Can anyone hear me? I don't think so.
Oh god, this is awful. Please, let this be a dream. I need to close my eyes and wake up in our Paris hotel. It's gonna be okay. This isn't real.
I'm not waking up. I don't actually sleep, so...
I shouldn't be talking to myself down in the bilge, while they march around on the surface boasting about what they're going to do with us. If they hear me, they could lock me down with the others.
God, I can't do this. Blake's the hero. Even Jordan can come up with clever ideas, now and then. But not me. I've got nothing, and I don't belong here. I'm so screwed, and when they catch me, we all are.
Deep breaths, Ryan. Stay quiet. Nice and easy, yeah? Be smart, and we all get to walk away from this. We can survive.
Don't know what to do.
Okay, Ryan. Go over what you know, think. What's happening?
Sailed away from Klugetown as soon as the others were asleep. I pretended to sleep for a while, for their benefit—then came down here to find a private place to talk. I'm hiding in our empty cart now, where we dumped all the water. It's just boxes and stuff down here, hopefully they don't come to search.
If they do, they'll come looking for me. I'm not in with the others.
We started sailing, and it wasn't light outside. Seemed a little weird at first. Wasn't sure what to do. I went out to ask about it, saw one of the bird-people locking up our bedroom. I panicked, and did the only thing that made sense.
I think they all went to sleep. If they didn't, I'm so screwed. Shouldn’t be talking, Ryan. Bad habit. Recording now? Stupid stupid stupid.
They're not taking us to Mount Aris. There's a mine out in the desert somewhere, we'll be there by morning. They're gonna sell us.
Sell us. Callahan is a slaver. We're so screwed.
More deep breaths. What do we know?
Crew of six. Bird things, bigger than we are. Even if they weren't, outnumber us two to one that can walk. But there are other locked cages. There's another bird locked up in the hold with me, chained up near the back. Don't know if she saw me. There's a few more across the hall from us, locked up just the same.
Six crew. Armed. None of us know how to fight. But if we don't fight, they're gonna sell us.
Others aren't even awake yet. They don't know what happened. Callahan didn't waste time, probably wants to get rid of us as quick as he can.
I have to do something. What's the smart thing to do when you're about to be enslaved? Fight back, obviously. Fight back with... something. No obvious weapons. The sailors only had crude swords, but they're all those bird things too. These claws and beak could rip out a throat even without help.
We might be able to use numbers. If I can get everyone unlocked, we could seize the ship. Together. Better than just waiting here to get dumped, anyway.
This does suggest an answer to something that has been troubling me about this other world thing since we discovered it. That map is covered with portals, and we're at least decently confident they're all in our world. How could this world have gone undiscovered for so long?
One possible answer is hostility. Anyone who tries to cross never comes back. That outcome feels frighteningly likely.
Alright, bird prisoner first, she's closest. Then my friends, then the others. We have to seize this ship before we land, or else... yeah. Don't even want to think about it.
Ryan clicked off the recorder, slipping it into the little bag he kept it concealed in. It was all kinds of flavors of crazy to waste time on it now. It was probably crazy to think he would ever have time to transcribe his ramblings.
Then he moved, climbing up the side of the tank as slowly as he could. Birds didn't have ears to perk high over their heads, revealing them like Jordan might've done with those fluffs he had going.
The cargo hold was almost pitch black. Unlike his native state, Ryan found the darkness practically impenetrable around him in this form. In the light, these eyes were probably the best he'd ever had, but in here...
It was probably working in his favor. If their night vision was a bit better, the crew might've seen him hiding down here. He might be locked up with the others, or dead.
He considered drawing his flashlight, but that was probably stupid for the same reason. Any source of light would attract attention if griffons happened to pass this way. So he slipped back to the bottom of the tank, then forced himself to relax.
Ryan still wasn't sure exactly how the powers worked. Everything worked on instinct, and doing any of it consciously took tons of extra concentration.
He counted his breaths, focused on nothing in particular. Until his body relaxed from the shape he'd copied, like letting the tension out of his shoulders.
Returning to his normal shape didn't drain him of energy the way taking a new one did, though he wasn't sure about why quite yet. Shouldn't changing into another creature involve the same process in both directions?
It didn't. Rather, it meant an end to the energy he'd spent. It's going to be weird when anyone listens to that log and it isn't in my voice.
Suddenly the tank rose far higher around him, almost twice the size it had been moments before. The trade was worth it, though: his eyes could finally focus on the cargo hold. He reached up, wings buzzing quietly to urge him up over the edge.
There was a tiny trickle of light from above, shining down through the boards of an upper floor. It was more than enough for him to see everything.
We should've felt more suspicious when we walked in here. The cargo hold was mostly empty. Even the crates and barrels waiting on shelves seemed empty upon closer inspection. What were the sailors transporting, if not dead cargo?
