Book 1, Destiny

Chapter 5, Pirates!

"Urgh" Arain opened his eyes, still puzzling about the day before. But it's hard to think straight while you're vomiting all over the bed, that weird fruit thing he ate definitely didn't agree with him*. And, as you can imagine, in his current state, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard an explosion coming from outside.

He looked out his window, to discover that the Thrush was on the move, faster than usual, he noticed. Then he saw the ship. It is an important but not very well-known fact that, when early men were so dazzled by the prospect of flight, they couldn't be bothered to do much work when it comes to the design of the first airship, so they just attached giant engines and bags of gas to sailing boats. This makes some of them quite slow, others still have many nautical objects attached to them, like ropes, or a steering wheel. This ship had entire sails hanging off it! He recognized the flag as well. The flag had the design of an iconic skull and crossbones. There was actually only one ship in existence that ever had this template, so it wasn't very iconic at all. Sadly, this was the one. It was captained by the Pirate Lord Skarl , voted pirate of the year for 10 times in a row. He bribed and threatened his way to the top every year, which was, by pirate standards, a perfectly legal course of action. The competition was really about who could bribe and threaten the best, that's pirates for you.

In any case, Arain wasn't really in the mood for this sort of thing, but when someone's got a dozen or so heavy-duty cannons pointing straight at them, few people are. Nevertheless, he rushed towards the control room, shouting as he went. Töramaður was there, fiddling with the many buttons and levers again. He took a quick glance at the boy, pointed towards the approaching galleon, and said, "Ship. Cannon. Shoot."

*This is because "the weird fruit thing" was the only known species of plant that could actually think, from the years of exposure to the Way, and as you could imagine, it wasn't very inclined to letting itself be eaten.

Almost on que, a gleaming shell shot through the room, shattering several mechanisms and piercing the hull. Töramaður seemed somewhat happy about this. It meant that the pirates wanted to board the ship and loot its goods, rather than puncture the airbags and sink it. Sure enough, a massive spear followed the cannonball, burying itself deep into the wooden planks. Arain saw Ellyss run out of her room with what appeared to be a chalk. With it, she drew a symbol on the floor, in such complicated patterns that suggested the drawer was either drunk, mad, or both. She pressed her hand to it, then pointed, very sternly, at the approaching pirate ship. A large bolt of blue flame and yellow lightning formed in the space directly ahead of her finger and launched through the air and landed directly onto the deck of the galleon.

What followed was a sound that closely resembled the colour purple, and something that smelled strongly of lavender. Oh, and a massive hole had appeared in the side of the ship. Ellyss then started franticly pulling at the spear that had lodged itself into the wall. This sudden action against the spear had about the same effect as a plastic toy hammer has when confronted with a steel door. Not only that, but the chain that stretched out from the spear to the other ship, had began to contract slowly. In other words, the ship was closing in.

Töramaður grasped vaguely at a portion of air that he remembered one of the control panels used to be. He then slammed a large and important-looking button in the centre of the main panel (it was painted bright red, obviously). A window had opened in the wall, showing full view of the Thrush. Some way down its side, Arain could see a cannon sticking out of it. moved a joystick, the cannon moved with it. And then he pulled a lever next to him, and the cannon fired. 'The metal ball that came out of the barrel must have been a third of a metre wide, at least!' Arain thought, simulating, in his head, the amount of damage a shot of that size would create. It tore another hole in the ship's side, and momentarily caused the galleon to falter in speed, but it came too late. The Pirates were boarding.