Chapter 18 "Rough Ride"
~ CLOUD SEA ~
"Who are you?!" The intruder didn't answer me. The air grew cold as he advanced towards us with his nodachi in hand. His long hair was silver like his armor, and I was completely transfixed by the spiked mask that covered his eyes. I wasn't even paying attention to how he had intimidated us into backtracking, like a bully in an alley. "I'll ask again… who are you?"
When we backed up as far as we could go, it occurred to me that he wasn't trying to scare us but rather he was going for the core crystals behind the back wall. Just as I was about to order the team to guard the door, I saw Nia quietly climb down the ladder behind our uninvited guest. (What?! She wasn't with me this whole time?!)
Feeling her presence behind him, the Blade turned around and spotted her. She and I were completely separated. With his back turned at us, I ordered the soldiers to subdue the intruder. In a single motion, he spun around and collided his one weapon with all of theirs. Nia used this diversion to sneak into the cockpit and check on the pilot. In another swift motion, the Blade swung back and knocked all of the soldiers and their common Blades to the floor.
I held up my shield and gripped Nia's scimitar. However, since we were separated, she wasn't able to power it. I was helpless in this state. The Blade walked past the incapacitated soldiers, brushing some of them aside with his feet. Soon, Nia reappeared from the cockpit, bringing a faint blue aura with her which filled the room.
"Wh-what do we do now?" James asked me with a trembling voice. "This guy's unreal." Even Brusa hesitated.
"Guard the door with your shield-hammer!" I shouted to James before I turned to Brusa. "Alright, time to prove yourself! Go on the offensive!"
"Right, then…" She tightened her grip on her megalance as Goliad powered it with his earth element. Curious to see what sort of fight she could bring, the still-unidentified Blade stopped and let her come at him. The sound of the two weapons striking was loud in the cramped room. In the meantime, Nia finally reunited with me and powered up the scimitar.
"Are you hurt?" Her healing powers encased me.
"No, I'm fine," I responded out of breath from the adrenaline rush, "but what about the soldiers and the pilot?"
"The pilot will live but he's out cold. I'm still healing the others." As she said that, I noticed that the room was still glowing a faint light of blue. "I'm sorry, but I can't fully support you and keep them alive at the same time."
After a minute of taking swipes at each other, the intruder used a little more muscle and slammed Brusa against the wall. As she fell to the floor, Goliad grabbed the megalance from her and took a defensive pose in front of her. He put up a valiant effort, much like how he did against Nia and I in the championship. Ultimately, he was knocked down as well.
"Please… I beseech you… stop this!" I didn't like how desperate my words sounded, but I was indeed desperate. "We're flying over neutral territory. We're not trying to invade your Titan!" The Blade stepped closer to us, still without a scratch on him. I felt Nia's power on the scimitar weaken as she reallocated some of her healing to Brusa and Goliad.
The silver-haired Blade sensed our vulnerability and struck with enough force to send both of us against the wall. My shield shattered like glass and Nia's scimitar was flung clear out of reach. We fell to the floor, stunned, gasping for air. I might've blacked out for a moment, but I wasn't sure. Perhaps it was the cold floor against my hot skin that prevented me from fully losing consciousness. As I lied there motionlessly, I barely made out the faint glow of Nia's healing aura still reaching across the room. She must've retained her consciousness as well which was the only relief that I felt amongst the throbs of pain. There was ringing in my ears as I heard James and Godfrey scream and shout.
Eventually, I found enough strength to roll over to face the Blade as he sliced open the door to the core crystal storage. By now, he had incapacitated everybody except for Nia and I, plus the inventory specialist who curled over in fear.
Unaware of how much noise I was making, I struggled to crawl over to my partner. She rested on her stomach with one hand out to keep her healing power going and the other hand in front of her face. I reached for her hand and instantly I regained a little bit more strength, as if I had siphoned from her power.
The violence ceased. The powerful Blade sheathed his weapon and gazed at the collection of core crystals. The inventory specialist could've grabbed the Blade by the neck, but he remained on the floor in a cowering, fetal position. Our uninvited guest had us completely under his thumb and he knew it. Casually, he picked up a core in its container, then another, like a customer browsing in a shop. At this point, I expected him to steal a rare core or two, but instead he put everything back.
"You're all fortunate. This is a much better fate." At long last, the Blade spoke, although he appeared to be talking to the cores instead of us. (Is he delusional?)
"Nia… honey…" I helped her sit up and held her tight. If this was to be the end for us, then the final thing that I wanted to do before we died was hug her. I didn't know how long we sat together like that, but eventually the Blade exited the storage room and returned to us.
