Welcome to Skyrock Garrison

The woman blushed and donned a sheepish grin. “Right, sorry about that! I guess you must be pretty confused, being kidnapped by gargoyles and dropped through the air and rescued by a floating outpost. Well, I’m Mabon, and this is my crew.” She said it in a way that indicated she was in charge of them, not merely one of their number. “We’ve been up here for the past few weeks trying to get the citadel to come home.”

The three young people stared at Mabon a moment before turning those confused gazes toward each other. Finally, Ianthe blurted out, “You—what?”

Mabon laughed and jerked her head as she began walking. It was clearly an invitation to follow her, so the trio did. “Plenty of time to get into all that. Let’s break for lunch, first. Take lunch!” The woman shouted the words into the air, and everyone in the vicinity dropped what they were doing and headed for a large makeshift kitchen not too far away.

“So,” she said as they marched. “What are your names?”

“I’m Ianthe,” said Ianthe. “It’s nice to meet you, I think.”

“Fairuza,” the other girl said.

“Kimmerick,” said the boy.

“Ianthe, Fairuza, Kimmerick,” Mabon recited, pointing at each person in turn. Satisfied that she’d gotten the names straight, the woman ushered the newcomers to the front of the chow line. Fairuza blushed as they cut in front of a large man with a big belly and one set of goggles on his face and yet another propped on the top of his head. But when the man got an eyeful of Mabon, he smiled grandly and happily stepped aside.

Mabon took a handful of plates and passed them around to her new entourage. “You picked a good day to fall out of the sky,” she said. “If you’d shown up yesterday, you’d be feasting on mushroom stew, and if you’d arrived tomorrow, you’d get your fill of oatmeal and broccoli. But today’s smoked goat, my personal favorite. Be generous with the gravy, Lovell; these are my guests!” She motioned for the cook to ladle more delicious-smelling, thick brown gravy over the slabs of meat that took up the whole plate. “We caught them tumbling out of the goddamn sky!”

“Fancy day for you,” the cook grunted. “But I only got as much gravy as I got. Can’t invent something from nothing. Not my fault you brought three extra mouths to my camp.”

“My camp,” Mabon corrected.

“Not if you ain’t the one feedin’ ’em,” Lovell countered.

Mabon grinned widely, and the group carried their plates to a makeshift dining hall, which was just rows of wooden tables and chairs crammed under a canopy of red-striped tarps. Sunlight leaked through the seams where the tarps didn’t quite overlap. In the shade of the tarps, everything glowed faintly red. Ianthe found the color made her pale skin look diseased, which gave her the creeps.

Fairuza, on the other hand, suspected that the light made her own naturally red skin look hale and healthy, so it wasn’t her fault if she preened just a little as she threw her thick legs over the bench to crowd herself near the table.

Kimmerick thought nothing of the light at all. Of the three young people, he was the hungriest, and nothing mattered as much as diving into that plateful of heavenly gravy.

Unfortunately for Kimmerick, he was also the most disabled, and so while he would have liked to attack his meal with gusto, he only had one hand to work with. He did the best he could with just a fork.

Mabon shook a napkin into her lap and cut into her goat meat. “So how did it happen that the three of you got captured by gargoyles?”

“Never mind that,” Ianthe demanded, her pretty face crumpled into a scowl. “I’d like to know what this is we’ve stumbled upon.” Ianthe indicated the entirety of the floating island with a regal wave of her fork. “And what did you mean about convincing the citadel to return home?”

“I asked first,” Mabon said, her face impassive as she forked a huge chunk of meat into her mouth.

“But there’s three of us,” Ianthe continued, “and only one of you, and I’m certain all three of us have the same question. Aren’t I right?” She glanced around at her companions for support.

Fairuza nodded as she chewed her meat. A small glob of gravy escaped the corner of her mouth. “I’d like to know, too.”

“Me, three,” Kimmerick added through a mouthful of half-chewed meat.

Mabon chuckled good-naturedly and let out a defeated sigh. “Oh, all right. I can see when I’m outnumbered. Well, you’ve had the glorious fortune of tumbling upon—you tumbled, after all; you did not, in fact, stumble—Skyrock Garrison.”

Fairuza cringed a little, expecting a snotty reply from Ianthe, who under normal circumstances was not the sort of person to take correction lightly. But for whatever reason, Ianthe did not quarrel. “Skyrock Garrison,” she repeated. “Not a very creative name for a floating island, is it?”

“I suppose not,” Mabon agreed, “but it’s the only floating outpost we have, so it’s at least apt. We didn’t have any floating outposts at all until a few weeks ago. Didn’t need any, as we don’t have skybound enemies in the Valley. Well, we didn’t. But then the citadel decided she was bored of holding still, so she lifted up her skirts and took off into the sky, and that rousted up a local tribe of gargoyles who didn’t like their territory being invaded. And I can’t blame them for that. If someone invaded our territory, we’d protect our lands with force as well. But we can’t just let the damned citadel float away, so what are we to do?”

