Chapter 640 (2/2)

Stilling himself with an effort of will, Drake admitted to himself that it wasn’t all bad. Due to that fearful fall, he had met Mieu. After a quick glance around himself, Drake reached into his pocket and removed a piece of paper that had been carefully folded in half. Most of the 8 person crew was below decks for the meal, with only two remaining up here to watch their course and steer the ship. Both were seemingly consumed with their tasks.

Drake unfolded the paper.

A quick sketch stared back up at him with his own eyes. Although it was done quickly, his own face and upper torso were cast in sharp relief in graphite or some charcoal variant. Drake would have appreciated knowing what it was made of so he could take better care of it, but he hadn’t known to ask.

The artist, Mieu, had taken a few liberties with the way Drake looked. His brows were heavier and more stern than he would have believed about himself. His chin was raised, almost defiantly. Or perhaps the better way of saying it would simply to say he looked… angry.

Most of all though, his eyes were almost mesmerizing. Drake couldn’t believe that she had done it, but he found looking at his own eyes to be intimidating, reassuring, and calming all at the same time. It was clear that almost half of the time for the whole drawing had been in finishing up the details that she had wanted for his eyes. There was a sense about him that seemed to say that he was a dangerous enemy, but a steadfast friend.

Which, Drake supposed, rubbing his chin, wasn’t such a bad way to describe him…

A gust of wind brought him back to awareness of his surroundings, and he carefully folded the paper back up and stored it within his interspatial ring. It was… a strange gift. And one that Drake couldn’t help dwelling on-

The ship lurched strangely to the left as if hit with a battering ram. Drake surged to his feet, looking around wildly. His elemental condensed on his shoulder, bristling with anxiety and panic. “Are we under attack?!?”

“Huh?”

Drake looked sharply up. A young woman, Moniky, was staring down at him with apparent amusement. Drake took a deep breath and said, “I just mean we seemed to be hit by something so-”

“Ha, that was just a bit of rough wind. And if that was enough to get a jump out of you… the rest of today will be pretty eye-opening.” She flipped as she dropped down and landed next to him on her feet. “Heh, better strap yourself in tight. There’s a storm ahead. We will ride right over it, but it won’t be peaceful.”

That turned out to be the understatement of the century. What followed was his worst nightmare. By the end of it, Drake tied himself to the wooden beam in his private cabin, praying for anything to get him out of here. He couldn’t stop thinking about how fragile the craft was, and how any sort of untoward wind would spell their doom.

Six hours later, Drake stumbled out of his room with a pale face. “Is… is it over?”

“Aye,” The captain answered, sharing a grin with the Aviator at his expense.

“I don’t get it,” Drake said, and halfway through speaking, he realized his mild shock was making him a bit more candid than he would have preferred. “Why not make the vessels bigger? Like a cruise ship from the old world; enough size to make sure it isn’t like a hellbound roller coaster.”

The Aviator answered, rather than the Captain. “Two reasons. First, we have to admit… skyship technology is relatively new. It was based on the old designs of course, but the Buoyancy and Lift Skills were only obtained after the System hit and Avrail Silver obtained his Class. It is hard to scale up size wise currently. The weight becomes too much for your average Aviator.

“And second,” The Aviator walked to the edge and gestured to the clouds below them. “One of my Skills is reading the wind. It lets the ship flow through the really powerful gusts without being damaged. That only works if the vessel is small. Too big and we take those directly on the chin. To survive that, we would need-”

“Stronger wood, bigger boats, and suddenly they are too heavy to float,” Drake said, waving his hand. “I get it.”

What he also now got was that he was on a vessel that was the cutting edge of research in the field of skyships. They were all guessing here.

Drake said another prayer to a god he didn’t believe in, just in case it would help.