Gentleman’s Guide to Fantastic Beasts 43

Gentleman’s Guide to Fantastic Beasts 43

…

Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Sivantic.

…

The sky ship was a robust construction of wood and metal held aloft by magic with sails positioned like wings. They reminded me of ancient caravels in history books that I saw in my previous life. Small ships meant to hug the coast and travel from port town to port town, and nothing like the clipper ships with four masts that sped across the world nor the great behemoths of steel and machinery that were set to replace them.

The skies of the people of the forest were filled with such ships, traveling from city to city and towns in between, which all surrounded the great capital from where the Tree of Light was erected.

Admittedly, I felt thrilled to be aboard. I had dreamt of flight before seeing the horrors it unleashed upon the world, as the wonderful invention was turned into a tool for war mere decades after its discovery in America. Airships and biplanes both thundered through the skies and brought death and conflict into the one place untouched by war since humanity decided to fight upon earth and sea.

The knowledge that the ships were used to carry prisoners and troops and had ballistae soured my mood enough, though, for my thoughts to wander towards knowledge from my previous life.

The Bubonic Plague had spread through Europe prior to the Renaissance. Rats and the disease were carried upon ships and spread across all of Europe from port cities. It caused the death of many, and in order to prevent it, ships were forced to stay adrift away from cities for a specific amount of time with only food and water being ferried between ships to sustain crews and passengers for periods set by the rulers of the cities.

Those ships were slower, could not fly upon land, and did not have the freedom of the skies to call their own.

Could measures of quarantine be imposed upon these ships? Even if a parasite and its host needed much more food than normal people, and would be forced to act days into any potential quarantine, that did not mean much. The people on the ship could become additional vectors or meals for the creature. If it is sufficiently strong and skilled, it can take control of the ship and survive the crash upon the nearest town or populated place and so another place would fall to the predations of the despicable creatures.

Each ship, thus, had to be checked carefully for anything and anyone brought aboard.

Otherwise, they could easily be used to spread the creatures that we were now dedicated to fighting against.

I thought of possible ways to achieve such a thing, or tried to, when something fly by our side.

It was a beautiful creature unlike that I’d ever seen before.

It had a long and trailing body covered in blue and white feathers, obviously meant to match the blue sky. It flew through the sky with massive wings that would look like clouds from below, and its underbelly was a near pure blue. The length of its body was long and serpent-like, but covered in feathers instead of scales and its head was more like that of a hawkish bird than that of a snake.

It was a magnificent creature, twice the length of our ship and with a trunk thicker than most wagons.

It’s appearance sent alarms ringing across the ship.

“Chrysor male at port! Keep an eye out for the females! Bring everyone who can’t fight below deck.” The appearance of the creature made the crew work feverishly. Many attached themselves to railings near their workstations and weapons, if they did not go under the deck. Guards came forth from the deck, where they had been monitoring and scanning the other passengers for possible threats, and they drew swords and watched the Chrysor carefully. The predatory gaze of the flying creature was directed upon us, and its sheer size and mass became more apparent as it loomed closer to us. “Ready the spikes on the hull! Be ready for it to ram us! Hold on!”

The Captain was ready with the crew near where the wheel of the ship awaited. He had his own guards and protectors, but most of the ship did not. Fear rolled forth from them, as they looked at the skies for the rest of this creature’s accompanying females.

As if on cue with the Captain’s call, the creature swung wide away from us and readied itself to swing our way.

The ropes were taut, the ship was steady, and without a doubt this ship will survive whatever was to come.

But, as beautiful and majestic as the creature was, its decision to try and kill this ship for whatever purpose made my decision  an easy one.

I assumed that it was much like a massive serpent in the composition of its body, and that its ‘spine’ was dorsally placed and not at the center.

With my wires, I lashed towards it, curling the material together into a long lathe bit as it sped and rotated through the air.

The feathers of the creature were surprisingly strong, but it was nowhere close to the strength of chitin that many monsters in the Great Desert had. It was more due to how they overlapped and covered one another, forming something close to a layered cloth-like armor upon the flying creature, and if I simply lashed out at it the creature would’ve rebuffed my attack.

Instead, by making the threads rapidly rotate and sharpening every wire, the cloth layers were torn apart and pierced at the same moment.

The oncoming attack I sent burrowed through the creature, and with my power coursing through it, I learned more of the creature.

It was old, many decades old, and its heart was deteriorating to the point it only had two more decades at most. Its stomach was filled with many stones, meant to mash apart what it consumed with its beak, and I ‘saw’ traces of human bone being crushed within it. The creature consumed meat. It took hold of prey with its tail-end, which was swift and whiplike, but also prehensile. The rest of the body could not move as a snake did, primarily due to the structure supporting the wings making much of the torso ‘solid’ instead of snake-like and segmented and small.

In its skull was a large brain, but the spark within it was smaller than those of dogs. Its lungs were massive and had many, many pouches within it and matched the mass of all the rest of its organs.  The air in the skies it roamed was thin, so it had massive lungs to fill with air and pump through its entire body. Its large brain was supported by many veins, which webbed upon its surface and even through it. Blood flowed through the veins and air was greedily consumed by the massive brain, immense solely to ensure as much contact with oxygen as possible, and with its massive mind it thought, it learned, and it sought to kill to fill its belly and the stomachs of its mates and children.

Or, somewhere close to that.

