by Rosie Scott
My eyes stuck on a tuft of black hair that waved in the afternoon breeze from the end of the shroud, just as shiny and healthy looking as it had been when Koby was alive. I held that image in my mind, feeling forlorn. I couldn't help but feel like I was a walking curse, bringing death and desolation to those I involved myself with. Everyone I had lost these past few years were dead, at least indirectly, because of me. Even Koby, barely more than a stranger to me when he was murdered, would not have been dead if I had never arrived in Killick.
Calder opened the shroud, because he insisted on it, though he kept the cloth up to obstruct our view. He stared at his friend's body for a few moments, his red eyes unflinching. His right hand came up to his chest, where he held onto the bronzed key once again. He then turned, nodding toward the sea, and murmured, “May you be free.” The sailors carried the corpse the rest of the way to the edge of the deck, where they dumped it.
I watched Calder's face as the body fell, and he flinched once it hit the water. I knew how he felt, because it was how I'd reacted when Theron's body was swallowed by the sands in Nahara. There came a time when one knew a loved one was dead, but somehow, losing the body only served to cement that fact into the mind. Until the body was gone, you could trick yourself into thinking the death was only a nightmare.
Judai's body came next, but hers required no ceremony. She was dumped into the sea like garbage, and no one mourned her.
I stood at the side of the deck for awhile, looking off over the ocean, my mind lost to thoughts. There were miles and miles of blue, deep water, holding all manner of untold secrets. Cerin's rubbing hand at the small of my back was the only thing reminding me he was there for the moment.
Then, Nyx approached me, saying nothing as she handed me folded parchment. I took it from her, noticing her black eyes waited for my reaction to its contents with an anxious hesitance.
I inhaled slowly through my nostrils, before holding the oxygen in as I unfolded the paper. Folded within the thicker parchment was a thinner piece, the two papers creased the same, so I knew they'd been folded together originally. The small paper was a map of Nahara.
“Where did you find this?” I murmured, moving the map to the side so I could get a better look at the paper that had been folded around it.
“Judai's pocket,” Nyx replied. “I didn't think to loot her body until last night. Thank goodness I did, huh?”
I let my eyes fall to the other paper. At first, it looked like a list. Then, I realized it was simply a bunch of important info, aligned randomly on a piece of parchment so as to be unimportant to those who were unfamiliar with the context.
#7: Judai, 74th High Star, 418
Nahara, proceed as necessary.
Rings as proof. Royal cloak/5K bonus.
Seek, extinguish.
50K G 420, or 30K after.
Red hair. Thin. 5”4.
“Ahhh,” I trailed off, glancing up from the assassination contact to look over the seas again. “How long it has been since I last saw Sirius's handwriting. I nearly missed it. Nearly.”
“You are worth fifty grand,” Cerin mused, dryly. “I was only worth twenty.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Sirius has been busier than I would normally give him credit for. We had just reached T'ahal by the 74th of last year. He is either still keeping things from Terran, or my brother did not tell me he had succeeded in getting some of the gods to act.”
“Perhaps Cerin had the right idea in buying you a new ring,” Nyx pointed out. “You should replace them all, if they will be used to collect your bounty.”
“No,” I argued, holding both of my hands out before me. I eyed all six of my rings. Other than the one that was my birthday present from Cerin, they were old and worn. A gifted ring from Bjorn hugged my left pointer finger, while a smaller ring Terran had bought for me as a teenager circled a pinky. “These are my rings. I won't replace them out of fear. Let us give the other six something to come after.”
“The other six?” Cerin questioned.
I moved the paper before him, before I circled the number beside Judai's name with a fingertip. “At least, unless Judai was the last on his list. I can just picture Sirius writing these, sitting at his desk and popping them out like thank you cards.” I huffed. “Given the information here that seems to pertain to only her, it's possible each of them had different instructions. He may have planted them in various countries for exorbitant fees. I have to admit, I'm impressed.”
