Chapter Ashborn 374: Air Trials

“Okay, so this one makes it go up, and this other one makes it go down, go forward, and roll the airship over,” Vir said, pointing to the three inscriptions carved onto the dashboard of the pilot’s seat. “That one makes it go faster, and this one makes it slow down. This one on the right makes the airship roll to the right, which will somehow allow me to turn…”

“And the one on the left does the opposite, yes,” Saunak confirmed. “Pitch, thrust, and bank. Simple!”

“You call this simple?” Vir cried. His head swam with the complexity, and considering how not a single one was labeled, he was almost positive he’d confuse one for the other.

“It is simple. You don’t even have yaw control, but seeing how you’re confused already, I am quite certain adding it would be more than your pea-sized brain could handle.”

Vir knew better than to argue with the mad genius about his perception of Vir’s intelligence—that was a battle he suspected no demon had a prayer of ever winning. Besides, he had a point. Mastering these controls while keeping control of the airship would be hard enough on its own, to say nothing of safely landing it.

“And you came up with all of these inscriptions yourself?” Vir asked.

“Do you see anyone else here who could make them? Er, Goddess excepted, of course.”

Ashani shook her head. “I doubt I could fashion anything more complex than what you have. Magitech was never my strong suit.”

“And what do those do?” Vir asked, pointing to the arms that extended to either side of the contraption.

“The wings? Same thing they do on Shrikes and birds. They keep you in the air. Similar in principle to those creatures, though not quite the same. With these, you won’t immediately fall out of the sky if you do happen to stop powering the inscriptions. Like, say, if you’re ever attacked and get distracted.”

Vir looked to Ashani, who nodded. “Worry not, they are properly airfoiled. It will fly.”

Vir didn’t have the faintest idea what an ‘airfoil’ was, or what made one ‘proper’, but he trusted the Imperium Automaton implicitly. If Ashani gave the craft her approval, that was enough for Vir. If these wings did what Saunak claimed, then it truly was an ingenious creation. Not even the Altani’s Skyships could remain in the air without a bevy of Lighten Load orbs that had to be continuously recharged. To do so naturally was nothing short of a miraculous feat.

“Now, listen up, because this is the tricky part,” Saunak said. “When I use magic, I have to first channel my prana through my tattoos, and then into the device’s inscriptions. Two stages, with each stage sapping energy. But you… You can channel ambient prana directly into the device’s inscriptions, yes?”

Vir nodded. Saunak had witnessed him use magic on plenty of occasions, so he wasn’t surprised the demon had deduced this much.

“Good. That eliminates one step. The other issue, needing copious amounts of prana, shouldn’t prove an issue for you, I think. Well? Go on! Give it a try!”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Vir gingerly reached out to touch the controls, as Ashani and Saunak watched on, along with a crowd of expectant wolves, who all sat on their haunches, wagging their tails expectantly.

“You’ve tested these inscriptions, right?” Vir asked, hesitating.

“Well, of course,” Saunak replied. “What do you think versions one through seven were for?”

“And they were successful?” Vir asked, sensing more to this story.

“Well, they served their purpose.”

Vir gave the demon a hard stare. “What happened to the previous version?”

“It flew just fine… Before I crashed it. Prana issues, as I said.”

“Right…” Vir replied, feeling much less confident about this gamble. But he did need Balancer of Scales, and he could survive a fall from any height, so maybe the danger was less than he feared.

With much trepidation, Vir allowed a trickle of prana to enter the ‘Takeoff’ inscription. This one allowed the vehicle to hover in place, but when nothing happened, Vir looked at Saunak with a questioning expression.

“More!” Saunak said. “You’ll need more than that!”

Vir doubled the prana flow, spinning up Prana Current before doubling it again. Only when he’d increased the flow sixteen-fold did the airship groan, rising slowly out of its cradle.

“Incredible!” Saunak said, clapping happily. “Simply incredible! I’d never gotten that to work before!”

Vir wanted to voice a complaint, but the act of keeping the airship hovering required a great deal of concentration. Too much prana, and the craft rose, nearly touching the ceiling. Too little, and it fell back down to the floor.

