“Moon-beast?” Nakoda asked hesitantly.
Salim crossed his arms over his chest and continued to say thoughtfully, “Yours and the horned mule’s parents have likely been taken into the plane of dreams. Unfortunately for you, my knowledge of the Dreamlands is limited-”
“So we have to sleep to get them back?” Nakoda pointed at Paco. “Then Paco’ll be really good help with that!”
“Perhaps,” Salim conceded. “But do you really want to encounter the moon-beast on its home turf?”
“Well, if it took our parents, then yeah. That’s kind of why we’re doing all of this…” Nakoda turned to Sapphire. “This is a flying house, or ship?”
“A ship, yes,” she replied.
“So, if we get it working, could we make it go up and find a portal into our dreams?”
The sheer ridiculousness of my brother’s question forced her to take a moment to form a response. “I don’t think the vessel was designed for interdimensional travel.” She glanced around at all of the damage. “And the damage reports indicate it might not be capable of flight anymore. Unless we can find someone on this planet capable of repairing a ship…”
Nakoda’s eyes went wide. “Mr. Pezock!” he exclaimed excitedly. “He can do it!”
“Totally,” Paco supplied sarcastically. “We’re gonna repair it with a bunch of dead sea creatures.”
Lilian shot him a glare before explaining to Sapphire, “Pezock is a bird man also stranded on the island. He’s managed to turn a crab carcass into a…something of an automaton. But trust me. It’s not as impressive as it sounds. He managed it mostly with pullies and whatnot.”
“No, that won’t be sufficient,” Sapphire replied, though she did look mildly curious. “No amount of pullies will be capable of fixing this ship.”
Ping!
Eighty-nine percent clearance has been returned to Sapphire Unit-6-3-9-4, Chris suddenly announced. The circular gate above our heads split apart, giving us access to the rest of the ship. Intrigued by the dragon, Paco had Turtle go over, stood on the lizard’s shell, and touched Chrys’ seemingly useless wings. Chrys looked down to analyze him. High likelihood of fiend corruption in the subject. Likelihood of repair…zero percent.
“Why would I need to be repaired?” Paco scoffed.
Sapphire walked past them, towards the panel. As she did so she pulled one of those pale worms Chrys had used from her neck. She inserted it into the panel and stood waiting. Suspicious, and still holding his aching side, Alton approached her. He asked, “What’s that? What are you doing?”
She frowned at him before explaining through Chrys, It is downloading the language most of you speak. Making it easier to communicate.
Alton didn’t look too convinced. He walked over to Salim and muttered, “I don’t trust her.”
The strange man nodded. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“She’s too perfect.”
“Hmmm.”
Alton raised a finger. “You never trust a broad who’s nearing perfect, ‘cause the skeletons in her closet? They’re always vast in number and fresh.”
The stupidity of the statement nearly left Lilian cross-eyed. “She’s been asleep for over six-hundred years,” she pointed out. “I’m sure that none of the skeletons in her closet are going to be fresh.”
In response, Alton pointed upwards, towards the pods above our heads. “Those look pretty fresh to me!”
“Done,” Sapphire declared in the same language. The worm retracted back into her neck. She turned. “…Did I miss something?”
“Nothing worth remembering,” Lilian answered dryly.
“Ms. Rectum?” Nakoda said suddenly.
“Requiem,” Sapphire corrected patiently, a smile tugging at her lips. “But just ‘Sapphire’ is fine, Nakoda.”
“Oh. Cool. I have a few more questions. Big ones.” She nodded for him to go ahead and ask. “How did you get here? And who put you in that pod? ‘Cause you looked scared when you first woke up. Were you forced into it? By bad guys?”
Sapphire now had everyone’s undivided attention. “To answer your first question,” she said carefully, “I was flying the ship and the cargo to…” Her brow furrowed. “…I can’t recall. This may be a side effect of being asleep for so long. I…I do recall there being some kind of mutiny…You’re right, Nakoda. I was shoved into that hibernation chamber, but as for who did it or why…I’m sorry. All I keep recalling is a lot of red and green…”
“Oh, I know all about mutiny,” Alton called over, scowling. “My captain betrayed us. That’s why we’re here.”
“That and,” Salim plucked a gem from his pouch and held it up, “the bloodstones.”
Sapphire narrowed her eyes at the gem. “Those are tiny batteries you have there.”