“What was the island called before it was taken over as an outpost?” Fairuza asked.

The frizzy-haired woman shrugged. “Nothing that I know of. There’s no people up here. It’s not really large enough to support a community of people—not enough water or wildlife, though the north end of the island does have a lake. But anyway, as far as I know, it didn’t have a name. Now it’s Skyrock Garrison. And that’s that.”

“I have so many questions,” Ianthe said as she delicately pressed her napkin to her lips. “I’ll start with—which valley are we in, exactly?”

Mabon tipped her head sideways as she gave the young woman a quizzical look. “The Valley,” she said slowly. “Bristleback Valley. Is anywhere else on the continent referred to as ‘the Valley’?”

“Well,” Ianthe said primly. Now, Fairuza cringed for real. She recognized that tone. Whatever attitude Ianthe had spared Mabon a moment ago had been bottled up and carefully tended, awaiting just the right moment to explode upon their unsuspecting host.

Now was apparently that moment.

“Well, I don’t know any Bristleback Valley,” Ianthe began haughtily, “and while my knowledge of geography isn’t expert by any means, I have studied the maps that the cartographers brought back from their sojourns, and I’ve never heard of Bristleback Valley. I’ve heard of Wet Knees, Sundercloud, and Frondvale Valley. I’ve heard of Golden Ring Valley, Hush Hush Valley, and—Fairuza, what’s that valley that the homely girl with the curling horns couldn’t stop talking about two summers ago? Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue—”

“Ianthe,” Fairuza warned.

“No, no, don’t try to shut me up, I know I’ll think of it if I—Stardew! That’s the one.” She smiled prettily as she propped her elbows on either side of her plate, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin atop them. “But I’ve never heard of Bristlebane Valley.”

“Bristleback,” Mabon corrected without even looking up from her plate. She took another bite patiently, wiped her mouth, stood, and whipped a map from her back pocket. A bit more roughly than was strictly necessary, the woman pushed her plate and Ianthe’s aside to make room for the map, which she spread on the table. She planted a firm finger over a large scar in the middle of a large continent. “Bristleback Valley,” Mabon said. “Right here.”

Ianthe leaned over the map, her prim mouth scribbled into a frown. “What’s all this?”

“This,” Mabon said with a weary sigh, “is a map of Saravos. The largest landmass in the world. You are here.” She tapped the scar again. It was located dead in the center of the continent, neatly splitting the land in two.

Ianthe shook her head with a tight little laugh. “That, of course, is impossible. We’re in Ylendra.”

Mabon eyed Ianthe carefully before turning her gaze to Fairuza. “Do you also think you’re in Ylendra?”

Fairuza didn’t need to look up from her plate to know Ianthe was boring holes in her skull with an icy glare. She cleared her throat and turned to Mabon. “Well, I know that we haven’t crossed a single ocean on our sojourn. I know that the Trunks is located at the base of the Overpride mountain range, and I know that mountain range hugs the eastern coast of Ylendra. That’s what I know,” she repeated.

Mabon took a deep breath. “Then I suppose that confirms the old tales.” She scoffed, shaking her head. “I never believed them. Never would have believed them. But I don’t think you two are crazy, and I don’t think you’re lying. Which leaves me with no choice but to believe you’re telling the truth.”

Ianthe pounded a small fist against the table, rattling the cutlery and causing a few curious heads to peek in her direction. “Speak plainly! You’re obviously trying to say something. Won’t you do us all a favor and just spit it out?”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Kimmerick who spoke. “She’s talking about the myths that gargoyles can travel through portals. If we were captured in Ylendra and ended up in Saravos, that’s the only possibility.”

Ianthe’s mouth fell open such that she looked like a fish, and she made a few false starts at actually speaking before she finally blurted out, “You can’t possibly be saying we’re really on the other side of the globe? But that’s impossible! A trip around the world would take . . . days? Weeks? Longer than a few minutes, anyway!”

“I guess you missed the part where I said portals.” Kimmerick sighed and hacked at his meat with his fork. With only one hand, he hadn’t made much of a dent in his meal. “In the old days, people used to go missing a lot more often than they do now. Today, we have patrols, Watcher guilds, and just generally better tracking. But back then, people used to vanish all the time—only to show up much farther away than they should have been. The victims swore they’d been captured by gargoyles, but nobody could explain the great distances they’d traveled in a short time.”

“A great mage of the modern era, Eros Levain, hypothesized that the gargoyles were traveling through portals,” Mabon continued when Kimmerick paused to take another stab at lunch. “The problem was that no one had ever seen these portals, and certainly no human has ever created anything remotely like one. But from what the three of you have said, it’s the only true possibility.”

