Plundering Worlds: I Have a Shotgun in a Fantasy World-Chapter 73: Lake Severin

[Three Days Later – Rathmere – Central Square – Early Morning]

The square was already busy when they arrived.

Aldric and Maren stood at the edge of the boarding area. It was the kind of farewell that didn’t require many words. Maren had a list—she always did—and went through three items with Elira in a low, precise voice before folding it and handing it over. Aldric kept his hands in his pockets and watched the airship like a man who had seen impressive things before.

The ship rested at the center of the square on its docking cradle—larger than Kael had expected. It was a passenger vessel. The hull was dark iron and pale timber, its seams riveted in overlapping plates. Beneath it, a framework of brass piping connected to four rotation chambers, each venting slow curls of white steam into the morning air. Along the upper deck, observation windows ran the length of the passenger cabin. At the bow stood a carved figure—stylized and abstract, formed in sweeping lines that implied movement.

Two boarding ramps. One for general passengers, already filling with merchants and their attendants. The other marked with a small brass plate and a shorter queue.

Aldric glanced at the second ramp, then at Kael. "Comfortable. You’ll do well there." He held out his hand. Kael took it.

"The capital. Don’t let it make you small."

He stepped back and stood beside Maren as the boarding ramp rose.

[Airship – The Ascent]

The interior of the upper cabin was long and narrow, tighter than it appeared from the outside. The walls were paneled in pale wood with brass fittings set at every joint, and the ceiling curved to follow the line of the hull. Seats ran along both walls, padded and individual, angled slightly toward the windows, with a central aisle dividing the space. At the far end stood a service counter attended by two staff in dark uniforms.

The other passengers were already settled. A merchant family occupied the third row, husband and wife seated side by side, two children sitting quietly beside them, with a maid positioned just behind. Further back, a man in a heavy coat read without looking up. Two men in matching grey sat together, speaking in low voices with their attention fixed between them.

Kael and Elira took seats near the midpoint of the cabin, by the window.

The engines shifted in pitch beneath them. A low resonance gathered through the floor, through the seat, into his bones. The boarding ramp sealed, and the cradle clamps released with the soft recoil of metal disengaging.

The ship rose.

The ascent came hard and immediate, the square dropping away below them as rooftops spread outward and the structure of Rathmere opened into view. The warehouse district lay to the north, the residential quarters fanning outward in ordered blocks, the southern road a pale line cutting through fields washed in early-season green and patches of thawed earth.

The fields stretched and thinned as the altitude increased. Lines of hedgerow and stone boundary faded into muted bands of grey and pale green, the roads narrowing to threads, the river turning to a strip of cold light. The horizon widened in every direction, carrying the land outward in a broad sweep, and the sense of distance settled into him as something vast and steady.

He looked out the window and kept his gaze there for a long time.

[Airship – Day One – Over the Northern Reaches]

The landscape below changed slowly at first. Below them stretched frontier terrain, a mix of scrub and rock broken by patches of dark forest and the occasional settlement marked by smoke and the geometric clarity of cultivated ground around it. Roads traced faint lines between distant points, visible by the shadows they cast. A river ran wide and brown with snowmelt, threading between ridgelines.

The observation deck was accessed through a door at the rear of the cabin, a narrow platform enclosed by brass railing, exposed to the wind and shielded at the front by a curved glass panel. A lectern stood at one end, and beside it a uniformed attendant held the posture of someone accustomed to repeating the same information with practiced ease.

Kael went up in the afternoon of the first day, and Elira came with him.

The wind pressed hard at that height. She kept one hand on the railing. He stood steady as the wind pulled at his coat.

Below, the frontier terrain shifted into cultivated land. Farmland stretched in long ordered strips. Villages were linked by proper roads. Settlement grew denser, the fields measured and aligned, the land shaped by deliberate design.

"The Northern Agricultural Corridor," the attendant said to the group gathered at the railing. "Primary grain supply for the eastern provinces. The canal system in the lower left quadrant was constructed approximately eighty years ago under the third infrastructure expansion. It increased regional yield by an estimated forty percent."

From this height the canals cut clean lines through the fields, dividing them into long measured strips. He followed the canals as they divided the land into ordered blocks.

[Airship – Night – Day One into Day Two]

The cabin dimmed in the evening. Passengers settled. The engines held their pitch—steady and constant, a low mechanical hum running at an even register.

Kael stayed at the observation window after most of the others had drawn their curtains.

Below, in the darkness, organized lights clustered into patterns that revealed streets and districts, outlining the structure of a city from above. It was of moderate size, its density apparent even at this height. The distance reduced it to light and a faint trace of smoke against the darker sky.

