Nazyr managed to detach the wheel in record time, causing Rylan to wonder how often the man had taken wheels off of carts before.

  He imagined they could fetch a decent price on the black market. The spokes might be made of bamboo, but the rim was solid steel.

  Lowering the rather heavy wheel down into the hole beneath the stone cover was a bit of an endeavour, but it thankfully did fit.

  Standing at the bottom of said hole, Rylan turned towards the huge fogtube that ran along one side, big enough for a grown man to stand up straight in. A door was built into it, a thick copper wheel protruding from its centre.

  Rylan grabbed onto the wheel, the copper freezing cold beneath his fingers. With a grunt, he started cranking it open. Metal bolts protested loudly as they scraped inward, finally coming to a halt with a click. The hinges creaked as the door swung out, cold fog spilling from the opening.

  Above him, Nazyr pulled the stone cover shut, plunging them into darkness.

  Rylan pulled out his glowband and strapped it around his forehead, his fingers stiff from the cold. “Come on, let’s go!” he hissed, his voice echoing oddly in the long tube.

  He stepped in and started moving down the slippery tube against the upward flow of the fog. The fog tingled pleasantly inside his lungs, and he breathed deeply despite its chill. His Affinity had a long way to go, but every breath of the concentrated fog in the tube would help.

  Leahna assisted Artoran in stepping in as well, walking behind him to help steady him. Yuel had his lantern out, lighting the way for Nazyr as the former pirate lifted the heavy wheel inside, then started rolling it down the tube, straight through the rivulet of water running down the centre.

  “Try not to step in the middle,” Rylan advised. “It gets very slippery.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Yuel replied coyly. “We’re used to slippery tubes.”

  Nazyr snorted. Rylan decided not to dignify the comment with a response.

  [Oohh... I think I get it,] Arphin sent after a moment. [He’s talking about—]

  ‘I know, Arphin,’ Rylan interrupted mentally. ‘Let’s focus, shall we? I need you to keep an eye out for danger up top.’

  [You got it, Boss!]

  They slowly made their way down.

  At some point, faintly sensing something above him, Rylan glanced up, only to find a small hexagon of aquamarine cloudmetal there.

  After noticing it once, he quickly realised he could feel the presence of each of the evenly spaced out flow inducers as he passed underneath.

  Interesting... I didn’t know Affinities could do this!

  If he looked at the small pieces of cloudmetal for too long, his mouth started to water, and he found he had an inane urge to lick them. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—they were high enough overhead that he wouldn’t be able to reach them even if he stood on his tippy toes and craned his neck back.

  Shaking his head at himself, he continued steadily down.

  The fog flowing up the tube dampened the sounds of their footsteps, but its flat inner surface reflected and amplified them. Dull thuds and shouting from the streets above penetrated as well, slowly growing sharper as they approached the walls.

  The central gates might have been breached, but it seemed the defenders at South Harbour had yet to be routed.

  The noise from above momentarily dimmed as they passed beneath the city’s outer walls themselves, then came back even louder.

  Despite expecting it, Rylan was a little startled when the fog inlet suddenly appeared before him. The tube ended just in front of the steel grating, which was embedded directly into the rock that the channel had been carved out of. There was a bit of space in front of the grating as well, probably for maintenance workers to stand on. Clumps of mistweed were stuck in the sturdy steel mesh, and Rylan plucked some out with practised movements in order to hear and see better through it.

  Daylight filtered down through the fog from above, big shadows betraying the presence of ships.

  He could faintly make out blobs of white light moving up above him through the rock—the spirits of Talon soldiers, most likely. Izzy came twirling by, momentarily reversing the flow of fog in her passing.

  “Arphin,” Rylan whispered, not daring to speak too loudly at the inlet. “How far below the docks are we?”

  [About two dozen feet, Boss!]

  That was a bit more than Rylan had expected, but still a doable climb.

  “You know how to recognise the Talon ships, right? They’re clad in metal. Are there any of those docked nearby?”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  [Let’s see, there’s a lot of ships here...] Arphin sent, adding an impression of the docks above. [Oh! There’s two of them in the middle of the harbour... and one to the west. They seem to be storing their leaky soldiers in the first two.]

  ‘Wounded, Arphin.’

  [Eh. Semantics. You knew what I meant.]

  Rylan turned around to face the rest. “All right, so there’s three Talon warships docked here. The one to the west seems most isolated, and from what Arphin is showing me there are... only five soldiers on board.”

  “Sounds like we have our target,” Yuel drawled.

  Rylan nodded. “Only problem is...” He glanced up again. “There are still a lot of soldiers on the docks.”

  [Yeah, they seem to mostly be hiding behind the buildings and occasionally shooting some arrows. They brought a bunch of ladders, but they seem to have abandoned those at the walls...]

  “They’re not actively engaging the walls,” Rylan relayed, his brows drawing together. “I think they may be waiting for the gates to be assaulted from within here as well.”

  “Then we should hold off on climbing up for a bit, too,” Artoran said, still sounding slightly out of breath. “Once they move into the city, we can strike out.”

  There wasn’t really a good place to sit down in the fogtubes, so Rylan ended up squatting with his back against the grating. It was moist, but so was everything else.

  Yuel and Nazyr laid down the wheel and carefully took place on it, sitting on opposite sides back to back. After helping Artoran place his crutch down across the width of the tube to serve as a makeshift bench, Leahna quietly joined Rylan at the grate. She looked paler than usual.

  “I’m guessing today’s the first time you spilt someone’s blood,” he probed. “You all right?”

