For a moment, everyone on deck, bandit and adventurer alike, froze.
"That wasn't me," Stephan said quickly, to no one in particular.
The balloon shuddered again, and this time a long tear ripped through the canvas where a stray arrow, or a stray flame, or simple bad luck had finally caught up with them. Hot air spilled out in a visible rush, and the Gale's Mercy dropped.
Not fell. Dropped, all at once, the deck lurching out from under everyone's feet as the ship tilted nose-first toward the hills below.
Cargo crates slid and split apart. Bandits and passengers alike scrambled for anything bolted down. Xavier grabbed the rail with both hands, ice magic the furthest thing from his mind, watching in horror as the ground — trees, rock, a wide grey ribbon of river — rushed up to fill the whole horizon.
"BRUCE!" Xavier's voice cracked as he searched the chaos of the deck.
Bruce had been thrown clear of the rail, sliding hard into a support beam near the mast just as a strut, torn loose from the balloon's rigging, swung down like a falling tree. There was no time. No spell fast enough, no distance to close.
Xavier screamed his name again, uselessly, the wind tearing the sound away.
And then something simply... stopped the strut.
It hung motionless in the air, inches from Bruce's skull, gripped in the hand of a man who had not been on the ship a moment ago and yet stood there now as if he'd always been part of the deck itself. He was old. Properly old, silver-bearded, weathered like driftwood, dressed in plain traveling clothes that looked entirely too calm for a ship in the middle of falling out of the sky.
He set the strut down against the deck as gently as a man setting down a teacup.
The ship was still falling. He didn't seem to have noticed, or care.
With his other hand, he reached toward the tear in the balloon overhead. Xavier couldn't have explained what happened next if he'd had a year to think about it. The air itself seemed to thicken, to gather, a cushion of pure pressure blooming beneath the ship's hull. The Gale's Mercy's stomach-lurching plummet slowed to a drift, then to something almost gentle, and it settled into the treetops of the Steepening Hills with a groan of splintering wood rather than the roar of a crash.
Silence followed. Somewhere behind them, one of the bandits was quietly, audibly praying.
The old man crouched down beside Bruce, pressing two fingers to his throat, and let out a small, satisfied grunt. "Rattled. Not broken. He'll live to complain about it later."
Xavier scrambled over, sliding to his knees beside them both. "Who- what- how did you-"
"Questions later." The old man rose, dusting off his sleeves, and turned his gaze toward the bandit captain, who had gone very pale and was very carefully not moving. "You lot have caused enough trouble for one afternoon, I think."
He didn't raise a weapon. He didn't even raise his voice. But something about the way he looked at her made the woman drop her cutlass on the deck without another word, followed a moment later by every other bandit still standing.
Xavier stared, hollowed out with the specific exhaustion of someone who had just watched death miss by inches. Beside him, Bruce groaned and blinked his eyes open.
"...Did we crash?"
"A little bit," Xavier said, voice unsteady. "This man appears to have caught the entire ship."
"Caught the strut," the old man corrected mildly. "The ship caught itself, mostly. I only encouraged it."
Stephan, Ember still smoking faintly in hand, wandered over with the particular wide-eyed look of someone who had just watched something break several laws of nature. "Okay, no offense, but what are you?"
The old man chuckled, a warm, low sound entirely at odds with what he'd just done. "Just a teacher, boy. Though I suppose showing off for a boat full of frightened merchants isn't the most subtle way to introduce myself." He glanced toward the eastern hills, where the treeline broke into open grassland in the far distance. "You're headed for the Field of Serpents, I'd wager, given the company you're keeping and the trouble you attract. Lucky, then. That happens to be right on my way home."
The bandit captain didn't so much surrender as visibly recalculate her entire life's choices. By the time the shaken crew captain got a headcount and lashed the survivors' wrists with rope scavenged from the rigging, the old man had already wandered off to inspect the wreckage of the balloon with the mild curiosity of a man checking on a garden.
Xavier helped Bruce to his feet, still shaking slightly. "You almost died. Again. That's twice now."
"I'm aware," Bruce said flatly. "I was there for both."
"I'm just saying, maybe don't stand near falling things."
"Duly noted."
Stephan sheathed Ember and glanced toward the old teacher, then back at his friends, uncharacteristically thoughtful. "A teacher who can stop a falling ship with one hand. What do you think they teach at that school, exactly?"
None of them had an answer. But all three of them, without quite discussing it, found themselves following the old man down the gangplank and into the hills.
The walk to the Warrior School took the better part of the afternoon, following a well-worn path that cut along the edge of the crash site and out into open grassland. True to its name, the Field of Serpents lived up to at least half its reputation almost immediately — twice, Xavier caught sight of long, sinuous shapes cutting through the tall grass at a distance, thick as a grown man's waist, before they slithered away without incident.
"They usually leave travelers be, so long as you don't linger," the old teacher said, noticing Xavier's wary glances. "Territorial, not particularly hungry for humans. You'll want to remember that if you ever come back through here without me."
"Noted," Xavier said, deciding not to test that theory today.
Bruce walked a little slower than usual, one arm still favoring the side he'd landed on, the scripture bearing the Great Roswelle's name tucked securely against his ribs. He hadn't said much since the crash. Xavier let it be, for now, filing it away under the growing pile of things he intended to ask about later, when there weren't strange old men who could catch falling ships within earshot.
Stephan, meanwhile, had appointed himself the teacher's new best friend, walking backward in front of the old man so he could pepper him with questions.
"So if you can do that with a piece of wood the size of a tree, what happens if you punch a mountain?"
"I try not to punch mountains. It's rarely productive."
"But hypothetically."
"Hypothetically, the mountain loses. Eventually. So does my hand." The old teacher's eyes crinkled with something like amusement. "You ask a great many questions for a boy who set a merchant ship on fire an hour ago."
"That was Bruce's fault."
"It was absolutely not," Bruce said, without looking up.
By the time the grassland began to slope upward into low, terraced hills, the sun had dipped low enough to paint the sky in long streaks of orange and violet. Ahead, past a final rise, the Warrior School came into view — a sprawling compound of stone and timber halls ringed by open training yards, banners bearing a crossed-sword insignia snapping gently in the wind. Even from a distance, Xavier could make out dozens of figures moving through drills in the yards below, the distant clash of practice weapons carrying faintly on the breeze.
The old teacher slowed as they crested the rise, looking down at the school with an expression Xavier couldn't quite place. Fondness, maybe. Or something heavier than that.
"Well," the old man said. "Welcome to the Warrior School. Try not to burn this one down too."
Stephan grinned. "No promises."
Xavier, still catching his breath from the climb, looked out over the compound and allowed himself, just for a moment, to feel something other than exhausted.
"...Yeah," he said quietly. "Let's not."