Keeping it at a constant height was a delicate balancing act, requiring not just a copious amount of prana, but significant prana control as well.

“You definitely need to make this easier,” Vir called out once he’d gotten the hang of things.

“I will, I will,” Saunak said dismissively. “Now, go on! Fly it!”

With immense reservations, Vir applied power to the inscription that allowed the airship to move forward. This was tricky, because he had to do so while maintaining the fine-tuned prana output to the inscription that allowed the craft to hover.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Luckily, Vir had long ago mastered the trick to multitasking precise prana control, back when he’d learned to charge Ashani’s orbs. Those had been painful lessons, and not ones Vir would ever forget.

The craft crept forward, and soon cleared the hangar bay doors, picking up speed.

“You’ll need to move fast!” Saunak called out. “Move fast, or else—”

Vir never heard the rest. A stray downdraft buffeted the airship, throwing off his precise control, and sending the airship falling out of the sky.

He’d luckily just cleared the perimeter of the tower, or the fall would have been a short one. As it was, Vir raced to the ground far below—faster and faster—out of control.

Realizing what an immense mistake this had been, Vir stopped touching the inscriptions and prepared to jump out. Once clear, he could, at the very least, land with Light Step tonegate any damage to himself. The airship was sadly another story, but Saunak couldn’t complain. Vir had done his part.

“I’m never doing this again—!?”

Just as Vir braced to launch himself free, something incredible happened.

The airship leveled off… and flew.

“It’s flying? On its own?”

Vir glanced at the wings. So this was what Saunak meant. The wings were somehow keeping the airship aloft. It was one thing to hear about it, and another entirely to experience it firsthand.

Easing back into the seat, Vir took a moment to marvel at the phenomenon. He provided no power—none at all. It was quite literally flying itself.

At least, it was for a brief moment. Then it began rolling to the right.

Vir touched the corresponding inscription and leveled it out without too much trouble. Now that he’d mastered one, the others came swiftly, requiring similar levels of prana and control.

After that, Vir experimented with applying prana to the inscription that allowed the airship to propel itself forward—thrust, as Saunak called it.

To his immense surprise, it took little effort to keep the plane in the air. Its wings did most of the work, and so Vir found the craft quite responsive and, dare he say it, easy to fly, once he’d gotten over his initial fright.

Even so, if Saunak had any hope of making this viable in the Demon Realm, he’d not only need to reduce the prana consumption, but he would have to properly train prospective pilots. Vir didn’t doubt many would perish tragically on their first flight without it.

Vir found that by angling the plane up slightly, and providing forward thrust, he was able to make the plane rise through the air, and soon, he pierced through the dark clouds, breaking into the lighter-gray clouds above. It was a view he’d seen only a handful of times when he’d followed Ashani to the rooftops of the tall spires in Mahādi.

Never did he think he’d soar this high on his own. With the wind rushing by his face, and in a contraption designed and built by Saunak, no less.

The experience was sublime. Surreal… and brought with it a thrill that Vir couldn’t get anywhere else. For not only was he flying, he was flying fast.

Throwing the airship into a dive, Vir picked up speed—faster and faster—until he tore through the clouds like an arrow. Not even Shrikes could hope to move this quickly. At that moment, Vir might very well have been the fastest being in all the realms… And it was intoxicating.

Vir laughed with childish glee as he came screaming down, wings flapping and vibrating, before throwing the craft into a roll.

But in his excitement, he’d input too much prana, and the craft turned belly—up, nearly making him fall out of his seat. Worse, the airship began careening towards the ground—the wings that normally kept the contraption afloat were now propelling it downwards.

Panicking, Vir pushed more prana into the roll inscription, righting it just in time to avoid a collision with the ground.

Heart pumping madly, Vir decided it was best to end the test flight. After bringing the ship up to the top of Saunak’s tower and performing a few lazy circles, Vir undertook what would undoubtedly be the toughest challenge of this experience—landing.

