The Wandering Isle

[Luned]

http://imageshack.us/a/img27/1171/wanderingisle.png

Closed to Warpath.

All uses of Aurelianus Drak'shal's character have been approved by his writer.

This is somewhat of a followup to Child of Darkness (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25044-Child-of-Darkness).



In the kitchen window, Muir lounged on a stool and reveled in the last golden rays of the evening, soaking in the warmth like a lazy house cat. His arms sprawled across the tangles of ivy that decorated the sill and the sun caught his auburn hair, highlighting it in flame as he watched the room. A light breeze filtered in and he shivered, cocking the collar of his jacket to insulate his neck.

"Are you really that cold?" Luned asked as she tidied the mess from dinner, the blissful scent of baking still hanging in the air as she busily returned cooking implements to their rightful homes. She was perfectly comfortable in her thin blouse but, then again, she hadn't spent the past several years in a desert. The girl had taken to wearing her long, darker hair down, but from the way she always gathered it over her left shoulder, it was obvious she just used it to play down the fresh scars on her jaw and neck. When unobscured, they shone bright white against her already pale skin. "You've been in Fallien too long. This is the best time of year to visit Radasanth, nights are warm but not too humid yet. Don't you remember?"

With a groan, the young man forced himself into somewhat civilized posture, his boots hooked in the rungs of his stool. "You don't know what you're missing, Lune. The desert is like being wrapped in a fuck-ton of blankets and just sort of shoved inside an oven all the time." He spoke with gratuitous use of his hands, insinuating some sort of fluffy burrito.

His sister wrinkled her nose, not particularly appreciating the metaphor. They were quite obviously siblings in spite of their differing demeanors, particularly in the face; they shared similarly delicate features, and though his darkly tanned skin greatly contrasted with her fairness, their freckles marked them as two of a kind. "That's supposed to sound pleasant?"

"Never mind," Muir gave up, dragging himself to his feet. He smoothed his coat, a nautical looking thing likely pilfered from another man's closet, which made him appear rather like a pirate in combination with his pinstriped pants that were tucked smartly into old leather boots. He wore a brightly woven Fallien-style kerchief at his neck in a scarlet that made his emerald eyes glow. "I think I'll go pay Rez a visit."

Luned hung her apron up with a little smile. "Have fun." When she stood next to Muir, with his radiant complexion and eccentric clothing, she felt a bit like she disappeared, but that was how she preferred things. He'd likely get up to some rampant mischief with their mutual friend tonight, but instead of feeling left out, the scribe would be glad to get one last evening of quiet reading in before preparations for the upcoming voyage grew too hectic.

With a wry little grin and nod of parting, Muir stuffed his hands in his pockets and strolled out of the room. "Will do!"



Hot mug of tea in hand and a choice book under her arm, Luned ascended the steps which led to the living space of the library, the scuff of her soft-soled shoes against stone nearly echoing in the tall, narrow passage. Off the small second floor hallway were a small parlor, a couple of guest rooms, and the scribe's own bedroom at the far end, where she deposited her reading on the desk. Dusk loomed over the view of the water from her window, casting deep shadows and bathing the world in gray, and as she reached out to the lamp, a voice erupted from the darkness behind her.

"'Ello, luv," it greeted her, the demon's grin apparent in his tone.

Her heart lurched and she dropped the mug, ceramic shattering hard and loud against the floor.

[Luned]

Getting the light was an unnecessarily complicated task with trembling hands but the scribe managed, and as the pale glow reached the corners of the little room, it illuminated the villain. Aurelius lounged on her bed, legs outstretched and back against the headboard, where he was sorting through some reading. He looked every inch the hooligan he was in dirty boots and black leather. The tiefling took a draw on his cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth as he flipped through another book. With a small grunt of irritation, he discarded it in a pile at the foot of the small bed. "What's the matter, luv? Not 'appy to see your old mate?"

Luned didn't budge from her place at the window, cringing at the peculiar accent that had haunted her nightmares over the past few months. "What do you want?"

Feigning a look of hurt, the half-breed stood up, the fag pressed between his lips. His coat was laid over the chair next to the bed, leaving bladed armor on display. "Alright, straight to the point: I want information, and I figure you're the chit to come to when I need to 'ave a scan of a few tomes."

The girl nodded, arms wrapped protectively around herself, and she instinctively pressed back against the window as he stood. The glass was cold and sent a chill up her spine. "What information?"

He smiled darkly, seeing her try to move away from him. The shiver she gave was delicious to the depraved creature that he was. "Chant is there's some ruins, down Fallien way. The usual ride-jink, magick trinkets, spell tomes and the like. But this ain't just any old ruin. This'un is… important. Used to 'ouse a Demon Lord, a few 'undred years back. Chant tells 'e left somethin' down in the depths. Somethin' powerful. Naturally, I want it." The warlock idly toyed with a few of the talismans, glyphs, and amulets tied around his wrists, letting his cold gaze wander over the girl, before holding his palms up in an inoffensive shrug. "This 'ere's a library, an' I need a few books," he said, as if it was really that simple.

"I'll find what I can, and I'll leave them downstairs in your name with the clerk. Give me a week." This was a standard research agreement, but it served another purpose: Luned would, if everything went as planned, be on a ship halfway across the ocean by the time he returned. That prospect was only comforting if he agreed, of course, and in a manner that didn't insinuate he'd harass the library's other staff in her absence. The scribe couldn't help but silently wonder just how Bleddyn's mysterious power, depths unknown, would contend with the scoundrel if things went awry.

The tiefling mulled that over for a few moments, obviously not happy with the answer he'd received, but he let slip a chuckle at Luned's obvious discomfort with his presence. "You sure you don't wanna come search the stacks with me? We could always pick up where we left off back in Ettermire (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25044-Child-of-Darkness&p=205044&viewfull=1#post205044)," he smirked lasciviously, leaning against the wall next to Luned.

It took every ounce of energy the scribe had left not to betray just how thoroughly terrified she was that he would; even just the memory sent her stomach churning and put the metallic taste of rancid blood in her mouth again. Handling that threat with composure took significant effort, but she managed. "I might need to send for books from other archives if we don't have what you need. It takes time." There was something almost funny about falling back on her standard responses for any patron who was impatient about a request, a desperate tactic drawn from habit, but she didn't have it in her to show amusement. The usual disgruntled visitors generally weren't half-demons with things like bladed armor and penchants for slitting throats.

He gnashed his fangs in irritation, serpentine eyes flashing over the scribe. If she lied to him, he'd have known, but he knew that the girl was too smart to risk that. He relented, lighting up another cigarette and stepping back to gather his coat. "If that's the best you can manage, luv, it'll do." He nodded toward the door to her room. "'urry up, then, and off you pop."

Luned backed away, first against the wall, then toward the door. Her steps tracked spilled tea across the hardwood floor. "I trust you know the way out," she said with the fortitude of a mouse.

"Aye, that I do. That also means I know the way back in. Keep that in mind, luv," Aurelius said quietly as he stalked past the girl, narrowly avoiding her with the blades adorning his leather. He headed down the stairs, his figure followed by curling wisps of smoke, and he chuckled. "Be seein' you real soon, Luned."

[Luned]

When the man disappeared down the stairs, Luned didn't move from the threshold into the hallway. She remained still as death as she listened carefully, following his footsteps as they grew more and more distant until the creak of hinges told her he was really, truly, ever so gratefully gone.

"Oh, gods," she gasped as she covered her face with shaking hands, using slow, deep breaths to calm herself. Her ashen skin made her ghostlike and she stared at nothing for a moment, wide, blue eyes unseeing. She couldn't bear Aurelius' reappearance alone, she didn't feel safe, but who could she possibly tell? If she went to Bleddyn or Resolve, she'd be forced to come clean about everything. She feared their inevitable disappointment almost as much as she yearned for their eventual forgiveness, which might never come. And Muir? They weren't close, not like that…

But no –– she did have someone.

The scribe stepped back into her room, shattered mug crunching underfoot as she walked to her desk. She slumped into the chair, searched her pockets for her journal, and soon she'd extracted something from the pages, which she unfolded to reveal its surface half-filled with correspondence in two very different types of handwriting. The enchanted paper's mate was in some unknown, undoubtedly distant region of the world, she was certain, but at the other end was the only person who didn't judge her for her mistakes, and who understood just how unsettling it was to discover that particular villain lurking in one's home.

Pen hovered at the ready, Luned stared down in a daze. What would she even write? The previous notes were all pleasant smalltalk, it felt wrong to tarnish it with Aurelius' name… so she didn't.

In simple penmanship and shortness wholly uncharacteristic of herself, Luned merely wrote:


He was here.

[Warpath]

The rag-clad thugs dragged the castellan through the sturdy stone walls he managed in the baron’s name. They held him by his arms and carried him backward, and out of despair he let his ankles drag, ignoring the pain when they would catch and bounce on upraised stones and gaping crags. When they carried him out across the tower bridge, he laid his head back and looked up at the cloudless sky, painted in a thousand shades of blue and pink and orange. It was the most beautiful sunset he’d ever seen, and thus he was sure: the Sway had betrayed them. How else could one explain the totality of their loss, and the world’s indifference to it?

The thugs knocked before entering the inner tower, hoisting the castellan along with them. This had been the baron’s study. Indeed the baron was still there, his head bare and his hair grey and wild, his finery torn, and he was on his knees on the floor. The baroness was there too, huddled in a corner with her daughters and their ladies. More of the invaders were inside, standing in a semicircle around the baron, and the castellan knew with a certainty that the man they looked to was the orchestrator of this grand sin against the divine.

The keep’s blacksmith had, until now, been the biggest man the castellan had ever seen. This black-clad brute was easily a half-foot shorter than the blacksmith, but infinitely thicker with muscle until the signs of his physical might struck the man as being grotesque: this was surely no human being, but the result of an unholy union between man and beast.

“They call you Flint, don’t they?” the castellan croaked. “You were supposed to be a myth. They told us you were a myth.”

Flint had been staring down at the baron, but now he turned his severe, unblinking gaze to the castellan. “That is why this was easy,” he said. For a half-man, his voice was soft and his speech eloquent – a blasphemy, like the rest of him.

“We caught him at the back wall. Can’t be sure, but I think he might’ve been considering a jump down into the moat.”

Flint did not immediately acknowledge that his lackey had spoken, continuing to stare down at the castellan. Maybe he hadn’t understood the words?

“His wife?” the ape said at last. “Family?”

“Word is his wife’s dead. We didn’t find any signs of family, but he’s a fossil. If he had kids, they moved on.”

Flint went on staring. How long had it been now? Two minutes? Three? And not once did he blink, or look away. Was he even breathing? And then, blessedly, he turned that gaze to the ladies huddled in the corner. A petrified stillness went over them, as if he could turn their flesh to stone with a glance. Then he moved.

He walked over to the castellan and slowly, deliberately, he curled his fingers into the material of his shirt, just over his heart. The thuggish escorts stepped aside, as unsure of their leader as their victims were. Flint began to push him backward, and the castellan tried to walk, to back away, but he tripped. He squeaked, but he didn’t fall. With one arm, Flint held him upright by his shirt, and half-carried him to the window.

It was an ornate affair, stained red glass with orange depictions of the Sway’s generosity to the Salvic people. Flint pushed the castellan’s back to the window and stared into his eyes. The castellan stared back, defiant.

“This is a man of faith,” Flint declared. “Look at him: so outraged, so sure. So deluded. If I asked you for the genealogies you kept, the records of land ownership, the tax books, the deeds, what would you tell me?”

“You can fuck yourself,” the castellan spat, struggling to keep the tremor from his voice.

“Such loyalty to your position,” Flint mused. “And yet you were going to jump from the wall and leave your family to their fate. You’d preserve this keep, the barony, the aristocracy, but not your own blood.”

“I have no family.”

“No?”

Flint’s forearm tensed and the castellan had a moment, a heartbeat of panic before the brute shoved him. His back screamed out in pain, shooting red-hot agony from his spine to every inch of his body as the glass shattered around him, raining sparkling red stars and glinting orange diamonds in the peripherals of his vision. His breath caught in his throat and the scream cut short when he instinctively felt the vast empty space beneath him, and the rush of hot air eager to snatch him up and toss his body about like a plaything.

A single clear voice cried out, heartrending in its fear and anguish. She tried to bottle her voice back up when she saw that Flint still had hold of her grandfather, who was bloodied but alive, peering wide-eyed back over his shoulder at whatever distance lay below him. It was too late. She had been hidden; anonymous amongst the baroness’s handmaidens, but now she was a fleck of gold in a vein of iron.

“Stupid girl,” the castellan hissed, clutching at Flint's forearm.

“And yet she’ll weep for you,” Flint said, and then he let go.

[Warpath]

Flint turned away from the window empty handed, and hardened his face as his prediction came true. The girl wept openly, not for herself but for the unfeeling, pious curmudgeon she’d known all her life. Sometimes – oftentimes – he did not understand people. What they would say and what they would do, what drove and motivated them, all that he understood, but why they felt the way they felt would forever be a mystery.

His men went to the girl and extricated her from the other ladies, who put on a show of attempting to protect her but really didn’t fight much at all. The girl herself did nothing but produce tears and a soft, mildly annoying wailing noise.

“Didn’t we need him?” Radek said.

“He would have been more precise,” Flint said, “but forcing a man’s mind to change is time-consuming. She may not know exactly where the documents are, but she’ll know enough.”

The men brought her closer as they escorted her out of the room, and for the briefest moment she found it in her to bury her grief, and she attempted to murder Flint Skovik with a single teary-eyed look. It was a valiant effort and her hatred was almost tangible in the space between them, but the field of freckles across her button nose softened the blow and the brute went on breathing, no worse for the wear.

At least, outwardly. Inwardly he felt a disquieting thrill, and his hand went instinctively toward a pack he wasn’t wearing.

“The boys will get it out of her,” Radek said.

“No,” Flint said sharply. The girl’s escorts hesitated, looking back at him. “No harm is to come to her. Find out every place where she lived, where her parents lived, and where the old man worked. Search it, then burn everything, and take her back into the village and turn her loose. Take all of them back to the village and turn them loose.”

“What about him?” Radek said, pointing at the baron. The old man looked up with hope gleaming in his eyes.

“What? No, toss him out the window.”

The baroness made a strange sound. It didn’t strike Flint as being the sound one makes when losing a husband, but maybe one a person would make when losing a particularly nice trinket. Strong disappointment, but not grief. The baron’s shoulders slumped; two thugs grabbed him, and began dragging him toward the shattered window.

“Wait,” Flint said. The thugs looked at him expectantly. “Don’t be wasteful.”

Confusion returned to the baron’s face, and then a modicum of hope quickly lost when the thugs began pulling his jewelry, accoutrements, and finery off. No reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Warpath]

“This was a little tougher than the last one,” Radek said. “Eventually they’re going to figure out how we’re doing it.”

Flint was descending the tower hurriedly, but Radek was right on his heels.

“We need to find a way to recruit more men, because eventually we’re going to have to resort to a proper siege. We need more money. If we could just take a keep instead of gutting it, we could use it as a base of operations,” Radek continued.

“Sieges take time and can be broken,” Flint said. “More men necessitate more supplies, fewer winnings to divide amongst more people, and a greater degree of organization and discipline. A static base of operations can be attacked. And Radek, if we take control of a place, we become one of them.”

“I’m just trying to think long-term here, Flint. We can’t keep doing this much longer, not in this region. You say we can’t become like them, but we’re not. We’re us, and they’re them. Wouldn’t it be better if we were calling the shots? I mean, hell, it isn’t like someone else isn’t going to fill the voids we’re leaving behind. Even if you burn all the records and confuse the lines of succession, somebody will eventually take control of these fiefs by force, and then it’ll just start all over again.”

They became aware of a scream rising in the distance, a voice raised in unceasing and constant terror, and the sound swiftly grew louder. They ignored it as they descended.

“This isn’t the endgame,” Flint said. “Fet’s plan is sound, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. We’re arraying our pawns, and forcing the aristocracy to array theirs on our terms.”

“But what’s the goal?”

“Victory,” Flint said.

The scream reached a crescendo just as the pair passed a tower window, and they caught a glance of the baron as he made his own descent. His persistent scream gradually faded.

“I guess I just don’t see the big picture here.”

“And I’m no more privy to it,” the brute said with a shrug. “It is good that you don’t need to trust me. Only Fet.”

They emerged from the tower into the courtyard, and Flint stepped over the baron’s broken body without changing pace. Radek glanced over at what was left of the castellan and winced.

“Why is the church still boarded up?” Flint said, marching up to the supply wagon.

“We can’t get in,” Radek sighed. “Apparently the priests had some clue we might show up, which is part of what I’m talking about. Even if the barons don’t see us coming, the Church is starting to catch on, and where the barons are stubborn, the clergy ain’t. If the bishops tell them to start putting the records in the churches and sealing them up, what then?”

Flint paused and looked up at the church, where massive depictions of the Virtues and the Sway were painted in incredible detail. The stained glass windows were dark, hinting at the sturdy boards erected behind them. Twelve men had a post, and were steadily hammering at the main door with it, but the wood wasn’t budging.

“Burn it,” Flint said.

“But the churches are rich, and often play host to valuable people during sieges. We don’t know what’s inside.”

“Liars,” Flint said dismissively. “Burn it.”

“Okay,” Radek sighed, and walked away to give the order.

Flint, meanwhile, found the supply wagon and began digging through it in search of his rucksack. He found it in a chest and opened it in a hurry, revealing a small collection of supplies, books, writing utensils, cookware, maps, and an otherworldly trinket. He pulled a thin notebook out and flipped through it until he found a crisp and neatly-folded sheet of paper. This soothed him, and he sat back against the wild mishmash of sacks and chests and barrels while he unfolded the paper almost reverently: a now-familiar ritual born of a careful daily action.

He knew the writings on that paper by heart. At the top left corner was a short line of Flint’s handwriting, and it said “I’m alive.” Below that, someone with much cleaner, ornate penmanship had written “I’m glad” in response. He followed the text downward, where the ornate penmanship spun a short tale, and he’d answered it with a shorter one. It was too basic to be personal, and yet the men gave him a wide berth when they saw that little sheet of paper in his mitts, and nobody thought to question it. To them it seemed an obsession, some unchanging piece of his past that he constantly revisited.

And yet, today Flint discovered a change – a line of writing that he hadn’t yet read over a hundred times before.

“Aurelianus,” Flint growled. He hesitated, drifting back in his memory to Ettermire, where he’d almost died, and where he’d been forced to strike an agreement with a devil. The looming payment of that debt was a constant pressure on him.

He had almost forgotten that Luned had made a similar arrangement.

Flint folded the paper again quickly, but carefully, returned it to its place between the pages of his book, and then returned the book to the rucksack before closing it again. He tossed the bag aside and cracked open the chest he’d found it in, dug through the items therein, and then produced an object wrapped in burlap. When he undid the burlap, he revealed twin hunks of metal. They were identifiable as weapons, but beyond that no mortal man had ever seen their like before Flint: they hadn’t been shaped by a hammer or by fire, but instead seemed to have been chiseled piece by piece from a single cut of black steel, and then those pieces were assembled, clicking together in a matrix of moving parts.

He hesitated again, but only for an instant. He slid the first of the pieces onto his left forearm, and then the second onto his right. The insides were coated in some kind of alien cloth, and after a few seconds of contact with his skin the cloth contracted, hugging the contours of his forearms, tracing every vein. The metal seemed to hum, to breathe, and he could almost feel something moving inside the bracers, like hidden clockwork spinning up.

The called them the ruiners, and as with all unknown things, he was wary of them. If he had to fight a fire-wielding devil, though, he wanted every advantage he had at his disposal. With that thought, he reached down and ran his fingertips over a shape in his pocket – a vial of clear liquid. He prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

“Radek!” he shouted.

His second turned away from his task by the church, where the men at the door were now sullenly stacking up bales of hay and dousing them in turpentine. Flint stepped off the wagon and waved for a horse to be brought to him while he marched to meet Radek midway.

“The ticket I told you to get from Tirel, where is it?”

Radek stared for a minute, then his eyes lit up and he searched his many pockets before producing a thin, wrinkled strip of paper.

“I meant to ask about that,” Radek said. “What’s an Agnie?”

“See the church burnt, and anything else you have time for,” Flint said, snatching the ticket from him. “Then get the men together and go back to Fet.”

“What about you?”

“I’m leaving,” Flint said.

“So the men are supposed to depend on me to get them home through the wilderness here? That’s insane,” Radek growled.

“If you’re not up to the challenge, send to Fet for a guide. Gods help you, though.”

“We need you.”

“Then the gods cannot help you,” Flint said. “You should have known better than to depend on me.”

Without another word, he swung up onto the horse and rode boldly out through the front gate, leaving the fallen keep behind him.

[Luned]

Sleep never came that night, understandably. Luned spent the wee hours of the morning sorting through books in the stacks, desperately seeking what Aurelius requested so she could put the whole ordeal behind her. In the end, she did have to send out a note to one of their companion libraries who had a better Fallien archive, but there was some comfort in knowing she'd done what she could for the moment.

After her errands, the scribe found it difficult to bring herself to return to the library; for the first time in her life the familiar space felt claustrophobic, stifling, and every little noise tested her nerves. The warm weather coaxed her down to the riverside where she watched the calm water for a long time, long enough that the humid, salty breeze from the delta condensed on her skin, in her hair, and on her clothes. Boats came and went, familiar faces nodded polite greetings, and Luned stood in the tall grass surrounded by ducks and geese until she lost track of time. If it was a normal day, she would have been sketching, but she didn't remove her journal from her pocket even once.

She knew he hadn't written back. She'd checked several times already.

Eventually the sky gave way to heavy gray clouds that smothered the sun and drew the contrast out of the bright green grass and deep blue water, desaturating the landscape with the first hint of rain. Luned's eyelids fell with the dimming light as lack of rest caught up with her, and she reluctantly admitted it was time to go home.

Out of habit, she walked by Moody's Ale Cellar on her way back to the library. The ground level of the old brick building was already alive with merriment –– for some, it was never too early to drink –– and her eyes flitted to the gables of the third floor, where Resolve lived. Resolve was her best friend, but they didn't talk much these days. Not since the tournament.

By the time Luned got home, her feet seemed to be moving of their own accord, and she had the fanciful thought that she might even manage some sleep finally. Not in her room, of course, but maybe Bleddyn wouldn't notice if she locked herself into one of the archives on the lower levels for a few hours…

With the heavy oak door of the private entrance closed behind her, effectively locking her into the serenity of the library, Luned took a moment to breathe, as if doing so might summon the courage she needed to trust her home again. In that moment, something stirred down the hall, and she held her breath as she listened.

There were steps and, from the surety of the gait, they certainly weren't Bleddyn's. Instinct beckoned her toward the door and she took a step backwards, the shadow of an approaching figure playing off the gray stone walls of the main hall. Her heart caught in her throat, her hand fumbling clumsily at the latch as panic set in, and then a voice called out.

"Luned?"

Movement seized and she barely managed an audible response. "Flint?"

The approaching figure stepped out into the hall from the passage that led to the main library, revealing itself to be one particularly broad-shouldered individual. Luned smiled.

[Luned]

They soon found themselves in the upstairs parlor and the man situated himself in a comfortable armchair of creaky old leather, the scribe on the chaise across from him. She folded her hands primly atop the folds of her dark blue skirt, and as he observed the stately decor around them –– the framed maps on the walls, the simple curtains, the antique furniture –– it brought him back to the quiet days he spent there after their fateful meeting in Ettermire. He'd remembered them like faded glimpses of another life after he'd left and being back felt strange, so he reached for normalcy with words. "What did he want?"

An odd smirk graced Luned's lips, as if she cringed halfway through a grin, and she relaxed a little, leaning back against the cushions. "Books. That was all… just some books."

"Books?" Flint repeated, turning it over in his mind. The girl didn't appear hurt, just exhausted from the stress of the encounter; maybe it really was that simple. "For what?"

"Something in Fallien," she said, combing a tangle out of her hair with her fingers, the tresses arranged deliberately over her left shoulder. "Some ruins connected to dark, magic things… things he probably shouldn't find. But I agreed to help, gave him a standard research agreement. He'll be back next week for them."

He frowned, the shadows under his eyes betraying his own lack of rest. Even with Agnie's help, it was a long and tiring trip from Salvar to Corone.

"But it's alright. I'm leaving in a few days for a trip, so he'll just have the books to pick up downstairs and that's that. I worry a little, but the library itself has protection wards… I think it'll be fine." It was obvious that Luned needed to justify her cowardly decision to herself more than her friend.

"I see," Flint said as he leaned back in his chair, still puzzling over the issue.

It was then Luned realized that, out of all possible types of encounters one could have with Aurelius, she likely had one of the more pleasant ones. Her hand unconsciously rose to her neck, tracing the memory of his grip from their traumatizing meeting in the tannery in Ettermire, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She was okay. More than okay, actually –– Flint was here. That brought up a whole mess of emotions, but the foremost was a sense of security, and she relished it. "So… what have you been up to?"

The change in subject brought a rise to the man's brow and he ran a hand over his smooth head, piecing together the most concise answer possible. "After we wrote I left Akashima, went home to Salvar, and found some work. There isn't much to tell." That last bit may not have been true, but he figured it may not be the best opener to tell tales of tossing the elderly out of windows.

At this point Luned knew him well enough to know she wouldn't get the epic out of him that she wanted, but that was fine. She smiled, leaning against the arm of the chaise. "Could you stay, at least for a couple nights? I'll be pretty busy with work but I think Bleddyn misses your company, though he'd never say it himself."

With a ghost of a smile, Flint nodded. "Yes, I think so."

The accepted invitation seemed to resurrect the hostess in Luned and she perked up, suddenly very concerned. "I'm sorry, I'm a terrible host! Are you thirsty? Hungry? I can get something together," she volunteered, shifting to stand.

Flint beat her to it, rising from his seat. "I could use some water, but I can get it. Wait here."

[Luned]

By the time Flint returned, the scribe had dozed off, curled up against the arm of the chaise. He paused in the doorway, thought for a moment, and then turned to go back downstairs.



The journey from the living quarters to the main library had nearly become routine in his previous stay and the path returned to him in muscle memory, his feet carrying him into the grand space almost without thought. The large room was just as he remembered with its tall, gray walls, vaulted ceiling, and ethereal orbs of white light which radiated a calm glow over the many rows of shelves. He noticed only a couple patrons as he strolled down the center aisle, brushing past aged scholar and casual browser alike until he arrived at the back hallway which led to Bleddyn's study.

Flint wasn't the elderly enigma's only visitor that afternoon; as he approached, someone stepped out and closed the door behind her. As he neared, he almost hesitated, unsure if he could trust his eyes… but, from the equally astonished expression on the girl before him, the feeling was mutual.

Pale eyes swiftly went from surprise to daggers, the serene environment doing nothing to hush the fiery reaction Flint's proximity evoked. She even appeared nearly the same as when they'd first met as opponents, swathed in vibrant crimson, strength and confidence exaggerated in her posture as she stalked up to him down the narrow passage. It didn't matter that he was wearing his skull stomping boots, nor the fact that he had nearly a hundred pounds on her; her presence was bigger, more intimidating, and apparently quite furious.

Before he could offer any form of greeting, she growled an order. "Outside. Now."



The courtyard still shone brilliant even under the first mist of early summer rain, emerald ivy and amethyst lilies softening the stark stone exterior of the structure around them; Resolve's imposing figure was a ruby set amongst a tapestry of jewel tones. She had her hands on her hips, a scowl on her lips, and there was obvious premeditation in her deliberate handling of the situation. Apparently Flint had been on her mind following the tournament (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25106-LCC-R1-Plane-Curiosity-VS-Skullfuckers), as well.

"You have exactly one minute to explain to me who you are, what the hell you're doing here, and why I should trust you with Luned."

[Warpath]

For all its idyllic color, dew, and soothing mist, the tension in that little courtyard was palpable. Flint hooked his thumbs into his belt and savored it with a raised chin, eyes locked on Resolve’s incongruous blues. He longed for a full night’s rest and all the preparation that entailed, but he’d been dreaming of this moment almost as much as his reunion with Luned. There were suddenly a lot of women in his life.

“Starting now?” he asked.

“What?”

“My minute,” Flint clarified. “I’m curious if it starts when I do, or if I’m already running out of time.”

“Does it look like I’m in the mood for jokes?”

She really didn’t.

“Strange that you mention trust,” Flint mused, “since Luned summoned me here, and not you. Strange that I know who you are, and but you don’t know who I am. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I should be asking you what you’ve done to deserve my trust in regards to Luned.”

“You listen to me you son of a…”

“Honestly I’m a little offended,” Flint continued, staring unblinkingly. “I thought one shared those sorts of stories with one’s best friend. The things we’ve done together, I mean. I suppose it’s a private thing, something a girl would only talk about with her closest – her most trusted friends.”

“I am,” Resolve growled, jaw clenched.

“Maybe because it wasn’t all good. You had to wonder about all those scars. I don’t. Would it make you feel better to know she gave as good as she got? I can show…”

But then it became unnecessary to go on, because Resolve shrieked, fists clenched at her sides, and charged.

Flint smiled.

[Warpath]

They’d done this once before, but this time Flint was ready.

The exorcist threw a wild right hook, and Flint narrowly ducked his head under it. He felt displaced air on the back of his neck, and his breathing went shallow as a fresh rush of adrenaline sent a visceral shock through every nerve. This woman was dangerous – taller and stronger, and her hate was almost a physical thing. That would be enough to give the brute pause, but she also had the ability to rip his spiritual essence from his body with nary a thought.

She was a worthy opponent, his equal or better, and he wanted her hate as profoundly as he wanted Luned’s acceptance.

Flint attempted a sharp jab at her ribs, but she caught his gauntleted forearm and yanked hard, sending him stumbling past her off-balance. He knew she wouldn’t be able to resist coming after him – knew she wouldn’t choose caution, not with him, not now. He planted one foot hard, then twisted at the hips with a shout and swung his arm in a vicious backhand. When his knuckles met the right side of her face her head snapped brutally to one side, and her body followed it, but she didn’t fall.

When she raised her head her lip was split, and there was a fresh line of angry red on her chin. “First blood!” Flint shouted, gloating with his arms held out high to the sides.

The word ‘blood’ was cut short when Resolve put her foot firmly into Flint’s abdomen, forcing him to wheeze and double over, and then she shoved his head downward while raising her knee up to meet it. He tensed his bruised abdominals to stop his descent and used his metal-clad forearms to intercept her knee, and then he shoved forward and up, slipping his arms between their bodies. It was unexpected – pushing closer to her rather than away from her – and the shock of it gave him just enough time to put his arms around her.

Resolve looked at him somewhere between rage and disgust, and then he lifted her up off of her feet and he squeezed, and her expression quickly shifted toward dismay. Flint’s broad, disturbingly well-muscled back, shoulders, and chest apparently lent themselves well to bear-hugs, and the young exorcist thought for a certainty that she could feel the blood being forced outward toward her head and extremities. Her ribs steadily shifted, and the air was long gone from her lungs.

And then she set her jaw, and she resisted, pushing outward with her arms. Sweat beaded on Flint’s forehead and he growled, veins straining against skin, but the immutable fact remained: the girl was still stronger. He redoubled his efforts, determined not to be overpowered, but Resolve wasn’t interested in proving herself. She threw her forehead into his nose, and he immediately let her loose, stumbling away with a strangled groan. Blood rolled over his lips in freshets, and made long, shimmering lines in his beard.

“Who’s bleeding now!” Resolve shouted.

They were mere seconds into only their second clash, but Resolve and Flint had a basic understanding of one another: she was angry, fierce, and unstoppably strong, and he was tough, experienced, and controlled. So when Flint’s eyes registered an abrupt and overwhelming fury, the exorcist was understandably put off, if only for a fraction of a second.

He came on in a flurry of swings, and Resolve turned the first few aside before one caught her in the jaw, and then another in the stomach, and then Flint grabbed her by the throat. Before her mind registered what was happening, he lifted her bodily off of her feet and into the air. She had only begun to react to this when he curled his fingers into her sari just above her hip, and then he near-effortlessly lifted the rest of her body up over his head. He was poised to dash her body on the ground and while it wouldn’t be a long drop, it wasn’t likely to be a pleasant one.

The exorcist’s moment of panic was woefully short-lived. Robbed of her reckless violence, she resorted to calculated skill, grabbing hold of Flint’s wrist with both hands, and then she rolled toward his back. He went down backward with a frustrated roar, and when they hit the ground their fight dissolved into a messy struggle, all kicking legs and ungraceful lashing, tangled black hair and torn cloth and flashing teeth. Ultimately Resolve caught Flint’s right arm, and then wrapped her body around it in a vicious lock. He panicked, struggling against her attempt to hyperextend his elbow and shoulder.

Fear granted him strength and he lashed, twisting and spinning like a disadvantaged crocodile, kicking up dust and crushing the lilies until he managed to get his feet beneath him. With a savage grunt, he lifted himself to a standing position, but Resolve did not relinquish her hold on his arm. Determined, she pulled with all her might, doggedly trying to pull his arm right out of its socket.

Flint tensed his back and his stomach and he lifted, pulling Resolve right up off the ground and into the air again, and the sensation was just enough for her to loosen her grip on him. Satisfied, he dropped her again and she landed on her back with a cruel, rib-crunching impact that once again forced the air from her lungs. The brute lunged up over her, fist raised, but she got her legs between them and kicked hard.

As if he weighed nothing, Flint went airborne, limbs flailing. He struck the wall of the library hard enough to rattle the nearby window pane and his head cracked against the brick, dazing him. He stumbled, but Resolve was suddenly there, shoving her forearm up under his chin and then she pushed. She pinned him to the wall and lifted him, slowly crushing his windpipe. And he could only think, her forearms looked so delicate.

“Say something else,” Resolve said, baring her clenched, bloodstained teeth at him, panting hard. “Where are your words now?”

Flint struggled lamely, raising his hands to try and shove her away, to scratch at her eyes – anything – but she used her free hand to shove his hands down and aside. The corners of his vision closed in, and he heard and felt his heart pounding hard, and the pressure grew behind his eyes. She was going to kill him. Again.

[Luned]

"Are you feeling alright?" A low voice rose the scribe from her sleep and she looked up to see Muir standing over her, deep green eyes narrowed in concern. Remnants of a hangover mussed his hair, clothing, and complexion; she quickly determined he must have recently returned from Resolve's.

Nodding, Luned sat up, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her palm. "Yeah, I… sorry. How embarrassing," she said sheepishly, words slurred from grogginess.

Her brother frowned as if he didn't believe her, but he let it be. "When's that meeting, again?"

"Tomorrow afternoon. And hey, I… there's someone you should meet. I think he's downstairs." She peeled herself off the couch, blinking herself awake as she smoothed her hair over her shoulder and wrinkles out of her clothing. "Come on."

The kitchen was empty when they arrived but the window was open, allowing some of the contents of the courtyard to creep in: curling tendrils of ivy, drops of rain collecting in a pond on the sill, and the disconcertingly threatening tone of a familiar voice.

"Oh, no," Luned gasped, rushing to the narrow door and opening it into the garden. She and Muir stepped outside into the mist just as spots of asphyxiation began to dance before Flint's eyes, threatening to wash over him in darkness. The scribe's command rang clear, bouncing off the stone walls until it was lost into the sky, echoing in his dizzied ears. "Stop!"

Resolve's death grip loosened; Flint saved himself some dignity by slumping back against the wall instead of forward onto the ground, though his weakened knees struggled to hold him upright through vertigo. He allowed himself a long moment simply to cherish breathing as the situation played out: Luned questioned the exorcist, then there was arguing and a sharp clang of metal as Resolve stormed out through the wrought-iron gate toward the street. Muir quickly followed, and soon the two were alone again.

The little scribe came into focus as she approached her injured friend, his vision still recuperating from the hit to the head and lack of air. "Oh, Flint," she sighed, the words laced with a combination of disappointment and pity. "Let's get you out of the rain."

With the patience of a saint, she waited for Flint to compose himself, taking his arm and leading him back into the kitchen where she sat him on the stool in the window. She inspected his bloodied face, gentle fingers resting briefly on his cheek as she tipped his head toward the overcast light. "She's vicious, isn't she?" Luned commented quietly, more matter-of-fact than anything. She turned away for a short moment to rinse a clean towel in cool water, and as she handed it to him, Flint began to laugh.

It started as a quiet chuckle but rose into a roar, the kitchen filled with his guffaws as blood continued to pour from his nose and down his chest.

[Luned]

The evening was surprisingly calm and pleasant, in spite of the rocky start. Luned made dinner and they talked casually about the places they'd been, Flint offering tales of Akashima, Luned describing the ghost city of Eluriand in haunting detail. Bleddyn joined them in the kitchen for a few minutes, cordially invited Flint to a chess game in the morning, and then departed with the usual request to take his meal in his study.

It was strange how easy it was to fall into old routine again. Flint contemplated this as he sat alone in his old room later that night, the scribe having gone to bed early to avoid repeating the earlier embarrassment. He ached all over from his skirmish with the exorcist, particularly his nose, and he anticipated the swelling would reduce to something flatteringly black and blue by morning. Yet, as he sat by lamplight flipping through some books from the Salvar regional section of the library, the alien comfort of something feeling like home washed over him. Last time, the decision to leave had been a difficult one, and he silently wondered if it would get harder or easier each time.

There was movement in the hallway and Flint tensed, but he relaxed somewhat when a figure stepped out of the darkness and into the threshold of his room. It was someone he'd never officially met, but heard much about.

"Flint, I presume?" Muir greeted him, leaning against the doorframe with his hands tucked in his pockets.

The freckles and traces of Fallien gave him away. "Muir," Flint said, and his speculation was correct.

