Book 2 | Chapter 9 | What's Coming Again Part 3

By the time Lillia had broken her stupor, Gerand had already taken the blade and snapped the rusted padlock keeping his cell closed. The metal broke with a thunderous clang that rattled the shipboards and seemed to ripple through the inch of seawater on the floor, though the latter was quickly scattered by his stomping through the water.
Rather than further ruining Hooke’s blade, Gerand used the pommel to break Lillia’s lock open. It was clear that these prisons weren’t ready for any sort of competent escape attempt. Weapons and leverage were beyond their means.
Gerand threw open the door to Lillia’s cell, and it groaned as it swung so wide that it almost fell off its hinges. Once it was open, he stepped to the right, stopping in front of Caelum’s cell.
The boy quickly pressed himself to the back, as far from Gerand as he could.
“You’re safe, you’re safe,” Gerand said as he lined the pommel up with the base of the padlock. “If you left it up to me, you’d rot in here, but I feel like Miss Princess would have something to say about that.”
He pressed the pommel to the lock but didn’t strike.
“Are you gonna call for help the second I open this for you?”
Caelum shook his head.
“And you don’t wanna stay in here?”
Caelum started to shake his head again but hesitated.
“You’ll get in less trouble if you’re locked in here, kid, but if she’s right about something coming, and I think she is, I would prefer to be out of a cell than in one.”
Caelum paused, then peeled himself off the back wall. “Wouldn’t you always rather not be in a cell?”
“See? Good man. We’re seeing eye to eye already. Princess, you approve of letting him go?”
Being addressed was enough to snap Lillia out of her daze, even though it didn’t answer any of the questions that had gotten her into it in the first place. She nodded.
Gerand broke open the lock on Caelum’s cell, and it fell, splashing in the water at their feet. He didn’t bother opening the door for him, instead turning back to Lillia. He held Hooke out to her. “I believe this is yours,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. She took the blade’s handle but didn’t pull it away. Gerand was still eyeing the weapon.
“Not to be a beggar, Princess,” Gerand said as he let go of the blade, “but do you have a spare weapon somewhere? Don’t know where you got the first, but I’d appreciate it if you had something less sentimental hidden away in your pocket.”
Lillia dismissed Hooke and called out one of the Captain’s Sabres, one of several that she’d left in there since the last time she’d made a legitimate run at clearing the Castle Siege. She tossed it over to him.
Gerand flinched out of the way as the blade flew awkwardly towards him. It careened past his chest, splashing in the water just to the left of the rotten potatoes.
Lillia had swung a lot of swords. That was her first time ever trying to pass one around.
“Sorry.”
Gerand frowned and fished the weapon out of the water as Caelum slinked out of his cell. The boy was looking around the room as if he was trying to find somewhere he could hide.
Maybe not ‘as if,’ but rather, ‘He was looking for somewhere to hide.’ He wanted to be out, but Lillia wasn’t ready to count him as committed to the cause.
“Alright, little lady,” Gerand said. His voice felt deeper now that he was free and had a weapon in hand. “You said something’s coming, and you don’t know what it is.”
“All I know is the objective,” Lillia said, “but thanks for believing me. Unlike some people.”
“You two are both talking crazy,” Caelum said. “What are you talking about? What objective? Do we even have a plan?”
Gerand shrugged. “Do you have a plan, Princess?”
“I was working on one, but—”
“There, she’s working on one. And any plan she was going to come up with would have needed ‘Step One: Escape the Cells,’ so we’re just getting a head start.”
“Unless the plan was to try to explain ourselves to the Admiral.”
“True. That ship might have sailed.” Gerand nodded. “But he threw us all down here in the first place.”
“It was a misunderstanding because you two are talking like crazy people,” Caelum said as he slowly closed the cell door.
“Caelum,” Lillia cut in so the two wouldn’t argue in circles for the rest of the storm. “Do you want a sword?”
The boy struggled for words for a moment. Then his face screwed into an awkward shape as every gear in his body turned towards trying to balance the trouble he’d get in against his chances if Lillia was right.
“Fine,” he finally decided as he held his hand out to her. “Thank you.”
She distributed another Captain’s Sabre. She was too used to always having access to the siege and an infinite number of guard captains to intimidate. At some point, far in the future, she would run out of free swords to hand out if she stayed on the Fourth Floor.
Until then, she was Lillia, Princess of Charity Blades.
“You’re welcome.”
In the meantime, Gerand had moved over to the potatoes on the side and was eyeing them with much too much enthusiasm. Once he realized the two were done discussing weapons, he closed his eyes for a little too long before joining them.
“So we still don’t know what the Princess says is coming,” Gerand said as he checked the weight of the blade Lillia had gifted him. “But I think the first thing we do is go up there and show them what for.”
“Show them what for?” Lillia asked.
