Combo post with [@Lauder] --- As conversations and sulking carried on aboard the ship, waves ceased to crash against the bow. After a while, people started to notice one after another that the sky all around them was false. There was no horizon, as for miles outward the air became the sea. It was disorienting, most of the crew and the party watched agape as the air seemed to shift and churn at the edges of an invisible sphere all around them for miles. As people began to peer past their immediate vicinities, they found that the area was barren and empty aside from the gate and its guardian, encapsulated in an endless ocean. Except for a lone, small, wooden boat drifting straight toward them. The keener members of the crew would be able to pick out yelling as the brown dot slowly became the shape of a tiny paddleboat. They didn’t seem like cries for help, or even demands for surrender, they mostly seemed like arguing. “Yoo daft bastard, of course they’re alright. Yoo think anyone with a mind to harm us would fall from the sky li’that? I seen meself pirates with better manners than yoo lizard-britches.” A gruff voice, vaguely feminine, broke through the waves easily. “I have plenty of manners, thank you. Plus it isn't a matter of they will harm us or not, it's if they can be trusted, and you know I don't trust easy,” a lighter, voice stated, granted almost inaudible to those aboard the much larger ship. “Yer a wee paranoid for a psycho-whatsit, ain’t yoo?” “Please do not bring my powers into this.” “Yer just up to high doh.” “I am perfectly calm, you were the one practically shouting at the top of your lungs,” the lighter voice commented in a more annoyed tone. “Maybe cause it’s friggin’ baltic here and I’ve not had any food in who knows how long?” The stronger voice seemed equally if not more impatient at this point. “Why is drunk you so much better to be around?” “I’m a dwarf, a fighter and a sailor. Get used to it.” “I could actually choke you right now,” grumbled the lighter voice, “I give in, we’ll go along with what you want to. If we die though, I’m shifting all the blame on you.” “Yer the one that kept me alive this long, lass.” As she said that, a [i]thunk[/i] sounded off their arrival as the dingy collided with the comparatively gigantic vessel behind the surly dwarf. “Oi!” she yelled out to anyone that cared to hear, “Yoo got rope to spare, aye? Be a charitable soul and toss a line or two so we can parley!” “You know I can fly and float you up there, right?” “We ain’t boardin’ a ship that ain’t ours, what kind of manners are those?” She turned and yelled up over the ship, “Yer sure takin’ yer time up there!” “Maybe they're dead,” the other commented, looking up the side of the ship. The gruff woman made a [i]tsk, tsk[/i] noise. “Then we’ll have to see, won’t we?” “But then we would have to be rude and board the ship,” the lighter voice jibed. “I know yer young, but yoo can be a little patient, aye?” A short pause in the noise before an answer came, “Nah.”