by John Bierce
At one point, Artur had wandered by to check on them, curious about the periodic explosions Talia was producing. Godrick was a little surprised to see his da on deck— on those rare occasions when Artur had to travel by ship, he seldom left his cabin. He seldom talked about his seafaring days, and most of what Godrick knew his mother had told him when he was young, before she died. It was pretty grim stuff, even with her clearly leaving a lot out of the stories. He’d never pressed his da to hear more, but he definitely understood why Artur didn’t like ships.
His da hadn’t stayed on deck very long— just enough to check up on them and remind Hugh to come help with whatever mysterious project they were working on when the lesson was over.
By the end of the lesson, Lothal had long since drifted out of sight behind them, and the Rising Cormorant had drawn alongside the beginning of the Skyreach Range. He could see a flight of dragons winging together amongst their peaks, recognizable only by their shapes as anything but a flock of sparrows in the distance. The mountains seemed to rise straight from the sea and land like great stone spikes driven upwards, ignoring foothills like they were frivolities for lesser mountain ranges.
That wasn’t actually true, of course— the foothills on this side of the range were buried by the seas bordering it. To the west, they were covered by hundreds of feet of sand, while to the south where the Cormorant sailed, they were inundated by saltwater. Farther north, or on the east side of the range, you could see more in the way of foothills— not just because they weren’t covered up there, but because the foothills to the east were far larger and far more numerous.
Godrick took a couple more minutes to enjoy the view, then left Talia and Sabae at the prow to follow Hugh down below.
Godrick smacked his head against the ceiling twice on his way to the cabin he shared with Hugh. He didn’t curse, however, just sighed heavily— he was long since used to hitting his head almost wherever he went, except for Lothal.
That was one thing he loved about Skyhold— all the ceilings and doors were more than tall enough, there.
As Godrick fixed his hair, he wondered at how Kanderon got in and out of the mountain. She was far too big to travel through most of the hallways or entrances.
There was a certain irony to that, to be sure. She effectively ruled over a small city whose streets she could not walk. But then, that was true of many of the nonhuman great powers— Indris could fly over her streets, but not walk most of them, and while Ampioc could technically roam the streets of Lothal with surprising grace, he seldom did so— not least because it left things rather slimy.
There were several ship’s cats clustered outside his door, for some reason. Actual cats, for the most part, not overgrown spiders. There was one seadrake among them, as well— seadrakes were far better-tempered than sand drakes, and were sometimes kept as pets by sailors. They got along well with cats as well, though likely just to take advantage of their body heat as much as anything.
Godrick sighed, and gently began moving the cats and the seadrake out of the way, though one of them decided to climb up his legs and up to his shoulders as he did so. He gave it a dirty look, but the young cat just butted its head against his cheek.
He carefully slipped inside, so as to not let any of the other animals into their cabin.
Only to find, when he got inside, an utter disaster.
There were papers strewn everywhere. Across the floor and on both bunks. Some were loose sheaves of papers, some were crumpled balls, and a few were even chewed up books. Countless torn up scraps covered everything. There was, inexplicably, a chewed-up hat lying on the floor as well.
There was an unpleasant noise like a book ripping, and another cloud of papers fired itself off the top bunk. The cat on Godrick’s shoulder reared up to bat at the loose pages, and Godrick sighed.
He stepped over to look, though he already suspected what he’d see.
Hugh’s spellbook lay atop the bunk, its crystal a much paler shade of green than usual. The strap Hugh used to sling it over his shoulder was all tangled up, and it was trembling slightly.
Godrick awkwardly reached out to touch the book, and it cuddled up to his hand, looking miserable. He gently scratched its spine, and the book seemed to relax slightly.
The cat hopped onto the bunk and sniffed the book curiously.
“There, there,” Godrick said. “Yeh wait here, and ah’ll get Hugh, alright?”
The book responded by vomiting paper scraps all over him.
Godrick knocked on his da’s door, the cat back on his shoulder.
“Hey, Da, is Hugh there?” he called.
“Just a moment,” Artur called.
There was some clattering, then Hugh opened the door, his new crystal still floating over one shoulder. Behind him, Godrick could see something covered in a sheet on the narrow table in his da’s room— Artur’s cabin was huge for a ship but small by any other measure. His da, sitting next to the table, waved at him.
“Why do you have a cat on your shoulder?” Hugh asked.
“Ah’m just bein’ fashionable,” Godrick said. “Why don’t either of yeh have one?”
The cat chirped happily at that.
“Thanks fer remindin’ me,” Godrick told the cat. “Hugh, ah think yer spellbook is sick. It’s vomitin’ paper scraps all over our cabin.”
Hugh just stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “I swear, it’s always something with that book.”
“Yeh still haven’t named it?” Artur asked. “It definitely needs a name.”
“Is it alright if I go check on it?” Hugh asked Artur.
“Ah’ll come with yeh,” Artur said. “Ah’m definitely curious what a sick book looks like.”
The three of them strode down the hallway— or, Godrick supposed, the passageway, as Sabae would call it. She was constantly getting on the other three for getting the names of ship’s features wrong. There were just so many alternate names for things on board a ship, though— it seemed really unnecessary to Godrick.
