Of course, nothing was ever that simple. There was still the matter of actually finding a suitable place we could stash the four ships that weren’t going to be coming with us, on our trek across the Velancian countryside. As likely as it was that they would be just fine being left on the beach somewhere, sufficiently tied down, I wasn’t terribly enthused by such a thing. Yes, monsters wouldn’t be interested in them, there were likely no bandits to find and steal them with the corruption of the Skyfall, and the Ward stone I had quickly Enchanted with the help of Meia would keep the wildlife away.

  But there was still the matter of inclement weather. A storm could sweep the ships out to sea if we weren’t careful, and I had no intention of losing my ship to such a thing.

  Luckily, Bella proved her worth once again. Consulting her maps with the help of the Blueback representatives on the Thorny Reef, they quickly identified somewhere where the ships could be stored.

  There was a coastal cave up along the Velancian coast, mostly unknown to the Dwarves themselves. While there were far fewer pirates on this side of the continent, if only because of the sheer distance from Marrowmist, that wasn’t always the case. This cave was apparently one of the few remaining locations known to pirate-kind as an easy bolt hole to hide within, over in Velancian waters. Apparently, there was even a dock inside, although there was some doubt as to how stable it was. It had been decades since the last known crew had used the cave.

  But even if the dock was long since decayed, it was still the best place within a hundred nautical miles to protect our vessels from prying eyes. First, we’d set up a beachhead at a deserted stretch of the Velancian coast, where we would need to establish a safe zone using one of the expedition’s Ward Stones. Then, we would drop everyone off at the camp and, using skeleton crews, transport the other four ships that were being left behind to the cave. Once inside of it, I would regretfully remove the advanced Ward Stone from the Astray and install it on the Ashen Bride.

  Finally, we’d sail back to the base camp, where we would make our final preparations. Including the apparently laborious transformation of the ship into some kind of…land-barge.

  The Gnolls sure had come up with a wacky ship. Still, it was useful for our purposes, so I wasn’t complaining much.

  It may be an off the cuff plan, but it was the best idea we had. Our options were just so limited. The Skyfall made everything harder, and even with the APD’s, you had to accommodate for it at every step.

  Still…

  There was one problem.

  What, exactly, were we going to do with Captain Bronzle now? I was incredibly tempted to say screw it to my elaborate plan of wiping his memory and just dump the comatose Dwarf overboard. He was a liability now that I had no further use for him. Originally, I had planned to, perhaps, use him as a way to gain the trust of a Dwarven military post, or even a village. There had always been the possibility that the Captain wouldn’t be of much use.

  But he had been, and that use had run out. A few of the other Captains were even supportive of the idea that we just execute him.

  I was reluctant to such an idea, and I had finally decided what use Giancarlo Bronzle would be to the expedition that intended to save the world.

  He would have just enough rope to hang himself with, in the end. For now, his still sleeping form had been transferred to the brig.

  I’d talk to him when I felt like it.

  …………………………

  It took us several more days of hard sailing before we reached the stretch of Velancian coast we were meant to search along. Once we did, however, we had to be much more careful.

  In all likelihood, Bronzle’s patrol fleet was not the only one in these waters. And I didn’t really want to slaughter more soldiers, before it came to the appointed time to do so. Which meant we were going to need to rely on the expertise of our resident pirate crew, if we wanted to dodge the patrols, as we searched for what we needed.

  This was…tricky. We couldn’t be too far out at sea, because that was very likely where all of the patrols would be. Even if the Principality apparently had some method of protecting its soldiers from the corruption of the Skyfall, we didn’t believe the patrols had access to that. Although we thought we saw some Dwarven sails, far off into the distance, while we were out on the open ocean, we never saw a hint of them in the corrupted shallows. Which obviously meant we should be keeping a low profile within them, of course.

  But there was another problem there. You see, the western coast of Velancia was very heavily populated. From small fishing villages to mid-size towns, to even a few full-size cities, more than a few people were living close to the water. Normally, I think their territorial waters would have been full to the brim with fishing boats, but that wasn’t possible these days. It was thankfully deserted out here, and I hadn’t spotted any mid-ocean ship settlements like those that had formed off the coast of Blutstein. Still, we had to be careful not to sail too far to the coasts, so any curious lookouts within the settlements wouldn’t spot us.

