by Jeremy Dwyer
Claudia nodded, with daggers in both hands, and she stood at the edge of the deck of the Everlasting Pain. She planned on dealing double damage, and then escaping with double speed.
“What is she?...” Caroline asked.
“Descend so the deck of this ship is eight (8) feet above theirs, off to the left,” Pradrock said.
The ghost of Captain Tychon did as directed.
~~~
On board the Tidal Sovereign, Victoria was filled with glee at the sight of the corpses of her enemies having been washed out to sea from distant shores. The winds and the storms continued to strike at the continents and land bridges – except for Emeth – around the Medathero Ocean. Ships out at sea were helpless.
“Still more of the ships in the seas are sinking. Another one thousand two hundred fifty-one (1251) ships were sunk by the storms in the north. At least three hundred seventy-five thousand (375000) crew on board were killed,” one light scout said, surveying the seas to the north.
“Another five hundred nineteen (519) ships were sunk by the storms in the south. At least one hundred fifty-five thousand (155000) crew on board were killed,” a second light scout said, surveying the seas to the south.
Then, they saw a shadow cast over the deck of the ship and over Victoria, and all the light scouts looked up to see the cause. Instantly, they knew that they were under attack, as they saw the bottom of an airship fast approaching.
Victoria concentrated and the powers of the tiara created a storm above her, with the winds whipping about and striking at the other ship that was descending.
~~~
The Everlasting Pain was struck by high winds and thrown to the side.
In the chaos, Claudia fell from the edge of the Everlasting Pain, but her skill was such that she landed as intended on the deck of the Tidal Sovereign, plunging both of her daggers into Victoria’s neck on the way down. However, they were quickly deflected by a power that Claudia could not see, so that the wounds were not as deep or as direct as they should have been.
~~~
Under the cover of darkness, some of Victoria’s dark scouts and swordfighters personally protected her, using sharp blades to push the daggers away from their intended path.
~~~
Victoria bled and writhed in agony, screaming: “Another dream was true! The hawk from above has dug its talons into me!”
Claudia’s telepathic abilities honed in on the many archers on board this ship who wished to put their arrows into her, and she created a rapid mental block into their minds to make them unable to see her. It was as if she were in the darkness brought on by the waters of the Ikkith Tar Ocean. Yet, it was the waters of the Elanatin Ocean that Claudia drank, and the darkness was in the minds of those who planned to strike at her.
During this, she ran to the side of the enemy ship and jumped at a rope ladder that had been thrown down from the side of the Everlasting Pain. She climbed up the ladder and boarded the ship, as the ladder whipped back and forth in the storm winds.
The winds and waves of water had died down, all over the Medathero Ocean, as Victoria lost her concentration, and could use the tiara no more at the moment. She called out: “Master, take me from here!”
At this, the demon, Matatirot, heard her and opened a portal. The Tidal Sovereign entered the portal and disappeared from sight.
~~~
Everyone on the deck of the Everlasting Pain heard what Victoria said and saw the other ship disappear.
“She called to the demon for assistance, and he rescued her,” the ghost of Captain Tychon said.
“I landed both daggers into her neck. She should be dead,” Claudia said.
“Yeah. She should be. But she won’t be. The demon protected her,” Akantha said.
Va’Qileren concentrated and looked to see if something was hidden in the darkness, but he saw nothing. “By my powers of light, I see that they are not hidden in the darkness. The enemy ship is simply not present here any longer,” he said.
Then, Akantha turned to Caroline, and said: “They entered the spirit world. Still think demons are fantasy?”
CHAPTER 20: Following the Stars to Secrets
Ever since leaving the jungles of the continent of Volaraden, Celio had been wandering the world, studying the stars. He had no other purpose to his existence besides study, since his wife and children had been killed by the pirate known as Captain Keallach over three (3) years prior. Now, applying mathematics to study the stars was all that he did.
He was not a drinker of the waters of any of the great oceans, not even those of the Medathero Ocean. His innate ability in mathematics was sufficient for him and he did not feel that he should come to depend on the waters and the poisoning risks that they posed.
The yellow suns had all but faded away, and this was interesting to him – even alarming. He had studied charts of stars over the years in the Seventh Hall of the city of Emeth, and knew a great deal about the historical patterns of the red and blue suns. Those traveled in predictable elliptical orbits that could be measured accurately, and calculations could be made about their future positions by any competent mathematical astronomer. However, the yellow suns had orbits that could only be described as complex. They were often modeled using probability, which could describe the future positions with a seventy-five (75) percent confidence, but these positions were along orbits that were an amalgamation of curves other than elliptical ones. At times, the yellow suns would change their distance, moving further out or in along a spiral. At other times, their orbit would reverse, or even change axis, to become north-to-south instead of east-to-west, or the other way around.