The young man's expression was unreadable. "Rez explained what happened. Not just today, but before. The tournament, Lune's trip to Alerar…" He sighed. "But honestly, I don't really give a shit. Rez is brash, I'm sure she earned it, and my sister's an adult, she can make her own damn mistakes. But she asked me to come talk to you, so here I am."

Flint wasn't sure whether he should have felt grateful Muir wasn't to be yet another person in Luned's life who disliked him, or disturbed by the boy's apparent apathy. In an effort to turn the conversation toward the friendly, Flint gestured to an untouched bottle of whiskey on the table before him, as well as the empty chair on the other side. The refreshment had been left for him wordlessly, perhaps a consolation prize from Luned after the beating he'd taken that afternoon, but he didn't drink. "Then let's talk."

Muir sauntered over and grabbed the bottle, but didn't bother sitting. "What is there to talk about? Enjoy your visit, then when you fuck off maybe the girls can get on with their lives and get over all that annoying fucking drama." And then, like a champ, the young man swigged back nearly half of the liquor in one draught without batting an eyelash.

In company like this, Flint began to understand how someone like Luned could stand to be around someone like himself. "It is unfortunate," he agreed, "What happened with their friendship, I mean. Luned talks a lot about both of you, and only good things."

"Well, she doesn't talk about you," Muir said. It was without malice, but it stung just the same. "I wonder what that means?" He pondered thoughtfully for a moment, a smirk teasing the corner of his mouth, and then he drained the rest of the whiskey, leaving a measly amount of backwash for his new acquaintance. The young man set the bottle back on the table and turned to leave. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Flint," he grinned slyly over his shoulder, and then he stumbled off to his own room to sleep.

The encounter was concerning on multiple levels and Flint sat in still silence for several minutes, hazel eyes fixed on the nearly empty bottle in front of him. But it was late and he was too tired for his thought process to do anything but run circles. Eventually he shook his head, closed his book, and stood to get into bed, himself… and, as he did so, he noticed something rather peculiar.

The aches were gone. And, when he checked himself in the mirror the next morning, there would be no trace of damage done.

[Warpath]

Flint slept well despite troubling dreams, and he woke with Muir’s words fresh and instant in his mind: Well, she doesn’t talk about you. He quickly dismissed his growing anxiety and instead focused on the pleasant parts of what was, for him, an exhausting day. A full day of travel would have been enough, but socializing was taxing even at the best of times. He was thankful for easily-goaded Resolve, for the fight had given him some semblance of normalcy, which in turn made it easier to feel at home. He wanted to feel frustrated at his loss and near-death at her hands, but ultimately couldn’t do it. He liked knowing she was still out there, still unsurpassed, still beautiful in her uninhibited anger.

And then there was the mystery of Muir and the blessed lack of bruise or pain or any other sign of yesterday’s exertion and violence. Flint pressed on his nose and flexed his stomach, back, and arms experimentally, but felt nothing amiss. In fact he felt good, far better than he would have expected even after a full night’s rest at the library. He tried to think back on what the strange man had done, but that brought back memories of what he’d said, so the line of thought was abandoned. He’d have to ask Luned about it another time.

It was early enough that the library was empty when Flint dressed and quit his room, walking slow and gentle to preserve the sanctity of near-dawn silence. He made himself a cup of tea from the dried herbs left over from his last stay, and cut the foul taste with a generous spoonful of honey. He was still stirring when he arrived at Bleddyn’s door, and with a gentle knock he entered.

Flint judged the world a strange place chiefly because he counted an ancient librarian of indeterminate age his most kindred spirit. Bleddyn sat in his morning robe with a steaming cup of tea at hand, and was in the process of setting up the chess board. The window was open to the dewy morning and there was a neat line of birdseed on the sill. Every few seconds a daring finch would appear in a flash of yellow to steal a single seed and then disappear again, and Flint knew this would go on for some time. There was a routine here: equilibrium as timeless as trees. The brute had to pause a second and savor it.

“Good morning,” Bleddyn said.

Flint grunted his greetings and sat himself down on the opposite side of the board. “This is a new set,” he said.

“An old one, in fact. A very old gift from a friend. Luned and Resolve brought it back from Raiaera.”

“How thoughtful,” Flint said.

“You’re not good at pretending to be bitter,” Bleddyn said, with the slightest hint of amusement in his voice. “You may take the first move, if you like. I’m not sure what color these pieces were originally.”

Flint moved his pawn. “No reason to pretend,” he said. “You’d see through it. I started the fight.”

Bleddyn shrugged, sipping his tea while he made his own move. “It’s none of my business. You realize it’s not you she hates.”

Flint nodded. “It wasn’t, anyway. A few more rounds and she might start hating me.”

“Maybe,” Bleddyn said. “She’s not a dumb girl, though. Maybe she’ll realize a fistfight is just another chess match to you.”

“Presumptive,” Flint said, grinning.

“Just an observation,” Bleddyn said, and then pointedly looked at Flint’s nose. “I see you’ve met Muir, too.”

“Yes,” the brute said, reaching up to touch his nose absently. “I meant to ask about that.”

“So did I,” Bleddyn said, making a show of thinking about his next move. “Let me know what Luned says.”

Flint grunted, amused. He figured the old man already had some idea about Muir’s unique attributes, but he didn’t push the subject. Bleddyn would share what he wanted to share.

“Your mind isn’t on the game,” Flint said.

“No,” Bleddyn admitted, “but don’t let that worry you, I think this game is mine even so.”

“I suppose you ought to share your mind, then, if you’re hoping that whatever’s distracting you will distract me more.”

Bleddyn chuckled dryly into his mug. He took a sip and then held it on his tongue, and then he swallowed. “I’m organizing a bit of an expedition, as Luned may have let slip.”

“Only a bit,” Flint said, “but with everyone coming and going I figured there was something exciting on the docket.”

“I’m putting a little crew together. I gather that your visit was unexpected and you’ve probably got prior engagements, but I’d like to hire you if you’re available.”

“I’ve spent a great deal more time on the dockside of ships and almost none sailing,” Flint said. “I’m not sure how much use I’d be to you.”

Bleddyn shook his head. “The transportation arrangements are quite satisfactory already, though I’m sure they can find some use for another set of hands. No, my needs are suited for the talents you were demonstrating to Resolve yesterday.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Keep an eye on Luned for me,” Bleddyn said, moving a rook without taking his eyes off of Flint’s. “Get everyone home safe and sound, and as much themselves as they will be able to be after what they’ll encounter.”

“You’d send her somewhere dangerous?” Flint said, cocking an eyebrow.

“No,” Bleddyn said, and then he thought about it. “Yes, and no.”

“You know she’s more than she was,” Flint said. “There’s something like me in her, otherwise I’m not sure I’d be here.”

“It’s your move,” Bleddyn said.

Flint stared at the board for a long time, and then made his move. Bleddyn made his own play in silence, and then took a sip of tea.

“I know,” the librarian said at last. “She’s my…apprentice. I know.”

“You think she can’t handle herself where you’re sending her?”

“Oh,” Bleddyn said, “I know she can. I think you misunderstand me. I’m not sending you for her sake, though I think your presence will help.”

Flint narrowed his eyes. “You’re being more enigmatic than normal.”

“You haven’t said no.”

“I’ll go,” Flint said.

Bleddyn nodded almost imperceptively, then reached over and pulled a thin book from the edge of a shelf. He took a long, quiet moment flipping through the pages, and Flint sat back in his chair to watch the finches, who must have thought themselves the best and luckiest thieves in all the world. Finally the old scribe found an envelope, which he opened, and from it he produced a crisply folded sheet of paper, yellowed with age.

Bleddyn seemed to hesitate for a moment before sliding the paper back into the envelope, and then he set it down beside the board and pushed it toward Flint’s side. His fingertips lingered on the paper and his eyes never left it, even after he convinced himself to let it go. When Flint reached for it, he was hesitant. He feared the old man would change his mind.

“That’s called a Mark,” the librarian said. “A powerful spell contained in a single image…a colleague once likened it to ‘freezing’ magic, preserving it like a piece of fruit. Once it’s applied, the spell is continually cast for as long as the canvas remains whole. A perpetual ritual.”

“What is the canvas?”

“Luned.”

Flint raised his eyebrows, glancing from Bleddyn to the envelope and back. “What does it do?”

“What it was meant to do, and nothing more, and you’ll apply it when you need to apply it and not before.”

“You’re doing it on purpose now,” Flint growled. “Assume I just tear this up.”

“Assume that, and you get on that ship? You’ll die, maybe, along with the rest of the crew. I know I’m asking a lot, but this is a job, and I’m sure you’ve done jobs knowing less. I need to know if we can depend on you.”

“No,” Flint said, “you can’t depend on me.”

“But you’ll go.”

Flint nodded, and Bleddyn sank into his seat a bit with a tired sigh. He considered the board for a long moment, and then he looked out at the finches.

“It’s your move,” Flint said.

[Luned]

Luned was scarce for the morning as she rushed about her work, having much to do in preparation to leave. She stopped by the courier to check correspondence from the libraries she'd contacted for Aurelius, tied up loose ends on projects, and organized a schedule for the library's few staff in advance, as she didn't trust her mentor to keep up with the more mundane tasks in her absence.

By the time she arrived at the meeting, conversation was already underway. A startlingly larger number of individuals than usual occupied Bleddyn's study, some faces familiar, some not. They encircled a long table in the back, a piece of furniture she'd only ever seen a handful of times in her tenure at the library as typically it was obscured under piles of books, documents, and artifacts yet to be archived. The fact that it had been cleared, assembled with seating, and even perhaps dusted was nearly shocking, though such a novel thing was lost on the others present.

Bleddyn occupied the head of the table from which he beckoned the newcomer, then gestured across from him to the elf at the opposite end. "Aeril, this is Luned, she will act as my proxy on this voyage. Luned, this is Captain Aeril Esgarel. I believe you are familiar with the rest." Indeed, she was, as one long side boasted Muir and his friend Gasper from Fallien, and opposite them sat Flint.

The scribe strolled over to Aeril and offered her hand for a firm shake. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Same," the Raiaeran grinned, professional but warm. Luned liked her already. Aeril was mature, something difficult to tell in an elf, but the corners of her amber eyes crinkled when she smiled under the wavy fringe of her short, dirty blonde hair. Well-suiting her profession, she wore something which could only be described in comparison with a naval uniform, though obviously custom. The jacket was a deep navy blue, lined in white piping with broad shoulders, with a plain white blouse tucked into smart trousers underneath. Even sitting, it was apparent that she was quite tall, and there was something no-nonsense about her that the scribe could appreciate.

Once properly acquainted, Luned assumed the free seat next to her, the combination of Bleddyn's belated spring cleaning and Flint's unexpected presence tempting a little smile of pleased astonishment.

"I suppose it is time for the reveal," Bleddyn muttered beneath his white beard, motioning to Gasper. The young man, built nearly as dense as Flint but a few inches taller and clad much brighter, unrolled a large piece of parchment to expose a meticulously marked-up map. Group effort pinned down the curling edges with random weights around the table –– candlesticks, books, elbows –– and all parties leaned in to inspect.

The destination, encircled in red ink and clearly marked, appeared to occur in the middle of the ocean some distance north of Dheathain. This earned many expectant stares in Bleddyn's direction, in which he basked for a wickedly long moment of suspense.

"I do not blame you if you are not interested after hearing this, Captain Esgarel, but your destination may or may not exist. The first part of the mission is to determine which."

Muir and Gasper took the reveal in stride, smirking with a mutual glint of mischief after Muir clarified in hushed Fallien, and Luned glanced to Flint, the girl already appraised of the situation in much more elaborate detail. The man was surely mystified, but kindred spirits as they were, he was inclined to trust Bleddyn before giving into the old man's theatrics.

At the opposite end of the table, Aeril's brow crinkled with intrigue, just like her eyes. "Well, you have my attention now, you old codger."

Luned stifled a snort of laughter under her hand.

Bleddyn seemed disappointed at the lack of scandal he'd caused, emitting a curt little sigh through his nostrils, but he continued all the same. "Carcosa is a unique location in that it seems to manifest randomly at various points in time and space across Althanas. With some help, I have accounted for its past several appearances in other worlds and determined a pattern. If our calculations are correct, it is currently there," he nodded to the map, "And we have but a short time to find it before it moves on."

"A wandering isle?" Aeril summarized.

"Not necessarily an isle," Bleddyn replied cryptically through steepled fingertips.

Many career seafarers would have found that discouraging, but the elf considered it a challenge. They were beginning to see why she came so highly recommended by Resolve's mother, a modestly successful merchant with a vast network of contacts. "How will we know when we find it?" Aeril leaned in, bracing her chin in thought.

"Luned has been trained to seek it out. You will simply go look, see what is there, record what you find, and return. If there is nothing –– unfortunately, a distinct possibility –– I may have wasted your crew's time, but everyone will still be paid in full." Bleddyn leaned back, settling back into the comfort of his armchair and layered, gray-blue robes.

"Now, I can tell you enjoy playing the enigma in games like these, but as I am responsible for people's lives, I need to know in plain words: are there any particular dangers you anticipate outside the norm? Theoretically, what do you suspect we will find, if it does indeed exist?" Aeril was appropriately shrewd.

Bleddyn was a firm believer in that the most intelligent man admits when he does not know something, so he answered with a hapless shrug. "I really could not tell you, but I do guarantee that whatever it is, it would be fantastically interesting." He said this with the wistful smile of someone about to be left behind on the very best of adventures. "And while I can not attest to the potential dangers, I assure you wholeheartedly that I would never put Luned in a situation I did not believe she could handle."

Something in the way he worded that statement caught Flint's attention, ominous after their chess game, and the man's gaze drifted briefly to the girl next to him. Luned simply sat, demure as usual, her silence affirming her status as an extension of her mentor. Flint realized just how much influence the man had over her, but not in any way that diminished her as her own person; it simply explained so many things about her unspoken philosophies. Her quiet acceptance of the brute mirrored Bleddyn's, and he suddenly felt he might owe the "old codger" some level of gratitude.

"That's a long gods-damned trip," Muir spoke up as he leaned back in his chair. "It might seem dandy from here to send a bunch of folks to fuck around looking for some fictional fairy land in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but after a few weeks at sea, everyone will be at each others' throats with cabin fever if we don't find anything. It's not exactly like you're asking us to go for a little stroll around the park."

"Ah, actually, I have some insurance for this voyage which may further convince you." Bleddyn went on to explain the mysterious Agnie who, coincidentally, had helped Flint reach Corone from Salvar so fast. She was an otherworldly fairy princess who, in short, had a unique teleportation ability which would ensure the ship had constant fresh supplies and offer crew members a way out if anything unseemly were to happen. This satisfied most of their remaining anxieties and pleased Muir in particular, who began a list of his required amenities on the spot. It was agreed that they would still depart day after next, as scheduled, and with optimistic tidings, the guests dispersed.



As Flint and Luned walked back to the residential quarters of the library, the man couldn't help but wonder. "Does he really trust that fairy?"

The scribe shook her head, hands clasped behind her back. "No. Did I mention she left Resolve and me without supplies when we went to Eluriand?" When she caught Flint's concerned expression, she smiled encouragingly. "It was fine, it was only for a couple days and Iarion helped us. And since then, Bleddyn has fool-proofed his fey bribery system. I think it'll be fine."

"Alright, then." Flint didn't seem convinced, but the scheming pair of scribes seemed to be confident in their plans, even if he wasn't privy to most of them.

"By the way, I'm sorry for abandoning you all morning," Luned said. "I hope you weren't too bored, stuck with Bleddyn."

Flint smirked. "Of course not. Who do you think moved all that furniture?"

[Warpath]

“Well, I think it’s exciting,” Luned was saying.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t excited,” Flint said. “I’ve just never had the…opportunity to take such a long voyage.”

The scribe caught his meaning. “I’m sure we’ll find ways to keep ourselves amused.”

The pair were walking the docks at a measured pace, perhaps enjoying these last few minutes on land. Flint was carrying a large duffle full of new supplies and clothes, recently purchased especially for the trip. He’d opted to leave most leather behind in favor of tough but quick-drying cloth, better suited to life at sea. He was already dressed in rugged, twill fabric trousers covered in pockets and colored a drab olive, tucked into his heavy and obviously well-loved boots. He wore a thin, simple white cotton shirt tucked in, and the color was entirely new on him and thus novel. Until that day, Luned wasn’t sure he could wear anything but brown and black.

“Yes, well,” Flint said, “you will have no trouble, at least. Did you leave any books for the rest of the library?”

“It’s not all books,” Luned said. She looked over her shoulder to regard the chest she’d packed. Flint had helped her put it on a little wagon, which she was drawing along behind her. “If you can think of anything to do besides reading,” she said a little too casually, “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Bleddyn let me borrow his old chess set,” Flint offered. “Not the Raiaeran one, the newer one. The one he was using before.”

“I got it,” Luned chuckled. “I’ll consent if you can restrain yourself.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ve seen the way you play,” Luned said. “I am not going to stare at the board for twenty minutes before making a move.”

“No, I wouldn’t expect so,” Flint mused. “I grant you that my experience is somewhat limited to life-and-death situations, but making impulsive moves seems your style.”

Luned affected offense, raising her hand to her chest and gasping at him dramatically, hair tossed over one shoulder. He regarded her from the corner of his eye, betraying only the slightest hint of amusement. “I didn’t hear you complaining at the time,” she said. “In fact, you were always right behind me.”

“That is where I prefer to be,” Flint said.

Luned looked up at him, eyebrows raised in pleased curiosity.

“It’s safer there,” he explained. “It’s important to keep something between oneself and giant sewer creatures, as a general thing.”

Luned laughed, and Flint cracked the slightest smile.

“So,” she said after her laughter died down. “You never said, why did you sign up for this?”

“I didn’t,” Flint said. “Bleddyn hired me on.”

“Oh,” Luned said after a moment’s hesitation.

Flint cocked his head, glancing over at her again. Something was off. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason,” she said with a shrug, and she reached up to readjust her hair over her neck. “I just thought maybe…well, it’s not important.”

“He was enigmatic about it,” the brute said thoughtfully. “I was surprised; I had expected a lecture about Resolve.”

“Resolve?”

Flint nodded. “I thought he might have some misgivings about our…dynamic.”

“I wasn’t aware you two had a dynamic.”

“Unstoppable force and immovable object,” Flint explained. “I think she fancies me.”

He peeked over at her, expecting more laughter at the absurdity of his joke, but instead Luned just turned her eyes downward, a tiny smile frozen on her lips. The brute frowned a bit, annoyed with himself: what had started as a pleasant conversation was now ruined, marred by an uncomfortable reality. He had specifically crafted himself to be a hulking destroyer – an ugly thing – and the comfortable continuation of his friendship with Luned required avoidance of this immutable fact. Nobody wanted to think about him like that: one can be accepted as a lover or a killer, but never both.

“Here,” Flint said, thankful for the opportunity to move on from the subject. “You’re not getting that chest up the gangplank. I’ll carry it.”

Luned started to protest, but Flint hoisted the chest up out of the wagon and onto his shoulder before she could stop him. He was too busy navigating the ramp to see the frown on her face, and that was for the best.

[Luned]

Introductions to the crew were brief and scattered, an inconvenience forgivable as they dove into their work like the dedicated professionals Resolve's mother claimed them to be. If Luned and Aeril had been anyone else, there may have been tension between the women as conflicting authorities, but fortunately the scribe was more than happy to assume the simple role of passenger. The Raiaeran claimed the captain's space adjacent to the grand cabin, and Luned and Flint gladly accepted the pair of officer's rooms across the narrow hallway.

The accommodations were somewhat better than they expected. It was cramped, but Flint acknowledged there was some advantage to being of relatively short stature as willowy Aeril stooped to pass through doorways. Having been used prior for mercantile purposes, the living spaces of the ship were comfortable and well-furnished. Everything was of quality from the sheets on their beds to the elaborate decor in the grand cabin, and even the chamber of hammocks meant for the rest of the crew seemed surprisingly cozy. That, in combination with the promise of Agnie's regular supply drop-offs, was enough to suggest the weeks ahead might actually be tolerable.

After some help moving in her things, Luned settled into her tiny but functional space. Her room and Flint's were furnished identically, from the small chests of drawers and mirrors to the drop-down desks positioned on the walls at the ends of the narrow beds. She couldn't help but allow herself a touch of optimism as she busied herself with finding homes for her possessions. The distraction kept her from dwelling too much on how she embarrassed herself with Flint and she resigned herself to contentment with the status quo once more. After all, how could she have possibly thought they had potential? Men like him had no interest in women like her. If Resolve was on his mind there was nothing she could do about it, save acknowledge that it sort of made sense; the exorcist was a striking individual inside and out while the scribe was, well, average. Painfully so, perhaps even boring. Even if she knew Resolve would never be interested, it didn't change the fact that Luned could never hope to compete with her.

After some time alone, Luned decided to check out the rest of the vessel to prevent herself from falling victim to the weight of her insecurities. Exploration of the ship at large was short-lived for the scribe, however. Within a couple hours of castoff, Luned appeared a little green, and by late afternoon she was nowhere to be found. Naturally, Flint investigated, going directly to her room.

He knocked twice before he received an answer. The door creaked open just enough to reveal a pale, sullen face, utterly unenthused to see him. "What?"

Flint frowned. "You're seasick."

"I know," Luned snapped, then her sour attitude swiftly washed away as the ship pitched over a swell. Her stomach lurched with it and she braced herself against the frame with a look of panic, then slammed the door in his face.

The brute sighed, thought for a moment, and went to find Muir.

[Luned]

He was easy to find. Instead of participating in chores with the rest of the crew he sat down in the galley, already half in the bag with a drained mug in his hand. He grinned when he noticed Flint and leaned back in his chair, white teeth stark against his tanned skin. "Welcome to paradise. How do you like it so far?"

"Better than expected," Flint said neutrally. The air was filled with smoke and delicious things, and he eyed the dwarf who was preparing their evening feast. It smelled surprisingly good for ship fare and the squat person hurried about preparing things, offering little more than a curt, bearded nod over the shoulder in greeting.

"Don't let it fool you," Muir rambled on, tipping his seat precariously. "In a week it'll feel like a fucking dungeon, or at least I imagine it does. You'll have to let me know." It was clear he believed Flint to have much more experience in the matter than himself.

Flint suppressed a sigh and brushed it off, still standing at the foot of the stairs. "You might wish to pay your sister a visit."

The boy laughed, his voice loud and harsh in the confined space. "I knew she wouldn't last long. But hey, how'd you figure? About me, I mean." His shrewd, green gaze aligned with Flint's and, for a brief moment, he didn't seem intoxicated at all. The brute couldn't help but wonder if it was simply a very convincing front.

"I believe that is fairly obvious," Flint said, getting impatient. "Luned asked you to talk to me that night on purpose."

"Yes, I know," Muir smirked, then sighed. "Now, I suppose I have a wretch to aid." He stood suddenly, the feet of his chair clattering against the floorboards, and he brushed past Flint to stagger up the stairs.

Only then did the cook speak, husky figure swamped under something that resembled a white chef's coat. It was a bit absurd looking with the dwarf's intricately braided, strawberry blond locks and bare, calloused feet. "He's a good lad, jus' a bit strange. Don't hold it against him."

As far as Flint was concerned, it was either a compliment to Muir or a strike against the dwarf to have such an opinion of their first mate. Only time would tell. "You're one of Captain Curie's, as well?" he asked casually, resisting the temptation to look over Muir's shoulder as he tended to Luned.

"All of us are, save the cap, that Gasper fellow, you, and the miss. The ol' broad wouldn't recommend we bunch 'less she was equally confident in all of us," the cook said, chatting while turning to extract something from the oven. "Though we has to admit, we're all a touch curious jus' where the bloody hell this babe's headed. A bit odd to run a ship on trust rather than information, if you catch my drift." The dwarf cut the heel off the fresh loaf of soda bread, halved it, and walked over to Flint, offering a portion. The manner of its presentation, extended on an open palm, insinuated some sort of peace offering; perhaps the cook was seeking more details and thought Flint had them to share.

"I agree," Flint merely replied. Betraying no inkling of disappointment, the dwarf returned to work and the brute tried the bread. Pleasant notes of molasses and ginger reassured him that the food would be as quality as the furnishings, and as he finished his snack, Luned's hollering interrupted them from above.

[Luned]

Meanwhile, Muir had let himself into Luned's room, where he found the girl nearly drowning herself in her wash basin as she sprawled with her head hanging over the edge of her bed. "Go away," she groaned, more out of mortification than anything.

"You need fresh air," he declared, hands buried in the pockets of his long coat as he stared down at her. "Come on."

She might have shaken her head in defiance, but it was hard to tell in her hunched position. Her hair, tied in a loose braid over her shoulder, obscured her face.

"Fine." Without ceremony, Muir bent over and grabbed around her middle. He hoisted her up under his arm and carried her, with no small amount of kicking and thrashing from the victim, toward the door.

"Stop! Muir, please!" Luned shouted, fighting tooth and nail until he dropped her without fuss at the threshold. She caught herself and stood, frazzled and angry.

Insistent, he reiterated. "Fresh air. Or else." Threats seemed to be the extent of his brotherliness as she fell for his age-old torture-until-she-gives-in scheme.

She glared but cooperated, halfheartedly fixing the lay of her knee-length skirt as he pushed her up the stairs.



Flint soon found them standing together at the bow, pirate and scholar conversing as the wind tossed their hair and clothing with the waves. When he approached, Luned noticed him over her shoulder and stopped speaking.

"Don't be an idiot," Muir warned her, then stepped away.

The scribe smiled sheepishly. "Sorry if I was rude," she said, searching Flint's face for forgiveness. Luned leaned heavily against the polished railing with crossed arms and was a bit disheveled, blouse half untucked from horseplay, but otherwise seemed fine. The wind put some color back in her cheeks and it was safe to assume that brief contact with her brother was all she needed.

"It's fine," Flint said, facing the water as he stood next to her. The endless blue was nearly enough to turn him agoraphobic. After a moment of consideration, he finally broached the subject he'd put off for days. "How does he do that?"

"Muir, you mean?" Luned thought for a moment, watching the water as well. The sun was still warm and the wind still pleasant, though it would only be a couple hours before the evening chill set in. "He studied Varmakkalai in Fallien –– it combines martial arts with healing –– and I guess he was a natural. It sort of became a part of him, now he does it without even meaning to."

It was difficult to picture that strange young man as a natural healer, so all Flint offered was a soft "Hmm."

[Warpath]

Flint had endured relatively short voyages on ships larger than this one, but those trips hadn’t been like this. Normally he would have locked himself up in his cabin and occupied himself while counting down the days like a man under siege. This time, he settled into a routine alongside the crew – unexpectedly, he found himself becoming part of a family. He felt like the black sheep, to be sure, but his inclusion was undeniable.

Those first few days were strange and uncomfortable as he became accustomed to his cramped living situation and his unfamiliar neighbors. In time Luned’s persistent seasickness became less so, and Flint did not need to encourage Muir to alleviate his sister’s discomfort again after that first time. Soon she found ways to cope on her own – it turned out that staring at the horizon for ten or fifteen minutes helped – until the girl got her sea legs.

Flint, in turn, amused himself with little obsessions. The first and most prominent was Muir and his healing presence. The brute would visit Luned and ask if he might borrow some of her books, and then he dug through the miniature library looking for any reference to Fallieni martial arts. The subject proved to be a little too limited in scope, and Flint was frustrated. When Luned asked him if she could help him find anything, he lied and told her he wasn’t looking for anything in particular. She gave him a look every time he said it, a look that said she knew he was just being difficult, and he didn’t know how to feel about that. He had always thought of himself as such a good liar.

He refused to betray his interest by asking Luned or Muir any more about Varmakkalai directly, so the wisdom of others was out of reach. Thus, he resorted to experimentation over the course of a few days. He would spend hours exercising to complete exhaustion, and then he would create excuses to hang around Muir for varying lengths of time until the fatigue faded, and then he’d do it all over again. At first the pirate was put off at Flint’s insistence to take his meals in the crew’s company while contributing nothing to the conversation, but in time his silent presence came to be expected. The experiments stopped being experiments and just became another routine.

The brute’s increasingly observable physical activity did not go unnoticed by the crew at large, and eventually it inspired curiosity. One of the general sailors – a young human named Roberson – began asking questions and spending more and more of his off time watching Flint. One morning, the crew woke to find Roberson and Flint exercising side-by-side, with the latter offering advice to the former. For a few days this created tension with Aeril, but then Flint started pitching in with the common duties and harmony was restored.

The days gradually gave way to weeks. A second crewman joined Flint and Roberson for lessons on combat, but Muir remained frustratingly aloof and would offer none of his unique insights. Luned, to Flint’s surprise, expressed interest in these lessons, at least as an observer.

“Why did you let him hit you?” she asked once.

“Because it hurts less to get hit in the forehead,” Flint explained, “and taking the hit allowed me to exploit an opening.”

“That’s strange,” Luned said, musing. “You’d think it’d be more important to protect your head than to hit somebody in the gut.”

“I think the ability to take a hit is more important than the ability to cause damage,” Flint told her. “When I was a child, nothing demoralized me more than trying as hard as I could to hurt somebody only for it to seem as if I’d done nothing to them.”

Luned nodded thoughtfully at that. “I can see what you mean,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be better not to get hit at all?”

Flint groaned. “You sound like an Akashiman,” he said. “They do this stupid…let me show you.”

He adopted a pose he’d learned during his long visit to Akashima, and that pose flowed naturally and slowly into another, and then gradually into a third. Luned was familiar with the concept of combat routines, and had read of Akashiman katas, but the immense physical control and fluid nature of the movements were uniquely intriguing to witness. It was like watching him fight invisible foes in slow-motion, deflecting their blows and dancing gracefully away from all attempts at violence.

Luned was delighted, and not five minutes later he was teaching her, and then Roberson joined in, and then another member of the crew. Half an hour later, Aeril emerged from her cabin to find that the dwarven cook had joined the lot of them, and she broke the training session up and sent everybody back to work. The next morning they met again and resumed, and by the end of the week a regular group of practitioners formed with the captain eagerly among them.

[Warpath]

Those weeks were strange for Flint: for the first time since he was a child, he was an accepted part of a community. Despite his best efforts to remain unaffected by this realization, in his heart of hearts he knew he was beginning to enjoy himself. Any other person would call these people friends.

The experience was marred by a low buzz of anxiety, though. He had frequent nightmares about Ettermire, his subconscious playing through countless disquieting what-if scenarios, each one uniquely gruesome and emotionally devastating. Multiple times a week he’d wake in the morning dark and sneak down the narrow hall to peek in on Luned as she slept. Every time he felt like a fool, but he couldn't deny the need to ensure she hadn’t been taken from him in the night by one of the myriad horrors they’d faced. They had seen so many monsters that sometimes their survival seemed the dream.

And Ettermire hung over him for another reason. The longer the voyage went on, the more paranoid Flint became at the thought of Luned discovering the Swaysong in his possession. He spent an unhealthy amount of his private time devising increasingly creative hiding places for the little vial. He was driven by the ridiculously overdramatic scenarios he imagined: that she would find the vial and fly into a rage and denounce him in front of the entire crew, and they would ostracize him for his betrayal. He would be forced to throw himself overboard, and ultimately he’d drown alone and forgotten, an unknown speck in the unfeeling sea.

Every time he saw her sitting alone above deck, staring forlornly at the horizon, he imagined she was thinking about that lost opportunity – the opportunity he was secretly denying her. If she had the Swaysong, she could fix the darkness in her past and mend the cold hole in her heart. Once, he was so wracked by guilt that he considered giving it to her. He had it in the palm of his hand, but when she smiled at him as he approached he quickly pocketed it.

It was easy to forget the fear and the guilt most of the time, though. She spent much of her time with her nose in a book and once she finished she would recommend it to Flint and he would, without exception, proceed to read it. When they weren’t side-by-side reading, they were discussing the wondrous things they were learning, or sharing in their mutual glee for outlandish stories under the guise of criticism. He could see the way his intellect continued to surprise her, and that was endlessly pleasing to him.

There was an overcast day that saw them sitting with their backs to a mast in the late afternoon when the sky unleashed the most abrupt and overwhelming downpour either of them had ever experienced. Flint had been reading so protecting the book was easy, but Luned had been penning notes. They scrambled to save Luned’s papers, but by the time they retreated below decks they were both utterly soaked.

“Damn,” Luned said, separating the sopping pages so the ink wouldn’t run any worse than it already had. Flint started to devise some means of drying the pages, but his attention wandered as he watched her.

The rain made her hair into dark, straight, thick strands, and as she worked she tucked those strands in behind her ear and inadvertently exposed the scars on her neck. Flint’s eyes followed a droplet as it ran over her freckled cheek to her jaw, and then his gaze abandoned it and followed the pale scar instead, which lead him inexorably to the clinging material of her blouse.

“Here,” she said, startling him. She raised her eyes, finding his, and handed him a relatively dry piece of paper. “Hold that for me a second?”

He nodded without saying anything.

Later that night, he wandered down to the mess to pilfer a strip of salt jerky. The dwarf surprised him, apparently whipping up another baked wonder, but he risked all ire and claimed the jerky anyway. The cook didn’t seem to care, so he sat down and gnawed on his treat sullenly.

“So,” the red-head said. “You gonna make a move on her or…?”

Flint glowered, and opened his mouth to respond, but a harsh laugh interrupted him. Muir leaned out of a far shadow, setting his bottle down on the common table. “He’s ugly, not stupid, Blue,” the pirate said. “Lune likes her beaus soft and pretty. You have no idea how long she had that coffee-skinned man-tart chasing after her. What the hell was his name, the doctor boy.”

“Petru?” Flint said, raising an eyebrow. That had been the man who had nursed him back to health after Agnie helped them escape Ettermire.

“That’s the one!” Muir said. “I thought for sure the two of them would have fifty rugrats strangling their ankles by now, but I guess old Bleddyn keeps my sister busy. Anyway, don’t feel too bad for him, Blue. There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Indeed,” Flint said, tearing off a strip of jerky with his teeth as he stalked away.

“Goodnight!” Muir called after him.

Flint trudged up the stairs without saying anything.

[Luned]

Without much else to do, the crew drank nearly as much as they worked. This was an interesting phenomenon for teetotaling Flint to handle, as though he was accustomed enough to the company of drunks, such generally didn't occur every single night over the course of multiple weeks. He could only be grateful that the events never escalated to the drama of the one party that had him on the run from Radasanth (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25198-Journey-to-the-North) months ago; just about anything was tame in comparison to that catastrophe.

On such occasions, Muir wasn't necessarily a bad influence on Luned so much as an interesting one. She partook in the shenanigans only a few times and always to his encouragement, the young man taking her under his arm and feeding her drinks until she was rosy-cheeked and talkative. She had stories to tell, some even Flint hadn't yet heard, and with a touch of liquid courage, she rose from mere scribe to illustrious bard. She particularly enthralled the crew with her account of Eluriand (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25090-Relics-and-Ruins), told with flair perhaps influenced by blatant embellishment, but no one seemed to mind. Her descriptions of the haunting city and the ghastly undead were enough to disturb dreams, but still they asked her to retell it more than once as one week at sea turned into two, then three.

One night, when Luned was noticeably more inebriated than usual, she related the tale of an ill-fated barony in Salvar (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?24406-On-the-Lam). Having allegedly heard it from a friend of a friend, she described a Lord Essen who struggled for power in the midst of the constant feudal warring that plagued the disjointed land. A neighboring landowner cheated the baron in a deal and, in his rage, Essen targeted a foreigner who'd been labeled a witch. He ended up biting off more than he could chew when he took captive the witch and two of her companions; their escape attempt took the life of the notoriously cruel warden and only escalated from there.

As Flint listened, he wracked his brain: Essen was a familiar name and likely somewhere on his list of men to throw out windows, from the sound of it. Through the first half of the tale this distracted him, but as Luned described the second casualty –– when the witch narrowly escaped sexual assault and the baron's own daughter sent a sword through his face, skewering him against the pillow in his own bed –– it clicked. Rumors had spread like wildfire after Essen's death at the hands of three vigilantes of unknown affiliation, and Fet himself had expressed interest in investigating the assassination for their own purposes.

The way Luned told the story in no manner glorified the gruesome events that occurred on that estate, but there was no denying it: she was one of the supposed vigilantes. Even if only the result of one massively tragic series of unfortunate events, she and Flint had been closer than he could have possibly imagined before meeting in Ettermire, of all places. She essentially did some of his work for him before they even knew each other.

The brute's expression darkened as he considered both the serendipity and less positive implications of this coincidence. This, undoubtedly, was the great mar on her past that she wished to erase with Swaysong. He held the answer to her pain, the one thing that could banish that darkness, and now the weight of the delicate glass vial in his pocket was even greater. He had a cause in Salvar, and the manner in which Luned framed the story implied that whether she was sympathetic or not, she was already involved. She seemed aware of the trouble the power struggles of the nobles were causing in his homeland, but would she understand his role in toppling them?

The end of the Essen family's story wasn't as conclusive as a cohesively planned tale's might have been; the scribe ran out of steam, eloquence waning as she wearily described the witch's last encounter with Essen's son in Tirel. In the same way he had betrayed his father and sister, she betrayed him, using cunning to sign the estate over to his estranged mother and the rightful heir. It was unknown whether this was the right decision for the barony as of yet, but the land and its people were out of the hands of the cruel Lord Essen and his treacherous son, and that seemed to be all that mattered. It was nearly a happy ending, albeit sort of ominous.

The audience met the story's quiet ending with pensive yawns. In spite of the action, the story lacked the typical hero, and without someone to cheer on, the crew drank deeper into their bottles and mugs as eyelids and postures drooped. It was late, the perfectly clear indigo sky above glittering with thousands of stars that peeked at them through the rigging and around the shadowy sails, but the crew was stubborn.