“What? No!” Caelum cut in. “I didn’t come out of here with you just to go fight everyone upstairs.” He almost offered his sword back to Lillia but thought better of it before she could accept. “In case you’d forgotten, I was working for them until about twenty minutes ago, when this lady slapped herself onto the side of our ship like a drunk dolphin.”
“Pardon?!” The dolphin was one of the better sea creatures to be compared to, but being told she was flopping around by a commoner of all people? Even if it was true, she couldn’t just accept that.
“What, you—”
“You will treat me with the respect I deserve,” Lillia snapped.
[Lillia used Indignance - Highly Effective Against Hapless Crewmate]
“I am a Princess and—”
Lillia was cut off by the sound of Caelum slamming into the wall and splashing down into the water after being thrown by her words. The poor boy landed face-down, plastering his sandy hair across his face.
Gerand rested his blade on his shoulder. “Damn.”
Caelum was going to need a moment. Lillia winced at the wet splatter he’d left dripping down the wooden wall.
Just as she was considering walking over to help him up, the ship heaved to one side, nearly throwing Lillia into the water and sending potatoes tumbling out of their sacks and into the brine.
Of the group, Gerand had the best sea legs by a considerable margin. He outclassed Caelum by standing and Lillia by having sea legs at all.
The ship groaned for a moment, and then it continued until it was a wail followed by a rupturing crack. Light poured into the hold as the deck split above them, several long boards peeling apart from one another to reveal the gray of the sky. Water poured through the new hole in the ceiling.
“Oh, shoot,” Lillia said. There was no sign of what had actually broken the ship, only the obvious truth that it was beginning to split apart while they were in the belly of it.
Caelum tried to respond, but with his head in the water, it only came out as bubbles.
“By the Silk, come on.” Gerand pushed past Lillia and heaved the dazed Caelum off the floor. “Guess we don’t need to worry about taking the upper deck. Just need to worry about—”
Just when he was about to outline the plan, there was another deep crack, one that they felt before they heard the sound. Ropes snapped in the wake, and then the deck above buckled inward alongside a deafening bang.
“Was that the mast?!” Lillia asked. Nobody could hear her. She couldn’t hear herself.
But Gerand was already moving, pulling Caelum along with him toward the stairs out of the hold.
Around Lillia’s feet, the water was rushing and suddenly rising. She didn’t know if it was from the deck emptying into the hold or if there was a hole in the belly of the ship, but she wasn’t interested in finding out.
Okay. She was trapped on a ship that seemed certain to be headed to the bottom of the ocean, but she’d managed to get out of Nennia’s lair by clearing an objective. Maybe she just needed to complete the task and she could be whisked away to safety.
Of course, the task was [Survive], which continued to be both obvious and totally unhelpful.
Gerand pushed forward as the ship rolled to the side again. Lillia almost fell clear off the stairs, but he kept moving, shoving up the stairs to the door. He tried to push it. It stuck.
“Fuck,” he said. He drew back the Sabre to hack at the wood but stopped before striking. “We can’t cut through. It will take too long,” he said as he allowed Caelum to slump off his shoulder and stumble into the door. “Any bright ideas, Princess?”
“Ideas?” Lillia echoed. “Yes. Bright ideas?”
The ship was already breaking. What was a little more damage from her?
Lillia dug through her inventory and pulled out a small glass bottle filled with a thick, gray mixture. She winced preemptively before uncorking it and ‘throwing it back.’ Unfortunately, it was much too thick to do anything other than slowly slide over her tongue, covering it in grit.
[Siege Potion]
[Grants those who drink it a temporary bonus to damaging structures.]
For the second time since getting thrown into the hold, Lillia made a note to head back to the Castle Siege when she had a chance.
“Out of the way.”
“After you, Princess.”
Lillia took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Then, before she swung Hooke, she realized there was something she hadn’t tried.
Instead of striking, she held out her hand:
[Tantrum]
Another one of the Captain’s Sabres came careening from the space above her shoulder and embedded itself into the door, sticking several inches into the wood before wobbling unsteadily.
The ship heaved to the other side. Lillia yelped as she nearly tumbled off the stairs.
“Huh,” Gerand said, staring at the blade in the door. “I was expecting a little more than that, but it’s a—”
Lillia stepped forward and struck with Hooke. The moment the cutting edge touched the door, a yawning split tore through the wood. After the first ocean spray crashed through, the split exploded outward, the wood shattering into a thousand splinters that scattered to the winds above, each getting stolen away by the storm and sea.
Everyone above was screaming, but not because of Lillia’s strike on the door.
No. For a moment, the misty rain calmed to reveal the looming shadow before them. Just off the starboard flank was a massive frigate, standing fifty feet taller than their ship and looming beyond the rain-locked horizon.
“By the gods,” Caelum said.
Then, for a brief moment, as lightning crashed across the sky, Lillia saw the light linger at the top of the attacking vessel. A warm light. A flickering light. The Hearth.
Lillia nodded. “Oh! Seize the Ship. There we go.”