“Impressed?” Nyx scoffed. “Why?”
“He's not underestimating me anymore.”
Twelve
32nd of Red Moon, 419
“Ha! Good news!” Calder's voice boomed out over the quarterdeck below him. It was the 32nd of Red Moon, more than a fortnight after Judai attempted to assassinate me. Our travel had been slow recently, for fish was the only food we had, and we kept having to stop the ship multiple times to fish for more. On top of that, the lack of varied foods was making us sick. Without the nourishment of plant foods, everyone was tiring, and some of the sailors were easy to bleed, even the slightest hit or splinter from the ship causing the skin to bleed like a far worse wound.
I'd been at a loss as to how to heal everyone. All I could do was offer the sailors energy. While I could diagnose their problems with a spell, magic could not give the people nutrition, which is what we all knew they needed. Giving the energy helped them to do their jobs and get us closer to land, but it was only a temporary patch over a very permanent problem.
Even our bodies were our enemies. Many of us craved foods we'd never had a taste for before, with even Nyx saying she would kill for a salad, despite never caring for them. Our bodies created these cravings in a desperate request for what they were missing.
Calder stood by his wheel, one hand keeping it still while the other held his binoculars to his face. He had been able to slowly turn his mood back to positive after Koby's burial, though now he just seemed to be anxious to get the job done. I had to imagine he wanted to be rid of us, for we had brought so much misfortune upon him and his crew.
The captain pulled the binoculars from his face, before adjusting the wheel before him. I hurried up the steps to the poop deck to be beside him.
“Land?” I questioned.
“I was right,” he murmured. “It is land, but we are approaching the southern tip of the wildlands. We are still far from Eteri.”
“We are far from Eteri, but we are alive,” I countered.
“Ah. Yes. I like that attitude.” Calder pointed ahead, though I could see nothing without the binoculars. “There is a man on the coast. Stranded, it appears.”
“Mm...” I trailed off. “You're not going to pick him up, are you?”
Calder hesitated, before putting the binoculars back up to his eyes. “I have been stranded before. I know how it feels.”
“Well, that's sweet of you, but I know how it feels to be stabbed in the gut.”
The captain chuckled. He pulled the binoculars away from his face, before handing them to me. “He is waving for us. If you want me to pass him, we will still have to stop along the coast for food. We need supplies.”
I put the magnifying tool up to my eyes, scanning the distance until I saw land. To the left, there was a coast that barely seemed like one at all. Instead of sand, I only saw odd, misshapen trees which were formed in all manner of twisted knots. I could not see much more detail from here, other than they looked to have very odd leaves that hung far to the ground. Moving the binoculars to the right, the treeline broke into more ocean, before another shoreline. This one was sandy, with a tuft of plant life up farther inland. Moving past it, I realized it was an island, for nothing but ocean was farther east.
“Is that all the wildlands?”
“The wildlands is the mainland. The islands are the Western Isles. They stretch north from here, off the coast of the mainland.” Calder hesitated. “Did you see the man?”
“No. Where was he?”
�
�The mainland. The swamps. Look left,” he instructed.
I did so, moving my gaze back toward the swamps. I scanned slowly, my eyes biased for a man.
“He's waving for us. I don't know how you're missing him.”
Finally, I saw him. From this distance, I could barely discern any detail. All I could see was that his skin color was similar to Jakan's, and his hair was long and black, hanging past his chest. He had both arms raised above his head, palms to the sky.
“He is not waving, Calder. He has his arms raised.”
“Ah. Godly friend of yours?” The captain chuckled.
In the distance came the rumbling of thunder. I pulled the binoculars down from my face, quickly. “Calder, don't pick him up.”
The captain raised an eyebrow, but he shrugged and took the binoculars back from me. “All right, fine. His death is on your hands, then. Not mine.”
“Yeah, it might be,” I agreed, before I hurried back to the quarterdeck. The musician on board still played his violin, and the crew continued their duties, though they noted the darkening of the clouds near the coast.