  Ultimately, what that meant was that we needed to be careful to sail within a small, narrow band of perhaps…a mile? A mile and a half? It was the opinion of our navigators that if we ventured outside of it, we might just come into view of either a patrol fleet or someone on the coast.

  And either of those were to be avoided at all costs. We had no way of knowing just what the communication capabilities of each settlement were, and thus our journey was slow going. We kept our sails low, and at barely half mast, to keep a low profile. As a result, the journey was slow and tense among the flotilla.

  But eventually, it paid off.

  We got lucky when we found a nice, isolated section of beach at the bottom of a low, rolling hill. There was not a single settlement within a couple of dozen miles of this place, and it was bearded on one side by a steep cliff. Normally, I think it would have been a nice place to visit, especially with your loved ones. Gentle sands and rolling waves almost looked idyllic, crashing upon the beach, with a wide open horizon stretching off into the distance.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Almost was the keyword. Under the grey gloom of the Skyfall, it just looked washed out and dour.

  Still, after consulting with Marcel, we determined that it suited our purposes for a temporary base camp. Using our row boats, we began the long and laborious process of unloading all of the supplies from the four ships of the expedition that were to be hidden. Marcel assured me that the Ashen Bride could handle all of it easily, in its overland configuration.

  Well, as long as no soldiers were bunking down inside the hull.

  Stripping the four vessels of nigh on everything that could be of use to us on the upcoming campaign took well over a day. We had requisitioned a lot of supplies from the storerooms of Blutstein, after all. As that was happening, Nyx was overseeing the construction of the base camp. The estimates that Bella could give us, based on the maps available to her, told us that it would take several days for us to reach the coastal cave where we intended to stash the ship from our current position. With the trip back to the camp once we were finished, it was going to be about half a week before the Ashen Bride would return alone, bearing the all-important movable Ward Stone. That, and the skeleton crews that were to operate the other four vessels.

  It was early in the morning when we finished with the unloading of both our troops and our supplies, and we didn’t waste another minute once it was done. We left behind Nyx, Gustave, and Bleddyn to run the burgeoning camp and sailed away.

  ……………………

  The cave was right where Bella said it was going to be.

  Honestly, the convenience of it was making me a bit suspicious. Things just didn’t go this well for me often. As we sailed into the dark mouth of the cave, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it would be infested with a Prime and its horde of underling monsters. Maybe the Velancian army really did know about this cave and was using it as a comfy little staging ground.

  Hell, maybe the Mad God himself was clinging to the ceiling like a bat, ready to swoop down and bite the heads off of all of us good little soldiers.

  …man, I really needed to get some more sleep.

  But, no. The only thing that greeted us was a damp, dark cave with an old, moldering dock inside. Still, it looked to be in good enough condition. It was sturdy enough to lash the ships to the moorings, at least, and not fall apart. If…not without a bit of groaning.

  I was pretty thankful that the current seemed to be weak in here. I didn’t think I was going to worry about the ships coming loose and dashing themselves against the cave wall.

  Much.

  With that task accomplished, the only thing I had left was the transference of the Astray’s Ward Stone to the Ashen Bride. I was definitely going to need the assistance of another Abjurer to do this.

  Good thing we had one.

  “Hmm,” Meia hummed, examining the slowly rotating blue crystal over its plinth. She circled the entire thing several times before coming to a stop in front of it. The half-Orc woman eventually shrugged. “I…still don’t really see what’s so different about it. To my senses, it just seems like a standard Ward Stone, if not a high-quality one.” She shook her head, turning to face me. “You say the Kawamarans made this?”

  From where I stood at the entrance of the small room that the Ward Stone rested in, arms crossed, I nodded. “It still beats me how they managed it.”

  Behind me stood two of the few crewmen that the Astray had taken along on the journey here. We were going to need them to actually carry the plinth, while Meia and I worked our literal Magic to keep the Ward field stable as it was transferred.

