The girl nodded again, her face watering. The object she pulled out was indeed a fantastic crystal, twice as large as those of Dod and Danaël.
The girl embedded the stone in the steering wheel's opening, and the dashboard lit up. Danaël could see to his right the meter indicating the level of fantasia present in the crystal, and in front of them, the windscreen, until then covered by a layer of metal, cleared, giving way to a transparent pane.
Likewise, the walls of the cart partially opened up, revealing four portholes on each side.
The girl pulled the steering wheel towards her, and it extended, CLICK! The handlebars, clamped to her chest, engaged the fantastic wing mechanism. The cart gave a gentle rumble.
Dod clung to the back of the driver's seat while Danaël, unperturbed, kept his eyes riveted on the young girl. On either side of the carriage, fantastic wings encased in another metallic veil began to move, tirelessly beating and stirring the air.
The rumbling became deafening, and Danaël felt the vibrations throughout his body, the sensation being such that any itch he might have had was now superfluous.
In the two exhaust pipes, released from the metal mass at the same time as the wings, a phenomenal amount of energy was being prepared.
"You...you can still surrender!" The young girl suddenly exclaimed. "Do you know who I am?"
"I couldn't care less", Danaël cut her off.
"I am Evangeline de Résevi, second princess of the kingdom, and you owe me the respe..."
The princess lost consciousness, her head hit the steering wheel hard, and she collapsed. With a sharp blow to the back of the neck, Danaël cut the princess off again.
He hurried to take the girl's place at the wheel and turned his gaze to Dod. It was very rare for the latter to show such emotion, but Dod was speechless.
Danaël, too, was panicking; in such situations, he often found reassurance in the serene gaze of his friend Dod Allentown. Well, not this time.
"Am I dreaming, or did you just knock out the princess?" Dod whispered madly.
"We've really got to go, man!" Danaël retorted, looking at the tavern on his left.
He could see and hear people bustling about. The shots fired by Princess Evangeline were loud enough to alert the royal guard.
"B... BUT WE CAN'T STEAL THE PRINCESS!" Shouted Dod.
"I think it's called a kidnapping, Dod", resumed Danaël. "And then she saw our faces, so we couldn't leave her with them. If she puts a bounty on our heads, we'll be in big trouble."
"Maybe she saw YOUR face, not mine", grumbled Dod.
He let out a long sigh before leaning back against the first porthole directly to the right of the cockpit. Arms crossed, he was still ruminating:
"We're dead, might as well surrender now."
"Come on, don't be so defeatist! I'm sure we'll get through this; I just have to figure out how to move forward with this thing."
Carts didn't use pedals, but Danaël didn't know that; the only books he'd ever read on how a vehicle worked were on pre-symbiotic cars.
He looked for a long time under his feet, searching for pedals - whatever they were, there had to be a pedalboard! Danaël straightened up and scratched the back of his neck vigorously.
Outside, the royal guard was busy, lamps in hand and fantastic revolvers drawn, now surrounding the vehicle. Their white tunics adorned with golden outlines glittered in the night and dazzled young Danaël.
The soldiers could see Danaël in the cockpit, but Dod was hidden by the darkness, all the more so as he was in the blind spot of the four soldiers facing Danaël.
The latter could see the lips of the royal guards shouting inaudible words at him, while Danaël, deep in thought, tried as best he could to keep the cart moving.
He instinctively put on his hood, trying as best he could to conceal his face, then, in immense distress, his gaze turned once more to the dashboard.
Noticing four levers to his right, he tried to pull the first one, but the cart rumbled in response.
"Dan", Dod said impatiently.
"I'm on it! I'm on it!" Danaël pulled the lever until it locked.
The fantasia contained in the huge exhaust exploded, and they took off with a bang. Well, take-off was a strong word, as the cart moved along at ground level, gaining altitude.
The royal guards threw themselves to the ground, but two of them, positioned at the rear of the cart, managed to escape before being totally pulverized by the fantastic explosion.
The cart was now moving at full speed, the problem being that they were heading straight for the opposite wall. Danaël pulled the second lever, and the cart abruptly stopped moving forward, heading backward in the opposite direction.