"So, you're still breathing." He was definitely talking to us now. He reached for his nodachi and raised it over our heads.
"No!" Nia screamed and increased the magnitude of her healing aura. We hunched over and braced for impact, but it never came. However, the stress was too much for me and I fell over in a dizzy spell. Nia leaned down to shield me from the Blade who simply stood there and watched us. Again, I wasn't sure if I blacked out or not. I lost track of time while I waited for my vision to clear.
"Impressive," the Blade spoke placidly and sheathed his weapon. Nia lifted herself off of me to face him bravely. Their eyes met, and her heavy, labored breathing soon calmed. It was as if he had put her in a trance. He got down on one knee and held out his hand in front of her, like a marshmallow to a campfire. Was he offering to help her stand up or was he getting a feel of her power? I wasn't sure what to think at that moment until he spoke again. "This is unlike anything I've ever felt."
"I… I don't know… who you are, but… you will not break me." Exhausted to her core, Nia was barely able to talk coherently. "Nobody dies today…"
"Humans aren't worth the strife." He continued to look deep into her eyes with his expression unchanging. "Fine. Suit yourself." He stood up and walked to the door which he had ripped open earlier. After surveying the mess that he had made of us, the Blade nimbly jumped out.
"Nia?" I looked up to her. "Are we still ali-" A loud crash of slicing metal deafened the air and the ship slowly tipped backward. It felt like we were sliding off of the small Titan. Nia grabbed ahold of me as everybody else rolled across the tilted floor and piled up against the back wall; a few of them even slid into the storage room. Then came another crash as we plunged into the Cloud Sea.
I entered a heightened state of panic. In my mind, I was climbing over lifeless bodies to try to escape; but in reality, I was stuck. Even if there weren't other people lying on top of me, I didn't have enough strength to move anyway. It took less than a minute for the Cloud Sea to fill the severed ship. The air became heavy to breathe, but we managed through it.
"Thank the Architect… we're floating…" Light was visible through the hatch. "Nia? Nia, where are you?" I felt someone squeeze my hand.
"I'm here…" By now, her power had ceased, but it appeared that everybody was saved albeit knocked unconscious. Still, I worried that they might suffocate. I finally extricated myself from under our teammates and pulled Nia out soon after. We spent the next twenty minutes carrying everybody precariously up the ladder to the roof of the ship. Fortunately, the inventory specialist was also still awake and able to assist us.
"One, two, three…" I started to take a headcount of the team on the rooftop.
"Is that everybody?" Nia asked in a tired huff, barely able to stand.
"Yes, we're all here." I looked in all directions across the Cloud Sea which was now up to our feet. "I don't see that rogue Blade anymore."
"Good. That's… that's very good, yeah?" She clutched her core and collapsed. Horrified, I scrambled to come to her aid, tripping over the legs of our teammates along the way. I held her in my arms and rested her head underneath mine.
"Hey… hang in there…" Her breath was hot on my hand as I placed it on hers over her core.
"I'll be fine…" Her weathered voice was so quiet that I hardly heard her over the Cloud Sea's din.
"You saved us." I brushed her hair away from her eyes. "I've only got strength right now because of you."
"I know…" She tried to smile through her fatigue but sleep soon took over.
We drifted for hours. I struggled to process what had happened. It was all a proverbial blur. One moment, we were fine, on our way to Indol for a simple delivery. Next moment, we were fighting for our lives against the most random of intruders, and an insurmountably powerful one at that.
Perhaps it wasn't random. Perhaps that Blade was the cause of the Ardainian ships disappearing in the past. Everybody had thought that it might've been pirates or a monster. I was sure that we could've handled those. And yet, we didn't stand a chance against this one Blade who somehow found us in the middle of nowhere.
How come the first two trips to Indol went smoothly while this one went down catastrophically? Perhaps the masked Blade was too far away to detect the presence of so many core crystals, until today. But where did he come from? Where was his ship? There were clearly no Titans roaming this part of the Cloud Sea. There was no sign of the small Titan which used to carry this ship either. I was the acting captain of a partially-submerged vessel, and I didn't know how to get us out of this terrible situation.
I wanted to blame the Special Inquisitor and Brighid for devising this mission and putting this team together without enough preparedness, but I knew that I was also to blame for suggesting it in the first place. As no person had ever returned from an ambushed delivery mission, neither the Special Inquisitor nor Brighid had any idea that the threat would turn out to be so dangerous. I knew I should've declined their offer for me to lead this mission in exchange for more gold than I would ever know what to do with. I hated myself for allowing greed to put me back in harm's way.