  That was the tricky thing about transporting active Ward Stones. Normally, you could just deactivate the whole thing and spin it back up at a new location. That was far easier than what Meia and I were going to attempt.

  Because I didn’t dare fully deactivate the wards of the Astray. I had no idea if either of us would be able to turn them back on again. Neither Meia nor I could tell just what it was that made the entire assembly different from the normal set of wards and allowed it to function as the ship moved. The absolute extent of our investigations had, at the very least, determined that whatever made it special, it had nothing to do with the ship itself. Nor anything underneath the plinth, like, say, an extended runic array.

  No, Meia and I were going to have to keep the field stable as the plinth and stone were carefully maneuvered down the hall, up onto the deck, across it, and down the boarding plank, up the Ashen Bride’s board, and then into the storage room Marcel had cleared for its use.

  We couldn’t mess this up for an instant, either, or else the wards would fail. And then we would all die horribly to the corruption of the Skyfall.

  So. You know.

  No pressure.

  I rolled my neck, cracked my fingers, and primed the dual Mana core at the center of my soul. “Are you ready?”

  Meia just snorted at me and cracked her fingers. I tried not to let it bother me how much louder hers was, and failed just a bit. “I’m never not ready, Hart. Let’s do this.”

  I approached the left side of the array, while Meia settled in on the right. The crewmen had already been briefed on their job, so they wordlessly stepped forward and gripped the plinth from the front and the back. “Alright. One…two…three!”

  At the same moment, Meia and I cast a very common Spell in Abjuration. Something so common that we could both cast it in our sleep. This was the common Ward Diagnostic Spell that Stahlbrandt had taught us in the first week of class. Through a strange interaction between the framework of the Spell and the array of the Ward field, arrays were more stable and capable of limited transference while held in the grip of the Diagnostic.

  But it was a bitch of a thing, keeping a grip on the Spell for more than a half-second. Doing this, you had to constantly modulate your Mana to keep it in phase with that of the Ward, or else it might just destabilize. I could already feel the strain of it, and I had no doubt Meia could as well. Still, she kept the strain off her face, unlike me. “Alright,” I grit out between closed teeth, already having to fight the field. “Pick it up, and go.”

  “Yes, Captain,” The crewmen murmured.

  It was hard to tell just how long it took the crewmembers to carefully maneuver the ward enclosure through the halls of the Astray and up onto the deck. I was focusing so hard on the minor fluctuations in the field caused by the movement that I had no sense of time passing. I was only barely aware of when we stepped out into the damp torchlight up above, in the cavern, and then began shuffling down the boarding ramp, onto the rickety dock in here, and then up the ramp of the Ashen Bride just across from us.

  Through my focus, I vaguely heard the loud voice of Marcel directing us into the prepared room, just below deck on his ship. It was only when my Core Lattice loudly spoke up from within us that I realized that not only had we stopped, but the crew members had set the plinth down.

  I immediately slumped in exhaustion.

  That…might have just been the single most exhausting Magical act I’d ever done. I think I’d really underestimated just how hard it would be. It had probably only taken a few minutes, but the constant focus had drained me of at least…seventy percent of my Mana?

  Crazy. It’d take me close to half a week to regenerate all of that. Fade wasn’t with us on this last journey, currently hanging out back at our beachhead encampment. If he had still been with me, I would have been able to top up in a few hours, with a little effort on his part.

  Still, it had worked. I could feel the wards of the advanced stone now surrounding the Ashen Bride, instead of my Astray.

  I sighed, and after exchanging nods of acknowledgement with a woozy Meia and thanking the crewmen, I ventured up onto deck. There, I found it to be a hive of activity. This had been the last thing we needed to do in this seaside cavern. All of the other vessels of the expedition had been securely tied down and emptied of their remaining supplies, before we left them here.

  It would probably only be an hour or two before we set out once more for the encampment, were the rest of our forces preparing for the journey across Velancia.

  And our confrontation with the Principality forces, in the heart of Rhoscara.

  With one last wistful glance over at my beloved Astray, I climbed the wheelhouse of this strange Gnollish vessel…

  And mentally prepared myself for what was to come.