Before I begin (Cliché Alert): This is my first fanfic so I'm probably going to make a load of mistakes, so please don't judge me too harshly. I know I sound like a complete noob, but hey, I am one so there's not much I can do about that… Anyhow, this is set in the world of the Edge Chronicles, probably a little while before the times of young Quint, I'm not too sure myself. Please excuse any problems and notify me of them so I don't repeat the mistakes. Review if you want to, I don't really mind if you mock me ruthlessly, I get enough of that already to be used to it.

Chapter 1: The Woodslider

As the Woodslider swept onwards, the branches of the highest trees whipping against its bloodoak prow, Captain Edge Viper muttered to himself. It had been three moons now, three long moons, since his lookout Buggin Drots, a short, frail old Fourthling with surprisingly accurate eyes, had last cried "Sky-wreck 50 paces to starboard!" Without any new sky-wrecks there had been no plunder. No plunder meant no gold. No gold meant no food, drink, equipment or rest. And none of these meant trouble for a sky pirate captain.

They were hanging in the hearty of a vicious storm, snow, rain and hail battering each of them from first one side then the next; as the howling winds twisted and writhed to better attack each beleaguered crewman. As Edge Viper surveyed his swaying ship from his wind battered perch on the steering platform, he noted each of his crew; Mardin Flets the Stone Pilot, sheltered from the raging storm in his heavy leather hood and overalls; Hentuck Blatterband the deck hand, tall, broad with bulging arms and a great two-handed blade slung across his back, passed down from his father's father's father down his family until it reached him, as was the tradition in the Deepwoods tribe he came from; there was sharp eyed Buggin and finally the ships quartermaster, Sneevel Quex, tall wiry with a shock of jet black hair and a thin goatee, who disliked the present stretch of non-profit even more that Edge Viper himself. Edge Viper prided himself on his crew, every single one of them a Fourthling, whom he had recruited them from the bars and taverns of Undertown with the simple message: "Are you desperate? Do you need money? Scared of heights? Then come with me."

That had been seven years ago now. Each one of them was now a little older, a little wiser, a little more scarred, than when they had first begun their voyages together. Seven years of wreck-raiding had brought them before things that they would never have dreamed of before. Twisted creatures from Open Sky lurked aboard those sad, dead vessels, each more horrific than the last. Some wrecks had hung in their solitary post for decades, maybe centuries, before Edge Viper and his crew arrived to strip them of their riches, and rid them of their creatures. Seven years ago Edge Viper's long blade had been pristine, glinting with a mirror shine, the blade fine enough to split a hair. Now it was as battle-scarred as the old pirates from whom Edge Viper had heard the stories of plunder and riches in gloomy taverns back in Undertown, the blade darkened with blood and rust, its edge blunted by the thick hides of the many mutated beasts that had met their end at Edge Vipers hand.

Mardin was signaling to Edge Viper. Down! Down! The storm would prove too much for Edge Vipers crew. They had to land. Easy enough to say… Edge Vipers hands leapt to the levers and began adjusting various weights, in an attempt to get his ship level, ready to descend. The levers juddered and fought him as the attaches to each of them were thrown around by the baying gales. As his captain wrestled the ship into position, Mardin began turning a wheel that stood beside his rack of cooling rods. As he desperately spun the wheel, putting his all into this as if it were the last act of his life, a great iron cover began to slowly close around the flight rock, sealing it in, protecting it from the biting squalls. When the rock was sealed within a metal dome Mardin dropped into a small cabin that joined into a hole in the cover so he was alone with the flight rock in an iron chamber. He reached and turned the burners up as far as they would go and added more and more fuel to them. Then he prepared a great fire, beneath the rock any firewood he could find he thrust into the mass of wood. Then he retrieved his firelighter from within the folds of his protective clothing. He lit the end if the long taper with his tinderbox and climbed from the cabin, careful to keep the taper's flame sheltered. He looked over to Edge Viper who looked back with a nod.

At this signal Mardin hurriedly thrust the taper deep within the bowels of the framework of wood he had built up. The fire caught and spread. Soon an inferno was blazing beneath the great stone, heating it to its heartrock. The rock began to grow heavy, then heavier and heavier until the Woodslider began to plummet towards the forest below. Mardin prayed to the Sky. Edge Viper prayed to the Sky. For all any of the crew knew the ratbirds themselves prayed to the Sky. It was a dangerous tactic they used to get themselves out of this mess. The ship hurtled towards the green canopy. Edge Viper peered over the side, careful to grip his Captain's hat tightly, and waited for the time that they were low enough to escape the worst of the storm, but not so low that they would meet their ends on the branches of one of the innumerable trees of the Deepwoods. At such a point he roared down a mouthpiece; "MARDIN!! NOW!!" His voice echoed along a brass tube and into the tight cabin shared by Mardin and the flight rock. At this prompt Mardin pulled three levers with all his strength; releasing a torrent of sand and water over the flight rock and its fire. Then he grabbed cooling rods and pushed them into the stone wherever he could. The resultant freezing of the flight rock gave it new buoyancy, and the ship halted its plummet with a suddenness that set its timbers creaking and groaning in protest.

The ship was under control, with the burners having been relit and the iron cover withdrawn, and Edge Viper descended towards a clearing among some ironwood pines, still battling the winds that came down from the storm far above their heads. The Woodslider came to rest on the east side of the clearing with a thud and its crew leapt over the sides hold ropes, grapples, pegs and all other things that they required to bind their ship to the forest floor. Edge Viper called orders to build a camp while tying off guy-ropes and hammering pegs into the earth with a speed that his seven years as captain had granted him. As night approached Edge Viper and his crew sat around a fire, drinking the last of their diminished supply of woodale and eating the ships final stock of stale black-bread and old tilder meat. They would be able to forage for more in the morning.