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When we were test floating it, it sat pretty low. It was heavy. But with the engines on it just hung there, barely above the water, with the water underneath skittering around madly, trying to figure out whether it was supposed to get out of the way or not. The engines were meant to push off things, not to make the crawler float through the air, that it why it was called a crawler. If you were lucky, you could survive ending up under one of those engines while it was holding the crawler up in a way you couldn’t if you ended up under the crawler itself, but they still pushed things down and around in weird ways.

“Take her to the test site,” Rimares said, and then climbed top side through the hatch above us. I stayed in the cockpit, taking in all the equipment and blinking lights. Birch got to take us out because she knew how to drive most anything with a working nav. Her already intimidating eyes always had a disturbing look of seeing things no one else could see. Though the nav, she could do just that.

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Seji pounded on the snow-beaten door of the isolated monastery. She couldn’t feel her hand hitting the wood anymore, and she wondered if the noise could be heard over the howling wind. She was not entirely sure she could hear much of anything either, except the wind. Even properly prepared for the elements, she was reasonably sure she had died at least twice on her way here. Between the numbing cold, and the blinding wind, it was hard to tell anymore.

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For the next year there was a lot or work and a lot of learning and plenty of getting my hands dirty. I started giving the four troublemakers who had scuffed my uniform fighting lessons. They’d been so busy studying books, they had never even learned to throw a punch. They didn’t want to at first, but I insisted. After all, it had been such an unfair fight. In six months, they were calling me “boss” as a joke and using their new found intimidation skills to keep the peace instead of pushing people around … most of the time.

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“Look out, dear!” Mrs. Apothecary pulled her husband down as a blast of magickal fire ripped over top of them.

The entire chamber was engulfed in magick, fire, and chaos. The two of them were crouched behind a stone table in the entry hall of the High Wyrd of Farport. Chaotic energies swirled above them, crackling with the force to scorch and scar stone, let alone cloth and flesh.

“Wait for it,” she said calmly, gauging the storm above them. “Now!”

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I spent three months cleaning the shop floor, or at least Rimares’ section of it. Most new apprentices spent six months at it, but I already had more experience cleaning shops than most of them, and working for the Apothecaries had made me very good a not spilling dangerous things on me. So instead of learning how to handle a broom, a mop, or a vacuum hose, or which chemicals to use when and which were safe and which would melt my hands off, I got to focus on what tools were for what, where they were stored, and how to clean them.

My spare time was spent making friends in town, doing things with mom and Officer Puppy, training with Blademaster Kasa, and visits from Maid, Dr. Pac, and the pirate Periwinkle. None of them really had any place to go while the ship was in for repairs. And, except for Maid, none of them were really interested in spending their time getting drunk in bars. Though Periwinkle did like a good wine bar, and would be praising each new one he found for days, even if it wasn’t really that good.

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