Shadows Within Dreams, pt. 1

In the principality of Gabriel, approximately an hour’s walk out of the city of Dupois, an incredible technological event is about to take place. In this small location lies the dirigible “The Lady.” Tomorrow happens to be her maiden voyage, and in a small building which was quickly thrown together that lies just outside of the launch platform lay many of it’s occupants for tomorrow’s journey.

The Lady is a technological marvel for it’s age. Being made of several large balloons and standing several meters tall, it’s truly a sight to behold. The plan for the inaugural trip is to start off in the location outside of Dupois and fly toward the capital of The Holy Empire of Abel’s capital, Archangel. It will do this journey in approximately two days, something that would take someone on foot at least 2 months of non-stop travel.

Early in the morning on the day of the voyage, last minute checks and preparations are being made to ensure the safe completion of the trip. Among the guard for the ship are two members of the Le Mort family. Skyler Le Mort the Second and Demetri Le Mort, cousins, hail from the metropolis Ogara in the principality of Dalaborn; Skyler being the son of a prominent general and Demetri being the son of a weapons merchant. Both were sent on this assignment due to the fact that they met the requirements necessary to be a guard on The Lady, they were both pretty boys. Finding out a horrid secret about what would take place that day on the ship, Skyler agreed to help. This however was a lie, and he brought Demetri in on his plan; they were going to do everything they could in their ability to prevent this event from happening, hopefully they wouldn’t be alone in this endeavor.

Now drawing closer to the sailing, a large crowd started to gather. Splitting the line down the middle was a small barricade, forming what looked to be a line of people, tickets in hand and ready to board The Lady. Even though there were several people in front of her, a small woman stood close to the front, waiting almost impatiently for the boarding to start. Dressed in a simple coat, her long hair braided and loosely wrapped around her neck like a scarf with a small bag thrown over her shoulder, she was one of the few people in this line that didn’t pay for her ticket. Eventually, someone finally came out of the ship and addressed the crowd. “Thank you all for coming out today.” He brought out his arm in front of his body and bowed, “We will now commence boarding. Please come one by one and present your tickets.” Even though the noise picked up after this, the people around the small lady could clearly hear her breath “Ach, Finally…” in what could be described as a British accent.

When it finally came to be her turn in line, she presented her ticket. The ticketer looked at the ticket for a moment and then said, “Ah, you must have been one of our lucky winners. What was your name miss?” She sighed slightly and in an annoyed tone stated her name, “Meruca.” The man nodded and motioned toward the stairs, “This way please, Miss Meruca.” She sighed again and climbed the stairs. Following in behind the people in front of her, she saw a large man in metal armor with a very large hammer causing a disturbance where she was supposed to be going to be seated. “But this hammer is my life! It will not part my hands!” He exclaimed. The woman he was with turned toward him and placed a hand on his. “It’s all right Krieg. It’s only going to our room, and nothing will happen while we’re on the ship.” “But my Lady…” She looked into his eyes, “You’ve done your job, relax.” After a moment, he finally gave in. Dejectedly, he placed the hammer head down/stock up in front of one of the men. After he and his ‘lady’ entered the main hall, Meruca stepped forward and talked to one of the men guarding the doorway. Asking her for her luggage, she handed him the bag over her shoulder. As she did this, she could see that it was taking 3 of the guards a large amount of effort to lift this hammer that the man left behind. “Be careful with that, it has a few really old books in it.” She told the attendant. “Of course madam.” And on that cue, she was shown into the main hallway.

As she was being shown to her table, she saw many well dressed nobles; children, women, and men all of which she assumed were nice and loaded. Close to the back of the room, she was seated at an extra large table. Across from her, she saw the man who was called Krieg and a dark skinned individual with pure white hair. Meruca looked around for Krieg’s “lady” and upon seeing that she was sitting by herself close to one of the windows, something else caught her eye from the front of the room. Two large men were coming in the door, one portly and the other tall. So tall in fact, that he actually needed to bend down to enter the doorway. The portly man was placed next to Krieg’s lady and the tall man was actually seated next to her.