The stars above were clear at this altitude. He had seen stars in another world under open skies, sharp and numerous. From here the ground lay far beneath him, and the sky extended in a wide uninterrupted span. The ship moved forward between the two, its motion smooth and even.

Elira was still awake. She had a book open on her lap, though her gaze rested on the window.

They remained there in silence for a time.

"Have you ever been on one of these before?" Kael asked.

"Once. When I was twelve." She looked at the lights below. "I didn’t pay attention. I spent most of the journey ill from the motion."

"And now?"

"Now I’m watching."

The lights of the city slipped behind them. Darkness settled over the land below once more.

[Airship – Day Two – Lake Severin]

The attendant’s tone shifted before the shoreline came into view. His delivery remained measured and even. The pauses lengthened and fell into a deliberate rhythm.

"In approximately four minutes, we will pass over the western shore of Lake Severin."

The observation deck filled as passengers left the cabin and gathered along the railing. They stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes fixed ahead.

Kael looked through the glass.

At first it seemed like cloud cover on the horizon, a brightness set too low and too wide, the light spreading across it in a flat metallic sheen. Then the edge of it resolved.

Water.

A body of water that began at the horizon and stretched beyond it. It exceeded every idea of a lake he had known. The surface shifted between grey and silver as the light moved across it. The opposite shore dissolved into distance.

"Lake Severin," the attendant said. "Surface area of approximately eleven thousand square kilometers. Maximum depth, uncharted. The lake was formed two hundred years ago during the final engagement of the Veyrath-Frost War."

The ship crossed the shoreline. Below, the water began, and the scale of it altered the view entirely. The land had carried structure from altitude. The lake spread without visible boundary, offering no fixed reference for distance. Water filled every direction the window allowed him to see.

"The individual responsible was Severin," the attendant continued, "born without a family name and later designated Severin of Veyrath by royal decree. He was the first Arcane practitioner to achieve what scholars now classify as Tier Nine working, a category that remains singular two centuries later. He was thirty-one years old at the time of the engagement."

Kael looked at the water.

"The Frost forces numbered approximately four hundred thousand at the point of engagement," the attendant said. "The lake now occupies the ground on which they stood. The engagement lasted—by all surviving accounts—less than forty seconds from the beginning of the casting to its completion."

"Forty seconds."

Four hundred thousand soldiers. An entire army erased. The lake below marked the space where they had stood.

Eleven thousand square kilometers. Forty seconds. One person. Thirty-one years old. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"It is reported," the attendant continued, "that observers in nations several thousand kilometers distant witnessed a red line descend from the sky. Accounts from seven different kingdoms describe the same phenomenon. The line remained visible for approximately three minutes before fading. Seismic disturbances were recorded in all seven kingdoms that later reported the red line, with tremors felt as far south as the coastal states."

The ship continued over the water. The horizon remained unbroken.

Kael stood at the railing, staring at the water. The world was larger than he had allowed for. Larger—and far more dangerous.

A child’s voice rose from somewhere along the deck.

"Father, is this the lake from the history text?"

"Yes. The one formed during the Veyrath-Frost engagement."

[Airship – Day Three – Approach]

The signs of the city appeared before the city itself. Air traffic came first—smaller ships moving in organized lanes at lower altitude, their running lights visible against the pale morning sky. Then the communications towers rose along the horizon, signal arrays turning slowly at their peaks. The outer wall followed, a pale line cutting across the landscape and extending in both directions beyond the limits of sight.

Then the city emerged.

Kael had seen Rathmere from above and recognized its order. What lay below now operated on an entirely different scale. The ring structure was legible from altitude, concentric bands forming the outer districts, a denser middle ring, and at the center, on elevated ground, the mass of the royal district, its rooflines distinct from this height.

The steam rail network cut through the middle ring in dark lines, the stations marked by plumes rising from their venting towers. The arterial roads were wide enough to read from altitude, running outward from the center like the spokes of a wheel laid out by deliberate design.

The airship began its descent.

The port came into view on the eastern edge of the middle ring, its landing towers rising in a tiered row, each platform marked with large characters visible from the air. Ships moved through various stages of arrival and departure, and cargo crews directed the steady flow of goods across the ground level. To the north of the main port stood a smaller structure with a shorter queue, covered walkways leading toward a private vehicle hall.

The ship settled into its cradle in a clean sequence of metallic sounds—clamps engaging, steam releasing, the engines lowering from operational pitch to idle.

The attendant appeared at the cabin door. "Passengers for the noble transit corridor, please remain seated until general boarding has cleared."

The general passengers rose and filed toward the exit, and the cabin gradually thinned.

A different door opened. A staff member in a darker, more formal uniform stepped inside. "Lady Elira and her companion. This way, please."