“Storm moving in, captain!” One sailor called.
“Yeah, I see it,” Calder called back. “It's about time, ey? We haven't had a good storm this entire trip! I've become bored.”
I was glad he seemed excited about it. I wasn't. There didn't seem to be anything worse in my mind than being in the middle of an ocean during a storm.
“Cerin,” I said, moving toward where he stood by the railing of the quarterdeck. “We might have problems.”
He stood up from his relaxed position, his silver eyes moving to the coast. “The storm?”
“The man,” I replied. I wasn't sure how much he heard of my conversation with Calder, so I elaborated. “I can't say for sure, but the man on the coast might be summoning it. Are Jakan and Anto still in their room?”
“Yeah.” He noticed me looking for Nyx next, and added, “She went with a sailor below deck.”
“We need them up here,” I said, before hurrying through the doorway and below the forecastle, and moving downstairs. I couldn't find Nyx right away, so I headed to the bedrooms, and knocked on Jakan and Anto's door.
“Yeah?” I heard Jakan call. Since he hadn't come to the door, I figured the two lovers were in a compromising position.
“I'm sorry to bother you guys, but we might have problems. We've seen land, but a storm is coming, and there's a man who looks a lot like Jakan summoning it.”
“Vertun?” Jakan murmured behind the door.
“I don't think the name matters,” Anto pointed out softly.
“Okay, we'll be up in a few minutes,” Jakan called to me.
I hurried back into the crew's quarters, before I heard my friend's enthusiasm from below. I went below deck, where it sounded as if my best friend and the sailor were utilizing the storage room for unintended activities. I didn't go past the first wall, leaving her mostly to her privacy.
“Nyx!”
The noises quieted. “Kai?”
“We have god problems,” I called back.
“Again?” She insisted, her tone annoyed.
It was at that moment that the ship began to vibrate. I reached out a hand, grabbing onto the nearest door frame, my heart thudding in my chest. This had never happened before during our time on the sea. It couldn't be the ship itself—could it?
An all-encompassing, muffled roar sounded from deep below us, the noise so strong that its vibrations rattled through the ship. A lantern fell off of a nearby wall hook, shattering. The broken pieces of glass then danced across the wooden floors, as if they ran from a predator. The roar was so loud I could hear nothing else, and it reverberated through my skull as if I was the one making it. I hadn't come across something that could make this kind of noise since the tortoise of Nahara.
The roar finally ceased. Above me, on the quarterdeck, I heard screaming orders and the sharp rippling of sails.
“That's one big fucking god,” Nyx called out.
“That couldn't have been him. Come to the deck, Nyx! Quickly!” I didn't give her time to respond. I ran back up to the quarterdeck, where I found the weather had changed drastically in the few minutes of my absence.
Clouds were thick and tumultuous in the sky above, rolling dark gray toward us from the coast of the wildlands. I could see a wall of rain rampaging to the ship from the land, though it hadn't yet hit us.
“To the gun deck!” Calder screamed, and many sailors went running to follow his orders, leaving only the few who needed to man the sails.
Cerin came running toward me, his hands on his scythe. He hadn't stopped being without it since the assassination attempt a fortnight ago, which was helpful now. The waters surrounding the ship were choppy and angry, as if we'd wronged them. The ship rocked sharply, at their mercy.
“Calder!” I yelled up to him, as he gripped his wheel so tightly both of his hands lightened to a near-white. He glanced toward me, distracted. “What are we up against?”
The captain didn't have time to reply. A streak of lightning chiseled through the sky in the waters between us and the shore, hitting the water and fizzling out. It was as if the man had summoned the storm, and the storm summoned the creature.
A deep rumbling echoed from below the water's surface. I grabbed ahold of the railing of the ship, waiting to see what rose from the depths so I knew how to combat it. My eyes stared at the deep blue water, catching onto the glistening edge of flesh as something in the seas swam below us. I could not see a form. I only saw one side. Was it really that large?