Living, apparently.
Ryan ignored the boxes, climbing over and around them until he reached the large crate in the back, almost as tall as a shipping container. He'd already peeked inside once, though he didn't need to look to feel what was within.
The creature inside tasted desperate, afraid, and hopeless. And if I'm wrong about what those emotions taste like, I might be damning all of us.
But he didn't have a choice. The others were trapped already, and he didn't have any other tools. A single spray worth of mace would not retake a ship.
He rotated the lock open with his mouth, so slowly that the click was barely audible. The one inside wasn't asleep, despite the hour. Her thoughts felt suddenly more focused, coalescing into fear. She expected something terrible to happen to her again.
Ryan opened the crate, though he'd already seen inside to know what to expect. There was a bird in the center, body wrapped completely with tight restraints. Even her mouth was gagged, such that she could do little more than wiggle back and forth on the floor. She looked up, but there wasn't enough light for a bird to see.
Ryan let the crate close behind him, then began fishing in his bag for the flashlight. "You don't know me," he whispered. "But I want to get you out of here."
Maybe it was unfair that he could sense the emotions of the creature on the ground below him. Her fear hadn't faded, though it was now accompanied by a single slice of desperate hope. "I'm going to turn on a light," he whispered. "Please don't be alarmed. I look... strange. But I promise I'm here to help."
He clicked on the light with a hoof. Even on its lowest setting, the headlamp nearly blinded him at first, filling the crate with a blast so overwhelming that he felt one set of eyelids closing involuntarily. The others remained open, and he could finally see the griffon again.
She was nearly twice his size, or would be when she was untied. In the faint white light, he could see some signs of abuse. There were feathers missing from her coat, and scars on her sides that suggested poor treatment. Then again, every one of the crew above had damage like this. Probably came from a life of violence and conflict.
There were faint undertones of disgust and fear from her, the same ones he often felt from Blake and Jordan. But this bird was so badly beaten down that there wasn't much room for disgust.
"The crew are asleep," he whispered. "But not all of them. I have three friends aboard, and there are more prisoners. Will you help me free them?"
Silence, obviously. The bird stared up at him with a pair of huge eyes, still fearful. She might be bigger, she might have claws that could rip out his throat, but she was also completely restrained. Her emotions barely changed.
"I'm going to remove the gag first," he whispered. "Please don't give us away. I can't stop you... but if we want to get out of this, we have to trust each other. Please don't be loud."
The crate would cover up their whispering well enough, but if she wanted to...
Ryan reached down, biting on the gag with pointed teeth. He tore, then repeated the process a few times. Each time he did, the bird tensed, expecting a blow—but it never came. That faint trickle of hope tasted a little stronger.
Finally he was through, and the canvas fell away from his teeth. The griffon opened her mouth, letting scraps trail away. She looked up at him from the ground, she still radiated fear, mostly.
"Why?" she asked. "What hive?"
I have no idea what that second question means. "Because it's wrong," he said flatly. "I'm not letting them enslave my friends. You help us, you can be free too. Doesn't that sound fair?"
She didn't answer for almost a minute. The ship rocked beneath them, creaking as it settled in the cold desert night. There was something else radiating from the bird now, joining suspicion and fear. Guilt.
"Nothing is fair," she said. "But this... maybe deserved. Bound to be something. Hippogriff's noose, Equestrian stone. Or a dog mine. Comes for all of us."
Her accent was hard enough to understand without speaking every sentence in fragments. "I'm Ryan. What's your name?"
"Galena," she said flatly. Was it as clumsy as he imagined, or was he just projecting?
"Well, Galena, my friends don't deserve it," he said. "Help us, and... I know a place, where no power of this world can find you. My friends and I are travelers from a better land. We'll take you there."
The confused soup of different feelings finally resolved into something. Hope won out, and the griffon nodded sharply. "You know what it means if you fight? Slaves who fight are too dangerous. Can't get a reputation for trading dangerous goods. They'll leave you in the desert, if you live."
He might've asked what was so bad about that—leaving them behind was exactly what they wanted, wasn't it? Except that she thought about the possibility with absolute dread. She'd rather be locked up in this box, subjected to who knew what tortures, than get dropped down below.
Were we in more danger than we realized?
"I understand," he said, resolved. "We'll take that risk. We won't let them take us." He gestured with one hoof. "Roll to the side, if you can. I'm going to cut through those knots."
Galena obeyed, dodging. "Hope you know what you're doing, Ryan. If I did, I wouldn't be here."
Ryan drew his pocketknife from the saddlebags he'd been holding, fumbling with the attachments until the saw flipped out. Galena tensed as she saw what he was doing, feeling a brief moment of fear and hostility—but then he started cutting through the rope, and it faded. "Me too.”