"Play us a song, Roberson," Blue coaxed the man, and he pulled out a pipe. The tune began slow and stately, an appropriate transition from Luned's story, but gradually picked up. Soon enough Roberson's fingers were twiddling a jig and Blue pulled Gasper up to dance, and feet tapped and chatter gently roared over the sound of the waves once again.

Luned smiled as the music started and pulled her shawl tighter, unbothered by her performance's mixed reception, and melted back into the mast she rested against. Spilling her great secret, though in the guise of a secondhand tale, had been unbelievably therapeutic, and she wondered silently if Resolve might listen as patiently as this audience. Was there hope in salvaging their friendship after all? The cider had her frightfully optimistic.

Her eyes fluttered shut and Muir nudged her, leaning in to take the half-empty mug from her hands. "Time for bed," he suggested as he finished Luned's drink for her, "Don't you think?"

"Yeah." It took some effort, but the girl pried herself from her seat, stretching her legs as she stood. As she walked to the stairs, she sent Flint a tired little smile over her shoulder before disappearing below deck.

The brute returned the gesture with a nod, then went back to mulling. He must have looked rather gloomy as Muir caught his eye several minutes later with a comically stern expression, mocking him from a distance in the dim light, and Flint sighed. He soon came to the conclusion that rest would make sense of his tangled thoughts and so, shortly thereafter, he followed the scribe's lead and trudged down the stairs after her.

[Luned]

Something tempted Flint to reveal what he was doing in Salvar before he abruptly left for Radasanth –– the work he'd done, his cause. Though Luned had opened her life to him, he hadn't done the same for her; she really had no idea who he was or what he did, and until now, he'd preferred to keep it that way. She never pried, but of course she wondered.

Without thinking, Flint walked past his own door and stopped at Luned's, which sat ajar. The pale glow of her lamp reached out into the cramped corridor, and as he stepped into the light, he caught her jotting something down at her little desk. She glanced over, set down her pen, and got up to greet him.

Flint's lips parted as if to speak and he watched Luned's expression subtly shift to something oddly expectant, wide blue eyes gazing up at him. She seemed much shorter than him for a change, with her bare feet against the cool floorboards and him in his heavy-soled boots. "You were the witch in Salvar," he said, and the tension between them fell away as ill-concealed disappointment washed over the girl's face.

"Was it that obvious?" she asked, laughing it off.

"No, actually. I only knew because of what you told me a while back (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25044-Child-of-Darkness&p=205073&viewfull=1#post205073)." She nodded in memory of their long-past conversation and the Swaysong burned through the breast pocket of Flint's jacket, searing against his skin. It was difficult to bring it up, but he couldn't help himself. The world wasn't that small, and this was a rather big coincidence.

The forced laughter dissipated into a slight, but genuine, smile. "That's a relief. You know, it felt good to finally get it off my chest. The more time passes, the less I regret. I mean, they weren't good people, and…" she trailed off, and this time it was Flint who was expectant. "If it hadn't happened, we…"

The alcohol-influenced pink in her cheeks blossomed into a hot blush and, as endearing as it was, it reminded the man of one important thing: she was drunk.

"Good night, Luned," he said, backing away from the threshold.

Luned nearly reached out but stopped herself, resorting to a little frown instead. "Really? Don't go, just–– wait," she blurted clumsily as she turned, stepping back into her room to rummage through the pile of books on the floor next to her bed. "I finished that last one, I forgot to give it to you earlier."

Directly across from the door was her desk, also covered in books, as well as her journal and many loose pieces of paper. Some, Flint recognized even in the low light: sketches she'd done of the crew in their morning exercises, the wrinkled leftovers of the water-damaged notes, and the corner of his mouth quirked to see the letter containing their correspondence on display, just the edge peeking out from under some drawings. He would have recognized it anywhere. On top of that, however, was another enchanted page bearing a peculiar mix of languages: Trade and something Elven-looking. The smirk died and his eyes swept across the room to focus on the scribe's figure, knelt ladylike in her nightgown as she finally extracted the correct volume. Was she still writing with the elf from Eluriand?

Insecurities built on one another and Flint nearly lost focus. He accepted the book as she offered it without thought, glaring blankly at the cover for a moment before looking back to her. "What do you mean, not good people?"

The intensity in his gaze startled Luned and she carefully considered her answer. It was difficult to compose a cohesive sentence with her mind so foggy. "Not that I'm qualified to judge, but I think they abused their power, and they were too desperate for more of it."

Flint fell silent for a moment, thinking. After a few seconds pause, he spoke again. "I've always valued people on their strength," he said. "A good person is a strong one, and the only way to gauge strength is to see it controlled. When the weak inherit more than they can control, they mistake that lack of control for a lack of power. They chase ever more and inevitably destroy themselves. They bite off more than they can chew, as you say in Radasanth."

Luned's brow furrowed as she considered his words, and the conclusion wasn't a positive one: Ettermire was clear evidence of biting off more than she could chew. "Oh."

Forgetting himself for a moment, Flint reached out and used the back of his index finger to smooth Luned’s brow. The motion surprised both of them, reminding him of his place, and so he quickly withdrew his hand again. "You wear your trouble on your face," he said, hoping that excused his lapse in judgment. "And you judge yourself too harshly. Nobody's born strong, Lune, but plenty of people get a taste of strength and are satisfied. Not you, though. You have the will to surpass yourself, and that is worth far more than any inherited power. I admire that in you."

"You do?"

"Of course. Why else would I be here?"

Speechless and sleepy, Luned leaned forward and propped her forehead against Flint's chest. For the short moment he allowed it, she closed her eyes and simply felt him breathe. In those quiet seconds, Flint couldn't help but notice the shoulder of her nightgown slipped down, offering a minuscule glimpse of white skin just out of reach of sun and freckles. It felt like something he wasn't supposed to see.

"You're drunk," he finally interrupted, his voice low. "Go to bed."

She sighed and relented.

[Luned]

The first supply drop-off was about three weeks into the voyage, soon before they were to arrive at their alleged destination. Luned scheduled it via correspondence with Bleddyn through their enchanted journals, sending requests from the crew for everything from food to booze to various forms of entertainment. When the old man procured the items, he confirmed with his proxy, and then they collaborated to set an appointment with Agnie for the drop-off.

The fairy was shockingly punctual, likely due to clever prodding by the elder scribe, and her cheery little face presented itself in the cargo hold promptly at noon. Clad in an offensive array of mismatched patterns and flouncing skirts, the blonde linked a door to a storage space Bleddyn designated out of the library, and hence opened it up for loading into the ship. She spectated with much enthusiasm as members of the crew shuffled in and out with bags and crates, eventually following Muir up deck in a flurry of chatter. Apparently the fey had a thing for rude young men.

Flint assisted Blue in refilling the galley's pantry while Luned retrieved a stack of books, which she carried up to the grand cabin to fill the already cramped shelves. Thanks to Flint's strange exercises, a common interest blossomed amongst the crew in Akashima, so the girl thought forward while adding to the supply lists and threw in some reading material to answer the questions about the region that their collected minds couldn't. She found homes for the new tomes, as well as the couple things their aloof captain Aeril requested, before stopping by her own room.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Ags wasn't the only one to step aboard the ship with supplies though.

Strolling through the portal Agnie had opened, a leather-clad nightmare stomped into the lower cargo hold, a cask of whisky perched on one shoulder, a smaller barrel carried under his other arm. Aurelianus Drak'shal scanned left and right, taking in his surroundings as he dragged through more of the ship's supplies. He dumped the cask at his feet, laying the other barrel full of salted meat next to it. Dusting his trademark coat off with one hand, avoiding the blades coating his armour in the process, the tiefling stepped aside from the portal- letting more labourers emerge, passing off supplies to the ship's crew.

Leaning against one of the support beams, he took out a cigarette from an inside pocket, lighting it with a small burst of Hellfire in his palm. From under the leather of his coat, emerged a horrific little creature, shrouded by a pair of crow wings; scampering up Aurelius' armour with scalpel fingers and little taloned feet the little animated fetus crawled up to it's master's shoulder. Perching there, it turned it's sutured eyes to the hard-working crew, many of them making warding signs, refusing to make eye contact with Aurelius, or his little friend. The abominable little creature yawned, flashing needle fangs as it did, albino flesh almost translucent on it's frame. Aurelius reached up and petted the horrific little creature's head.

It wasn't often that the Anarchist and bastard helped anyone out like this. But, on this occasion, there were extenuating circumstances.

He had returned to Luned's library, a week after his initial visit, as per the chit's instructions. The plane-touched had been thoroughly looking forward to his return visit, and tormenting little Luned while he was at it. But, in this he was to be sorely disappointed. He got his books, right enough, but sneaky Luned was nowhere to be seen; the tiefling had inquired as to her whereabouts, but no-one said anything. Usually, he would have broken a few necks, nicked a few sods, but he decided to play it canny- he already knew someone else he could ask.

And so, Aurelius had spent the preceding fortnight dropping in to see Ags every few days, slowly getting her to open up (though not in the way he might have hoped). It didn't take long before the subtle manipulator had gleaned not only Luned's whereabouts, but that she was with another of his "acquaintances".

Thus, the warlock was here, on board the same ship as the pair of berks he'd managed to blackmail back during the ride in Ettermire- Luned, and her minder, Flint.

He had offered to give Agnie a helping hand when she had mentioned the supply run to the ship. Now, blowing a lungful of smoke at the hard-at-work crew, and flicking away the remains of his cigarette, he left the main cargo hold, taking the stairs up to the next level. He could smell Luned instantly; after spending so much time with her, he wouldn't forget her scent anytime soon- he could smell Flint too, and this deck of the ship was saturated with them. Along this corridor were a few small quarters, at the other end the plane-touched could see an open room, lined with hammocks- the main bunks for the crew. He couldn't picture Luned being surrounded by a mob of sea-men for the three weeks they'd been at sea.

So he headed for the pair of officer's quarters.

But even as he opened the door to Luned's room, he heard the soft footsteps approaching. He slipped inside the room, closing the door over as quietly and quickly as he could. Aurelius ducked behind the door, pressing his back to the wall, arms folded across his chest, waiting for the person to pass on by. His pet flapped from his shoulder, landing on the neatly made bed, sniffing around before spreading his wings and chittering excitedly at the door.

Aurelianus quirked an eyebrow, wondering what the beast could sense.

His question was answered a moment later when the door to the small cabin opened, and in walked Luned. She shut her door, not seeing the half-demon lurking behind her. His little pet had sensed the chit coming, but thanks to the heavy presence of her scent in her room, Aurelius had been blind to the fact it was her approaching. He smirked at his good fortune.

The petite scribe spotted the animated and modified foetus instantly, opening her mouth to scream at the disturbing creation of a less than stable mind. But Aurelius was there in a heartbeat, clamping his hand over her mouth. Her scream died in her throat.

"Don't fret, luv. That's just Junior. 'e's real friendly, you'll see," he said in her ear, grinning happily.

With a shove, the tiefling sent the scribe sprawling over her bed, while Junior scampered around her, sniffing loudly, chittering in the Infernal tongue. It leaned in close to her face, furling it's sable pinions on it's pale back, while the tiny tongue lapped at Luned's cheek.

"Aw, ain't that adorable? I think 'e likes you," he smirked, reversing the little wooden chair and taking a seat next to the bed, crossing his arms over the back.

[Luned]

Several things rushed through Luned's mind in the moment she was shoved down on her bed, from blaming Agnie for her treachery, blaming herself for her own stupidity, and disgust at the grotesque creature that tittered around her face. She sat up with a soft shriek of repulsion, rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand. "That's… you took that?" She could only assume he'd lifted the original fetus from the medical oddities lab in Ettermire, where its home once upon a time was in a formaldehyde-filled jar next to a deformed puppy. "What did you do to it?" But no –– that was off-subject. She barely tore her eyes away from the freakish creature, her contempt-laced gaze seeking Aurelianus' smug face. "Why are you here? I got you the books."

"Aye, you did, cutter, and I'm grateful, don't get me wrong. But you're forgettin', you still owe me. And you're off on a ride, I can't keep an eye on my investment." He spread his hands, gesturing to their surroundings. "So, I figured I'd come check in on you, and your minder."

The reminder that Flint was nearby gave the scribe guts she didn't have when she was alone in the big, empty library. "Well, fine," she said, crossing her arms protectively over her chest as she ignored his familiar toddling around her sheets. "So you've checked in. It's not like I wasn't coming back."

Aurelianus chuckled dryly, liking the backbone he sensed in the scribe now. It was a pleasant change. He whistled softly and Junior flapped up to perch on his shoulder, hissing and chittering at the aggression in the air. "Actually, from the chant around your library, there's every chance you ain't comin' back from this ride." He smirked arrogantly. "Besides, I couldn't pass up a chance to see you back in Flint's oh-so-manly arms, now could I, luv?"

"Leave him alone," Luned frowned, defensive. "I'll be back, you have my word. You can leave now," she informed him sternly, raising her voice at the end as if hoping someone might walk by and overhear.

Aurelius knew exactly what she was doing and instantly had a blade in his hand, making sure she saw the serrated weapon. It worked, from the way she pressed back against the wall. "I'd keep your voice down, Lune. Don't want to panic me or Junior, 'ere, do you? 'e gets… nasty when 'e's upset." He stood up and stepped closer to the bed, letting his familiar scamper down his sleeve. It hissed at Luned from only inches away and it took all her effort not to look. Aurelius cocked his head, as if weighing her words, before that same self-assured smile spread over his fanged mouth. "Oh, I can't leave without sayin' 'ello to our mate, Flint. I think I'll bang around 'ere for a while, keep you both company."

"Don't you have more important things to do than harass us?" Luned scowled, her fear turning to anger. It was clear in her face: she didn't want him there, especially not now. Not when… damn. Inspired, perhaps poorly, to make a statement, Luned peeled herself off the wall and stood, making her posture as erect and glare as severe as she could muster. If she really was an "investment", that knife was just for show, and with Muir around, she could afford a nasty surprise in exchange for a moment of confidence. "You need to leave," she said, staring down the man as best she could from her shorter height. "Don't say anything to him. Just leave."

Aurelius knew where her confidence was flowing from. So, naturally, he decided to squash it. Lashing out far faster than she could ever hope to block, he hammered the pommel of the knife against the bridge of her nose, shattering it in a wash of blood. She collapsed to the floor, covering her face as a torrent of red ran down her chin and soaked her white blouse. "I'd watch who you rattle that bone-box at, Luned. It could get you hurt one day," he said, his face a complete blank. "You might be valuable to me, but don't think for a second that means I'd 'esitate to make you a deader." He dragged the girl to her feet, throwing her to sit back down on the bed. He lit up another cigarette, leaning against the wall as he tapped the knife against his bladed thigh. "Now, unless you want your boy-toy findin' out about our special time in the tannery, I suggest you play nice from now on."

The bloodied scribe glared hatefully, Flint's words coursing through her mind: the ability to take a hit was more important than the ability to cause damage. He made it sound so easy. It hurt like hell, the throbbing of her nose and sting of tears in her broken sinuses unbearable, but she had never been this angry in her entire life. The sickening emotion gave her courage, the same relentless flaw that had sent her suicidally into the horrors of the Ettermire sewers. She roughly wiped away some blood, smearing it across her face, and the pain suddenly disappeared.

She'd used her revert ability without even writing anything, and if Aurelius was paying attention, he'd have noticed the cut the hilt of his knife made across the bridge of her nose was gone.

Luned shocked even herself with this development, having depended on calligraphy to cast before, but she didn't let it show. She focused on the hate. "Fine. Tell him, tell the whole crew, and then we'll find out how well you swim."

Aurelius chuckled. He admitted to himself that he liked Luned when she was this sassy, but he wasn't going to let her think for a second she had the upper hand. "Aye, we might just at that," he agreed, nodding and resheathing his blade. He stepped closer to Luned, Junior hopping down onto the bed and snapping at her with its tiny needle-fangs. He held a hand up, summoning a ball of hellfire with a mere thought. "But I promise you, cutter, we'd see how well this tub goes when it's on fire right after."

The girl continued to glare, but she'd run out of steam. There wasn't an ounce of sass left in her after that threat, only anger and frustration. She remained silent, and the increasing distress was apparent in her face as the glare gave way to a teary frown.

He sat back down, shaking the Hellfire from his hand, and pet Junior gently on the head. "So, I'll take this to mean you ain't 'appy to see me?" Aurelius grinned. Luned didn't answer; she just leaned back against the wall, her weak posture a sign of defeat as she tried to ignore the sticky sensation of blood drying on her skin and clothes. What would she possibly have left say? The half-breed feigned a look of hurt before sparking up another cigarette. "Well, that's too bad," he shrugged. He took in a lungful of smoke, exhaling slowly as his serpentine eyes locked on the bloody chit. "So, what in the Nine 'ells are you doin' out 'ere, anyhow?" he asked, his curiosity piqued.

Luned looked at him in astonishment at this sudden willingness for polite conversation. "Research," she replied simply, and hoped the answer was boring enough that he'd lose interest.

As he looked back at Luned, his face said it all: How stupid do you think I am? He took another draw off his smoke, tapping the ash onto the floor. "Aye, now you can elaborate on that."

"You're not missing anything," she said, pressing back against the wall in a subconscious effort to keep as far away from him as possible. "Bleddyn thinks there's an uncharted island out here. We're looking for it."

"An' there, you're right –– I'm not missin' anythin'. I reckon I'll stick around, need somethin' to pass the time, and waitin' for my next ride to get underway is givin' me the yawn." He finished the cigarette in a few quick draws, stubbing it out on Luned's desk as he watched his familiar nip at her fingers. "Besides, if you're runnin' the risk of gettin' into trouble out 'ere, there's worse cutters to be stuck with than me."

The scribe's brow furrowed and suddenly she simply looked tired –– so very, very tired. She crossed her arms again over her crimson-stained chest, doing her best to ignore the nipping creature. "Listen, I appreciated what you did for us back in Ettermire, I really did, and I'll hold my end of the bargain when you need a favor," Luned said. "But please, please don't stay. It wouldn't go well for anyone, you nor us."

"Oh, I don't doubt it could go bad for you, luv. But as far as I'm concerned, you can take your feelin' to the Mazes –– I don't really give a pikin' toss. Besides, I'm not bothered so much about you. But your basher, Flint…" Aurelius picked up his familiar, petting the creature idly as he glanced around Luned's room, taking in the sheer volume of tomes littering the shelf and table. "Well, he has somethin' of mine an' I want it back," he said, not caring to go into anymore detail.

The tables turned and Luned found her own curiosity piqued. "…What is it?"

The tiefling saw no reason to hide the truth. "I gave 'im a way out of Ettermire, instead 'e found 'is own way out and still 'as one of my glyphs. They 'ave a certain amount of," he smiled, trying to think of the right words, "Sentimental value."

The answer was less shocking than anticipated and Luned simply blinked. "Oh." And then, rising over the relative quiet of the 'tween deck, the creak of hinges as someone entered the room next door interrupted them. It was Flint's room, and if Aurelius didn't know already, he could deduce it from the change in the girl's expression.

A slow smirk crept across the half-breed's face, his fangs showing between his pale lips. He felt Junior spread his wings, feathers touching his alabaster cheek, as Aurelius scanned the girl's face. "Why don't you give 'im a shout? We can 'ave us a reunion," he smiled.

Luned cringed, considered, and gave in. With a rap on the shallow wall between their rooms, the villain's voice likely overheard already even if muffled, she called out. "Flint? Is that you?" In spite of her efforts to keep the panic in her throat from affecting her voice, it wavered, and Aurelius' smirk broadened.

[Warpath]

Flint was stashing a pair of new books in his quarters when he heard a voice from Luned’s room – a male voice. It struck him immediately as being familiar, but try as he might he could not place it. It was certainly no member of the regular crew, which meant it was one of the temporary laborers employed by Bleddyn or Agnie. He could not imagine why the scribe would need to meet with one of them in private, but he hesitated, not wanting to pry.

Then Luned called his name, and he knew certainly that something was off. He hadn’t heard that tone from her since Ettermire, and as he charged into the room it all came together. That’s where he’d first heard that voice, unknown until now.

The door came off one of its hinges when Flint shouldered it open, and before anybody could make a peep, he had a handful of tunic, with which he was shoving the tiefling back against the wall that divided Luned’s quarters from his. The wall rattled and Aurelianus let out a sharp laugh. After that rush of violence, the moment dropped into still, intense silence. The brute was so still that it was impossible to tell he was breathing.

The myriad spikes and blades on the tiefling’s armor had drawn ugly gashes on Flint’s forearm, and his blood dripped black to the floorboards. He seemed oblivious to it though, and might have attempted more violence if not for the wicked blade the half-demon was tapping against Flint’s inner thigh. One nick there would see him bleed out in a few heartbeats, and so they were at an impasse. It was the tiefling’s move.

When they’d first met Flint had been delirious with fever. Since that day, he imagined that he’d exaggerated the tiefling’s presence in his weakened state – imagined the pure and visceral discomfort those snake eyes inspired in anybody sane. Now, at his healthiest, he found that he’d imagined nothing. If anything, he'd been oblivious to the full extent of his tangible malevolence.

Flint was a brutal thug and a ruthless revolutionary with a long history of criminal enterprise, but he had never met a single person who embodied chaos and wild anarchy as completely as Aurelianus. Worse than that, he wasn’t just a mad dog in need of being put down. This was a monster that had made a philosophy of being a monster. They had a lot in common, and that was bad.

So they stared at one another for a long moment, the anarchist and the rebel, until the gut-churning little abomination clambered up over Aurelianus’ shoulder whispering infernal curses, and sank its little teeth into the back of Flint’s hand. He didn’t flinch.

“That’s repulsive,” he said dully, moving his eyes from the tiefling down to the familiar and then back again without blinking.

“I’d wash that out,” Aurelianus said with a smirk.

[Warpath]

Aurelianus warned his familiar off first with a little hiss. Once the abomination took its needle-teeth out of the flesh of Flint’s hand, he slowly released the tiefling’s shirt and stepped back away from the knife. His eyes did not leave their unwanted visitor, even as he reached behind him and grabbed the chair. Once there was a piece of furniture safely between them, and within reach as a weapon, Flint risked a glance over at Luned. If the sight of her bloodied face and blouse alarmed him, he didn’t let it show.

“Can you breathe?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” she said sullenly.

“You here to collect?” he asked Aurelianus.

“Maybe.”

“He said you have something of his,” Luned said, sitting tensely with her eyes locked on Aurelianus. She was poised to hop up and put herself behind Flint, but she now knew firsthand how fast the tiefling was. She wasn’t sure if Flint was faster, but it seemed unlikely.

Flint’s mind raced as the tense silence stretched. This was not unlike a game of chess played at breakneck pace with one’s life on the line, and in secret the brute relished it. Of all the deadly people he’d met – Resolve, Swanra’ann, the fairy Isylle, Fet – Aurelianus was the most difficult to read and predict. But it wasn’t impossible: if Flint played this too stubborn, the tiefling would threaten Luned. Flint thought he could pretend not to care, especially with Muir aboard, but there was the tiniest sliver of doubt. If they fought and he was disabled for even an instant, Aurelianus could do one of countless unspeakable things. The crew would eventually come to their aid, but only after Luned had suffered, and surely more people would end up hurt or dead before the tiefling was stopped.

He repressed the urge to sneer, and instead focused the frustration on Aurelianus. He had been enjoying the new experience of companionship amongst these people, but now his attachment to them was a liability – a weakness to be exploited. He had what the tiefling wanted, which gave him the leverage, but he also had more to lose.

“It’s not here,” Flint said at last.

"Then bugger off an' fetch it. I'll wait 'ere with our little Luned."

“No,” Flint said. “That would require leaving the ship and returning to Salvar. I don’t believe you can control yourself that long.”

Aurelius considered Flint's words, thoughts unreadable behind is inhuman eyes.

"Aye, you have a point," he smirked, lighting up another cigarette and blowing the smoke across the room. "Alright, you canny lad you, if it'll make you feel any better, we can go together and get what's mine."

Flint considered it for a moment. The essential thing was getting Aurelianus off the ship and away from Luned, and he was willing to sacrifice his presence to make that happen, but it wasn’t ideal. As long as Luned was aboard the ship and Agnie could supply it – a necessary evil at this point – the scribe was accessible. If Flint brought Aurelianus to the trinket, and the tiefling succeeded in killing him afterward, Luned would still be trapped here if she didn't abandon her mission, and she'd be relatively defenseless. Finally, he gave his head the slightest shake. “I can’t trust you not to kill me once you have it.”

"True," he nodded, taking a long draw on the smoking cigarette, his familiar wrinkling it's tiny nose up at the smoke, coughing in little high-pitched squeaks. "But there's not much stoppin' me pennin' you in the Dead-Book now. Or burnin' this tub to ash, for that matter. Be a good lad an' play nice, and I'll settle for offing you later."

“I’m canny, remember?” Flint said. “Your trinket is with my people in Salvar, and they’ll be on the move by now. It could take you years to find out who they are and where they’ve gone. If you kill me, you could lose it forever.”

"Oh, now you're just insultin' me, mate. I'd leave you 'til last." A dark smile slid over is face, smoke slithering out from between is pearly white fangs.

“The ship is your only leverage.”

Aurelianus looked annoyed for a fraction of a second. He was growing bored with this endless dance, and Flint knew well the growing urge to cut or break something. The brute felt it, himself. "Alright, sod this for a game of soldiers," he snapped, the abomination spreading it's wings and bearing miniscule fangs from it's perch on his shoulder. "If you lann me who your people are now, I'll try to leave one of 'em this side of lost. I'll find 'em on my own eventually anyway, and at least this way, you can stay here and be all warm and cosy," he glanced at the bloodied scribe, "balls deep in 'er everynight."

Flint narrowed his eyes, considering it. He felt no loyalty to Radek, and this was the best deal Aurelianus had presented thus far. Fet would take it personally if the tiefling managed to slaughter an entire strike team, and those men were some of Flint’s best. Without them, his cause would be set back significantly, if not irrevocably crippled.

“A fair proposition,” Flint mused. “And this will settle the debt between us?”

The tiefling chuckled softly, shaking his head at the stocky man. "Not by a long shot, basher. You'll know when I call in my marker, I promise you that," he said, his cigarette clamped between his lips. "Nah, this is just me reclaimin' what's mine."

“Really?” the brute said. “This feels like a favor, to me. A favor for a favor.”

Aurelianus growled. "Don't push it, mate. I want my glyph back, and if I don't get it soon, I'm sure I can find.. somethin' to make it even." At this, he ran his snake-eyes over Luned's form, licking his lips lasciviously. "But I'm tryin' to be an amiable body 'ere. So just pikin' get me my glyph."

“Eventually, perhaps,” Flint said. “Stalemate. If you hurt or kill the crew, I will have no reason to help you. If you kill me, you don’t get the glyph back. You don’t want to spend your boon on it.”

"Keep goin', Flint. Wouldn't be 'ard to torch all this, and rip the answers out of you."

Flint shrugged. “You’ve seen my back,” the brute said. “Pain and I have had a long time to work out an understanding, and I find myself growing fond of…these people. I imagine I’ll be disinclined to negotiate if you force your hand with them.”

"You don't *know* pain, human," the tiefling said, all humour hidden in his face. His eyes narrowed, slit-pupils locked in an unblinking glare at the cocky basher. "I'd be 'appy to.. illuminate you," he said, letting his utterly inhuman gaze roam over both of the occupants of the room.

Flint made a low, thoughtful sound. “Or we could discuss this another time. In Salvar. When the girl isn’t with me.”

"Oh, but I'd be 'eartbroken without our little luv- me an 'er have a real spark. Her tongue tastes like peaches," he said softly, grinning like the bastard he was, savouring the instant extra-tension in the room. "Oh, didn't she tell you, mate?"

Flint stared for a long moment, unblinking, and then slowly pushed the chair out from between them with the side of his boot. “This isn’t fun,” he finally said. “Our negotiations could be so much…purer.”

Aurelianus glanced down as the fingers of Flint’s right hand slowly and pointedly curled into a fist, and the tiefling grinned delightedly, showing off a mouthful of short cutlery. "Hmmm..." he considered the implications of Flint's words, stubbing out his now-finished cigarette on the desk, next to the other butt. "Aye, they could at that basher."

Flint stepped back, and Aurelianus stepped forward, toward the door. He paused just before reaching the frame, turned, and smooched in Luned’s direction. "I'm not done with you yet, luv. I 'ope you'll be thinkin' of me - I'll certainly be thinkin' of you."

Luned just glared, fierce behind her half-mask of blood. Flint kept himself between them, and his eyes never left the tiefling. Finally, blessedly, Aurelianus turned and walked out of the room, and Flint followed. They walked side-by-side down the hall, then back onto the deck of the ship. If the rest of the crew had any inkling of the tension between them, they kept it to themselves. It was hard to tell, though – they might have been trying to avoid looking at the familiar, which was skittering about on the half-demon’s shoulder excitedly, taking in all the myriad sounds and smells of the sea.

"You'll be seein' me again soon, mate."

“I know,” Flint said.

"Keep in touch. I worry so when I don't 'ear from my favourite cutters," he mocked, smiling to himself, and re-sheathing his Baatorian green-steel knife.

“You found me once, you’ll do it again.”

"Aye, unless you end up in the Dead-Book out 'ere."

Flint shrugged. “Of what? Boredom? There’s nothing out here. I’ll finish this job, and then we’ll discuss your trinket. Properly. I am many things, but I pay my debts.”

"So do I. Bear that in mind, mate."

[Warpath]

“Knock it off!” Muir shouted, struggling as Flint dragged him along by his coat.

“Stop squirming,” Flint growled, shoving the pirate into Luned’s quarters. Once the pirate saw the broken door, he settled down.

Luned was pacing around her quarters, taking steadying breaths and moving her furniture back into the proper places. She’d already torn the sheets off her bed and thrown them into a corner, sure she could smell the abomination on them.

“Holy shit,” Muir said. “What the hell happened?”

“I’m okay,” Luned said, but Flint grabbed her by the back of the neck and reached up, gently pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Ow,” she said. “Stop it, I’m okay.”

Her shoulders had been up to her ears before Flint had taken hold of her. Now she was resisting the urge to lean into him as he examined her nose, and her legs felt like wet noodles.

“That’s a lot of blood,” Muir said.

“I fixed it,” Luned said.

“How?” Flint said, releasing her neck and stepping back when he was satisfied that she was unhurt. He had been prepared to try and wipe some of the blood off of her cheeks when he realized what he was doing and how uncomfortable it must have been for her. One monster did this to her, certainly she didn't want another one anywhere near her.

“I don’t know,” she said dismissively. “Is he gone?”

Flint nodded.

“Is who gone? Who the fuck did this?” Muir said.

“Aurelianus,” Flint said. “One of our mutual acquaintances.”

“Your friends fucking suck,” Muir said.

“He is not a friend,” Luned said, suddenly incensed.

“I’m going to make sure he doesn’t slip back onto the ship,” Flint said. “Watch her.”

“Flint,” Luned said.

“I’ll be back. Watch her.”

“Of course I’ll fucking watch her, where were you…?”

But Flint was already stalking out of the room, every muscle tense.

[Luned]

The half-breed's mischief caused much more trouble than simply amongst his acquaintances. Aeril insisted on knowing the details, calling a private meeting with Flint, Luned, and Muir to sort things out.

Fortunately, it was a brief event.

"This has been a calm and pleasant voyage thus far," she began as the four sat around the plush couches of the grand cabin. Luned, unbloodied and composed, sat next to the captain, Muir and Flint across from them atop similarly luxurious upholstery. The room could nearly be described as opulent in its decor, showcasing the best of the best textiles and furnishings from all over the world, and was meant to be used for pleasant things like reading and drinking. The scribe couldn't help herself but sit and frown, uncomfortable in a room so painstakingly optimized for the opposite. Aeril continued speaking after a dramatic pause, a dainty crystal tumbler of ruby-hued port held untouched in her hand. "We should near our destination in a matter of days, but at this point, I'm genuinely concerned for the safety of our crew. Bleddyn gave me the impression that this Agnie was a professional, yet she allowed someone unauthorized aboard the ship. I've heard the rumors of a scoundrel with a –– a creature –– and blood? I heard of massive amounts of blood, yet you all appear quite well. Was it his?"

As Bleddyn's proxy, Luned felt obligated to smooth things over. "Aurelius has nothing to do with Bleddyn. He's an acquaintance of ours who likes to play very distasteful pranks. But I assure you, everyone is fine," she said. It wasn't the most convincing lie ever, but perhaps because it was largely true and only dishonest in its lack of important details, the elf took it well.

"I do not want to hear of him again," Aeril said sternly, giving them all a good glare. The crinkles at the corners of her eyes, which Luned had liked so much, displaced to the furrow of her brow, and it aged her. "Is that clear? You have contact with Agnie and Bleddyn. You make certain of it."

Much like a chastised child, Luned nodded obediently. "I will. I'd like nothing more, myself."

Still, Aeril eyed the men across from them, her sharp gaze falling on Muir in particular. "And I wish to hear of no other shenanigans. We have a brig and and I am not afraid to use it. I can promise it is much less comfortable than the rest of this harlot of a ship." With that she stood abruptly, stalked to the door, and disappeared into the hall.

Muir lazed back against some pillows, idly plucking at a loose thread on the arm of the couch. "That's the first time I've seen her knickers in a twist," he said, then glanced across to Luned. "Can't blame her, though. You know she only listened to your lame explanation because you're the boss; she'll obey, but she's lost faith."

"Muir, you are so eloquent tonight," Luned retorted bitterly as she rubbed one of her temples. "Please, share more from the endless fount of wisdom that is your opiate-raddled brain."

That barb should've stung, and if this was any other situation, Flint might have laughed. He hadn't expected a sibling squabble.

Her brother laughed, though. He could laugh at just about anything. "I love you, Lune, I really do, but you're a fucking mess. For once, I think if Mum and Dad could see us now, they'd think I was the upstanding citizen for once. How fucked up is that? I mean, look at you, it's like you've been wrestling bears or some ridiculous shit," he said, running his hand along his jaw and neck to mirror her scars.

To Flint's surprise, the scribe cracked a smile and coughed a halfhearted chuckle. "I wish."

"Now that I know the story," Muir said, revealing to Flint that Luned spilled at least some of Ettermire's secrets while he was on watch, "I think I understand. I mean, I think you're a fucking idiot for not telling Rez, but I get it. You think everyone has these expectations of you to be perfect and good and not like assholes like me, but you know, we'll still like you even if you admit to yourself that you're as fucked as the rest of us." He stood, seemingly quite pleased with his pep talk, and straightened his clothing. "Now, I've got a hot date with Blue and some strapping seamen. If you need me, you know where to find me."

Luned nodded. "Thanks," she said quietly, and her appreciation was lost to the slam of the door.

[Luned]

By the time he spoke, Luned had thought for sure he'd drifted off to sleep.

"Whatever he did to you, it's not your fault."

Flint's voice rose over the quiet rush of waves against the exterior of the ship, filling the cramped darkness with warmth. Luned stared at the ceiling, unseeing as moonlight filtered in through the tiny hull-side window and glinted pale off the beams. The open curtains swayed as if mimicking a breeze, but she didn't notice. Her mind was too full to take in anything else. Flint finally knew of her great shame, and as she feared he might, he broached the subject.

"I know," she said, her own voice much smaller than his.

The man had thought of nothing else since their earlier encounter with the hell spawn Aurelianus. His brutally colorful imagination tortured him as thoroughly as the painful thought of bringing it up to the scribe, meeker than ever after the joy of her first broken nose.

He couldn't just ask. But here, lying under the wooly darkness next to each other, he mustered the courage simply to talk. He'd insisted on giving her his room after the incident, having planned to sleep in a chair nearby, but the scribe wouldn't have any of it. They compromised by dragging her mattress in and placing it on the floor, an almost comical thing, as the room was so small they were nearly on top of each other like children in bunk beds or soldiers in barracks.

Being so close might have been a scandalous thing any other night, but after their uninvited guest, their thoughts were too heavy to stray to other things (well, mostly).

Unable to ask for her part of the story bluntly, Flint eased into the uncomfortable subject with practiced tact. He really only knew how to navigate others' emotions for the purpose of manipulation, so it felt strange to maneuver in such a way; it was like searching in the dark for something, afraid of a misstep. As he laid on the spare mattress, he concentrated on the moonlit silhouette of the bed suspended over him. He couldn't see Luned, but some of her long hair spilled over the edge with the sheets in a fuzzy halo.

Flint took a deep breath, then spoke again. "I wasn't in my right mind in the tannery," he began, carefully avoiding mention of Ezura. "I'd dug myself into a hole I wasn’t going to be able to crawl out of on my own. When he found me, he offered an exchange. 'A favor for a favor.' He promised to get me out of Ettermire, and it felt like I sold my soul to survive. I didn't have a choice."

There was a long silence, giving Flint's subconscious plenty of time to conjure all the horrors that creature was capable of, before Luned replied.

"Me too," she said, hesitant. "He asked for a favor, and…"

Flint couldn't handle the silence again and, in his panic to fill it, he blurted the thought he'd been too terrified to put into words. "Did he…?"

Luned's breath caught in her throat. "No," she finally said. "Not yet."

Not yet. The answer was as relieving as it was foreboding. But, even still, Flint felt himself decompress just the smallest amount, making it that much easier to breathe. "What happened?"

