The Mists of Death are taboo; none who enter return, or so we were told by the local death spirits. We intend to challenge that notion. We have brought wizards, warriors, equipment, knowledge, and experience; no matter what dangers lie inside, they will not faze us.

  However, in the unlikely scenario that we do perish, we leave our travel log here for the future explorers of our glorious Kingdom to find.

  For Alabaster,

  ?Casius Esteban and the 17th explorer team.

  -A letter placed on a dusty, rotting notebook.

  Axehand fell back on the deck, once again rocking the ship; and the whale, with its tail tip missing, released an ear-piercing bellow as its flight destabilized, heading away from them and seemingly unable to turn around.

  "Open the sails!" Marcus yelled, returning to his senses. "We must ride the wind before the whale turns around! And Laura, don’t you dare let up!"

  "I’m trying," she replied through gritted teeth. Axehand looked over his shoulder, grunting a chuckle at everyone’s incredulous gazes, and the airship flew away. Behind it, the whale thrashed in mid-air, swinging its stump like mad as it struggled to balance without a tail. It rained thick, black blood.

  Its bellows continued to fill their ears for a long time, but the distance quickly increased. They were flying with the wind, and the whale could barely keep itself afloat, let alone turn around to chase them.

  "We did it!" Jerry cried out, panting. "We survived!"

  “Most of us were already dead, Master," Boney said, cluckling a bit. "But yes. We made it."

  "Axehand…" Marcus made sure everything was in order before turning to the undead. "How did you even do that?"

  The skeleton grunted, reaching for his steel flask and taking another swig of wine.

  "Axehand is super strong," Jerry said. "And now, with this new overcharging trick, he’s even more so."

  "He sliced the entire tail apart," Marcus said. "That’s way beyond the reach of his axes."

  "I have no idea either, but if it works, it works."

  "That makes no sense!"

  “Neither do flying whales.”

  "Can we focus, please?" Laura asked from the side, her voice strained. "The steam pressure is intense. I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”

  "Do you mean we will fall to our deaths?" Boney asked, looking at the torn valve.

  "Yes, so do something about it."

  "We must land immediately!" Marcus said. "Men, keep the sails half-open. Laura, can you release some of the fuel?"

  “Maybe, but don’t expect smooth."

  "That’s fine. Everyone else, prepare for an emergency landing."

  "There’s a swamp over there!" Jerry yelled from the ship’s front. "We could land in it, but there’s a problem, Marcus!"

  “What?”

  “We don’t have a landing permit!”

  Marcus gave him a blank stare. “This isn’t the time, Jerry. To the swamp!”

  Laura dissolved and swiftly recreated her water bubble, letting some smoke hiss out and making the ship drop a few feet like a rock. Everyone found themselves flying, then slammed into the deck.

  "Hang on to something," she shouted, struggling to stay upright. Sweat was already tricking down her forehead. "This is the best I can do!"

  "Boney, hold the wheel," Marcus ordered, rushing to the prow. "I see a mud lake in the swamp; we’ll land there. Laura, lower us to thirty feet off the ground."

  "How the hell can I know that?!"

  "Keep going until I tell you!"

  The ship kept dropping a few feet at a time, slowly but surely descending. The swamp grew in their vision. The tallest trees almost scratched the hull.

  "That’s enough!" Marcus said, narrowing his eyes. "Billies, raise the sails fully. We need to slow down as much as possible."

  A ship’s momentum was hard to stop in mid-air. There were no breaks. It was supposed to slow down gradually by air resistance, but that wasn’t fast enough right now. Thankfully, the airshipwrights had made the wheel work by opening two flat blocks of wood at the right and left side of the hull respectively.

  "Boney, prepare to turn right,” Marcus said. “Axehand, grab the left stopper and force it open when I tell you! You two must work together. With both stoppers open, we’ll slow down and have a chance at making it."

  Axehand stared back defiantly. He didn’t like being ordered around.

  "Please!" the treasure hunter said, and the double-skeleton finally complied with a grunt. Reaching down from the left side of the deck, he grabbed the top of the stopper and prepared to pull.

  "Are you ready?" Marcus said. "Three, two, one… Now!"

  Boney turned the wheel at "one," so the ship turned sharply right for a moment before Axehand acted. The stopper resisted as he pulled, clearly not meant to operate manually, but it was unable to resist his strength; something gave way, and it swung open.

  The ship rocked as it straightened and started losing speed fast, both stoppers acting as their name would indicate. The entire thing shook, its structural integrity failing.

  "Keep them open!" Marcus said, looking down and trying to calculate the distance. "Laura, we’re thirty feet in the air. I’ll need three short bursts. Drop us in three, two, one… Now!"

  The ship protested as it dropped, making everyone’s stomachs fly for a moment before they crashed into the deck. A moment later, the process was repeated, and by now, Jerry could see trees jutting out to their left and right. They were zooming by way too fast.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "I’m not sure this is a—"

  The water bubble disappeared. Steam hissed out of the valve’s hole as the airship landed in the mud, its hull instantly crashing into the ground below and dragging through it.

  The moment they landed, everyone flew forward. Jerry rolled on the deck, almost crashing against the railing before Headless got in the way, taking the strike for his Master. Laura, too focused on controlling their descent, flew off before Axehand reached out with one hand, easily and gently stopping her mid-air.

  Marcus cursed as he crashed against the base of the prow, while the Billies, somehow, remained glued to the masts. The entire ship groaned as its hull was grated off, and it toppled to the side.

  The airship reached the end of the mud lake. Its prow tore into a thicket of short trees, uprooting some of them and locking the ship in place with a massive bang. Everyone fell off and into the mud lake.

