High and Dry

David jolts himself awake, beset by the humid, seaborne fog of the early morning. It’s hard to breathe. The old man is standing over him.

“Come”, he beckons.

He and David march their way through the scrub brush to find a sandy beach, overlooking the ocean. Piled up along the shore is a massive stack of logs. The old man must have worked through the night for this.

“We can’t teleport this many people, given the state we’re in. We’re going to do it the old-fashioned way. Can you build us a ship?”, he asks.

David ponders for a moment. If he were to build an old-style sailing ship, it might be months or even years before they return home. At the very least, it’s got to be fast.

He thinks back to his previous life, scratching his chin. In a war many years ago, his country used a novel technique to make a fast boat. A hydrofoil. With a set of three pylons that jutted into the water, it would lift itself free of the sucking drag of the ocean and hit incredible speeds; its only limit was propulsion. Propulsion, here, would not be the problem, given the magic abilities available to him.

He quickly went to work. The logs were cleaved into planks, with sharp, loud slaps of wind magic, and neatly assembled into a frame large enough to hold all the villagers and their supplies. Special attention was paid to beef up the mounting points for the foils. David adjusted his slime-producing magic somewhat, producing a hard, waterproof tar to seal the hull. Bit by bit, the ocean-going vessel took shape.

The old man interjects once he sees the massive, deep pylons jutting from the hull.

“David, what is that? I’ve never seen anything like that. Shouldn’t it be smooth on the bottom?”, he asks.

“You’ll see when it’s finished. Don’t worry.”, he reassures him.

A few hours go by, and a vast, classical sailing ship has taken form, but with hydrofoil struts beneath, a grand central mast, but no sails. With tremendous effort, David picks it up from its makeshift berth and lowers it into the ocean. It floats.

A small crowd of curious villagers gathered to watch the commotion. When it settles in the water, they cheer. Sara comes running up to him, and gives him an enthusiastic hug at leg-level.

Soon enough, the villagers were loaded onboard, with as much supplies as could be harvested. It was show time. A two-part spell was needed to get this hulk moving. One, to propel the water beneath the vessel, and the other, a wind spell, for steering and to reduce drag.

Before they set off, David decided to ask the old man his name. He’d just blindly trusted him this entire time, given the circumstances, it wasn’t important. The old man eyes him with a gleeful smile.

“Montgomery.”

“Thank you sir. Let’s get going, shall we?”

With a tremendous bang, the ship shunts itself forward, out towards the open ocean. David is handling both the propulsion and the steering, while projecting a crude map up to the helm for Monty, the old man. Slowly but surely, it picks up speed, and rises up on plane out of the water, leaving only its pylons below the surface. It’s flying. The wind whips over the bow, and the ship is tearing through the water at a breakneck pace.

Those villagers who were brave enough to remain on the top deck quickly shuffle below, save a few young elf men. Sara is clinging to David’s leg, turning green. The ship keeps accelerating. A hundred miles an hour. Two hundred. Three hundred. It’s ripping and tearing at the ocean, its joints straining under the load.

The ocean sprays up in a grand, awe-striking fan behind the foils. They’re really moving. David takes a moment to check on the crew. The villagers are alright. Montgomery, the old man, is white-knuckle gripping the helm, laughing all the way. He’d make a great pirate captain.

This continues for a few hours. Some of the villagers turned green and threw up into the bilge. Sara has passed out from the stress. The ship carries on, tearing its way through the water. David decides to do a terrain scan each half hour.

Finally, his scan picks up land. This rouses some of the more adventurous villagers, fighting against their seasickness. A vast continent comes into view. David checks his map. It’s uncharted, for him, at least. Slowly but surely, the ship nears the shore, slows down, and sinks back down into the ocean on approach.

In front of them is a vast desert, endless golden sand, roiling hot winds, and scarcely anything else.

A meeting is called.

Montgomery, his most trusted supporters, and David meet in a small, wooden hall within the ship. They trade ideas. One of which is to head out on foot – that’s immediately shot down. It would take too long. The other is teleportation. Once again, they’re too far, and there’s too many people. A heated argument ensues. David breaks the silence.

“Could we simply sail through the sand?”, he asks, not believing it to be possible.

The room falls silent. A few murmurs and harumphs fill the air.

“Yes!”, the old man roars. “That just might work!”

And so, the ship was hauled up to the shoreline, disembarked, and floated onto the dry desert sugar-sand. The villagers reboarded it, and looked to David for guidance.

“Here goes nothing”, he muttered to himself.

A cloud of dust and sand whirled around the ship. This leg of the journey would need wind magic and not much else. Blasting the sand away from the hull, he conjured a pocket of intense negative pressure ahead of the hull, sucking the ship along, riding on its pylons through the vast desert. The sun beat down mercilessly, but some of the girls from the village fashioned canteens and conjured fresh, cold water for the men on top deck.

It was decidedly slower going this time. Periodically, David sent out terrain scans and updated his map. As he expected, it’s nothing but emptiness out there. Occassionally, he’d spy life forms in the sand, some of which were especially large. One turned out to be some sort of massive land worm, but it was much too slow, so the ship outran it easily.

After many hours, the ground began hardening. One of the hydrofoils ripped off the hull of the boat, sending it careening, sideways, kicking up a massive plume of sand and mud. The villagers screamed and held on for dear life. Once the ship skidded to a stop, David did another geolocation scan.

They’d covered an incredible distance. They’re about halfway to Laios. Ahead of them lies a grand mountain range, visible just barely in the distance, and a strange, tundra-like biome ahead of them. They had two options; pack it up and head out on foot, or fly the boat. After some harumphing, they chose the latter. Teams of three assembled to handle the three axes of movement to keep the boat aloft; one handled the yaw, one the pitch, and the most strenuous one, keeping it from sinking.

The ship groaned and shuddered as it righted itself from the sand, slowly rising, and David provided the forward thrust. Away it went, showering loose sand from its nooks and crannies.

It had been 1500 years since these elven villagers had exercised their magic. It was slow, dreadful going, especially for the poor lads who drew the short straw. Each team had a backup crew waiting on standby. To give them some encouragement, David generated some nice robes for each crew as they finished their turn.

Eventually, old man Montgomery shuffled over to David, who had stood at the stern deck for hours, straining away.

“There’s a security risk to this, son.”, he mutters.

David blinks away sweat from his brow, his concentration waning somewhat.

“With the ship higher up, our magical signatures stretch farther. You may need to…” He trails off. His eyes go wide.

A purple, hexagonal grid of magic had formed in the sky, far off of the stern, behind them. Link by link, it was growing, coming closer. David craned his head around to look. Then, the sound reached them. Far-off, resonant booms. “I need to see it closer”, David thought to himself. His vision zoomed in, giving a perfectly clear image of the calamity.

As each grid formed, it created a shockwave that roiled the earth below. As that shockwave tore up the sand, it froze in place, shimmering in the air. “Analyze”, he thought.

The grid was a form of capture magic that stopped time itself in its area of effect. He couldn’t see a caster, but the mana required to carry out a spell of this magnitude must be enormous.

Montgomery and David look at eachother. The choice is clear. Carry on at the current speed and hope it doesn’t envelop them, or pick up the pace and risk discovery. The order is given – all non-essentials below deck. Gyro crew, lash yourselves to the mast. David was going to send this rickety wooden hull as fast as it possibly could go.