by S. J. Wist
Cirrus wanted to do little else than pounce on the King and hold him on the beach, but the feeling of desperation from his blue eyes held him steady as Simera’s heart pleaded for him to stay put. Whatever madness had overtaken the dragoon to face death, meant something to his mentor that he did not understand.
Cirrus blamed his own Curse; as his own humanity had drawn far away from the soul lost in him for so many years. He had given up ten years ago the possibility of ever finding it again and being a normal dragoon. He didn’t have to give up any more. He was no longer Cursed. Unless by a miracle, Cirrus knew he would never be able to understand all that Simera did, not unless he lived on. Not unless he continued forward. Please be careful.
“Stay true with Aragmoth until I return. We will walk together through the Halls of the Great Dragon when the Caelestis’ tears douse the fires of the Keol that imprisons us here.”
Cirrus watched as the King took to the air in a flurry of sand that fell around him like sharp rain, and started over the Eternal Waters that had lost the glow of the Soph Aur on its surface. As the last of its rose strings were pulled under by the tide, he felt his conscious rise back to the present.
3: GRAVY BOAT
“You’re just in time, kid. I was just finishing off the last of the offerings.”
Offerings? Kas asked by psi, confused. To the sea caelestis?
“No, apparently this gravy boat seems to think that the dragons themselves are gods.”
That is absurd, Kas replied by psi after he took his sheath from his mouth and fastened it back to his belt on reaching the deck of the ship. The route he took to it proved harder than it should have been, as his body still shook from the speed he had travelled unresting through the Keol. Only to be drenched in the freezing ocean water on emerging from it. The pressure still compressed his inner ears and head. Now the very wind seemed against him as the rest of his senses finally caught up to make him shake from the cold.
“I’m glad to have your blessing then,” Hain said as he finished off the last of the bottle. “But how ever did you catch up so fast?”
I have to save the last hope for the world from death, dragons and my father’s phelan. Just how fast should I have run?
“Hmmm,” Hain said unsure of Kas’ excuse as he looked around to the calm waves of the Eternal Waters. He clearly looked perplexed.
You forgot I can also fly.
“Ah go figure, the stupid pigeon,” Hain said with distaste.
Kas knew that Hain hated griffins and the fact that Gwa was a Custos didn’t change much of his mind, and likely never would.
“So how did it go with your father?”
Kas decided to preoccupy his thoughts from the question to the somewhat-empty deck. You start by telling me what happened to his finest mercenaries…?
“Well, I did everything I could to persuade them to take the other ship, but all they saw was a trickster and didn’t listen. Then with one sight of my Muse, they chose this one instead,” Hain explained.
Kas was not seeing what was so special about the GLORIA to inspire Hain, before looking up to the pluma somnus that sat on the highest beams of the sails.
“Complete with two Awls.”
How exactly do two Awls get along on one ship?
“Wonderfully. We even come trained beforehand to stay the hell out of each other’s face. Now stop staring at him before you make a problem for yourself by getting his attention—like the other ones did. He’s particularly touchy around those who have bad manners.”
“How are you still alive then?”
“My charm is still more useful than my manners.”
“Or reading?”
“Don’t start with me again, kid. If you’re going to be a vagabond, you’re going to have to learn to act like one, starting now.”
“Alright, who is insulting the Lady?” Gloria asked as she tied up her hair into a bun, to keep its dark red curls from being tangled by the wind as she emerged from below deck.
“He meant the gravy bowl,” Hain said in Kas’ defense as he dumped the bottle onto his hands. It was just the right weight to turn the scale of her attention towards him.
Hain!
“Now now, be a good boy and shut up and learn something.”
I cannot believe you.
“That chardonnay was marked to be part of our offerings,” Gloria said with a scornful look that dropped one of her curls free and over her eye.
Hain looked at it with a shrug. “Please forgive him. My friend here was extremely thirsty. And his English is horrible.”
My English is far better than your own. You can neither read nor write any language, Kas grumbled back at Hain’s psi.
“Stop steaming kid or they’re gonna fry us like fish eggs. You know how Jru always preaches that the strongest should always be the first to head into a battle?”
Yes?
“Well, here it’s the cute and innocent ones who go first.”
Kas recollected his state of calm. He highly doubted that the Dock mistress had accumulated her great wealth by believing idiots who were unable to hold a drink down. Or their feet steady, while blaming someone a fraction of their age for their drunkenness.
Gloria walked closer and grabbed the empty bottle from his hands, before lifting his face up with her free hand. Her beautiful eyes paralyzed him. For a moment, Kas thought them to be blue, before he saw the green in them that Hain had. Human’s eyes weren’t supposed to appear as different colors to the seer to match their intentions, so he figured it was all his imagination.