After the anger from the situation wore out, grief and worry took over. I gazed down at Nia who looked so peaceful in her slumber, with her hair tussled, her outfit soiled, her skin chafed. I'd never seen her in such a worn-out state before. I wanted nothing more than for us to be back home in Hagan Village. We were alive for now, but would we starve before we could come up with a way to get home? Tears were starting to well up, but I held them back fearing that crying would mean giving up hope. I had to remind myself that, as long as Nia and I were together, we had hope.
Something had to be done. Careful to not disturb her, I removed her sleeves and tucked them under her head like a pillow. I instructed the inventory specialist to watch over the crew before I climbed down the ladder into the cloud-filled ship. It was like trying to navigate through fog. Using the sunlight coming in through the hatch, I stumbled into the cockpit to search for a radio transmitter or a telecommunicator. It was tough to see, but it appeared that everything in the cockpit had been damaged beyond repair.
Turning around, and bumping against the doorway in the process, I hobbled across the main room to the storage room in hopes of finding a flare gun or any sort of distress-signaling device. The collective glow of the core crystals afforded me enough visibility to locate the emergency panel. I opened it to find sufficient quantities of dried provisions, containers of pollen orbs, and a couple of flashlights. They weren't nearly what I was expecting to find, but I gratefully took them anyway.
Back on the rooftop, some of the crew had awoken. Appropriately, they were scared and confused, but seeing the emergency stash of food calmed them down a little bit.
"I don't think I need to tell you all to conserve the food supply. We're lucky to have any at all." I made sure to update each member of the team as he or she woke up. The dried food tasted awful, but it was better than nothing. Nearly everybody's armor was torn where the masked Blade had sliced them open. Bruised and battered besides, Nia's mass-healing had done the trick and saved us all.
The sun was hanging low on the horizon. With radio communication out of the question, we brainstormed ways to get our damaged vessel moving again. No suggestion seemed to pan out, our resources were limited, and we were running out of daylight.
"What if we cut off parts of the ship and used them as lifeboats?" one soldier wondered.
"No dice. We have no means of propulsion," James countered the idea. "Even if you guys have wind-powered Blades, it'd be no use because none of you have ether-cannons."
"Why don't we resonate with some of the cores in storage?" another soldier asked. "Surely one of them will provide an ether-cannon."
"We're not resonating with any new Blades," I vetoed, "not while we're confined to this small space." The smaller the number of individuals to bring back to Mor Ardain, the better.
"What are those green things?" a third soldier pointed to the containers of pollen orbs that I had found in the emergency panel.
"Pollen orbs…" I picked up a container and read the label. "Use for taming Titan to serve as vessel. Not for human consumption."
"We keep those on the ship in case the Titan stops cooperating with our commands," the pilot explained.
"Can we use them as bait to attract a new Titan to replace the original one?" I asked him. As a Titan ship pilot, he understood Titan behavior better than anyone else here.
"We can try, although we don't have any anglers." He took a container and studied the pollen orb inside. "We would have to grind it into dust and spray it downwind."
"Do it," I ordered without deliberation. "It's our best shot yet." I passed a couple of containers to him and stood up to determine the wind direction. "It's blowing from the bow, so spray it off the stern."
"Right…" Everybody made room for the pilot as he carried the containers across the rooftop. We all watched him unscrew the caps and use them to grind down the pollen orbs into dust. Some of it immediately plumed into the air, but luckily, he was wearing a mask like the other soldiers. Once finished, he leaned over the edge of the roof and sprinkled the dust. I couldn't see it in the darkness, but I trusted that he had put out an ample amount.
I instructed the soldiers to take turns keeping watch and gave them the flashlights to use. As night fell, all of the Blades' ether lines provided a calming glow across the rooftop, like a nightlight. I crawled over to Nia who remained asleep and snuggled next to her. The evening temperature and the wind chill made for a very cold night, and the surface was uncomfortably hard, but I was tired enough to fall asleep anyway.
Everyone hushed, and the sounds of the sea took over…
I woke up the next morning with my face buried in Nia's long hair. My heart sank when I remembered where we were. Unsurprisingly, my body ached from lying on a cold, hard surface for hours. My neck and shoulders hurt the worst.
"Nia…" I whispered closely. No response. She was still asleep. I rolled onto my back and stretched out. It was a beautiful day, despite our predicament.
"Good morning!" Godfrey greeted in a cheery mood. Nobody was smiling. "Okay, I know it's not exactly good, but we can't stay down forever, y'know?"
"Your effort is appreciated." I got on my feet and observed our current state. Some soldiers and Blades were patrolling the edges while others were still asleep. I shook the kinks out of my legs and walked over to the soldiers minding the stern. "Any signs of life out there?"
