Alkimiya - A Fantasy Mystery Series

TWENTY~ONE - The Wall

Shivering under the covers on her small cot bed, Zenetra woke. A constant humming in her ears added to a headache brewing at the forefront of her head. The little room she shared with Tilde was cold, damp, and submerged in eerie shadows.

She rolled onto her side and released a groan. Her stomach pinched at the movement, her muscles there particularly tender. The humming in her ears transformed into the sound of raging water.

Sea rot. Wave. Lothar, Delwyn, Captain Inglehart— 

Fully awake, Zenetra took in the small room with greater detail. Tilde's bed was empty. Wet sheets and blankets were piled on top of her mattress. Mimi's playing cards were scattered about the room. Their designs were bubbled and faded from saturation, their corners split as they stuck to the floor. The bottle of whirl lay in a shattered heap of glass at the foot of Tilde's cot. Gone was the portal. Only a gaping hole above the two beds remained where that small, circular glass window had been. Rain dripped in and pooled around the pegs of the metal-framed cots. 

She tossed off the wet blankets that covered her body. Someone had stripped her of her uniform. Other than her underclothes, which were also cold and damp, she was naked. A sticky paste had been applied to her lower stomach where the belt had strapped her to the foldable chair. Already coloring into a nasty purple bruise, the line of broken blood vessels was a disconcerting thing to see. For all its safeguarding purposes, the strap could have cut her clean in half.

As she examined her injury in the poor lighting, her hair and necklace dangled in the way. She pressed the stone against her clammy skin and released an unsteady breath of relief.

Her absence of clothes produced a litany of issues. Zenetra was cold, wet, injured, and for all she knew, alone.

Expecting her personal items to be scattered around the room, she was relieved to find her duffle bag resting at her feet. It had been set out of range of the pooling water and broken glass. She reached for it, wincing at the painful shift of her bruises and aching muscles, and donned fresh underclothes, winter leggings, and a matching long-sleeved shirt. With no trace of her constabulary uniform in sight, she put on her civilian clothes. Her oversized "Bat Chic" winter jacket had been left at Guild Square. To keep her warm in place of that, she wrestled on a wool sweater dyed dark indigo and felt the fabric constrain at her biceps.

Her uniform boots were missing as well. She stuffed her icy feet into two layers of socks before lacing up her ankle-length civilian shoes, and then double-knotted the strings for good measure. Dressed and warmer than when she awoke, she set out to explore the rest of the airship.

The hallway was an eerie, darkened tunnel that creaked as though the metal hull were still set in water. A cross-breeze fluffed her loose hair and blew frosty air on the back of her neck. Her boots clicked too loudly for her liking.

She headed for the deck. The hatch that closed over the hole was gone. Rain showered down through the opening and dripped off every rung of the ladder. She watched the water trickle past her boots as she listened to the sea roar beyond sight.

They were no longer trapped inside that rising tidal wave but from the sound of things, they weren't far from it.

Zenetra stepped into the opening. Cold droplets hit her face as she peered up the ladder. The sky was gray and overcast, with a cool mist that smothered the airship like a blanket. Not knowing what to expect at the top, she climbed up to the deck with quivering wrists and weak ankles.

The stairwell to the captain's quarters and the navigation room was gone, ripped away by the combined force of the wave and the viscous flakes of sea rot. In its place was a single, chain-made emergency ladder that rolled out of the opening of the navigation room. The roof, as Zenetra vividly recalled, had been torn off before the crash. Half a wall was missing and with it, the deckhand and the steward.