When he discovered most of the younger followers dead, the gilded core cultist was enraged.
He let out a thin breath. With a smile, he drew a talisman, snapped it straight, and hurled it toward the stack of forty-odd crates.
"Very well. I can answer in kind. Enough games. Fall back, every one of you." he bellowed to the cultists below.
The cultists sheathed their blades and receded fast into the forest's shadows. The gilded core was not aiming to kill men.
His plan was to gut their supplies. Smoke boiled up at once.
"Move, you fools! Move!" Todd roared. "That mist's poison, shift your feet and do it quick!"
Mortal men who knew nothing of such arts curled in on themselves and melted into meat puddles.
Rations turned sour between one heartbeat and the next. Rust bloomed over worked steel and crawled hungrily into fresh ore.
Captain Todd did not wait to see what was left. He kicked off, each qi burst a foothold that drove him higher.
He raced through the air toward the cultist, rapier leveled at the cultists throat.
Simeon rose with him, pouring his strength into the tip of his spear until it throbbed with light.
Together they thrust for the hovering figure along crossing lines.
The gilded core cultist twisted away rather than meet them head-on.
Blood boiled from his palm and swelled into a massive javelin.
He let it drop, all that weight and killing intent falling toward the wounded men below.
Simeon and Todd refused to let it reach the deck.
"Don't you go sparing yourself now, Simeon!" Captain Todd demanded.
"Spare me the lessons. I know what I'm about," Simeon scoffed.
The blood forged javelin came on brimming with qi.
Steel met it twice, a rapier flashing white as winter glare, a spear running with aqueous sapphire like river light.
Veins stood up on forearms and necks as the two men wrenched the javelin's path, forcing the strike to bite left when it wanted straight.
It still came down like a verdict. Todd did not wait to see where it chose to land.
He rushed toward the men below and flung his qi outward. A barrier rose just before the falling javelin.
The javelin landed on the ground. Blood answered. Spikes erupted from the impact in a savage bloom.
Simeon snapped his own qi shield into place and stepped in beside Todd without a word.
The burden split between them, and so did the pain, both barriers groaning under the force until the violence spent itself.
When the spray settled and the air stopped trembling, the crew and passengers found their voices again.
Cheers rose raw and shaking, not triumph so much as relief that their hearts were still beating.
"Bastard," Simeon said through his teeth. "The damned cultist's gone."
"Men're still alive on my deck," Captain Todd growled. "We run after him like fools, and he'll take the rest of them from us."
"This is your bloody fault. Had you even a hair more strength, we'd have brought him down."
The captain kept his mouth shut. Todd knew no one above them would care that the men lived or died.
They would not like to see the burned crates and the empty holds. Todd and Simeon knew they would pay the price.
Todd walked away, he stared up at the starless sky, wondering how much would be cut from the pay, then Radeon, now Sail Knife sat across from him.
"You did damned well tonight, eh?" Captain Todd said. "Saw you hauling the asses of those cultists. You mean to put your name on their list, or what?"
"Captain, I told you back in the day I'd swim a sea of swords for you, didn't I? I was a wee lad then," Radeon replied sheepishly.
The two of them started hauling the bodies of the diseased. Some were too disfigured, so they took mementos instead.
Then Radeon and Todd came across one of the crew. Dead. Still young. He had joined only a couple of years in.
The captain traced the gash on his chest. Deep. Too deep, even for him, to have survived.
Todd closed the boy's eyes and passed the man's body to Radeon.
He took out his flask and started drinking in sorrow.
"Look alive now, captain. You start pulling that long face and those ugly mugs will start doubting."
Seeing no reaction, Radeon, now Sail Knife, pushed his antics further, acting as if he could not feel the weight in the air.
He rifled through the dead and flashed an almost toothless grin.
"Look here, captain. Found me some treasure."
Todd knew Sail Knife was not a sharp man when it came to people. He slapped him with his hat and chuckled, and some of the weight went out of the air.
As they bickered, the rest of the passengers did not share their mood, Simeon least of all.
As they set to digging a grave for the fallen crew, the air above them began to hum.
A spirit frigate twice the size of their galleon slid into place overhead.
"Board." The word dropped from above. Pure command. No room for an answer.
Radeon and Todd held their ground as thick ropes came snaking down, meant to haul up what remained of the ship's array.
While they worked, Radeon let his eyes wander over the wreck for anything worth keeping.
Then he remembered the wooden bow where Fay had been tied.
"A moment, captain. Let me fetch something," he requested.
Radeon pried out the makeshift rail. In his hands lay a length of a tree too young to cut for lumber.
It ran nearly two meters and showed no split or mark where steel should have bitten through.
"What's that now? Saving us firewood?" Todd joked.
"I'd have a bit of her over my grave, if you'll spare it," Radeon said suddenly turning melancholic.
"You can plant it after you've buried me. Now shut your trap."
The captain turned away, rattled enough by the loss to let the talk of graves pass.
Radeon kept his head bowed until the man's gaze moved on.
Only then did his fingers linger on the grain. This was no simple rail. A branch made out of Platinum Endless Maple.
Treated the right way, it would become a peerless treasure, the first bone of the body he meant to shape for himself.
Once the ropes had bitten deep and held, the galleon's broken flight array took the weight. It shuddered once, then climbed hard.
Radeon stayed on the ruined deck with the captain, while those with no business in sky sailing kept to the frigate's deck.
Wind hammered Todd and Sail Knife in the face, and the deck flexed under their boots.
Radeon did not see the captain in any mood to talk, so he set himself to the wood.
He felt only its weight on his back and the paths it opened in his mind.
Devouring had carried him through his first life. He knew its limits well.
On a field of blades it was slow. It needed time to set the board. It was an engine for recovery, not a clean killing art.
So his aim now was simple. He needed a physique that could walk both mysticism and war.
Flesh close enough resemble men, yet marked by special traits he could claim as his own design.
As his thoughts wandered through bloodlines and specialized bones, the ship's pitch shifted under his feet.
They had reached the front-line camp.
Radeon felt the outer array brush against the first mate's token with a faint buzz as they slipped through its shell.
'This raid on a forgotten peak wasn't rushed. Someone's been planning it a long time.'
High above the ground, he counted at least a hundred bonfires.
The largest burned white-hot. Forges. Each one spat sparks as hammers rose and fell, turning out swords in an endless line.
Alchemists hunched over their cauldrons nearby, steam and smoke coiling as they brewed draughts that could knit flesh or rot it.
In the center, the array masters clustered around a great pale platform.
Their assistants held torches high while they fitted together a slab of alabaster broad enough to bear a city-sized array.
The ship eased into a slow descent. Cultivators on the ground and Captain Todd guided the broken galleon down along the camp's flank.