"When I was leaving the tannery I was invisible, but he still caught me. He grabbed me by the throat, all covered in rancid blood, and I saw spots, and then he offered the deal. F-for the favor, I mean. He threatened to hurt Ags…" she trailed off as if to savor the irony. "I agreed. And then… well… he kissed me." For all the drama Aurelianus caused, telling the story like that, it almost seemed absurd to be so terrified of him. After all, he was apparently chummy with the person he'd threatened to use as collateral in the first place. And as revolting as a french kiss from a blood-coated forked tongue was, she survived. But the fact of the matter was, even if he hadn't gone further yet, that's all it was –– yet. At this point it seemed inevitable. "When he snuck into the library, I found him waiting on my bed," Luned said, immensely glad Flint couldn't see her face. "All I could think was that he was there for the favor. I wished I could die, right then and there, so I wouldn't have to bear it. But… he asked for books," she choked through a miserable laugh. "I couldn't believe it."

The brute chose his next words very carefully. "He can only take from you what you let him."

The girl's hand automatically rose to her nose, inspecting its familiar curvature with gratitude. Flint watched the shadow of her movement on the far wall. "I wish I could be like you," she said, fingers moving to rub at her stinging eyes. "When he hit me, I tried to take it like you said, put him off by not being fazed. But it hurt so much, and I was scared––"

"Don't forget," he reminded her like so many times before (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25106-LCC-R1-Plane-Curiosity-VS-Skullfuckers&p=204794&viewfull=1#post204794). "You control the fear."

"I'm not fear, Flint. Maybe I'm something else, but I'm not that."

They fell into pensive silence and the brute took some of her hair into his fingers, the tendrils embracing his fingertips in loose curls. As he looked at the contrast of dark strands against pale skin, he knew she was right. He was fear, and as such, these hands were meant to break things. Hers were meant to fix them.

[Warpath]

The days following Aurelianus’ visit were a muted reflection of the days immediately preceding it. The crew whispered amongst themselves and had a hard time making eye contact with Luned, but when she wasn’t looking they stared, driven by rumor and confused by reality’s incongruity with that rumor. Nobody outwardly bounces back that fast from a broken nose, after all, and the scribe was superficially as hale and healthy as she’d ever been.

To her credit, Luned took it all in stride. She was keenly aware of her surroundings in a way she hadn’t had to be before, but she went on drawing and reading and watching sunsets and, after awhile, having conversations with the crew. Flint made a show of returning to his routine, but nothing ever took him far from the girl’s side for long. Gradually, day-by-day, the tension eased.

Without overtly discussing why, the crew made repeated and concentrated efforts to search every inch of the ship in teams, following patterns random and organized and every possibility in between. Aeril did not discourage this, since the hold was being organized and reorganized on a daily basis, and a record number of rats were being caught.

Soon, it was agreed upon that no surprises had been left by Agnie’s supply crew, and while things largely returned to normal there remained a small but persistent sense of unease no one could shake. Their isolation had fostered in them a sense of freedom, family, safety, and disconnection from the cruelty of the world at large. Flint, in particular, felt that loss keenly: he’d been reminded that social attachments were a weakness he could not afford.

[Warpath]

Carcosa could not be far off according to Bleddyn’s calculations and estimations, and yet there were no signs of it whatsoever. The crew was getting restless. Every other day Flint would eye the horizon a few hours before sunset, shrug, and guess that the island didn’t actually exist. Luned always remained silent and unreadable, but the unspoken consensus among the crew was that he was right.

Little squabbles and fights began to break out here and there, and not even the normally-affable Blue was above it. Flint pestered the dwarf repeatedly for salt jerky, which he had already eaten more than his fair share of already. Frustrated by his persistence, the cook shoved a bucket full of fish heads at him and told him that was his ration for the rest of the week. The brute glowered, took his bucket, and went above decks to sulk.

Luned found him at the stern of the ship, clumsily hooking a fish head on a tough fishing line. His fingers were covered in gore, and the top of his head was sunburnt. “It’s out there,” she announced.

Flint blinked, looked at her, and then searched the horizon. “What? Where?”

“No,” she said. “I mean, not yet, but I know it’s out there. I can feel it.”

The brute stared at her for a long moment, and then made low, thoughtful noises – not quite muttering to himself, but almost.

“Do you believe me?” Luned said.

“I believe you believe it,” Flint allowed, and then he shook his head. “You don’t need me to believe it.”

“I want you to,” she said.

Flint paused, and then said, “Whether I believe it or not is irrelevant. You believe it, and as long as you do I’ll keep looking for it.”

“Because Bleddyn is paying you?”

He grunted.

“That’s not a word,” Luned said accusingly, and then she mimicked the noise, which brought the ghost of a smile to Flint’s lips.

“Won’t that snap?” she asked, pointing at the line.

“Probably,” Flint signed. “Roberson helped me braid it, but he said the ship is moving too fast for anything to catch it.”

He tossed his fish head overboard anyway, and then he lashed the attached pole to the railing. While he was repeating the process with a second line, Luned was drawn across the deck by the sounds of a commotion below. Muir had nearly the whole crew gathered around him, and had apparently used Luned’s library to create a maze on the deck. Her brother’s nonsense was just intriguing enough to draw her away from Flint’s.

“Why are my books…” she began, and then she didn’t have to go on. The crew had apparently constructed a pair of simple mazes for use in rat races, using rats they’d captured while searching the craft for Aurelianus. They each had a rodent, pairing off amongst themselves and then racing their little champions by tempting them along with pits of cheese stuck on the ends of knives or other tools.

This was amusing for the crew, but nobody was as tickled as Muir himself, who was laughing himself to red-faced breathlessness. Every time a rat was distracted by something other than cheese, he would point and double over. When one rat pushed one of the books over and nearly crushed its opponent, he fell right out of his chair, howling until he was gasping for air.

It was about that time that Aeril stomped out onto the deck shouting, and the crew was collectively shocked into a chaotic jumble, leaping over themselves and scattering the books in their haste to stand at attention, and the rats ran to every corner of the deck in a panic. Only Muir remained in place, struggling futilely to stifle his laughter.

Aeril tossed a cloth bundle to the deck, which unrolled as it struck, and a mass of tins, vials, and needles bounced free and scattered. “H-hey,” Muir said, snickering as he wiped away his tears. “That’s mine.”

“It’s drugs,” Aeril said.

“That’s not mine,” Muir said, valiantly swallowing a snicker.

“It was in your quarters,” Aeril said. “You’re on something right now.”

“No!” Muir said, affecting seriousness. The corners of his mouth were stubbornly ticking upward even as he worked – worked - to frown, and the effort to kill his drug-induced mirth was so intense as to make his face redden ever more.

Flint was descending from the sterncastle carrying a fish half as long as he was tall by its tail. He looked curiously from the drug paraphernalia to Aeril, and then over to Muir. “Get him up,” the captain was saying. “Throw him in the brig.”

“But he’s the first mate,” Roberson said, wide-eyed. “What if we need him?”

There was a moment of silence, and then the crew began to snort, snicker, and sputter, and even Muir himself burst into a fresh peal of mad laughter. Flint couldn’t be sure, but he almost detected the slightest quiver in Aeril’s shoulders as she suppressed her own laughter. “Brig! Now!” she said, once she was sure she was in control of her voice.

Two of the men helped Muir to his feet and escorted him below decks, and Aeril looked about the deck in disgust. “We’re professionals here, and we’re on a job. We’re being paid well, and gods damn it, we’re going to do work deserving of that pay. As far as any man can tell we’re in the middle of an empty sea, and every one of you knows how fast storms kick up, and how easily the elements can swallow up a little boat like ours here. Do you want to drown because the man on the other end of the rope is too high to haul you out of the soup?”

“No ma’am,” the crew muttered.

“Then you put every one of these damn books back in alphabetical order, scrub my deck, and toss every last one of these vermin overboard post-haste, or you join your illustrious first mate in the brig!”

The crew scattered, struggling to catch their rats. One of them ran for dear life for the sterncastle and found itself trapped in the corner. Flint stepped over to it as it tried to climb the sheer wooden walls surrounding it. It cowered, but he never reached for it. He waited until the crew finished tossing the hapless creature’s fellows overboard. When they finished and hurried off carrying Luned’s books back, he stepped aside. The rat ran for cover, and he watched until it escaped below decks.

Only then did he realize Luned had seen the whole thing, and he tensed.

“You caught something,” she said.

“Uh.”

She nodded at his fish.

“Yes,” he said.

[Luned]

By the time Luned deigned to visit her brother, the only other person left down there was Gasper. The quiet man reminded her of a second shadow at times, a constant, silent presence at Muir's side. He leaned against the widespread bars of the small cage, head thick with dark curls drooping as he spoke softly with the prisoner. The scribe wasn't fluent enough in Fallien to understand what Gasper muttered under his breath, but as she entered the hold, discussion ceased. With a polite greeting, the withdrawn man excused himself back to the deck. Luned approached the little cell, arms crossed as she assessed the situation, and like her own shadow, Flint followed.

Muir didn't seem any worse for wear as he sat contentedly on the dirty floor against a large support beam. He wore only his slacks and white, short-sleeved shirt, having been searched thoroughly. His boots, jacket, and belt sat in an unceremonious pile nearby, but well out of his reach.

"It's stupid for you to be sorrier than I am," he teased his glum sister. "Now I can sleep all day and won't get dirty looks about it." Indeed, he saw it as a short vacation from the duties he already sorely neglected.

"I'm not really sorry," Luned said, "But… um, do you think we could have a moment?" She glanced back to Flint with an apologetic smile.

The request caught the brute off-guard, but he readily obliged. She watched gratefully as Flint nodded, turned, and began his ascent up the nearby stairs.

And Muir, sharp as ever, couldn't help himself. "I appreciate a nice ass in leather as much as anyone else, Lune, but for fuck's sake, at least be discreet about it."

She flushed so deeply her face nearly turned purple, and with a scowl she tore her gaze away to settle on the prisoner. Her heart beat in her throat as she listened to Flint continue to climb the stairs without a word, and soon he was gone.

"Don't give me that look," Muir said, crossing his legs. "I'm helping. What are you two, twelve? Quit with the fucking cow eyes and jump his bones, you can thank me later."

Luned pursed her lips and took a slow, deep breath before responding. "I'm not here for advice, Muir. I'm here because I'm worried about you."

"Oh, the rats, you mean? S'fine. Better company than that asshole Roberson, he snores like––"

"No, I mean…" Luned covered her face with a hand and sighed, lowering her voice. "I mean the nephina. What if you go through withdrawal? Maybe I can find just a little to tide you over."

"My self-righteous, goody-two-shoes sister is an enabler? Oh, now that's precious," he grinned, teasing relentlessly. "No, no, I'm fine. I've got some."

The girl looked up, assessing his clothes. "They obviously searched you," she said.

"Not everywhere," Muir said with a smarmy wink, causing his sister's intense blush to pale a few shades.

"Right. Never underestimate an addict," she grimaced, calming her repulsed imagination with more pleasant things like Flint's bu–– books. And tea. Yes… books and tea.

Satisfied with his current predicament, the young man stretched and situated himself more comfortably in his cell. "I really am serious about that nap. Go on, I'm fine."

[Luned]

For the next several hours, Luned holed up in her room to devise ways to avoid Flint. Of course, Muir's mortifying remark only made her anxious because it was true, and that in turn bothered her even more. Soon this trapped the hopeless scribe in a vicious cycle of humiliation and discouragement, and the only thing to bring her out of it was a shout from up on deck.

"Boat ahoy!" hollered Roberson's voice, shrill over the choppy waves.

Considering they hadn't seen another vessel since leaving port, the excitement outweighed any wishes Luned had to avoid anyone. Before she knew it her feet carried her out the door, up the stairs, and straight to the starboard side of the ship, where several other crew members –– including Flint –– already gathered in the mist. In the few hours she spent below deck, the weather turned, and the sun's golden face was nowhere to be seen as clouds heavy with the promise of rain and thunder swarmed the sky. The humidity even suppressed the salt in the air, and in the warm breeze, everything felt sticky.

Aeril stood squinting into a spyglass and watched the looming presence on the horizon, too far and hazy to decipher its identity. "That is alarmingly close for no one to have noticed until now," she criticized.

Roberson sheepishly defended himself, having been on watch. "The fog came quick," he said, adjusting the bandana that covered his head with one hand. "Never seen anythin' like it."

The curious cook interrupted, head barely clearing the side of the boat to inspect the mysterious ship with everyone else. "Can I borrow it?" Blue asked, holding a hand out for the spyglass. Aeril offered it readily, and as soon as the dwarf had it in hand, the climb began to the crow's nest. It was quite a sight to see the stout creature scurry so nimbly with squat limbs, much like a winter-heavy squirrel up a tree, and soon an excellent vantage of the approaching vessel was procured. Intricately braided beard and hair billowed in the wind, pale red brilliant against the overcast clouds. Blue took time to analyze the issue, and after a long moment of suspense, called out. "There's more than one!"

This answer didn't please Aeril, her pale lips pinching into a scowl. "How many?"

"Bless my heart," Blue bellowed over the roar of the sails, caught fiercely in the quickening breeze. "Too many to count!"

The Raiaeran frowned and something in her voice darkened, mirroring the gloomy skies. "Strike the colors, just in case," she commanded Roberson, and the man obliged. "We can not afford a confrontation, but I am hopeful it will not come to that."

Though Luned was grateful for their captain's shrewdness, the elf's calm demeanor didn't help the unsettled feeling in her stomach. She looked to Flint as if searching for some sort of reassurance but, as his expression shifted from concerned to questioning, she regretted it. Feeling the heat return to her cheeks, Luned redirected her gaze to the water. The waves seemed to have come to a low boil, black and frothing without the blue sky to cheer them.

And so they crept forth, some sails cut to slow their pace. It quickly became evident that the fleet was not moving at all, nor did it even classify as one. The array of vessels was hodgepodge and thoroughly decrepit, tattered canvas on many, some with masts bare even of rigging. It was a floating ghost town, at least a dozen lost crafts clustered in this desolate corner of the vast ocean. They rose out of the fog like skeletons, ominous and weary from weather and time.

Rain started. The cool drops drew the sticky moisture from the air, falling light and refreshing, and the crew met the ship graveyard with shivers running down their spines.

"Turn away," Aeril said, her words startling as they rang out in the eerie quiet that had settled over the ship. Something uneasy in her voice betrayed how utterly spooked she was, wavering even as she repeated her command in a harsher tone. "Turn away!" The hand at the wheel didn't respond and she stormed off to handle the situation herself.

Meanwhile, Luned dared to look back to Flint. "What do you think…?" she began, then trailed off when she realized he wasn't listening.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, stern, hazel eyes focused on the specters before them.

Luned frowned. "Hear what?"

[Warpath]

“The song,” Flint muttered. His voice was nearly consumed by the patter of rain on the deck, and Luned had to lean closer.

“What?” she said, but he went on staring out into the fog. “Flint?”

Luned glanced away from Flint, trying to follow his gaze out into the obscurity. She began to turn back to him, but did a double-take when she saw how close they were getting to one of the wrecks. A mast rose naked out of the churning black water, splintered and looking for all the world like a black broken bone, and it seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The scribe turned to look back at the captain, and she felt the first chill of dread crawling up her spine. Something was wrong.

Aeril was shouting into the face of the sailor at the wheel, but the man seemed oblivious – hypnotized – and he was staring out into the fog. “Oh no,” Luned whispered, realizing that Flint’s gaze was turned in the same direction and locked. A quick glance around the deck revealed that the rest of the sailors were similarly afflicted. Roberson stood transfixed with the flag in his hands, still attached to the rope. Another sailor stood next to a discarded mop, leaning over the railing and gazing dreamily into the fog.

“Flint,” Luned said, gently touching his arm.

“Hmm?”

“Flint, look at me, something’s going on.”

The brute muttered.

“Flint!” Luned hesitated, and then reached up with both hands, turning his head with a light touch so that he faced her. He resisted half-heartedly, and even though he looked at her it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere. “I need to know what’s going on, Flint. Something’s wrong.”

He seemed to struggle with something, as if he didn’t have the words to explain a taste or a smell, and then he suddenly looked back out into the fog. “That’s my name,” he muttered. “How…?”

The ship lurched abruptly and the wood groaned from deep within the hold. Flint tore his attention away from the invisible mystery long enough to catch Luned when she stumbled, but when she looked up at him hopefully he immediately turned his attention back out beyond the ship. She scowled at him.

And then there was a shout and the sharp slap of flesh on flesh, and Luned turned away just in time to see the aftermath of Aeril throwing a haymaker into the face of her steersman. The sailor went down hard and the wheel went spinning, but the elf caught it and spun it hard in the opposite direction. The ship leaned, and a fresh gust dragged them away from the wreck nearest them.

“I need eyes!” Aeril shouted over the drone of rain and the creak of wood and…something else.

“Sandbar!” a voice hollered from above. It was Blue, skittering ever-higher into the rigging. “Swing portside hard, there’s a sandbar!”

“Keep talking!” Aeril shouted back, more furious than any storm. The sailor she decked was crawling past her, dragging himself up to look out into the fog and the mist and the rain.

Luned’s heart thundered in her chest and her breathing went shallow, and she rushed to the port side and looked straight down. The froth and the foam and the churning black were alarming, but the glimpses of white sand far beneath were far more so. “Even out!” she shrieked. “Turn right! Er, starboard!”

To her credit, Aeril let the wheel spin with practiced ease without hesitation or question, brow furrowed. Luned tensed as she heard grinding from the base of the ship, but it only lasted for an instant.

“No!” Roberson screamed desperately. “No you’re turning the wrong way! They’re the other way, turn back!”

“Belay that!” Blue shouted. “Do not turn back!”

“Turn back!” another sailor shouted. “Turn us back!”

“Shut up!” Aeril shouted viciously, but the sailors continued hollering, pointing. “Be quiet!”

Roberson was climbing up onto the railing now, slipping once or twice and falling back to the deck and Luned ran over to him. He had nearly a foot on her, but she grabbed hold of his belt from the back and pulled with all her might and they fell to the deck together sprawling. The scribe crawled to her feet again and looked up, shocked to see the man weeping.

“I’m trying,” he said, covering his ears. “I’m trying, I’m trying!”

Somewhere hidden behind the veil of rain, someone was singing.

[Warpath]

Flint felt the rain and the cold, and he was aware of the shouts and the chaos surrounding him, but none of it seemed even remotely important. He heard a song echoing from somewhere, and there was nothing he wanted in the world more than to listen, to hear it better, to feel the emotion it exalted. It stirred long-dormant memories in him, triggering flashes of faces and places, people loved and long forgotten. Didn’t his mother once sing this song? But no, it was only similar.

He felt like he was forgetting something imperative, but no – the song soothed him, pushing down all worry – what could be more important than this? There was someone out there, someone who knew him and accepted him wholly and without reserve, someone who did not, could not fear him. He was being welcomed, and at last he could rest. She was out there in the mist, arms held open just for him, and he could collapse against her and rest, finally rest. She would take his burden from his shoulders. She promised it.

“Rauk,” she sang.

“That’s my name,” he said, feeling a wash of unease. Nobody knew his name. “How do you know my name?”

“Rauk,” she sang, chiding. “I know you. I accept you. I need you. I will waste away without you.”

No! He could not allow that. That would be the saddest possible thing, perhaps the worst thing to happen, not just to him or to her but to anyone ever – literally the most tragic event in known history come or gone. How could anyone abandon someone so perfect to languish? If he failed to listen now it would be a crime against all things right, and the spite he would earn from the whole world would crush him absolutely, and he would deserve it.

“Rauk,” she wailed somewhere out there, and he could almost envision her, bright eyes glistening with tears, hands clutched to her heart. “Rauk, you’re turning away from me, come back!”

He growled. Something was wrong about this. Where was Luned?

“Rauk, don’t leave me!”

“Turn back!” someone was shouting, and that seemed like the best idea. He needed time to think, to figure this puzzle out, and the best way to do that was to get back to his mysterious love. If he just saved her first, he would have time to figure everything else out. She was still too far, they needed to steer the ship into that mass of wrecks, it was worth all risk.

But where was Luned?

The ship lurched and his lover’s song turned desperate. He could not leave her, not like this. It was better to face abandonment with her than to leave her alone out here in the middle of the ocean with no hope.

He took a step, and hesitated. He would certainly die if he jumped overboard. What could there be out here?

“I am here, Rauk,” she sang. “I am. Please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me the way they left you. I’m so cold Rauk, so cold.”

He took another step and swayed. Luned was in front of him, pushing her hands against his chest. She was shouting, but he couldn’t make out the words. He looked into her eyes and hesitated, letting her push him a step back, and then another. She was panicked, her hair plastered to her cheeks. What was she saying?

“They are jealous of us, Rauk,” the lover sang. “Rauk don’t listen. They mock you, don’t you remember? You are not one of them. They will never welcome you. They can never love you, but I can. I love you with everything I have already, and my love can only grow. Don’t you love me, Rauk?”

Of course he did. She loved him, and he would turn her away? The thought made him want to weep.

He took a step forward, and Luned’s bare feet slid backward across the deck though she braced herself. She put her shoulder against his chest and pushed, but he wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t let her stop him.

He had to swim to her. He had to.

[Warpath]

Flint was getting dangerously close to the side of the ship, and Luned was having no success stopping him. She tried everything, and though he didn’t overtly struggle against her, he did not stop coming. Of course he was strong, the scribe never doubted that, but she was disturbed at how strong he could be. It seemed improbable that he could play the juggernaut so effectively if not for the mysterious charm he was under, and yet she saw no way to track the enchanter or interrupt the spell. She was losing him.

And then there was a rush of color and flying red hair, and three bodies went tumbling to the deck: Blue, leaping dramatically to the rescue from the rigging. The cook was up before the rest of them, charging another sailor in the process of climbing the railing. Luned felt her heart drop when she realized how many of them were spellbound, and how close that number was to casting themselves into the sea.

And then she realized she wasn’t one of them, nor was Aeril, nor Blue – why? What was the common denominator? Her mind worked fast, playing through the myriad possibilities with astounding mental grace, and she always came back to the same word: siren.

The sailors of Corone were well-known for their legends and superstitions. Every ship that came back did so with unsubstantiated rumors and tall tales about alien weather or incredible feats of daring or sea monsters beyond all imagining – impossible things. Some told stories about merlings: a sentient people of the sea, somewhere between man and fish, and among those tales of wonder were more of a darker sort. It was said that the merlings had their own witches and wizards, malefic creatures that used their song magic to ensnare the hearts and minds of men.

Only men.

Luned looked to Blue as the cook dragged a sailor across the deck by the back of his shirt, and her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said, realizing for the first time. “Oh!”

How little they knew of dwarves. She wanted to wrack her memory to make sure she’d made no social faux pas by assuming the dwarf’s sex, but there wasn’t time. Flint suddenly sat up, going from lying prone to sitting upright in one instant, smooth motion. He seemed confused for an instant, listening to that distant song, and Luned capitalized. She ran at him full speed and leapt at him, intent on tackling him back down to the deck. Their bodies collided, most of her weight striking his shoulder, and he grunted and turned as he went down.

“Oww,” Luned said, and her heart dropped when she looked over and saw Flint already crawling to his feet again.

He marched determinedly, eyes locked on some distant point in the misty cloud. She grabbed hold of his belt from behind and tried to brace herself, but her feet slid on the water gathering on the deck. The rain was coming sideways and the ship rocked, dipping into tremendous sprays as Aeril navigated the forest of shipwrecks blind. How could they hope to survive this?

Flint would have told her that they owned the fear, that he was fear, but their enemies were stealing him, and with him went all hope for Luned. He had one hand on the banister, and when she yelled his name he hesitated for only a fraction of a second. He tensed, ready to spring overboard.

“Help!” Luned shrieked, knowing it was already too late.

And then a thick arm wrapped around Flint’s neck and pulled, hoisting him up off of his feet and dragging him backward. Luned stumbled away, blinking in disbelief at the brawny figure obscured behind sheets of rain, until he shouted at her.

“Gaspar?” she said. “Gaspar how…?”

“Muir!” the Fallienman screamed at her, and then he launched into a rush of Fallieni she could not hope to decipher, struggling as Flint began to fight back.

Muir!

Luned took the stairs onto the sterncastle two at a time, and Aeril barely spared her a glance. The elf’s face was screwed up in harsh determination, and she was squinting desperately into the wind and the rain. For a moment, the scribe was struck by the heroic figure she cast, the dauntless captain standing defiant before the storm.

“We need Muir!” Luned shouted. “Give me the key to his cell!”

“No!” Aeril barked. “That man is in the brig for a reason, Miss Bleddyn, and that’s where he’s going to stay!”

“What?! Captain we need his help!”

“We need no help from the likes of him,” Aeril said. “We’re safer with him locked up, and he’s safer below decks. The answer is no, Luned, now get your ass back on deck and make yourself useful before I let the waves take you!”

Luned scowled at the fierce elf for a moment of doubt, and then ran at her. Aeril widened her eyes and tightened her grip on the wheel, but Luned danced around behind her and quickly began searching her belt and her pockets.

“You sodden bilge-swilling mad sack of – what are you doing?! Stop!”

“Ha!” Luned fished a small ring of keys from the elf’s pocket, prompting Aeril to grab at her one-handed, but Luned was already ducking away with her prize. Once she was out of reach there was nothing Aeril could do – the wheel could not go unattended.

Luned rushed back down the stairs, nearly slipping on the last step, and she stopped only an instant when she saw Gaspar wrestling with Flint. Their struggle was getting alarmingly close to the side of the ship again. He shouted something in Fallieni and she could translate on tone alone: “Hurry!”

She hurried.

[Warpath]

Muir was standing alert in the brig, hands wrapped around the bars of his cell, which was now suffering a minor flood. While it was doubtful that he was sober, his eyes were wide and alert, and as Luned approached he tensed and peppered her with questions.

“Luned what the hell is going on up there? Where is Gaspar? Do you have the key? Are we sinking?”

“Shush!” Luned said, fumbling at the ring for the key she saw the captain use when she locked him away. She paused. “Do you hear anything weird?”

“What?!”

“Muir, shut up, look at me, and focus,” she said harshly, emphasizing each word. “Answer the question: do you hear anything. Do you hear a song.”

“Luned what the hell are you talking about? A song? Where the fuck is Gaspar?”

“Muir! Do you hear it?!”

“No! No, Luned, I don’t hear a fucking song, just a lot of screaming now will you please fucking tell me what’s going on and where Gaspar is?”

“He’s above,” Luned said, working on unlocking the cell. “Everybody’s under some kind of spell – all the men – they’re all trying to jump overboard. Aeril is steering the ship, Gaspar and Blue are trying to keep people from killing themselves, and we’re in the middle of a storm.”

“Hurry up, hurry up,” Muir said. “All the men? Wait wait, stop, all the men? Maybe you shouldn’t let me out.”

Luned shook her head. “I don’t know, Muir, gods dammit I need help. Gaspar was fine the last time I saw him, I don’t underst…”

She paused, looking up at her brother and realization dawned on her face. “Oh,” she said. “Oh for gods’ sake, is there anything I didn’t miss?”

Muir searched her face, confused for a long moment, and then he realized what she’d only just now realized, and for the first time in years she saw him flustered.

“Come on,” she said, yanking the cell door open.

Deep inside, she was actually a tiny bit relieved that Flint was trying to kill himself, now.

[Warpath]

Gaspar was getting tired, but Flint wasn’t. A goddess was in his corner egging him on, begging him not to let her fall from grace, and Gaspar was trying to stop a grumpy thug from ridding the world of himself. One of them just wanted it more.

When Muir and Luned surged back up on deck, they immediately piled onto the brute, which was encouraging for a few seconds, and then Flint lifted the three of them and resumed his steady march to the sea, growling.

“Oh, fuck this,” Muir said, dropping back to the deck and running off again. Luned yelled after him, but he didn’t stop.

Blue reappeared to take his place, taking a running start before leaping in an attempt to tackle the man to the deck, but she just bounced off of him. He was beginning to lash out at them now, shoving Gaspar aside and shaking Luned off of his arm. What willpower he had to resist the siren was fading. It was one thing to prevent him from walking, but to fight him without hurting him would be completely different.

“No no no,” Luned hissed, beginning to lose sight of any hope.

Flint sent Gaspar to the deck with a harsh backhand, desperation in his eyes now, and Muir reappeared with a coil of rope draped over his shoulders, cursing violently. The pirate threw a punch, but Flint caught it and squeezed, and Muir dropped to one knee muttering “ow” and “ouch” alternately. Gaspar came to his rescue this time, shoving Flint away and pulling the coil from Muir’s shoulders.

“Blue! Roberson!” Muir shouted, and Blue hurried off to stop the young seaman from casting himself overboard.

In the meantime, Gaspar wrapped a length of rope around Flint’s shoulders while the brute marched, winding it across his torso and around his waist, and then the Fallienman tossed the other end to Muir, who was already jogging toward one of the masts.

“Flint!” Luned shrieked as he finally jumped overboard, and she ran to the side and looked over, and Gaspar looked down with her.

The brute was hanging from the rope forlornly, kicking and wiggling futilely. A wave battered him against the side of the ship, but when it dropped away again he was still there, waterlogged and miserable but alive. Luned whipped around just in time to see Muir finish tying the other end of the rope to the mast.

“More rope!” Muir shouted over the thunder of waves and the grinding scream of sand raking the belly of the ship.

One by one, the four of them subdued their hypnotized fellows and then secured them with rope. By the time they ran out of rope things were more manageable, and Gaspar and Muir dragged the remaining men down to the brig where they locked them in.

Then the four of them stood on deck looking to one another panting, and the question went unasked between them: what do we do now?

“Eyes port!” Aeril shouted from the sterncastle. “Ahead! Blue, I need eyes!”

Blue ran for the rigging without question, but Muir, Gaspar, and Luned turned forward and let their hearts sink.

A tremendous, half-rotted capital ship loomed before them. Its deck was potted with holes and its sails were tattered away, and it was so large that there was no doubt that it had come from some unknown nation leagues from any place they knew, and yet it floated, riding the waves as if it could subdue them with its bulk.

“Straight on!” Blue shouted from the rigging. “Sandbar directly starboard! You must stay straight on!”

Luned felt her shoulders drop.

They had a choice: run aground, or collide with a ghost ship.

[Warpath]

They gathered their afflicted crewmates as far back from the front of the ship as they could, all but Flint who struggled on the rope and swung at them when they tried to pull him back on board, and when there was no time left they abandoned him and dragged Luned up onto the sterncastle. The ghost ship bared down on them, perched on a wave, wreathed in fog and rain, and lightning flashed in the black mist above them. They were breathing hard because the air seemed more water than oxygen, and thunder roared so monstrously that the boards vibrated beneath their feet.

Aeril let the wheel spin, caught it, and smiled. Her eyes were steel-hard behind a half-veil of short wet hair. She howled into the face of the squall, and Luned pressed her back against the walls rising above the sterncastle, bracing herself. Muir and Gaspar shared a long look, and Blue was tying her wrists to the rigging, and slipping her ankle through a square of empty space in the ropes. It seemed wise to pray.

The nose of the ship dipped hard as the sea dropped away, and the ghost ship hauled itself upward, dominating the sky as if to swallow them whole. Aeril lunged, sending the wheel spinning at a hundred rotations a second, and the front of the ship leaned away at the last possible second. An eternity passed, moments stretching into centuries where the only sounds were the rain and one’s heart beating, and the rain became illimitable shimmering droplets in Luned’s perception, all suspended in the night sky.

And then wood struck wood, and the ship jerked hard. A chorus of shouts went up, and chaos ruled for the briefest moment: Luned went sliding across the sterncastle, rolling and tumbling, and Gaspar joined her, kicking up a small wave as he slid across the flooded boards of the deck. Muir was tossed into the air entirely, tumbling head over feet, and he landed with a sharp wheeze. Aeril went headfirst over the wheel, which went spinning without her. Overhead, Blue was shaken like a spider in her web, but the rigging held strong.

The ships grinded along, side by side, the waves throwing them together, but each held strong. The ghost ship was too big to fail completely, but her boards were rotted, and so they crumpled where their ship only scratched. Splinters and shards sprayed everywhere, raining down like a hundred thousand daggers dancing. The noise was incredible; harsh enough to cause pain, and it was like two giants screaming from deep within the earth.

And then the sea carried the ghost ship up and slowly, so slowly away from them. They’d clashed, and the goliath was the one sent reeling and bloodied. Aeril was on her feet again, limping but whole, and she stopped the wheel from spinning and set the course straight again. Luned couldn’t tear her eyes from the ghost ship – they’d come so close – and now she realized there were people moving on the deck.

Moving the way her own crew had been moving, moments before – a crew of dreamers. As the goliath lurched in slow motion she saw them, dozens of them, all turning to look at a single pale figure. A piercing shriek rose up over every other sound, and someone leapt from the ghost ship to theirs, impossibly fast and lithe.

And then Luned lost sight of it, and her blood ran cold.

There was a siren on board their ship.

[Warpath]

“Shit! Shit!”

Luned ran, and Muir groaned as he crawled to his feet. “What?” he said.

She was desperately peering over the side of the ship – the side that collided with the ghost ship.

The side Flint was suspended on.

“Oh shit,” Muir said, running after her before he was fully on his feet again. Gaspar was right behind him, but a little less panicked. Rather than peer over the edge, he followed the rope from the mast, took hold of it, and began to pull. He shouted in Fallieni, and Muir darted over to help.

“He’s still there!” Luned said. “Oh gods, he’s not moving.”

“Muir!” Gaspar shouted suddenly, and the pirate glanced back just in time to dodge the knife being swung at him.

“You can’t hurt her,” Roberson said, seething. “I won’t let anybody hurt her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Muir said, holding his hands out.

“You shut up,” Roberson hissed, brandishing the knife. “I’ll cut your pretty face right off.”

“You think I’m pretty?” Muir said.

“Muir,” Gaspar said tersely.

“It’s fine, relax,” Muir said dismissively. “He’s just…hey, have you been in my stash?”

Roberson slashed wildly and Muir danced away from him again with a shout.

“He’s not on drugs,” Luned said tensely. “The siren’s got him. She must have cut him loose. Don’t hurt him.”

“The what?” Muir said.

Roberson suddenly turned his attention to Luned, gasping. “You wouldn’t dare. How could…I thought you were my friend. Oh gods, you…I won’t let you.”

The afflicted sailor lunged for the rope holding Flint and began to saw at it, and Luned shouted. Gaspar tackled him to the deck and they struggled for the knife, and as the Fallienman began overpowering him Roberson began to scream, desperate tears running down his cheeks.

And then an earsplitting shriek was raised, and everybody turned their attention to the opposite side of the ship. Muir had found where the siren was hiding, clutching the side of the ship, and he was now hauling her lithe form up onto the deck. They struggled briefly, the sea monster and the pirate, before he got hold of a loose plank of debris from the ghost ship and broke it over her head. She flopped to the deck, out cold, and Roberson went quiet.

Everything went quiet - all the cacophonous noise they hadn't realized had been there all along until it was gone - all but the rain and the waves and the normal creak of the ship.

It was over.

[Warpath]

Roberson lay still on the deck, looking dazed. “Are you okay?” Luned said.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, it was just…it was so beautiful. I had to listen to her. I had to.”

“It’s okay,” Luned said, speaking to him but watching as Muir and Gaspar finished hoisting Flint up.

His hand reached up suddenly and gripped the edge of the railing and she let out a massive sigh of relief, sitting herself down on the deck heavily, ignoring the ubiquitous puddles beneath her. She leaned back against the mast and watched, exhausted, as Flint crawled back onto the ship with Muir and Gaspar’s help.

His gaze was clear and hard again, and it flicked from Luned to Roberson, and then over to the still form of the siren. Despite having a relatively short stride he crossed the deck fast, and had his boot raised, ready to bring it down on the siren’s head over and over until she was well and truly dead.

“Stop!” Aeril shouted. “No.”

Flint growled, but set his boot back down obediently.

“She’s our prisoner now,” Aeril said, “and I have some questions for her. Get her down to the brig and secure her, then get my crew untied. It’s a good thing there are two of you immune to her, because you’ll be joining her there.”

The captain was looking pointedly and directly at Luned.

[Luned]

"If you sing, I'll gut you like a fish," Muir warned the siren as she huddled in the back corner of the swampy brig. She belonged there, slimy as the waterlogged floorboards, her presence dark as the dank belly of the ship. Even after escaping the clutches of the ghastly graveyard, the weather failed to improve, and the small collective rattled about in the hold as the vessel lurched through wave after wave. Muir equipped himself with his glaive, the lethal blade poised between the bars of the cell with a menacing glint of steel. For once, he was not kidding.

The creature was beautiful and gruesome at the same time. From the corner of one's eye she might have been an angel, but straight on and without song to fool the senses, her affinity with the sea became clear. Nothing but the ocean's imitation of a woman, her curves glistened with opalescent scales, a hanging weaving of algae and seaweed donned over her shoulders in cruel mockery of hair. Her eyes were large, round, and utterly black, the lack of pupils disconcerting. She hunched in the water on the floor, watching her captors with fear as they stared back. Even her limbs mocked them, curled about herself with a hint of elbow or knee, but their natural curve and fluidity of movement reminded Luned of tentacles.

Her skin crawled just thinking about it, but she swallowed her horror and cleared her throat. Flint's mantra of fear had been a foreign concept but she saw it now, truly, for the first time. Today, Luned was fear. The siren trembled with terror, utterly at their mercy, but even that wasn't human; she shivered and lurched like an eel caught in a net. "We won't hurt you if you cooperate," the scribe said.

"Fucking hell we won't," Muir spat, his blade lurching into the cage as a wave caused him to stumble. The siren made a strange, panicked gargling noise, perhaps the closest she could muster to a scream.