Only now did Vir realize his mistake—Saunak hadn’t given him any instructions, or even advice, on how exactly to land this insane contraption of his.

Luckily, Vir was far more comfortable with the controls now, than he’d been when he first started out. Thanks to the hover feature, Vir figured he could simply slow the craft and bring it to a hover, before inching it into Saunak’s hangar and settling it into its cradle.

The complication, however, was again the wind. For whatever reason, the wind that fluidly carried the airship turned violent and stormy near his tower, buffeting the craft, and making controlling it a perilous experience.

Vir’s hands flew between the roll, the pitch, thrust, and hover inscriptions, playing over them all in a furious dance to keep the airship stable in the air before understanding that this was an exercise in futility. He was crawling towards the hangar, and at this rate, the wind would undoubtedly force him to crash.

Aborting the attempt, Vir accelerated and brought the ship around for another pass. Spending any time at all in that vortex was a death sentence, and so his only option was to come in hot and fast, slowing at the very last possible minute, once he’d cleared the maelstrom.

A plan that posed a very real threat of crashing into the hangar, but Vir supposed it was better than tumbling all the way to the ground below.

Vir took a breath, braced himself, and went for it.

“Hmm,” Saunak grumbled at Vir’s aborted landing attempt. “I’ll have to do something about that…”

That the craft flew and performed as well as it did was far beyond his expectations. He’d fully expected it to break up mid-flight. Not that his test pilot needed to know that tiny detail. He’d survive a fall, anyway. And if he didn’t… Well, he wasn’t much of an Akh Nara then, was he?

“I do believe this tower may not be the most suitable platform for launching and recovering aircraft,” the Madam Goddess said, a frown upon her face.

“Indeed. The tower upsets the local weather patterns, even with the Lightning Array disabled,” Saunak replied. “Perhaps I ought to build something at ground level. Much more vulnerable to the Ash Beasts there, though.”

“Perhaps I can take a look at your tower’s systems,” Ashani said. “There may be a way to stabilize the local weather pattern for this purpose.”

Saunak’s eyes widened. “Madam Goddess, that would be a boon which I could never even hope to repay! Let us not waste any time. Let us prepare these changes at once!” Saunak said, walking over to the lift, all thoughts of Vir forgotten.

“Erm, I believe it would be best if we waited until after Vir was back safe. I doubt I will be able to make those changes immediately, and I feel we should be here in case something happens to my friend.”

“Hmm?” Saunak said, thoroughly confused. Friend? What was she—ah! “The airship. Of course. Of course, of course,” Saunak said offhandedly. In truth, he couldn’t care less what happened to that model. He’d already drafted a better version in his head. Then again, he supposed it would be good to study the current iteration for stress fractures. Yes, it made sense to recover the craft, after all.

Vir came around for another pass, though this time he showed no signs of slowing.

“Is something wrong?” Ashani asked.

“It shouldn’t be…” Saunak replied. “It was working just fine. Why is he coming in so quickly? He’ll destroy the hangar!”

That was a much worse prospect. He’d rather Vir crashed somewhere else, where the only loss would be the aircraft, and potentially his own life. No, crashing into his hangar, which contained all sorts of tools and construction apparatus, was far, far, worse.

“Stop!” Saunak yelled, running toward the incoming aircraft. “Stop this at once!”

The wolves that sat quietly until now, howled loudly, chasing after him.

“What? What do you want? Shoo! Go away!”

Saunak, who’d started running to warn away the incoming Vir, now ran for dear life.

“They are worried for their master’s health,” Ashani said, suddenly appearing beside him, floating in midair.

“Madam Goddess, what do you—!?”

The airship whooshed by, knocking Saunak over with a gust of wind. He tumbled and rolled to a stop.

Just in time to see the airship crash into the hangar.

No. Not crash. Land?

The speeding craft, which had been sure to destroy everything, slowed at the last minute, creeping into the hangar, and settling gently down into its cradle.

“Well, then,” Ashani said with a sweet smile, setting down just in front of him. “It would seem you get to live another day…”

Saunak heaved out a breath… and wept.