KeroKeron

  The sed child of the Montero Dynasty, a family with full trol of the New Houston Flotil, has finally returned home from a (utterly disastrous) busirip to New New York, returning to a life they hate and a family that despises them.

  A newbie maid w for the Monteros is doing their best to live their life, one song, oep at a time. Trusted with a moal task by their superior, they begin their dest into the deepest depths of New Houston.

  For one fra of a moment, one heading up, one heading down, their paths cross and are forevermore liogether. They’ll grow closer, one dead Antithesis at a time.

  Ash stares at Emily in stunned silence. Emily tilts her head in fusion as her expression slowly returns to normal.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” Ash says, quickly shaking their head to clear their shock. “I was just surprised you smiled like that. You looked like you’d cut off anyone’s head if they tried to talk to you this m.”

  “Ha,” Emily scoffs. “I probably would have. My head was killing me. Oh, speaking of, I asked you to put aside time for me then totally bailed, sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine. We have time now, don’t we? So, how are you pnning on improving the ship?”

  “Well…”

  Emily pulls out some paper and starts drawing out some of her ideas, pig Ash’s brain for their experience w on the ship to improve her pns. Podries over to quietly listen to them chat, giving his own input when possible, and Anton leaves the trio alone, watg the hole in the floor for any signs of the drourning.

  After only fifteen minutes, he breaks up the enthusiastic discussion about armour-pting material choices and calls the other three ain.

  “It’s moving again,” he says, a frown creasing his brow.

  “That was fast,” Emily ents, st her illustrations of the ship and walking over to the winch as he turns it on.

  “Too fast,” Anton agrees with an unfortable nod.

  “You’re really expeg shit to hit the fan, aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you?” he retorts.

  “Fair point,” Emily responds with a mischievous grin that sends shivers down the spines of everyone in the room.

  Anton fshes her a cautious look, but Emily chuckles and waves away his .

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to cause too much trouble.”

  More like ’t if I want my full quest reward.

  “I just suspect they will have identified me as the culprit already.”

  “How would they know?” Podrick asks. “It didn’t look like you left any survivors.”

  “Well, for one, I did. I only killed everyone in the main mansion and everyone who gathered to fight me from the other wings. I left the servants who weren’t in the main building alone a ba to set up that explosion. I know a couple of them ran away when I was inside, and there’s a high ce they told people what they saw.”

  “Why did you leave witnesses?” Ash questions.

  “Simple. I want them to know it was me,” Emily says with an uling ck of ge in her expression. “And, I doubt it would make a difference even if I’d killed all the servants. I didly go in quietly, I was far too angry for that, and I used a lot of lightning. It’s my mai, but it’s actually pretty rare. There aren’t many lightning mages in the try, and I only personally know o third circle.”

  As her expnation fihe drone arrives below the hatch, steam p from its outlet pipes as it rises closer to the ship. The winch cable slides over a pulley at the edge of the hole, pulling the drone up into the gap. Ash moves to the lever beside the hatch, waiting for the perfeent to push it, causing the open hatch door to pivot up, catg the bottom of the drone and lifting it into the ship pletely.

  Emily reaches out and flips the selector swit the side of the small mae to disable the steam flow to both the balloon and the propellers, increasing the amount of vapour p into the room.

  “Thanks,” Ash says with a nod, moving to open a few vents in the floor to remove the steam.

  Anton quickly moves to opee partment, pulling out a letter telling them to dock immediately at hangar twelve. He stares at the note, reading it carefully as if looking for a hidden bde about to sh out at him.

  “Anything out of the ordinary?” Emily asks.

  “No, but how much do you want to bet someone will be waiting there to arrest us?” he responds, gng up at her.

  “Oh, I don’t think you want to gamble like that with me,” Emily says, her hand moving up to rest on The Clock’s pouch at her belt. “You won’t win. Don’t worry though. If they are waiting for us, I’ll deal with it.”

  “I think that makes it worse,” Anton sighs, walking out of the room as Emily grins savagely.

  He returns to the bridge, starting the ship on its dest towards the docks as Emily remains behind to chat with Ash and Podrick about the pnned modifications, making the most of time she suspects will be rewound. As the ship touches down, Emily moves to the mai, meeting Antoo leave together.