With a calming hand, Aeril waved off Muir, then stepped up to the brig. She nearly had to bend under the short ceiling of the hold, her strong figure imposing over their hostage. "We are looking for something," she said, no hint of compassion in her voice, eyes unblinking under her dripping hair. "If you help us find it, we will free you. If you do not, you are dead. If you mislead us, you are also dead."

"Blue's a fantastic chef, she can make anything edible," Muir added, "Even refuse. Don't they say the flesh of a siren grants immortality?"

"You're thinking of mermaids," Luned corrected him, glancing sidelong.

He sighed, exasperated. "Well, shit."

Aeril allowed their digression, surprisingly, before continuing her threat. "Do we have a deal?"

The siren stared, mouth agape to reveal her bottom row of impossibly small, razor-sharp teeth. They glittered like pearls behind blue-tinged lips. And then, finally, she spoke. "Perhaps," she gargled in a surreal imitation of human speech, a mockery of human communication. She formed decipherable words in Tradespeak, but through muscles obviously unintended for human language. "What is it you seek?"

"It can take many forms, not necessarily the expected. It should be quite close. You may have noticed something… different, perhaps, in the vicinity." Aeril's gaze remained stern as she watched the creature for a reaction.

"No… no. I cannot," the siren gasped. "We cannot go."

Aeril's face pinched. "Why not?"

The abomination merely shook her head, stubbornness briefly overcoming her terror –– at least until Aeril ordered Muir to take care of her. He jabbed at her through the bars, nicking her arm, and that time, she truly did scream. It was a horrific, blood-curdling sound, raw and utterly inhuman. She didn't even try to maintain the charade as she squeezed webbed fingers over the gash in her arm, clear blood running in shining streams over her flesh. After the scream she wailed, rocking and slithering and twisting in on herself, the sudden burst of emotion the only thing to humanize her monstrous visage.

Luned felt sick to her stomach and looked to Muir, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as if they might keep the sharp pang of empathy at bay. It didn't help.

Her brother shook his head with a knowing glance as Aeril interrupted. "You may have a moment to make your decision. Luned, Muir, watch her." And, with that, she stomped up the stairs to tend to the crew who still battled the storm on deck.

The siblings watched on in silence for what felt like a very long time, Luned's wide eyes transfixed on the siren as she coddled her wounded limb. It laid loose against her, hand splayed on the floor, the arm bending in a fluid twist where the bones of the forearm should have been. Morbid fascination and disgust consumed her attention, every jostled movement of the creature inciting a cringe as the swaying ship rocked them in the tight arms of the hold.

In time, however, the creature relaxed somewhat. Her posture slackened against the corner bars and she all but forgot about the wound, her form sinking deeper into the sloshing, ankle-deep water. More continued to spill down the steps from above.

"Muir…" Luned spoke up, barely in a whisper. "You didn't… is that sugar glass?"

A cheeky grin stole across his face.

"You drugged her," Luned deduced, suppressing an astonished laugh. "Will it work?"

Muir shrugged, then approached the brig. "Wakey wakey, toots," he said, kicking at the water to splash the siren's prone form. "You giving us directions or not?"

She looked up slowly, the change in her face evidence of resignation to her fate. "And I will be free?"

Still, her strange voice made Luned shudder, but Muir took it in stride. "Yes," he confirmed.

That was enough for the abomination. "I cannot see," she gargled. "I need the air."

In silent commiseration, the siblings nodded to one another, and Luned left to fetch the captain.

[Luned]

Soon the siren, bound and compliant thanks to a modest dose of nephina, rose into the fresh air once again. Something reminiscent of a smile teased her sharky little mouth, and as Gasper propped her upright against the foremast, Luned grimaced.

Flint had worked with the crew to maintain the safety of the ship during the strange intermission, but when the hostage resurfaced, he paused. While Aeril interrogated the siren he stepped aside with Luned, who clung to the rigging so the rushing waves wouldn't sweep her off her feet.

"Are you alright?" she asked him, wiping some hair from her face.

He nodded, bracing himself on the rope as well. Dangling over the side of the ship surely earned him some bruises, but it was nothing compared to the state he would have been in if they hadn't put a leash on him. "Thank you for making sure I didn't do anything stupid."

"Don't thank me," Luned said into the wind, shielding her face against the salty spray ineffectually with an arm. "Gasper, Muir, Blue –– Aeril, too –– they saved everyone."

At this point their captain seemed satisfied with the information the siren provided and she gave Muir and Gasper orders to keep her under close watch, her prison in the brig traded for the tight grasp of two strong men. The creature remained quiet, her gaze focused pensively on a singular spot on the shadowy horizon.

Luned couldn't help but watch the abomination in eerie fascination, and her brief lapse in concentration did her in. The ship soared over a particularly large swell and crashed down hard on the port side, a rush of water pouring over the railing and knocking the scribe off her feet. The wave would have swept her down the deck if Flint didn't grab her arm.

Aeril saw everything and lashed out. "Get downstairs," she ordered Luned as she stalked back to the quarterdeck to take the wheel.

"But––"

"Don't be an idiot, Lune," Muir hollered over the crackle of straining sails, some restored to put them back on course. It was his usual insult, but it was multi-purpose and, ultimately, effective.

With a dark frown, the scribe cooperated at a creeping pace, going from obstacle to obstacle to maintain steady footing. Flint followed to make sure she succeeded, and at the door, she turned to look at him. "I just want to help," she said, brow furrowed.

"You can help by not getting hurt," he said, and then Roberson called his name for help with something, the man's voice nearly carried away in the wind. Flint turned to go.

"Be careful," Luned shouted after him before climbing down into purgatory.

[Luned]

Things went from bad to worse on deck, the poor weather only a precursor to the true storm. The sky turned nearly black, the seascape illuminated by shockingly bright crackles of lightning that flashed on the horizon, gusts punctuated by echoing booms that raged in the distance. It was a living nightmare.

Flint had never been a sailor, but between his recent practice and the current predicament, he certainly felt one now. He earned the gratitude of the rest of the crew alongside Gasper as they pitched in, learning as they went, proving themselves capable allies in one of the most menacing faces of nature.

Muir had been left alone to handle the siren when Gasper's help was needed, a situation he handled expertly for a short while, but the tables turned as the creature's high waned. Even a monster borne of the sea felt unsafe.

"It is here," she said, her strange vocal cords struggling to be heard over the blustering storm. "Set me free!"

"Here?" Muir said, bracing himself against the mast where she was bound. "You're staying right the fuck here until we find it and know we have it."

"Free me!" the siren wailed, struggling against the rope that kept her secure against the support. Her voice was shrill and she threw her head back against the wood, her hair-like veil of plant life slipping away. Her naked head glistened in the fierce rain, the strange scales that studded her skin catching the flashing light like jewels.

"Not yet!" Muir argued back, and just as he spoke, the surface of the water behind him shifted and rose in an unnatural shape. Blue shouted something from up high but he missed it, caught in a rush as the siren began to sing. He unleashed a fist across her jaw, quickly shutting her up, and his knuckles bled from where they caught her vicious little teeth.

His success was short-lived. The abomination's body changed, dropping its imitation of human limbs, and like writhing snakes her arms and legs freed themselves from their binding. Even her torso lacked expected human structure, twisting unnaturally to shrug off the rope. Without the attention of the rest of the crew and with a sobering mind, she wriggled from her bonds, impeded only temporarily by Muir's effort to strike her down. It was difficult to fight on deck as it swayed, water constantly threatening stability, and he had never faced a true monster before; she had the upper hand in nearly every way.

Flint was busy with tightening some lines when Blue hollered again from above. "Tie down," she screamed, then again with more urgency, "Wave!"

The brute immediately checked the leash at his waist, a loop of rope secured tightly to the rigging, and braced himself. Just as he did so he glanced down the deck to see Muir in his struggle, losing quickly against the siren; she slithered over him, limbs grasping him in curling tentacles, choking his arms into uselessness as they wrestled across the boards.

And then the wave came, and it was too late.

[Luned]

"Man overboard!"

Not many words reached the cabin in a decipherable manner, but those did. Within seconds Luned ran to the bottom of the stairs, the last of the great wave rushing down the steps and into the hold, and she hung onto the railing at the landing as she looked up at the door. She froze there, uncertain. She could potentially help –– it was a long shot, but if revert saved Resolve before –– or would she only get in the way?

Before she decided what to do, the door at the top of the stairs opened to reveal Flint's distinct silhouette. Coughing still seized him as he dispelled the rest of the salt water from his lungs, but that didn't stop him from checking on the scribe. He knew she would be tempted to do something very, very stupid if she'd heard. And, from the look on her face, he knew she had.

In turn, waiting had been torture, and Flint's sullen expression was not what she wanted to see. "Who?" Luned asked, voice trembling.

The brute struggled to put the words together, so he didn't. "Just stay there."

"Who was it? Flint, tell me," she pleaded. His mouth opened but he couldn't bring himself to elaborate, and she immediately knew why. "… Muir?"

His silence was his answer.

The scribe let loose a string of curses and barreled up the stairs. Flint's breadth blocked the door and he attempted to contain her, knowing it wasn't safe. "Let me through," Luned said as she tried to pass, "I can help!" Her struggle proved futile as Flint truly was an immovable force, his bulk holding steady against her pulls and shoves. He certainly wasn't going to let her join her brother. "Move!"

The ship lurched and Luned teetered back dangerously at the edge of the steps, inciting Flint to reach out and grab hold of her arm to steady her. It was her opening, and before he knew it, she dodged by and yanked herself from his grasp. She flew across the deck to the foremast with the same suicidal determination that nearly killed them both in Ettermire's sewers, the gusts and waves nothing as she ran blindly forward.

Aeril didn't miss a thing; she'd seen Muir go and certainly didn't want to see her employer's proxy go with him. She shouted viciously over the wind from the sterncastle. "Someone get her below deck now!"

The scribe soon reached the foremast and clung to it, then sunk to her knees in an effort to keep steady. Pen in hand, she began writing something on her arm. The ink ran rivers in the rain, but it didn't matter; it was the sentiment that cast it, not the marks themselves. She didn't trust herself to cast without the ritual like she had with Aurelius, not when it was so incredibly important––

And suddenly Flint was there. He pulled her to her feet and she tried to wrestle from his grip yet again, refusing his help. "Wait! I can fix it," she said desperately, struggling to finish the last character. She did, and for a moment Flint humored her, trusting her words. Nothing happened.

Another shout from the captain reached them through the noise. "Get her below deck!"

"No," Luned argued, raising her pen to cast again. "No, it worked with Resolve (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25090-Relics-and-Ruins&p=205383&viewfull=1#post205383), I just––"

A wave surged over the side of the ship and, yet again, she depended on Flint to keep her miserable self from being tossed across the deck. It was hopeless. She was hopeless. "Luned," Flint urged, "Come on."

The girl didn't seem convinced as she allowed him to herd her back, constantly checking over her shoulder as if Muir might suddenly appear again.

He didn't.

[Luned]

Flint managed to coax her all the way to the cabins, the slightly elevated floor there mercifully dry –– not that it mattered, seeing as they were both soaked to the bone. The girl had been silent as the reality of the situation sunk in, but as her friend ushered her into her room, it finally hit.

"It's my fault," she muttered, eyes wide in the near darkness. Ocean threatened to burst into her room through her tiny window, some remnants of waves trickling in around the steadfast frame and weeping down the wall. The bare bed frame cast skeletal shadows across the floor where she stared blankly, polluted by the growing puddle collecting on the wood. Its black surface rippled and shone in shining streams as the vessel swayed.

Flint frowned, torn. The event distressed him, as well, and as much as he wanted to comfort Luned, the storm still raged outside. The crew needed his help, and somewhere, his subconscious begged for distraction. "No, it isn't," he said, at a loss.

"But he only came here because I asked him," she said, beginning to break down. Blame was a natural stage of grieving, after all, and easier than dealing with the rest of her muddy thoughts. She couldn't even begin to consider how she would tell Resolve, their parents… "If I was up there when it happened, maybe…"

Poorly equipped in the skills required to comfort someone, Flint racked his brain for the right thing to say. It proved quite difficult, his own emotional state more compromised than he would have expected. After all, he was intimately familiar with death, having seen and caused his fair share in his short time; this only laid testament to the fact that allowing himself to enjoy a sense of community only bred weakness. Even for a conclusion so negative, he had mixed feelings; though Luned lost a brother, he'd lost a friend.

It was too late for words as the first of many sobs shook the girl's shoulders, signaling the end of coherent conversation. Flint briefly considered leaving, but before he could act on it, the weeping girl latched onto him and there was no hope of escape. She buried her face in his shirt and, in cautious response, Flint rested a tentative hand to rest on her shoulder.

That was all it took to diminish her last bit of composure and she lost it, her arms wrapping around his neck in a desperate vise. "Why didn't it work?" she asked no one, then lost the ability to speak for a long moment as her sobs muffled against his shoulder. With nothing else to do, Flint maintained a steady hand on her back and held them upright as the ship lurched and rolled. She leaned heavily against him, all her strength in her sorrow, and the salt of her tears mingled with the sea in his shirt as she refused to let go.

Minutes passed, and as they did, the girl began to calm. The change in the air and their stillness invited a chill, and Flint took the opportunity to redirect her attention. "You should get dry," he said, voice low. "I need to go help."

"No," Luned choked stubbornly, renewing her despairing hold on him. "Don't go. I can't…" She failed to finish, words catching in her throat.

The brute frowned anew and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight. He held her for a long time.

[Warpath]

The civilized races have words for the ocean – concepts they can grasp. They call it vast, and bottomless. They throw around words like abyss. They talk about the crushing deep and take its cold emptiness as a matter of course, a fact, an incomprehensible notion reduced down to a graspable, bite-sized conception.

They don’t know how big the ocean is, because only drowned men understand the sea.

Muir was one of them now, suspended in the murky dark, knowing for the first time what it was to actually be alone. In every direction he turned there was nothing but endless salty green. Lightning flashed furiously, illuminating the abyss in strobe-light bursts, but he could not tell which way was up and which down. He felt fear, cold and profound, and his chest felt empty though he held his breath. He wanted to hyperventilate. He wanted to scream. He held it in until he felt like he was going to burst, because if he let it out the sea would rush in to claim him inside and out.

And then he saw something moving and foolishly he felt hope, but his heart soon dropped. It was moving fast, directly at him, and though it was capable of mocking one, this was no person. The siren’s inhuman face was twisted up in rage, or maybe that’s how she actually looked when she wasn’t playing scared and coy, her blue lips pulled back so taut that they ceased to exist, and her sheer white gums bristled with thousands of long needle-teeth. It was a mouth too full of teeth and as she swam, lashing this way and that like a snake, she worked her jaw ominously.

Muir braced himself, but there was no preparing. He tried to grapple her but her skin was oily, so catching the slick fluidity of her limbs was no different from trying to catch a handful of water. She slithered over him, sinking her teeth in his shoulder and his forearms, her limbs everywhere, tangling him up, working in underneath his coat and his shirt, gripping his throat and his underarms and his fingers, pulling his legs to unnatural angles. His blood swirled in the water around them, and the more he struggled to shove her away, the more his lungs burned in his chest.

He wondered, in some lucid corner of his brain, what he would die from first: drowning, or blood loss, or of being eaten alive.

And then she suddenly stopped, and shoved him away from her, and he saw the briefest glimpse of her face and realized the fear hadn’t been an act because there it was again, only rawer, more primal. If she could pale, he imagined she would have. She opened her mouth and screamed, and it was the clearest, purest scream he’d ever heard or would ever hear again. Even through the water, the sound rang high and terrible, and he felt his heart soar with sympathy despite the fact that she’d been murdering him.

She darted away from him, screaming again and again, flicking this way and that, chased by a cloud of bubbles. He wondered, and then he felt something: a pressure, a change, a crushing force. If he’d been in the air his hair would have stood on end, he would have called it electricity. Down here it was just dread.

The siren went on fleeing, and then Muir saw a darkness move through the water below him. It was as if the deepest void had a sentience, and broke off some part of itself and sent it up. It was like seeing a mountain glide with the grace of a sparrow, there it was and there it went, disappearing. The siren stopped, let out a perfect shriek of despair, and then scrambled back through the water toward Muir. The green murk flashed around her, changing her from eely silhouette to alien woman and back again. She had no enchantments to weave on him except for natural compassion shared between two doomed people, and he desperately wanted to save her. He almost held his arms out to her.

And then the sea darkened behind her, and the darkness spread in every direction. She spread all her limbs wide, screaming her last and then there was a flash – a glimpse – a mouth as wide as a ship opened and closed and her voice was silenced in an instant. Muir was transfixed, made a speck, a grain of sand: his insignificance was absolute. When ravenous mountains fly faster than finches and a man is alone with it, truly alone, what is hope? The despair was so severe that he looked forward to the pain, no matter how long or intense, just for the end to all experience waiting just beyond.

It had dozens of gleaming green eyes and a mouth that could open wide enough to swallow nations, and where it went the storm followed. He saw it but could not conceive of it, and then it was gone and he was alone again. He waited for it to return, floating limp-limbed, and when it didn’t he was afraid it was behind him. He turned over and over, sure it was coming from below, or above, it was impossible to tell, what if it rained until the sea reached the clouds? What if there wasn’t a surface to swim to?

He couldn’t help it. He screamed, and then the sea rushed into his mouth. There was a fire in his chest and it hurt so bad, and his body would not obey anymore. He breathed in water, and the first drink drove his body insane, so it tried for another breath, and then another, desperately yanking in mouthfuls of water at a time. The cold should have soothed the fire in his chest, but it didn’t. The corners of his vision swam and darkened, and he suffered spasm after spasm as his muscles fought against all hope for air, ignoring his attempts to control it.

He could finally die. He longed for the peace, the release.

And then his vision slowly sharpened again, and the spasms renewed, threatening to crush his ribcage, and the fire flared up, and he tried to vomit up the water but only more rushed in.

Tossed in the storm, alone in an endless green void, Muir went on drowning, but he never died.

He was the first man to become one with the ocean, the first one to come to know it and live, but nobody could hear him screaming, or could ever hope to find him with a hundred thousand years to look.

That’s how big the ocean is.

[Warpath]

The storm relinquished them with a frustrated peal of thunder, and the ship rolled down a swell battered but whole. It was so sudden that even the most seasoned sailors among them were stunned, staring slack-jawed up at the sky while the late morning sun smiled back down on them. The sea before them was calm and blue, reflecting gold shimmers.

There was an island on the horizon.

Nobody said anything, though. The crew gathered on deck, drying in the warm light of the sun, and they stared. Luned stood at the forefront, hugging her arms to herself, and she scowled red-eyed at the distant rocks and the swaying green of the trees – spruces, firs, oaks, and maples, Aeril told them. All unnatural in this part of the world.

Carcosa, the thing Aeril dubbed The Wandering Isle.

Flint kept himself near and behind Luned. He was the only person not looking at the island. Instead he was pulling his shirt off and prodding his new bumps and bruises, taking advantage of what he figured could be a painfully brief respite. He was ringing his shirt out when Luned spoke up for the first time since she’d cried herself out below decks.

“I want to watch the whole thing burn.”

Flint flicked his eyes up to her, then out to the island, and then he went back to firmly wringing the water out of his shirt. It seemed like it had soaked up the whole of the sea. “No you don’t,” he said. “That’s something I would do.”

“Does that make it wrong?”

“Well, maybe,” Flint said. “I am not in a position to say. I think it best if we leave that place the way we’ll find it.”

“Why?”

She turned to look at him, almost hurt that he wouldn’t let her even entertain the notion of taking her grief out on an inanimate object. It didn’t sink in that he hadn’t been wearing a shirt until he was pulling it back on overhead, but she found that she didn’t care. She wasn’t in the mood. Once he was fully dressed again, the brute nodded out at the sea back the way they’d come.

Luned turned around, and her jaw dropped. The storm hadn’t ended; it was still out there, forming a tremendous and perfect circle around the sea surrounding the island. The sea swelled and raged beneath sparking black thunderheads, and then the clouds simply stopped and the sea contained itself. She wanted to call it the eye of the storm, but it was more than that.

“Like it’s defending itself,” Roberson said. “Holding the world’s biggest storm at arm’s length.”

Luned shook her head. “It’s not defending itself from the storm,” she said. “It’s using the storm to keep us away.”

“It failed,” Flint said.

“Not completely,” Luned said dully, turning her tired eyes back to their destination.

[Luned]

Brief discussion quickly decided that they would send a small party ashore for a short visit later that day, but only after a chance to rest. The storm wore the crew threadbare and many of them struggled to keep attention, barely more than a sorry lot of seafaring zombies. Most watched the island with a certain heaviness, distrustful of the unassuming oasis. Muir's loss had them wary, spooked, somber.

As Aeril and Luned sorted out the logistics to the best of their mood-hampered abilities, the captain realized something. Surveying the deck, all hands gathered, she frowned. "Wait. Where is Gasper?"

Blue knew. The dwarf's expression betrayed everything and, for a moment, an uncharacteristic wave of incredible bitterness overcame Luned. Blue knew her brother better than she did. That was inexcusable, but the anger toward the innocent cook was only a displacement of how she felt her failing as the elder sister. "Went below deck soon as it cleared," Blue said, hoarse from shouting. She had yet to grab a moment to mourn the loss of their friend, and her need sorely showed.

"I suppose he has earned a break," Aeril said. She wasn't the openly sympathetic sort, but everyone knew she felt for him as she brushed off his lapse in professionalism. The captain would observe the loss in her own way, later, in privacy. "Who should replace him?" she asked, glancing down to Luned, who had requested the man long before the incident as part of the research crew.

"No one," the scribe said. And then, without another word, she went to find him.



Luned discovered the young man not despondent in his hammock as expected, but at the brig. He'd collected Muir's boots and other possessions into his arms, sodden coat folded respectfully, and stood alone in the hold, staring blankly at the cell where he and Muir shared one of their last conversations. Water still sloshed across the floor, murky and stagnant, and Luned tried not to let it remind her of Ettermire's sewers as she joined Gasper.

It was painful beyond description to lose a sibling, but she had no basis of comparison as to how it felt to lose a lover. For a brief moment, Luned imagined losing Flint, but she only succeeded in flustering herself.

Even aside that, Gasper was dependent on Muir to bridge the language barrier between himself and the rest of the crew; she couldn't even begin to grasp what loneliness that was. He had no one, stranded hundreds of miles out at sea amongst strangers and his sorrow.

The scribe pieced together some fantasy of what their relationship had been: Muir surely was the instigator, dragging Gasper along on foolhardy adventures and getting them into more perilous versions of the predicaments he caused as a kid. Muir needed people to ground him or he'd simply lift from the earth and float away; Gasper must have been his anchor. As she looked to him, even with his strong body bent under the weight of grief, she could see it. He was Muir's complement.

"I'm sorry," Luned said. Speaking broke the sanctity and, for a moment, she wished she could take it back.

Gasper glanced over, impossibly dark eyes sunken with physical and emotional fatigue. "Why?"

"For leaving you alone. He was both of ours."

It took him some time to decipher her words, but he managed. Some attempts were made to craft an adequate response in Tradespeak, but that was not so easy. "Yes," he replied simply.

They stood in shared silence until the clatter of approaching footsteps interrupted from above, announcing the retirement of the crew. It was time for a well-needed, albeit brief, rest.

[Luned]

The brink of high tide consumed the beach and their rowboat landed nearly in the tall, pale grass that lined the rocky sand, a barrier which prevented the dunes from drifting inland. Beach roses formed a floral fence, merry and pink, and a forest rose up beyond so thick with foliage that it seemed to breathe. The sun was warm and the cloudless sky impossibly blue, only the distant ring of ominous gray a reminder of the obstacle they'd face again. The island resided in the eye of the storm, disturbingly calm in its summery oasis.

As they neared, everything appeared surprisingly normal at first glance. The waves shimmered clear like typical waves, the grass bowed to the wind like typical grass, and the saltiness of drifting seaweed was reminiscent of the coast back home.

But it didn't feel normal. As soon as Roberson hopped out of the rowboat to hold it steady, he jumped, as if charged by a jolt of static. Immediately his curiosity shifted to unsettledness, and the change clear as day on his furrowed face.

"There are no birds," Aeril commented, and it was true. The air distinctly lacked the cry of gulls, ever-present coastal vultures that marked proximity to land no matter where on Althanas one might travel. The quiet was, quite understandably, eerie. Second out of the boat, her long legs made quick work of the hop onto the beach, and for a brief moment she hesitated. Amber eyes fixed on the ground as waves lapped her boots, as if expecting something to be amiss, and her next couple steps over the muddy sand were overly cautious.

Luned thought the woman might have had a moment of trouble accustoming herself to solid ground. After all, land sickness was just as real as sea sickness. But, as the scribe stepped out with Roberson's help, she knew exactly what was wrong.

The ground seemed to crackle, indeed, with static; however, the sensation was wholly separate from anything physical, the sort of presence she imagined Resolve felt and the scribe would only ever wonder. It fell in a heavy, invisible fog at their feet, tingling up their legs, causing hair to stand on end.

It was power. Pure, raw, uncontrolled power.

A shiver ran up Luned's spine as she realized the gravity of such a discovery. If she tapped into this place as an amplifier, as she'd used the Swaysong in Ettermire, could she still go back and save Muir? This hypothesis sent her mind reeling.

"I hope our visit will be brief, I do not like it here," Aeril frowned, ever opinionated. "Is it cursed?" That question was meant for Luned, and the elf crossed her arms protectively over her chest as she waited expectantly. She almost appeared nauseous.

The scribe shook her head. "No. It just is," she said vaguely, channeling her enigmatic mentor. "Do you feel it, Flint?"

In her distraction, the brute seemed to have materialized next to her. He and Gasper both shifted weight between their feet, testing the strange sensation of this curious place. From the general consensus of unease, it appeared that Luned was the only one of the group to have any significant acquaintanceship with magic.

"It's exactly as he said it would be," Luned continued.

Aeril didn't seem interested; she had more questions. "Is it inhabited?"

"I don't know. Doubt it."

"There is a building," Gasper said, those few heavily accented words more than most of them had ever heard from the man in the common language. He gestured a ways down the beach where, nearly entombed in vegetation, stood the remnants of what appeared to be a lookout tower.

Luned was already on her way before she even considered what she was doing; action was easier than thought at this point. Aeril might have reminded her to be careful, but she wasn't listening. She was fixated on this piece of foreign architecture, unique not only in its structure, but its materials. Engulfed in tall shrubs and creeping vines, it was only a skeleton of what it might have been before, its gray cement facade beginning to crumble from neglect.

The company climbed the small, rocky hill upon which the tower sat, on a narrow outcrop overlooking the shallow cove where their ship landed and the open coast beyond. It was assuredly abandoned.

Roberson took up the front with Luned and, without second thought, he poked his head in the open doorway. "No sign of anyone recent," he said, seemingly to himself, before stepping in and jogging up the first of the many metal steps.

"Be careful," Luned scolded him, leery of the ruin. The first floor and the area around it were empty, save some odds and ends rusted over and grown over with grass and underbrush that had crept out from the forest over the years. Gasper found part of a broken bottle, but nothing could be learned from it, save that the mark on the bottom used a character set even Luned didn't find familiar.

The tower boasted about five stories in height and Roberson cleared them with ease, appearing at the open top high above. He looked around, shielding his eyes from the bright sun, and apprised the peculiar land upon which they stood.

"It's small," he called out to the others, who gathered on the large, flat rocks at its base. "Unless it's attached to something bigger at the far end, couldn't be more than half a mile wide. I think I see more buildings just beyond these trees."

"Any sign of people?" Aeril asked, giving up on any previous remnant of stealth they may have had.

"Not that I can see, I… wait. There's someone on the beach," Roberson said, squinting far down the stretch of sand beyond the tower's outcrop. And then, without consideration of the potential danger, he waved his arms and hollered. "Ahoy!"

[Luned]

The encroacher began as a speck on the sand, an ant crawling toward them down the endless stretch of rocky beach. The group stood in tense silence, unsure how to handle this strange meeting. In preparation, Aeril lifted her spyglass to inspect the stranger, only for her mouth to drop open in atypical astonishment.

"Is it human?" Flint asked, on edge.

"It…" Aeril began hesitantly, as if attempting to look through a mirage. "I think it may be Muir."

Luned stared into the distance, stunned. "What?" As she gawked, Gasper didn't hesitate; long, lean legs carried him down the incline and onto the beach, where he quickly picked up speed. Before they knew it, he was halfway to the staggering figure. "W-wait!" the scribe cried, panicked, before taking off after him.

Before Flint and Roberson could follow suit, Aeril stopped them. "I do not trust this place," she said, her voice low and stern. "Be cautious."

Flint agreed. After all, the siren was proof that the sea liked to play tricks on travelers such as themselves, and Carcosa was likely no different. The brute took chase after the two more impulsive of their crew, leaving Aeril and Roberson to take up the reluctant rear of their procession down the beach.

Running on sand was difficult and Luned's legs were nearly rubber by the time she reached the figure, Gasper's arms already wrapped securely about his shoulders. It was Muir, alright. That familiar mop of brilliant auburn hair, tangled and salty, shone fiery in the sun, and the girl joined the pig pile before even considering any potential danger. If what she felt when she saved Helethra (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25044-Child-of-Darkness&p=205050&viewfull=1#post205050) was relief, this was something else altogether.

"Oh gods, Muir! How did you get here? Are you hurt? You're alive!" As Luned gushed, Gasper had his own foreign mutterings to add, all under his breath. The reunion was joyous as one might expect, save the haunting smile that graced Muir's dehydration-cracked lips. Head to toe, there wasn't a wound in sight on the man's tanned body, even under the clothing tattered from the siren's attack. Not even a scar. He could've run a marathon if he pleased, but the psychological impact of his living nightmare rendered him more emotionally useless than a hefty dose of nephina. Speaking of which, he was seized by the first signs of withdrawal, and his hands shook with agitation.

"Get me the fuck off this godsforsaken island," he growled, utterly unenthusiastic under the onslaught of affection.

Luned stopped in the midst of showering his dirty face with kisses, shameless tears running down her own cheeks, and she looked into his shadowy eyes with concern. "What happened to you?" Gasper fell silent and loosened his grip slightly, just enough to give Muir back the full capacity of his lungs.

"There's a monster," Muir muttered, looking to his sister but imagining something else entirely. "In the water. The ocean is a monster."

The others' arrivals went unnoticed, so absorbed in the shaken man the pair were. "Monster?" Luned repeated in consideration. Unsure what to make of it, she redirected his attention to something more positive. "Muir, I… come on. Let's get you back to the ship."

[Luned]

In the journey back to the ship, the party deduced that Carcosa was an amplifier for magic-based abilities. It made sense, what with its strange, electrifying presence in conjunction with Muir's frightfully enhanced ability to heal. Open acknowledgement of his talent may have spooked Aeril and Roberson some amount, but they took the reveal in stride. The captain agreed to explain the predicament to the crew so they wouldn't shower the disturbed young man with too many questions.

By the time they returned, Blue had filled the galley to the brim with delicious things. The dwarf smothered Muir with enough fondness to shame his own mother, handling the shock of his reappearance more easily than anyone else, and hence force-fed him enough stew and ale that he might have burst if Gasper and Luned didn't whisk him away first.

At his sister's insistence, Muir took her room to recuperate. She spent the rest of the evening fussing over him, tending his emotional wounds and suffocating him with the affection of an overly concerned sibling. He suffered through it with surprising composure for a man who cheated death.



"You must feel neglected," Aeril said in a rare moment of personableness, hands clasped behind her back as she strolled up next to Flint.

He stood on deck at the rail, perhaps watching Carcosa for more tricks. The last glimpse of sun glowed stunning against the darkness on the horizon, disappearing behind the lightning-heavy clouds in a shroud of gold and rose. Dusk settled over all with an eerie calm, similar to the vibrant lifelessness of the island. Everything felt surreal, as if the crew would wake the next morning and none of the events of the past day and a half would have happened. The strangeness would fade away as if it never existed to begin with, they would never find the island, and then they would go home, disappointed but whole.

The man decided that Carcosa only had the right to exist in fiction. The monsters of Ettermire had him wary, and he was reluctant to relive a seafaring version of their sorry adventures in that dire place. Already he feared deja vu.

"Just relieved." For Muir, for Luned, for the voyage on a whole. "Except for what Muir said. We will need a plan to get through the barrier." Flint's warlike instincts kicked in and he welcomed them; there was comfort in old habits. He could strategize and make himself useful.

Brow quirked, Aeril glanced sidelong to the brute. "You would believe his vision? One he had mere hours after a nigh incoherent high? At the risk of sounding close-minded, I am hesitant to trust someone with such a shaky grasp on reality."

"That may be true," Flint said, his gaze fixed on land. It played coy with him, branches fluttering like eyelashes in the distance, beckoning. "But we can't discount anything after what happened."

"Either way, I will not return with you tomorrow. Roberson has also requested to stay behind, and I will not ask any of my crew to fill in. You will have to do this 'research' on your own."

The brute nodded. He didn't blame them.

[Luned]

"Are you sure you're comfortable? Do you need anything else?"

"For the hundredth fucking time, I'm fine. For fuck's sake, go read a book or write something or harass Flint or just fuck the fuck off," Muir groaned. The more exasperated he became, the more it limited his vocabulary.

"But––"

He rubbed his temple, already reclined on the bed with an unnecessary number of pillows stuffed under him. His sister was thorough in her efforts. "I don't give a shit what you do, just go away. I'm going to sleep. It will be very boring, I promise."

The girl frowned, hesitated, and relented. "Alright." With one more hug, forced on the irritated young man like a child strangling a distressed cat, Luned took her leave. Gasper rose from his chair and saw her to the door, offering a warm little smile at the threshold. She reciprocated, peered past him briefly as if to make sure Muir hadn't disappeared, and then stepped away. She heard Gasper shut the door behind her with the scratch of a metal latch, some low whispers, and then silence, save the muffled sounds of music and conversation from up on deck.

It was tempting to join, but she hadn't the heart or emotional energy for smalltalk and stories. The same surreal fog surrounded her as it did Flint, and she opted to hide out in the grand cabin instead. After all, Bleddyn deserved an update.

The note was long-winded. Luned curled up on the chaise where she'd brought her things, a temporary home while she lent her room, and wrote an account of their recent adventure. Even the cozy quilt she'd wrapped herself in didn't keep out the chill as she recounted the siren, the storm, the loss. Her announcement that they did, indeed, find Carcosa merely felt like a consolation prize after the trauma they'd endured.

Flint found her a few minutes after she finished writing and tucked the journal away, catching her at the brink of a doze. "Hello," she said, smoothing her braid over her shoulder in her cocoon of bedding. "Seems everyone's doing well, from the sound of it." Some boisterous applause punctuated her comment.

"It's a coping mechanism," Flint said, closing the door behind him before joining her. He sat on the couch across from her, his solemn face absurd in contrast with the bright upholstery. "No one wants to come to the island tomorrow. We're on our own."

Luned nodded. "That's fine. I mean, I'm not surprised. It's all pretty strange."

"Is he really alright?"

She nearly smiled, but something stopped her. "Physically, yes… but I can't imagine what it was like to go through something like that. I think it'll be a while before he's back to normal. I might ask Bleddyn to send Ags for him so he doesn't have to deal with anymore ocean than necessary."

The brute's expression darkened; they both knew what that implied. But he recognized that might be the best thing for the poor sap, as well. "Good thinking."

"Yes… we'll see how he's doing tomorrow. And who knows, maybe Bleddyn can send us something to help us leave. Perhaps a ward…"

Leaning forward, Flint propped his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands under his bearded chin. "Luned," he began, stern gaze falling on the girl across from him. "What are we doing here? What is this place?"

[Luned]

She'd expected the question, and thus was prepared to answer it. Lucky for Flint, he earned an explanation much more in-depth than anyone else would receive, even Aeril or Muir. "The first time Bleddyn discovered Carcosa, he didn't know what it was. It occurred as an anomaly in Radasanth; someone reported that their cellar changed overnight. When he investigated, it seemed that some otherworldly catacombs had materialized under this one block in the city, and deep inside…" she hesitated, as if piecing together the clearest way to explain everything. "There was a power source. He tapped it, bought out the surrounding homes, and had the capitol build him the library on top of it to protect it. He was influential enough to get everything he asked for."

"Carcosa is under the library?"

"It was," Luned continued, "But eventually it disappeared. The catacombs, I mean. He maintained his hold on the power source, but has been unable to leave Radasanth since. He has to keep close or else he'll lose it entirely."

That begged all sorts of questions, but he went with the most urgent. "Why here? Why now?"

The scribe pursed her lips in thought before speaking. "Well, he's been trapped in Radasanth for a long time; he's never said it, but I think he blames himself for not helping Iestyn during the Corpse War, amongst other things. From what I understand, he's devised a way he could leave, but it requires access to Carcosa's current manifestation. He's had a lifetime to perfect a way to bond himself to it again; I suppose he hopes for a redo, and the time was right."

Flint ran a hand over his smooth head. "I suppose an alien power source explains a lot about the old man," he said. "How old is he, anyway?"

Luned shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. I believe the library was founded about eighty years ago. Assuming he stopped aging when he bonded with Carcosa, that adds up to… a century and a half, give or take? But really, who knows."

"So, what are we doing tomorrow?" Flint asked, leaning back against the cushions. He wasn't sure what he'd expected her to tell him, but that all seemed reasonable enough.

"Explore," Luned said, an inkling of a mischievous grin teasing the corner of her mouth. "Bleddyn will send instructions when he gets my note. Until then, I want to see what's out there."

The brute frowned. "Aeril thinks it's dangerous."

"Has that stopped us before?" He couldn't help but smile at that, and she continued. "Carcosa manifests across different worlds, different eras… various peoples have settled it, and as we saw today, some of them have left remnants behind. I have to admit, I'm curious what artifacts we might discover. Perhaps we'll find some souvenirs. Imagine that, holding something invented in an alternate universe."

