by Rain Oxford
“I know. If I’m too nice, he’ll try to walk all over me.”
“Or he will kill you. Also, be careful not to answer me, as it looks like you are talking to yourself to those who cannot hear me.”
“I know.”
“You know what?” Bralyn asked. I shook my head. “Do you want me to seize the ship by force or coerce the pirates to take us where we want to go?”
I gaped. “Do you fight everyone? What happened to, ‘We are still people’?”
“I’m a warrior. Yes, I’m also a person, but fighting is what I do.”
“You said quests were what you do.”
“You are seriously overthinking this. You’re a sorcerer; you know how it is.”
I grimaced. Sorcerers were known to work well with warriors because they both had a price and neither of them was afraid of getting their hands dirty. “I think we should try to pay them first, and you can do what you have to if they refuse.”
We reached the dock then, but before we could take a step onto it, a pirate jumped down from the ship and glared. He was a heavyset man with long, tangled, greasy black hair and a beard to match. Under all that hair was a wide, dirty face with a long, crooked nose and eyes the color of sea foam. He was as large as Bralyn in both height and girth, but he had as much fat as muscle, whereas Bralyn only had muscle.
“Hello,” Bralyn said brightly. “We are trying to get to the Island of Light. Would you be able to help us?”
The pirate scowled at him. “No. Go away.” His voice was not as deep as I had expected; it was actually more nasally and scratchy.
“We can pay you,” Bralyn insisted.
“You have nothing I want.”
“We have gold,” I cut in.
The pirate just sneered. “I have gold. I have three private islands full of gold. The way to the Island of Light is treacherous. Why would I risk my life and the lives of my crew?”
“Well, what do you want?”
“Food!” another pirate shouted. We looked up to see three other pirates at the edge of the ship, all listening to our conversation intently.
“You don’t have food?” I asked.
“We have fish. We have all kinds of fish, and we’re sick of it,” the pirate in front of me growled.
“Ask him who the captain is. Only the captain can make a deal,” Merlin said.
“Are you the captain?” I asked the pirate. He was bigger than the others and the only one to step off the boat.
“I am. My name is Bloodbath.”
“Really?” I asked, my jaw dropping. Before his scowl could turn even more venomous, I asked, “And you’re sick of fish?”
“You would be sick of anything if it was all you ate for two years.”
I was so sick of apples and broccoli after six days of eating them that I never wanted to see them again, so I could understand his frustration. “Great. Then I do have something you might want. Bring me one of your fish.” He only stared at me. “Really, I can help. Just one fish.”
He still looked skeptical as he turned to his crewmates. “Toss him a fish.”
A moment later, one of the pirates tossed a little fish at me. I caught it with my free hand, but almost dropped it because it was so slimy. Once I had a firm grip on it, I pointed my staff at it clumsily. Fortunately, the fish was already dead. I couldn’t transform a live animal into a dead one, which was why I couldn’t conjure meat with my wand.
Change this to meat. The crystal on the staff glowed once again and the fish changed into the same tofu I had tried the other night.
Merlin groaned. “You cannot give that to him; if he hates it, he might eat us.”
Bloodbath was excited when he saw the meat, however, and took it from me. Juice seeped into his beard as he shoved half of it into his mouth and I had to force myself not to gag on his behalf. To my surprise, he ate it whole, bone and all. “I have no idea what that meat was, but it was absolutely delicious!” he declared. The other pirates cheered.
“Great! It’s called tofu. Merlin said it’s a great source of protein, whatever that is. So you’ll take us to the Island of Light if I turn your fish into tofu?”
“You have a deal. Come aboard! Had I known a wizard could be so powerful, I would have kidnapped one long ago.”
“Actually,” I pointed out quietly, “I’m a sorcerer, not a wizard.”
He frowned. “Really? But I thought…” He indicated his hair.
I blushed. “Yeah.”
