Currently we were at the second one, and we were still going pretty slowly, I thought. I moved the lever up one notch, and our speed noticeably increased. The channel between the islands was pretty wide and I didn’t think we would hit anything. I checked the little blue dagger on the map and saw we were moving in a northeasterly direction. I knew I needed to correct that and go more of a straight northerly direction, but that course correction would have to wait until we got out of the Sunset Isles and into the open ocean. As we knifed through the ocean waves, I spent my time wondering how the propulsion actually worked. If there was a tube all the way from front to back, maybe the tube was open to the sea on all sides. Maybe the water creature pulled water in and pushed it back out somehow. It was the only thing I could think of. I resolved to read more when I had the chance.

  -----

  Captain Doornail crouched with his superior officer at the ridgeline and wished he could hold a perfumed handkerchief to his nose without looking like a dainty maiden in front of his soldiers. The encampment of the enemy seemed to stretch on for miles, and the stench was immense. They carefully counted all the campfires they could see and counted the number of goblins and ogres at each fire, then retreated down the ridgeline before they were spotted. Doornail knew that ogres and goblins, being nocturnal, had very poor daylight vision, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He even took the precaution of pulling his blanket over his head and shoulders to keep the sunlight from reflecting off of his steel plate armor.

  In the days since his old friend Dortham Smith had warned him about the advancing ogrish army, Captain Doornail had not been idle. He had returned to the city after only a couple of weeks, despite the Warleader’s orders, and had quietly repaired whatever damage the Warleader had done to the forces in the keep before the Warleader realized that someone was wise to his tricks. Goodman had then gone for an extended leave of absence, leaving a void in the higher command structure and ordering that no changes were to be made in our troop deployments until his return.

  Dortham had kept things running smoothly using his position on the Council of Elders while the prince was away in Mithram and had held a council with the remaining captains in both the Stonekeep militia and the Army of Mithram after the Warleader’s departure. At first no one wanted to believe what Councilor Smith had to say about the coming invasion, but he and Captain Doornail together had laid out the evidence of the incompetence of the Warleader and had convinced everyone present of what was really afoot. Many were still skeptical, but Dortham had convinced the captains to send out a scouting mission to see for themselves. Captain Doornail had found himself going on that mission along with Captain Holdfast of the Army of Mithram, who was the highest ranking officer remaining. Their soldiers kept watch in a thickly shaded grove on the other side of the ridge from the ogrish army.

  “Seen enough?” Captain Doornail asked.

  “Aye. I don’t know how Councilor Smith knew this was coming, but I’m damned glad he did. I counted fires for eighty thousand troops,” Captain Holdfast said.

  “I counted eighty-five thousand, sir.”

  “Your eyes are better than mine. Come to think of it, I’m really glad you chose this ridgeline to wait at rather than advance farther or range more to the north and south. That wasn’t an accident, was it?” Captain Holdfast said.

  “Not so much, no. We know Kromwell Surekeel is in command of this army, so we thought he would come straight to Stonekeep by the easiest route without laying siege to either Indigo or Aerie. I knew of this spot from previous campaigns, and it’s the logical place to camp an army of this size,” Captain Doornail said.

  Captain Holdfast nodded. “Good man. Let’s get back to Stonekeep with haste. If their forces are here and with the disposition I see below us, then Stonekeep’s certainly their target. We’ve no time to waste in our preparations.”

  “I’ve little doubt that they’re working on that already,” Captain Doornail said. “Still, this army is the biggest I’ve seen, and I’d guess that just the ogres outnumber our regular troops. They have swarms of goblins, too. We won’t be able to meet them in the field and probably can’t hold out more than a couple of weeks in a siege.”

  Captain Holdfast nodded again. “We’re going to need a miracle, captain.” Louder, to the troops, he gave the order to saddle up.

  As Doornail readied his steed, he looked worried.