  They stand side by side in silence as the track below the ship carries it into the city with a stant low hum.

  “Maybe we should wait on the bridge so we see if there are any guards waiting for us,” Anton suggests, shifting unfortably on the spot.

  “I doubt they’ll be visible until I show myself,” Emily expins. “They should know no mortal guards stand a ce against me alone, so they’ll probably try to wait till I move deeper into the docks to surrouh mages.”

  Not that I’d let them.

  “I see.” He nods before falling silent, waiting for the quivering underfoot to stop.

  After a few moments, the ship halts with a deep g, log into pce as the hanger doors shut behind it. Anton flips the lever to open the door, and Emily steps out into the seemingly empty hangar. Walking doweps, she focuses on her magical senses while calling upon her e with lightning, feeling several powerful magical signatures slowly verging upon their position.

  Yeah, they know.

  With each step dowairs, a dense pressure builds around Emily before bursting out as her foot hits the floor and her e solidifies. She lifts a hand to rest on The Clock’s pouch as crag lightning dances along her skin, her eyes lighting up in an azure glow. In an instant, three pahird circle mages rush into the room from different doors on all sides, magic circles prepared behind them as they finish their ts. Several sed circle mages follow them in, joined by a flood of city guards.

  Emily presses The Clock’s button as several spells and a hail of bullets start flying towards her.

  I guess they don’t want to take me alive.

  She steps aside, lightning ing her body and almost leaving an afterimage from the speed of her movement, dodging a powerful nce of wind that carves a deep groove into the side of Calypso behind her as time grinds to a halt.

  ***

  Emily is thrown out of her lightning-charged state as she finds herself ba her room aboard Calypso again, her pns for the ship’s modifications floating in the air before her and a loud thunder crack from outside shakio the core. The irritating buzzing in her mind has returned, and a siing blend of emotions fills her chest to join it.

  “Fug great,” she growls. “I guess the emotional severance doesn’t reset with me.”

  Sighing and rubbing her brow, she focuses ohunder crack to distract herself.

  Curious. I guess my e with lightning is still there, so this is now sidered the time I made it?

  She calls upon her e again and, after a few seds to solidify her trol, she forms a twisting maelstrom of charge around herself to satisfy the True Elementalist quest’s requirement, before pushing herself off her bed and leaving the room.

  She runs into Anton in the corridor and waves off his s about the thunder before sending a stream of maa into the floor and using it to search for Ash.

  Log them deep in one of the ste rooms repairing a damaged pipe, Emily approaches them and expins her pns to modify the ship before tinuing to pick their brain to optimise her ideas. e evening, she’s fihe purely meical part and is ready to move on to pnning some entments to help reinforce it against magical attacks like the wind hat tore a hole in the hull with ease.

  She eats with the rest of the crew, the versation flowing much the same as the first time as she voluo take over at night and informs them about New Denntimo. Afterwards, she awakens Podrick again before returning to her room to tinue w on se-scale entment designs.

  After a long night of throwing herself into her work to avoid fog on the siiions ing in her chest and buzzing in her mind, she meets the crew for the m meal.

  “Hey,” she grunts as she drops dowween Ash and Podrick.

  “Hey,” they both greet her back.

  Emily reaches out, a light purple mist flowing up and along her body to form together above her hand into a clockwork bird that she offers to Ash.

  “Here you go. I threw it together st night.”

  “Thanks,” Ash says with a grateful smile, taking the bird carefully and drawing curious gnces from Aony, and Sam.

  “No problem,” Emily replies without much ge in expression. “I’m always happy to share my babies with people reciate them.”

  Emily turtention to the rest of the crew, gng around to check Tony, Ange, and Anton are paying attention to her before her words.

  “I maintaihe same speed st night, so we should be six hours out from Ashdon. I’m gonna go sleep for a bit now, but whe closer, stay out of sight of the city. Try to find some duo set down behind. It doesn’t matter even if it’s a fair distance from the city.”

  Anton raises his brow and anxiously looks to the rest of the crew, who share his .

  “You’re expeg trouble?”

  “Aren’t you?” Emily says, repeating his future words ba. “I’m pretty certain they will already have worked out it was me that wiped out the Mandragos, and this ship left the docks in a hurry right before the estate blew up. Even if they aren’t certain I’m on board, they’ll at least send out a message to stop and search it, and even if they don’t fihey reise the ship as Mandrago property so they’ll try to take it back.”

