Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

at them. “Suri, you have to provide for your family! She’s counting on you!”

Suri put her face in her hands. “I’m gonna skin Taethawn alive, Hector. I’m gonna have myself a fuckin’ Meewskin coat.”

“Purrr! Purrr!” Cutthroat grumbled and chirped in her throat, fluffed her neck feathers, then turned her head to delicately preen Suri’s hair.

“I’m taking your berth for the rest of this goddamned trip. You can sleep on the piss-damned floor, you crazy bitch.” Gar made a sound of disgust, pulling a bottle of Vlachian slivovitz out of his Inventory. “Jesus Christ.”

“Call her ‘bitch’ one more time, and I’ll throw you through your own fucking bridge.” I stepped up this time. “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking to.”

“Your girlfriend? What about Little Miss Dragoncooter over here?” Gar motioned with his head toward Karalti. “You two’ve been all bunked up together like a pair of-”

Karalti rumbled as she turned on him, slowly. “WHAT did you just call me?”

Fortunately, before Gar could answer, the Strelitzia’s proximity alarms went off—and the intercom crackled.

“Captain! Need you on the deck!” Ambrose’s voice buzzed out of the hallway speakers. “We’ve a lot of Cloud Emperors up here.”

“Lord help me. Pregnant dinosaurs, flying jellyfish… all I wanted was to spend my fucking afterlife in peace.” Muttering to himself, Gar finally equipped his clothes—the same ratty ones he’d been wearing since we met him, and flashed one last withering look toward Cutthroat before striding off.

“Can you go keep an eye on that bitter old bastard and make sure he doesn’t try to dump us in the ocean? I’ll stay here and… sort out whatever is happening.” Suri squeezed a handful of her hair. “I don’t even know if she actually has eggs. She won’t move her arse to let me check. I mean, she might just be psyching us out? Right?”

I eyed Cutthroat as she quorked smugly to herself, wiggled her tail, and settled back down. “I’d say the odds of her actually laying actual eggs are pretty good right now.”

“How the fuck did Payu even get to you?” Suri moaned, as we left her to tend to her mount’s injury. “Cutthrooooat…”

Shaking my head, I made my way to the bridge, and nearly ran headlong into Rin as she tried to careen through the door I was just exiting. I caught her before we collided and opened my mouth to speak before I saw what was going on behind her and my eyes widened.

Thousands. There were thousands of titanic jellyfish sailing above, beside, and below the ship. They ranged from creatures the size of a car to the size of a cumulus cloud, some of them so huge it was impossible to look at them without craning your head. They were long, puffy and blimp-like, with a central sail running down the length of their translucent bodies. At the core of each jellyfish was a bright, churning blue light, which shone through their gel-like flesh like a bioluminescent lighthouse. Every [Cloud Emperor Jellyfish] was slightly different, sliding past us in iridescent shades of blue and purple.

“Oh thank goodness you’re here!” Rin gasped. “I was just about to come and get you! What happened? I heard a pistol go off.”

“Uhh… ummm…” I tore my eyes away from the sight outside and looked down along the deck. Gar was at the helm, with one hand on the control wheel and the other dancing over the magitech holoscreen that managed the ship’s navigation and controls. His other crewmates had their own flight consoles, frantically delivering reports.

“Rin! Guess what? Cutthroat’s gonna be a momma!” Karalti exclaimed, squeezing past me and running over to the window. “Wooow, look at these!”

“Cutthroat’s going to be a… OMIGOD!? She was pregnant!?” Rin’s voice nearly hit the ultrasonic range.

“Yeah. And she’s decided that Gar’s cabin is the place to raise her kids.” My eyes were drawn up to the sight outside. “Wow. This is fucking incredible.”

“This is fucking insanity, is what it is.” Gar was fuming, glancing between the console and the sky ahead of us. “I’ve never seen so many of the damn things in one place.”

Rin squealed in excitement, clapping her hands. “Omigosh! Little hookwings! We should have a baby shower!”

“A baby shower?” Karalti looked at her over her shoulder. “Is that where people throw babies at you, and you have to try and catch them in your mouth or something?”

“Wh… what?” Rin deflated slightly, her hands still pressed together. “N-No! Why would anyone do that?!”

“Because babies are delicious! Baby camels, baby iguanodons, baby corrun… they’re the perfect food if you’re raising eggs.” Karalti’s expression turned distant and dreamy as she looked back to the window. “Huh. I wonder what baby Cloud Emperors taste like?”

“My guess? Neurotoxins followed by a slow, agonizing death.” I wandered over to the railing, watching as one of the jellies cruising close to the ship sucked in a bladder full of air through a valve at the front of its gas chamber. A few seconds later, it blasted a shower of clear, clean water out the back of its body.

“Mmm. Spicy jellyfish…” Karalti barely seemed to notice I was there.

I left Karalti to her calamari-based fantasies and went to go check in on Ambrose. He was working on his controls, all eyes forward. “How’s it looking? Are we going to make it through?”

“We should. As long as we don’t provoke them and cause the herd to vent a huge amount of gas.”Ambrose had a hollow, knocking voice, as if a drum had learned how to talk. “They don’t notice us. We don’t bother them. That’s the best we can hope for.”

“What kind of gas?” Rin asked as she joined us.

“Argon. Hydrogen.” Ambrose replied. “Screws with airship engines.”

“Hey, look! Cutthroat isn’t the only one with eggs! The jellyfish are spawning!” Karalti pointed outside, jumping up and down in front