  Everything came to a still, and absolute silence ensued, echoing in their ears harder than any sound had.

  Marcus raised his upper body, taking a deep breath as he wiped the mud off his face; this small lake was less than a foot deep, apparently, and filled with floating waste—weeds, sticks, logs, and, most recently, broken planks.

  "We survived…" he muttered before laughing. "Hah! Take that, Abdul and all your sand surfers. I told you I could fly an airship!"

  "We survived, but I don’t think the ship did…" Jerry said, perfectly safe in Headless’s embrace. "It looks a bit broken. At least the gas barrels didn’t explode.”

  The wooden airship was toppled on its right side. Its front was littered with holes, inflicted by the short trees it crashed on, and its mast lay broken in half. Its entire hull had been grated off, left in pieces in the mud lake, both stoppers were broken, and even the air valve was ruined.

  The only part of the airship still standing was the hot air balloon, as it was higher up and had escaped tree impalement. Though empty, inner mechanisms kept it from deflating.

  “How will we return it at this rate?" Jerry wondered aloud.

  "What?"

  "We borrowed the airship, remember? And you, you big goof…" He turned to Headless, whose head was missing, flung who-knows-where. "I could handle this fall myself. You didn’t need to do that."

  Headless did not respond whatsoever. He’d probably smiled, forgetting that his head was no longer with him.

  "Is everyone okay?" Jerry asked, looking around him. The undead surfaced one by one, shrugging off the mud, except for Axehand, who seemed to have landed on his feet. He held Laura in a princess carry, taking care not to hurt her with his bones.

  "You saved me. Thank you," she said, smiling gently. "Can you let me down now? Not in the mud, please."

  Axehand grunted, placing her at the edge of the small mud lake. She turned to the others.

  "Why are you lying down? Stand up already, we need to hide the airship. That whale could return at any moment."

  Axehand grunted in displeasure, while Jerry laughed.

  "We should find Headless’s head first," he said. "He can’t drown, but being buried in the mud must be unpleasant."

  Headless still didn’t respond—he was probably trying to nod. A moment later, he worked out the fact that his head wasn’t visible and gave a thumbs-up.

  Marcus stood up and looked over himself, completely covered in mud. He glared at the pristine Laura. She smiled back. Besides Laura and Axehand, the only clean thing was Jerry’s chair, which had flown all the way to the shore of the small lake and landed on a soft patch of bushes. Miraculously, it was still whole, if a bit cracked in places.

  "Let’s get to work, everyone!" Jerry said, uncaring of the mud all over him. "We must find our friend’s head, then quickly hide the airship."

  "How do you propose we do that, Master?" Boney asked.

  "By searching this mud lake until Headless winks at us."

  "I meant hiding the airship."

  "Oh. We could throw trees all over it, I guess?" Jerry looked at the ship’s prow, surrounded by uprooted short trees as it was—most barely reached six feet in height. "Axehand can help out; he’s very strong. He can also cut down some trees if we don’t have enough. He’s not the world’s greatest lumberjack for nothing."

  Axehand grunted in pride, proudly raising one axe into the air.

  Marcus facepalmed before he could think better about it. "Oh, great," he said. "This is going to be annoying; I can feel it."

  It was. The mud lake might have been small for a lake, but it covered an area of over ten thousand square feet. Moreover, Headless couldn’t help them much as he couldn’t see anything. They all ended up trudging through the mud for a solid ten minutes, soaked beyond salvation, while Laura watched on from the side.

  In the meantime, Axehand was throwing tree after tree over their fallen airship, hiding it from any eyes in the sky. When he ran out, he easily cut new trees with one swing each. He really was the world’s greatest lumberjack.

  "I found something!" Jerry exclaimed.

  "Is it the head?" Marcus asked.

  "No, it’s a cool fish. Look!"

  He proudly raised a small form into the air; it resembled a brown fish spine, except it was thrashing about.

  "The Dead Lands even have skeletal fish," he said, smiling.

  "Better put that down, Jerry," Marcus said, "or the little asshole will try to gnaw through your hand."

  "Nah, fish can’t do that. Look at how cute it is; I’ll name it Fishbone. What do you say, Fishbone? Wanna join us?"

  The fish skeleton thrashed manically. Jerry could easily suppress its soul if he wanted to, but just like with the whale, he felt such overwhelming chaos in there that there was no way he could tame it.

  "Oh well," he said, throwing it back into the mud, "goodbye, Fishbone. Have a happy unlife."

  The fish swam away at top speed, almost instantly disappearing into the mud.

  "Why didn’t it attack you?" Marcus asked again, straightening his body. "I thought wild undead were berserk."

  "No idea."

  "They’re aggressive, not completely suicidal," Laura said. "If you’re clearly out of their league, they won’t attack."

  "You know a lot, don’t you?" Marcus raised a brow.

  "I’m a well-read girl."

  "Sure."

  "I found the head!" Boney exclaimed, raising Headless’s head before bringing it close to his own. "Look, Master; with two heads, I’m double as smart."

  "That’s still zero," Laura said, drawing a few puzzled looks that quickly turned into amused ones.

  "My joke was funnier," Boney said.

  "It really wasn’t," she shot back.

  Axehand was just finished with his personal project, having laid dozens of trees on the airship already, and he rubbed his axes together in satisfaction for a job well done. Only a corner of the balloon was visible now, but he’d covered it in mud to be discreet.

  Jerry smiled. "Great job, Axeha—Wait, is that log moving?"

  On a floating log right next to Axehand, something shone like a row of gems. They were teeth. The mud erupted as a large, reptilian form lunged out.