Celio was driven by a desire to explain these things using logic – he felt that randomness was not a truth, but rather a collective term for all those things no one yet understood well enough to predict. It might require a complex numerical model, which was acceptable even if the physics underlying it was not immediately understood, to explain all the movements and make accurate predictions of future yellow star positions. Sometimes, a cleverly constructed equation using integrals or derivatives was necessary, and he had been working on some of his own, as well as making improvements to equations that he found in the notes of star charts in the Seventh Hall. He additionally found star orbit models in the Second Hall, where knowledge of mathematics was recorded, covering all subjects. There was overlap between them, so he had to research the archives in both of the halls.
What Celio always detested was the nonsense that he heard from the sun-worshippers – those who made deities of the suns, rather than trying to understand them as natural phenomena. The various sun-worshipping cults attributed will and intelligence to the suns – red, blue and yellow – and saw them as living beings that made decisions and cast judgment on people. They were no better than the water-worshippers, he thought: all of them were superstitious fools. Mathematics was the lens through which to view the world: it clarified all things. That it was so difficult only meant that greater efforts had to be expended by more scientists and mathematicians to combine and organize and analyze the information they did have to make the patterns more discernible. Fools worship, he thought, whereas the wise man turns to mathematics. Faith was the mark of a fool, and was no substitute for a proper system of equations, as far as Celio was concerned.
The application of mathematics did not mean the end of mystery, however, as the world was complex. He still struggled to understand how those who drank the waters of the Atrejan Ocean had some sort of enhanced ability to predict the motions of the yellow suns with immense accuracy. Celio knew the oceans had power – it was real and measurable. The fact that it could be toxic when combined with the waters of any other ocean was what dissuaded him from ever taking a waterbinding. Yet, the powers of the Atrejan waters were such that he contemplated their very existence. He reasoned that the waters probably gave the drinker sensitivity to some sort of energy field that was not perceptible as sound, light or heat, but that had a different form.
Celio had even spent time in the First Hall, where the knowledge of the oceans was stored, including histories of those who drank of their waters and applied them in many different ways, and theories on how they gave their power. There were also theories on ways to allow a person to drink the waters of more than one of the oceans and not suffer from the disease known as crixalethicis. Some researchers thought it possible that, after drinking water from one ocean and taking on a waterbinding and using that water’s powers, one could later break the waterbinding. Then, the drinker would be free to drink of another ocean’s water, and take on a new waterbinding. There is no record of anyone ever succeeding at that, however. Others pursued the more ambitious goal of having multiple waterbindings, theoretically at least. There were accounts of some attempting it in practice, but the person who wrote the conclusion of the account was necessarily different from the one who made the attempt.
He knew that the waters of the Ikkith Tar Ocean – which gave their drinkers the power to create darkness – were also the cause of visual distortions which appeared as a dark haze over the sea waters. That dark haze made it difficult for sailing ships to navigate over that ocean. Hence, they were called the “dark waters” or the “maze waters.” However, the same “maze waters” term could also be used to refer to the Lujladia Ocean, whose waters gave their drinkers the power to create light. Those waters created visual distortions which made it difficult – with misleading light patterns – for sailing ships to navigate those waters.
Celio had a theory that the light energy that was emitted by the Lujladia Ocean waters – the same energy that created the visual distortions at sea level which complicated navigation – was contributing to the irregular motions of the yellow suns. The energy emitted might very well be absorbed by the yellow suns and produce the orbital deviations. The waters moved in a variety of patterns, including ripples and waves, and those undulating patterns of energy, if absorbed by the suns, could manifest in non-elliptical solar orbits. Why this didn’t appear to affect the red or blue suns was a riddle, but it was interesting to him to investigate a possible connection.
He had traveled as of late to the land bridge known as Elaja’s Walkway, which ran from north to south and connected the western end of the continent of Nataloridivu to the western end of another land bridge known as the Jeshirinko Barrier. That land bridge then extended east to the western edge of the continent of Revod.
Elaja’s Walkway was bordered on the east by the Lujladia Ocean and on the west by the Dead Waters Ocean, whose waters gave no known power to its drinkers, and weren’t toxic to anyone, even if they already had a waterbinding to one of the other waters.
Like all land bridges, Elaja’s Walkway was relatively narrow – when compared to the continents – and mountainous. It was populated and constituted a land-based trade route, but it was not easy to travel through. It was, however, a safe place for many small cultures to thrive.
Celio traveled along the eastern edge of the land bridge, looking out to observe the Lujladia Ocean. There were lighthouses at known distances, and stone obelisk markers along the shores, indicating those distances and the directions in which the lighthouses could be found. A surveyor with a telescope could look in that direction and see the lighthouse, and look near it, and possibly see another – that wasn’t really there. The visual distortions were such that they gave rise to what could be called illusions. What was worse was that entire islands appeared to be present, yet weren’t, and multiple ocean travelers had reported this over the millennia. That was the reason for the hundreds (100) of obelisk markers pointing out the actual lighthouse positions in an attempt to map the ocean despite those distortions. Celio had researched this, as well, and knew that he would have to be careful about trusting his eyes when looking out over these waters.