  She blinked and glanced at him. “I’m fine. Or I will be, as long as we all make it out of here alive. Are you all right?”

  He thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “Surprisingly so, to be honest. It wasn’t the first time for me... but still. I’d kind of expected to feel more remorse about killing, or something.”

  Her jaw tightened. “Well, good. Those clodmongers didn’t deserve your remorse anyway. Not after what they did to dad, to our home.”

  “We’ll have our revenge on the Talons someday,” he promised. “One way or another.”

  A loud crash sounded from above them, followed by the sound of horns blowing. Rylan looked up, seeing the blobs of white starting to move, like a disturbed hive.

  “But let’s start by stealing one of their ships,” he finished.

  “All right,” Artoran said, standing up on wobbly legs and rubbing his hands together before he reached for the strap across his shoulder and brought his gittern around to the front. “It’s showtime.”

  They grouped up some thirty feet back into the tube. There, Artoran directed Rylan and Leahna to stand behind him, while Yuel and Nazyr kept the wheel raised at the front.

  As instructed, they didn’t touch it directly. Instead, they each held one end of Artoran’s fishbone crutch, which had been threaded through the axle hole.

  Safe for Leahna’s hand on his shoulder, Artoran stood unaided as he strummed his gittern, tuning it a little. “All right. I’m about to start playing. Try to hold still, yeah? And when I yell ‘Now!’ you gentlemen make sure you remove that crutch in one smooth motion. I don’t want any accidents.”

  “You let go, and I’ll pull it out,” Nazyr grunted at Yuel, who nodded, looking a little nervous.

  Artoran turned back. “Is it time, son?” Rylan glanced up one last time, then nodded. “Then here goes!”

  Artoran started to play a jaunty melody, his gittern lighting up white as he did, with most of the light concentrated around the strings.

  Rylan found himself unconsciously tapping along, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Glancing at Leahna, he found her doing much the same, and they shared a smile.

  I guess this is what he meant by ‘try to hold still’!

  The jaunty melody sped up, growing more complex, and the mana started to swirl in a familiar waveform. Then, it left the strings, swirling through the air towards the wheel, which began to glow, then spin.

  Rylan saw Yuel and Nazyr nodding along as the wheel started to rotate faster and faster, more swirling mana spreading along its spokes to its outer rim.

  As it accelerated, the fog started to churn.

  Soon, Izzy excitedly came flying back swirling around Artoran, then the wheel, causing even more fog to swirl with the motion.

  The wheel was making a noise now as it ground across the crutch, going faster and faster, sending the occasional bone splinter flying.

  “Is it time yet?” Yuel called out, a tremor in his voice as the noise coming from the wheel continued to rise in pitch and urgency, its spokes long having become a blur.

  Rylan unconsciously took a step back

  “Hold on, hold on, just a little longer,” Artoran sang in reply. “That grating looks quite sturdy, so we’re gonna need some speed. If you hold a little longer then success is guaranteed! So hold on, hold—”

  With a sudden crunch, the tortured crutch snapped in two. The wheel dropped. It hit the copper tube with an awful grinding, tearing noise, sending a shower of sparks back at Artoran, Rylan, and Leahna, each of their Mana Shells lighting up where the tiny glowing shrapnel hit. Then the wheel was gone, leaving behind a massive rend in the metal.

  It bounced off the roof at least once as it flew down the fogtube, then caused an absolutely deafening clang and a crunch of stone as it smacked into the grating.

  In the ringing silence that followed, the grating and the wheel together disappeared into the fog.

  After a moment, there came a faint whistling, and finally another dull clanging crash as the grating probably smashed through some poor sap’s shack down below on the cloudbed.

  Rylan just hoped it had been evacuated.

  “Well, I guess that works too,” Artoran mused. “I wasn’t going to need it much longer anyway... Is anyone coming over?”

  [Doesn’t look like it!] Arphin joyfully replied. [Some people are looking around, confused, but nobody seems to have realised where the noise came from. Also, that was awesome!]

  “The coast is clear, let’s move it, people,” Rylan urged.

  “That’s your cue, boo,” Nazyr whispered.

  “Right! Right, sorry,” Yuel stammered, distractedly handing Artoran back half a crutch before he grabbed his harpoon and moved forward, the rest hot on his heels.

  Yuel cautiously slowed down at the edge of what was now a gaping hole leading to a massive drop. With Nazyr holding on to the back of his shirt, he put one foot on the edge, craned his neck back, and started swinging his harpoon on its rope. After winding it up for a bit, he flung it up to the docks like a grappling hook.

  It hit something with a clang, then fell back down.

  [Aww, just a bit short.]

  “A little higher, Yuel!” Rylan relayed.

  “You got this, boo,” Nazyr murmured.

  Yuel took a deep breath, puffing out his chest, then leaned out a bit further and spun his harpoon up again. This time, it landed on the docks and, after scraping forward for a bit, hooked behind some of the pavement.

  Yuel gave it a few testing tugs, then nodded. “So. Who’s going first?”

  Rylan stepped forward, already activating Stealth. “I am.”

  Want to read ahead? Check out my !

  You can also click here to go The Cloudfarers! ^^

  Got a burning question or want to glimpse some more behind-the-scenes stuff?

  Want more of my writing? I've published a completed six-book LitRPG series!

  The Whispering Crystals is available on KU, Audible, and in print:

  : Unnatural Laws

  : Unusual Enemies

  : Unimagined Adventures

  : Unchained Potential

  : Untamed Spirit

  : Undivided Worlds

  /

  Finally, you can to boost me on Topwebfiction.com!