Crrk! The ship jolted. I yelped in surprise, my grip tightening on the railing. Cerin grabbed onto it himself, clutching his scythe desperately with one hand. Across the deck, Nyx, Jakan, and Anto finally appeared, all of them looking shocked as to how quickly things had devolved. They ran to the edges of the quarterdeck, grabbing on as we did.
The ship shook again, violently. I was terrified. I had no idea what was happening, or why I couldn't see what attacked us.
Pssshhh! The water erupted before my eyes, making way for the tip of a tentacle, the flesh shooting into the air much like Mantus had so long ago. It glistened a dark purplish-maroon on the opposite side, though the color faded to a grayish-white on the side nearest us, which was lined in suction cups. The tentacle raised into the sky until it was higher than the ship's largest mast, and with a crack like a whip, it flew downward toward the center of the quarterdeck, crashing through sails and equipment.
“Fire!” Calder screamed. With the tentacle now holding our ship in a tight embrace, the monster rose above the waves, a flat, fleshy white underbelly which split into multiple tentacles pulling itself in toward us.
With a glance to my left, I saw all of my friends hacking at the offending tentacle. In both of my hands, I built fire energy.
BOOM! The vibrations knocked me from my feet, my spells dissipating in my rush to stand. The dwarven cannons on the deck below had all fired at once, cannon balls flying toward the creature and ripping through soft wet flesh. Each hit caused a geyser of blue blood, the wounds leaking so bad they were pouring. Even still, this creature was too large.
“Fire at will!” Calder yelled. “Fire until the kraken is dead!”
Ah. So this is what a kraken looked like. It was as large as I'd imagined one would be, given they could destroy entire navies, as was the case in the stories I'd read of Valerius the Undying. If we were up against a kraken, we needed to throw everything we had at it.
BOOM! The cannons fired again, but this time I held onto the railing, building fire in my free hand. I didn't wait to throw it. The fireball sizzled through the air toward the kraken's underbelly, fizzling out once it hit the water still pouring from its body. I figured the fire would devastate the kraken's flesh, but it couldn't reach it through the liquid of the saltwater combined with its blue blood.
Extrac la agua del life, I recited, a black combination spell of death and water building in my h
and. It was one of the spells I'd learned from the necromancy spell book we bought in Comercio the year before, and I'd never yet used it. I stretched my hand over the railing, and the black energy connected between the kraken and I in a funnel. After a few seconds, the creature's life water seeped out of its skin through the funnel, before becoming too heavy within it and splashing to the seas below. If the kraken was mostly made of water, I would relieve it of its burden.
Klink! Anto's arm blade finally sliced through the tentacle, and the limb separated into two, blue blood seeping over the deck in puddles. The debris from the masts and sails continued to fall in splinters from the wreckage above, floating over the blue blood in pieces.
The rains finally hit us all at once, the sky releasing its water over our heads like it was trying to impress us with it. I dispelled my spell, knowing it was little use. Between the kraken being surrounded by water and now receiving the relief of the rains, my one spell could not compete.
Enflic le plague! I thrust disease at the kraken, the death energy sinking into the soft flesh, darkening it into a moldy gray before spreading outwards. The creature roared from beneath the waters, and it shook the ship beneath my feet, the vibrations rattling my teeth.
Pssshhh! Two more tentacles shot out from the ocean. One followed its predecessor, whipping around the center of the ship. Another shot out toward a sailor trying desperately to control a sail, the tip of it slipping around her torso and tugging her from the vessel, rolling her up within its grasp as it carried her over the sea. Her screams filtered through the rains, her hands scrambling to release herself from its hold. The tentacle tightened, and her screams rose in pitch as the shattering of bone cracked through the air. Thick red blood dripped from the bottom edges of the tentacle, before it flung back and released its victim, her broken body flying through the air away from the ship, where she landed within a splash of ocean.
