With the break of dawn, life breathed into the port-city of Gisela. Hints of light winked from behind prussian-blue clouds as a massive, three-masted ship drifted into the harbor. The barge’s hull had undergone significant damage, by something fierce and, it was obvious, of great strength, the vast pit bored into the craft's side its only calling card. Vessels of lesser size were moored here and there, sat low in the midnight-colored water as they flanked the behemoth’s passage. Few souls walked the flagstone walkways, and in the background, as if thrust into the fog-smothered firmament, rose the city's edifices.
The ship had just sailed the easterly seas within a lengthy interval of three weeks, wearing down captain and crew both. From the northeastern coast of Salvar to southwestern Corone, the voyage had been a particularly protracted one. The hapless crew had seen the fall of dozens of their comrades, somehow still holding on to their sanity after numerous death-filled nights and pirate raids on The Ashanti. Death had only brushed shoulders with the captain himself, who owed his life to all his men. Or what remained of them, at least.
Saving their commander's skin, after all, meant saving their own. For what value a crew of seamen without a captain?
Standing on the upper deck, the survivors silently regarded the brickstone buildings fringing the crowded docks, their faces weary from hangovers and lack of sleep. No-one spoke a word in the interval, as if silence was a revered thing when beholding a reality that, if measured but days ago, would have seemed too far-fetched. Of that a handful of seamen candidly expressed their felicity, sobbing together at the rear in a poignant embrace.
Navigating whatever sea the world offered had always demanded both stoicism and a hard mentality. As could attest Azaranth Ubissad of Ursten. Embarking on this ship, for it was he who had led to this now ending journey, had proven a complicated decision. He had stayed an hour at a time where lingered in their immediate vicinity a monstrosity able to easily upturn warships. Worse, it was demanded of him and the entire crew onboard to stay perfectly still - lest the creature sense their presence and send them all to oblivion. Indeed those odds had trodden dangerously close to reality, in fact, as was evidenced by the gaping ruin that was the ship's bow.
The experience, as he could see, had taken its toll on everyone. Some made it alive, after all. And none could believe it, it seemed - not even Azaranth.
His reasons to undertake such an endeavor would appease few people, and understandably so. How could one hope to find someone, whose fate was completely unknown, in a world of such scale? Where could one even begin to trace signs? True signs that would lead one to whom one sought?
It was all absurd, Azaranth knew. But he held certain… vows. And many would berate him for their outwardly low value. But these vows, as well those whom they were related to, were all that kept him sane in a world filled with moral depravity and madness. He would not - could not - break them. Azaranth reckoned that, had the crew discovered the true cause behind their traveling that great a distance, mutiny would have been well underway.
“Drop it, boys!” came the strained command from the captain, a vague, sturdy figure standing at the helm. “Smartly, now!”
The ship had gone completely still. A splash then drew Azaranth's attention when he saw the anchor chains drawn taut, barbed flukes vanishing under sizzling foams. The motion shed white dust into the air, settling on his cloaked sleeves like a contemporary sawdust coating.
He was confident that he had at least uncertain clues of his friend's location, and so knew where he would begin his search. The recently-built, abandoned quarters of another port in a completely different country, namely Raiaera, held the answers. Azaranth was certain that a Khal'jaren priest named Maverick was responsible for his comrade’s disappearance, and in turn, he suspected that an old library there once been his residence.
And safehouse. For Maverick had been conspiring, planning in the name of vengeance. And something dreadfully told Azaranth that this upcoming endeavor was simply part of a grander scheme - the fall of some country going by the title of Alerar.
Finding said priest would lead Azaranth to his friend, and that was all that mattered. The Salvarian cared not for politics, and the fall of one country, in his eyes, mattered little. Nations would rise only to one day fall, and clear the space for another to fill its stead. History repeated itself to no end.
It was a cycle he simply did not wish to meddle in. And that’s the gist of my excuse.
He leaned on the railing as footsteps scurried behind him. Men fast at work with rigging and carrying crates from stem to stern, organizing them for disembarkation.
He had expected myriads of emotions when he would finally arrive, but never, in his time onboard, thought fear among them. For fear, on strictly conservative measures, was one of a number of instincts the warrior was mostly unfamiliar with. And now this sensation, this alien poison, only disconcerted him. And now he felt like an infant, set to relearn much of life's principles. It had thrown him off, he would soon know, an already precarious balance. Rising to harass him like a ghastly corpse in his mind's eye, it threatened to harass him for ever.
What business had fear with a monster hunter? How could he even experience a breadth of such sentiments, if he wished to be marginally competent in the profession of tracking down and standing in the shadow of blood-curdling behemoths?
Some questions, Azaranth reflected, seemed to lead to nothing. And it wouldn’t do, to keep walking that path.
Regardless, he considered, for his first time aboard a vessel his overall performance was far from deplorable. He knew the risks on that ship would outweigh all benefits, to him and crew both, but necessity had its place. Nothing was more important than his goals, the motivation that led him here, this waking port on the western coast of Corone. Even bearing the responsibility of somehow recompensing the crew, and risking his life, was not enough to sway him.
His decision was set in stone.
He would find Merka Ralem.
Somehow.
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