21-09, 392AU

Morning

Today was probably the strangest day of my life, and the way things are going I can only hope that it won't be my last. It all started pretty normal, woke up to Gerian and Sellys running and screaming all around the tent before sunrise, all excited for my "great adventure". I reminded them that I'll only be gone for a week or two at most, and they made me promise to bring them souvenirs from Halsen. I almost wanted them to come along and meet mum, but the city is a dangerous place for kits, especially nowadays. They'd have other chances to meet their aunt anyway.

Looking back, I'm really glad they didn't come. I went to the Telyn river, planning to meet mum downstream and walk with her to Halsen, and that's when things went south.

Raging Waters

At first I thought Kilynwe mad. The riverwater started rumbling and the trees started quivering as nearby animals fled the banks and took shelter behind the trees. I whispered a plea to the Kilynwe, hoping the river spirit would calm down, or at least let me pass through safely. But it wasn't his doing. The water beneath me started bending up in to the air, carrying my boat with it, and before I could process what was going on, the world around me shifted.

I was no longer surrounded by the forests of my home. Looking around, I saw that my boat was trapped in the maw of a massive whirlpool, stretching as far as the eye could see. There were other small boats in the water, all unmanned, as well as many large boulders. My boat rocked aggressively as the powerful currents tossed it about, as I dug my claws into the wood, holding on with all my strength. I almost crashed into half a dozen rocks, and I held a blasting stone, ready to knock away any that would have impacted the boat.

After a while, I honestly can't tell if it was a minute or an hour, I spotted something. It had the bearing of a ship, but it was much huge - larger than any castle I've ever seen, and all made of solid metal. Hundreds of metal spokes and rods split from its hull in all directions, and I could see faint lights shining from some of its windows. The ship was directly in the path of my boat, and I figured that my stone wouldn't do much to change that, so I changed my plan. Right before impact, I leapt from the boat and held on to the ship as tightly as I could.

I felt the ship rocking and swaying as I was sprayed with water splashing from below. I noticed a small opening in the hull nearby, and I carefully managed to make my way towards it.

The Engineering Room

Inside the ship, I saw an incredible sight: there was a bright glowing crystal that looked almost identical to the energy crystal made by human Enchanters back home, except this was thousands of times bigger - it was taller than I, and was floating in the grip of a large metalic vice. The crystal's glow seemed to be flowing into the steel, almost as if the metal were siphoning the Essence directly from the crystal. If I ever get back home, I will try to recreate this design, it could very well revolutionize the storage and transfer of Essence in various artifacts.

As I neared the crystal, I saw another hole in the hull on the opposite side of the room, along with two other people who climbed in through it. One of them was a large blue man who later introduced himself as Dhovos, the other was a man that seemed to be a sort of metal-based earth elemental, by the name of Ascii. Just as we started introducing ourselves, two humans appeared from the same hole I came in through: a large human called Moxmen and a human wearing strange steel armour called Ignis.

All throughout these introductions, water was rushing through the holes and started flooding the room. A voice came from a metal pipe, looking for "the engineering crew" (I heard about an artifact that allows people to project their voices from various places, I assumed this was something similar). The voice said it was the captain of the ship, and after we explained that we aren't the engineering crew, it claimed that it doesn't care and simply wants us to patch up the holes in the ship. We agreed that it's in our best interests, because except for Dhovos we can't breath underwater, and we probably wanted to ingratiate ourselves with the captain so that he'd agree to take us back home.

Ascii seemed to know how to repair the ship, so he and Dhovos went ahead and started fixing one of the holes. Partway through, a bright red shark swam in through the hole they were working on, but Dhovos managed to calm it before it tried anything.