The destruction of its spine at the halfway mark made it back half go limp, and it lost momentum. It could still fly, even half of it gone forever, and for a moment I considered letting it go.

However, I could not in good conscience allow it to live the life it would’ve had.

Such a magnificent beast deserved to die with some semblance of honor.

So, I aimed for its brain and heart, and lashed out with my threads once more.

To my surprise, a roar-like caw left its lips and light flowed forth from the creature. Its wings emitted a bright and harsh light, easily enough to stun the casual passerby, and it was followed by intense winds. Sailors cried out from both the sudden flash, and as they held onto the ropes tying them to the ship. Some rope broke and some people flew off, but I diverted enough of my attention to arrest their momentum with some of the fabric I had on my person and brought them safely back onto the ship.

The lenses of my mask prevented me from being stunned, but my threads did not keep their shape, as the creature suffused the surroundings with its power. What was once empty space, filled only with atmosphere, became filled traces of power. In order to pierce its defenses, I needed to imbue my threads with my own, and to guide it through the filled path and make it fly? My current course was inefficient and not speedy enough, so instead I took control of a weapon.

The ballistae had already been readied, so I took control. The crew of the weapon yelped as it came alive at my control, as I guided it to face the beast, and used a single thread through the murky space between the ship and the creature to make sure it would fly true. I tied a string to the bolt, connecting it to me, and fired it off. The speed of the bolt, the strength of its materials, and more flooded my mind, while I enhanced it all.

The materials began to crack and break.

It was not suited for the action I was forcing it to take, unlike what I normally used.
The wood was splintering, breaking apart, and the rough iron heating up and igniting the air around it. Less of a ballista bolt and more a speeding bullet, it sped through the air to fulfill a singular purpose: pierce the Chrysor’s heart.

I guided it carefully, and it found its mark, piercing through layers and layers of tough feathers and the hide beneath, and going through the organ the size of a small boulder. It boiled blood, scorched flesh, and pierced the creature through but did not completely go through. It was embedded, for a moment, like a skewer through the creature from one side to the other… and that is when I sent a surge of power through the bolt.

It came apart, the ‘front half’ of its form nearly entire eradicated and torn from the rest of the creature.

Both wings fell slowly after the head their size and structure making them float slightly in the air. Its head was still cawing silently without its lungs, while the back half of the creature fell limply towards the ground

I was tempted to fetch its head to study it further, but there were other matters to attend to.

The rest of the flock of the creature was coming, and I needed to assist the crew in dealing with it all.

…

The deck of the ship became a makeshift clinic shortly after the battle. I mended the wounds of the people, while they watched me with no shortage of awe and fear in equal measure. Due to the careful machinations of the rulers of the land, the awe will persist longer than the fear, especially with my acts of healing.

The injuries aboard the ship were light. The worst was a broken arm, which I set and splinted, and told the man to rest for the day as his bones mended swifter thanks to my ministrations. Water was not in short supply aboard the vessel, some mechanism of magic allowing them to create enough to sanitize cloth and clean wounds and even cleanse parts of the deck to allow for the beasts slain to be harvested and picked apart for what little flesh they had.

“The feathers make for good armor and the hide makes good leather. Unfortunately, there’s not much meat on them. Tough, too. Gotta cut it all real thin.” The captain of the vessel approached me. I cleansed myself of any dirt and detritus with heat across my whole form. The old man had a scarred face, but both eyes, and wore a thick coat over the same uniform of trousers and shirt that the rest of the men wore. A simple rag covered his bald head. “You’re from the Great Desert. One of their mystics? Young for one. A clan heir running away?”

“I am of no clan and not of the mystics.” I told the man simply. “I am a physician and I travel through these lands to warn of a great danger. The cause of this eternal night.”

The old man’s eyes were wizened and gray, but they widened at my words.

“I’d thought it strange some noble’s guards came aboard the ship without any noble to protect. Suppose they came to watch you, though you didn’t need any protecting.” The city controller sent guards to watch me and protect me. In the fighting, they had fended off females of the species, which were half the size of the male. As a swarm, they surged towards the ship and tried to take the crew off by dragging them away with their beaks. The captain took a seat on the deck and looked at me. I noticed one of his hands was a facsimile carved of wood rather than a true appendage. “I have half a mind to sail my ship over there and offer my services. If they can afford to let men like you loose upon the world.”

“The As’Kari would welcome your service, but life in the desert will kill most of your crew. We fly on the backs of tamed monsters for a reason. This ship will attract swarms of monsters far deadlier than anything here.” I wondered if the parasites could inhabit the monsters of the Great Desert. Many of them were insect-like and they showed no ability thus far to inhabit such bodies. I could only hope such was the case. “You’ll need to learn their language, as well, or have something to trade so that the merchants will offer you their services.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The wizened captain stated simply. His gaze upon me was a measuring one. I simply allowed him to look at me as he wished. Finally, he spoke. “It’s strange. You have power, but you don’t have the stench of a killer.”

“What do you mean?”

“When men kill, I feel their winds shift. It’s sharper and crueler.” This man seemed to have some sort of adaptation towards detecting magic. Most people interpreted magic differently. He must have trained his senses to ensure his ability to pilot a flying ship and that led to his senses being geared to detect ‘wind.’ “How do you have such strength with death of others in your hands?”

“The death of others is not necessary for strength.”

I told him thus, and the disbelief in his eyes worried me.

Just how did the strongest of these lands gain their immense strength if such a belief was so prevalent?