"What? Oh you're not-" Carol hesitated, trying to find the words. "Well, it's a light-tempered air beast, these things are hard to classify, since the light mutates them so heavily. I think there are broad categories for them, but I don't really know them."

Okay. Reasonable. She will not interrupt these people at their work to demand a thorough grounding in the theory of air beasts.

...she will not interrupt these people at their work to demand a thorough grounding in the theory of air beasts. Won't! Will not!

After a second or two of internal struggle, she nods carefully.

"You should ask Maria about it, she knows tons." Carol says.

"Alright then, let's go, I still have to show you the engine, the guns, the mess hall..." The captain trails off.

Mental note: go to Maria with your air beast theory questions.

"Okay. Thanks."

'Engine room', it turns out, is a shockingly poor description for the area basking in the brilliant purple light of the single large hole on the far side of the wall. The light is brilliant enough to be difficult to look at. A lanky old man with a mustache like a walrus and an expression like an angry walrus shuts the cover on the hole, revealing the rest of the room. The floor is a mess of iridescent purple rocks mostly in barrels, the pipes from the corridors converge here, into the far wall. There are an assortment of dials scattered haphazardly around the room and a panel of buttons next to the hole.

"Hullo." The man wheezes in what could charitably be referred to as the tattered remnants of a voice.

Ellen attempts a smile. "Um, hello."

Is this what engine rooms are supposed to look like? She feels, looking at it, like it is not. What does she know, though, she woke up in a rock with no memories.

"Ellen, this is James Archibald, our head engineer, James, this is Ellen, our new crew mate, the one we found her in the stone, I'm just showing her around. Ellen, here's where the engine is controlled and fueled." The captain says. "You can ask James here anything you want to know about how this ship runs, he knows it in and out." He beckons Ellen away from the engine. "C'mon, I'll show you the cannons."

Right, cannons. Those are for... shooting things? What is there to shoot? Air beasts? Other vessels? Those both seem like such concerning answers.

She follows, anyway. It is not up to her how concerning the universe turns out to be.

The gunnery deck one level above is the largest room on the ship, open from side to side. It's pristine, nothing out of place, all the ordinance carefully packed in crates and stacked on shelves. One of the walls has lockers, along with a warning next to it:

'ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES!' The sign reads.

The brass cannons are mounted on swivels, with grips and reticules to allow one to aim. Maria is sitting at a desk, tools in hand, the shell in front of her half covered in strange curving lines. Upon closer inspection the rest of the shells on the shelves have similar markings.

"You've met Maria, our gunnery officer." Maria doesn't lift her head at the introduction.

"...what's only for emergencies?" she asks, studying the sign and the lockers.

"The rifles." Maria says.

...what sort of emergency is best solved by rifles? Nothing good comes to mind. "Okay," she says, disquieted.

"Y'don't want the crew playing with them, now do we?" The captain smiles. A soft whine can be heard outside, Maria turns her head, getting up from the desk, leaving the engraving on the shell unfinished.

"What is it?" He asks. Maria, in lieu of answering, takes hold of the controls of one of the cannons. "Company." She says, before taking careful aim. An alarm blares while red lights blink over the doors. A loud, metallic female voice echoes through the ship: "Battle stations everyone!" Carol, by the sounds of it.

Maria fires twice in quick succession, the sound is low and bassy, two brilliant purple streaks paint the sky out the window. Ellen can see the serpent from before, speeding towards the ship, it dodges into the second shot, slowing it down in a spray of viscera.

"Go to the crew quarters!" The captain yells at Ellen before running out of the room.

—well fuck.

She goes to the crew quarters, doing her best not to fall over or get in anyone's way. Navigating the vessel's narrow and unfamiliar corridors is a daunting task, but she turns out to be all right at it if she focuses. These are not ideal conditions under which to focus, but, you know, could be worse.

A couple of people push past Ellen to get to the gunner's deck. The bassy rumble of the cannons fills the hallway and rattles teeth as Ellen makes her way to the crew quarters. 

The alarm is still blaring, louder here, probably to wake up the crew. There's a porthole in this room and the battle raging outside is visible from here.

Wow that's really loud. She was told to stay here, though, so here she'll stay.

...the ineffable sensation of bees itches slightly in the back of her mind. She ignores it in favour of staring out the porthole; the middle of a battle with a loud alarm blaring is not the ideal time to sort out her mysterious bee feelings. Perhaps the ideal time will never come, but if so, she is going to pick a non-ideal time that is later than now.

The long serpent-like creature approaches the ship, slowed down by it's need to dodge incoming projectiles. It seems to be having quite a hard time of this, as while many of the shots veer wildly of course, occasionally a purple streak will be perfectly timed to force the creature to move awkwardly out of the way. In these moments it becomes easier to hit, meaning it has to retreat a bit to regain momentum.

Now that it is closer, Ellen can more easily make out the creature. There are eyes scattered haphazardly over it's long body, it has limbs of varying sizes and positions emerging at strange angles. It has what appear to be horns around its midsection. 

Oh wow what a creature. What's it like to be that shape? What's it like to see like that, to move like that? What's it like to fly?

... that's not a normal response to looking at one of those, is it.

Whatever motivates it, or mechanically propels it onward, are both unknown. It dances through the open air, weaves between bright purple streaks, it makes little headway until something shifts in its demeanor. It dashes towards the vessel, heedless of the impacts and explosions. It's mouth, Ellen can see, is arranged lengthwise on the creature, coiling around it twice, making it look like some kind of eldritch zipper. A high pitched whine is heard as it roars.

It's headed straight towards Ellen, and doesn't seem keen on slowing down.

—her first instinct is that it's literally coming for her in particular, and from there her mind skips straight to wondering how fast she can cast herself free of this vessel to draw it away, the clear and obvious solution to the problem in front of her. But that's insane, right, to think that it's coming for her rather than coming for everyone. That's an insane thought and an insane response to it.

The creature's desperate charge is still pretty alarming, though, and her options for dealing with it are pretty limited, so fine, okay, now is the time to consult her ineffable bee sensations. O apian mystery, what have you got to contribute to this situation? Anything that will turn that beast away?

The first thing it offers her is the knowledge of how to collect nectar and pollen from a flower by giving it a magical kiss.

Then the knowledge of how to process what she collects into honeycomb.

Then, how to add someone to her hive, for which the most prominent method is also a magical kiss, though there are others.

Then, how to establish her hive base, a permanent and irrevocable claiming of a certain area as her own. This room is too small; she needs something bigger, for the hive base to fit.

The alarms are still blaring and the enormous beast is coming to eat them all with its terrifying spiral of a face and Ellen is BEDEVILED by MAGICAL FLOWER KISSES.

She stands at a sort of mental crossroads between three options. One is a fragment of another life, an artist of exceptional talent and hard-won skill. One is a magical pot that can cook meals of surpassing quality with magical effects. And the last is a more elusive magical ability, harder to understand—something about augmenting items and materials by combining them together into a result that's greater than the sum of its parts, though not necessarily by much.

Under other circumstances she'd jump at the chance to experience another life. She thirsts instinctively for talents and memories of all kinds.

However, art seems like it will not help her survive the next ten seconds. Honestly none of this will help her survive the next ten seconds, but her options are limited, so she's going to seize that third thing as hard as she can and hope something useful ensues. Something more useful than flower kisses and frying pans.

The power solidifies, crystallizing in her mind and descending out of its place in the three-way path; another power sprouts up in its place. Another arcane and elusive one, this time about investing part of herself into an object to become able to watch over it from a distance.