Kas lowered his own eyes, which was an instinctive way to avoid provoking her. But the sight of her curves that were like the waves of the ocean ignited him into a blush without so much as a drop of alcohol in him. He felt as if he were being burned from the inside out.
“Rather a handsome one to be in your company,” Gloria noted aloud. Kas shivered when the green eyes of the Awl above them looked his way and caught some of his more vulnerable Threads in turn. “Is he of an upper class I should take note of?”
“Why do you say that?” Hain asked with a bit of concern of Kas’ identity being found out. Delare was still closely eavesdropping on them from above.
“There isn’t a scar on him.”
“Well, that won’t work. How dare you try to deceive the Lady Gloria you stupid kid,” Hain said before he used his hand to slap Kas in such a manner to leave the result of his sharp nails bleeding on his cheek.
Kas could feel Hain sop up every bit of pleasure for striking him, knowing full well that if he reacted at this point with so much as a glare, it would blow his cover. There wasn’t much to hide on Hain’s part, as he could have been Aragmoth himself and the phelan somnus wouldn’t have hesitated to hit him.
“Better?”
“Unnecessary,” Gloria said as she pressed her handkerchief against Kas’ face.
“So you believe the dragons are caels?” Kas needed to find a change of topic as he could feel the pluma Awl tighten its fingers on his Threads, as much as Hain was holding out to save both their necks. But the alcohol wouldn’t keep Delare out of Hain’s dizzy thoughts for long.
“No, I think they’re demons, as I do with anything that is more beautiful than my two consorts. I also respect them as the bigger demons after they nearly turned my ship into driftwood.”
“That’s when you hurled a bottle of wine into the eyes of the fiery cael of war, turning his eyes to ash, which toppled him from the skies and doused his rage in the cold Eternal Waters,” Hain trumpeted like a storyteller. He spread his arms towards the water to embrace it onto himself, pretending to use the sea’s breeze to cool his passion for his Muse.
“It was a bottle of char-don-nay,” Gloria said as she grabbed the bronze armor that slung over his left shoulder to his waist from behind, and spun him around. It was only a thin strap of metal, but it was enough to keep an Awl or a blade from attacking his heart first. “It’s not my tail that will be strolling their lands wi
thout this gesture of good will beforehand.”
Kas feared she might actually bite Hain, despite being entirely human and one from Earth for that matter. He could faintly smell the sun’s rays on her tanned skin still. But anyone who took one wrong look at her was quickly stunned by her beauty and then cut down by her sword-wielding consorts. As he looked across the deck, her griffin somnus looked to be walking closer to do just that.
“Alright, well if your consorts are that beautiful, why is one of them wearing a mask?” Hain asked, looking up to where the pluma somnus observed the conversation from above.
Because normally Awls wear masks you idiot, Kas finished in another growl of his psi at him, as his drunken rambling threatened to ignite a fight on the ship.
“Yes, but I want to hear why from her Lady. Wait your turn to be a bitch,” Hain finished in psi.
“My love!” Gloria called up to Delare, as if waving for an angel to descend from the sky.
The pluma somnus took his hand off Kas’ Threads and looked down to her in response. Then he removed his black, sadly engraved mask, and held it with one hand as he rested his other arm on his bent leg. It revealed a clean, porcelain-white complexion and the unshadowed, full brightness of his green eyes. His light brown hair was unmoved by the sea’s winds, and rested calmly in its wisps on his slender shoulders.
“Ah damn. He is kinda decent-looking...in a creepy kinda way,” Hain thought aloud. “You should take that mask off more often and learn to glow like your woman!”
Delare only quietly put his mask back on and stopped paying Hain any more mind. Then he tightrope-walked it back to his nest.
“What am I saying?” Hain asked mostly himself as he hung over the rail like a beaten rug. “The glow from this boat is what’s going to kill us all.”
“The ‘gravy bowl’ appeases the sea caelestis and we should be thankful to her for having survived this trip. So do stop insulting her before I throw you over next and see if you have the same effect.”
“Naked and fed to a caelestis that is said to have the somnus of a gorgeous mermaid... I want to live long enough to try that one day.” Hain thought to the reach of Kas’ psi as he hung over the rail like the drunk he was supposed to be.
Kas let out a breath of relief after the conversation ended. The Dock mistress let them be alone, taking the attention of the griffin somnus and his katana in-hand, with her. “That was close.”
“Meh, your welcome,” Hain grunted back.
“So exactly what happened to the other soldiers again...?”
“Two things you should never do to a female. Try and cheat her or insult them within reach of their claws. Fresh mercs have horrible manners.”
“I will have to thank my mother for the etiquette I inherited from her with a prayer later on.”
“Maybe your high-and-mighty self works in the Sanctus, but you’re not going to last a minute against the Caelestis if you can’t even take on Gloria.”