“And I thought…” He held his hand out in front of his chest in a rough estimate of my height.
I blushed deeper. “Yeah. I have a sorcerer staff, though,” I said, trying to be positive. “And this is my sorcerer family’s mark.” I pointed out the gold emblem on my robe.
“I see,” he said, obviously not convinced.
“He may look small and feeble,” Bralyn cut in, “but he conjured a beast of unimaginable horrors to carry out his villainous quest.”
That must have been all the confirmation Bloodbath needed because he turned to his crewmates. “Men, this is the sorcerer…”
“Ayden Dracre, and this is Merlin,” I said.
“I’m Bralyn Trajir, a warrior.”
Bloodbath turned back to his pirates. “This is Ayden, the great sorcerer who can change fish into food, Bralyn the warrior, and Merlin the… extinct land animal.”
Merlin growled. “He’s a wizard,” I said quickly.
Bloodbath frowned again. “Really? You’re a sorcerer… and he’s a wizard? I must have been at sea for too long.”
* * *
We were soon on our way. Aside from the captain, there were five pirates on the ship. The only one who wasn’t dirty, hairy, and huge was Jevwen, who was the captain’s son. He was about sixteen, slender, and clean compared to the others. His hair was even short, albeit crudely cut, and his clothes were obviously sewn by himself. He had the same bone structure as his father, so he would look very similar if he put on weight and broke his nose a few times. However, he seemed to have no interest in doing that.
While the other pirates brought fish for me to transform, Jevwen sat in his bed below deck and read. I wanted to read, too, but the books were in a foreign language. The young man was clearly perfectly happy being a scholar instead of following his father’s legacy of sea-pillaging. Even more astounding to me was how proud Bloodbath looked when he introduced Jevwen to me. I was glad he could be so free.
It was dark and cramped below deck with a row of ten beds narrowly spaced along the right wall and wooden crates taking up the rest of the room. Each pirate had his own box of personal stuff, except for Jevwen who had two. Other than that, the crates contained everything from writing paper to jewelry, since the pirates were pillaging different treasures from different places and ships.
Finally seeing the end in sight for this journey and finally so close to proving myself, I started to feel a little giddy. That was until Bloodbath informed me that the trip would take five days.
* * *
On the first day, it was okay. I used my staff to create fire in an iron bowl and cooked fish for Bralyn, Merlin, and me, while the rest of the crew ate tofu. Bralyn didn’t like tofu any more than I did. Many of the pirates were anxious about having a sorcerer on board, but they warmed up to me quickly. Merlin spent most of the day lying in one of the beds below. He said he was just tired, but I knew it was sea sickness.
When the sun set, sea mist made it impossible to keep a candle lit on the deck, and since it was a cloudy night, the moons provided little light. I still wasn’t comfortable on the ship, so I made my wand light up and sat with Jevwen. We told each other funny stories of our childhood. Mine were sad. Soon, the rest of the pirates joined in and I learned how they all came to live here with what was undoubtedly the most successful pirate I’d ever heard of.
Unlike everyone who was born with magic, non-magic users had a choice in how they wanted to live their lives. Bloodbath enjoyed the sea and hated taking commands, so h
e had chosen pirating based on that. Bloodbath was his pirate name, of course, and nobody knew his real name. Jevwen enjoyed traveling, so when he turned fourteen, he left his mother and found his father. Once the other pirates were out of tales, they got back to work or went to sleep, leaving me alone with Bloodbath. I told him my story, and he was quiet when I went to bed.
* * *
On the second day, I woke with cramps in my shoulders and neck. There were enough beds for all of us, but I hadn’t been prepared for how rocky the ship was and how loud the crashing waves could get. Merlin refused to teach me anything or even let me use my staff to practice for the upcoming battle, saying he remembered how easy it was for these types of ships to sink.
I didn’t want him to tell me how easy it was.