He wanted to measure the distortions and had brought a surveyor’s transit, with a scope and angle measurement dial for the incline and the rotation about the upright axis. He was able to spot two (2) of three (3) of the actual lighthouses he checked according to where the marker obelisks indicated they were. The obelisks themselves were spaced every five (5) miles along the shore, and the light houses were ten (10) miles out to sea. He could also see, near to each of the lighthouses, within a mile, another lighthouse nearly identical to it. This optical illusion had dangerous implications for sea travelers. Worse, the third marker obelisk he checked pointed to a lighthouse that did not appear to be present any longer. Instead, there was one to the north of it by three fourths (3/4) of a mile. The markers were placed firmly into the ground, as he knew, so it was more likely that the optical illusions were also capable of entirely displacing the appearance of the lighthouses, rather than the obelisk marker shifting out of its position. This could almost certainly cause a fatal shipwreck, he realized. As serious as it was, it gave him hope for his own theory.
Celio made his way to higher ground, carrying his small surveyor’s transit with him, and went up fifty (50) feet into the mountains, which must have been a thousand (1000) or more feet in height. He looked for a better vantage point, to see what visual distortions might be present at increasing heights. If the distortions lessened noticeably, that would suggest that the effect was diminishing with altitude, which would weaken his theory regarding the energy from the waters affecting the yellow suns. After all, he reasoned, the strength of the energy should increase or decrease in the same direction – though not necessarily at the same rate – as the magnitude of the visual distortions.
The mountains, however, had rough terrain, with boulders and caves, that hid many secrets. Celio, in his search for a better vantage point from which to see the oceans, stumbled upon one of those secrets. He saw the mouth of a cave, and in that cave were bright lights. This he found interesting, and he entered the cave to see the source of the light. It turned out to be a series of mirrors on the inside walls that were reflecting sunlight entering into the cave. By these, the cave interior was well-lit and he could see that the contents were of interest to him.
Upon the floor of the cave was a mosaic of blue tiles, arranged in one hundred forty-four (144) rows of one hundred forty-four (144) tiles each. Each tile itself was square depression, perhaps one (1) foot long on an edge, and was apparently filled with water. He could not tell which water was in the tiles, however. He looked at the array of one hundred twenty-six (126) mirrors on the rough stone cave walls – arranged in a parabolic curve whose vertex was at the back of the cave – and wondered what was to be accomplished by this. Celio considered that it might be a different form of lighthouse to signal ships, but he doubted that it would be observed far out to sea, because of the lack of a direct line of sight out of the cave entrance leading into the ocean. Yet, the arrangement of mirrors was quite deliberate.
Celio examined the mirrors closely and measured them. They were nine (9) feet in height and four (4) feet in width. These measurements did not suggest much about why they were present, however.
He turned again to look at the water-filled tiles on the cave floor, which were bordered by rectangular stones. On the border stones were markings and he walked around the formation to read them. What he read was puzzling: “Of the squares within your sight, count them all, yet miss not one. Unlock the gateway to the sea, when all of your counting is done.”
The mirrors were not square, nor were the border stones. Only the water-filled tiles were square. There were one hundred forty-four (144) times one hundred forty-four (144) or twenty thousand seven hundred thirty-six (20736) of them. And that was the naïve way of counting. Celio was a trained mathematician, and knew that, within squares, more squares could be found. Besides counting the individual tile squares, one had to count all of the two (2) by two (2) tile squares – there were one hundred forty-three (143) of these across and down, because you could count the first and second squares, then the second and third squares, and so on, until the one hundred forty-third and one hundred forty-forth squares in that row, and the same
for the column. Hence, there were another one hundred forty-three (143) times one hundred forty-three (143) squares, making for another twenty thousand three hundred six (20306) squares. Continuing on, there were one hundred forty-two (142) times one hundred forty-two (142) three (3) by three (3) tile squares, making for another twenty thousand one hundred sixty-four (20164) squares. Taking this to its conclusion, there were one million five thousand seven hundred twenty (1005720) total squares, which included the single overall one hundred forty-four (144) by one hundred forty-four (144) tile square.
Celio’s next question was what to do with this number. He noticed that the tops of the border stones had digits on them, and were loose fitting with gaps between them. He pushed down on the ones that corresponded to the digits of his number, in order, while walking around the arrangement of border stones surrounding the tiles of water.
The water-filled tiles themselves began to descend, forming a watery staircase leading below the cave floor. Celio looked at this, thinking this to be a dangerous way to walk – a wet staircase would be treacherously slippery. However, the water began to drain out of them, through some openings at the bottom, and his curiosity was piqued. He walked down this staircase and found himself on the bank of an underground river in another cave.
There was a small sailboat with what looked like tattered sails, yet the hull looked seaworthy. He was looking for the answers to the mysteries of the movement of the yellow suns. Yet, a mystery of a different sort lay before him.
He was fifty-one (51) years old and had already faced some of the worst things in life. Neither fear nor the need to support a family was holding him back. Curiosity carried him forward.
Celio got into the boat, and then it began moving along the river, entering a dark tunnel. The vessel traveled alternately down steep grades and over watery plateaus, even though there was no wind to propel it. He accepted that he had no idea where it would lead, or when he would arrive.