For your information, I have already spoken with her many times.
“Of course you have, in your Dreams.”
Kas had almost blurted out the last six months of his Dreamwalking expeditions to Earth, but decided to keep quiet. Not because he didn’t trust Hain, as the former Custos had once served his mother and saved her life on two occasions, but for the sake of the other Awl on the ship. The only Awls he had ever known next to Hain were those who were loyal to his father. Delare he had yet to see proven otherwise.
“You ever get the feeling we’re sailing to our deaths?” Hain hiccuped as he looked across the dark blue ocean to the Torian Continent. It loomed like an ill-omened shadow in the horizon’s fog.
Kas couldn’t help but the fear that the old phelan somnus might be right. With the scars on his dark-tanned face, arms and chest, Hain was the perfect painting of many near-death encounters. “I have not foreseen such.”
“Oh? Just what have you foreseen then?”
Kas looked up to where the Thread sails raised to the coming Aur storm of the morning from the Torian Continent, as the estus energy of the waves under them cracked and sparked to its counterpart above. When the energy struck the ship, it was quickly channeled to the masts from the metal on the sides and just under the deck of the GLORIA. Then the energy was released by the pluma Thread of the stringy sail that floated safely behind them. If the ship had been going faster, it might have left a colorful rainbow to drift in the air for a while.
The Thread was weaved as a dense version of pluma silk, which was the best conductor for estus and aeri energy alike, and what kept the energy from choosing to go through them instead. When the Aur storm was over ten minutes later, the Thread dropped to the sides of the masts to cool. Then it was twisted back away by the contraption made to do just that. The white cloth sails were then lifted once again to fill with the fresh, crisp air that would drift them to their destinies. Where death may or may not be laying in wait for their last breath.
“No, I mean seriously, why didn’t we take a Sano with us if this mission is so important?”
“Do you doubt in my abilities?”
“A phelan is best suited to serve as fitted to one of their talents. You can sing, you can heal and you can wield and command blades in battle.”
“Is that Jru’s training I hear from you? Just how much did you drink before that bottle?” Kas asked as he wasn’t entirely sure the phelan was drunk anymore.
He got a groan back.
“I already know what I am best suited for as an adult. Your concern is noted.”
“Oh? Then what is it?”
“The exact opposite talents of my Aliyr.”
“Huh?” Hain asked confused, as he pulled himself back up straight to see the silver markings on the High Priest’s left arm. “Who’s that? You didn’t tell me you got Bonded—didn’t you just turn eighteen?”
“It is what they call Fate, Hain, and no, I have not married her. You should learn to read better,” Kas said as he covered the glyph on his arm with his white sleeve before the phelan somnus could try to do just that. He went over to pick up one of the black uniforms that had been stripped from one of the lesser fortunate on their voyage, and looked it over. It didn’t have a drop of blood on it. “Were they a living offering?”
“You tell me first.”
Kas let out a sigh as he had raised Hain’s defensive wall again. “Yes, she is alive, and no, I did not have anything to do with its making.”
“Bonded by Fate eh? This I really gotta see the other side to. Because if you have taken up lying, I’m throwing in the towel to the caels. As for the best of the best crew; did you seriously think I would offend the sea caelestis by throwing her anything that could get stuck in her teeth? You’re supposed to be an expert on relations between mortals and the caels as a...” Hain paused for a moment with a loud yawn. Then he stretched his hands before him, complete with a pair of new black gauntlets. A deviant smile stretched across his face in turn to match the story of how he had taken them. “Priest.”
4: DREAMING FLOWERS
The voice drifted away from her mind, leaving Sybl in the deafening silence of the world around her. She wanted it to stay, to continue to tell her that she wasn’t alone and that there was someone out there thinking about her, who cared what her future had in store, but there was no way to keep it.
It was the sad thing that came with dreams, you could never keep them.
She opened her blue eyes on the grass of the woods she lay on at the back of her foster home. On looking up, she found it was snowing. It was unusual in the least, as it was the middle of August. Laughing, she caught one of the cold snowflakes in hand. It was not melting.
“Wishes do not melt away.”
Sybl sat up and looked around for the voice, while trying to untangle with her fingers her wavy, light brown hair. It was now a long series of knots leading to her waist. She wasn’t awake, as the dream had changed. The trees had vanished to leave her sitting in the middle of a field of pink fl
owers. “Hello?”
“Hello.”
She jumped to her feet when the voice came back to her head like an echo carrying an eerie chill. A familiar chill.
“You can make more wishes, but you cannot alter the ones made in your past.”
“What...? Where are you?” Sybl stumbled as she found the strange kid who looked to be the source of the voice, behind her. He wore a black mask with white, wavy stripes painted across and a cloak made entirely of brown feathers. Her first guess was that he might be a tribal child from the Amazon.