The cats and the seadrake all flooded into their cabin when they entered— there was no way to keep them all out while all three of them entered.
There was barely enough room to stand for all three of them. Poor Hugh was in danger of being squashed between Godrick and his da.
“It looks like the poor thing ate somethin’ that didn’t much agree with it,” Artur said, as Hugh comforted the miserable-looking book.
Hugh paused for a moment, then lifted up his pillow to check and scowled.
“That’s exactly what happened,” he said. “It ate the magic journal Kanderon gave me to keep in touch with her. I’d bet the enchantment on it is giving it indigestion.”
Artur stepped back as much as he could in the cramped cabin, looking nervous. “That’s, ah… really not good. Long distance communication enchantments are fairly high-energy.”
“How high energy?” Godrick asked. His da knew quite a bit about enchantments— he’d pursued enchantment as a potential career when he was younger, though he’d decided against it, ultimately.
“Blow a hole in the side a’ the ship an’ sink it high energy,” Artur said.
“We should probably go get Alustin,” Hugh said. “He’s got a journal too, he can contact Kanderon for us.”
Hugh gingerly lifted the spellbook off his bunk and began carefully walking it down the passageway, Artur close behind. Godrick took a few seconds to clear the cats and the seadrake out of the room, then shut the door behind him and followed.
He felt a bit like Hugh, thinking it, but Godrick would absolutely love it if this was the last interesting thing that happened on the voyage. Boring sounded wonderful right now.
That was, of course, when the whole ship shuddered, and the yelling and screaming started abovedeck.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Here Be Serpents
Sabae was having more trouble with this whole flirtation thing than she had anticipated. It had always seemed easy enough from o
utside, and she had never had any trouble advising friends about their dating lives— or even manipulating Hugh’s dating life, because he definitely never would have gotten together with Avah without her meddling.
She still needed to decide whether to intervene in the whole Hugh and Talia situation. She certainly could, but she felt rather less relaxed about meddling in her friends’ lives now, largely thanks to her persistent anger at the way Kanderon, Alustin, and her grandmother had manipulated them over the last year.
Somehow, though, dating became a problem of a whole different order when she was involved, and not observing.
And a cute boy asking what she liked to do for fun should not be this difficult to answer.
It had all started innocuously enough— after Hugh and Godrick had left, several Radhan teens around their age had approached them. Two boys, and a girl who turned out to be the twin of the shorter boy. Tollin, Dell, and Yarra.
Talia, for whatever ridiculous reason, was just glaring at Yarra the whole time.
Introductions had gone easily enough— Tollin and Yarra were both water mages, and were curious about Sabae’s unusual magic. Sabae had been happy to answer a few questions, though she wasn’t going to give away the whole fishing fleet when it came to talking about her magic. Other mages might advertise their affinities and capabilities, but battle mages needed to be a bit more circumspect.
Then Yarra’s twin brother, Dell, the lone non-mage in the group, apparently bored with all the technical discussion of magic, had decided to change the subject. He apparently got more than enough of it from most of the other teens onboard— the Radhan trained many more of their youth in magic than most populations. Dell was blind in his mind’s eye, however, so he couldn’t learn magic. Nothing wrong with that, of course— the aether wasn’t thick enough for everyone to be mages.
So he asked Sabae what she liked to do for fun.
It’s not that Sabae’s mind went blank. No, lots of potential answers came to mind. The problem was that she rather doubted that Dell would be that interested if she said she enjoyed studying magic, even though that was true. She’d probably sound insane if she said she enjoyed getting involved in the deadly politics played between the great powers. Hanging out with her friends just sounded too boring.
Her pause had dragged out just to the point where it was getting awkward when the pack of sea serpents attacked the ship.
It probably said something about her that her immediate response was feeling relieved that she didn’t have to answer Dell’s question.
Sabae had seen sea serpents before, of course. Ras Andis’ fleets brought in dead ones every now and then— they attacked fishing boats regularly along the southern coast of Ithos, hence the need for mages to guard the fishing fleets. There were far, far more dangerous creatures in Anastis’ oceans, but most, like krakens, leviathans, and the countless aberrations of the depth, generally kept to themselves and avoided the shallows. Sea serpents were surface hunters with voracious appetites, and had no compunctions about targeting ships. They were as cunning as wolves, and far more powerful.
Sea serpents traveled in packs of a half-dozen to a dozen individuals, ranging in length from ten to twenty feet. They were slow and sluggish most of the time, save while hunting. While pursuing prey, they were faster than nearly any ship over short distances, save for a few coursers that were the seagoing equivalent of her grandmother’s sandship, That Old Pile of Junk— built to travel at terrifying speeds propelled by storm archmages or the like.
Despite the name, they weren’t snakes at all, nor reptiles nor dragon-kin, but fish. They possessed strange, lobe-shaped fins that they could move in any direction, which along with their sinuous, snake-like bodies, gave them unparalleled agility in the water. And though they weren’t snakes, they were just as good at climbing as snakes were, and had a nasty habit of climbing silently up the sides of ships and snatching sailors off the decks.