Flint's brow pinched a bit in thought, as if reminded of something. "Yes, that could be interesting."

"We'll need our energy, though. I think I'm going to call it an early night," Luned said, settling down against the arm of the chaise. "But… thank you. I mean, for when we thought… you know." She pulled her blanket up around her face, as if out of instinct to hide. "I'm sorry if I imposed on you."

He shook his head. "You didn't."

[Warpath]

The perpetual storm marred the first light of the sun, adding a grey-blue tinge to the pinkish light as it first struck the ship. Flint was alone on deck, sitting cross-legged and naked from the waist up, and a semicircle of various items and supplies was arrayed before him. He had completed his morning exercises and was now enjoying a small breakfast of fish while considering the puzzle of Carcosa.

It all came back to the frustratingly impenetrable nature of magic. Luned had told him that this place had manifested as a series of catacombs once, and he chewed on that mentally as he chewed on fish physically. Like the fish, the concept had small bones. What of the trees, Flint thought. He looked at their silhouettes in the early morning gloom. Had there been trees in those catacombs? Or were these an illusion? Or had the trees only grown since then?

There were no easy answers to those questions, no logic that could be applied to sort the truth out given enough time and common sense. Magic had its rules, Flint was sure, but only gods had the perspective necessary to discern them. He was convinced that man stumbled around in those domains blind, and it was no wonder that wizards died messy, unexplainable deaths so often. They were standing in the middle of raging storm clouds wearing metal underwear, waving their limbs about.

The brute shook his head and muttered to himself, suddenly reminded that Luned was quickly becoming one of those wizards, and he did not need the mental image of her in metal underwear – or any underwear, for that matter. And he didn’t like the thought of her in storm clouds, either. He didn’t know how to fight clouds, or lightning, or gods. How could he fight anything he could not understand?

His eyes fell upon the items before him, and he sighed. He hadn’t thought of his gauntlets until the night before, mainly because he had packed them safely away, out of sight and out of mind. They were strange things, bulky and solid and heavy. The metal of their construction was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, and once again he marveled at how they seemed carved rather than shaped. There were whorls in the steel, if one looked close enough, but no marks from a hammer, or any tool. They were all impossibly rounded edges, perfectly straight lines and uniform grooves, symmetrical and identical. There were lines on them that might have been seams, places where they came apart, but Flint couldn’t figure out how. They looked like nothing made by man or elf, dwarf or demon – they looked like they were beyond the like of anything else on Althanas, because they were.

The gauntlets made him uncomfortable because, like magic, they came from somewhere else and they didn’t belong. He didn’t understand them and he feared they couldn’t be understood. They were gifts, yes, but the thing that had given them was as unknowable as Carcosa – what if he was as mysterious to it as the island was to him? Even if it meant well, maybe the thing called Shasande had given him a curse instead of a gift and never realized it.

And what did they have to do with Swaysong?

Flint glanced back toward the sterncastle, and when he was certain Luned wasn’t going to sneak up on him he reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial. The liquid within was, like everything else here, a mystery. Drinking it killed Ezura, but it saved her daughter. Swanra’ann wanted it, but so did Luned. Shasande had known something about it, but the creature had been so cryptic, sometimes hinting that the substance would save him and sometimes suggesting that it would kill him.

He sighed and returned it to his pocket, and then he reached out and pulled the gauntlets on one at a time. As always, they felt heavy and loose on his forearms at first, and then the silky material inside gently squeezed in on his skin until they felt snug and perfect, warm but not hot, and their weight became familiar and comforting. Their bulk was awkward, at first, and then he began to think of them less as impediments and more as armor and weapons in one, dense and unyielding, an unassailable extension of his flesh.

They felt good. They felt too good, and that reminded him that now he was stumbling around in a storm cloud, wearing metal very literally, and he had no idea if or when lightning would strike.

He considered taking them off again, but then he looked out to Carcosa. Luned attracted danger, or was attracted to it. He couldn’t tell which, but it was a fact. And he was going to follow her onto that island, pay or no pay, and he would follow her into the sewers of Ettermire again or onto the Tular Plains and right through the gates of hell, and that was a fact too. One does not put aside facts.

So Flint tossed the remains of his breakfast overboard, pulled a cotton t-shirt on, and began packing his supplies.

He left the gauntlets on.

[Warpath]

“How long have you been up?”

Flint seemed to think about it, and then shrugged. “Awhile.”

“If I knew you were so excited to go beachcombing I would have been up earlier,” Luned said. Blue bustled about the galley cheerily, whipping up baked concoctions of every description. She kept setting banana muffins and spongy shortcakes in front of Flint, but he pushed them across the bench to Luned every time, and she nibbled on them happily while they talked.

Flint shook his head. “I prefer having you well-rested before we go together into certain death,” he said. “I imagine it was difficult to sleep and check on your brother every hour on the hour.”

“You know you don’t have to come,” Luned said, only half-serious.

“I’ve not broken anything in weeks,” Flint complained. “Months? I can’t pass up the opportunity.”

“Uh huh,” Luned said with a mouthful of muffin. “These are amazing, Blue.”

The dwarf gave a very ladylike curtsy, and Luned wondered how her gender had gone unnoticed for so long. “Anyway,” the scribe continued, “what makes you so sure there’ll be anything dangerous on the island? I mean, I’m not denying it, but yesterday it seemed like the island wasn’t inhabited.”

“But it’s magic,” Flint said.

“So?”

“You can’t trust magic. One minute you’re conjuring puppies out of hats and the next you’re immolating. Who knows what that island is going to do.”

Luned laughed. “I’m not sure that’s how it works,” she said.

“Well,” Flint said, “that’s how it looks to me.”

Luned thought for a minute, crumbling off bite-sized pieces of muffin and popping them into her mouth one after another. “Bleddyn wasn’t always forthcoming about Carcosa,” she said, “but I think I’ve pieced together a basic understanding of it. It’s dangerous in its own way, but not like Ettermire.”

“What is it like, then?”

Luned considered it for a moment. “A powder keg?” she said, almost apologetically.

Blue offered Flint a strip of jerky, and he bit off a piece and chewed sullenly.

[Warpath]

Flint slid out of the dinghy ungracefully once the water was shallow enough, and Luned clutched the sides as the little boat rocked. Once the brute was settled, he turned around and steadied the craft, glancing up at Luned apologetically.

“Not many boats where you’re from, I’m guessing,” Luned teased.

“Many, actually,” Flint said. “But I’m bad at them.”

“Well, it’s good to know you’re bad at something.”

Flint let out one flat guffaw as he dragged the dinghy to shore, pulling it up onto the rocky beach one-handed. “Then you’ve had a great many things to call ‘good’ since we met.”

“And what does that mean?” Luned asked. Flint offered his hand to steady her and she accepted it gratefully, stepping out of the boat with all the poise Flint lacked on his own exit.

“I’ve never tried to hide my failings,” Flint explained. “I’m not good at navigating sewers, for example, we found that out. I don’t see a future in animal wrangling for me.”

“Not giant rats, at least,” Luned said, trying to joke but shuddering despite herself. “And you’re not good with kids.”

“What does that mean,” Flint said, deadpan. “I love children.”

Luned laughed whole-heartedly and from the belly, throwing her head back. She only realized where they were after a long moment of laughter and tried to stifle herself, looking around cautiously. Flint didn’t seem to share her discomfort. He was grinning at her, oblivious to the island.

“You’re good at keeping us alive,” she offered after a moment. They began trekking up the beach toward the trees. He proved her point: his eyes were already beginning to flick this way and that, scanning the dark places surrounding them for danger.

“That does not count,” Flint said. “I don’t know that I would say I’m good at that. I’m...heavily practiced.”

“Same thing,” Luned said. “I’d be dead if not for you.”

“And I if not for you. Watch your step.”

“Thanks,” Luned said. “I’m not so sure of that though. If not for me, you probably would have left Ettermire instead of going into the sewers. You had enough money.”

“Hmm,” Flint said. “But Swanra’ann had men waiting for me at the brothel where I kept it. They certainly would have followed me, and without you and your plight to intrigue him, Aurelianus would have had no reason to stop them. I would have ended up in exactly the same position without you to get me out of it.”

“I don’t know about that,” Luned said thoughtfully, pushing aside the nagging discomfort the tiefling’s name caused her. “I think they only took you because you were too sick to fight back.”

“You overestimate my abilities,” Flint said. “Despite my best efforts, I am still only human.”

“Well, I’m not complaining about that,” Luned said. “What else would you want to be?”

Flint glanced at her sidelong, reminded of Muir’s taunting and Luned’s stories of Raiaera and the mysterious man she’d met there and still wrote to. An elf, maybe, he wanted to tell her. Or a pretty, coffee-skinned doctor.

“Something else,” he said instead, dismissively. “A better communicator.”

“That’s silly,” Luned declared. “You’re a wonderful communicator. You speak Trade very eloquently, and you had the whole crew hanging on your every word when you wanted it. You’re too hard on yourself.”

“And yet there remain things I don’t know how to express.”

“Really?” Luned said. “I mean, you have an accent, but I never would have guessed. You know I’m always willing to help if you have questions about Tradespeak.”

“What is that?” Flint said.

Luned followed his gaze and spotted a stout grey structure between the trees. It looked as if someone had found a way to shape a single uniform rock into a building, and she knew instinctively that she’d never seen or heard of a building anything like it in all of the known world.

“I don’t think there’s a word for that yet,” she said.

[Warpath]

Flint was surprised at how much he was enjoying himself. First, he had Luned’s sole company, which apparently meant even more to him than he first realized. Second, it gave him pleasure to explore mysterious places with the scribe, at least when those places weren’t known to be full of insects of unusual size, and he was finding it surpassingly easy to forget that the island’s magical nature was a danger to him. Third, the island’s mysteries challenged him.

“Do you think there’s anybody inside?” Luned said.

Flint shook his head. “No, it’s a defensive structure. If it were inhabited, we would have been spotted some time ago. See how the trees funneled us from the beach? We took the path of least resistance, as anyone would, and the building is positioned to see before it can be seen.”

“It’s not a house.”

“No,” Flint agreed. “Those openings are too narrow to be windows; the building is too stout to be comfortable. It’s built to weather attacks…easier to fire arrows out, harder to fire arrows in. Genius.”

They approached the structure carefully, craning their necks as they watched for any signs of life within. As they stepped nearer, it became more and more apparent that Flint was right. The building was abandoned, and had been for some time. It was set low in the earth, and a makeshift staircase had been formed out of the earth and augmented with planks of wood. The staircase led down a few feet to a solid metallic door, which was liberally coated in rust.

“This hasn’t been opened in decades,” Luned said.

Flint nodded.

“Are we going inside?” she looked over at him, then back at the door.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Flint admitted. “Soldiers built this expecting to hold this position. If they were forced out, they might have trapped the door against whoever they were defending against. And they weren’t from anywhere I’ve ever been.”

Luned nodded her agreement. She was very familiar with Radasanth and its stone-and-brick buildings, but she could not conceive of how the walls of this structure had been formed. There were no signs of individual stones, or cuts, or mortar. It was smooth and curved, almost circular. Not even the elves or dwarves of Eluriand had anything like it.

“It’s like ice,” Flint said. “If ice were stone.”

“But there are stairs,” Luned said. “And that’s a door, with a knob, and rivets to hold everything together. It has familiar elements. People built it.”

Flint raised his right hand to regard one of his gauntlets for a moment, nodding his agreement. He knew what inhuman, alien construction looked like, and Luned was right. This thing was familiar, worldly, manmade. It was different enough, though.

“We should go in,” he decided. “There might be something useful.”

“Okay,” Luned said. “Um, you go first.”

Flint grinned at her.

“What? If you get hurt I can fix it. Or try to. I’m sure it was just a fluke with Muir, maybe he was just too far. Or the stress. Or the storm? Or the island. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“I told you,” Flint said, already marching at the door while shaking his head sadly. “Magic.”

Luned took a few steps back as Flint continued approaching the door, and then he leapt off the top step and lifted his boot, driving it into the door right above the knob. The door exploded inward, the metal rusted all the way through, and a cloud of dust burst outward. Flint coughed quietly and half-heartedly, waving the dust aside as he stepped into the dark. After a long moment, Luned assumed it was safe and followed him in.

The structure was definitely abandoned. There was a carpet of ancient dried leaves and pine needles over a stone floor, and the ceiling was oppressively low. The narrow openings in the walls let in only a little light, and it took a long moment for Luned’s eyes to fully adjust. Flint found a metal frame that might have housed a mattress once, and a stack of strange boxes.

“They’re hollow,” he announced.

“What are they made of?”

“I don’t know,” Flint admitted. “Something new. Hard but very light. It flexes but doesn’t bend. I don’t think I could break it.”

“You don’t have to, there are clasps.”

Flint grunted and, after a short struggle, figured the clasps out. Despite also being metal, they showed no sign of rust, and the first crate popped open easily. Inside were pieces of some alien tool, and as Flint examined them he began to discern how they fit together. He didn’t try to assemble the item, but instead laid the pieces out side by side on top of another crate to try and discern what the complete object was.

“I think it’s a gun,” Luned said.

Flint nodded. “That makes sense, but the barrel is so small, what good is it?”

Luned shrugged. Flint wasn’t interested in hunting squirrels, so he shoved the pieces back into the crate unceremoniously, closed it, and set it aside. The next crate was more interesting, neatly packed with strange, heavy items, vaguely similar to the size and shape of lemons. Each was topped with a ring attached to thick pins, and Flint examined one closely. He put his finger through one of the rings and let the object hang from his hand, tilting his head curiously, and then he shrugged and tossed the object back in and slammed the lid. More junk.

“One would have hoped that someone so good at building defensive structures might have left some sort of basic weapon,” he complained.

“Maybe they took all their weapons with them when they left.”

“It seems likely,” Flint mused. He was continuing to go through the crates, finding more of the squirrel-guns and the queer jewelry. One crate had rust-free knives in it, but he didn’t need a knife so he set them aside. Another was full of long belts of two-inch-long brass cylinders, and he couldn’t imagine what they were for.

Luned was peeking out through the windows when Flint let out a victorious bark of laughter. She turned around to find him wearing a big, padded, brown-black fur cap. It had flaps on the sides that he unfastened so that they fell over his ears.

“Oh gods,” Luned said. "You look like a sheep dog."

“Tell me you like my hat,” Flint said evenly.

“Oh that’s wonderful. I want to try it on.”

Flint took it off and handed it to her. It had a red star sewn onto the front of it, and in the center of the star was a yellow symbol composed of what looked to be a stylized sickle crossed with a hammer. She put it on, and it very nearly fell over her eyes. Flint struggled not to laugh at her, and she tilted her head up and smiled at him from under the hat’s heavy brow.

“It’s really warm,” she said.

Flint nodded his agreement. “Finally something useful,” he said.

[Luned]

Luned returned Flint's souvenir –– he appeared to be keeping it, as he immediately replaced it on his head –– and glanced to the bright doorway. She squinted, her eyes catching the sway of trees outside. A few scattered leaves blew down the steps and into the strange hold, one of the first breaths of life the space had seen in decades. It disturbed the dust, but there were no cobwebs. Like the lack of birds, it struck her as odd. "Roberson said he saw more of a settlement inland. I wonder what else we'll find," the girl speculated aloud.

Satisfied that they'd exhausted the curious room of intrigue, the pair exited into the fresh air once more. The strange sensation of every surface crackling with raw magic began to settle in; it was odd, but eventually became more white noise than anything as they expanded their investigation of the island. It fell into the background like a low, distant ringing in their ears, muffled by distraction.

The scribe took the lead into the nearby woods, encouraged by the apparent lack of inhabitants. Just as they entered the shade of the canopy, however, she paused, and Flint stood ever watchful of the mysterious landscape as she dug her journal out of her pocket. With folded scraps of paper and letters-in-progress stuffed between pages, it seemed a miracle that she found her spot, but she opened directly to the prior evening's correspondence with Bleddyn. Her note sat solitary and unanswered, sepia ink and off-white parchment speckled by flecks of sun that filtered through the branches above. She frowned slightly. "He said he would send instructions when we got here," she explained to her friend, who stared intently into the depths of the vibrant forest. He caught glimpses of stone and wood structures through the foliage, but not enough to gather any real information.

Flint opened his mouth as if to speak, but before he could form words, a massive boom resounded through the air and earth. The island trembled, its lack of response only enhancing its eerie deadness, and Luned latched onto the brute's arm with one hand. She clutched her book to her chest, having nearly dropped it when startled. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

The blast originated from the strange structure they'd only just explored, and the roof shuddered and collapsed in on itself in the short distance, sending up plumes of dust and smoke. The event was short-lived, but left them shaken. Flint's mind instantly reverted to fear-mode and he searched the trees and the beach, in spite of the fact that he knew he'd find nothing. The island was strange. It was silly of them to have trusted it. The hat obstructed his view just barely, furry flaps agitating him in his peripherals, and he removed it.

"It's probably a fluke," Luned said, barely more than a whisper. "If they had guns, who knows what else was in there? We don't know…"

The brute merely grimaced. As the last debris settled into the fresh tomb, they lost the light mood to this reminder. Caution was king in a place like this.

[Luned]

The scribe wrote a quick note to Aeril, to whom she'd given some of her trademark enchanted paper. She confirmed that they were, indeed, alive, and not to worry unless they didn't return by sunset. The captain obviously noticed the blast as she replied quickly and curtly, approving the plan. Luned imagined the elf was particularly glad she'd chosen to avoid the island at this point, and it was early yet.

Exploration slowed after that. Possessions tucked away, the pair crept through the temperate jungle, their pace hindered by skittishness. Not even the danger swayed Luned's curiosity, and Flint knew well enough not to argue as they trudged through the underbrush and into what appeared to be an abandoned settlement. Only a small handful of buildings populated the clearing, now overgrown with creeping emerald vines and earthy moss and puffy clusters of tiny white flowers. The foundations appeared to be quite old –– ancient, even –– made of slabs of granite-like stone which rose several feet from the earth. Atop these remnants of a past civilization, a new one had built their own dwellings, boxy wooden structures grafted onto the earlier ruins. These buildings were rotting, having been hastily crafted from roughly finished logs hooked at the corners like the kinds of northern cabins Luned had seen in books. Wooden slats covered most of the windows, protecting their contents from prying eyes.

When Luned appeared intrigued enough to intrude once more, attempting to peek into one building through a crack in the warped doorframe, Flint spoke up. "It isn't safe."

"These are so obviously from different settlers," she defended with a disappointed frown. She knew he was right, but she felt the need to argue. "What do you think is inside?"

"Hats beyond our wildest dreams," Flint said. The humor didn't cover for his disinterest in prodding the island into further explosions.

"I know, we should wait," Luned relented stubbornly, backing down off the doorstep. She walked around the the single story home to investigate the rest of the abandoned settlement, remnants of fencing and chicken coops long lost to time lining her path. There was a strange beauty in the disrepair of the aged creations, materials given back to nature as moss and flowering vines reclaimed the rotting wood. Around the back, a new building came into view, and it was all the more fascinating. "What is that?"

It almost appeared to be the corner tower of a castle with the rest crumbled away, only some surrounding wall and the first two stories of the tall stone cylinder remaining. On top of this perched a wooden hut, its vantage reminiscent of a treehouse, but built atop an old fortification instead of a tree. It was delightfully odd and the large sea-facing windows had been left open, begging for intruders.

Luned was very close to becoming one as she walked around the back to peer up the first flight of stairs at the open doorway which led to the peculiar roost. It took all her self control to remain firmly on the ground, blades of overgrown grass tickling her bare knees as she stalked the circumference of their finding. "I've never seen anything like it," she said, nose in the air as she walked, trying to get a better look at Carcosa's penthouse flat. She nearly tripped over a knot of sprawling tree roots in her distraction.

"Me neither," Flint said, crossing his arms as he inspected the foreign structure.

The scribe came to stand next to him, crossing her arms similarly. They both stared up at it, as if gauging its malevolence. "It doesn't seem dangerous."

"At this point, I'm not so sure if the problem is whether or not I trust it. The issue is whether or not I trust you not to find trouble, regardless of its benign appearance." The brute paused. "I am afraid I might not."

She broke her concentration on the tower to look to Flint. She did a poor job of covering genuine offense with feigned melodrama. "You don't trust me?"

Flint paused, piecing together the right words. "I'd trust you with my life, but not with your own." He glanced over to her, met by a concerned blue gaze under a crinkled brow. Eye contact broke when her hand nervously raised to smooth her hair over her shoulder, his focus following the motion to the pale scars she kept covered. This new habit irked him. "You should be proud of those," he said, and without thinking, reached out to brush her hair back. He stopped himself midway, but before he could draw away again, Luned caught his hand with her own.

Once snared, it almost seemed like she'd forgotten what she was doing. For a moment she just stared at him, shocking Flint into silence. Their time alone had gotten to her, no matter how strange the circumstance. Heat blossomed in her cheeks as she finally spoke, her words hushed and uncertain. "Flint, I… can I kiss you?"

Verbal affirmation proved unnecessary. They leaned into each other, his body language the only answer she needed, and their lips met. It was soft and sweet and warm, everything it was supposed to be. They lingered long and still until the sun grew hot on their skin, and she eventually released his hand.

When Luned opened her eyes, Flint was smiling at her. She wanted more. The cheeky grin was all it took to instigate her and she pounced, throwing her arms around his neck and claiming his mouth once again. She kissed him deeply and urgently as if her very life depended on it, weeks –– months –– of building tension released in one simple act. In that moment, the looming presence of Carcosa and the mission and any semblance of propriety were lost to the salty, sea-borne breeze. She had him.

[Warpath]

Flint made a sound Luned didn’t think him capable of, something relieved and happy and vulnerable, and it made her tighten her arms around his neck. Nothing was trying to kill them and there were no teasing brothers or over-interested dwarves or disapproving captains, and they were as alone as people could be. The breeze nuzzled the trees and the waves caressed the distant beach, and those were the only sounds.

“I won’t break,” she promised, murmuring against his lips with the smallest smile. She waited until his fingertips began tracing the sides of her neck down to her shoulders, following the scars when they could. She sighed and melted into him, but he was not convinced. She was so soft, so small, so light, and for all his discipline he could not fathom stopping now.

He pressed his palms gently against the back of her ribs through her blouse, hugging her to him, and they rested their foreheads together, peeking up at one another cautiously. Neither wanted to ask if they were dreaming, it seemed too stupid, but the question was a viable one. Their surroundings were surreal, and they’d come together so easily that every previous moment of unresolved tension seemed too silly.

“You’re impossible to read,” she told him.

“You’re…how do southerners put it,” he muttered. “You’re out of my league.”

She shook her head, letting one arm slide loose from around his neck so that she could reach up and run her fingertips across his lower lip. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Her eyes drifted, lingered where her fingertips had been wandering, and then they were kissing again. The breeze felt lovely and the rustling leaves were romantic, but they were growing deaf to the world around them. The sun was intense, but that wasn’t the greatest source of heat around. Her hands slid down along his chest, and his down along her back, and their breathing got shallower. Flint groaned, and Luned bit his lower lip.

She was tugging a big handful of the bottom of his shirt upward, and he was gripping the material of her skirt. She parted her lips from his to lay her head back and moan, and he capitalized, letting his lips brush down along the side of her neck toward her shoulder. Bleddyn cleared his throat for the second time, much louder.

Luned’s eyes snapped open wide, and Flint tensed, and all at once they split apart and straightened their clothing, clearing their throats and struggling to find something to look at.

“How strange,” Bleddyn mused. “The way the flora is largely deciduous and yet the climate is decidedly tropical.”

“What?” Flint and Luned said at the same time.

“Oh the weather, right, yes, very strange,” Luned said, straightening her hair out a little too zealously.

Flint muttered his agreement wholeheartedly, developing an extreme and heartfelt passion for climatology and plant life.

“You’d best be careful, boy,” Bleddyn warned, wagging a disapproving finger.

Flint went wide-eyed.

“You have no idea where those have been, or where they came from, or who made them! You can’t just go sticking your hands in every pretty thing you find on Carcosa. It’s dangerous!”

“I…what?”

Bleddyn waved his hands at Flint’s arms.

He stared a long moment, then looked down at his forearms. The gauntlets.

Despite himself, the brute began to laugh, and though Bleddyn did not crack a smile there was a distinct twinkle in his eye.

[Luned]

Once the shock wore off, Luned was left with only questions. "How did you get here? Why'd you send us if––"

The old man crossed his arms, his silent signal suggesting patience. When she closed her mouth, he explained. "Open your journal."

She frowned, reached into her pocket, and extracted the small bound volume. Flipping to the page of their most recent correspondence, she discovered a scrap of paper with some writing on it. The language was familiar, vocabulary distinctly magical in nature. "Ah," she sighed, understanding. Bleddyn hadn't known where they were, after all; he'd used their link to find her with a location spell, then promptly followed. "But what about the library? I thought you couldn't leave Radasanth without…"

"Losing hold on Carcosa? Yes, but as you can see, such a precaution is no longer necessary. We are here, and we may reestablish the connection anew. Indeed, a better connection with much more generous limitations." He saw the concern in her eyes and continued. "I closed the library, just in case the old wards don't hold."

Luned hesitated, nodded, and rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "What is the process?" She avoiding looking in Flint's direction, afraid it'd renew the embarrassment. If she blushed any deeper, she'd go violet.

A proud smile teased ever so slightly at the corners of Bleddyn's mouth. It always pleased him to see an arduous project come to fruition, and this was perhaps the one he'd spent the most time on over his entire illustrious career. "Simple, really. After all, I have had plenty of time to perfect it." He reached into the pocket of his dusty blue robes, appearing perfectly scholarly even on this tropical vacation, and extracted an envelope.

Flint's eyes narrowed at the object as it reminded him of something. Lo and behold, the old man produced a piece of vellum from its place of safekeeping. Upon it was a radial design, much like the one stashed carefully with the brute's things on board; it was a Mark, noticeably similar to the one Bleddyn had given him during their last game of chess. Flint wasn't trained to read the language presented in the endlessly intricate design, ink sitting atop the paper in a delicate filigree of knots and curls. But, all the same, even he could see the parallels.

"A Mark? For this?" Luned asked, not so much skeptical as seeking an explanation.

"Do not underestimate the power of a well-designed Mark," Bleddyn replied, going into teacher mode as he held the document between careful fingertips. The edges of the thin vellum rippled slightly in the breeze. "I have spent the better portion of a century devising this spell. It is so perfect not even that vapid fey acquaintance of yours could botch the application."

Luned could have laughed, but she didn't much feel like Agnie was a joke anymore. She forbade her mind from escaping to darker places and circled back to the issue at hand. "Simple, indeed," she said. "And they're instantaneous, aren't they? To think, all those weeks of travel for a few hours on a tiny island."

At that, Flint spoke up with a slight frown. "And that storm."

"Ah, yes, I did read your note about that ghastly predicament. How is your brother?" Bleddyn asked, genuine sympathy casting a shadow over his typically wry gaze.

"Alive," Luned replied with a helpless shrug.

The old man nodded and took a slow, deep breath. "I would not wish that experience on anyone, not even a young man who puts himself to hell and back for fun," he said, referring to Muir's experiments with drugs. Building tolerance to poisons was no cake walk, but as much of a thrill seeker as he was, it was generally understood that he likely preferred thrills on his own terms.

"But I will handle him. We can send him home early if needed. Now… shall we?" She eyed the Mark, her curiosity inciting impatience yet again.

"Not so fast, young apprentice. I have an announcement first." He spoke this with an air of formality, looking between Luned and Flint as if standing before a crowd worthy of a speech. His shoulders squared and posture straightened, emphasizing his frail physique. Sometimes the girl forgot just how old he really was. "I have lived a very long time," he began, "And over such a long life I've had the fortune of many blessings, the most recent and perhaps one of the greatest being you, my dear."

The affection in Bleddyn's words was uncharacteristic of him. Something tightened in Luned's gut; what was he getting at?

[Luned]

"I am afraid it was the Corpse War that finally did me in. Without your presence, I wouldn't have lasted more than a year or two after Iestyn's death. I am not an openly sentimental sort, as you know, but you and he have served as the lodestars of my otherwise bland existence. The work you did with Resolve in Eluriand was perhaps the most meaningful favor a soul has ever done for a wretched old man," he smiled, though he only half meant it. The other half remained unspoken, only hinted in the promise he'd elicited from Flint weeks ago. A life as long as his was bound to be endlessly complicated, as well. "After that, Carcosa was the last loose end. Once you apply this Mark, I will officially retire."

Luned's face pinched, fraught with anxiety over this strange speech. "Once I apply it? What do you mean, retire? Bleddyn, what––"

"The library and everything in it is yours," he interrupted. "And Carcosa, too. I hope, with this new Mark, that it will no longer be a burden, but a means. You share many of my best qualities, Luned, but you have something I never did, and that makes all the difference. You have ambition. I held the key to unknown depths of power for eighty years –– eighty years –– and the most I accomplished was to squirrel myself away behind stone until I wasted away into a very sorry old man."

"But––" Luned exclaimed, Bleddyn quickly silencing her with a hand on her shoulder, and she finally understood. Before he could speak, she interrupted again. "You blame yourself," she said, her tense posture wilting, her tone of disbelief. "Do you really think you could have stopped Xem'Zund?"

Behind his snow-white whiskers, Bleddyn's expression softened. "I don't know," he said, and under the weight of his arthritic hand, Luned felt him brace himself against her the slightest bit. "I can never know. But I will always wonder. Do you remember what I told you those many years ago, when we first met Resolve?"

The girl stared at him, blue eyes wide and teary. "Yes," she muttered, nearly a whisper. "I think so."

"Don't live as a ghost as I have, trapped in a self-imposed limbo," Bleddyn pleaded, the grip of his skeletal fingers tightening on her shoulder. "You can change the world, Luned. You fixed the life of a lost little girl, you fixed the attitude of a bitter old man, and I have faith that you can fix the gods-damned whole of Althanas if you live long enough." And then, as quickly as the intensity rose, Bleddyn's form gave way to a weariness only a man who'd lived far too long could possibly know. "I am so very tired. Please, accept this one last gift from a miserable old man before he disappears into the sunset." He released her to offer the Mark with both hands, a motion of utmost respect.

"Oh, gods," Luned gasped, tears drawing lines down her pale face. There was no trace of flush in sight. "What will happen to you? Where are you going?"

It was then Bleddyn realized his theatrics might have been a bit much and he patted her shoulder, gently this time. "I will be at the library when you return," he reassured her. "But I cannot say how long I will have once I surrender myself to human mortality again. Long enough for one last game, at the very least," he added, looking to Flint.

The brute had felt like an eavesdropper through the entire conversation, a third wheel to this profound moment between mentor and apprentice. At the very least, but he appreciated the sentiment. "I would hope," he replied simply, otherwise at a loss for a contribution.

Bleddyn smiled to him, albeit tentatively, then turned his attention back to Luned. "I cannot force you to accept this, though. Ultimately, it is your choice."

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. "If… if I say no, will Carcosa be lost?"

"Most likely," Bleddyn nodded. "Until the next hapless sorcerer stumbles upon it. But no one else could possibly be as worthy as you."

[Luned]

Luned understood that, in a way, acceptance of this offering would replace what she thought she'd lost in Ettermire. After all, that's what Swaysong was: power. But, since their traumatizing misadventure in Alerar, she'd had plenty of time to second guess her motivations. Thus far in her life, power had only spelled trouble. She could only bear so much.

"Something to consider," Bleddyn added slyly, "Is your journey home. I know all about Aneised's little red book." Luned flinched, as if caught redhanded at something quite unacceptable. "I will save my lecture for later and will simply say that, between those teachings and Carcosa's power, you and your crew could weather any storm, no matter how treacherous and unnatural."

As easy as that, she was convinced. Luned reached out, hesitated, then accepted the document into her own hands. She held it as if afraid she'd break it somehow. "How does it work?"

Bleddyn seemed to decompress, almost as if he'd been holding his breath. "Like any other Mark," he said, tracing one shaky finger over the design. "This was the difficult part, it is what creates the channel between the marker and the marked. I can teach you more when you return to Radasanth."

She glanced to Flint, perhaps hoping he'd convince her otherwise, but his expression mirrored what her gut was telling her: Isn't this what you've wanted so badly?

It was. It really was, and as much as that scared her, Bleddyn was right. At the very least, she owed it to the crew who still had that journey to make. She'd consider the implications and consequences of this decision later.

"Here goes nothing." Luned approached the tower and knelt down into the unruly grass, nearly disappearing into a prickly shroud of green as she selected an inconspicuous location for the Mark. Though she knew it might not carry through future manifestations of this mysterious place, it was worth practicing a little discretion. With a deep breath, she pressed the drawing facedown against one of the smooth, gray stones which formed the foundation of the peculiar structure. And then, as simple as that, it was done. She pulled the vellum away and the design remained adhered to the new surface. "That was anticlimactic," she said as she stood, but as her height shifted, she felt it.

The low buzz of magical static she'd nearly forgotten about seemed to rise from the ground with her, humming over her like a new layer of skin. It wasn't physical, but rather something impossible to put into words –– a tingling which transcended the standard sense of touch. For a moment the girl stood in silence, staring at her hands as she puzzled over the sensation. She rubbed her fingers together as if expecting to produce a spark. In her distraction, the blank vellum fluttered to the ground and was soon carried away by another salty, sea-borne breeze, a white form swept away into the dense, rustling forest.

Flint didn't know what to make of her reaction. "Luned?"

After another moment she glanced up, a bit bewildered, but fine. "You know how, when you're a kid, you wake up on your birthday expecting to feel different, but you never do?"

The brute hadn't exactly had the most typical childhood, but he had an idea of what she meant. He nodded, Bleddyn standing stoically with his hands clasped neatly at his waist nearby.

"It's like that, but it actually happens," Luned said, glancing down as she brushed her hands over her clothing, as if to wipe the magic off her palms. "It's… weird."

"You will get used to it," Bleddyn said. "Just take utmost caution with anything you do until you learn your own strength. Is that understood?"

Luned nodded, the sensation utterly distracting. "Is this really it?"

The old man nodded. "Yes, though I think I shall stay and take a look around. Of course, you are welcome to join me," he said, glancing between the two. "But it looked as if your interests lie elsewhere." That jab was enough to send some color back into Luned's cheeks.

"Bleddyn," she spoke up, looking at her hands again. "I'll keep the crew safe, but… what happens after? I think you've vastly overestimated what I'm capable of. I don't want to disappoint you."

"Well," he cleared his throat. "If it helps, I will be dead before too long, and then you can do whatever you want." That fact, as inescapable as it was, still horrified the girl, and such was obvious as she gaped at the old man. "Just keep up the act, let me die a contented man, and then you have my permission to resign yourself to the life of a sorely underemployed housewife surrounded by a gaggle of frighteningly smart, gratuitously muscled children."

Flint, having been nearly silent thus far, laughed. In a way, that was an awkward verbal approval of what had transpired between him and Luned. He'd take it.

She frowned. "You've been spending too much time with Muir," she accused Bleddyn. "He's a bad influence."

He smiled. "Shall I walk you to your boat?"

[Luned]

Saying good bye wasn't easy after all that, even if it was only for a few weeks. Luned shocked Bleddyn with a hug, which he reciprocated a bit uneasily. The warm fuzzies of their relationship were generally left unexpressed, and it showed. Their tentative embrace was short but meaningful, framed like a painting between a perfect blue sky and the waves that reflected it. For a short moment, the shadowy ring in the distance was forgotten.

"I look forward to that game," Flint said as he shook Bleddyn's hand.

"Indeed," he agreed. "I will have the young exorcist for company until you return, but she isn't much for chess." For a self-proclaimed bitter old man, Bleddyn never seemed short on humor. His tone shifted to something more solemn, however, as he continued, lowering his voice just enough that Luned wouldn't hear. "You know how she is. She will be careful in her own way, but still, don't let her get away with too much."

This reminder of his duty unsettled Flint a bit, but all he could do was nod in affirmation. This appeased Bleddyn, who stepped back so Flint could push off. "We will talk more when you return home," he said, his voice reassuring over the rush of water. "For now, take care."

"Be careful," Luned called out as Flint arranged the oars, an afterthought as their dinghy began to drift away. "Don't stay out here too long by yourself. If anything happens, write and we'll come back!"

The old man merely waved, then turned to walk back up the beach and into the woods. She watched as his blue-clad form disappeared into the shade of the trees, and as their little boat swam over the waves, her stomach commenced its predictable bout of somersaults.

"It doesn't feel real," Luned said, looking to Flint as he rowed. "None of it does. What if it isn't? What if we all died in that storm, and this is…" she drifted off, realizing she was rambling.

Flint's rowing slowed. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine, I just…" she leaned forward, stretching to reach him from her seat, and rested her hand against his cheek. "Do you feel anything strange?"

The brute paused in rowing, holding the oars tight as the current threatened to pull them away. "No, but I don't have much experience with magic. I imagine you might feel things I can't." The dinghy lurched over a wave, nearly sending Luned out of her seat. "Hold on. We can discuss this better when we get back to the ship."

[Warpath]

While Flint helped Roberson haul the dinghy up out of the water and return it to its place on board, Luned did her best to explain what had transpired on Carcosa to the rest of the crew. Ultimately there wasn’t much to say and the story was met with silence, mainly.

“It all seems so…anticlimactic,” Aeril said at last. “Do you feel different?”

Luned huffed quietly, frustrated with the question she couldn’t answer fully for herself, much less elucidate upon for others. “No. Yes? I’m not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “Believe me, this isn’t what I expected either. It doesn’t feel real.”

“Enough questions,” Flint said. “What we set out to do is accomplished, but we’re not done. We still have that to content with.”

