Work Text:
It’s hard to focus on the words Freyja’s saying when Maxwell’s paying more attention to how tenuous his grip on her hand is, how easily she could drop and fall into the void below, how sweaty both their palms are. “You must promise me, Master Gotch!” she shouts over the sound of the devouring aerocharybdis as they draw closer and closer to its maw. “You must promise to carry out my dying wishes!”
“You’re not dying, Freyja,” Maxwell argues, but if he can’t haul her back on the deck, she might make a liar out of him.
“Swear to me!” she demands, clinging to the side of the Zephyr. “Swear you will do it!”
“Fine,” Maxwell says. “Fine, whatever you want. But you’re not going to die!”
“GotchCard,” she says, her voice going dreamy even among the howling wind. “We sign everybody up for one. We make it available across Gath, Zern, Zood and Shahar. We charge thirty-seven percent APR.”
“What? No!”
“You must! It’s my dying wish.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Maxwell says, and he makes another attempt to pull her aboard— but she slips from his grasp at the last second and he can only watch, horrified, as she falls.
It starts as an average day in Shahar.
Not that the current crew of the current Zephyr really have “average days.”
Their days since traveling into Tazg’wagwa’s homeland have largely consisted of encountering physics-defying geographical features, spending a few moments oohing and aahing at them, and then freaking out when the geographical features turn out to be living, moving beings.
Van’s patron seems to come from a whole family— pantheon?— of unbelievably large interdimensional creatures. So far, the ship’s crew has narrowly avoided being crushed in the claws of a crab much larger than the Langostrum Gargantanex they faced at the Temple of Katur, evaded capture by a treasure-hunting magpie the size of a mountain, and befriended a millipede long enough to occupy the majority of Shahar’s topsoil.
So there’s always something exciting happening. Even when Maxwell would rather it weren’t.
At breakfast, Samwell tries to stop Wealwell from eating his toast upside-down so the side with the jam hits his tongue first. Bert rectifies the situation by spreading jam on both sides of the toast and giving it back to Wealwell. Olethra and Ludmila play footsie under the table while Maxwell tries to pretend he doesn’t see it.
“Sleep alright, Max?” Van asks him, passing him a cup of coffee with her tentacle arm.
“Thanks,” he says, taking the mug. “Yeah, I slept fine. You?”
“Like a baby,” she confirms.
“I slept dreadfully,” Wealwell informs the table. “Kept having a nightmare that I was being chased by an enormous cat. And I was a ball of string.”
“I also dreamt that I was a ball of string,” Freyja says, with a biscuit halfway to her mouth. “What do you think that means?”
“I think it means we need to stop doing dream interpretation this early in the morning,” Maxwell grumbles into his coffee.
Freyja won’t let go of this idea about growing their business. Which is ludicrous, because as far as Maxwell’s concerned, The Gotch Show, LLC is less of a business and more of a club the two of them are in together. It’s the corporate equivalent of a backyard treehouse. It doesn’t need to grow.
“You’re as bad as Wealwell,” he bitches at her fondly. “Always going on about investment opportunities. We’re not in Shahar to line our pockets, we’re here for a good time!”
He watches her jaw drop as she looks at something behind him. “What’s that?” she asks, pointing over his shoulder.
Maxwell turns around and sees something he can’t immediately explain— a vortex of dark stormclouds, roiling and churning until they form the shape of a huge mouth in the sky with vicious teeth and a voracious thirst.
“A bad time,” he answers Freyja.
The crew of the Zephyr is always ready to jump into action. Maxwell starts hollering for everyone else to get on the deck and start priming the weapons in case they need them. He’s not yet the bosun Van is, but he’s learning. Sylvio hops on the spring-loaded fist-shaped battering ram while Onion starts helping Samwell load the cannons.
Maxwell stands at the prow of the ship with Ludmila and Olethra, gazing forward at the massive sky-mouth. “Do you think it has lips?” Ludmila wonders.
He stares at her. “What?”
“Well, it’s a mouth,” she reasons. “Does it have lips? Giant lips?”
“It would need so much chapstick,” Olethra contributes.
“Should we try to steer around it?” Maxwell says.
He watches the girls exchange a glance and then look back at him. And he has the uncomfortable feeling that he’s about to get some really terrible news. “We tried that,” Olethra says. “We’re sort of… getting sucked in.”
“Like a black hole,” Ludmila adds. “This aerocharybdis—”
“This what?”
“It’s Mila’s word for it, like it’s a big mouth monster in the air,” Olethra explains. “Aerocharybdis. It’s not a Charybdis that is aromantic; I already made that mistake.”
“Good to know.”
“This aerocharybdis—”
“Wait, would that imply the existence of an ace charybdis?” Olethra says.
“We’re going to die,” Maxwell says.
The plan is for Van to commune with Tazg’wagwa and determine whether this is a long-lost sibling or an enemy. And, regardless of the answer, figure out how to use the big squid’s help to lever the Zephyr Mark II away from the gaping maw of the aerocharybdis.
Olethra and Ludmila have the steering under control. Samwell, Onion and Sylvio are getting the weapons ready in case it comes down to a firefight. Dawderdale and Daisuke are protecting Van. Bert’s in the kitchen making pizookies.
Which leaves Maxwell and Freyja working to keep both items and people from falling overboard as the Zephyr careens inexorably closer to the big hole in the sky. A barrel of anchovies nearly topples into open air, but Maxwell snatches it back before it can fall.
He’s not so lucky when Freyja takes a tumble and goes over the edge of the deck.
“Freyja!” Maxwell shouts, rushing over and grabbing onto her hand just in time.
It’s pretty hard to rattle Freyja Ildisdottir, but she looks alarmed. “Is it my time?”
“No!” Maxwell swears. “I don’t care how big that thing is, it doesn’t get to eat my friends.”
She dangles over open air, eyes wide. “Master Gotch,” she says. “Is now a bad time to say that I see you as more than a friend?”
“Freyja—”
“I see you as a business associate.” She puts a lot of emphasis on the title.
“Oh. That’s fine then.”
It’s moments later, watching her slip from his grasp, when he wishes he’d thought to chalk up his hands before the aerocharybdis drew them in closer. Wishing he hadn’t loaned Olethra his wingsuit. Wishing Freyja were wearing a bungee cord or a harness or something.
(Why is he doomed to watch the people he cares about plummeting through otherworldly skies? Why does it keep happening?)
Before the only other member of The Gotch Show vanishes into the void, a tentacle lashes out and wraps around her waist, pulling her back up and setting her safely on the deck.
Maxwell whirls around, ready to thank Van for her excellent timing.
But it’s not Van.
Tazg’wagwa in all its slick glory hovers around the Zephyr, vast and powerful, prepared to tow the ship to safety.
“I think Jazzy Tazzy’s got this from here,” Maxwell says, gripping Freyja’s hand in his. “Should we go below decks?”
“Good idea!” she agrees, her blonde braids in disarray. She’s okay. They both are.
As the giant squid prepares to rescue them from the giant whirlpool-in-the-sky, Maxwell and Freyja scurry off the deck to live another day.