Salim’s own eyes widened with interest. “Batteries? I guess, in a sense…”
“No. Literally. Each ship is given a battery core. It provides the motor force for the ship while travelling at sub light speeds. Yet the cores we use are larger than I am.”
“You have that much?” Salim asked, a smile splitting his lips.
“Yes. They’re manufactured by…” She sighed and shook her head. “Another thing I don’t remember, unfortunately.”
“Hmmm. Well, where on this ship would this ‘core’ be located then?”
“…The bridge,” Sapphire said, looking like she had to brute force the memory back to her. She glanced upwards, at the opening in the ceiling. With nowhere to go but up, we all stepped onto the platform. It was big enough to hold and carry all of us, even me and Turtle. Chrys clung to Sapphire’s back and wrapped his wings around her chest, becoming almost a draconic backpack. She didn’t seem to mind. She ordered the platform to rise. As we ascended I noticed Alton give his mutated or dead crewmates one last, agonizing look.
We rose up into a smaller room leading into a wide corridor with a high ceiling. Salim immediately pushed his way to the front of the group, eyes visibly dilating with magic. We all had no other choice but to follow, with Alton right behind him. Like the rest of the ship, the corridor had been forged from the same smooth metal.
Salim and Alton suddenly stopped dead, allowing the rest of us to catch up. I immediately understood why. There was another circular gate at the other end of the corridor, and it was being guarded by another pair of mutants. Unlike the ones before, their proportions weren’t deformed, but their faces were little more than masks of snow-white flesh. The lower halves of their bodies were dressed in amor like Sapphire’s, but black and red. They each held metal javelins crusted over with what I assumed was dried blood. Tiny, beady eyes stared through the mutated flesh of their face, changing interchangeably from red to green.
When neither Salim nor Alton moved, both instead clutching at their heads, whispering to themselves, Nakoda took the initiative. “Come on, Don!” he cried, readying his lance. “Let’s do this!”
I snorted once, charged, and immediately regretted it.
It wasn’t because of the mutants, who immediately readied themselves to defend the door, but because of the ship itself. I understood why both Alton and Salim were reacting the way they were. With each step through the corridor the steel of its floor, walls, and ceiling warped. The blue metal turned green, and the air suffocated me with the stench of sea salt. Both of my primal halves, the donkey and the unicorn, came to an agreement: beyond that door was pure, concentrated evil. And that evil was trying to take over this ship.
“Speed up, Don, speed up!”
My brother’s words rang through my head like a clear bell. I focused on it. Focused and ran towards the evil. Not because I wasn’t afraid, but because, as Riders, we had a job to do.
We sped past Alton and Salim. I got us in close enough for Nakoda to ram his lance downward, into a mutant’s abdomen, slamming it sideways into the nearby wall. The mutant just stepped to the side to escape my brother’s lance, tearing its stomach open in the process. This lack of self-preservation took both Nakoda and I aback, but he still managed to block the second mutant’s attack. He knocked its javelin sideways but only had enough space to swing his lance like a hammer. It cracked across the mutant’s head, sending it to the floor.
BANG!
The shot from Paco’s rifle echoed painfully throughout the corridor. But, hey, I wasn’t going to argue against a helpful bullet splitting open the shoulder of the mutant Nakoda had gored, knocking it back just as it attacked again. It threw its javelin. Because of the impact, the javelin went wide, but it did hit someone. Sapphire. It struck her across the chest, splitting open the front of her armor.
Lilian moved to her side. She bit open her own thumb with her teeth, making it bleed, and drew a bloody sigil across Sapphire’s forehead. Better than setting her on fire, I guess.
Seemingly recovering from the ‘evil sickness’, Alton rushed in to help Nakoda and I. His sword made sword-shaped bubbles as he swung and intercepted the javelin of the mutant that Nakoda had knocked down. Seeing this, Salim pointed a finger at the other mutant and screamed unnaturally, “MUTINY!”
The mutant shuddered and then pounced onto its partner.
“Um, okay,” Nakoda said, sounding just as confused as I was.
I suddenly felt him stiffen in my saddle.
“Oh no!” he cried. “Not now!”
I looked back at him, but it was our joined shadow that snatched my attention. It was darker than it should have been, oily black, and moving independently of our movements. And then, from it, a familiar face rose. One wreathed in blue fire with burning eyes to match. The ghost’s glow matched that of the streams of blue mist streaming out of one of Nakoda’s pouches. Seeing that, the ghost whispered hatefully, “Mutineers…and thieves!” and raised his bony hands to unleash Hell.