* * *
I was awoken on the third day with the tip of a sword at my throat. Only the sparse moonlight streaming in through one of the hatches reached my bed, but it was enough to identify the man threatening my life.
Sorcerers were masters of magic, yet that didn’t help me at all when Dessa had a dagger to my back or when there was a sword to my throat. I glanced at Merlin’s bed, but he wasn’t in it. When the blade was finally retracted, I was able to breathe again.
“Why?” I asked.
“You are about to face an enemy of unimaginable power, but I could have easily killed you in your sleep just now. You need to hone your survival instincts,” Bloodbath said, harnessing his sword. “Have you ever been taught to use a sword?”
“My father tried to, but I was so bad at it that it wasn’t worth the risk. I was little at the time, though.”
“Come up to the deck and I will start training you with the sword. You won’t master it before you face Magnus, but even a little training is better than none.”
I followed him reluctantly up the stairs and groaned when I saw that it wasn’t even daylight yet. Before I could retreat back down the steps, Bloodbath handed me a sword.
“Face me.” He showed me how to stand, how to swing, and how to block. “Only in enactments, lovers’ spats, and entertainment do they clash blades intentionally,” he said. “When the blades strike, it dulls them, but it is better to dull your blade than lose your leg or worse. Against another person, you don’t need as much force as you probably think you do. A person’s body is not that strong. If you are fighting a monster, however, put as much force in it as you can, because too much is better than not enough.”
“I can’t hold my staff and a sword at the same time.”
“That is true, but you have already told me that your staff doesn’t always do what you want it to. A sword only does what you make it; any failure is on you. If the hilt breaks, that is still your fault. Someday, a sword may save your life where magic lets you down.”
I practiced all day. Merlin watched and Bralyn took over teaching me several times when Bloodbath wanted a break. By the end of the day, I could barely hold the sword at all and I couldn’t feel my hands. Bloodbath gave me a drink from a large brown bottle, told me it would help me feel better, and then just laughed when I asked him if it was a healing potion. It definitely wasn’t a potion; it made me feel worse for a short time… and that was the last thing I remembered.
* * *
On the fourth day, I woke without any pain. In fact, I felt great until I went back up onto the deck and was immediately handed a sword. “Can’t I eat first?” I asked.
“When you cut me, you can eat,” Bloodbath answered.
I looked at Jevwen, who was watching us. He shrugged. “It was how he taught me. I went many days without food.”
I turned to Merlin. “I’m hungry.”
The wolf smirked. “You wanted to be the strongest sorcerer. That requires daily practice in all kinds of skills. Trust me, I am taking notes. Apparently, I was not hard enough on you.”
I hoped that he was joking.
* * *
The sun was getting low in the sky and there didn’t appear to be an end in sight for my training when we heard a shout from Jevwen. He pointed to something in the distance, but it was too far for me to make out. “There’s a bad storm out that way.”
“That’s the way to the Island of Light, though, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It is,” Bloodbath said, harnessing his sword and joining Jevwen. “Can you tell how it’s moving?”
Jevwen held up a slender metal object to his eye and looked at the storm through it. “No, not yet.”
“Keep an eye on it.” He then addressed the other pirates and told them to lower the sails and close the hatches to the cargo. When he checked back with Jevwen, the boy didn’t have good news.
“It’s coming right for us, and it’s coming fast.”
“You and Ayden need to get below.”
Jevwen nodded, but helped his father lower the sail instead. I helped close the holes into the lower deck until thick clouds blocked out the sun. By then, the waves and wind were getting violent. Finally, Jevwen, Merlin, and I went downstairs. Bralyn insisted on staying and helping in any way he could.
Merlin settled on the bed and rested his head on his paws.
“It’ll be okay,” I told him.
“I know, but that storm was not normal and I have a very bad feeling about this.”
