Massacre Girls (Rated M)

[Briarheart]

Closed to Amari.

The horizon was an endless sea of drab. In the lower half of the view port, you had rolling snowdrifts occasionally broken up by a smattering of green from pine trees that had not been fully covered by the blizzards. In the upper half, a blanket of clouds thick as pea soup and gray as you'd imagine the northern reaches of Salvar to be. The sky always looked ready to dump another five feet of snow on you, and was just waiting for you to look at it the wrong way.

I was thankful for just a light breeze of thirty-five miles per hour at the elevation we flew at. What was that in knots? I don't think it's too much of a difference, but it would be good to know for future reference. If I'm going to captain an airship, I would need to brush up on my aeronautical terminology.

I rose from the creaky leather of the captain's chair and strode across the cabin. The chill of the winter air crawled all over my skin, no matter how tight I pulled the fancy long coat around my body. Occasionally, a whiff of the previous owner's cologne and body odor was strong enough to break through my shitty sense of smell, and maaaan was it gross. He probably never washed it. Probably never took it off, really. He didn't seem like the kind of person who cared much about laundering techniques. But, in his defense, I only knew him long enough to ram a shard of broken glass into his throat and kick his naked, flapping body out of an air hatch.

“Our journey shouldn't take much longer,” I said to the crew. “I just hope she doesn't mind me dropping in uninvited.”

Nobody answered. Not that they could—they were all dead.

Three Alerarans with cordyceps mycelium wrapped around their necks like sapphire chokers continued their work, one manning the steering wheel, the other two doing airship engineer shit. They monitored various gauges and twitching needles with clouded eyes, twisting knobs and shifting levers up and down to keep us afloat and compensate for the wind that pounded us from all sides.

The Sinistar--well, hang on, it was still The Blade of Agnon until I could land and get one of these n'urds to paint the new name over the old one--was also crewed by ten other men that milled around the rest of the airship. They had various duties, all of them irrelevant to me, but each had a bit of combat training. The Blade was one of about five recon craft that flew along the border between Alerar and Raiaera, keeping an eye on their occupation forces as they tried to take their ancient home back from the high elves inch by bloody inch. But one day, a bipedal houseplant stowed aboard and started throwing spores and acid everywhere, and then whoops it slipped off into the nighttime sky and was never heard from again. I left a few hints near the southern part of the border where the two countries met the sea that the Blade malfunctioned and sank into the sea before turning north towards those familiar frozen wastes.

As far as I could tell, I hadn't been followed by any other ships, so the ruse must have worked.

Had to admit, I was a bit disappointed. I would've loved to notched my first cannon kill.

Over the course of the next half an hour, a certain mountain range lurched up from the snow in the distance. One I had promised never to return to many times before but hey here we are again how about that.

The Seventh Sanctum.

It was the home of a revolving door of assholes, villains, monsters, freaks, idiots, criminals, mercenaries, killers, demons, and all sorts of other things. It was all held together by a pale redhead with a penchant for saying dumb, mopey, depressing stuff about how she doesn't have any feelings anymore. And then there was the leaking black smoky shit everywhere she went thing, too. But she was incredibly handy to have around, and very good at killing things.

I would just need her to keep her hands to her fucking self whilst in my new beautiful wooden airship. The last thing I needed was for her to brace herself against the wall and suddenly I have a new view port.

“Prepare for landing,” I ordered the undead crew as I left the bridge. “Drop us down in front of the main gate.” The propulsion engines groaned in protest as their power was cut bit by bit. My knees buckled as I felt the craft lowering in the air. Two other Alerarans sensed what was happening, and rushed past me towards their posts in preparation of what was to come.

I turned the brass knob of a door and pushed it open to reveal the captain's quarters. It was a bit on the cozy side, but had everything I needed. A small chest to store my effects in, an elliptical mirror hung over a writing desk, an overhead lamp powered by a runic battery that did its job a little too well, and a bed that was little more than a five inch-thick padded mattress set on a raised area with more storage underneath.

Walking up to the mirror, I gazed into it. What stared back was absolutely monstrous. Gnarled, twisted vines wrapped in a mockery of a face. Sharpened, yellowed teeth made of bone. Four glittering amber eyes.

At least I filled out the Blade's former captain's outfit rather well.

The coat was stashed in the chest--possibly a reminder of the poor fucker's past life as a buccaneer. It was almost black, and had a healthy amount of gold and red decorative trim. Certainly not standard Aleraran Fleet garb. That I had also commandeered from his corpse before it went overboard. It was a boring olive jumpsuit, more practical than anything. I adjusted the black tricorn hat on top of my head, which was also in the chest. It fit perfectly.

Now all I had to do was wait until we landed.