Getting out of Mesios turned out to be far easier than getting anything done inside it. A merchant near the town gates pointed them toward the airship dock the moment Xavier mentioned the Field of Serpents, seemingly delighted at the prospect of three underdressed teenagers throwing themselves at one of the more dangerous regions on the plateau.
"Only way to cross the Steepening Hills in under a week," the merchant had said. "Unless you fancy getting eaten by something."
None of them fancied getting eaten by something.
The airship dock sat at the edge of town, a wide wooden platform bolted onto the cliffside, where three vessels bobbed gently on some invisible cushion of wind magic. Their ship, the modestly named Gale's Mercy, was smaller than the others — a long-hulled wooden vessel with a taut canvas balloon overhead, humming faintly with enchantment.
Xavier stared up at it, hands on his hips. "Okay. I'll admit it. This is cool."
"You admit it very loudly for someone who spent three days insisting he didn't want to rely on the system for 'small things like this,'" Stephan said.
"This isn't the system. This is a flying boat. Completely different category of cool."
They boarded alongside a modest crowd of merchants and a pair of guild adventurers headed the same direction, and within the hour, the Gale's Mercy lifted off the platform with a lurch that sent Stephan stumbling into a crate of cargo. The ground fell away beneath them, Mesios shrinking into a patchwork of rooftops, and the Steepening Hills unrolled ahead like a great green and grey wave frozen mid-crash.
For a while, it was peaceful. Bruce sat near the rail with his new scripture, saying very little. Stephan leaned over the side, testing exactly how far he could lean before someone yanked him back by the collar. Xavier watched the clouds and tried very hard not to think about how thin the deck boards felt underfoot.
The peace lasted almost two hours.
It ended with a grappling hook.
It hooked over the starboard rail with a heavy clang, followed by another, and another, each one hauling a rope taut against the hull. Xavier's stomach dropped somewhere below the ship itself.
"...Please tell me that's part of the flight," he said, already knowing the answer.
It was not part of the flight.
Figures began hauling themselves up over the railing, a dozen or more, clad in mismatched leathers with scarves pulled up over their faces. The lead figure — a broad-shouldered woman with a cutlass strapped diagonally across her back and a voice that carried without effort — dropped down onto the deck first.
"Nobody do anything stupid, and this stays simple! The Gale's Mercy now flies under new management!"
The other passengers scattered, screaming, ducking behind crates and cargo. The crew captain, an older man near the wheel, raised his hands slowly.
Xavier looked at Stephan. Stephan looked at Xavier, already grinning, hand resting on Ember's hilt.
"Don't," Xavier said.
"I wasn't going to do anything."
"You are radiating 'about to do something.'"
The bandit woman's eyes swept the deck and landed squarely on the three of them, since they were the only ones not cowering. Her smile went thin and unpleasant. "Well. Adventurers. That's inconvenient."
"For you," Stephan said, drawing his sword in one smooth motion, "not for us."
He squeezed the lever.
Six seconds of roaring orange flame lit up the deck, and the fight began.
The nearest bandit barely had time to raise his blade before the flame caught his sleeve, sending him stumbling backward into a stack of crates with a startled yell. Stephan pressed the advantage immediately, closing the distance before the man could recover, Ember trailing smoke with every swing.
Xavier didn't wait to be told twice. He spun to the closest threat — a lean man with twin daggers already closing in from his flank. He threw his weight into a low, gliding step that carried him just outside the first strike's reach. Frost bloomed along his forearm as he caught the man's wrist, and by the time the dagger clattered to the deck, a thin sheet of ice had crept up to the elbow.
"Should've stayed home," Xavier muttered, driving a knee into the man's stomach and shoving him toward the rail.
Bruce, for his part, had flattened himself behind a stack of cargo, hands pressed to the deck. A low tremor rolled outward from his palms, and the wooden planks beneath two advancing bandits buckled upward in jagged spikes of hardened grain, sending both of them sprawling.
"I really need to practice with actual stone next time," Bruce muttered, wincing at the effort.
The bandit captain watched all of this with a flicker of genuine irritation crossing her face, drawing her cutlass properly for the first time. "Kids with tricks. Fantastic." She whistled sharply, and two more bandits dropped down from the rigging above.
The fight sprawled across the deck in earnest now — steel against steel, flame licking up the mast where an errant swing from Stephan's sword had caught a coil of rope, ice slicking the boards where Xavier fought, cracked planks jutting up wherever Bruce dug in. The Gale's Mercy groaned beneath them, a low, ominous sound that had nothing to do with the fighting at all.
Xavier barely had time to register it. "...Did anyone else hear that?"
Above them, the great canvas balloon gave a violent shudder, and the whole ship listed hard to one side.