"Hoy-oy, the straps." The Warlord Karich Urough leaned into his bootheels and climbed the deck like a mountainside, steeling toward his liner's bow. Behind him, his cloak of coal-black braids thrashed in the wild wind. "It's port or plummet, which do we choose?"
"Port!" replied the crew. Their call-and-response clawed at the oncoming stormwall. It howled in response; its dark whirls and eddies painted in azure leylight that forked and illuminated the turmoil within.
This troupe of cutthroats dared to claim the sky; to climb, to recreate legend, and defy godly decree. They were hard men, unkempt and thick of hide.
Two pairs of eyes watched from the cabin window, one in fear, the other in delight. Ablee traced her father's every move, his command, his bravado. Admiration and the first licks of contempt warred within her gut. He sought to claim her prize, and that could not stand.
Overhead, their twin hooks squealed and strained. The relics were as tall as men, their sigil-etched iron glowed forge-hot, grinding along a streamer of lightning that should have held no purchase, a leyline. When secured upon a line, a hook ignited, held its place, and maintained momentum when pushed.
Each of the two carried the price of a small town, holdings Karich sacrificed to the Church for a chance at prestige. In his eyes, everything needed to reach his ambition sat aboard this ship.
"Resound!" he called again and hammered the heel of a fist against the foremast, beckoning the spirits of his crew and vessel to push on. Their vessel, The Notion Unbidden, fought at the edge of the unknown. Galleon-sized and purpose-built, its shipwright thought his own blueprints mad. The ship was too heavy, straining its hooks to their limits, and the dockhands said it could never shove off. Karich, The Ogre, proved them wrong.
In their ensuing flight, his daughter bristled. Through the days leading to their departure, she insisted the men cart each of her belongings down to the brig, a whole bedroom set, cases of books she held no intention of reading, and dresses she had no want of wearing. All of this in the hopes that the vessel would flounder.
Wet wind rolled, licking at the laquered wood they clung to. A mile of open air and the kaleidoscopic lights of Basi'Turrim waited below for any that might lose their footing.
The ship's hull carried no luster. It was charred, dull, and black. Their ploy was simple; its execution complex. They would slip past the city and its Watchers, wrapped in night and storm, and mount the Tower. That pale, titanic monument stretched well beyond the clouds, impossibly wide, a vertical landscape, forbidden, protected. They sought to find its peak, to reach heaven, and take their place among the gods.
The auburn-haired girl and her black-headed brother, Cline, clung to a table-top, huddled against the cabin window. Leylight lanterns hummed beneath them as they braced against the tilt of their vessel's climb. It was late, and she was over-giddy, up well past a bedtime even a Warlord couldn't enforce.
Just you try, she thought, pressing her tongue to a missing front tooth's gap. That girl, Ablee Urough, was only six years old, barefoot, knees and elbows skint, in a soot-stained tank top and shorts. The Ogre in Small, the men called her, or Lord's Spawn; the sentiment was the same. She carried Karich's fire and had deemed herself the ship's second, illegitimate Captain, availing herself of its luxuries, pilfering its stores, glutting herself on jerky and ale.
Despite the first Captain's ambivalence, the men took care to dilute her cup with water when her attention strayed elsewhere.
"We're going to feel it hit? The turb- turbul-" she asked, drumming toes against the tabletop and squinting into the dark horizon. Each quake of thunder reignited her wonder and pulled back eyelids that'd warred too long at drink and sleep.
"Turbulence," her brother shook his head and swiped his greasy mop back to the side. She deeply adored the boy, paying little mind to their differences. With little time for books, she instead filtered the facts she wanted through his mouth, "I don't think so. The Notion's too big..."
"Lame," her nose pressed flat to the chill window as rain began to pelt. "Let's go out, I can't see anything."
"Door's locked, and you fogging the window's not helping..." he rolled onto his back and slid the table's length, then grabbed its leg and lowered himself, dropping to his feet on the cabin's wall.
"You could tell me how to jimmy it." She huffed and rapped a knuckle against the wet glass.
Outside, the men hollered. "I need fresh air!" she called to Ibera, the one-armed veteran officer wrestling a hook's chain on the other side of the window. "Find your missing hand and open this door for me!"
A heartfelt laugh tore through his chest as he gave the chain another vigorous yank, "Go to bed, little demon!"
Spurned, she turned her ire on Cline. "We'll feel it when the Watchers show up. They'll make sure of it, we'll get knocked right off the line."
"Why would you," he paced, thumbing the fabric of his white nightshirt, "Dad won't let that happen."
"Dad won't let that happen," Ablee chided back at him, "Whitepelt'll send us spinning, shattered, splattered through the Turrim pines, picked at by wolves."
"Ab, please..." Cline's face grew pale, and he settled into the crook of the upturned wall and floor as she went on.
"Like a ghost she streaks across the sky, clutching hook and blade. The Lioness, the pride of Basi'Turrim, Watch Commander Whitepelt!" Ablee's pounding feet reached a crescendo. "She releases her God gifted Ambrosia's might, calling upon the power of the Earth itself, dashing the dreams of any foolish mortal that would dare to pierce the heavens."
Cline stole a glance at Karich's lockbox on the counter, hand reaching to the brass key around his neck. Karich's instructions were clear and terrible: "If things go south, open it, eat it, you'll likely survive the fall."
A single honeycomb sat inside the box: Ambrosia, a palm-sized, silver-skinned hexagon with a glowing center that oscillated through a rainbow of colors.
It was the food of the Gods, granting one person a sliver of their might, and partaking meant heresy. Whitepelt, in her service to The Church, was exempt from this rule.
The implication gnawed at him. As firstborn, he would be saved, and his sister damned.
Outside, the ship's bell rang rapidly, shouts arose, and Karich bellowed above them, "Slack the front hook, we've drawn eyes!"