Not for the first time, Sabae would have died if it weren’t for Talia. One moment, Sabae was making a fool of herself, and the next, a bolt of purple-green dreamfire was traveling right past her face.
She whirled to see a serpent looming over her, looking confused, with a smoldering patch just beneath its jaw from the impact. The great fleshy whiskers and the corners of its fang-filled mouth quivered, and then the smoldering patch ruptured, spilling out thousands and thousands of what looked like coins. The serpent began to deflate like a balloon as the coins kept flowing onto the deck, before it finally just collapsed into the water.
The coins, of all things, appeared to be made of wood.
Sabae only hesitated for a moment before she began to spin up her wind armor, but that moment of hesitation was enough to give the next sea serpent a chance to strike. It closed its jaws around Dell’s leg, then threw itself back into the water, dragging the Radhan youth over the railing.
She didn’t hesitate this time. Sabae leapt atop the railing, then dove headfirst towards the water, detonating the wind armor around her legs to propel herself forwards into the water like a spear.
Talia had absolutely no interest in admitting it, but the only reason she was able to kill the awful fish-snake thing before it grabbed Sabae was the fact that she’d been fantasizing about blasting the Radhan teens with dreamfire.
It’s not that she hated the Radhan in general, just their youth. They were unnecessarily friendly, even more unnecessarily pretty, and almost certainly all planning to seduce her friends, especially Hugh.
Self-reflection wasn’t always Talia’s strong suit, but she definitely knew that none of her friends would look fondly on her for fantasizing violence against others for petty personal reasons like that.
But then, it saved Sabae’s life, because her mind’s eye was already primed for the dreamfire spellforms.
The second awful snake-fish thing took her by surprise, however, and she cursed as it dragged Dell over the side of the prow. Before Talia could do more than curse, Sabae had launched herself straight after Dell.
Talia briefly considered chasing after, but she had only gone swimming a handful of times in her life, in placid ponds and narrow streams in the valleys of the Skyreach Range. Before she could make a decision, however, screaming came from farther down the deck.
More of the hideous creatures had clambered up the sides of the ship, and at least three sailors had already been grabbed by them.
Talia formed the spellform for guided dreambolts in her mind’s eye— she didn’t want to accidentally hit any panicking sailors or rigging with a normal, unguided dreambolt. Before she’d even finished, however, the attack was already over. One of the creatures was blasted over the side by several Radhan water mages, another was impaled by a dozen massive wooden spines that erupted from the deck, and at least four of them had been slaughtered by Alustin. He’d sliced them into thin, finger-width discs with a storm of paper.
Not for the first time, Talia was glad Alustin was on their side. She could easily imagine him doing the exact same thing to a human being.
She turned to Tollin and Yarra, who were gaping in confusion and horror.
“Can either of you feel Sabae or Dell with your affinity senses?” she demanded.
They both just looked blankly at her.
“You’re water mages, aren’t you?” she demanded.
“Right, sorry,” Tollin muttered, and closed his eyes.
Yarra started to close her eyes as well, but Talia jabbed her with a finger. “And keep a watch out for out for more of those awful creatures.”
“Sea serpents,” Yarra said, but nodded and closed her eyes.
Talia raised an eyebrow at that. That was not what she was expecting a sea serpent to look like.
The seconds crept by like hours as Talia scanned the railings for more serpents, waiting for the young water mages to find Sabae.
Finally, Tollin opened his eyes. “I can’t find them,” he said.
She turned to Yarra, who was on the verge of tears. “I
can’t sense my brother or your friend at all.”
Talia struggled not to scream and curse.
“Neither of us are very powerful yet, though,” Tollin said. “They could have easily dropped behind the ship or something and left our range.”
Talia took a deep breath.
“Keep looking,” she ordered them.
Sabae’s wind armor on her upper body meant that when she entered the water, only her legs actually got wet at first. She quickly spun up water armor around herself, trapping the remnants of her wind armor inside so she could breathe. She couldn’t use both armor types at once yet, so the vast majority of her air escaped before she sealed it inside her water armor.
While Sabae could propel herself by detonating her water armor around her limbs in the same manner she wind-jumped, she’d been practicing a rather different method of swimming locomotion. It had taken direct intercession by Alustin to get her the chance to practice it in the great water holding tanks below Skyhold, but given that the water wasn’t purified until it was to be pumped upwards to the top of the mountain, where it would then travel downward through pipes, getting it dirty hadn’t really been a concern.
Sabae focused on pulling water in towards her head, spun it down her body, then released it off her hands and feet. She shot downward into the water.
She couldn’t see the sea serpent at first, but she could feel it with her affinity sense as it dove downward, Dell still struggling in its mouth. Sabae redoubled her efforts, panicking a school of scrap-feeders that often followed sea-serpents as she jetted past them.
As Sabae dove, she felt something— no, a whole group of somethings— deep in the water below her.
Her eyes, dry in the bubble of air held in by the water armor, widened.
Juvenile serpents.
They were floating with their head downward and tails pointing upwards— for whatever reason, serpents spent most of their time not hunting in that pose, from what Sabae had been told. Each juvenile was about the size of Talia, but she had no doubt their needle-teeth were just as sharp as their parents’.