by Jeremy Dwyer
“Proceed one hundred seven (107) steps forward,” Cassius then said, and he did so, but walking backwards while Ryan and Liora walked forwards.
The ghost of Captain Tychon and the other ghost pirates pursued them until they couldn’t – it seemed as if Cassius, Ryan and Liora disappeared.
“Where’d they go, captain?” one of the ghost pirates asked.
“The question isn’t merely where, but when?” the ghost of Captain Tychon said.
“What does that mean?” the ghost pirate asked.
“They escaped us for the moment,” the ghost of Captain Tychon said.
“So what now?” the ghost pirate asked.
“Other fools sail this sea. We’ll check on these later,” the ghost of Captain Tychon said, and he and his ghost crew returned to the Obliteration and sailed away.
~~~
“We shall wait here for a while. What seems an hour to us may be a day for them,” Cassius said.
“Where are we?” Liora asked.
“The better question is ‘when are we?’ The answer is in slow time. Or, as the Chroniclers like to call it, quick sight,” Cassius said.
“Did we go inside the waterfalls?” Liora asked.
“No. We would be motionless, senseless, with time nearly stopping. You would perceive little or nothing, as if you were nearly dead. At least, in theory,” Cassius said.
“Then what did we do?” Ryan asked, not sure exactly what the trick was.
“We approached from the diagonal, and we are between the waterfalls. In a short while, we will leave,” Cassius said.
A minute later, Cassius said: “It is time.”
“That was fast,” Ryan said.
“Remember what I told you. And follow my footsteps precisely, so that you don’t become a permanent fixture here,” Cassius said.
Cassius then calculate the diagonal path to walk and Ryan and Liora followed carefully and precisely, and they returned to their ship.
“We must go to the nearest port, captain,” Cassius then said.
“Our original course was northwest, toward the Way of Raza’Deptorum. That might be the closest landmass with a port,” Ryan said.
“That will do. This island is far too treacherous for the unprepared,” Cassius said.
“The island was cold. Why was that?” Liora asked.
“The island has many dangers. Yet, the source of them is not clear without a closer examination, which will have to come at a later time,” Cassius said.
After another half (1/2) day of sailing, they arrived at a destination with which Ryan was somewhat familiar. However, it was at a point not originally where he intended to land. It was off the east coast of the Way of Raza’Deptorum land bridge, and they found themselves near an area that was hill country.
“This is no seaport. Where did you take us, captain?” Cassius asked.
“To the Way of Raza’Deptorum land bridge, and far away from that island. We can sail the coast to a known seaport in the morning,” Ryan said.
Liora looked at Ryan and asked: “You need rest, don’t you?”
“This was a long day – for all of us,” Ryan said.
Cassius retired to the cabin which he had paid for. Liora, however, spent the night with Ryan, looking for comfort and friendship and found more. They took a considerable liking to one another, and she resolved that night to end her working relationship with Cassius as soon as she could.
The next morning, when they all awoke, Cassius met them on the deck of the ship, knowing full well that the girl had lost any interest in business with him, having become enamored with the new captain.
“We’re not alone. Look,” Cassius said, pointing to a ghostly figure standing on the shore.
“Not again. Not more ghosts,” Ryan said.
“Please! Please! Please! No more ghosts! No more problems!” Liora said. She gave her heart to Ryan, and her mind, as well as everything else she could. These adventures no longer interested her. She stayed close to Ryan and hugged him tight.
“Wait here. We’ll sail back soon enough,” Cassius said.
“You’re going to meet the ghost?” Liora asked.
“Would you rather run, unable to navigate with certainty? Sometimes, it’s best to wait and plan your next move. And that planning may even involve confronting the unknown,” Cassius said. He then walked down the boarding ramp and met with the spirit.
The ghost of a female corsair approached Cassius and he walked up to her, not apprehensively as some might, but with a calm and confident composure.
“Ghosts don’t scare you, do they?” the ghost of the female corsair asked, smiling.
Cassius reached into his coat and pulled out the glowing blue crystal and held it to his chest, putting the chain around his neck.
“Perhaps we should discuss a few things,” Cassius said.
“How very personable of you. Perhaps I should invite you to dine with me…yet, I won’t. You know why, of course?” the ghost of the female corsair asked.
“It wouldn’t be this, would it?” Cassius asked, gesturing toward the glowing blue stone.
The ghost of the female corsair approached and looked at the glowing blue stone and said: “No. And I hope you weren’t counting on that making a difference.” She then walked directly through Cassius, as ghosts were apt to do, and he felt it, and shuddered. She should have been repulsed by the pain – the glowing blue stone was an ‘unhaunting’ stone, and had repelled ghosts in the past. It stopped the ghost of Captain Tychon, and it stopped spirits before. Now, however, it did nothing.
“You were there. I can see it all over you,” the ghost of the female corsair said.
“Where do you believe I was?” Cassius asked, still wondering why the unhaunting stone failed him.
“You don’t even know, do you? Belorakanis Island – the island of crossings, where many waters meet. One of those is the ‘dark waters’ – Ikkith Tar – that’s why it’s cold, and it cracked your little stone there,” the ghost of the female corsair said.