He pointed out at the horizon, toward the perpetual storm.

“He’s right,” Aeril said. “Get this deck in order, boys, and start double-lashing the cargo. This time we’re going to be ready for it.”

Luned looked to Flint appreciatively. His tone had been dismissive, but she knew him well enough now to see his intention: he was protecting her from the crew. He peeked at her from the corner of his eye and gave her a subtle nod.

“Mr. Flint,” Aeril said, “since Mr. Muir is still quite put-off from his ordeal, perhaps it would be best if you joined me in my cabin to discuss preparations. It’s time we put your expertise to good use.”

The brute nodded his assent. When Aeril turned to walk away, he hesitated, looking to Luned. She smiled her encouragement to him.

“I’m going to check on Muir,” she said. “And I could use a minute, anyway. We’ll talk later.”

Flint grunted, and a moment passed replete with desires neither of them could act upon yet. Instead they shared a look, and then the brute turned to follow the captain, and the scribe looked back out over Carcosa, losing herself in thought.

[Warpath]

Flint lounged in his seat to Aeril’s right, glaring out the large windows at the distant storm clouds. A snake of wicked, barbed lighting squirmed rhythmically in the tempest in answer. What are you to me? it asked. He didn’t know.

Aeril was drawing a rough map for reference more than anything. Carcosa was represented by a triangle, and she drew a circle off to the side of it. “This is where we encountered the sirens,” she said. “Obviously it would be best not to return that way.”

“The storm does not seem to move or change,” Flint mused. “We know we can survive it the way we came, perhaps it would be best to face the devils we know.”

Aeril shook her head. “You weren’t in any position to see how bad off we were. It’s a miracle we didn’t lose anyone.”

“Except Muir,” Flint said, “and only because we let our vigilance slip. We know the sirens’ tricks now. Those of us that are susceptible to their spells can be confined and secured below decks. We can prepare for them.”

“And they for us,” Aeril said. “If we pass that way again, they’ll know their spell won’t work. Who knows what they have to fall back on.”

“Hmm,” Flint said. “They are surmountable.”

“I’m afraid I’m not like you, Mr. Flint,” Aeril said. “I would prefer to avoid a fight whenever possible. These men depend on me to keep them alive, and I just don’t believe we can go up against those sirens again and come out with everybody on the other side.”

“Very well. We go around the sirens, or we try. We should assume that they will want to come for us.”

“Indeed,” Aeril said.

“We came from the north on their side, so it stands to reason they will expect us to go around them to the north.”

“So we go around them south at an extreme angle. We’ll make for Scara Brae rather than Radasanth. Perhaps that would be wise regardless. We can resupply there instead of relying on witchcraft again. We may have to ration ourselves, but it will be safer.”

“That’s up to Luned,” Flint said. “If he lets her, I fear Luned will send Muir home before risking him in the storm again, no matter the risk to herself.”

“Another fight you’re eager not to back away from,” Aeril teased.

Flint shrugged. “Another enemy I know. That is always preferable.”

“I must admit,” Aeril said, “I’m surprised you haven’t argued to send Luned back through her magic door. Surely it would be preferable to be lost in the crowd in Radasanth. She’d be harder to find.”

Flint shook his head. “She won’t leave the ship until the job is done. Not unless the crew comes, and you will not leave your ship behind.”

“You could make her leave, or take her away. This is all for nothing if she doesn’t survive, and worse than nothing if she dies on board exactly because she didn’t leave when she could have.”

Flint shrugged. “Not what I was paid to do,” he said.

Aeril eyed him critically. “We’ll see what she and Muir want to do, then. Assuming they decide to stay, what else can we do to prepare?”

Flint thought a long moment, and then began to list his ideas – preparations for every conceivable threat, and then he ran through the shortcomings and dangers of those preparations, and the best ways to overcome them. At first Aeril nodded her agreement, and then she began taking notes on her rough map. When Flint finally exhausted his backup plans for his backup plans, she declared herself impressed.

“I must admit, Mr. Flint,” the captain said, “I was not originally keen on having you aboard, but now I’m glad to have you to depend on.”

“Trust me, use me, and put me to work, Captain,” he said as he moved to his feet. “But you must never depend on me.”

[Warpath]

Voices were coming from the room that was once Luned’s, and Flint paused a moment to consider them. It was hard not to talk to her – there was so much to say – but there would be time for that. Muir needed her now.

Instead, Flint went into his own room and closed the door behind him. For the first time, the mission had what felt like an end in sight, so the brute took a long moment to look over his quarters. The gentle rock and sway of the ship was familiar now, and the room he once called cramped now felt cozy. This place had become a sort of home, and he was surprised that he would miss it.

He retrieved his rucksack, digging through the sparse contents within. It was a shame they hadn’t discovered freshwater on the island, there was so much he wanted to wash the salt out of. He was wondering if there was still time to find a nice pond or well when he found what he was looking for: a bound codex of Salvic nobles and their familial lands and basic lineages. Dry reading for most, but a hit-list for Flint. He flipped through the pages quickly until the codex fell open, revealing an envelope.

He opened it and retrieved Bleddyn’s Mark, unfolding the paper carefully to regard the impossibly intricate design. When he stared at it, the parts in his peripheral vision seemed to shift, like strings slipping into knots but never fully tightening. When he tried to watch the phenomena directly he saw no movement but for what once-still parts fell newly into the peripheral. An optical illusion, one might assume, but Flint didn’t think so.

Bleddyn had suggested that such a thing meant his life so the choice to use it had seemed obvious – he had assumed that Luned would need it the moment she unlocked the island’s secrets. Now it felt like another little betrayal, like the Swaysong. He folded the paper back into thirds and tucked it back into the envelope, and decided at once that he would give the Mark to Luned immediately. He had gained her affection somehow, despite the odds, and he refused to have anything more between them. Every secret was an obstacle and a burden.

He turned to go to her, and paused when something caught his eye. He turned the envelope, and found writing all down the opposite side. It was Bleddyn’s hand, and he was sure the writing hadn’t been there when the Mark had been entrusted to him.

My large friend, it began. There was much to discuss with Luned, and so little time to say all that needed to be said. Most can wait for your return, but not all. Recall well my words about this Mark, first. Let Luned test her new limits, and consider this a lifeline between she and us should she venture too far. Second, you must take great care with the objects you now wear on your arms. I had assumed you found them on the isle, but further consideration brings doubt. Suffice to say that my research on and connection to Carcosa has given me unique insight into realms beyond Althanas, and I believe I have seen the place from whence those tools came, and the creatures that created them. They are surely powerful, but they are not safe for their bearer. However you came by them, I advise the utmost care if you choose to keep them, and that you dispose of them completely if you do not. Such things could do significant harm in callous hands. Thirdly and finally – I wish you both the best. Take care.

The old scribe’s name was signed below with a practiced flourish. Flint read it over again, and then muttered to himself. He didn’t know what to do. The greatest relief would be giving it to Luned immediately, but he didn’t know enough. What would she do with it? What if they needed it? What if she didn’t understand it any better than he did? Bleddyn hadn’t seen fit to tell Luned about it, but why not? This all felt like a test without a right answer.

Flint sighed and tucked the envelope into his back pocket, and only now thought about the second focus of Bleddyn’s message, and realized that he was still wearing the gauntlets. He was briefly disquieted, because somehow he’d become accustomed to their weight and bulk. He’d held Luned wearing them, and somehow they hadn’t seemed like a impediment. In fact, he thought that he remembered exactly how she felt pressed to his forearms, and yet…

He reached up to pull the left gauntlet off, but hesitated when a crack of thunder echoed; rattling the walls of the ship though the storm was miles off. He stared at his hands for a long time, lost in thought, vacillating between fear of the unknown and fear of the known. Bleddyn called them unsafe, but he also called them powerful. Flint needed power more than he needed safety.

He wanted to curse and rail against all this mystery and magic. He wanted something he could grab and hold, something he could…

And then there was a light, familiar knock at the door, and all the confusion and the frustration fell away.

[Warpath]

Luned came into the room and closed the door behind her, and then they came together automatically. There was no hesitation now, no doubt between them: she pressed her hands to his chest and he put his on her hips, and then they closed their eyes and pressed their foreheads together. It was a wholly unique and pleasant sensation to Flint: to be exposed to someone and to enjoy it.

“He’s being stubborn,” Luned sighed, reaching up and running her fingertips over Flint’s cheek through his beard. “I’ve never seen him so scared of anything. He thinks he’s hiding it.”

“Aeril and I plotted the safest course we could imagine,” Flint said. “With luck we’ll avoid the sirens altogether and only the storm will need contending with. I recognize what he’s going through, but Aurelianus getting back on board is a greater threat than the storm.”

“A greater threat to me,” Luned said, opening her eyes to look up at him pointedly. “Besides, I don’t think it’s the sirens he’s afraid of.”

“The storm and the sirens were unexpected when we first encountered them,” Flint said. “We’d had weeks of smooth sailing to lull us into complacency, and in the end we faced those challenges successfully. Fear will make us far sharper this time. We can handle whatever’s out there.”

“I hope you’re right,” Luned said.

“I am,” Flint said. “By nightfall we’ll be most of the way through the storm.”

“This is going to be a long day,” Luned sighed. “And here’s me without a bed, now.”

She peeked up at him, the corners of her lips teasing upward, and Flint made a thoughtful sound. “Well we can’t have that,” he said. “It seems I have no choice but to share mine. I am nothing if not a gentleman. Everyone says so.”

Luned’s grin broke into a wide smile, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “You are, but I strongly doubt anybody has ever said so.”

“You just did.”

“True,” Luned said, close enough now that her lips brushed his when she spoke. “But I think I know you a little better than most.”

“You do,” he said.

Their lips came together, and then Blue shouted down for all hands on deck, and Flint growled.

[Warpath]

The anchor came up and the sails unfurled, and a strong, balmy breeze immediately dragged them forward. Aeril spun the wheel dramatically and the ship leaned, and only came straight again when her nose was pointed south. The early afternoon sun threatened to burn Flint’s scalp, but he allowed it – the storm loomed dark before them, a wall of grey-black suspended in the sky and pregnant with lightning. The dry heat of the sun was about to become a pleasant memory.

Luned wrapped her arms around herself and watched Carcosa steadily shrink while the sailors worked around her. Someone – Flint? – wrapped a heavy jacket around her shoulders. When she realized it some moments later, she slipped her arms into the sleeves, casting a glance toward the oncoming storm. She couldn’t decide which was more dismaying: Carcosa shrinking away from them, or the storm rushing toward them.

A cold rush of air rocked the ship, and the overwhelming scent of rain was upon it. “Time to tie down!” Aeril shouted from the sterncastle.

The crew separated, each man drawing a length of rope around his waist and then over one shoulder, where it was expertly tied, and then lashed at the other end to mast or banister or sturdy rigging. They were arrayed in teams, each length of rope carefully measured so that every man could come to the aid of two others. The women, along with Muir and Gaspar, were carefully separated amongst the crew and had longer lengths of rope, permitting them the most movement.

Flint was stationed with Aeril on the sterncastle, and his leash was long enough to give him full run of it. Now he stood beside the captain, helping to lash her hands to the wheel tight, but not so tight as to cut blood flow to her fingers. “I still question the dearth of harpoons on your ship,” he told her.

“This isn’t a whaling craft,” she said without looking at him.

“Well,” he said, “now you know there are other things out here in need of spearing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Retie my left, please, still too tight. You may ask Muir for his glaive, if it will make you feel better. You’d make better use of it, I guess.”

Flint glanced out over the deck as he retied Aeril’s hand. Muir was focusing closely on his weapon, fastening the blade in place tightly. Even from this distance, the brute could see that his breathing was shallower than anyone else’s, and he was the only crewman not glancing at the oncoming storm.

“No,” Flint said. “He needs every source of confidence we can give him now. Besides, I’ve never used a polearm.”

“Seems simple enough,” Aeril said. “Pointy end goes into the thing you want dead.”

“It’s a long weapon,” Flint said. “The farther you are from your enemy, the easier it is to miss. I’d be as likely to skewer you as a siren.”

“Let Muir keep it, then.”

Flint grunted, and then the rain came down on them in a solid sheet, and they were instantly drenched.

“Here we go,” Aeril said, but not even she could hear her voice over the fierce patter of water on the deck.

[Warpath]

The rainwater rushed off the deck through the banister rails, four dozen small rivers launching themselves overboard and separating back into illimitable drops before merging with the sea. The only light came from the waterproofed lanterns on deck and the constant flashes of lighting. The thunder repeated its monstrous peals over and over, brutalizing any attempts at communication. The crew struggled against the water and endured. Flint watched them stoically from on high, armored arms crossed over his chest.

Aeril shouted something indecipherable so Flint crossed the deck to her and leaned close, putting his ear near to her mouth. “We should have been through by now!”

The brute nodded, and didn’t know what else to say. Night had fallen at least an hour earlier, and the storm was as intense now as it had been when they first entered it. They had assumed that it was a circular system centered on the island, but now it seemed to stretch farther to the south than it had to the north. The sails strained against the wind, however, and the ship glided across the waves as if half airborne. The storm couldn’t go on forever.

Unless the world had ended while they were on Carcosa, which was not as distant a threat as one might hope. Flint’s mind drifted for a moment as he recalled the stories he’d heard of Caden Law and the devastation recently visited upon the entire island of Scara Brae as part of a narrowly aborted Armageddon. This was Althanas, and so the end of the world was never all that far off.

Flint pressed his cheek to the side of Aeril’s head and shouted into her ear: “It’s too late to change course now. We endure!”

The brute leaned back and Aeril nodded at him, eyes narrowed against the downpour. He could see the strain in her neck and shoulders, but there was no helping it now. He could not take up her burden, and the crewmembers with the requisite skills would be just as exhausted.

So Flint straightened his back and banished all signs of his own fatigue, and gave the captain a hard look, and she returned it.

[Warpath]

Shipmen called it the crow’s nest, but Blue the dwarf was beginning to think that calling it the fool’s nest was more apt. She had her back pressed against the rails and her hands wrapped firmly around the banister, and she fought down the urge to vomit. Normally she had a very strong stomach, but the storm was tossing the ship about wildly and no stomach would be up to this task. It was bad enough on deck, but the masts were swinging from side to side like a metronome. That she hadn’t been struck by lightning a hundred times over by now was a miracle, and she began to imagine that the ship’s drunken rocking was the only thing keeping her alive.

She risked another peek out at the horizon, praying for signs of an end to the storm. There was no hope before them, and when she looked back she saw no more reason for raised spirits. It was as if the storm had no end.

Or that it was following them.

Her heart skipped a beat at the thought, and she felt in her bones an absolute truth to it. She had no evidence but her certainty: the sea was a roiling mass of black hills, the sky a turbulent blanket of charred clouds and spears of lightning, and neither changed an iota. Either they weren’t moving – unlikely, given Carcosa’s disappearance – or the storm was.

If they packed up the sails and hunkered down, Blue thought, perhaps the storm would pass them over. The more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed, and she was prepared to climb down from the nest to run it past Aeril when a new thought occurred to her, a thought that drew her eye out to the horizon in the direction they’d come from.

As she watched, she felt her heart quickening in her chest. The lightning flashed and struck, drawing blazing veins in the sky and in the empty space between the clouds and the sea, and she tightened her fingers on the sodden wood that surrounded her.

“It can’t be,” she murmured. “No.”

The storm wouldn’t pass them over because it was chasing them, and it was about to catch up.

“Hoy!” Blue screamed, waving her arms, but her voice was swallowed up and nobody on deck was looking up. “Hey! Look at me, gods damn it, look up here! Hey!”

She looked back out at the horizon and moaned in dismay, now sure of what she thought she might only be imagining. The lightning flashed, and for an instant the sea and the ship were illuminated, and she could barely – just barely see a shape beneath the waves, a shadow rushing toward them.

Whatever it was, it was tremendous. It was tremendous, and fast, and as it drew nearer the rain fell harder and the flashes and arcs of lightning became more intense. It was the heart of the storm.

Muir had been right.

Blue screamed until it tore at her throat and she felt herself go light-headed, waving her limbs.

The shadow fell beneath the ship, and then it grew.

[Warpath]

Movement caught Flint’s eye and he glanced upward. Blue was waving frenetically down at them, and when she met his eye she pointed emphatically down. He crossed the deck in a few long strides, clutched the railing, and peered over the edge. He searched desperately for signs of sirens or other invaders, and only after a long moment did he realize the problem was so much worse.

A shadow was growing beneath the ship, darker even than the waves themselves, and the flashes of lightning revealed it to be ever-larger. Something was coming up on them from below.

“Brace!” he hollered madly, turning back to Aeril. She saw him and the panic in his eye, and turned the wheel sharply to one side.

The ship lurched once, and then chaos reigned. The deck fell out alarmingly from below Flint’s feet, and in the peripherals of his vision he saw the sea rising up to either side of the ship. He landed hard on his side and slid across the deck toward the front of the ship. Aeril cried out in pain and fear behind him.

The waves crashed and roared against the sides of the ship, and the deck was raised up so quickly that Flint felt his stomach lurch, and his hands grasped at the floorboards in a futile search for a grip. He didn’t find one in time, so that when the boat reached its apex his back lifted four inches off the deck before falling back to it again.

Flint pushed down the pain, and let the tactical side of his mind race. Something colossal and heavy had been attached suddenly to the underside of the ship, he decided: the first shock had been the ship suddenly slowing down due to the extra drag, the second had been a new and monumental weight dragging them downward, and the sudden rise had been the counteracting force.

“Some sort of anchor!” he roared, crawling to his feet. “The sirens have some sort of anchor!”

He raced to the edge and looked over, but could discern nothing beneath the waves. The ship was going much slower now, and even over the rain he could hear the masts straining against the sails.

“Do you see anything?!” Aeril shouted.

He shook his head fiercely.

“They may try to cut through the hull from below! They’ll cut holes!”

“Holes I’ll plug with their corpses,” he growled.

He was about to turn from the rail to go below deck when the ship lurched again, and once more the sea rose steadily up to either side as the water beneath them was displaced. He gripped the rail hard, and his stomach sank when it began to seem as though they would be pulled right down beneath the surface. What could be so large, so heavy to pull them this way? A hundred sirens wouldn’t have the strength, a thousand…

And then cold realization struck him, and he looked down on the deck, where Muir stood pale and still, the lone man not looking over the edge.

No sane man looks directly at death when he knows death’s face.

[Warpath]

The waves were alarmingly high, battering the sterncastle with foam and spray, but the ship dropped no farther. Aeril turned the wheel one way and then the other, and then she looked out over the deck desperately, lost. What could she do? What could anyone do?

The men began to shout, giving conflicting orders, demanding guidance, calling out for help. One or two threw things down into the water, mops and buckets and even a knife, but those things disappeared into the depths and changed nothing.

Flint paced, opening and closing his fists rhythmically, and he watched the sea, and he waited, and he was the only one that didn’t cry out when their foe revealed itself.

At first they thought they were stone spires rising from the sea around them, black towers as thick as tree trunks. “A mountain!” someone shouted. “We’re caught on a mountain!”

The spires kept rising, and Flint stopped his pacing to watch them, tense. They were not stone. They reached a hundred feet into the air, fourteen or fifteen of them surrounding the ship, and then the spires curled so-slowly downward upon them, first like the fingers of a giant hand, and then they seemed more like spider legs without joints.

Muir danced away as the first tendril came down on the ship, lighting gentle and limp upon the deck, one end rising up out of the sea on one side, and the other end disappeared over the edge on the opposite side. Gradually, slowly, one-by-one, the remaining limbs came to rest on the ship. One lay over the main mast, and Blue was already scrambling down out of the crow’s nest.

What happened next came as no surprise: the tendrils tensed, and pulled, and tightened, and the wood of the ship screamed. Flint charged the tendril nearest to him, but hesitated when he got a close look at it. From a distance it looked like stone, but up close it reminded him of something far more terrible.

In Ettermire he’d encountered a cockroach the size of a stagecoach, and the alien armor covering it still haunted his nightmares. The surface of those tendrils was similar, plated and segmented and hard, gleaming with water. Flint viciously kicked at it, but his blows did nothing.

On deck, four sailors were attempting to pull one tendril up off the deck, but their efforts were utterly in vain. Muir had the most luck, driving the blade of his glaive down into one of their enemy’s limbs. The blade sank into the surface a few centimeters, and could be driven no farther.

The wood of the railing snapped in two and then three places, and the ship rocked violently first to one side, and then the other, tossing the crew off their feet. Overhead the mast began to groan, and with an explosion of splinters a crack appeared right at the base of it. Their ship was being steadily crushed, and the sea churned around them.

Flint untied himself and bounded over the railing, dropping off the sterncastle and landing heavily beside Muir.

“Gaspar!” he roared, but the Fallienman was already crossing the deck, bounding over the tendrils one after the next.

The three of them gripped the glaive, and with their combined weight and all the strength they could muster, they forced the blade down into that unholy tentacle an inch at a time. The blade sank, and just when it seemed that the tendril was a thing beyond sense or pain, the ship lurched so hard to port that Roberson was thrown overboard, only saved by the rope still tied around him.

The tendril loosened and then lifted off the deck, launching upward with such force that the three men were tossed aside.

“The glaive’s still stuck in it!” Muir shouted. “Find something sharp for the others!”

“They’re going slack!” Luned said. “You’ve hurt it, it’s letting us go!”

The injured, upraised tendril rose up, up, well over the mast of the ship, and then it dropped fast onto the front of the ship, and the force sent them all airborne, tumbling insensible through the air, limbs flailing, thunder and waves roaring, and the waves rushed up to meet them.

And amidst the chaos, as they slid and tumbled and rolled over the slick, shattered deck, they saw it.

It was hauling itself up out of the sea, a dozen oozing eyes flashing in the lightning, and it opened its maw too full of teeth.

[Warpath]

The ship leaned forward until the sterncastle rose up into the air, and from behind the wheel Aeril was looking down into the sea. She watched as the leviathan emerged from the sea, a black shape divorcing itself from the darkness surrounding it. It was bigger than the ship, so much bigger than any living thing had the right to be, but it was impossible to tell exactly where it began and the sea ended. The lightning illuminated it in glimpses: this eye from a fish, that from a crocodile, a lipless grin taken from a shark, limbs like a crab amongst a jellyfish’s ribbon-legs, and she could not tell if it had a tail or a squid’s tentacles. And then it opened its mouth to reveal a void ringed in a hundred thousand gleaming razors, a mouth that loomed above the ship and seemed poised to devour it whole, and Aeril felt herself go cold and calm.

So this is it, she thought. Wow.

This is how I die.

[Warpath]

The ship was failing all around him, cracking and splintering and snapping. The mast was leaning alarmingly to one side, and one more good shake would doubtlessly break it off and send it to the bottom of the ocean. The rain beat down on him, making everything slick, but Flint endured. He climbed, curling his fingers into the gaps between the boards, shoving off from the tendrils.

Luned had her back to what was once the floor and she was standing on one of the tendrils, gripping her rope to keep herself steady. She looked down first to see the monster poised to swallow them, but then she saw Flint, and she had no more attention to give to death. She held on to the rope with one hand, and reached out with the other. Her braids were coming loose, and her hair hung soaking wet and wild around her face, and her eyes were wide.

She was screaming something – his name? He couldn’t hear her over the cacophony. He was afraid, but not for himself. For the first time in his life, he had no thought of his own pain or safety, and had no need to push his fear aside. For the first time he embraced it, and it gave him strength. He didn’t care if he lived or died, just so long as she lived – just so long as she had a chance.

His mind raced, desperate. He had to contact Agnie somehow, get Luned back through the doorway to Radasanth before –

The wood of the ship cried out, and another railing snapped and splintered, and the back half of the ship shifted downward alarmingly. It couldn’t bear its own weight. The rope in Luned’s hand suddenly went slack and she cried out, stumbling and then shoving herself back. Flint’s heart stopped, but she didn’t fall. She gripped the tendril with both hands now, crouched against it, and the look in her eye spoke of all the hope abandoning her.

He hung from the ship with one hand, eyes locked on hers, and with his free hand he reached down into his pocket and closed his fingers around the vial of Swaysong. When he pulled it out he hesitated, and her eyes went from his hand to his eyes, and realization dawned on her face. He felt a strange, unfamiliar pang in his chest and wished desperately that he could tell her that he was sorry; he wanted so badly to explain. Instead he popped the cork out, and Luned screamed.

He didn’t need to hear her to know the word, but he raised the vial to his lips anyway.

The Swaysong had no taste, but it was cold. He swallowed it, or tried to, but the moment it touched the inside of his mouth he could feel it sinking into his flesh, filling his cheeks and his jaw, spreading its cool touch over his nose and down his throat. It spread perceptively throughout his body, working its way down and then in toward his bones. It crawled up into his skull and it laced its way down along his spine, and then he began to feel wrong.

He was too aware of himself, and the world began to fade away. The unpleasant cold of the rain seemed distant compared to the comforting chill within him, and the thunder and the waves and the rain dropped away to a hushed din from somewhere beyond, so insignificant next to the beating of his heart and the rhythmic rush of blood through his veins. Suddenly the night was not so dark and its colors intensified and supersaturated, and when the lightning streaked across the sky it did so at a crawl, and its luminescence was no harsher than the sun in the early morning gloom. He forgot pain and fatigue and weakness, and wondered what had prevented him from scaling the ship with ease: the weight of his own body was nothing – a single feather, no more than the droplet of rain just about to strike the bridge of his nose.

So this is what it felt like to be a god.

He let go, and fell.

[Warpath]

The ship was not perfectly vertical, but it was held up at an extreme angle. Flint slid down along the deck toward the leviathan’s open maw. He was aware of the imperfections in the deck ripping at his leg and side, but the pain was nothing, another piece of information he consumed. Strange – a moment ago death seemed only seconds off, but now he felt as though he had all the time in the world.

His boot struck the tendril immediately below him and he twisted, curling at the waist and catching it in both hands. “You will know first,” he growled. “You will know first, and no one will forget after you.”

He braced his boots against the deck just beneath, and pressed his fingers into the surface of the tendril. What had seemed so hard was now pliant, supple, and his fingertips sank in, pierced, and some warm liquid welled up against his palms. He took great handfuls of flesh, reveling in the feel of individual ropes and strings that made up that appendage, and then he pulled.

“I…AM….FEAR.”

Blood gushed around his hands, splashing on his neck and chest as he butchered the alien limb with his bare hands. The tendril shivered in his grip, eager to lash but the requisite muscular control had been severed. Flint squeezed and twisted, ripping and yanking chunks of white flesh free and tossing them back away from him. He felt the world lurch as the leviathan loosened its grip on the ship and the sterncastle dropped back down toward its proper place in the sea.

He released the mangled meat and let himself slide farther downward before the ship fully evened out. The leviathan was already lifting the next tendril away, so he shoved away from the deck and went airborne, and reached both hands out to catch. He struck the tendril hard, wrapping his arms around it, but the monster trembled in fear and the appendage lashed, lifted high away from the deck and quivering, shaking him loose.

Flint was ripped free and sent tumbling through the air, freefalling. The ship was far, far below him now – how far had he been thrown up? He didn’t know, but he felt no fear, only exhilaration. Death has no meaning to gods. His upward momentum was spent and he righted himself in the air. For a perfect moment he was suspended in midair, frozen in place with his limbs spread wide, and he could see the ocean spread out in every direction below him and the ship seemed tiny and insignificant. He saw Aeril there, and Luned, and Muir and Gaspar clinging to a railing together, and Blue hanging by her right arm from the rigging, and the leviathan was settling backward into the water, lashing its tendrils in the air furiously.

The young god – no, titan – he fell toward the ship. Was it fifty feet down? A hundred? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. The leviathan must have seen him, because it swung one of its tendrils to intercept him, but this was the one they’d stabbed with Muir’s glaive. He caught the shaft of the weapon with speed he didn’t know possible, twisting his body with an acrobat’s grace. The tendril lashed one way, and then the other, but Flint felt no concern. It could not shake him loose.

He held tight as the appendage dropped out of the sky, and the sea rushed up to meet him, and the wind roared in his ears and he smiled. He smashed into the surface of the water, and there was almost enough force there to tear him away but not quite, and the black sea embraced him in roiling cold and the tendril slowed its descent and drifted.

Flint looked, and saw the underside of the ship, and saw how vast the leviathan was. It gripped the ship with only the upper quarter of its body, the rest was a shadowy mass of tails and tentacles and tendrils swaying dreamily in the deeps. He didn’t know how to think of it: fish or whale or squid or lobster, it was something of all of them, all the sea in one body. He wanted to be closer to it that he might break it, so he twisted in the water and wrapped his legs around the tendril he hung from, and he pushed the glaive deeper in. The tendril lashed, and launched him upward once again.

The wind rushed around him again, too fast for him to determine where he was or where he was going: he didn’t care. He gripped the tendril tight and twisted the glaive, yanked and shoved viciously until the meat around the blade was raw and soft and ground up to uselessness, and then the tendril whip-snapped and Flint was, at last, shaken loose.

He fell for what felt like a long time, but everything was moving so slowly now, and then he felt his back strike something solid and something gave way – wood or bone, he couldn’t tell at first. He fell again, and then he struck the deck of the ship violently. It was his back, he decided – it was broken, utterly shattered. He couldn’t feel his legs, and his vision was blurring. He could feel himself bleeding internally, feel the ruptured mass of organs he didn’t know the names of, feel the nerves misfiring.

There was the briefest instant of fear, and he felt the darkness closing in on him, and then he denied it. The sounds came rushing back, the sea, the shouts of pain and fear, the thunder, the crashing waves, and his vision sharpened. He let anger take over, anger at his frailty. Get up, he told himself. Stand up. He tensed his back and felt his spine pull back into place, every segment snapping and cracking and fusing, sometimes the wrong way so the bone snapped and fused again until it felt right.

His heart had been fluttering, but now it found the beat again, and it pounded harder than ever – maybe too hard. He felt the blood straining against his veins, threatening to burst free, so his veins hardened until they strained against his flesh and threatened to tear rends in it, so his flesh hardened to hold them. He stood straight and stretched his arms to his sides and tensed, flexed, and his strength was such that he broke a bone in his left shoulder. The bone knitted too fast, and tore the ligament free entirely, and he could feel the tissue stretch between the bones to reconnect again, and when it pulled it did so too hard and yanked the bone away from the muscle, but the tendon healed.

It all happened in seconds, and the agony made him laugh. This time he flexed and felt his body strain against itself, but it held. He was learning how to be greater than a god, and there would be missteps, but what did it matter? The flesh obeyed.

“Flint!” someone shouted. He turned. Muir? He tossed the glaive back. He didn’t want to break it. Everything was so frail.

“Flint it’s coming back!”

What was coming back? He stretched his back and felt the muscle spread, pushing up against his skin. The flesh almost tore; he felt a bead of blood swelling against his shirt. He didn’t stop, even when the fabric ripped. What did it matter?

He found himself on the ground again, sliding violently across the deck. What was this? He slapped his hand against the wood and dragged himself to a stop, and looked up. The leviathan had rushed the side of the ship, and the impact had almost cracked it in half. Indeed, it was leaning, groaning, sinking. Its spine had been broken.

For a moment, Flint’s thoughts were confused. He had failed? He stumbled, suddenly feeling too heavy – too dense. His triceps were too large, too strong, and he almost broke his arm when he reached to catch himself. He was a fool, no god he, no titan. He remembered Ezura, the way she had swelled to grotesque proportions, the way her muscles had crushed the rest of her body. He had doomed himself.

It was hard to breathe. His ribs were too heavy, pressing in on his lungs, and he couldn’t fill them. He tried to take a deep breath, and cried out. He didn’t know what he overextended, but it tore. He coughed, and tasted blood.

He fell to one knee, and his vision swam. The leviathan laid two of its tendrils across the deck and began to pull itself up out of the water, intent upon bringing its full weight down on the ship. Its mismatched and myriad eyes twisted this way and that, both furious in its pain and gleeful at the coming revenge.

Flint began to fall to one side, and reached out. The movement was too sudden and the radius snapped, the bone tearing at his skin and pressing out on the inside of his gauntlet, and he felt his veins bursting one by one, and bruises spread beneath his skin. He had failed himself.

He had failed them all.

He had failed Luned.

[Warpath]

He struggled against death, fought for every breath. Despair settled over him, pushed him down, and he clawed for the light. The end was inevitable, but he refused to go easily. Oh-so-carefully he turned his head, blinking and straining his eyes to see. He caught a glimpse of Roberson, hanging limp from his rope. The deck was so empty, he thought, and then he realized the masts were gone. He turned his eyes to where Blue had been in caught in the rigging, but the rigging was all gone.

Someone was screaming Gaspar’s name, Muir he guessed, and the pain in his voice was heart-rending. It could mean nothing good. He turned his head the other way, but could not see onto the sterncastle from where he was. All he could see was Aeril’s hand and wrist, still bound to the wheel. Her fingers were delicately curled, and still. He was glad not to see her body, for he found that he had admired her. He wanted to remember her strong.

He turned his eyes to the sky and wheezed, and gave up on breathing for a moment just to rest. His eyes drifted closed, and through his eyelids he saw the lightning dancing, flashing, and the light gradually faded, each flash a little duller than the last.

“They got it, didn’t they?”

A girl stood alone on an empty street, filthy, soaked, and shivering. Loose pieces of paper drifted across the cobblestone behind her, tossed by the evening breeze. The script on the papers was Aleraran, and Flint didn’t read elf. Even underneath the grime, her hair tangled and snarled, shivering for fear and cold and exhaustion, her eyes spoke of unrelenting purpose.

“You look vulnerable,” he told her.

“If I had Swaysong, I could undo it,” she said.

She looked down, and he followed her gaze. Ezura’s corpse was there, misshapen and grotesque due to the Swaysong he forced her to drink. When he looked back up at Luned again, her face was bloody, and she had bloody cuts on her neck. The vial was in his hand, empty.

“I’m leaving,” she told him coldly. “You can find your own way out.”

Flint’s eyes snapped open and he took a harsh, deep breath, and felt his ribs shift and strain against his lungs. His chest burned. How long had he been dead? He didn’t know, but the darkness was already closing in again. He tried to growl, but instead he gurgled blood.

He couldn’t lift himself, so he turned his head and spat and coughed.

“Oh gods, thank you,” someone said. “Flint!”

He struggled to focus his eyes. Luned?

Her leg was pinned at an awkward angle underneath one of the leviathan’s tendrils. She was in pain, but her concern overrode it, and he realized with a chill that she’d watched him die. If the leviathan didn’t hurry, she’d probably have to see it again.

“Flint, look at me,” she begged. He focused his eyes on her again. “Stay with me.”

Slowly, despite the agony it caused him, he nodded for her. I’m not going anywhere, he wanted to say, but couldn’t because he was. The corners of his vision were cloudy and ethereal, and he was reminded of that brief instant some months ago when Resolve had torn his soul from his body. He swore he could see shapes and figures standing just outside his vision, watching with interest as his body failed him. Ezura would be there, he knew, and countless others.

“Flint,” she said, “listen to me. I need you to get up. I need you to get that thing away from the ship. I need you to kill it, so I can fix this.”

“Can’t,” he rasped hopelessly. “Dying.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and she shook her head, and he gave her a pained look. “No,” she said. “Flint you’re not dying. Look at me, focus. Okay? You gauge strength by seeing it controlled, remember? Control it.”

Flint’s mind wandered, but this time it went with a new clarity. He remembered a rosy-cheeked Luned full of doubt and want, pressing her forehead to his chest. He remembered reaching for her hair in the dark, as afraid for her as he was of her. He remembered her rain-soaked, shaking out sodden pages. He foresaw the leviathan hauling itself up onto the ship with one final effort, foresaw the scream cut short and the instant of panic and pain before her life was crushed out of her.

It made him angry.

“What are you!?” she screamed at him, breathing a little heavier as he crawled to his feet.

Of course, it seemed so obvious now. How did he forget?

He was fear.

[Warpath]

He spat blood and took a deep breath, filled his lungs deeper and deeper until they strained against his ribs, and then he filled them more. He clenched his fists until the strands of muscle in his forearm squeezed his shattered bone back in place, and the tissues met and mended. He felt the muscle fuse. He felt the bone knit and harden.

The leviathan was as good with boats as Flint was, but now it was determined. Three times it had tried to hoist itself up onto the ship, and three times it had fallen back into the water. This time it would not fail, dropping back until its head was almost completely submerged. This time it would surge up. This time it would crush these insolent gnats.

Flint tensed his body, one muscle at a time, and raised his arms. For all its size, all its power, the leviathan knew nothing of strength. He roared, and he charged. As he ran his footfalls grew heavier, pounding the deck, threatening to shatter the wood beneath his feet. At first he felt it, the new weight of his bones resisting him, pulling him down, but then he grew stronger, and gravity could not hold him.

The leviathan surged up, pulling on the ship.

Flint leapt.

Its eyes widened and it recoiled mid-leap, opening its maw and snatching him out of the air. It chomped down on him, and the brute disappeared. Pleased, the leviathan let itself drop down into the water again while it resumed preparations to crush the ship. Its victory was at hand.

And then it shivered and lashed, and when it opened its mouth again Flint was still there, having wedged himself between two of its horrific teeth. He yanked one tooth out of its moorings, again washing himself with a gush of blood, and then once again he leapt – not out of the monster’s mouth, but deeper inside it.

The leviathan winced away from the ship and turned, snapping its mouth closed and withdrawing its tendrils. The ship bobbed free as the monster dropped down into the raging sea.

[Warpath]

Luned tried not to look at her leg, or what was left of it. She tried not to think of the things she’d witnessed – the friends she’d seen die. Blue, Roberson, Gaspar. Aeril. They were all gone, along with sailors she hadn’t known as well. The rain was growing lighter, and she knew now that it meant the leviathan was retreating, but it was doing so with Flint in its mouth.