"Okay, so not that one!" Exasperated Danaël.
He pulled the lever, and the cart came to a halt a few centimeters from the rear façade of the central tavern. Outside, the guards, panicked by young Danaël's erratic movements, ran in all directions, trying to avoid the ship.
They jostled one another, falling, getting up again, and then jostling again in a cacophony of noise. As the craft swooped towards the sky, Danaël hastily added fantastic power by raising the first lever, and the cart took off, leaving behind a multicolored veil, obstructing the view of the royal guards.
Reinforcements arrived, and the few guards still on their feet told their companions to take the remaining carts and chase after Danaël and company.
"See Dod!" Exclaimed a euphoric Danaël. "I told you we'd make it."
Dod hadn't moved a muscle, positioned in the same spot, and still with his arms folded. The small hint of enthusiasm he used to have was still not back, and Danaël noticed because his smile faded the second Dod replied:
"How do you plan to get past the metal dome, genius?"
A big detail that had escaped Danaël in the heat of the moment. "Shit, that's right!" he said to himself, too proud to admit to his friend the blunder he'd made.
The cart sped along, Danaël busy managing their altitude by manipulating the various levers. Piloting the cart was no longer a problem for him, but another had been added to a list that had been growing ever since their altercation with Princess Evangeline.
Princess Evangeline! Danaël turned back to Dod and pointed at the princess:
"Try to wake her up, we're going to need her."
Dod, still grumpy, mumbled a few inaudible words, but even he had to admit that there was nothing better to do at the moment.
The latter took a few steps towards Danaël before crouching behind the driver's seat, where the princess was slumped.
Dod gazed at her for a few moments. She was in regal finery, her blonde hair adorned with fine layers of fantastic crystals of which the young Dod had never seen.
They intertwined between her golden curls, reminiscent of a majestic peacock unfurling its feathers. Her blond locks were strewn across her face in a well-groomed fringe that stopped just below her white eyebrows.
Her eyelashes were the same color, and even though they were closed, Dod still remembered the crimson glow of her eyes.
Her porcelain skin would remain slightly flushed, and the expression on her face was taut. Her luscious lips rippled like a stream of refreshing water.
Dod patted her on the shoulder, and Evangeline's face quivered, but the girl didn't wake up. Dod set to work, this time shaking the princess more vigorously, still without success.
A thought occurred to him, "what if I slapped her?" Dod immediately brushed aside this idea; it was better not to aggravate their case by laying a hand on the princess of the Ordinal continent.
The princess still didn't seem to be waking up, and Dod was getting impatient:
"Princess! Princess! Princess! Wake the hell up!" Dod wouldn't stop, shouting and shaking the princess in all directions, desperate. "Did you hit her that hard?!"
Danaël didn't reply, all his attention focused on the four carts that were now on their heels. Danaël glanced in his rear-view mirrors, first to the right, then to the left.
Two royal guards were positioned on the roof of each cart, all clinging to small rungs, holding Danaël's cart at gunpoint.
One of the drivers seemed to give Danaël a sign, a warning of the salvo of fire that was about to descend on them.
The city of Goliath was awakened from its early slumber by the fantastic tremors caused by the guns of the royal guards.
Danaël zigzagged as best he could through the streets of Goliath, trying his best to avoid every shot. He had the advantage of knowing this city better than the royal guards.
He feinted to the right, pretending to enter the central alley, before immediately darting back towards the turbo-transportation line.
A fantastic beam missed them by a hair's breadth, blowing away several of the merchant stands still present from the solstice festival.
The turn was too sharp for one of the carts, which exploded against a barricade set up for the festivities before ending its fall against the wall of an alley.
Several pieces of debris smashed into houses, causing even more commotion. Danaël calmly noted the crash of the cart and murmured to himself, "Well, only three more to go".
Dod, still occupied with Princess Evangeline, looked over his shoulder and saw the direction in which Danaël was heading. An expression of despair and astonishment appeared on his face.
"Dan, you're not planning to take the turbo transporter with the cart, are you?"
"We're going to have to take some risks if we hope to lose them", replied Danaël in a hurried tone.