The branch of a tree materialized - spearing through the canvas, and becoming entangled in the ropes, pulling on some of them. Engines began roaring into life, and the ship tilted at a crazy angle. Cursing ferociously, Krogenar pulled his knife from his boot-sheath, and slashed at the ropes.
.....
The Weave slid across Laisha's face like the finest silk. Her eyes opened when the sensation ceased, and she found herself on the other side of the Sea of Swords.
While it was usual for Krogenar to be so far from The Forest of Mysteries, it was unusual for him to be building anything.
The female drow passed through Ardeep Forest, Waterdeep City was marked by a distant black cloud to the west. In the clearing, she spied an airship of NyTek design: a Hammerhead.
Murmuring a word of power, she was assumed into the folds of The Weave. From a pouch at her waist she withdrew a small vial of oil. Sprinkling it over herself, her scent was neutralized. After eighty years, Krogenar could scent her easily, cloaked or no.
"An airship? Nay, it canna be," she thought. She remembered Krogenar's first encounter with an airship had induced powerful revulsion in his spirit and his body. He had railed against the idea of bypassing the journey for the sake of the destination. It was like rushing to the point of intimacy with a woman, without dallying to enjoy the contours of the landscape first. That, and the high speed oftravel hadthrown the strider's finely tuned sense of balance into havok. He had staggered through the hallways as though drunk. All his senses had screamed that they were moving dangerously fast, but there was no true danger.
As she neared, Laisha noticed that much of the airship was covered by leather hides stretched across a bamboo platform. Puzzled, she stood beneath the ship.
Looking up into it, she saw a flash of steel. A metal plate dropped towards her. Waving a hand at the wayward armor, it veered away and skidded on the grass. The glade was littered, she noticed, with more armor plates.
Her first impression had been that the bamboo was for making scaffolding needed for altering the ship. To her horror, she realized that the bamboo _was the ship! Krogenar was cutting away the remains of the ship that he deemed unnecessary.
She stared down at a slab of armor plate and shook her head. One shot from another airship, and the strider and his wicker vehicle would be in flames. A sudden wind whipped Laisha's black robes, and a ball of lightning seemed to open before the ship. As the ship was pulled into the existential tear, the wizardress stabbed her walking staff into the soft ground, and steeled herself against the pull of it. The bamboo ship skidded clumsily into the portal, digging up the grass.
She covered her mouth to stifle her laughter when she saw the ship re-emerge at the other side of the clearing, where a nearby tree promptly fell across its bow. Bloody cursing echoed across to her, and she strolled to her friend and let her veil of invisibility fall away. It was a momentary reprieve from the sadness that was creeping into her heart.