  “Fair point. Are you thinking we should walk into the city without you then?”

  “Ha,” she scoffs at his question. “Quite the opposite. Who cares if they’re searg for me? They’ll never find me if I don’t want them to. I close the distaween the ship and the city quickly, sneak into the city without being noticed, and carry all the supplies we’ll need in my magic ste. So, I nning on going myself.”

  She finishes emptying her bowl of pe and passes it to Sam as she stands up.

  “I’ll put together a list of things we hen,” Anton says as she starts walking out.

  “Sure,” Emily says before pausing and gng at Podrick as he hurries to finish his food to follow her. “Actually, give the list to Pod. I’ll take him with me.”

  The boy’s eyes light up at her words, but she simply waves him off and tinues out to return to her room.

  ***

  Emily wakes up as a shudder passes through the ship. Looking through the eyes of her scout on top of the balloon she sees sand all around, with a tall duretg up to cover the horizon a few hundred metres ahead. The buzzing in her mind has subsided, the cold apathy of severance havi in once again.

  She rises from her bed and leaves her room, making her way to meet Anton and Podrick by the ship’s mairance.

  “Oh, hey, Emily,” Antos with little surprise as she approaches, her footfall nearly silee the metal floor. “I was just about to send Pod to grab you.”

  “No need,” Emily shrugs, gng at the freshly awakened meid notig the spatial bag hanging at his hip now. “You got a list?”

  “Yep!” He grins, pulling a sheet of paper from the poud presenting it to her.

  Emily reads over the list quickly before nodding and handing it back.

  “Perfect. Let’s get going then.”

  Anton flips the lever beside the exit hatd the door swings open as the metal stairway lowers to the desert floor.

  “Good luck,” he says as they ast him.

  A dry wind blows by as they desd the steps, carrying a fine mist of sand into their faces. Podrick squints, lifting a pair of goggles from around his neck, and Emily grabs her scarf, unravelling it from around her neck before deftly ing it around her head to cover everything, leaving a small slit to see through.

  “Nice goggles,” she says as she gnces over her shoulder to che Podrick.

  “Thanks! Ange lehem.”

  Emily’s foot nds on the soft sand below the steps, the uneven, shifting ground a sense of familiarity as she shifts her weight to pensate, walking with unnatural stability. Podrick stumbles as the surface beh his feet slides away a little with each step, the slight slope they’re parked on doing him no favours. Emily reaches out a hand to steady him.

  “Let’s do this quickly. I’d rather not leave the ship alo here on the ground - you never know when a pack of stalkers will e across it,” she says, receiving ahusiastiod iurn. “Climb onto my back. I’ll carry you to the city.”

  Emily turns around and crouches on one knee, her back to Podrick.

  “Really?” he asks nervously.

  “Either you get on now,” she replies, gng over her shoulder aing him see her unamused gaze through the slit in her scarf, “or I throw you over my shoulder. It’s up to you.”

  Swallowing down his apprehension, Podrick immediately s his arms around her ned his legs around her waist.

  “Good,” Emily says, turning to the dune ahead and casting lightning step, a crag magic circle ing her legs. “Hold on tight.”

  Podrick tightens his grip, looking down at the mesmerising twisting of runes and power with awe for a fra of a sed before the ground below them blurs. He lets out a surprised yell as Emily rockets forward, each step leaving a glistening gss footstep on the sand as it melts uhe heat of the crag psma p into it. She rises up the duh the boy holding onto her back for dear life, cresting it and immediately seeiarget in the distance.

  Emily runs over dunes and open sands alike, ign the ges iion and ine while putting one foot in front of the other, nothing breaking her even stride until she reaches the st dune close to the sprawling city border, with familiar towers of scrap metal junk oher side. She skids to a halt, digging her heels into the sand and sending up a spray of particles around them.

  celling her spell, Emily taps Podrick’s arms to tell him to let go before turning to face the spluttering boy, trying to clear the sand from his mouth.

  “That,” he says, spitting out the st few graiween his teeth and looking up at Emily with shining eyes, “was incredible!”

  KeroKeron