Ianthe’s mouth was still hanging open, so Fairuza placed her thumb under the girl’s chin and closed it for her. She didn’t want her friend to accidentally catch a fly. “This is a lot to take in,” Fairuza said, “and it’s gonna take some time to process it all.”

“I’ve already processed it,” said Kimmerick. “I mean, I guessed as much when Mabon told us where we were.”

Now, Ianthe whirled on Kimmerick, the color rising in her cheeks, giving her a deep rose flush. “Well, aren’t you just too proud of yourself! Am I the only one who is even the tiniest bit concerned that we seem to have traveled thousands of miles away from home in the span of a few moments? What are we going to do? How are we going to get home? What are we going to do?”

“The first thing you’re gonna do,” Mabon said, “is calm the hell down. You’re safe and you’re with good people. That’s more than a lot of folks get, so don’t start caterwauling just yet. As for the rest, we’ll just have to—”

“Servo Mabon, ma’am?”

A pockmarked young man with a headful of bushy red hair stood a few feet away, wringing his hands and biting his lip, clearly distraught at having interrupted Mabon’s meal. Fairuza could all but see the kid’s knees knocking together.

Mabon blew a wayward curl from her eyes. “What is it, Sprocket?”

“The bergess is here. She’s waiting for you in your quarters. Ma’am.”

The woman sighed heavily as she dragged herself to her feet. “Get these plates cleaned up, Sprocket,” she said to the young man, indicating what was left of their lunch. “You three, come with me. There’s a lot to explain and not a lot of time to do it. And before you start crying again, Ianthe, I am not immune to the gravity of your predicament, and I promise we’re gonna figure something out the best we can, as soon as we can. Right now, though, the answer to my prayers is waiting for me in my tent.”

Chirp had already gathered the plates by the time the trio had clambered to their feet. Fairuza put an arm around an increasingly irritated Ianthe, but Kimmerick was running ahead of them, his eyes big as saucers as he gaped at Mabon.

“A bergess? Here? So that’s what’s going on! Hot damn, well, ain’t that exciting! You’ve got a berg problem! I have to admit, I never heard of a berg waking up on a floating island, though. What kinds of buildings do you even have on floating islands?”

“None in these parts,” Mabon said, walking briskly. “The berg in question isn’t native to the island. The berg in question,” she said with a sigh, “is the citadel.”

Kimmerick gasped. He actually gasped, covering his mouth with his good hand. “You gotta be pulling my leg. There’s no way—”

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Ianthe demanded. She’d yanked free of Fairuza and was now practically jogging to keep up with Mabon and Kimmerick. “What is a bergess? What’s a citadel? Why is everyone so up in arms—”

“Ianthe.”

Fairuza stood frozen in her tracks. She grabbed her friend by the arm and swung her around so they were now facing the opposite direction of where they’d been heading. If it hadn’t been for all the commotion of tumbling out of the sky and getting whisked off to lunch under a canopy of tarps, they would have seen it earlier. They couldn’t have missed it. And even now, looking straight at it, Ianthe could not believe what she was seeing. The ground flew out from under her as her stomach fell into her shoes, and though she’d hate herself for it later, she let herself fall against Fairuza’s bulky frame for support as her knees turned to water.

Floating several hundred yards away was a castle.

Mabon sucked in a breath and dipped her chin. “Yep. That’s the citadel. It’s supposed to be on the ground about three miles from here. But a few weeks ago, the damn thing woke up and took off.”

“It’s not just a berg,” Kimmerick breathed, lights of delight flickering in his overwide eyes. “It’s a boulderberg! We don’t—we don’t even have those in Ylendra! Not a single one has ever been sighted! We just have normal bergs—windmills coming to life, lighthouses, log cabins, the occasional watchtower. But a boulderberg!”

Ianthe gaped, clutching the front of her shirt. “But I thought bergs could only be buildings made from wood.”

“That’s the boulder bit in boulderberg,” Kimmerick explained. “In Saravos, buildings made of stone have started coming to life! They’re called boulderbergs! I never dreamed I’d get to see one with my own eyes! And look at it. It’s enormous!”

“It was—is—a citadel,” Mabon reminded them. “A fortified building designed to withstand heavy attack. We don’t use it as a military fortress anymore, though. That citadel is home to the Bristleback Military Academy. It’s where we train officers and strategists. That building has more military knowledge contained within its walls than anywhere within a thousand miles! We got the last of the people out a few days ago, so at least there’s that. But we can’t just have our citadel floating around like a noblewoman on vacation! So now you understand the urgency of why we need to capture it and return it to the ground. And with that, I must leave you.”