"Nothing major. Just a couple of gradies," one soldier reported.
"Alright. Carry on." If I didn't know better, it looked like we were on a group fishing trip. Our rations were already halfway consumed. I knew we were running out of time. Surely by now, the Special Inquisitor must've figured out that we encountered trouble. Then again, maybe he was too busy to notice. I wasn't sure if we'd drifted off-course. If the Ardainian empire was out to search for us, then they probably would've followed our usual course.
"Remi…?" Nia was awake at last. I returned to her side and helped her sit up. "Are we still…?" She looked around and sighed. "Shite… I was hopin' it was just a nightmare." As she buried her face in my neck, she moaned at the pain in her back.
"Can you heal yourself?" I wondered. She wrapped her arms around her abdomen and closed her eyes, but nothing happened.
"I… I can't…" She let go of herself and stared at the palms of her hands. "I'm all used up…"
"I'm not surprised. Never before had I seen you exert your healing power like that." We sat together in silence before she winced in pain again.
"Ugh… I'm not used to hurting for more than a few minutes." She put her hands on her back and thrust her chest forward to stretch, but it didn't do any good. "Help me up, would you?" Back on her feet, she walked to the center of the roof and watched the pilot and a soldier grind two more pollen orbs into dust and spray it downwind. "What are they doing?"
"We're trying to attract a new Titan to carry us back home," I explained. "That's what those substances are used for."
"Looks a bit messy." She pointed out how their armors were covered in the dust.
"We're all a little dirty right now," James commented as he and Godfrey came over to us. "At least we're alive. We owe you big time." They both shook her hand which prompted some of the soldiers to do the same.
We spent the next few hours sitting around and exchanging stories. It was almost fun, but I couldn't admit it to myself. Our foodstuffs were scarce, and I was anxious to get back home in time for my special day with Nia. Time ticked away while we waited for the pollen bait to work, until…
"Titan ahoy!" Somebody announced from the stern. The whole crew left their posts to look behind the ship. Appearing through the mist was a Titan indeed. It was a magnificent sight to behold. I was overcome with a rush of relieve as the Titan came into view. The sun shined down on us like a ray of hope, and some of the soldiers applauded.
"Steady now. We still have to corral it and tame it," I reminded everybody. As the Titan drew closer, we realized that we'd attracted a big one. In fact, it started to look too big. We were already experiencing the turbulence from the waves that it was making in the Cloud Sea, and it was still far away. We all looked at each other as the mood dropped. Nobody wanted to cheer anymore. Fear had completely overtaken the joy that we felt a few minutes ago. (What have we done?)
"Oh Architect have mercy!" somebody shouted at the top of their lungs.
"What? What is it?" I tried not to panic.
"It's Uraya! It's the Urayan Titan!" I had no idea who shouted that as everybody riled up quite a commotion. The rooftop was in an absolute frenzy. Some soldiers even got down on their knees and prayed. I wracked my brain for an escape plan, or at least something to minimize the damage…
"Everybody! Down the hatch! Now!" Nobody heard me. "Hey! Down the hatch! We can't risk anybody falling overboard!" I had to grab each person by the shoulder to get them to follow me below deck. Meanwhile, Nia retrieved the leftover rations along the way.
We huddled in the cloud-filled ship and counted the seconds until the Urayan Titan was upon us. It was very difficult to breathe in the submerged room, especially since we were all filled with terror and trepidation. Nia and I clung onto each other so tightly that I was sure that she felt my heartbeat.
"Just remember, Rem," she started to speak before inhaling sharply. "We'll always be together, no matter what happens to us…"
"We can't die, Nia. We just can't. We've got our special day coming up." The roar from the Titan grew louder. Soon it was loud enough to drown out the screams from the crew. I couldn't even tell if I was screaming or not. Darkness consumed us as the Titan opened its mouth and swallowed us whole. We spun and tumbled violently. It was the scariest thing I'd ever experienced. None of it seem real. I tried to find solace in the fact that Nia and I were still in each other's arms. If we were destined to remain trapped in this pitch-black, torturous prison, then at least we were trapped together.
In due time, the rough ride was over, and all was quiet. My senses were shot. It felt like we were floating in nothingness. I didn't know if we were still alive or in some portal to the afterlife. I'd never allowed such thoughts to enter my mind before. I waited for something to happen, but nothing else happened. I tried to see, but I saw nothing. I tried to talk, but I heard nothing. I tried to feel… anything. I was willing to feel anything, including pain. I squeezed my hands, and slowly my brain registered warmth. I flexed again and felt something warm, and soft.
"Yeah… I'm still 'ere." It was Nia, and I couldn't have been gladder.