Cassius now understood what happened, but not how she knew.
“That could have happened in any cold environment,” Cassius then said.
“Another one is the ‘light waters’ – Lujladia – that’s why there’s a glow. Your blue stone glows because of that, even though it’s cracked and doesn’t do you any good,” the ghost of the female corsair said.
“What of this Belorakanis Island? Why does it matter to you?” Cassius asked.
“Why wouldn’t it? Being a ghost, I still have interest in the world. And I could tear you apart now – you know that,” the ghost of the female corsair said.
She used her ghostly power to become partly material and knocked him to the ground.
“There’s no need to prove what is known. What is it you want?” Cassius said, picking himself up, slowly.
“Tell me the course to get there, and I’ll let you live,” the ghost of the female corsair said.
Cassius gestured toward Ryan and he came down the boarding ramp with Liora following him. They were afraid, but it did them no good to fight. Sailing across those waters and encountering the ghost of Captain Tychon again might not have a good outcome.
“Well, if it isn’t young love? It’s been centuries since I’ve had that,” the ghost of the female corsair said, watching Ryan and Liora approach.
“Captain Ryan can tell you the course to that island,” Cassius said.
“She wants to know the course to Belorakanis, where the waterfalls were,” Cassius said to Ryan when he was near enough.
“Who is she?” Ryan asked.
“I am Irina, Baroness of these lands,” the ghost of the female corsair said.
“I am Liora. This is Ryan,” Liora said.
“I was married once. My husband was murdered…by Captain Tychon,” the ghost of Baroness Irina said.
“He’s the last person we ever want to see again,” Ryan said.
“How can I disagree with that
sentiment?” the ghost of Baroness Irina said.
“Tell her where the island is, please, captain,” Cassius said. He was concerned that the ghost of Baroness Irina might decide to destroy them all if they refused to meet her demands.
“If that place is your idea of a good time, I’ll tell you,” Ryan said. He took a small piece of paper out of his coat and began writing out the course on how to return to the island with the waterfalls.
“You did that by hand. You didn’t look to the stars. I can tell, because you did it with mathematics,” the ghost of Baroness Irina said.
“When I listen to the stars, I hear noise more than signal. It’s gotten louder…we lost our way because of it,” Ryan said.
“What is this noise you mention?” the ghost of Baroness Irina asked.
“It’s like if you’re having a conversation with somebody and there’s two (2) or three (3) other people screaming the whole time,” Ryan said.
Ryan then handed the paper with the charted course over to the ghost of Baroness Irina, who made her hand become material and she held the paper.
“You need to leave this part of the world. Go now, before the world grows darker still. Tychon is waiting for you, and plans to kill you both. He wants to make you watch each other die, horribly. You’re both in love…I can see that,” the ghost of Baroness Irina said.
Ryan and Liora glanced at each other momentarily, knowing that she had understood them.
“And so can he. It sickens him…he hates all love,” the ghost of Baroness Irina said.
“Where should we sail?” Ryan asked.
“Sail west, away from these waters, and do not return,” the ghost of Baroness Irina said, and then she vanished.
Ryan, Liora and Cassius returned to the ship and set their course due west. Ryan converted the ship to its airship configuration, elevated it to one hundred twenty (120) feet of altitude and traveled over the land bridge that was the Way of Raza’Deptorum.
“My dear, Liora. While we travel to a more suitable location, perhaps you could take the time to repair this crystal,” Cassius said, holding out the cracked blue stone for her to take.
Liora looked at the blue crystal which Cassius held out toward her – the one that had the liquefied topaz inside of a topaz outer shell – which Cassius had shown her before and that he had used against the ghost of Captain Tychon.
“You didn’t want me to touch it before, remember?” Liora asked, clearly annoyed.
“Things have changed. Now that you’ve seen how important that it is, I trust you’ll give it the care it deserves,” Cassius said, handing it over to her.
Liora drank anew of the waters of the Kazofen Ocean from her vial and was energized. She stared at the crack in the crystal down to the finest level and realized that it had a structure that was very irregular. It wasn’t topaz – that was just the mineral closest to it. “This structure is highly irregular – it doesn’t have the same repeating pattern that topaz does. Everything about it is slightly askew,” Liora said.
“How far askew? Can you still repair it?” Cassius asked, concerned.
“The crystal geometry is there, but each of the arrangements has angles that are not congruent with others in the same polygon. They have almost random differences,” Liora said.
“They are not random, but of a deliberate design, I must assure you,” Cassius said.
“Maybe not random, but topaz – that’s what this crystal is the closest to – is much more uniform, nearly perfectly so. I can seal this crystal, but whatever I do will be more uniform than the irregularities present,” Liora said.
“Will that alter the existing structure?” Cassius asked.
“Not the way that I’m going to do it. I can just join the partial crystal chains already there – they’re already broken. Rejoining them would repair the fracture,” Liora said.
“Work carefully, please. We may yet encounter other difficulties, and this may again be needed,” Cassius said.
Liora began to manipulate the blue stone’s crystal structure near the fracture site, using the powers the Kazofen waters gave her to alter the fine molecular structure of it. She rejoined the broken chains as best she could and handed the blue stone back to Cassius.