He was a bronzed man with dirty blonde hair, and an almost disturbing lack of clothing. The only things he had on were boots and what could probably be described as shorts, the fur around his shoulders looked like it was probably made for a smaller man. As he sat down across from another man close to his size, he grunted. He twitched a bit as he saw his weapons being carried past him, and then he happened to notice that someone was talking at the front of the room. “… calm as we take off. While you wait, you’re free to order anything we have available. Please enjoy the trip.” The man then bowed and went back through the door behind him. He took this as an opportunity to get familiar with his surroundings, given he felt compromised without his greatsword and mace. He saw that there were 6 guards in total in the room, the only ones that stood out to him was the one at the front with a longbow and the guard to his right that had a pair of longswords. His nostrils flared a bit when he noticed the small woman next to him sticking him in his side with one of her fingers. “Didn’t you hear the man? He asked you want you wanted to eat.” She said in an accent he hadn’t heard before. “Oh.” He grunted. “Meat and a large helping of ale.” “Of course sir.” The well dressed man retorted.

The man in armor known as Krieg shifted in his armor. “Ale, eh?” He stated to the half dressed man across from him. “Not many people enjoy the taste of such a drink. Where you from friend?” The man across from Krieg grunted then answered “The lands of Goldar.” “Goldar eh? You must be a man after my own heart, a warrior!” Krieg could see that he clearly had the man’s attention now and he extended his hand toward the man. “Krieg.” The man shook the outstretched hand. “Max Ouron.”

The fifth member of their table was generally unnoticed, but given that he walked past all the guards and onto the ship unnoticed, he preferred it this way. He preferred to keep a low profile, and he thinks that he still hasn’t been noticed at the table he had been sitting at, even though he ordered some water just a small bit ago. He preferred to simply sit back and take notice of his surroundings. This was the first time in a long while that he had been in such a large crowd for as an extended a period as this. He took note of the people at this table of his as the food was being brought out to them. The two large men Krieg and Max next to him seemed to be enjoying the stories of war they both told to one another. The girl at the end of the table was reading a book of some sort and the man across from her was eyeing every bit of food that was coming out from behind them. He stated some sort of chant when his food, which was quite a large volume for someone of his size, was placed in front of him, digging directly into the mass when the chant was done. The lady was now sipping on a dark liquid of some sort, taking her time with it almost, and the two large men continued to regale one another with stories as they ate and drank. As he ingested his water, he wondered just why he was so interested in this group.

As she sipped on her wine, she watched as the man in front of her continued to down plate after plate of food, and she wondered, out loud, after about the 4^th plate just where he was putting it all. Stopping mid bite, and with a bit of food hanging out of his mouth, he pointed to himself and cocked his head sideways looking at her. With food still in his mouth he asked “You mean me?” Shuddering a bit, she nodded her head. Chewing and swallowing what he had left in his mouth, he brought his hand in front of his face then closed it in a fist. “Well, I do quite a bit of exercise and it makes me very very hungry.” Meruca looked at him in a confused way. Grinning, he pushes the plate in front of him to his right, in front of Krieg, and got up on top of the table. After taking a deep breath, he started to dance.

He’s actually quite good, Skyler thought to himself. He’s causing too much of a ruckus though… Moving over to the table, Skyler addresses the man in a stern tone. “Sir, I need you to get down off the table.” Being ignored, Skyler places a hand on one of his two longswords and repeats himself. Looking down at the guard, the dancing man sees that the guard is serious. He stops, sighs, and then he jumps off the table and sits down. Breathing outward, Skyler thinks his troubles are over for the moment and then notices he thought too early. Now his idiot cousin was dancing like a maniac on top of one of the empty tables on the other side of the room. Walking briskly to him, he reaches out to grab him “Get down Demetri!” Demetri doges his grab but makes a mistake in his stepping and falls onto the oak table, the thicker part of his longbow digging into his back. Skyler yanks Demetri off of the table and whispers to him “That’s what you get, now get back to guarding. We don’t know when they’re going to do this. Be ready.” Sulking and slumping off, Demetri goes over to a nearby potted plant and sighs. Skyler shakes his head and goes back to his post at the other end of the room.

The next couple of hours go by without any real incident. Meruca goes to the bathroom a few times and is escorted each time by one of the guard. At one point she notices the guards in the area outside of the bathrooms acting a tad strange, but she doesn’t really think much of it. Sometime during the waiting, the man across from Meruca gets the attention of one of the attendants and asks him why it’s taking so long to go to their room. The attendant simply replied that he didn’t know and that this wasn’t like a normal ship, so he assumed this was the normal prescribed wait. About another hour passes by and that’s when everything started going to hell.