There was blood everywhere, and she knew it was hers. She pressed her palm into a pool of it, but it had mixed with water and so it did not cling to her skin. It would not do. The surface of the deck would not do. The pain was unbelievable. She dragged herself a foot at a time, screaming at the pain but refusing to look down.

“I can fix this,” she prayed. “I can fix this.”

She felt light-headed as she reached the doorway. The door was gone now, and the hallway was warped, the square frames made into twisted mockeries of themselves, rhombuses instead of rectangles. Rain poured in from every seam and crack, and she could see the sky through holes in the wall. She dragged herself on, shivering. Something that had once been a part of her caught on the door frame and she screamed her lungs ragged, but she didn’t let that stop her.

She reached up and struggled, pulling the bed sheets off the mattress. “Thank you,” she whispered raggedly. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

They were dry.

She stretched the sheet out and touched her fingers to the remnants of her leg, trying so hard not to think about what she felt, what was soft and what was hard, what was warm and what was cold, what wet and what dry. Her fingers came back so bloody, and her hands were shaking.

She dragged her fingertips over the material of the sheets, and every line was difficult and excruciating. She felt consciousness abandoning her.

“Please,” she said, pressing her hand to the bloody symbols. “Please.”

[Warpath]

Muir opened his eyes and inhaled sharply. He lifted his head and looked around, kicking his feet, and found himself tangled up in netting. He realized he was in his hammock. He searched himself, found his needles. He was feeling raw, but now wasn’t the time.

“Gaspar,” he said.

“What the fuck is going on,” Roberson said. “Where am…what the fuck is going on. Muir what the fuck is going on?”

The younger sailor dropped out of his hammock and stumbled away. He was dressed in his nightwear, and he touched his chest and his stomach. “I think I died,” Roberson whispered.

Muir didn’t care. He kicked his legs over the side and dropped out of the hammock, and bounded out, up the stairs onto the deck. Blue climbed very slowly and carefully out of the rigging and dropped to the deck, looking at her hand and wrist, closing and opening her fingers as if expecting them to fall off. She looked up at him, her eyes empty, and tears formed at the edges.

Aeril descended the dry steps from the sterncastle like a sleepwalker, touching her shoulder. She paused and turned, dropping to one knee to help a sailor sit up. It was Gaspar, looking every bit as dazed as the rest of them, and Muir charged him. They embraced, speaking over one another in too-fast Fallieni, touching one another’s faces and chests.

“Are we dead?” Blue asked at last. “Is this…?”

“No,” Luned said from the sterncastle doorway.

Dawn cracked over the horizon, and fresh sunlight stretched across the deck. The clouds were broken, patchy and fluffy and white, and the sea was calm and glistened in the first light. The scribe stepped out on deck, and Muir immediately dragged her into a fierce three-person hug with Gaspar. “What did you do?” he whispered.

“I fixed it,” Luned said with a tired smile. “It’s what I do.”

“Where’s Flint?” Muir asked.

He looked up at her face, and she looked away from him. Her smile wavered, and a rush of tears began to roll down her cheeks. “I couldn’t fix everything,” she said, and her voice cracked.

[Warpath]

“Wow,” Aeril said.

“Gross,” Muir agreed.

“That’s not what I meant,” Aeril snapped. “It’s just…”

“I can still hear you,” Flint growled.

The brute was sitting cross-legged in bed with his back to the headboard, eyes closed and hands on his knees. He was naked from the waist up, mainly because no shirt on board would fit him anymore. If he was muscular before, he was hulking now. An empty vial was set on the sheets in front of him.

“I don’t understand,” Luned said, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why can’t I undo it?”

“Part of me now,” Flint said without opening his eyes. “Not just physical. Can’t separate without undoing me.”

“Why’s he talking like that?” Muir said.

“As far as we can tell, the Swaysong is in a constant state of adapting him based on his wants and needs,” Luned said. “He needed to be stronger to kill the leviathan, so it made him stronger, for example. But it doesn’t just stop when the need goes away. If he doesn’t concentrate, it changes him based on every random thought or feeling. If he loses focus, he dies.”

“You killed that thing?” Aeril said.

Flint nodded once, slowly. “Drowned it.”

“How do you drown a giant fish?” Muir said.

“Stabbed it in the gills with its own teeth,” Flint said. “It died. Sank. Stayed inside it, where there was air to breathe. Woke up here.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yes,” Flint said.

“Wait,” Muir said. “Isn’t he going to need to sleep eventually? Can you sleep?”

Flint shook his head slowly. “Hard to move. Hard to do anything without breaking bones. Hard to breathe. Will die soon.”

“No you won't,” Luned said quietly. “I wrote to Bleddyn. He’s going to find a way to fix it.”

“Hmm,” Flint said.

“What does that mean?” Luned said.

“Unlikely,” he sighed. “Considered problem. No answer except transcendence. Insufficient time.”

“Transcendence?” Aeril asked, looking to Luned.

The scribe shook her head. “He keeps mentioning it. Honestly, even with him talking like that it’s hard to keep up. It isn’t just changing his body, it’s changing his mind. I can only imagine how slow we seem to him right now.”

“Very slow,” Flint agreed.

“Then you tell us,” Aeril said. “If there’s something you can do, there must be something we can do to help. We owe you that much.”

“Nothing on this world,” Flint said. “Only ends are death, transcendence. Do not wish either. Wish to stay with Luned. Outside help a possibility, no means to communicate. Positive divine intervention unlikely. Wait.”

Flint’s eyes snapped open, and he looked at his arms. “Of course. So stupid.”

Luned glanced down at his bracers, then up at his face, slowly lowering her arms. “What?”

“Shasande,” Flint said. “Great foresight. Impressive.”

“Shasande?”

“Unimportant, found salvation,” the brute said. “This is going to hurt. Do not be alarmed.”

Luned look to Aeril and Muir, and they looked back. Everyone was clearly alarmed. Flint stared at the strange pieces of armor for a long moment, and then he took a slow, steadying breath. He glanced up at Luned. “I will long to touch you without these one day,” he told her. “Do not let me try to remove them. Ever. The vambraces mean life on this plane. Their removal means death or transcendence. Understand?”

“No,” Luned admitted. “I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but…” She shook her head. “I won’t let you try to take them off.”

“Good,” Flint said. “I will miss the power. Would miss you more. Might not realize it, hard to say. Difficult to remember being imperfect.”

“Did he just say that he’s perfect?” Muir said.

“Almost,” Flint said. “Shame.”

There was a sudden, soft whirring noise, and the three backed away from Flint cautiously when they realized the noise was coming from his bracers. He sighed and turned his gaze down on the alien tools. After a few seconds, the whirring noise was joined by a series of sharp clicks, and Flint took a few more steadying breaths.

“Flint,” Luned said. “What’s happening?”

“Vambraces are tapping prominent veins in wrists and forearms,” he said. “Will purify blood of Swaysong. Constant process, perpetual. Painful.”

“What do you mean, perpetual?”

“Body produces substance now,” he said. “Never fully removed, only reduced.”

“Will it be enough?”

“Yes,” Flint said. “Need you to leave now, please. Don’t want you to witness this. Pride.”

“Okay,” Luned said. “Okay."

He looked up at her reassuringly, and she searched his face for a long moment. She told herself that he was still in there, somewhere, but there was no sign of it.

They left, and fifteen minutes later he began to scream.

[Warpath]

Flint woke up drenched in cold sweat. When he stepped out on deck he found the lanterns lit and the moon hanging high amidst countless stars, nary a cloud in sight. The crew was below decks, and he slipped past their sleeping forms on the way to the galley. He was surprised to find Blue awake and cooking.

“How’re ya feelin’?” she asked quietly.

"I'm myself again," he said. He held up one of the vambraces pointedly. “It hurts.”

The dwarf raised her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’ve just…I guess I’ve never heard ya complain.”

She was even more astounded when he smiled, even if only a little. “Then you can guess how much it hurts.”

Blue nodded slowly, setting a plate of cheese and salt jerky in front of him. She watched as he began tearing in, and he winced every time he had to hold the jerky tight to bite off a chunk.

“You saved us,” Blue said quietly and suddenly.

Flint shook his head. “Luned saved us.”

“Yes, but so did you,” she said. “Thank you.”

Flint muttered quietly to himself for a moment, paused, and then said, “You’re welcome.”

A long moment of silence passed between them while Flint ate. “Aren’t you tired?” he asked at last.

“Yes,” Blue said, “but I’m afraid to dream. I died.”

“Hmm,” Flint said. “So did I. I slept fine.”

“How?”

Flint shrugged. “I’m alive,” he said. “And the living need sleep. We’ll all die eventually Blue, but not today.”

She nodded. “Not today.”

“Go to sleep,” he said. “Where’s Luned?”

“She was on the sterncastle,” Blue said. “Give her some time, Flint.”

“I have to apologize,” he said, moving to his feet. “Sleep.”

“I’ll try,” Blue sighed.

[Luned]

She'd had a lot of time to think –– too much time, really. It had been hard at first to process anything other than Flint's horrific screams, and once he fell quiet, it took all the control she could muster not to check in on him and make sure he wasn't dead. She thought for sure that if she opened that door she'd discover him withered away and twisted in on himself, racked by the same gruesome death he gave Ezura. Luned should have savored the irony in that, she supposed. He'd betrayed her, after all. But she just didn't have it in her to be bitter, and that just made her more frustrated than what he'd done in the first place. She felt entitled to anger. She wished she could rage like Resolve did, finally understanding the nature of the exorcist's temper. It must have felt glorious to focus emotion so concisely and dispel it with something as simple as a punch.

But thinking of Resolve only caused her to remember what Flint said so many weeks ago. He and she had a "dynamic", he'd said, and a hot rush of panic buried itself deep in Luned's chest. She wondered if he'd been dishonest about anything else, and then she realized they'd never actually talked about those things. Not for the first time, she became painfully aware of just how poorly she really knew him.

Apparently he'd kept her out of his life for a reason, and she wondered if she shouldn't have been so ready to share hers.

Simply put, she was at a loss.

The scribe took a slow, deep breath, the calm, cloudless night lost on her. She didn't see the perfect shade of indigo overhead which she had yet to mimic with her inks, nor the nameless color of the glittering starlight reflected off the waves. Her mind was too full to notice the things that usually helped her reach contented distraction.

She still didn't even understand what she did back there. She'd seen how that spell functioned even on Swaysong, it should have been contained. She finally began to understand the full gravity of what exactly Bleddyn had talked her into, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. What else was she capable of? Were there limits, and how could she even go about finding them if there were? What could she possibly do with that amount of power?

Feeling overwhelmed, Luned forced herself to focus on the other issue at hand: Muir. He was, understandably, a mess. He should have died twice in just the past couple days, claimed by the sea both times, and here he was, still on the ship. She imagined him in fetal position in her cabin, Gasper at his wits end in attempts to calm him enough to sleep. She wasn't an expert, but she imagined all the drugs in his seemingly endless stash couldn't ease that kind of trauma.

At least in that case, she did know what to do with this new power of hers. Luned reached into her pocket to extract her journal and opened it, careful not to lose any of the loose pages to the wind. She found one particular folded letter and peeked inside to find it still lacking response. She sighed and heard the creak of hinges over the waves, followed someone's heavy footsteps on deck.

She knew that gait.

It circled around and climbed up onto the sterncastle with her. Luned stood frozen, not ready to face him. She wasn't ready.

But she looked over her shoulder anyway, exceedingly cautious, to see Flint approach. He was solemn, as if facing a judge for sentencing. But that's what it was, wasn't it?

Luned stared at him wordlessly for a long moment, dark circles drawn under her tired eyes. "You look like you," she finally said, as if she'd expected a monster.

[Luned]

Flint nearly reminded her, himself, how appearances could be deceiving, but he didn't need anything else counting against him right now. "No apology could ever possibly make up for what I've done," he began, "but––"

"Stop," Luned interrupted, and he did. "I'm not ready for this yet." A long silence followed, and if she didn't know him so well, she might have missed the slight slip in composure which communicated just how hard he took that. "Sorry," she added weakly, her voice nearly lost to the crash of the waves against the hull of the ship.

In the next stretch of uncomfortable silence, she realized she still held her journal open, and she fumbled to tuck away the open letter and close it. She clutched it to her chest, both defensively and secretively. "I just need a little more time, but I'll come find you soon, and we'll talk. I promise."

The brute nodded, at a loss for words, and turned to leave. He felt her watch as he descended the sterncastle until he went out of sight, heading back downstairs to his cabin.



Lying in the dark, the alien sensation of loneliness set in. Flint couldn't help but focus on the fact that she was supposed to be there with him. But all he could do was wait, and so he did.

[Luned]

Luned kept her promise and, just as the first hint of the waking sun washed the sky gray-blue through Flint's tiny window, there was a timid knock at his door. When he opened it to let her in she stayed frozen at the threshold, and a quiet moment passed between them before she broke the silence.

"I'm mad at myself," she said, barely a whisper in the sleeping hallway. "I want to hate you –– for risking yourself, for keeping it from me –– but I can't. Not until I hear what you have to say."

This was cause for hope, but the fact that she wouldn't enter the cabin unsettled Flint. He noticed her fidget as she stood in the cramped corridor, not much more than a familiar silhouette in the low light. He could tell she was still dressed; not much rest had been had that night by anyone, he was sure. The brute thought, then replied. "Are you ready to talk?"

The girl hesitated. "No, I…" she trailed off, unable to articulate. A hint of impatience laced her words, or maybe distraction, and it caught Flint's attention like a red flag.

"Is there something else?" he asked, bracing himself against the frame of the doorway. The pressure made him wince and he bit it back.

She was quiet for a second or two and he thought she might have noticed. He couldn't quite make out her expression in the shadows but he imagined a soft frown, pity he couldn't accept from her, and he almost spoke again to defend against it. But she surprised them both when she moved toward him, her ghosted silhouette sweeping up to him in the darkness, and he felt her hand brush feather-light up his chest and neck until her thumb blindly traced his jawline. Her lips met his, warm and soft and far too brief, and she quickly pried herself away with that same strange impatience he'd sensed before.

She took a deep breath as if psyching herself up for something. "There's something I need to do first," Luned said, having retreated far back enough into the hallway that her voice seemed distant. "You should get some sleep."

Now Flint knew that there certainly was something else and he followed her down the hall, wincing as his hands unconsciously groped the wall for some sense of direction. "Luned," he said sternly, perhaps a bit louder than she would have liked. "What is it?"

The scribe kept walking as if hoping to shake him off, but when she realized it was no use, she stopped. "Muir can't stay," she said, the determination in her voice ominous. "We're sending him back early, but I have to make sure it's safe first."

"How?"

Luned sighed. "I wrote Ags. Aurelius is there. I'm just going to… scare him a bit. To make sure we'll all have safe passage."

After facing a leviathan together and emerging relatively unscathed, a rude tiefling should have seemed like a cake walk, but Flint was not up to the challenge yet. He was tired, sore, and needed time to recuperate before putting scoundrels in their places. "Are you sure?"

They were walking downstairs into the cargo hold where Agnie had linked the door the day of the supply drop-off, and it only grew darker the deeper they went. "What's the point of power if I can't keep the people I love safe?" Luned asked rhetorically without slowing.

Flint sighed. Companionship with the scribe was proving to mean episodic deja vu of Ettermire's sewers, but as he was then, he was now: too deep to turn back. "Fine. But I'm coming with you."

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Aurelius sat, perched on the window-sill of the kaleidoscopic nightmare that was Agnie's parlour, working his way through another cigarette and muttering to himself angrily.

His bladed and leather clad form crouched on the gaudily painted sill, like a malignant spider, twirling a silver pocket watch on its chain in his slender fingers- he had bobbed the timepiece from an Aleraran nobleman a few days before, and hadn't got round to pawning it yet. The shining glass face told him what he already knew; Luned had kept him waiting for over an hour. The thought turned his mouth into a vicious snarl, fangs bared. Who the pikin' Hell does she think she is, summoning me like some kind of servant?

But, the fact Luned had requested his presence at all had the warlock peery, suspicious, and just curious enough to ignore his paranoia as it screamed at him from inside his brain-box. Despite the fact he was still healing after the chaos up in Salvar with the witch-hunters, he had come anyway. Besides, there's a brothel and a pub downstairs, so it ain't all bad.

Ags herself was busy bustling around the room, singing softly with her musical voice, flitting from here to there in flashes of bright fabrics and golden curls. Killin' time, the tiefling snapped mentally, twirling the small silver watch, watching the riot of colours coming through the stained glass as it bounced off the silver face, and the myriad tokens and mystical knick-knacks tied around his wrists. But the distraction lasted mere seconds before the tiefling finished his dozenth cigarette. With a sharp whistle and a frustrated gesture, he got the attention of his grotesque little familiar. Junior raised its albino head, tiny sutured eyes turning to the warlock who had raised it from death. Baring tiny needle fangs in a hideous approximation of a smile, it took to the air on sable pinions- as it crossed the room, it received a tender pat on the head from the silk and lace-swathed fairy Princess. Her lack of disgust at Junior's appearance went a long way to endearing the barmy chit to the Cager, he realised idly. The animated albino foetus had certainly taken to her.

Flapping over to its master's coat on crow wings, laid over the back of the hideously garish, pink pastel chaise long (it had taken Agnie six or seven times before Aurelianus had remembered the ridiculous name of the piece of furniture), Junior started rummaging. It emerged a moment later, a silver cigarette case clutched awkwardly in its scalpel-fingered hands, barely managing to carry the weight of the item. But with awkward, jerky movements, the familiar succeeded in bringing the cigarettes to the waiting hands of its master. Running his free hand through the blood-red quills on his head, the tiefling snapped open the case, drawing out another hand-rolled cigarette. Clamping it between his pale lips, he lit the tip with a small burst of Hellfire from his palm.

Agnie's frenzied cleaning and rearranging finally grated on the tattooed warlock's last nerve.

"For pike's sake, will you park your arse!" he snapped.

All he got in way of a response was an angry pout, before the rainbow whirlwind was in motion again.

This time, however, she was moving over to the doorway that led to her bedroom. The half-breed remembered what had happened to him last time he had tried to peek through the entrance.. but this time, as she pushed the door open, it revealed a swirling vortex shimmering with a variety of luminous colours.

Sighing, he tried to block Ags out, waiting for Luned to show up and finally lann him why she wanted to see him, of all people. Junior clambered nimbly up the segmented armour covering his left arm, somehow navigating around the barbs and spikes covering the leather. Sitting on his shoulder like some monstrous little gargoyle, the little creature whisper-hissed something in the half-demon's pointed, pierced ear. It spoke in the Infernal tongue of the Hells, a language Aurelius himself was fluent in. His master nodded at the sibilant sounds.

"Is that a fact?" he smirked, getting up from the sill, shaking out his legs to get some feeling back in them.

Just as Junior had warned him, two figures emerged. The abomination had hissed that they were both powerful, both tainted with some.. odd forms of power. Aurelianus quirked an eyebrow as the meek scribe emerged, along with her minder- Flint, the brawny Salvaran basher. Junior wasn't usually wrong, what with his Hell-spawned senses, but unless he'd missed a whole lot in the past few weeks, this pair of addle-coved rubes didn't have any sort of power on their sides. Or any brains, he smirked, remembering how they had wound up in his debt.

Blowing a cloud of smoke into the heavily perfumed air, the tiefling stood before the pair, scanning them with his snake-like eyes: They looked much the same as when he'd seen them aboard the ship a few weeks back, but there was definitely something off about them.. something about the awkward way they avoided each other's gaze..

The half-breed barked out a harsh laugh, his fangs displayed in mirth.

"Bloody 'ell, but you two are adorable. Could nick the sexual tension with a chiv. What's the matter Flint- still not stickin' your pike in 'er?"

The human's eyes narrowed, but he kept tight-lipped.

Shaking his quilled head softly, the tiefling looked over Luned. "And let's not even start on you, my dirty little tease. I know 'ow you like to play with the blokes," he grinned, winking lewdly. "After all, I--"

"Shut up."

Luned's voice cut through his own, giving Aurelius pause. He blinked. Had she just interrupted him? Really!?

"I'm not in the mood to listen to you today," she sighed, sounding wearier than her appearance gave credit to.

Toying with the obsidian rings in his eyebrow, and trying to figure out whether to laugh, or knife the bitch, Aurelius paused. The warlock didn't expect anyone to interrupt him, let alone the spineless little chit he tormented for fun. The novelty of the situation was enough to keep him quiet, listening. Junior sensed its master's quiet, smouldering anger and hissed malevolently at the pair of humans. The tiny scalpels scored the leather armour beneath its grip.

"Alright," he allowed, blowing another stream of smoke, "then 'ow about you tell me what the pike I'm doin' 'ere?"

The mousy little girl drew herself up, obviously preparing herself for whatever speech she had practiced to herself for this moment. The plane-touched waited with bemused irritation. His gaze flickered to a pair of gauntlets enclosing the Salvaran's fists- they were new. Something about them didn't sit right with Aurelius, and he found one of his hands straying to the demon-hide grip of his Baatorian knives. The air in the room took on a tense quality, but no-one made a move.

"Aurelius, we didn't come here looking for a fight. I will keep my promise for the favour I owe you, but right now I need your word that you will leave us and that ship in peace, and that anyone who needs passage through Ags will remain safe."

The warlock spun the silver pocket-watch on its chain, mulling over Luned's little speech. A sneer of distaste curled the corner of his lip.

"You brought me all the way 'ere, just 'cause you're peery I'm goin' to do somethin' to your pikin' ship?!" His free hand tensed into a fist, the fingerless leather gloves encasing his hand smoking a little at the edge.

Junior let out something between a shriek and a whisper, flapping his wings angrily.

"If any body on that tub should be worried about me, it's you," he snarled, jabbing a finger at the chit. "But I'll tell you what, Lune- seein' as you did send me off with Duffy to pen the witch-hunters in the Dead-book- I'll make you a one-time offer."

He could see the suspicion writ large across the pairs' faces. They didn't trust the half-breed at all. And they were right not to.

"You and me 'ead through to the bedroom, right now. I'll pike you like Flint 'ere wishes 'e could, and in return, I'll wipe both your slates clean. You'll never 'ave to see me again." a vicious smirk split his marble-skinned visage in a predator's grin. "If not, you can bar your bone-box, and piss off out of my way."

"You bas--" Flint started, muscles bulging beneath his shirt.

"Ah ah ah! Bite your tongue, basher," Aurelius grinned, wagging a finger at the stocky human. "I wanna 'ear 'er answer."

"This is exactly what I was talking about. This isn't happening anymore. Is that clear?"

His laughter was all the answer she needed. She folded her arms across her chest, glaring at the tiefling with undisguised hatred.

"Is that so, luv? Well, tell me this, little Luned. Who's goin' to stop me?"

The Baatorian knife was in his hand in one fluid motion, serrated edge reflecting the rainbow lights in the room. Even as the green-steel blade appeared, his mouth filled with incandescent, liquid black fire, lapping up from the edges of his lips.

Even through the Hellfire, his mocking smile was visible.

[Luned]

His smirk didn't last long. Luned's crossed arms tightened and one nervous finger traced an invisible symbol against the thin cloth of her blouse, hand trembling as she conjured a new, untested spell. Even if only for the blessing of Carcosa's seemingly boundless power, it worked.

Before he knew what hit him, Aurelius found himself tossed like nothing across the full expanse of the room, taking furniture with him. His body slammed through the chaise, toppling it with shin-shattering force against his legs, and his arm took out a lamp. He didn't notice the shriek of it crashing against the hardwood floor as he quickly found himself crushed against the bright paisley wallpaper and cream wainscoting. No, not against –– nearly through, as wood splintered around his frame and torn paper crinkled under him as he cautiously tested his limbs.

Except, he realized after some effort, he couldn't move. The tiefling's head spun from the impact and somewhere in the background he heard a musical little cry, undoubtedly Agnie's response to the mess in her freshly organized flat. Once he regained his wits he grinned anew, blinking away the blur of impact-induced vertigo to see Luned stroll right up to him through the wreckage. Flint followed cautiously, as if he'd expected that even less than Aurelius did, with a hand fidgeting nervously at his pocket.

The demon laughed, hoarse at first, but soon the trashed room filled with full-bodied guffaws. It was simply too priceless. "C'mon, luv, enough of the love taps. 'it me like you mean it!"

The scribe stopped several feet away from him, well out of arm's reach, a dark determination settled over her typically timid features. He nearly laughed again, but before he could, his breath caught in his throat. His lungs remained collapsed, diaphragm unresponsive as every muscle in his horrid body ached to gasp for air. He took this odd turn of events with as much stride as he possibly good, maintaining that sinister smirk on his face as he struggled to keep composure. Of course, this ordeal was endlessly amusing to a depraved creature like himself and he ached to laugh as much as to breathe, but he had to admit that there was an inherent discomfort in losing control over one's basic functions.

Luned watched intently as his smirk weakened, his frame pinned against the wall just as he'd done to her at the tannery in Ettermire. In his forced stillness, Aurelius suddenly became aware of something sharp in his right thigh, a hot pain that began to spread; he couldn't look, but he assumed it was some part of the wall's infrastructure having penetrated his layers of leather. He stared back, intrigued by the new calculating chill in those narrowed blue eyes. Soon spots danced in the corners of his vision, threatening to wash over him with darkness, and just as he thought she might actually take it that far, she spoke.

"You will leave us alone," she reiterated. "And you will leave the ship in peace, and there will be no trouble for anyone who chooses to use Agnie's service. I am not the person you knew before –– your games will not work anymore. Is that understood?"

Suddenly the air returned to Aurelius' lungs and he gasped involuntarily, chest heaving as his body gratefully reclaimed some precious oxygen. She released him from his pinned position against the wall and he chuckled through a cough as he found his footing again, only faltering slightly. The pain in his leg spread and he shifted weight to the other foot, realizing she'd broken some of the blades on his vicious body armor. That displeased him considerably, but he figured he could displease her even more. It was one of his many unique talents.

"Pff! Really, luv? This is the best you've got –– auto-erotic asphyxiation?" The words dripped from his lips like acid, and they accomplished just what he wanted.

She lifted her right arm, drew something so concisely and elegantly in the air that it seemed naught more than the flick of a finger, and that was the end of their discussion.

Aurelius only registered a split second of the blow as it slammed him clear through the surface behind him, across the space on the other side, and into the next wall. His form crumpled like a rag doll under a barrage of dislodged bricks, dust rising in a cloud before settling over the fairy princess' pristine furniture. The scribe had singlehandedly transformed the apartment befitting of royalty into a warzone in the course of a very short, very tense conversation, and no sign of consciousness offered itself from Aurelius' resting place under the rubble.

Ags did not appreciate this turn of events at all. "How dare you invite yourself here and attack my guest," she started, and with a frightfully impatient coldness so unlike herself, Luned lifted her hand toward the flouncing fey.

[Warpath]

There was a storm of words in Flint’s head, a war of his own conflicting ideologies, his own loyalties. He had some vague memory of his own recent ascent to power but this was different, and more than any magic he’d ever witnessed or heard of. Luned was altering reality on a whim, or one man’s place in it, and the results were disquieting. She was going to kill him, and as he looked at her sidelong he knew she didn’t care.

He didn’t blame her. Aurelianus would be defiant to the point of suicide, Flint knew – it was the only thing he admired about the tiefling. Luned was declaring herself now, pushing back against the universe, and how could a nascent goddess brook defiance? There was a line here, and Flint saw it being crossed.

Bleddyn’s words came unbidden, a plea to preserve the girl they knew, and the notion harmonized with Flint’s heart: she wanted this now, in the heat of this moment, but if she killed the man would she regret it? Would the power and the rage frighten her, once they faded? Would her heart harden, and her soul darken?

But there was the cold side of him, the side he’d been forging since he was a boy, the side that saw a world full of monsters like Aurelianus, and the only way to overcome them is to be like them. No child wants to grow up, and the first step is always the hardest, but innocence is made to be lost and if one is to be evil then let that evil be necessary.

So Flint watched as Luned put Aurelianus through a wall, and he did nothing. He turned his eye to her and waited, knowing the moment was coming: she was going to kill him. He was going to let her. They’d be the same then, put on the hard path he’d already chosen for himself decades ago. She’d understand him fully, and he’d understand her.

And then the bumbling, criminally negligent fairy appeared. Flint sneered, dismissing her, but Luned didn’t. He turned back to the pile of rubble that housed the tiefling, and then spun around again, shocked, when Agnie shrieked, tumbling through the air and colliding with a far wall. Ornaments and paintings fell with her, and Flint’s brow furrowed. “What are you…?”

“Your guest is a psychopath,” Luned said, ignoring Flint, jaw tense. “Your guest tried to…he...your guest!”

She spat the words, clenching her fists at her sides. Flint looked from Luned to Agnie, and the fairy raised her eyes, and there was something new there. It wasn’t fear, but maybe concern. The floor lurched, and Flint felt his blood run cold. Dust crumbled from the ceiling, and the air itself grew heavier. Luned's anger was a physical thing now, a force filling the room and pulling it in on itself, and it was directed at everyone and everything.

And then he knew that he was losing her.

Luned’s fury was coalescing, and Agnie began scooting back across the floor cautiously, suddenly unsure of what, exactly, she was looking at. She didn’t have a concept of her own end, but that wasn’t going to stop Luned from trying to teach it to her. She might have, if Flint didn’t step in behind the scribe and press the Mark gently to the back of her neck, curling the paper on her skin. The spell caught, blazed, and the paper fell away blank.

The tension in the room faded by a degree, and all at once Luned turn on Flint and slapped his armored forearm away. “You traitor,” she hissed. “You…”

But there was confusion in her eyes now, and maybe pain. She felt the power slipping away from her, coiling up inside her, and in its absence she regained her senses.

“What did I…?”

“Get out,” Agnie said, murderously quiet. “Get. Out.”

“Agnie I…”

But then the fey charged Luned, pushing and shoving at her. Luned raised her hands to defend herself, struggling to escape, begging her to wait. Agnie whipped a door open, and with a powerful shove put Luned through it just as Flint appeared to drive them apart. Only when Luned was gone did he realize what Agnie had done, and with a harsh growl he plunged himself after her. Agnie didn’t care. She swung the door closed.

The door slammed, and the fairy panted furiously for a long moment, fuming. And then slowly, gradually, realization dawned on her. She opened the door again, but she already knew they wouldn’t be on the other side. They hadn't been returned to the ship, or to any other doorway she had in her network.

Somehow, she’d lost them.

They were gone.

[Warpath]

The cold was so intense that it burned before the numbness set in. Flint surged out of a pile of snow roaring, and then he clutched his arms to his torso and hunched against the arctic wind, and his mind reeled. Something had gone wrong. He was not where he was meant to be.

He cursed, and his breath clouded, and there were snowflakes in the cloud and in his eyelashes, and he felt the strength sucking out of him. He was sure that he’d never been so cold – that nobody had ever been as cold as he was now. No, he told himself firmly. No, this is just because the transition was sudden. This is just the winter.

He shivered violently, hissed, and then spread his arms out wide and leaned against the wind, forcing himself to accept the biting cold. He’d been born in a blizzard, grown up on the crown of the world, slept in snow dens. He was a child of the north, and no true north man dies from cold.

Luned!

He leapt and bound this way and that, digging at the snow. He knew she was here, somewhere. Certainly she had arrived before him, but he knew they had not been separated. He wouldn’t allow it. He found her and dug her free, muttering worriedly at the color of her lips. He bundled her up in his arms and hoisted her out of the snow cursing, stumbled just once, and then looked out at the horizon. It was day, but the clouds were grey and uniform, and he could not guess at where the sun was. Hadn’t it been night in Radasanth?

“I have you,” he told her. He didn’t know if she could hear. He didn’t know if she was breathing. “I can do this. We can do this.”

He turned around in a circle, willing what little warmth he had into her. He pulled her head gently up to his neck, and winced when her nose touched his skin. “Stay with me, I…”

He paused, and felt his heart flutter. “Wait. Wait I know this place. Wait.”

He started bounding through the snow, growling as his feet sank into the drifts. He could not lift his legs high enough, and even when he could he only sank farther at the next step but he pushed on, panting.

“Stay with me,” he begged her. “I can do this.”

He began climbing a hill, praying that he wasn’t going mad.

“We’re not far,” he promised her. “I’ll hurry. I’ll get us there. Don't leave me now.”

Her hair flew in the Salvic breeze, brushing his upper arms, the only semblance of warmth here. He clutched her tighter.

“You can depend on me.”

[Mordelain]

Thread Title: The Wandering Isle
Judgement Type: Light Commentary
Participants: Luned, Warpath

Plot ~ 19/30

Story ~ 8/10 – You took a simple, wayfaring adventure, and turned it into a believable unfolding of madness. I have to commend you on using simile and metaphor in a conventional manner, but applying it in an unconventional way. You made briny teeth important. You made sea dogs heartfelt and human. You lured me in, completely, and delivered an excellent parting of ways.

Setting ~ 6/10 – The setting was developed enough to be visualised, but, once more, there was so much talking that did not acknowledge this environment, that it was lost in the wayside often. This was not helped by the use of entirely reflective, narrative, and internal posts, such as 86, where Luned could quite literally have been anywhere on Althanas as she tinkered away in her eternally conflicted mind. Nobody expects purple prose, or Tolkien-esque detailing of genus, leaf, and flora and fauna, but be mindful of focussing setting too heavily in one post, and abandoning it through the scene on the assumption that we have been satisfied.

Pacing ~ 5/10 – developing plot, narrative, and technique over such an expansive body of work is never easy. However, each scene of the thread placed, concretely described, and easy to follow in terms of pacing…the transition between them, and the sense of time between them stretched the reader too thin and wore on the senses. Strength lied in the middle, but the beginning, and the ending, contorted the general flow of events as they unfolded.

Character ~ 25/30

Communication ~ 8/10 – The thread builds on outlandishly solid communication in every post. It was a delight to hear every character, PC, and NPC voice even the minute opinions that keep us on our toes and getting through the day to day. I especially appreciated the accents to each sentence; Muir’s hair flicking, Luned’s stomping, and the crew’s movement around each dialogue. It was every bit the living, breathing, spoken word powerhouse.

Action ~ 8/10 – When the siren comes on deck and the switch between ‘general sea adventure’ and ‘realms of fantasy’ happened I fell in love. This thread managed to maintain momentum not just between characters, but the players and their environment, throughout its entirety. Keeping action concrete, detailed, and interesting for this length of time was a feat in itself.

Persona ~ 9/10 – This score is commendable because it ties together dialogue, character, and technique. Every character's emotion was believable. Muir's demure nature, Luned's admiration for Bleddyn, and Flint's grizzled background slapped me around the voice. If it were not for the menagerie of faceless NPC's, and fleshed out accents to your PC's tale, this would have readily been a 10. I would be hypercritical to even begin to attempt to offer advice - you know your characters better than anyone, and indeed, better than you probably know yourselves.

Prose ~ 19/30

Mechanics ~ 7/10 – This thread had near flawless and practical application of mechanics throughout. A pointer, however, to improve upon, is the use of colon and broken thought adjoining speech. When “Flint is coming,” she said, wistfully, and with broken speech, can be clearer with “Flint is coming,” she said. Her voice was wistful and broken, go for the more paced and defined approach. Luned errs on the side of longer sentences, so be careful of run on – post thirty in particular: The crinkles at the corners of her eyes, which Luned had liked so much, displaced to the furrow of her brow, and it aged her. The same said for the introduction of post 41, fragments of post 61, so forth.

Clarity ~ 5/10 – The primary issue here grounded in the communication, and dialogue heavy background of the thread, is the obfuscation it causes. Whilst you both made every effort to detail the speaker, the frequency of changes and the action on-going in every scene lost me, in many places – like a Game of Thrones-esque epic, the number of NPC’s, pennames, and places became difficult to follow. I would encourage you both, in the future, to consider the relevance of references, and wherever or not it would be better to slow things down to keep clarity and ease of reading in mind.

Technique ~ 7/10 – You both use simple, short, and comic statements to highlight the disbelief in your characters. You have a solid grasp of literary techniques. Post 80-90 was a highlight, and though you could have developed a greater impact of Muir’s scream, it did its job effectively and really made me cringe.

Wildcard: 8/10 – Never have I read something so long, and yet so wonderfully written on the history of Althanas. Though it was lumbering, and the focus on dialogue was too great, it was truly enjoyable. I have a soft spot for merchant navy, sailors, and fantastical seaborne adventures, and you did not fall for clichés and metaphors that many do. My only advice is to work on the consistency between your posts in terms of presentation. I have an inkling you worked closely on plot, dialogue, and narrative, but the technique and use of contraction and elision varies in places, and it disjoints the reader when you switch between literary and colloquial styles.

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I would be happy to develop on the points above, or provide more in depth examples based on those notes if requested. cydneyoliver@gmail.com, or my Mordelain inbox are both appropriate avenues to do.

If you have any concerns, doubts, and worries, and do not wish to speak to me directly for whatever reason, then I am sure another member of staff will resolve the matter on your behalf. I am perfectly amenable and open to feedback, as the judge has to develop, as much as the writer put under the scrutiny of the rubric!

Total ~ 71/100


Luned receives 5200 experience, and 400 gold.

Warpath receives 4200 experience, and 400 gold.

Aurelianus receives 300 experience, and 75 gold.

Spoils: Flint's hat refuses to leave you alone. Not only does it suit him well, it always seems to find it's way back to his side, no matter how far apart they become. Maybe it's magical, or maybe, just maybe, it's something to do with pirates needing the correct headgear? We'll never know!

[Mordelain]

Experience and gold added.