“There was something odd about the storm,” Jevwen said as he started pulling down books from his shelf. For a while, he was wrapped up in that. The ship continued to rock violently until even I felt sick. “Here!” Jevwen shouted, causing me to jerk in surprise. He shoved his book into my hand and pointed to a bunch of foreign words.
“I can’t read that.”
“It’s a Charybdis; a sea monster. I knew that storm wasn’t natural. A Charybdis is causing it.” He turned the page and I saw a drawing of the monster.
Merlin sat up. “Then we have a very big problem.”
It looked like a fat worm that was widest at its mouth and gradually narrowed into a thick spiked club on its tail. Its mouth was actually its entire head. It was drawn with its mouth open wide and, if the drawing was accurate, it wasn’t a mouth that was designed to close.
The creature appeared to have both scales and fur, like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a dragon or a mammal. It also had two flippers close to its head, but the flippers had claws, like a sea turtle’s.
“Please tell me you’re not sure about this.”
“I am. I’ve heard stories of it before. Trust me; this is the Charybdis.”
“Okay, so we should be fine then. Monsters don’t eat ships, right?”
“Only if there are people on them,” Merlin said. “Ask him if his book says how to defeat a Charybdis.”
I did, and Jevwen shook his head. “Nobody has ever defeated one. In fact, no one has ever faced one and lived to tell about it. It’ll swallow our ship whole.”
“Then I don’t see a choice. I’ll have to stop it with magic.”
“This is a legendary sea monster,” Jevwen argued. “Sea monsters are bigger and more dangerous than anything you will ever face on land.”
“Not while my mother is still alive. I understand that we have no chance, so please; point out another option that I’m missing. I’m all for it.”
He didn’t have an answer.
I went back upstairs, ignoring their protests, and was immediately soaked by huge waves that were crashing over the deck of the ship. Although the sky was dark with furious clouds and the wind was violent, it wasn’t raining, which was just further proof that this wasn’t a normal storm.
I pulled my wand out of my pocket with my right hand, pointed it towards the center of the storm, and held my staff in front of me with my left hand like a shield. It quickly became obvious that the boat was circling the heart of the storm. Furthermore, it was increasing in speed.
When I looked over the edge of the boat, I realized how much trouble we were really in. A whirlpool had opened up in the sea and it was growing in size. Inside the vortex, I saw row after row of long, shar
p teeth. It was the mouth of a creature that could easily swallow the ship and everyone on it. And we were circling closer and closer into it.
With panic and desperation, I used both the wand and staff at the same time. The only command I gave them was to save everyone on the ship. Red and white magic met in the middle, formed bright blue lightning, and shot into the mouth of the Charybdis. At first, I thought the magic had no effect, but then the vortex stopped growing and began shrinking.
There was no moment of relief, because I knew it wouldn’t be that simple. I felt something bash against the other side of the boat— something strong enough to send the large pirate ship spiraling out of control. Well, more out of control than it had already been.
I realized what had struck the ship when a massive tentacle, easily the size of an ancient tree, reached out of the ocean and came down. Apparently the Charybdis wasn’t the only sea monster hungry this night. Either that or the drawing hadn’t done the Charybdis justice.
Something in me seemed to snap, and suddenly my wand and staff were just extensions of my magic. Energy stirred inside of me, swelled, and burst outward before I even realized what I was seeing. Calmness was all that was left in me as blue light engulfed the entire ship. All I could think was that we would live. We would live because I said so.
When the light faded, we were alive. We were away from the monsters.
We were stranded on land in the middle of some tropical island.
Chapter 10
“What did you do?” one of the pirates, Lasender, asked me angrily.
I was too busy having no clue to answer him. Unfortunately, Lasender tried to grab me, undoubtedly to shake me. Merlin latched onto his arm before he could touch me and he shouted in pain when Merlin tossed him to the ground. When he scrambled backwards to get away, Merlin didn’t go after him.
“He saved our lives,” Jevwen said, exiting the lower deck.
“How do you know? You were below!” Lasender said.
