“There you are!” Edwyrd nearly jumped, only the rather heavy sleeping Rupert kept him from springing up. The voice had come from the window directly behind his head. Where no voice should have been able to come from, it was a twenty foot drop to the sea below the window. Edwyrd twisted his head around to try and peer out the window.
Blocking his view of the sea outside was a large shadowy object. It was hard to make out anything in the darkness; the moon had set some time ago. All he could really see were two glowing embers set about an inch or two apart. He also heard what sounded to be a droning, or soft buzzing noise. “Knew I’d find you eventually,” the glowing embers said.
“Tizzy!” Edwyrd said aloud. “You startled me.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Mind if I squeeze in?” The demon placed two of its hands on the windowsills. The window was wide open, but there was only about a foot and a half by a foot and a half of area to squeeze through. Edwyrd wasn’t sure how the demon was going to do it. Nonetheless, he gently shook Rupert to wake him, so they could move out of the way.
“Huh? What...” Rupert said groggily.
“Shhh... It’s all right. Tizzy’s just trying to crawl in through the window, so we need to make some room.” Edwyrd whispered.
“Huh,” Rupert looked out the window. “Oh, hi Tizzy.” Rupert seemed to wake up more, glad to see Tizzy. He backed out of the bunk and stood a little uncertainly on his hooves in the small walk space in front of the door. Edwyrd backed out the other direction, to the forward bulkhead. As he did so, the droning noise ceased and suddenly Tizzy was squirming through the window.
The wood of the frame groaned alarmingly, and Edwyrd was afraid Tizzy would break the window. Apparently, the multi-limbed demon was more supple and agile than he appeared, however, for he shortly had wormed his way in without breaking the window. Tizzy certainly seemed bigger now than he had before, Edwyrd thought. The demon took up the entire bunk, easily. Edwyrd suspected that the demon was actually the same size he’d always been, Edwyrd was just a lot smaller now. It was really rather interesting to view Tizzy and Rupert from his perspective as Edwyrd. Both were much more frightening looking than he’d ever realized before. The dark really didn’t seem to help a lot.
“Whew, tight one that.” Tizzy commented, shaking random limbs as he adjusted himself on the bunk. He looked up at Rupert. “Glad to see you’re feeling better. Look a lot healthier now.” He turned his head to Tom, “you though. You don’t looks so hot. Kind of pale and underfed. You been getting enough fresh air?” Tizzy queried. Edwyrd just shook his head at the demon.
Tizzy sniffed around a bit. “Hmmm, still got your pet wizards around?”
Edwyrd shook his head again, “they’re not my pets, but yes they’re in other cabins.” Tizzy started licking his lips. “Anyone to eat on board?”
“No. You are not going to eat anyone on this ship.” Edwyrd said firmly.
“You know. The problem with you youngsters, you just ain’t got no appreciation for fine cuisine. Nothing like a bit of fresh sea-human to liven up the old palette.”
Trying to change the subject, Edwyrd asked, “didn’t you get enough to eat with your accursed master? I assume that is where you took off to.”
“Why sure enough. Most fun. Took him a good day to croak. Raped him 69 times I did.” Tizzy’s voice was getting louder with excitement. Edwyrd made a quieting gesture with his hands. For once Tizzy took the hint. “Why don’t you wanna wake anyone up?” He asked more quietly.
“I’d prefer not having everyone go jump ship when they found out a demon was on board. Someone has got to drive this thing to shore.”
Tizzy blinked. “Think they’d do that for one demon on board? What would they do if they knew there were three?” Tizzy giggled, so did Rupert.
“Let’s just not find out. OK?”
“I suppose, whatever you want. But why bother having someone drive it to shore? Why not just fly to shore? Seems a lot easier to me.”
“Yes, well, we’d have to carry Jenn and Gastropé.” Actually, Edwyrd thought, if they could let Jenn know Rupert was a demon, then flying would be easier, he wouldn’t have to carry three people anymore. On the other hand, he doubted the two wizards would really go for being carried by demons. He also wasn’t prepared to let Jenn know about Rupert yet. “And I, for one, don’t want to do that. So we’ll just wait to get into port.”
“Gonna take a while with this ship. Doesn’t seem to have much in the way of masts. Must be kind of a slow one.” Tizzy looked thoughtful, “they don’t got a steam engine on it do they?”
“No afraid not,” Edwyrd answered.
“Probably no nuclear turbines either?” Edwyrd just shook his head. “How long to port?” Tizzy asked.
“Well, if we hadn’t lost the masts, then it would only have been about another three days. As it is I’d guess it will take about another five or six.”