Cassius examined the crystal and saw that it still had a glow to it, but he could not know for sure if it was powerful enough – if it had any power at all. “It does have the appearance of being repaired,” Cassius said, unwilling to thank Liora until he saw results. He was concerned that the glow was a residual effect from having been on that island, as the ghost of Baroness Irina had said, as opposed to the glow the unhaunting stone had before, when it was effective.
Liora then turned to Ryan and asked: “Ryan, you mentioned Admiral Ramalaxis before. Who was that?”
“There’s quite a bit of legend surrounding her. Long ago, pirates and enemy fleets from tiny kingdoms were ambushing ships on these waters and stealing their cargo,” Ryan said.
“Gabrielle Ramalaxis was an Admiral of the Ihalik Empire, whose economy was slowed by the conflict. She was charged with finding a solution to the problem, my dear,” Cassius said.
“Right. She assembled her fleet and tried to fight it out, but she could never find the enemy. They hid in the darkness. After a lot of hide and seek, she called on the ghosts of these waters to attack her enemies and crash their ships,” Ryan said.
“What happened with the ghosts? Did it work? I can’t see how it would,” Liora asked.
“It sort of worked. She won every battle,” Ryan said.
“Sort of?” Liora asked.
“It was not a victory for Ramalaxis, personally. The spirits defeated her living enemies, true enough. Afterwards, however, they lingered with her, and haunted her for her remaining years. It was all because she had called them to her side while being unprepared for the complications. Eventually, she went mad from the torment they caused her,” Cassius said.
“Is the Admiral Ramalaxis Bridge named after her, then?” Liora asked.
“Yeah. The seas were safer to travel without the pirates and the other fleets. The economy in Ihalik and the whole region got better, as the story goes, so it was decided to name that land bridge in honor of her,” Ryan said.
“Given her unpleasant circumstances, however, there was little opportunity to bask in the glory…or to reap the financial rewards that she was due,” Cassius said.
CHAPTER 33: Calling of the Wild into the Darkness
Hesperos booked transport on a ship leaving Emeth and traveled in a northeasterly direction for two (2) days – sailing slowly across the Medathero Ocean because the crew had navigational difficulties. After he arrived at a seaport on the western coast of the Crypt Trail land bridge, he then made his way through the swampland, traveling for a day both on foot and by paying for passage on riverboats, until he found the mausoleum.
He entered the mausoleum and found it to be vacated. He drank anew of the waters of the Elanatin Ocean from his vial and searched out for the thoughts and feelings of others, but detected no living being.
The oculus allowed some light to enter the room and it shone down on a pile of bones that had been used in an earlier sacrificial ritual. Hesperos noticed that the bones were arranged in a certain way and formed a symbol. The symbols that the Explorers of the Quiet Sea used were part of a secret code that described many different things, including navigational instructions. The reader had to parse the symbol’s elements to understand precisely what they denoted, and he understood this arrangement to mean that Pandaros had moved on to the continent of Waderav in the northeastern region.
Hesperos immediately left the mausoleum and crossed the swampland again, returning to the seaport and booking transport over the Nabavodel Ocean. The ship traveled southwest at first, and then to the northeast, until he reached the northeastern region of Waderav. This took another two (2) days of slow travel.
Soon after arriving in Waderav, Hesperos found his way to a village where many peopl
e were hard at work rebuilding from the ruins. They were mostly diligent in their labors, except for a young woman, who seemed to be just sitting on the ground by a tent. An older woman stood next to her, as did a young man.
“Who are you?” the older woman asked. She saw a gruff-looking traveling man who was in his late thirties or early forties.
“I am a traveler of the world. I noticed you rebuilding your village, which appears to have been damaged by the storms,” Hesperos said.
“Were you sent here to help us?” the older woman asked.
“Along my travels, I help some, and I am helped by others,” Hesperos said.
“She’s not dead,” the young man said.
Hesperos then drank anew of the Elanatin Ocean waters from his vial and was energized. He began reading all of their minds. Before he had arrived, the young man was trying to have opportunistic intimate relations with the young woman, but the older woman caught him and stopped him, threatening to cripple him if he did. The older woman was also trying to awaken the young woman from her trance, hoping to get her back to work.
He then read the mind of the young woman in the trance and realized that her name was Nerine and that she had seen Pandaros, who convinced her to sing the Fascinate Me song. That is why she was in the trance, because the summoned spirit had entered her body and stunned her. This, of course, meant that Pandaros was likely nearby, or would be soon. Hesperos also learned that Nerine was hoping to be wed to the sunfire creature who had fallen from the sky.
“She is not ill, merely troubled by a fright,” Hesperos said.
“You scared her, didn’t you, trying to be fresh?” the older woman said to the young man.
“She was like this before I found her! I didn’t do anything,” the young man said.
“Make sure you stay away, or you won’t be doing anything with anyone, ever,” the older woman said.
The young man then walked away, clearly annoyed, but he busied himself by casting his eyes upon every woman he passed as he went back to find work to do for the villagers. Soon, he started helping with the construction of a frame for a new house.
