Chapter 371: Drop the Pilot

Chapter 371: Drop the Pilot

A flying ship with wings, not often you see that soaring majestically through the heavens. Quite the sight, I mean, if you ignored the screaming.

No one was expecting the ship to take off, least of all me. The wings were quite large when they were unrolled but very thin and flimsy. You wouldnt have thought they could lift an enormous boat weighing several tons out of the water and into the air. The sailors on board certainly didnt think so.

They decided the best way to deal with this turn of events was to start screaming like kids trying to embarrass their parents in a supermarket full-on tantrum.

It probably didnt help that the ships timbers began creaking and splintering like they were about to come apart. And it helped even less when parts of the mast began falling off.

On the bright side and you know me, always looking for a glimmer of hope in the midst of the horror that is my life we easily rose above the tidal wave. Say what you like about the destructive power of giant walls of water, they cant fucking jump.

Controlling this monster with freshly grafted fairy wings was a Herculean task. Youve probably forgotten what kind of physique I have, perhaps you assume that with all the travelling around in the fresh air and running away from murderous foes I would have put on a few pounds of muscle. Tight, compact abs, oversized delt to give me that Vin Diesel in a wife-beater look. Sadly, I had been skipping sessions at the gym of late and was still a weedy strip of piss.

The pull on my arms form invisible strands I could barely hang onto was immense. The wings were beating fairly slowly, aiming us up at an angle of thirty to forty degrees, I would estimate, and everything around me was shaking to pieces.

Barrels and crates slid past me, some of them with howling sailors attached. They must have seen some terrible things during their time at sea a Kraken or two, I would imagine but apparently a short sojourn into the wild blue yonder was enough to send them apoplectic with terror. It wasnt like there were sharks up here.

Yes, I know, inb4 attacked by sky-sharks.

Will you shut the fuck up! I screamed at the people screaming. Ive got this. It was the sort of baseless claim I could make with great confidence since if I didnt got this, we were all dead and then what were they going to do? Sue me for misrepresentation of the facts?

My calming and reassuring voice did nothing to calm or reassure them. The screaming continued (a good title for my memoirs, volume two).

Once Id wrangled the ship over the wave, I felt like I had a little time before the next problem. It seemed to me these nature-based attacks took some time to set up. Of course, it wouldnt matter how long they took if the ship fell apart first. And if the wings gave out, I doubted wed be in for a soft landing.

Steering was hard. Simply pulling harder to the left or right didnt seem to do very much other than to put the hull under more stress. What I really needed was someone who understood the nuances of flight better than me.

The most obvious person would be Richina. These were her wings, after all, so who better to operate them? With the doll controlling her, she could be told where to take us.

This idea struck me as a good one, and we all know where that usually leads.

I got the ship to a decent height and levelled us off. The wings were stretched out and our flight path was steady, sitting us in a glide that didnt require constant trimming. The sailors had quieted down to a soft whimper, clinging to each other and taking sneaky peeks over the rail to see how far up we were, and then regretting it. The big wave had dissipated and the immediate danger was over. The next danger, the imminent fall to our deaths, had already pulled up and opened its doors, ready for boarding.nove(l)bi(n.)com

I let go of the vines connecting the wings to me and stepped back. The crew couldnt see the vines, but they knew I was the one controlling things one of the main causes for the screaming so they viewed me walking away as some sort of portent of doom. Sailors are a superstitious bunch.

Its fine, were just going to glide around for a bit, like a big bird, you know, like an albatross. That probably wasnt the bird you wanted to use as an example when talking to sailors, but I doubted many of them had read Coleridge.

The ship was holding position quite well but it was going to start losing altitude fairly quickly without me here, and I wanted to go get Richina. I could have sent someone, but the sailors didnt look like they were going to be able to detach themselves from each other until we were back on solid water.

Stay here, dont touch anything, Ill be right back.

Its not often anyone looks at me like they dont want me to leave, so it was touching how sincerely the crew panicked at my departure. It really meant something.

I had decided it would be better to be in the room when I did it, as controlling others by attaching them to me was my new meta.

You want to use this to control her? Let me just reverse those connections and use it to control you.

The vine in question wasnt what I thought it was. It was very much a solid and unpleasant real world object, and it was making Laneys throat bulge.

There were a bunch of different options open to me and I had to guess which was the best, or, as I like to think of it, make an executive decision. I left my body and swiped my sword between Laney and Richina to cut the throbbing tentacle in half. It might have existed in the real world, but it existed here, too.

The part attached to Laney shrivelled up. The other end retracted into Richina. I darted forward and grabbed it. The wriggling sensation in my hands was unpleasant. I dragged it across to my body and I shoved it in my own mouth.

What effect would this have? Only one way to find out. I returned to my body.

The tentacle had been cut here, too. Laney retched and vomited up the part remaining inside her.

Richinas end was now reaching into my real world mouth.

It was like the scene from Lady and the Tramp, only much, much more disgusting (also, come to think of it, like Walt Disney). Richina fell backwards onto the bed, I fell on top of her. She was naked apart from some thin strips of bedsheet, but there was nothing remotely sexual about the situation. Well, I did have her prehensile tentacle tongue in my mouth, but if Id been French that would just mean I was saying hello.

The sense of fear and terror was huge now, and in my mouth. It made my lips tingle. But my attachment to Richina went both ways. She was trying to take control of me through this appendage, and I was trying to do the same with the adjacent version. The outcome was never in doubt. This was what we trained for.

The slithering in my mouth relaxed, and slipped down my throat, turning to smoke as it went. Richina stared at me through empty, glazed eyes.

The ship shook, like when a plane hits an air pocket, and my stomach dropped inside of me. Now was not the time to throw up Richinas soul.

Get up, I said. Richina did as instructed. Follow me.

I led her, and everyone else, up to the deck. The ship was aiming its nose down instead of up, and we were picking up speed as we approached the sea below.

Take us up, I said to Richina. She raised her hands and the wings grew bigger. We swooped away from the water and towards the clouds.

There were clouds now, lots of them. In the distance, flashes of lightning. A storm was approaching, sent by the Council, although maybe someone had French-kissed them into submission, too. It had taken them some time to get their act together and launch this next attack, but it was a pretty good one. How did a flying ship avoid a storm?

Take us higher, over the clouds. Lightning only aims down, right?

Richina did as instructed. We broke through the clouds and were met by uninterrupted blue. Uninterrupted by nothing apart from the dragons flying towards us.

Flossie, can you handle it?

She nodded, then turned to Dudley and exchanged a look. Love? Trust? A promise to be together forever between two soulmates? I wouldnt know.

Then she ran to the front of the ship, her bottom wobbling as she skipped onto the top of the figurehead some kind of fish wearing a helmet, I wasnt really paying attention and then she jumped off.